:jam: Here’s what is probably the final update to the text-based RPG that I am writing in JavaScript! :jam:
The most important changes I made related to procedurally generated content. I added a system to link the procedural content to handcrafted content to ensure continuity, and I also added a world map visualization to the UI. Because I noticed that performance had been greatly impacted by the addition of 3,000+ locations, I reworked the playerData object to only read and write to localStorage when saving and loading. Finally, I completed the game’s story, at least for the purpose of the jam.
:jam: This is another, and probably one of the last, big updates before the game jam. :jam:
I finally fixed the pathfinding algorithm, so enemies now properly target and attack the player. More importantly, I started developing the procedural terrain for the game, both for the world maps and for regions within it. I have attached some screenshots of a graphical representation of the map, although it does not yet appear in game. The blue represents oceans or rivers, brown shores, yellow deserts, black mountains, red volcanoes, green forests, "P," "L," and "U," for specific nodes. The regional terrain generation is still very much in development, except for the oceans which are complete.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
:jam: This is probably the biggest update so far to the text-based RPG that I am working on in Javascript! :jam:
Now that the game engine has been effectively built, I have started adding tons of procedurally generated features. Essentially all of the characters you will encounter throughout the story now have procedurally generated names, thanks to my implementation of a Markov-chain-based name generator. There are also now random encounters with enemies, and shops which are entirely procedurally generated, from items, to their markups, to their currency. They also have a rare chance to offer unique, procedurally named weapons with stronger stats. I also added xp to the UI and fixed issues with enemies clipping, although there’s more work to do for the combat system. These features should hopefully make the playing experience unique to everyone, and make it easier to create lots of content in time for the game jam.
:jam: Here’s another update for the text-based RPG that I am developing with JavaScript! This is a shorter update, since the last couple were to long for Hakkuun, but here’s some highlights:
• I revamped the new tactical map, which now displays enemies with their names below them, has them change color when hit, shows the direction the player is facing for easy visualization, and any obstacles in the room.
• More or less finalized the Imperial Academy and Treasury locations, which is more than half of the tutorial area, which is already over 70 unique rooms.
• Updated documentation, including instructions for installation (although the binary file is not yet ready for distribution).
• Fixed issues with enemies clipping out of bounds, hopefully for real this time.
Thanks for reading!
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/spoken-word-sorcery
:jam: Here’s another update for the text-based RPG that I am building in JavaScript! It’s finally starting to come together, with a lot of the mechanics approaching completion. I fixed bugs related to the sorting of save games, added some debug commands, implemented a whole new mapping system that looks much nicer and has a fog of war, added a combat grid, bugged player turning abilities, and added some foreshadowing for the game jam.
(Sorry for the repost, the first one was too big for hakkuun.)
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
:jam: This is another update for the text-based RPG that I am developing in JavaScript, and the first one done specifically for the Arcade Jam (although I forgot to put the :jam: emoji next to some sessions)! I fixed some UI-related and other bugs, changed how item drops worked, adding an ammo checking system, added level scaling, and adjusted the action economy. I also expanded the map a ton.
(I posted this again because my first was too big for hakkuun.)
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
:jam: This is another update for the text-based RPG that I am developing in JavaScript, and the first one done specifically for the Arcade Jam (although I forgot to put the :jam: emoji next to some sessions)! :jam:
I’ll first describe some technical fixes and then move on to the more interesting content additions. First, I fixed a bug where when an alert popped up on the screen (such as one when a player tries to save during combat), the player would no longer be able to type actions in the input bar. It took a bit of time to diagnose but after that it was simply a matter of returning focus to the input bar. Another UI-related fix was having the game check the gameSpeed value before generating the UI. It’s a radio button, so the current gameSpeed value should be selected, but for new games the gameSpeed value is generated after the radio buttons. This led to the wrong button appearing to be selected, but this was fixed by adjusting the default selection. Finally, I fixed an issue where spells could be cast that were not in the player’s spellbook. The issue was that I forgot to set the value of a checking variable, matchKnown, to false, which led to spells bypassing the checking system. I also had to do some refactoring because links to cutscenes were inadvertently broken.
Moving on from the technical changes and bugfixes, there were a lot of mechanics that were added to the game. The first big one was adding an ammo checking system, which actually made sure that weapons had sufficient ammo and then decreased the quantity of ammo by one after use. This also allowed certain weapons, like javelins, to serve as their own ammo. I also changed how enemies dropping items worked, having them now drop items after death into the room rather than into the player’s inventory. I also made support spells have actual functionality and implemented temporary stat modifiers to give some more depth to gameplay. Finally, I added level scaling to ensure that spells and weapons would not become totally useless as the game goes on, although I still have significant work to do balancing-wise. On a related note, I changed the action economy to allow the use of spells and weapons in the same turn.
