WIP Wizard's Dungeon

[BydoEmpire]

I put in one of those "I hate myself" hacks to work around the graphical corruption bug, but everything does seem to work, so... ship it? 

 

Pretty good update this week:

- Added a main menu and maze is now random (I force the seed to a specific value in builds w/ the menu skipped, that should be off now)

- Added a map screen when you pause!

- Gates now lock you into rooms with special items for a period of time, forcing you to deal with those enemies

- New treasure and item distribution - it's much more random than it was before

- Several updated enemy graphics, and better distribution of enemies across levels.  New goblin enemy type as well.

- Palette changes when you get to a new level, and difficulty ramps up.

- Tuned sword, still too powerful but a bit better

- Tested in MAME and JS7800

wizarddungeon_wip.bas.a78

[+Karl G]

I played the new version a little bit in js7800, and there were a couple of times my character turned into what looks like a ghost.

 

 

[BydoEmpire]

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1 hour ago, Karl G said:

I played the new version a little bit in js7800, and there were a couple of times my character turned into what looks like a ghost.

Thanks for trying it out!  This is actually a game mechanic.  If you get killed, you turn into a ghost. Your health turns into a 30 second timer. You have to find a gravestone before time runs out or your game is over (it basically just starts over). If you get your ghost to a gravestone, you get revived and and continue on.

 

While you're a ghost you can't use weapons, but the enemies can't touch you either. Just find that gravestone as fast as you can!

 

Needs a lot of tuning.  At some point I will update the map to call out gravestones you've found.

 

I added some general documentation to the first post of the Wizard's Dungeon thread:

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I just played a bit of this and there are three things I wanted to mention, two of which I believe are bugs.

 

- Where is the sound? Didn't we have some audio when shooting and hitting enemies before?

- The grave stones don't stay on the screens? Specifically I find on and noticed that if I pause on that screen and then un-pause, the grave stone is no longer on the screen? Same with moving off the screen to a different one and then coming back the grave stone is no longer there? Shouldn't they be static?

- I've seen two of the green spiders now take the treasure when moving over it? Is that normal behaviour?

 

Will keep playing a bit more but there are a few things I want to mention that I'm really liking as well!

 

- Those monster sprites are really nice and varied

- The tentacle monster is excellent! but...make him a bit more purple in color? hehe

- I like how the monsters are limited by the barriers same as the player

- It is really cool how the monsters (Especially the mummies) just kind of meander around the screen until you get a bit closer to them or shoot them and then they go aggro!

 

I'm a fan of these exploration and casual games like this as well as platformers so I'm watching this one closely to see how it develops and thank you!

 

[BydoEmpire]

22 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

The grave stones don't stay on the screens? Specifically I find on and noticed that if I pause on that screen and then un-pause, the grave stone is no longer on the screen? Same with moving off the screen to a different one and then coming back the grave stone is no longer there? Shouldn't they be static?

I think you're talking about the gates to the top/side exits.  The gates blocking the exits do disappear after pausing - that's a known bug.  The gravestones (which are in a fixed position and say "RIP" on them) get "used" when you touch one as a ghost, but are persistent otherwise.  If they do disappear otherwise, that's definitely a bug.

Rooms with special items have gates on the exits, holding you in the room for ~10 seconds.  They do not reappear after you've gotten the item.

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 Where is the sound? Didn't we have some audio when shooting and hitting enemies before?
 I've seen two of the green spiders now take the treasure when moving over it? Is that normal behaviour?

There is no sound yet, I haven't gotten to it.  Definitely on the TODO list.

 

The spiders should not take treasures, that's definitely a bug if they do.  I am aware that the gold coins will move location to location if you exit and reenter a room, but they should stay in the room until you take it.

 

I'll look at tweaking the palette for the tentacles, that's a great suggestion, I'm not super happy with the amount of pink.  Definitely planning more monster types, as rom-space allows.

Thanks for playing!

Edited February 9, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+-^CrossBow^-]

No I meant the gravestones. I was playing JS7800 and was able to reproduce it all the time. The Stone would be in the center of the screen and I would touch it as the wizard and nothing happens (Expected since I'm not dead/ghosted). Leave the room and come back to it and the grave stone is no longer on the screen. 

If I'm on the screen with the grave stone and then pause to bring up the map screen, and unpause to get back to the game screen, the grave stone was no longer present on the screen. So yes I would say this is a bug as well then if they aren't meant to randomize their locations from visit to visit on the screen.

