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Dungeon Crawler thoughts

By Marcin Seredynski | April 4, 2013 - 20:06 | Game Development

Negating a dungeon crawler

There’s a number of common mechanics present in dungeon crawlers:

Exploring a dungeon that has multiple levels, riddled with secret locations
Controlling a party of characters or less often a single character
Collecting equipment and gearing up his party or character
Solving puzzles to progress through the game
Melee and ranged combat, plus magic
Improving the party or character’s stats

All of the above are present both in Dungeon Master and in Legend of Grimrock. There’s a gap of a quarter of a century between these games. I’ll have a short look at all the elements and will try to negate what’s done usually in dungeon crawler games like.

Dungeon Exploration

Usually, the dungeon is hand-made by the game designer, the mobs, items and puzzles are carefully placed, a careful difficulty progression is clear. The designer holds the player’s hand at the beginning and lets it go as the player progresses through the game.

Contrary to this, roguelike games generate dungeons randomly, and every play through is different.

Party or a Character

Usually, there is a party that cooperates on a common goal or a character pursuing a larger quest. The party is controlled by a single player.

Contrary to this, the party may cooperate but it may be controlled by multiple players like in Hired Guns, or multiple players may control multiple independent characters, each pursuing its own agenda.

Items

Usually, the items are designed by the authors, and placed in proper spots on the map. As everything is known about every weapon in the game, progression is ensured through the game.

Contrary to this, items can be generated randomly or semi-randomly, like in hack-and-slash games such as Diablo. The items characteristics are random, they may affect the game in different ways, such as by enabling abilities or dealing extra damage.

Puzzles

Usually, the designers put the puzzles on the map and offer clues to solve them. This guarantees every prerequisite to solving a puzzle is available before the puzzle is found and needs to be solved.

Contrary to this… I can’t think of a notable example. There is one way to generate puzzles dynamically, but I don’t think these would be very original – a procedural puzzle is just like Sudoku – once you know how to solve one, you know how to solve them all. Here’s an interesting article by Sean Howard about building puzzle trees.

Combat

Usually, the right types of enemies are placed where they can be defeated – the dumbest and the weakest near the beginning of the game, the smartest and the toughest near the end. It ensures the player will always have both a challenge and a chance to win it.

Contrary to this, the mobs may be placed randomly, both picking their type and place. Again, I can’t think of a game that does this on a pure chance, there is always a difficulty bracket the mobs have to fit in. The Binding of Isaac places mobs randomly, with good result, although sometimes “unfair”.

Advancing Characters

Usually, the stat system is based on Dungeons and Dragons or a similar role-playing system. Characters have their specialties or classes and these affect their base abilities. The abilities may be improved by gaining experience. This works really well, as it’s a very understandable and flexible approach.

Contrary to this, there are open-skill systems, and you can compare the two yourself. Personally I prefer open skill systems as I don’t like to limit my choices for character development.

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Ouya – First Impressions

By Marcin Seredynski | April 2, 2013 - 02:32 | Game Development

Hardware

The internals of Ouya are comparable to those of a decent tablet device:

CPU/GPU: nVIDIA Tegra 3
Memory/Storage: 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal flash storage
Sound: 5.1 sound
Networking: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Ethernet
PC Connectivity: Micro USB
Other: Bluetooth

It can output 1080p HD graphics via HDMI port.

The dev kit is a bit of an ugly duckling. The controllers feel like prototypes, are a bit too light in the hands, but have buttons, pad and sticks laid-out like you would expect. The bit that seems to need adjusting is the touchpad. You can barely feel it on the prototype controller, and it doesn’t feel precise. So far it felt redundant for me.

The fan is a bit noisier than I expected and it seems to turn itself on and off at random times – even when there is no pressure on the Tegra, it spins.

Firmware

It gets updated quite often. The Software Version of the firmware I’m testing is 1.0.2, Build Number 1.0.158_r1.

On the first boot, you are taken through a setup and update process, which is straightforward (you pair your controllers, you configure your networks, you twiddle your thumbs when the updates are downloading). I think it took me a bit more than 10 minutes to go through this one time process.

On a regular cold boot, it takes the console about 20 seconds to boot up. You get to see a bit of Linux console when it starts up, then the logo appears, and an “ooo-yah” sound plays, and you’re taken to the start screen:

If you don’t have any games or apps installed, the option you should select is “Discover”:

The menu shows you a list of sections, like: “featured”, “go retro”, “hear me”, “genres” and “sandbox”. It doesn’t explain what does “hear me” or “sandbox” means, although I guess “hear me” is another set of promoted games (there’s just 5 of them there), and sandbox seems to hold all the games that didn’t make it to “featured” nor “hear me”. The sandbox is divided in sections, 20 games each:

By now, you have probably noticed that Ouya likes to have a lot of blank space on the screen. I was wondering why is that, and figured that apart from keeping the UI clutter free it could be done for performance reasons. I’m quite allergic to UIs that stutter, and unfortunately Ouya has one that doesn’t feel very smooth. As I see it, it shouldn’t have any problem at all running at full 60 frames per second, but it seems like it runs at 10-20 frames per second at times. The most annoying thing to me personally is – when I scroll through the game list, there is this whoosh sound. I have no problem with the sound itself, but sometimes the playback of that sound breaks up when the scrolling happens – it clicks and breaks. Hopefully the Ouya team is going to improve this in one of the firmware updates.