Beyond mechanics, I continued to add a lot of actual content to the game. This included adding a bunch of new locations, such as expanding the rooms in the Imperial Dreadnought and the labyrinth behind the Imperial Treasury. I also greatly expanded the variety of weapons and tried to make it easier to generate custom weapons to give players some more variety in preparation for the game jam. To improve development speed, and minimize burn out, I am trying to develop content and mechanics in parallel to each other.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
:jam: Here’s to another update for the text-based RPG that I am building in JavaScript! It’s finally starting to come together, with a lot of the mechanics approaching completion. :jam:
As I have for the last few updates, I’ll start with the more technical changes and then move on to the more interesting stuff. The first of those was fixing the sorting and categorizing of save games so that they display in the order of creation and retain their numbering after new games are created. This avoids any potential confusion about which save button corresponds to which saved game. I also started adding some more debug commands, such as the teleport command, which allows me to render specific rooms at will, which is good for seeing the game’s layout. I also added a lot more grammar options for using weapons during combat, which should make for a more pleasant experience. And that does it for this scrapbook’s bugfixes!
As for more substantive changes, there are a lot. The most exciting one in my opinion is the replacement of the old mapping system, which used floating divs that were super buggy and kind of ugly, with one based on the HTML canvas element. For some reason, I totally forgot about it, but now that I am using it development is way easier. There was a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to generate reasonably sharp lines, but it looks way better, has much higher performance, and does not have any bugs that I’ve seen. It also enables a fog of war system, where only rooms connected to rooms that the player has visited can be seen. This should hopefully improve immersion and encourage exploration of the maps. Some attached images show rooms before and after lifting the fog of war. The new system also has the added advantage of allowing me to render enemies on the map according to their position, which is something that I hope to implement in the future.
Speaking of the enemies’ positions, I totally overhauled that system too. I kept trying to make it work without a cartesian coordinates system, to the point where I was getting ready to essentially use polar coordinates instead, when I decided to just get rid of the old method and totally redo it. I’m glad I did, because now enemies can maneuver around the battlefield and weapon ranges can be in terms of feet, which is easier to understand than the close/short/medium/long that I started with (especially since each of those could mean very different things in different rooms). Pathfinding has been implemented, so enemies will attempt to move within their weapon’s range of the player, although they no longer attempt to avoid the player’s attacks as they used to. I hope to bring back this mechanic in a future update, although I might not because the enemies are actually getting very challenging.
To combat the improved enemies, I buffed the player’s turning abilities. Now, instead of only being able to turn 45 degrees in a turn, they can now turn up to 90 degrees. This doesn’t sound like a huge change, except that instead of taking 4 turns to attack an enemy behind the player, for example, it now only takes two turns. Player movement is not yet implemented, but that is a top priority for the next scrapbook. Aside from all of these changes, I also kept working on the weapons system, rebalancing and improving them, and I added descriptions for the attacks of all the enemies which should improve immersion.
Specifically for the game jam, I also added some more details in the intro that foreshadow the “loophole” themed twist, but no spoilers. Thanks for reading!
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
:jam: This is another update for the text-based RPG that I am developing in JavaScript, and the first one done specifically for the Arcade Jam (although I forgot to put the :jam: emoji next to some sessions)! :jam:
I’ll first describe some technical fixes and then move on to the more interesting content additions. First, I fixed a bug where when an alert popped up on the screen (such as one when a player tries to save during combat), the player would no longer be able to type actions in the input bar. It took a bit of time to diagnose but after that it was simply a matter of returning focus to the input bar. Another UI-related fix was having the game check the gameSpeed value before generating the UI. It’s a radio button, so the current gameSpeed value should be selected, but for new games the gameSpeed value is generated after the radio buttons. This led to the wrong button appearing to be selected, but this was fixed by adjusting the default selection. Finally, I fixed an issue where spells could be cast that were not in the player’s spellbook. The issue was that I forgot to set the value of a checking variable, matchKnown, to false, which led to spells bypassing the checking system. I also had to do some refactoring because links to cutscenes were inadvertently broken.
Moving on from the technical changes and bugfixes, there were a lot of mechanics that were added to the game. The first big one was adding an ammo checking system, which actually made sure that weapons had sufficient ammo and then decreased the quantity of ammo by one after use. This also allowed certain weapons, like javelins, to serve as their own ammo. I also changed how enemies dropping items worked, having them now drop items after death into the room rather than into the player’s inventory. I also made support spells have actual functionality and implemented temporary stat modifiers to give some more depth to gameplay. Finally, I added level scaling to ensure that spells and weapons would not become totally useless as the game goes on, although I still have significant work to do balancing-wise. On a related note, I changed the action economy to allow the use of spells and weapons in the same turn.