 

I forgot to mention that I do like the magic gates that limit you to stay put in the room for a bit to deal with the monsters before opening. That is a good way to keep the player engaged in taking them out and actually getting some treasure that the monsters might leave behind (yellow gems thus far?). Otherwise, a person will be tempted to just blow through screen to screen until they finally find the exit to the next map.

 

I need to put this back on my DF cart and play on actual hardware to see if the grave stone issue is an emulation issue or actual?

 

[BydoEmpire]

2 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

So yes I would say this is a bug as well then if they aren't meant to randomize their locations from visit to visit on the screen.

Thanks, @-^CrossBow^-, that is definitely a bug.  The gravestones should not be disappearing!

[+Karl G]

1 hour ago, BydoEmpire said:

Thanks for trying it out!  This is actually a game mechanic.  If you get killed, you turn into a ghost.

 

I had wondered if that might be the case except for the fact that it happened once just as soon as the screen changed when I entered a new room (I think?). It's possible I hit something right before changing rooms and didn't notice, though.

[BydoEmpire]

1 minute ago, Karl G said:

 

I had wondered if that might be the case except for the fact that it happened once just as soon as the screen changed when I entered a new room (I think?). It's possible I hit something right before changing rooms and didn't notice, though.

Yeah, sometimes enemies will spawn right underneath you.  I haven't resolved that one yet.  I'm guessing that's what happened, but certainly could be a different bug.  Thanks again for letting me know, I'll keep my eyes open for this.  I'm changing a lot of things every week, and I don't have any kind of test suite so I definitely break things along the way.

[CloakeD]

Enjoyed playing this,really cool idea becoming a ghost and searching for a gravestone to revive.

[BydoEmpire]

I plan to add an item that shows you where on the map certain items are before you've found them... like a Gem of Seeing.  Might make that a bit easier.  Then again, the suspense is part of the fun. Need to try it, play it and tune it to see.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Okay, so after playing this on my DF cart there are a few changes to what I stated above when playing through JS7800. 

 

- I was NOT able to get the spiders to take gold as they did the one time through JS7800 so this might have been some odd fluke thing?

- The grave stones do disappear but only once you have cleared that screen of all monsters. If you just pause with them still present, then the grave stone remains. Walk off screen and back on provided there are still monsters there and it will still remain. But if you clear out all of the monsters in that room and then pause the game or leave the room and come back, the grave stone is no longer there. So it only disappears once all monsters are cleared from that room.

 

The colors on my actual 7800 and LCD look quite a bit different in places and the tentacle already seems to have more a purple look to him. Likewise the actual monk dude you play as seem to have more of a burgundy robe with purple highlight on the edge vs Red/Blue. I've adjusted a ton of times on my 7800 and colors just never seem to be right either way. Likely a result of the UAV composite/svid similar to what we see with Tower Toppler and Commando in combination with LCD panels.

 

[BydoEmpire]

6 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

- The grave stones do disappear but only once you have cleared that screen of all monsters. If you just pause with them still present, then the grave stone remains. Walk off screen and back on provided there are still monsters there and it will still remain. But if you clear out all of the monsters in that room and then pause the game or leave the room and come back, the grave stone is no longer there. So it only disappears once all monsters are cleared from that room.

 

This is such a weird one.  I can tell the frame when the byte that stores what item is in that room gets cleared, and I know the only place in the code that's doing it... but I don't see the reason why it's happening.  It actually gets cleared while you're playing, not on after an unpause.  The redraw after unpausing is working because it just checks that byte and see's "nope, no items in this room."  It was already cleared by then.  This'll be fun.  I have a good track record so far of fixing nasty bugs late Sunday night that stump me all weekend... we'll see if I can get this one cleared up before the weekend even starts.  Thanks for the help in narrowing it down, this would have been WAY harder without the details you provided.

 

[edit]FIXED!  It actually wasn't to bad.  The flag got cleared if you picked up a gem after killing a mummy, because it THOUGHT you picked up the room's item.  It was easier to find on rooms with gravestones because I crank up the % chance of spawning mummies in rooms with gravestones. They're pretty rare otherwise, so you don't nearly have the odds of seeing one, let alone killing one, let alone them spawning a gem.

Edited February 10, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+Muddyfunster]

I had a bug like this that drove me crazy in EXO. Turns out I'd used the same memory location for two variables in very different parts of the code and they were overwriting each other. 

 

If there is an odd bug to find, @-^CrossBow^- will find it  he is the bug whisperer!

[BydoEmpire]

21 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

I had a bug like this that drove me crazy in EXO. Turns out I'd used the same memory location for two variables in very different parts of the code and they were overwriting each other. 

