WIP Wizard's Dungeon

[gambler172]

I also checked it on multicarts and it works fine ?

[Trebor]

Concerto on a couple of my NTSC consoles and the MiSTer FPGA has been working beautifully regarding Wizard's Dungeon.

[+GoldLeader]

Haven't checked the latest build, yet...But it's always worked Great on my Dragonfly

[BydoEmpire]

Thanks for playing Wizard's Dungeon on the special show @ZeroPage Homebrew - that wizard exploit at the end was hilarious.  A little while back I fixed an exploit that Crossbow found, where when there was only one tree in that room, you could use your lightning through the tree and kill him while he just sat there.  I'll have to tweak it a bit.  When I fixed the enemy sprites not overlapping the walls as much, I made them more likely to get stuck. I've noticed this with bats a little, but it wasn't a big deal.  It's a bigger deal with the final boss!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

50 minutes ago, BydoEmpire said:

Thanks for playing Wizard's Dungeon on the special show @ZeroPage Homebrew - that wizard exploit at the end was hilarious.  A little while back I fixed an exploit that Crossbow found, where when there was only one tree in that room, you could use your lightning through the tree and kill him while he just sat there.  I'll have to tweak it a bit.  When I fixed the enemy sprites not overlapping the walls as much, I made them more likely to get stuck. I've noticed this with bats a little, but it wasn't a big deal.  It's a bigger deal with the final boss!

I didn't know ZPH was streaming again?! Do they have that scheduled on their afterdark specials? Also, I watched the stream a bit just now but didn't see where they found an exploit on the wizard. But based on your description, it sounds like they got him 'stuck' on one of the trees and then were able to way lay into him at that point?

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

1 hour ago, BydoEmpire said:

Thanks for playing Wizard's Dungeon on the special show @ZeroPage Homebrew - that wizard exploit at the end was hilarious.  A little while back I fixed an exploit that Crossbow found, where when there was only one tree in that room, you could use your lightning through the tree and kill him while he just sat there.  I'll have to tweak it a bit.  When I fixed the enemy sprites not overlapping the walls as much, I made them more likely to get stuck. I've noticed this with bats a little, but it wasn't a big deal.  It's a bigger deal with the final boss!

Thanks for watching, it was a ton of fun playing through the 'Normal' setting in the game and annihilating the wizard. Granted he got his robe stuck on a tree branch while I hammered on him from a distance so he was a little easier than he probably should have been. ?

 

Some things I noted during the playthrough:

- 1h31m & 2h58m: My weapon got caught in the wall
- 2h49m: Slowdown was flashing the map up on the screen. It happened a number of times but this timestamp really shows it.

 

27 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I didn't know ZPH was streaming again?! Do they have that scheduled on their afterdark specials? Also, I watched the stream a bit just now but didn't see where they found an exploit on the wizard. But based on your description, it sounds like they got him 'stuck' on one of the trees and then were able to way lay into him at that point?

 

We're officially streaming again this coming Friday on Jun 18th but we've been doing some unscheduled After Dark episodes here and there. ? You can see me destroy the Wizard by getting him caught on a tree at 3h13m.

 

For those of you who missed the stream, here's the link of us playing through Wizard's Dungeon on Normal.

 

- James

 

 

[BydoEmpire]

It's great to see @Blues_Bloody's label artwork, too!  Makes it seem more "real."

[+-^CrossBow^-]

2 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Thanks for watching, it was a ton of fun playing through the 'Normal' setting in the game and annihilating the wizard. Granted he got his robe stuck on a tree branch while I hammered on him from a distance so he was a little easier than he probably should have been. ?

 

Some things I noted during the playthrough:

- 1h31m & 2h58m: My weapon got caught in the wall
- 2h49m: Slowdown was flashing the map up on the screen. It happened a number of times but this timestamp really shows it.

 

We're officially streaming again this coming Friday on Jun 18th but we've been doing some unscheduled After Dark episodes here and there. ? You can see me destroy the Wizard by getting him caught on a tree at 3h13m.

 

Yes, these are issues that I've mentioned to him before but I'm not sure he has the room to code in full fixes for that.

 

On that method you used to kill the wizard, yeah that is similar to what I did only he was stuck and I used the lightning to take him. The fix was to add in the second tree so you can do that. But I hadn't managed to get him stuck like that before so that is interesting.

 

@BydoEmpire Wonder if it would make the wizard too tough if he occasionally teleports and reappears at different parts of the room as you fight him?

