Dance of Death v0.6.136 Released!
Today, on the first Annual Roguelike Release Party, I am honored to bring you the latest update to Dance of Death, version 0.6. This has been one of the longest iterations to date, implementing a number of major features focusing on world and wilderness generation. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of this version, and though I have my work cut out for me moving forward, feedback is, as always, very much appreciated!
The following goal items have been completed:
- World generator.
- Wilderness area generator.
- Ability to move between wilderness areas.
- Entering a dungeon from a wilderness area.
- Exiting from a dungeon onto a wilderness area.
- Improved name generator.
- Gender bonuses tweak.
- New playable races.
- Reworked main quest to include the wilderness.
- Saving the world map.
- When the game loses focus, added a “Paused, click to continue.” overlay to ensure the keyboard focus is always correctly active.
#5, the improved name generator, now uses statistically-sequenced weighted random letters to create names based on a list of seed names, then runs a Damerau-Levenshtein check among other post-processing to ensure that the name fits. Gender bonuses (#6) have been modified to differ across races, paving the road for a surprise feature involving races and gender (no spoilers!). As far as playable races (#7) go, I decided to make good on my goal and add Dwarves, but held off on further adding races until they can be more clearly defined; this definition is a large part of the skill/item/combat/interface (roughly in that order) redesign that the next few versions will feature.
The following items were also completed:
- A basic hunger (sustenance) system.
- Monsters now drop corpses that must be used as sustenance.
- Eating now restores health, health no longer regenerates automatically.
- The dungeon is placed on the highest peak, and the player is guaranteed to start in the wilderness within roughly a 9-area distance.
- Walking through rough terrain, such as bushes, unstable ground (hills), and cliffs (mountains), takes more time for both the player and monsters.
- Characters are now equipped with their starting items when the game starts.
- Ranged attacks now properly resolve at the end of their animation.
- New status messages “Starving!” and “Revitalized!” now appear when Sustenance reaches 0, and when health is regenerating, respectively.
- Attribute bars updated.
- FOV is doubled in wilderness areas.
- User input now forces animations to complete.
- Added new/missing ASCII tiles to character map.
- Added functionality for tiles that are visible but not passable, such as water.
- Continue screen now centers vertically and displays characters in descending order from last created.
- Bug fix: Monsters now accurately check whether the player can see them, eliminating extraneous messages from out-of-sight.
- Bug fix: Examining items that are near the bottom of the screen in the inventory should now bump up the examine box properly.
- Bug fix: Monster turns are now correctly resolved when ranged combat completes.
The following items were scaled back largely to ensure a timely release, and partly to keep the feature iterations tighter to avoid unnecessary feature creep:
- Ability to move between a wilderness area and the world map.
- Moving at the world map level.
- Entering a wilderness area from the world map.
Once again, happy ARRP, and please, do not hesitate to send your questions and comments this way!
Hey been playing the game more. It’s handy to play at uni when I’m procrastinating due to the web browser and all.
Question; are you planning on implementing any towns, or any more islands you can travel to? I reckon after you do the mission in the first dungeon having a port on the first island would be wicked, so you could travel to the next one. I pick up loads of stuff by the time I get to level 2 of the dungeon (furthest I’ve got before starving), so it’d be great to be able sell some of it and buy some sweet gear.
Also for some reason I dig how the stats numbers are so low. like having health being 5/5 instead of 50/50 like most games. I may copy that idea.
Definitely planning to expand out the world with towns, other islands/continents, geological features like rivers, lakes, volcanoes, etc.
I will be taking a week or two break from development to compile feedback and to organize my plan of attack moving forward. There are a good amount of features missing: leveling, magic system, useful items; and a good amount of features that I want to experiment with: a lighting system, day/night cycle, weather, etc. I’ll have to spend some time sorting out what will make it in and when!
Regarding the 5/5 health, I like to say that small numbers “feel more fantasy”, while large numbers “feel more sci-fi”; same goes for integer bonuses, e.g. +1 (fantasy), as opposed to percentages (sci-fi).Though the combat, skill, and item systems are all slated for major revamps in the upcoming versions, I’ll be sticking to the low numbers!
The hunger system and lack of automatic health regeneration make this version more punishing than previous ones. I don’t expect to get the “it’s too easy” feedback as often now, but I do want it to be playable through! Let me know if you find it too difficult.
Thanks for the feedback!
Just got around to playing this a little more in depth and am seriously impressed. My first time opening this I managed to miss the world map screen and the fact that eating is tied into sustenance and health restoration. I really like both features!
It was a little irritating having to eat enough food to boost my sustenance even though I wanted to save the corpses for tougher battles after which I’d need to restore my health.
I don’t quite get the skill penalties, either. I wore a chain mail with 3 points in light armor and 5 in heavy armor, but I got a -3 penalty for wearing the mail. Are you supposed to invest in the group container categories as well?
Looking forward to playing more (I don’t suppose there’s any technical reason not to browse to the .swf directly and play fullscreen?); will have to go read through your world generation post next.
