"The Ordered know nothing of creation, destruction or transformation - they preserve, simply put, and their digital minds cannot conceive anything but."

• flavour text on Ordered Souls

The Games Foxes Play

(complete source code - mirror | view all previous posts | play 0.4.3 online in browser on itch.io!)

I've been having a few DCSS addiction issues in recent evenings, where the bulk of my limited development time is located. Hopefully the last horrendous FeCK run will knock some sense into me. It's almost as if a D:2 Quicksilver Ooze is Xom speak for "go back to programming NOW!".

Despite this lapse in discipline, progress has been made:

• The "zoom-teleport" has been reworked for what is probably the 8th time by now. I lost count. What DOES matter is my success in optimizing away that annoying lag spike RUINING my immersion. (I did this by pre-loading some assets on game start) I personally think it looks very awesome now. Do ignore the ugly pink walls, overlapping text and flickering tiles on the edge, my optimization testing drew me down a deep pit of tweaking many knobs that should now be reverted.

• Epsilon's "Industrial Apex" level has had some random generation returned to it despite my statements from last week, because it took almost no effort to bring it back and I still want to have the right to post in a place named "roguelikedev".

• I have implemented A* pathfinding! I was really expecting a nightmare here, but things went very smoothly. All I had to do was steal some (MIT-licensed) code (and read this excellent article to understand it better)! So far, zero lag has been noticed even though every entity running it is updating their path every single turn. I remember reading that Cogmind ran into performance issues with the trillion service bots running around, though, so I may be forced to optimize this later on (say, by only recalculating the path if something obstructs it).

At this point, I am not really sure if I am just messing around learning about cool tech things or actually making a thing I can ship, but it's fun so I'll keep going.

"The Artistic create solutions to problems, and when there are none, create problems to make solutions for."

• flavour text on the Artistic tab of the skill tree

The Games Foxes Play

(complete source code - mirror | view all previous posts | play 0.4.3 online in browser on itch.io!)

I am reaching the negative side of the perfect sine function that characterizes my level of discipline in relation to time since I started. I would like to take a moment to equally celebrate and blame the hard work of the DCSS developers for making their latest "Talisman" rework way too awesome and siphoning away the limited free time I can afford to spend in front of a screen.

That being said, I have done a few things.

I think I will be stepping away from the "traditional roguelike" ethos for a little bit - by reducing the random generation and trying to make a single level that is fun to play before trying to add variation to it. This project has went through about 12 identity crises in the last year, and needs to narrow itself down to a single root.

In this spirit, I will now be focusing on making one level, centered around the very cool Epsilon serpent boss I showcased a few months ago, with a predetermined structure and predetermined enemies. The "Soul Cage" now acts as a teleporter pad, granting access.

So, the plan is this. Place cool foes around this map from the pool I have already made (including Epsilon), let the player craft some interesting Axioms (spells) to explore the core game mechanic, and basically put them in a simple 5 minute challenge to go beat the giga-robot snake. If it's fun and it works, there will be plenty of opportunities to expand the formula and return to a more diversified experience.

This will allow me to actually push a new version to itch.io (the current one is starting to get very old), and to actually stop with the sprawling mental daydreams and endless void-staring that gets nothing done.

I am feeling frustrated and utterly confused as to how any indie game ever actually gets made, especially by hobbyists who have to depend on a main time-consuming income source. It feels like I am stuck in a "two steps forward, one step back" loop - yes, there is progress overall, but the slowness of it is painful.

Despite all this, I can say without doubt that this entire ordeal has taught me so, so much about intrinsic motivation, far beyond just technical know-how.