[BydoEmpire]

June 13, 2021 Update:

- fixed enemies occasionally wandering off the right side of the screen
- fixed bug with chasing enemies getting stuck on walls (especially the wizard)
 

1 hour ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Wonder if it would make the wizard too tough if he occasionally teleports and reappears at different parts of the room as you fight him?

That would be pretty cool, I've got about 70 bytes left in ROM, I'll see if I can make something work.

wizd_210613.bas.a78

[+x=usr(1536)]

Played this for about 2.5 hours last night.  Made it to level 3 but couldn't find the stairs and eventually died ?  Had a lot of fun exploring the maps, and it's running just fine from a Concerto.

 

Two questions: one, would it be possible to introduce a difficulty level in-between Normal and Hard; two, are there any plans to introduce a password system or similar so that you can continue play from the last level that you were on?

 

WRT the first item, Normal's difficulty ramps up well, but it's slower to do it than I'd prefer.  By the time I was about halfway through level 2, the pace was roughly where I would have liked it to have been from the start - but the mechanic of gradually introducing the new enemies is one that I'd like to see kept, just happening sooner as the player progresses.  Obviously, this is a matter of personal preference and not everyone will agree, but it is one that I feel is worth considering.

 

As for the second item: I'd kill for this ? Not that I don't want to play the game again, but given the amount of time I invested in it to get to the third level, it would be a plus to not have to repeat the entire performance on later games.

 

That aside, I really like the game.  It's like Venture meets Berzerk meets early Zelda, which works out to be a really good mix.  Thank you!

[BydoEmpire]

41 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Played this for about 2.5 hours last night.  Made it to level 3 but couldn't find the stairs and eventually died ?  Had a lot of fun exploring the maps, and it's running just fine from a Concerto.

 

Two questions: one, would it be possible to introduce a difficulty level in-between Normal and Hard; two, are there any plans to introduce a password system or similar so that you can continue play from the last level that you were on?

 

WRT the first item, Normal's difficulty ramps up well, but it's slower to do it than I'd prefer.  By the time I was about halfway through level 2, the pace was roughly where I would have liked it to have been from the start - but the mechanic of gradually introducing the new enemies is one that I'd like to see kept, just happening sooner as the player progresses.  Obviously, this is a matter of personal preference and not everyone will agree, but it is one that I feel is worth considering.

 

As for the second item: I'd kill for this ? Not that I don't want to play the game again, but given the amount of time I invested in it to get to the third level, it would be a plus to not have to repeat the entire performance on later games.

 

That aside, I really like the game.  It's like Venture meets Berzerk meets early Zelda, which works out to be a really good mix.  Thank you!

Thanks for that - I don't think I have the ROM space for a password continue feature - I did add a continue from the last level you died on.  That would be really good to have, though, it takes me over an hour to go through the whole game and that's knowing exactly what I'm doing.  I'll mull this over, maybe there's something I can squeeze in.

 

WRT the difficulty, I totally agree.  It doesn't really start getting fun until pretty far along.  The whole first level is kind of a wash and I almost never even get hit unless I'm being sloppy... but I'm too close to it, and it's hard to see the forest for the trees.  I don't want to make it too hard or too confusing for people that haven't played it much.  I was thinking about ways to make it more engaging earlier, and I upped the spawn rate a bit early on but probably needs more tweaking.

[BydoEmpire]

I could probably let you always just select the starting level from the main menu (even if it's a secret option). You'd miss out on points starting on higher levels, but that's okay.  I'd have to think about how to allocate spells and magic items, too.

 

For difficulty, I may speed up a few enemies that appear in the first two levels. I could add some of the tougher ones like snakes to level 1 also.  That might be a nice bit of variety.

Edited June 14, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[BydoEmpire]

On 6/13/2021 at 2:57 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

For those of you who missed the stream, here's the link of us playing through Wizard's Dungeon on Normal.

- James

 

 

I saw it was confusing when the wizard killed you around 2:30 - what happens is he teleports you to an opposite corner of the maze. I think there's a little randomness.

 

I usually use the wave spell on the wizard, but the lightning is actually pretty good too because it does so much damage.

Edited June 14, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[BydoEmpire]

I think I have a good way to do a simple level select.  I want to be careful not to break anything, especially continuing, so I want to test a bit more before posting anything but it's looking promising.

