Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(+1)

I've been waaaaay too ambitious :/ I'm working on a angband-esque rogue like, which despite being glacially slow to play I'm finding quite entertaining to test. Map generation, player code and items/entity code are all in the bag. I'm just about to start work on the combat system and then its just a case of a win condition and I'm done.  Hopefully I'll manage to finish before the deadline.

Good luck! I made a couple of roguelikes for the Spectrum, except in ZXBasic, and they're still slow. Obviously the genre it a lot more processor intensive than one would expect. Now I'm curious to see what comes out.

 Curiosity is fine, just as long as expectations are low ;)

Well, it's too slow. Even ignoring all the initialisation and level builds the time between turns is best measured in eons. I'm sure there's a couple of optimisations I could do but nothing that's going to make this playable within the rules and time frame of the Jam.  If anyone is interested I've put the code on github, only as a warning for what not to do :)

https://github.com/Spoozilla/S...

Huh. BASin freezes trying to run it, and Fuse complains about a missing ROM. Were you going for the traditional format?

Yeah, that's really odd. Although the .bas file when raw from github works fine for me... github and BASin not getting along for some reason? Anyway, https://raw.githubusercontent.... seems to work.

As for the snapshot, I have no idea what's occurring there. I just saved the .z80 from BASin and it seems fine here. Unless github is breaking binary files now too :/ 

Here's a .sna directly from Fuse. http://www.int13h.com/download...

The .sna file works fine. Level generation isn't bad. But the moment I'm next to a monster, I have to mash the direction keys a whole lot before landing a single hit, and then it doesn't seem to do much. It would be more responsive if it was turn-based, in my opinion.

It is turn based. There's a little indicator in the bottom right of the screen that rotates to show the machine is "thinking". The main loop waits on a key input before progressing. This should be handled by the pause 0 at line 530.  Mashing the keys probably wouldn't result in a good experience.

For me the issue is with the amount of entities that can be on a level and the amount of time it takes to process their moves. With a packed level it can be between 20 to 30 seconds between turns.

(1 edit)

Oh, huh. I misunderstood then. As for processing moves, that also takes the most time in Escape From Cnossus. But because it's written in (compiled) ZXBasic, it's just noticeably slow, not unplayably slow. :P

(+1)

Testing my own games is my bane, i tend to spend waaaay too much time on it ^_^

Sounds great! I look forward to trying it :)