 

If there is an odd bug to find, @-^CrossBow^- will find it  he is the bug whisperer!

Even though it wasn't the issue here, tracking down this bug did lead me to find a place where I was only clearing the first 16 bytes of my room_item_list, when it's actually 64 bytes.  Fortunately, that didn't really matter as I set it all up later, but never good to leave uninitialized stuff hanging around.  Could have been really nasty down the road...

 

"Bug Whisperer" is a rare and valuable skill.  Highly treasured!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Well is now a bad time to discuss the fact that it is possible in some cases to defeat monsters through the walls on the screen? It seems to be easier to do when you are to the right of the wall and the monster is on the left and as far as I know, this is only possible with the sword in hand. While the sword sprite and animation isn't possible when up against a wall. It does appear that the sword is still working as I was able to kill enemies through the wall. Spiders and mummies being easy given that they home in on the player sprite and don't have know better enough to try and go around the wall sections. 

 

 

[BydoEmpire]

Nah, always a good time!  The sooner I know about bugs the better.

 

I know why you can't use weapons (especially the sword) in some cases when you're facing walls, but I just haven't dealt with it.  On the radar, though.  I didn't know you could defeat enemies through walls yet.  I'll check that out.  The sword is a bit quirky since there's a bunch of special-case code to deal with the fact that it's not a projectile.  Still needs a lot of tuning.   It feels more like a light saber than a sword - It slices and dices through every enemy!

Edited February 10, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[BydoEmpire]

2021/02/12:
- fixed bug with clearing room items after picking up a mummy's gem
- fixed bug with levels rarely not having any stairs (!)
- first pass of sfx
- swords now aren't blocked by walls
- fixed enemy spawn percentages
- added keys, chests and maps
- map screen highlights rooms with gravestone & stairs if you have a map
- pause screen shows your items
- new room interiors
- some different gfx for different levels

- fixed some incorrect map room sprites

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Few issues that I've noticed. This was through Bupsystem as the emulator.

 

- shots fired left or right will go diagonal after ever so many. Usually to the upper diagonal to where you are facing without moving the controller in diagonally

- Room numbers appear in the lower center of the mazes. They don't impede or block your movement but just seem outta place there?

- Pressing button 2 to change weapons will also cause the game to randomly teleport the player to a different room while also changing the weapon. In fact, you can press button 2 even with the default shot weapon and still teleport around the maps?

 

 

[gambler172]

hi

checked the actual game....work well,but have the same teleporting problem,when pressing

button 2.

 

[BydoEmpire]

D'oh, I left a debug option on to cycle screens when I uploaded the bin.  I have dozens of debug options and need to make sure I turn them all off!  I've seen the diagonal firing problem, of course when I sat down and tried to dig in I couldn't get it to happen but I didn't try that long.  

 

I've also seen a bug where sometimes arrows get stuck in the walls for a second or two.  I suspect that started happening whenever I introduced the 'accidental diagonal firing' bug.

 

Fixed version attached.

 

wizarddungeon_wip.bas.bas.a78

Edited February 13, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Okay, so I haven't quite figured out exactly how the diagonal shot is happening, but it does it on JS7800 and Bubsystem both. Now, if you spam the fire button, then the shots tend to only go in the direction you were last facing. But if you are more leisure with them, then it is about every 3rd shot of so that will go off in the upper diagonal to where you are facing.

 

You stated that rooms with gravestones and stairs are highlighted on the pause/map screen when you have a map? Well, my second room was a gravestone room and it was forever highlighted in grey on the map screen after visiting it as were all the other gravestone rooms. Also the room with the stairs was highlighted in light purple. It wasn't until about a dozen screens after that, that I found the map item. So it would seem that the rooms will always highlight regardless of possessing the map item or not?

 

Some things to consider based on what I've played in this latest release:

- When you turn to ghost form, I think it should be possible for the player character to then move through walls completely. I'm stating this because I just played and was able to uncover nearly the entire map of the first level. However, the gravestone screens seem to be right close to each other near the start of the level. But by the time I was way far off, there wasn't a gravestone screen anywhere less than 9 screens from me. As a result, there was zero chance of making it to one before the 30sec timer runs out. But if the player character can actually go through walls, then they have a stronger fighting chance of making it to one. Granted it could have just been really bad luck on how the gravestone screens happened to be in the order they were on the map, but it was pointless to have the option when there wasn't anyway in heck I was going to make it in time.

- Do the mummy gems actually do anything or just points like other treasures?