Beyond mechanics, I continued to add a lot of actual content to the game. This included adding a bunch of new locations, such as expanding the rooms in the Imperial Dreadnought and the labyrinth behind the Imperial Treasury. I also greatly expanded the variety of weapons and tried to make it easier to generate custom weapons to give players some more variety in preparation for the game jam. To improve development speed, and minimize burn out, I am trying to develop content and mechanics in parallel to each other.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
Here’s another big update to the text-based RPG that I am working on in JavaScript! I’ll start with the technical changes and then discuss the content I added. One big change under the hood is that enemies are now generated directly inside the code for specific rooms, rather than as variables that are then passed to the rooms. This significantly cuts down on clutter in the location files, which are already getting to be a bit unwieldy. I also added a check, and corresponding window alert, for when a player tries to save while in combat or in the middle of a cutscene. Previously they would be able to do so, which can lead to game-breaking bugs and other issues.
Another big change I implemented was the ability to save multiple save games and select them at the load game screen. Previously, only a single save slot could be maintained, and it was easy to accidentally overwrite it. It also sorts these saves in the order of most recent creation, for ease of navigation. Finally, I implemented a big quality of life feature: a help function. The player can now ask for help and receive a list of all the possible commands they can use. While in various parts of the game the features are explained, this is still a helpful reference.
In terms of more player-facing changes, one big thing was the transition to a D20 system. Instead of using random number generators up to a certain maximum value to calculate things like damage, the game now simulates dice rolls, which both makes combat less swingy and is a bit more fun for the player to experience, as it prints what the player rolls each time before adding up the damage. This also makes balancing the game easier on my end. I also implemented the ability to use consumable items, which have existed in the game but previously served no purpose. They can now be used to restore health, mana, etc., both in and out of combat. I also massively expanded the content of the game, increasing the map size (in terms of number of rooms) by ~25% and added many new cutscenes and combat encounters. I also added an unlocking system for rooms, where players can find keys to unlock specific rooms that would otherwise be inaccessible.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
This was a very technical, but still significant, update to the text-based RPG that I am working on in JavaScript. One change was the creation of a system for procedurally importing the various rooms and locations from the locations file to the actual save file. This is important because previously each individual room was declared, imported, and then added to the savefile. Given that there are already 30+ rooms/locations, and there will likely be many more, eliminating 2/3rds of the lines of code related to saving rooms is crucial to avoiding cluttering the save_data code. It is also a prerequisite to procedurally generating rooms, which eventually the game should be able to do. I then extended these changes to items, enemies, spells, and cutscenes, for similar reasons.
Moving beyond the more technical aspects of the release, the update also seriously enhances the combat system. First, it gives the enemies some barebones AI that substantially upgrades the challenge of combat encounters, by allowing them to move away from the player when the player gets too close. It may be a bit hard to tell in the images (somewhat unsurprisingly given the text-based nature of the game), but the enemies move away from the direction the player is facing. Second, I added a randomness factor to the damage done by spells cast by the player, to make encounters a bit more balanced. Third, I continued to work on the storyline to keep adding new content to the game even as I improve its underlying engine. Fourth, I implemented a feature that allows players to rest and restore their health and mana at certain locations.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
Another significant update to the text-based RPG that I am working on in JavaScript. This one primarily focuses on the map system, which is much better than the last iteration. It is more user friendly than it was in the previous version (it only shows rooms touching that are actually connected, among other updates). It also uses a recursive function to show both rooms directly connected to the player’s current room and rooms connected to those rooms. I also started working on the next major area of the game, but it is still tentative and the map is not yet cohesive enough for display. I will likely take a break from the map after this and start working on the inventory system again, although there are still improvements to be made to the mapping system (such as reordering some rooms and better centering).
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
I added a major update to the text-based RPG that I am working on in JavaScript. The introduction/tutorial to the game is finished, although there are likely some bugs left to fix and potentially some more systems to integrate. The combat system also now includes the ability to rotate around a room to fight the enemies that are in the room. I have continued to work on the game's inventory system, which successfully tracks items but does not yet affect the stats of a player.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
I am continuing to work on a text-based RPG in JavaScript. I have implemented a very basic combat system, but am working to update it to allow for a user to move and rotate around a room to engage in combat. I have also implemented a basic inventory system, that successfully tracks items being picked up, dropped, equipped, and unequipped, although the items do not yet actually affect the player's stats. I am close to finishing all the frameworks necessary for a complete tutorial but it is not done yet.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
I am continuing to work on a text-based RPG in JavaScript. I still have not yet finished creating all the features required for the tutorial, but the UI is mostly done and a lot of the input handling is in place.
GitHub: github.com/beyond-reality-dev/Spoken-Word-Sorcery