Forgot to mention – I like the simplicity of the controls; it allows me to play with one hand on the numpad and one hand in my left hand in its natural typing position. Good job. : )
[…] I highly recommend you give Dance of Death a try and follow its development closely. It already has an epic feel and a satisfying level of difficulty that is sure to keep me coming back for more. […]
The skill penalties are definitely not as transparent as I’d like (in fact, I don’t remember what they are based on right off the top of my head!). Both the skills and equipment systems are getting a rehash in the upcoming version, along with the interface.
As far as playing fullscreen, I am drawing to the screen using a bitmap as opposed to the usual vector drawing that is common to Flash. It doesn’t scale too neatly, especially since I have bitmap smoothing off for faster performance.
Thanks for all of the feedback and support, Ryan!
Cool, thanks for the info. I noticed the scaling oddness, but I was able to resize the browser to a close enough ratio as the object tag that it didn’t totally fry my brain to play. : D
[…] so dass man nicht immer von Anfang an beginnen muss. Dance of Death befindet sich noch in der Entwicklungsphase, so dass man auf neue Features gespannt sein darf. Die aktuelle Version ist aber in sich fertig und […]
[…] Dance of Death is a flash roguelike game. You could be playing it right now instead of reading this review. While wonderfully portable you may need to agree few times to give it more storage on your hard drive. World inside is fully persistent and needs some space. It is divided into pieces just like wilderness map of ADOM. In DoD though, you can only move by going through borders of current area. Remember to use the ‘m’ap key to find the stairs to visit. Look for hints in your quest log. Finishing this dungeon means victory. […]
Any chance of smaller dimensions version? My 1024×768 screen doesn’t like this game.
There are plans for a tighter interface for the next release. I will definitely be shrinking the map area, and might play with different size tiles to get the right result (which will, in turn, lead to smaller dimensions).
I have also been toying with the idea of allowing the user to configure their tile/screen size. This will probably not make it out in this release, and if I can hit a good middle-ground tile that works for everyone it may not need it!
Thanks for the feedback, I will keep it in mind.
Found this game at the temple. Its cute, and I like it. I found it very easy. I went orc, maxed maces crush, put some points into health and armor and other obvious things. No challenge afterwards
I liked the eating being tied to both sustenance and health. Maybe a rotting system one day for another added pressure? Or not.
Anyway, as far as game difficulty goes, I’d like it if the game was murderously hard. You’ll know you’ve reached that place when the tears of newbs floats your boat.
Hey really love ur game!
any posibility to a downloadable version for all of us that lack of internet regular connection??
It would be great to play wherever I take my laptop!!!
Thanks beforehand and keep on updating.
Indeed, the difficulty is very low at this point. Early development has been mostly focused on experimenting with different mechanics and game systems, with little tweaking or balancing (since so little is final yet).
The next release will introduce a more robust item and skill system, which will start paving the way towards the more murderously difficult game your heart desires ;).
I had frankly never thought of doing a downloadable version, but will take it under advisement!
It has been a while since I have worked on Dance of Death (with Chronophase and the soon-to-be-released project underway), and I am itching to get back to it!
I finally completed this! I spent most of time just amassing 10-20 edible beings, and then took on the dungeon.
It is quite fun!
The skills don’t seem to work as intended; I put skills into Heavy Armor and Light Armor, but I still got penalties. I also had 5 skills with Mace, but still had penalty.
Shooting with bows is fun, I appreciate that You included the “Perception” skill, that changes the view-area, it really makes a difference when using bows. In dungeons it does not help as much, though.
I like the world generator, that You did. It works really well – the symbols are (mostly) understandable and the items also are different from the terrain (for the most part). I like how You have many different terrains based on height (sand, bushes, trees, etc.). Trees also add a tactical element (?).
Somehow, the game was addicting, but I don’t what made it so. I guess I am easily addictable.
Rauni
I am glad you enjoyed Dance of Death, Rauni! The skills are slated for a rehaul on the next release, at which point I’ll address the currently cryptic nature of armor skills and weapon skills.
Thanks for your feedback.
To the creator I’d like to see a wilderness area that grants NO experience for monsters killed….until:
You have leveled up in the first cave. The monsters that spawn in the first cave give experience (and some of the monsters don’t because they were in the first wilderness). Then after you escape the first dungeon some of the monsters (kobalds goblins etc) will start spawning outside as well as the no experience monsters then you can get experience while going through the wilderness to the next cave/level.
Are you still working on this? I’d personally love to see a new release, cuz this is the only fun game my school doesn’t block.
LufiaGuy2000, thank you for your support; your comment made my day :).
I am not actively developing Dance of Death at the moment, but I have not forgotten about it. I have a few other projects in the pipeline I’d like to experiment with and ideally release before I get back to developing Dance of Death, however. Once I get back to it I’d like to maybe do a free web version and a paid mobile version, with the ability to synchronize progress in between them.
“yes me”, it’s very likely that once I resume work on Dance of Death I’ll retool the entire skill/XP system to be more intuitive and to better achieve the goals it was built for: 1) being a use-based skill system, and 2) giving the player the ability to redistribute XP from old, unused skills, to new skills.
Thanks once again for your support, folks. Do not think for a second that your words go unnoticed. Dance of Death wasn’t high in my priority list, but hearing from players has reminded me of how much work there is left to be done on it.