How was Day 5?

This was a pivotal day, in my opinion. We finished the implementation for using items from the inventory (as well as respecting the quantity), added a proper enemy reaction to smoke bombs and then we moved on to procedural map generation, which as you can see below, is now functioning. With this, DroneSync qualifies in my view as a roguelike, because it has procedurally generated content and perma-consequences. (A controversial thing to debate, but to each their own.)

Grenade Grogginess

We left off yesterday with an inventory window, but it didn't have any interactivity. I changed that today by making it the way of activated smokebombs. You can click the item, or use a number key (1-9, 0) while the window is open. I had to change how the item effect is handled slightly, but this should provide more flexibility in the future. Once the smoke grenade is used, the enemy behaviour needed to be influenced by it. I added a simple change so while engulfed by the smoke, enemies do a random walk, disoriented and confused.

Procedural Generation

There are many ways to do procedural generation, depending on the kind of map you want to have. In the spirit of saving time, I imported the "growth-based map generator" (inspired by this algorithm) I used in my last roguelike, Cartomancer. Next, I applied some pathfinding techniques to it (reusing prior graph-traversal code) to pick a starting room with only one exit, and then find the furthest room from it to place the game objective, computing the critical path in the process. By knowing what the critical path is, I can eventually place interesting optional objects and content in those side-paths, and possibly use the system for adding locks and keys to increase the challenge of the game.

What's next?

With the map generation now in place, I'd like to enhance it, by adding more interesting room designs, to make traverse more fair. Getting spotted from across an empty room is deeply unfair (and worse, there are no doors right now, so you can be spotted from miles away through the door.

I think that the game design/core mechanic needs to be improved: the way the drone works is feeling incomplete right now, and I want to pull it into the core experience. I have some ideas about how to do this that you'll see tomorrow (hopefully).

I feel like I've been saying it for days, but way enemy awareness works is definitely in need of work, so that they operate more intelligently when responding to unusual activity (smoke bombs, drones and you).

I won't have opportunities to stream for the rest of the jam, although I might do something after the jam ends, both to consolidate the codebase, fix any bugs, as well as play other entries that interest me. Stay tuned!