Fida'i - End of day four

This was a day where I got a fair bit done but not as much as I'd like as I became bogged down in technical AI issues and other bugs which popped up along the way, not to mention having to hold down a real job in between somehow.

The practical and interesting things was the finalising of the bodyguard AI so that they pathfind after your assassination target and which means that they're a constant threat while you're trying to close in to make the kill.

But I spent a bit of time while on the AI of those guards implementing the simple sounding 'gold coin' item. This is an object which for some reason is ignored by the ordinary townsfolk, but anyone who is tasked with guarding the town or a person simply can't resist walking over and picking one up when they see it. So you can throw a coin and try and lure your target over to it and hopefully away from the bodyguards. Or throw it in front of the bodyguards and hopefully they'll take the distraction leaving their charge alone. That's combined with the stone item for distracting noises and the smoke bomb for cover ups or get aways to fill out the assassin's kit at this stage.

Also, the map is bigger and I implemented a whole bunch of new vaults to randomise the map in "wang tile" style. That's actually probably the most significant change but it was one which isn't all that interesting to  me because it was already programmed and just needed me to sit down and populate the data file.

Fida'i - End of day three

The view shown is debug mode by the way and normally you can't see through walls etc, but I thought that best to mention if I keep posting full-screen pics. The assassin is a bit hard to make out like this which isn't a problem in the actual game because the field of view is limited to what's in front of him. You can't miss him.

New stuff:

- Stones for throwing to distract hostile enemies searching for you with a distracting sound;
- Coins for throwing onto the ground to distract a non-hostile enemy and they will go and pick it up and maybe neglect their guard duty;
- Assassination target who is the enemy with the red suit. He is the one who is described as the 'uncaring warrior' in this game as I just did a look command at him for the screenshot and that was the randomly generated assassination target for that playthrough;
- Two body guards who move around near the assassination target and they are the heavily armoured enemies;
- New tiles for stones, coins, doors (open and shut) and other stuff;
- Bug fixes and AI tweaks and a bunch of minor rubbish;

Things seem on track for a comfortable finish. The to-do list includes more thief equipment to vary up the gameplay, and also some expansion on the backstabbing mechanics so you can choose to murder anyone you like in town even if they aren't hostile. Also, more vaults to build city blocks out of (as there are only three or so currently which is why the random map sucks at the moment), as well as a bunch of UI and gameplay tweaks.

Fida'i - End of day two

Day 2 hasn't been the most productive for me but I've still managed to get a few critical things.

Bugs have been squashed and I've got the neutral and hostile AI's working properly after a few mishaps. The plan is that town guards will see through your disguise if they get close enough to you and attack you, so you need to be careful to avoid them as you slink through the town. The ordinary townsfolk don't care about you unless things get ugly and then they might get involved. I've gone the full gamut of AI problems - guards turning hostile and then attacking themselves, being attacked by townsfolk while they stand there, attacking townsfolk for no reason, and now finally it's working properly.

Next step is to work on the spread of alarm through the town. When someone sees someone else who is alarmed, then they'll also turn hostile. It's supposed to mimic the spread of your description through the population once your cover is blown.

EDIT: And that work has been largely done. What you can see below is a scenario where the player has been exposed and alarm has spread through the immediate area but the rest of the town remains unaware.

Fida'i - End of day one

At the end of day 1 I've butchered a bunch of previous code and reused some old algorithms along with tiles from previous projects to get the Frankenstein's monster Fida'i up and running.

What I've got so far is a Wang tile random map generator which works from pre-set vaults, sometimes flips or mirrors these vaults as they're slotted together and messed up a bit with a few drunken walks before checking to see if the whole map is connected.

The blue fields of view are neutral townsfolk who don't suspect that you're a vile murderer just yet. The plan is that when you engage in a some kind of evil act, like stealing, fighting or assassinating your enemy, then they'll turn hostile. From there, I want other citizens who didn't see your actual deed to be alarmed by seeing other alarmed citizens so that the words of your misdeeds would spread throughout the city as you try and escape.

Mix into that a few tricks of the thieves trade, such as locations where you can update your disguise and elude pursuers, smoke bombs, poison darts, caltrops, coins and other distractions to throw onto the ground to distract guards, and failing that stones you can throw which won't distract the relaxed enemy but if someone is on alert then they'll follow the sound.

Fida’i – stealth, infiltration and subterfuge - 2014 7DRL

I’m just about to start work on Fida’i, the spiritual successor to my previous 7DRL in 2012, Mujahid. I'll be using this blog to provide a daily update, along with posting updates at 7drl.org.

Gameplay will focus on being given a single target for assassination and you will need to use your stealth skills to infiltrate a bustling city through use of disguise and trickery to isolate your victim and finish the job. The next step will be getting out alive, which might prove a lot more difficult once terror spreads through the previously unaware populace.

Will be written in python with libtcod and some tiles from opengameart.org.

Game content creation is continuing (despite the delay)

Things have been delayed quite a bit with me having a fair bit of real life work pressures which obviously take priority over writing a silly free RPG game, but there's been a bit of writing going with respect to filling out the game content which is good progress. 

Not exactly the most exciting stuff to be posting about because screenshots of game content like that would just go and spoil all the material in there.  Here's an example:

I'm working on implementing quests with a few beginner options at the starting town to do with helping out villagers to try and arrange for someone to heal you in the village.

There's also been a bit of work on the game UI with me polishing and broadly "finishing" a targeting system to be used with the magic and other systems in the game.

Critical hits

I was having problems with balance where if you played a fighter you would of course have better than average melee stats. And that seemed to work out quite well when you were fighting the tougher monsters who packed a bit of a punch, but the basic starting enemies couldn't really put a dent in you. The numbers just didn't work out, and it ended up being a situation where you would walk into a room full of kobold soldiers and dire rats and just wait around for them to hurt you but it was impossible.

The Dead Simple rules provide for a perfect roll on a d20 always hitting but I think it's silent as to what that means when you take into account the damage calculations. A normal hit checks the attacker's attack roll against a defender's toughness roll to see if there's any damage and then mitigates that a bit for armour and shields. And that seems to work fine apart from the fact that it practically means that light-weight enemies find it tough to penetrate both the toughness part and the armour.

So now critical hits have been put in, which effectively mean that we skip the toughness and armour checks. If you roll perfectly on the d20 then you automatically cause damage to your opponent. Even the weakest enemy you fight has a 1 in 20 chance of hurting you.

That message log is all sorts of messed up but that's a problem for another day.