It’s time again for 7DRL! I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple weeks. It’s the first game I’ve made since August last year and I’m happy to have the emotional relief of being able to create something.

Prelude

Before the event began, I was getting myself back into the developmeent habit by working on a new update for my engine (DOME) as well as trying out an overhaul of my main development framework (Parcel).

This event will serve as a great trial-by-fire for both.

Vision

Here’s how I pitched Acolyte’s Pledge to myself:

“Take the role of a paladin, a holy warrior, fighting to save the world from evil forces, while trying to hold onto the oaths sworn to their deity.”

My goals for this game are to:

1. Create a traditional-style roguelike
   • simple but flexible RPG combat mechanics, items, spells and such
   • Procedurally generated levels for meaningful challenge
2. Attempt to evoke a theme of gothic horror, through the use of sprites, music and text.
3. The unique hook of Acolyte's Pledge is the intended implementation of encouraged "conducts". These are the vows you take at the start of the game which will encourage different kinds of behaviour, in exchange for a boon. For example:
   • "Pacifism" in exchange for more powerful attacks, or
   • Steadfast" (not running from a fight) to be granted a spell to cast.

Day 1

My intention for the day was just to rebuild my foundations. In the past, I could draw on the code of previous projects, but with the rewrite to Parcel, I’m starting from scratch. I’ve been following the general blueprint laid out in the python roguelike tutorial and mapping concepts into Parcel’s (remarkably) familiar structure. I’ve not used the tutorial before, but the proposed architecture is similar enough to make-do.

In the span of one day (I started at 8am), I went from a simple tech-demo map with a player to completing part 7 of the tutorial, leaving me with a facsimile of roguelike gameplay.

• The map can be procedurally generated
• There is an enemy to fight (Just rats, per RPG tradition)
• I figured out simple combat and AI systems.
• Rudimentary UI implementations to allow a message log and health bar to be displayed.

This isn’t going to end well…

For combat, I’m trying out a version of the damage formula in this article, which scales nicely and allows a variety of attack and defense statistics.

The AI just path-finds to the player right now, but it uses a neat optimization of the A* pathfinding algorithm called Jump-Point Search, which is way more efficient. Hoping it holds up long term.

Here’s the log screen. My previous games haven’t done logs very well, but it’s a hallmark of roguelike design to have one so I’m hoping to do better.

What’s Next

I’d originally planned to finish the tutorial in one day so I could focus on implementing my actual game concepts, but they’ll need to wait. I’ll only be making incremental enhancements for the next two days as my free-time is limited by work and external events.

The tutorial will next bring us into the item and magic casting systems, which I am looking forward to.

Here we go!