[+x=usr(1536)]

51 minutes ago, BydoEmpire said:

I think I have a good way to do a simple level select.  I want to be careful not to break anything, especially continuing, so I want to test a bit more before posting anything but it's looking promising.

Nice!  Looking forward to seeing how that shakes out.

 

Which leads me on to my next point, which will probably be incredibly obnoxious in light of the above ?

5 hours ago, BydoEmpire said:

I could probably let you always just select the starting level from the main menu (even if it's a secret option). You'd miss out on points starting on higher levels, but that's okay.  I'd have to think about how to allocate spells and magic items, too.

What about tweaking this a little bit so that if you complete the level, you receive a bonus for jumping ahead?  Same idea as Star Wars, Tempest, etc. used, essentially.

 

(And I get it - space is tight.  If something is doable, great; if not, no biggie ? )

Edited June 15, 2021 by x=usr(1536)

[BydoEmpire]

7 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Nice!  Looking forward to seeing how that shakes out.

 

Which leads me on to my next point, which will probably be incredibly obnoxious in light of the above ?

What about tweaking this a little bit so that if you complete the level, you receive a bonus for jumping ahead?  Same idea as Star Wars, Tempest, etc. used, essentially.

 

(And I get it - space is tight.  If something is doable, great; if not, no biggie ? )

Currently if you complete a level, you get a 100 point for each room you've visited.  If you visit all 64 rooms on a level, you get 10,000 points.  Is that what you mean, or do you mean that if you start on level 2, for example, just start your score at 5,000 or something like that?

[+x=usr(1536)]

27 minutes ago, BydoEmpire said:

Currently if you complete a level, you get a 100 point for each room you've visited.  If you visit all 64 rooms on a level, you get 10,000 points.  Is that what you mean, or do you mean that if you start on level 2, for example, just start your score at 5,000 or something like that?

More like the latter, but not exactly.

 

Let's say you start on level 3.  Your score still starts at zero, but on completion of the level you receive a bonus of, say, 50,000 points or similar.  The bonus could even be linked to the starting difficulty, so completing level 3 at Hard would yield a higher bonus than at Easy or Normal.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I have an idea that should be doable for using a level select. Since we can only get one set of weapons and artifacts per level anyway, just make it so that when you start on Level 3 for instance, everything you pick up will be the level 3 version of that weapon. Not sure how to handle the magical artifacts since you pick those up along the way with each found on each level map. But something along those lines perhaps in regards to weapons should be possible?

 

However, that won't work for @x=usr(1536) idea for getting an increased bonus for starting at a higher difficulty because what I'm proposing above, essentially starts you off as if you had already gone through all the other levels to reach that point. So it doesn't make sense to give someone a 50k or whatever starting score if they are already powered up to the same level they would be normally had they played through it to that point.

 

For the score bonus to be inticing, you actually need to have the player start at a lower level and then have the weapons essentially stack as normal. But that would mean that a player starting on level 3 would only have level 1 magic missile as their default and any weapons picked up will only then be level 1 as well. That would make defeating the hordes or later enemies WAY too difficult I think since they would become bullet sponges at that point. 

 

Likely best to leave it as it is honestly. Yes it takes awhile to get through the game, but then you don't want to be able to breeze through it in 30min either since the game no longer loops and starts over allowing you to keep increasing your score. 

[BydoEmpire]

44 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I have an idea that should be doable for using a level select. Since we can only get one set of weapons and artifacts per level anyway, just make it so that when you start on Level 3 for instance, everything you pick up will be the level 3 version of that weapon. Not sure how to handle the magical artifacts since you pick those up along the way with each found on each level map. But something along those lines perhaps in regards to weapons should be possible?

That's pretty much the way I've got it working now, if you start on a level > 1, you get all weapons (as you should have gotten them all on level 1) and they're at the appropriate level. You do not start with any magic items, but everything you could have found on prior levels (that you skipped) will be available.  If you start on level 4, for example, you'll find all the magic items in that level.

 

I'm not sure I want to give a starting score if you start on higher levels, though.  I think there should be some incentive for starting from the beginning, but this option also lets you just play and finish the game if you don't have the time. I'll think about it...

Edited June 15, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

However, that won't work for @x=usr(1536) idea for getting an increased bonus for starting at a higher difficulty because what I'm proposing above, essentially starts you off as if you had already gone through all the other levels to reach that point. So it doesn't make sense to give someone a 50k or whatever starting score if they are already powered up to the same level they would be normally had they played through it to that point.

