Heart Realm Day 01

While this may say Day 1, it's technically Day 3 or 4 of development. I started writing down the concept of the game the other day, but didn't actually start programming or anything until today. So, the game, as of right now, is called Heart Realm as you'll start off in this single hub type place and be transported to other various locations and dungeons which will primarily being procedurally-generated as most Rogue-Like games do. I decided to go with the name "Heart Realm" because you will always have this central hub-type realm you visit for shops and whatnot and can transport yourself to various locations via portals or whatever. I'm not 100% sure of all the details of the game. As far as the character goes, I'm also not entirely sure what I want to do, but from what I've decided so far is that you will play a generic player character which as you proceed through the game will evolve in whatever way you may see fit through the equipment, attributes, and spells you build into this character.

I've decided that I want to have a nice variety of practical equipment that doesn't become a linear curve of "A beats B, B beats C, C beats D, etc." I want the equipment to grow in strength over time through the player's own doing, with upgrading. Though that doesn't mean you won't find some magically enchanted weapons and stuff, they just won't be as common. A nice example of what I'm talking about can be seen in the game Dark Souls. There's weapons that are better than others in certain situations but there isn't like a single weapon that beats all, they all have their own uses and play-styles that fit accordingly.

That being said, it's going to be a bit difficult for this particular game as I plan on making the combat in somewhat of a real-time/turn-based style. What I mean by this is, every time you move or perform some action when enemies are around, they will also perform some kind of action in kind. If you sit there without performing any action (moving, attacking, casting spell) the enemies will also just sit there and perform no actions. This will allow you to play at whatever pace you'd like. If you want to take your time and plan out your moves you can, if you want to just run in there swinging your weapon wildly, you can. There's a few games that have similar combat systems, but one that comes to mind is Dungeons of Dredmor.

Since I'm not entirely sure on all the details of the design just yet, I think now is a good time to mention what I've accomplished so far. The game is being programmed in Java, for no particular reason other than just I feel like doing this in Java. I've got a basic map loaded up that gets its tile info from a small bitmap and reads determines what tiles to place where based on the pixel data. I've got a simple character that draws on screen, moves around with keyboard input, and can perform a simple attack animation with the click of the left mouse button. I've also got some basic tile-based collision detection so you don't go through walls and such. For now, that's all. Here's a couple screen shots of what I've got.

Well, that's all for now till the next update, which hopefully will be somewhat frequently.

~ Rogue Templar