At any given time, you can press Y on the controller to search the games by title. The search works pretty well, and it searches through all games and apps available:

When you decide which game you would like to download and play, you can have a closer look at it:

The miniatures of the screenshots look like something you would be able to select and put on the full screen, but unfortunately you can’t. You can only browse them. Once you are confident you would like to give the game a go, you can download it.

It’s time for a reminder, that Ouya is based on Android. Once your game has finished downloading, you will be show this familiar window:

As much as I’d like this to show a nice list of access rights for the application that fits with the rest of the Ouya theme, I understand this is a core part of Android’s app sandbox mechanism and it may be best if nobody messed with it.

When you confirm the installation, you can start your game and have a good time:

I’m not going to review this game, I just used it as an example (truth is – I suck at it).

Once you have discovered some Ouya games, you can see them in the Play menu:

This reminds me about something that Ouya’s UI is missing – a download manager. The only way to check on the games you’re downloading is via the Discover menu, when you get to details of a specific game. I expected to see my downloads in the Play menu at least, but no luck. I hope the download management will be addressed in one of the future updates.

I won’t cover the Make and Manage menus – these are quite boring, and usually lead to vanilla Android screens, like the ones you know from your phone’s or tablet’s Settings.

Games and Apps

It’s been just a couple of days since Ouya started accepting games and apps. There seems to be little about 100 games and applications to be discovered right now. I think it has potential, and we yet have to see how it develops:

At this moment it’s wild west out there, a number of pioneer developers have uploaded their games and are testing the waters. I haven’t managed to spot any obvious gems yet, but I will keep looking for them.

As far as Tegra’s computing power goes, it’s mostly untapped. More than half of the games available feature either retro, pixel, minimalist or just plain crude graphics. We yet have to wait for jaw-dropping games. I have downloaded one game running on Unreal Engine (“The Ball”), but it has failed to install, and therefore failed to impress me.

Currently there are only 2 non-game applications available on Ouya: “TwitchTV” and “Blue Board”. The first one lets you watch twitch.tv streams, and the second one lets you use your Android phone or tablet as a bluetooth keyboard for Ouya.

Download speeds

The downloads were slow for me. I live in Poland, and have a 50 Mbps connection at home. A quick one time “benchmark” I’ve made shows that I get about 3 Mbps download speed from Ouya. I haven’t snooped so I’m guessing that Ouya’s content distribution network is only hosted in the US and yet has to spread to Europe.

What about money? Is it really free?

The first thing that struck me and I forgot to mention when I wrote about the Ouya Discover store was… It has immediately asked me for my credit card details, when I wanted to download a game. That was a WTF moment for me, but well, I had no other choice but to comply. I fuzzily recall that Google didn’t ask me for this information that early.

The credit card is the only available payment option at the moment. For me, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. As soon as there are other payment options, for example PayPal, or a top-up wallet, I’ll be removing my credit card info from the system.

All the games are free to play, as advertised, and some of them have monetization mechanisms built in. I have only tested one. The purchase worked without any problems and was extremely simple (although not too pretty nor exciting):

And 3 seconds later:

Conclusions

Ouya is too new to be coming to any conclusions. It’s already there, it’s alive and working. It has its own hiccups (UI and downloads especially), like every new product or service, but it will definitely get there. The frequent updates of firmware are a huge opportunity for Ouya to launch as a polished Android console in June. The hardware has yet to be taken to its limits.

I think it’s a nice gaming gadget to have for just $99.

Unity3D Gem: PlayerPrefs helper class

By Marcin Seredynski | February 7, 2013 - 22:18 | Game Development, Unity Gems

122 Comments

In Unity3D, the PlayerPrefs class provides a simple mechanism to persist values between game sessions. Unfortunately, only the int, float and string types are supported out of the box.

