After having deleted about 3000 comments over a few weeks, none from humans, I decided to add a CAPTCHA system to the blog. For those unfamiliar with the name, these are systems wherein the system presents a word or two to the user as a distorted graphic, and the user types the word correctly. They are designed to be solvable by users and not computers, but have the downside of being irritating to the user by slowing everything down, and sometimes so distorted that humans can’t easily solve them either. For this blog, I decided on a system called reCAPTCHA, which uses actual scanned text from a central repository. It has the neat benefit of simultaneously recognizing scanned text that scanners can’t read, i.e. for digitizing books, while providing insurance against spam.
On a happier note, the mysterious python project I mentioned earlier is close enough to finished that I’ll elaborate more now. I have been working on a roguelike game. Since it’s an unpopular genre, many readers may not have heard of it before. In a roguelike, the player moves around an ascii character inside a tile-based map, fighting monsters and picking up treasure. They’re essentially like old-style block-based RPG games set in a dungeon, except the whole thing’s overhead and in ASCII instead of fancy graphics. For instance, a ‘$’ might represent a pile of gold, or an ‘r’ the ever-feared rat.
In my game, the player must delve into a dungeon, collect as much loot as possible, and leave–a typical goal. It includes line-of-sight, twenty-something identical monsters of increasing power, a random dungeon generator, about eight unique items, a message system, color (provided with python’s curses), and three original game devices. The only aspects of the game uncompleted are the highscore table, and game balancing issues. (Right now it works as a program, but it’s not much fun to play.) Documentation might be added at some point. If you intend to play the game, I advise you skip the next paragraph where I spoil the hell out of it. Or read it, depending on your play style.
The first element is a branching dungeon. As the player descends, she travels through an inverted “tree” about six levels deep. This isn’t completely random, to make other aspects of the game consistent between plays. Each level of the dungeon has a random setup of nine rooms connected by corridors, all in a grid, as per the classic ‘Rogue’ which started the genre. There are a guaranteed nine monsters and nine items per level, for consistency between sessions. The second element is lava. As the player explores the dungeon, she may discover that it is in fact a volcano about to erupt–and she had better get out of the way before it does! This provides a built-in time limit, an interesting forced aspect to exploration, and the opportunity for me to have fun making the lava flow up and down branches in a fluidlike manner. Lava flow rate, relative to the speed of the player, is one of the balance issues I am working on now. Finally, the goals of the game are rather like a checklist. First, getting out of the dungeon alive is a plus. Second, getting more points by taking items and killing monsters than the lava consumes provides an interesting ultimate goal. Third, there are special items in the dungeon the player can try to get before she leaves. There is gem on each of the six levels of the dungeon. Getting all six gives the player a reward. Also, there is a magic scroll in a special level somewhere in the volcano. This is especially difficult to bring to the surface.
In all, I tried to make a simple, but fun roguelike to play in half an hour to an hour. I wanted it to be original enough to be interesting, but simple enough that I could write it and fairly casual players could discover everything about it. Finally, I wanted to write a game I myself would find fun to play, which I believe I have.