- Some of the room feature too narrow a passage on the top half as compared to the bottom half. Needs to be more consistent and only allowing portions of the map with single character sprite corridors makes it impossible to NOT get hit by monsters. This is complicated more when given the fact that sometimes your shots don't actually seem to go forward when you are in a tight corridor like that. 

- Health pickups and their frequency of generation needs to be looked at. On level 1, I played through all screens minus about 10 of them? and I only had 1...ONE health pickup that I found. The only reason I couldn't find more or didn't explore the entire map was due to the distance of the nearest gravestone screen as I stated above and couldn't possibly make it there in time.

- I'm not sure mummies should be available to spawn from the get go, if you only have the default shot weapon, they are basically impossible to kill as they simply take too many shots with the default weapon. This resulted in a lot of lost health on the first screen. Maybe they shouldn't become available until after the bow weapon is found first?

- On the main play screen, in the lower right is where you have your weapon select shown. However, you do not have sprites to show that you possess the other weapons and just have to know and cycle to see what you have picked up. I think that once a weapon is found, its sprite should be shown in the spaces for it, but then make it have a colored background behind it when selected?

- Map screen and maps in general look like there will always be left over space on the left and right hand sides? I would suggest moving the items in possession (Map, key) as largest sprites (If possible) on those sides instead of along the top maybe? Or something to fill in that space. Maybe change that screen completely so it doesn't use the outline of the current room your are in and could just be more minimalist to make seeing the map and items easier. Possibly give it a different decorative graphics on the sides of that screen? Or, maybe have it look like a map parchment with some graphics to show worn paper curls and edges on the sides?

 

Okay, that is enough from me for now LOL! It is actually a lot of fun and keeps me wanting to explore and find more treasure in the rooms. That is why I passed by the stairs room and kept going when I found it.

 

Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense or is confusing and I can record a play session to better highlight what I'm talking about?

 

[BydoEmpire]

Those are some good suggestions, thanks Crossbow.  I did a couple of those things, but others I want to think about and play through a bit.  In general there's a lot of randomness to where the items appear in maze.  It's not really ideal that you can start on a gravestone square, or that in some games you're a long ways from weapons and in some games they start really close.  Generally I do like randomness in games, but not to the point it's unfair.  I'll keep tuning as I continue.

 

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I haven't quite figured out exactly how the diagonal shot is happening

Fixed (hopefully). Stupid programmer error.

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Do the mummy gems actually do anything or just points like other treasures?

Nope, just points

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I think it should be possible for the player character to then move through walls completely

added, but might be quirky still. Gates will block the ghost now, which isn't good, but tbd.

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I think that once a weapon is found, its sprite should be shown in the spaces for it

I tried doing that this afternoon but it was flickering badly.  I do agree it should be there, but thinking about the best way to do it.

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Map screen and maps in general look like there will always be left over space on the left and right hand sides

Updated a bit - it uses the space better.  Lol, I had originally put the items on the left but it looked weird and I moved to the top. Hopefully better now.

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On level 1, I played through all screens minus about 10 of them? and I only had 1...ONE health pickup that I found

I had hardcoded 2 potions per level, but I've added some extras as the levels progress.  Need a bit of mystery

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it would seem that the rooms will always highlight regardless of possessing the map

Correct.  If you don't have the map, it will show you every room you've visited, and highlight the gravestone, stairs and current room.  If you do have the map, it shows the whole level.

 

2021/02/13:
- fixed angled shooting bug
- improved map screen
- fixed wizard flipping L/R on diagonal movements

- allow ghosts to go through walls (current still blocked by gates, but tbd)
- lower chance of mummies in gravestone rooms, but chance rises each level

- added more potions and treasures as dungeon levels progress

 

I was planning on update maybe once a week, but it's so cool you're actually playing it I want to get some more updates in!

wizarddungeon_wip.bas.a78

Edited February 13, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I can confirm the angle shots are now fixed it would seem. I also do like the changes on the map screen as it doesn't have as much empty/negative space making it appear that the map should be larger than it actually is. 

 

On the potions etc, I did find 2 I think on the round I was playing but there are some things I want to discuss and to prevent spoiling anything, I will take them to PMs.

 

 

[+GoldLeader]

COOL BydoEmpire!!

 

I know I should poke around more of AtariAge than I do,  and I am constantly finding WIP games for 7800 and 2600 by people I know from here. 

 

I just DLed it and will try it out on the Dragonfly later.  Everything about this game looks like it's right up my alley!  This is exactly the kind of thing I'd hope to come up with if I ever coded...

 

Looks great!  Keep up the good work!

 

Cheers!