Folks, I just want to clarify something: I'm not proposing a starting score other than zero.  The bonus for starting at a higher level would only be awarded when the level is completed.  No freebies; the player has to work for it ?

 

As for the weapons and artifacts, @-^CrossBow^-'s idea of picking up the more powerful versions as you play through the level is a good one, though I'm not sure how many levels of difficulty it would take to reach the tipping point between 'this is hard but getting better' and 'yup, I'm dead'.  As for the artifacts, I have no really good idea on this one either.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2 hours ago, BydoEmpire said:

I saw it was confusing when the wizard killed you around 2:30 - what happens is he teleports you to an opposite corner of the maze. I think there's a little randomness.

That makes sense now, thanks for the explanation! It's kind of cool that the Wizard teleports you across the maze so you have to make your way back.

2 hours ago, BydoEmpire said:

I usually use the wave spell on the wizard, but the lightning is actually pretty good too because it does so much damage.

I was very afraid to use the lightning so I didn't get too close to him! Eeep!

 

- James

[BydoEmpire]

It's not very slick, but I think this works, but I found a bunch of pretty serious bugs I introduced in the last few days trying to fix other bugs. For example, in fixing the AI code for the enemy wizard getting 'stuck' on the trees, I accidentally made the statue enemies move at maximum speed, which was kind of funny. When you got close, they came to life and swarmed on top of you like a homing missile and killed you right away.  That was a good one.  In adding the level select, I occasionally stomped over the room with the stairs, so if you started on levels 3 or 4 there was no way to win.  So... I fixed everything I know about. I tested new games on each level, continuing after dying, starting a new game after winning, etc.

 

6/15/21

- added level select - press SELECT on the main menu to cycle through starting level.  You'll see a treasure icon in the lower right:

  Blank (default) - Level 1 (magic bolt level 1)

  Gold Coins - Level 2 (all weapons at level 1)

  Gem - Level 3 (all weapons at level 2)

  Treasure Chest - Level 4 (all weapons at level 3)

  This only applies if you start a New Game.  If you Continue a previous game after dying, you will continue on whatever level you died on. This seems most logical to me.

- fixed bug w/ statue enemies moving too fast

- I added one pixel to the "knock back" effect of lightning, making it a bit more powerful

- tweaked enemy speed and spawn chances, so hopefully the earlier levels are a bit more challenging

 

Literally 0 bytes left in ROM.  Fixing some of the bugs I caused required a bit of hackery. It's getting precarious in there. The code looks more like spaghetti each day.

 

Let me know if you find anything serious.  I don't think I can add any scoring changes for level select.  I know the wave spell (previously arrow) gets stuck in walls occasionally, that's been there a while, but I think I'm going to have to mark that bug "Known Shippable."  I might look through the bounce code and tweak a few things but no promises on that one.

 

wizd_210615.bas.a78

[BydoEmpire]

Wow, the enemy spawn rate and speed changes make a big difference, will probably tune a bit.  I did test level select + continue last night and I didn't run into any issues. Fingers crossed I didn't break anything else.

[BydoEmpire]

2021/06/19
- fixed bug with not letting you re-select bolt spell after getting a different spell (this was an interesting one, level select was NOT working as-intended)
- updated level select art to show number of the level you'll start on if not the first
- tweaked hero/wall collision to be more forgiving on top and bottom of hero sprite- tweaks some enemy speeds

- spawn gems if you kill all enemies in a room and you're already at max health
- updated some sfx
- phase spiders blinks out longer, making them a little tougher

- minor scoring tweak

- freed up a little bit of ROM by optimizing some redundant code

 

wizd_210619.bas.a78

[BydoEmpire]

I think this might be it... if I didn't just jinx myself.  I've made the enemies faster, especially on hard.  It's a lot more tense now, and you have to really pay attention.  Hopefully that makes the first couple levels more fun as things pick up quicker.  I did beat it on hard, so it's definitely doable but a pretty good challenge.

 

I had a good moment on the 4th level where I was down to 2 health and was considering just killing myself to find a gravestone, but there were enough unexplored rooms I was able to farm enough potions, along with getting lucky with a chest that had one, that I got back up to almost 50 before the final boss and I beat him.  That was kind of fun.

 

2021/06/29
- increased enemy speed on normal/hard
- minor sfx tweaks

 

Need to work on the manual now...

wizd_210629.bas.a78