Here’s a little helper class I wrote to support any IConvertible type:

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using UnityEngine;

public class PrefValue where T : IConvertible
{
	private readonly string _key;

	public PrefValue(string key)
	{
		_key = key;
	}

	public T Value
	{
		get
		{
			if (PlayerPrefs.HasKey(_key))
			{
				var storedString = PlayerPrefs.GetString(_key);
				if (storedString != null)
				{
					var converted = Convert.ChangeType(storedString, typeof (T), CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
					if (converted != null)
					{
						return (T) converted;
					}
				}
			}
			return default(T);
		}
		set
		{
			PlayerPrefs.SetString(_key, Convert.ToString(value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
		}
	}

	public void Delete()
	{
		PlayerPrefs.DeleteKey(_key);
	}
}

using System;

using System.Globalization;

using UnityEngine;

public class PrefValue where T : IConvertible

{

private readonly string _key;

public PrefValue(string key)

{

_key = key;

}

public T Value

{

get

{

if (PlayerPrefs.HasKey(_key))

{

var storedString = PlayerPrefs.GetString(_key);

if (storedString != null)

{

var converted = Convert.ChangeType(storedString, typeof (T), CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

if (converted != null)

{

return (T) converted;

}

return default(T);

}

set

{

PlayerPrefs.SetString(_key, Convert.ToString(value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));

}

public void Delete()

{

PlayerPrefs.DeleteKey(_key);

}

Here’s how to use it in your components:

using System;
using UnityEngine;

public class MyAwesomeGame : MonoBehaviour
{
	private PrefValue _playTime = new PrefValue("PlayTime");
	private PrefValue _previousStart = new PrefValue("PreviousStart");
	private PrefValue _money = new PrefValue("Money");

	void Start()
	{
		Debug.Log("Previous Start Time: " + _previousStart.Value);
		Debug.Log("Total Play Time: " + _playTime.Value);
		Debug.Log("Money: " + _money.Value);

		_previousStart.Value = DateTime.Now;
		_money.Value += 0.05M;
	}

	void Update()
	{
		_playTime.Value += Time.deltaTime;
	}
}

using System;

using UnityEngine;

public class MyAwesomeGame : MonoBehaviour

{

private PrefValue _playTime = new PrefValue("PlayTime");

private PrefValue _previousStart = new PrefValue("PreviousStart");

private PrefValue _money = new PrefValue("Money");

void Start()

{

Debug.Log("Previous Start Time: " + _previousStart.Value);

Debug.Log("Total Play Time: " + _playTime.Value);

Debug.Log("Money: " + _money.Value);

_previousStart.Value = DateTime.Now;

_money.Value += 0.05M;

}

void Update()

{

_playTime.Value += Time.deltaTime;

}

With this, you may just use it and forget about having to call an appropriate PlayerPrefs.Set method to update.

Windows 8 and Steam for Linux

By Marcin Seredynski | October 27, 2012 - 03:27 | Game Development Links

2 Comments

Today my PC has decided to die. Today Windows 8 has been released. Today Steam for Linux Beta has been announced. Today I’m in a position in which I need to decide what operating system will I get for a replacement PC. This might have been just a coincidence that everything happened on the same day, but I’m sure it’s a conspiracy.

I could just go with the flow and get Windows 8 with its tiles, totally unfitting for a desktop OS run by a user with well-developed productivity habits. Also, as a developer, I need to be able to easily access guts of the system, and having to switch to a bastardized desktop mode feels a bit sideways in Windows 8.

I can’t just switch to Linux, as my favorite development tool (Visual Studio with ReSharper) can only run on Windows. Unity3D, which I started using, doesn’t yet have a Linux-native editor. So, Linux is out, at least for now.

This leaves me with Windows 7. I can still run effectively and naturally all the software I have, I can still play games I have on Steam. I have absolutely no reason to switch.

Interesting observation is… Apple wasn’t really the first who made mainstream tablets. Microsoft had tablets earlier. And they shoved a desktop OS into them. Now Microsoft tries to shove a tablet OS into desktops. In a way they have made the same mistake twice. Of course there is the desktop mode, but honestly it just doesn’t feel right. If I have to emulate earlier version of Windows on a new one, why would I get it in the first place?

Here’s something to think about: click.

I can’t wait until Linux will have as powerful dev tools as Microsoft makes for Windows, or until Bill Gates is done with giving away all of his money and comes back to Microsoft to take lead that makes sense.

I just know the Linux thing will happen first.

Steam Greenlight

By Marcin Seredynski | September 5, 2012 - 20:31 | Game Development Links

gamination

Dungeon Crawler thoughts

Negating a dungeon crawler

Dungeon Exploration

Party or a Character

Items

Puzzles

Combat

Advancing Characters

Ouya – First Impressions

Hardware

Firmware

Games and Apps

Download speeds

What about money? Is it really free?

Conclusions

Unity3D Gem: PlayerPrefs helper class

Windows 8 and Steam for Linux

Steam Greenlight

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Negating a dungeon crawler

Dungeon Exploration

Party or a Character

Items

Puzzles

Combat

Advancing Characters

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Hardware

Firmware

Games and Apps

Download speeds

What about money? Is it really free?

Conclusions

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