Others Vinculike - Roguelike-like Dungeon Crawler [Development Thread]

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eugeneloza

Member
Jan 2, 2022
205
91
0.56.5625 - Character Editor and a lot of other new features

Finally an update! Took me way longer than I hoped for, but a few bigger features are ready!

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eugeneloza

Member
Jan 2, 2022
205
91
medassin said:
somehow dungeon quite dark. can u make it brighter?
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Technically yes, but I'm not sure if it will look good. I guess I can add an option to adjust gamma or something like this, let me think how to make that.

However, note one more thing, there was an issue quite some time ago (maybe 4-5 months) that the game sometimes overall was darker than it should be on Windows platform under some specific circumstances (changing window size or switching between fullscreen/windowed modes). This bug was first workarounded, now properly fixed. Make sure you're using the latest build.

What platform are you playing on? I know that on Android if I have the brightness set to lowest, then the game is indeed very hard to play. I can think of some solution specific to this platform.

Finally, why dungeon being dark is not good for you? I mean there can be many reasons, and I understand - but maybe I could make a better fix for a specific problem? E.g. for some time I'm thinking of having a "high-contrast" mode for the game so that it would be "more accessible" for people with vision issues (or some unexpected hardware). Maybe that would be a "better solution" to the darkness problem?
 
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KSVreset

Newbie
Feb 20, 2018
44
69
You should probably post a thread in the Games section if you want more eyes on it since I don't think anyone goes looking for new games in this subforum. I only found it through word of mouth.

Pretty fun gameplay though I would prefer human characters. There's a lot of creative stuff here, and I love how different enemy types play off of each other so there's no single winning strategy and you're never safe whether you're fully dressed, naked, going commando, tied up or unbound. The sleep ambushes open up a lot of fun stuff. I'd love to have an alternate dodge roll that goes about half as far as the current one does, since SO MANY of the maps are tightly packed and trying to roll in them will usually result in me spiraling into a wall for half of the duration. It's also hard to use the roll aggressively since you'll usually barrel into the enemy and be slowed while they're lining up an attack; a shorter roll would be more precise and let you use it for defense OR offense (at the cost of valuable stamina, of course).

I do have a complaint about the difficulty. The first 15-20 floors aren't bad because of the slow build-up, but eventually you get to a point where you have a large variety and quantity of enemies, but they all try to path straight at you at all times, so it inevitably melts into a single huge clump of bad guys. With bad RNG, you may get a combination of enemies that prevent you from having enough time to actually land an attack, meaning you can never interact with the clump and your run is dead unless you somehow gain enough breathing room to escape down the exit stairs while fleeing the angry mob.

Some thoughts for addressing this issue...
  • Ranged weapons, spells, or skills would let you can pick away at enemies from a distance. I read somewhere that you wanted to add this sort of thing in the future, so maybe the groundwork for it already exists.
  • A reduction in noise made while fighting so you don't continually attract more and more enemies while dealing with the ones you have. Perhaps the reduction scales with levels beaten, or maybe you're thinking of some kind of skill tree or meta progression that would allow this.
  • Change to enemy AI so that they try to surround you and box you in instead of walking directly at you. Or they simply have a chance to pause and/or move irregularly while chasing so as to naturally spread themselves out from the clump. Or they gradually lose interest during a prolonged chase and wander off away from the player.
  • Decrease the quantity of enemies on the floor at a given time and instead scale the rate of placing new enemies onto the board as the player goes up in floors. This way you can fight as many monsters as before on a given floor but they're spread out so you aren't dealing with 20 enemies in a single fight.

That all said, it's a fun and very promising game. I had a good time playing around with this one and I'll be eagerly waiting for more development.
 
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eugeneloza

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Jan 2, 2022
205
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KSVreset First of all, horribly sorry for delayed answer. I wasn't feeling well due to abrupt weather changes and it kicked me out of life for a few days.

KSVreset said:
a thread in the Games section
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I'm afraid that I've got "only one shot" at this :) So I really want to wait with creating a thread until the game will be at least in Alpha stage (= most of planned game mechanics in place, including the ones that you've mentioned ;)): this still requires quite a lot of work. Otherwise it might be just "get more eyes on the game" now, but make a bad impression and never get another chance. E.g. adding animations and the overall planned upgrade to how the game looks could make a great difference.

KSVreset said:
I would prefer human characters
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Yeah, I plan this feature. The Character Editor at this point is quite versatile, so that we can have not only furry but also human bodyparts and possibly even an "option" to lock defaults to "only humans", "only furries" or "either". The only thing that limits it now - is that I need to do the drawing :) Which I plan for the nearest time. Right now took a "week off" to work on an unrelated NSFW jam game - with one of the goals to learn to draw faster, which to my own surprise I've achieved :D

KSVreset said:
maps are tightly packed
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I must admit I don't like the fact that maps are tightly packed now. Somehow switching between long and short dash might be not very user friendly. But initially I envisioned maps with much larger open areas. Tight maps also undercut one important feature I want to make: ability to safely stealth around the enemies, as killing most opponents on the level now is the only way to finish the dungeon level. I plan to "upgrade" the map generation algorithm somewhere soon, and hopefully it will show more precisely if this would be enough to fix the dash roll issue, or maybe it would still make sense to add the ability to fine-tune the range of the roll from the Player.

KSVreset said:
a single huge clump of bad guys
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Or they gradually lose interest during a prolonged chase
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They kinda already have AI that tries to surround the player. However, for now it's pretty simple and maybe I'll need to make something different - but first I want to make a bigger upgrade to AI. Currently we're using TES: Oblivion style stealth system, simply because it was much easier to implement and is more "reliable". I want to remake the whole system into more TES: Skyrim-like one. Currently if the monsters see the Player character they'll chase her for 15 seconds before giving up, if the character is out of sight or out of their detection range. However, I want to make it so that monsters will not be able to "chase character" if they don't see her. This way they'll go to the "last-known" location, and should try searching around the area afterwards. This shouldn't even be hard to implement, but it will create a few issues with balancing of this feature (especially in a tightly packed map :)) and will require a lot of testing and tweaking which might take more time.

KSVreset said:
skill tree or meta progression
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I'm itching to make a skill tree (or rather a skill list) as the next big feature. It shouldn't be hard to do. The only problem here is that it will be a save-breaking feature (as will count character levels in a different way), but maybe even this would be possible to fix without forcing starting a new game. But before that I want to finish implementing character bodies and poses.
 
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KSVreset

Newbie
Feb 20, 2018
44
69
No problem on the delayed response; everyone has their own life going on, and I won't demand immediate responses from anyone.

I understand the need to make a good first impression for your reveal. Although I enjoy the game in its current form, it is definitely a work in progress, so I think more cooking time will be appreciated by the general public. Of course I don't mean to bash your tastes or push you to add in stuff you don't like, but most people probably don't like furry characters so even something as little as adding in bodies for humans is going to make the game more attractive to many people. I'm looking forward to seeing the character editor expanded too, since my characters all feel pretty interchangeable right now that I have enough of them to usually be playing a similar level.

I haven't noticed enemies trying to surround me, but I'm guessing it's something like they'll get into their (probably melee) attack range and then fan out so there's one at each of your corners. And NOT something like them trying to cut you off and intercept or deliberately flank your movements, although that does sound fun. I tend to strike once and immediately retreat, so it makes sense I wouldn't see it in action if it's the former. Only recently have I realized you can cancel your attack cooldown by interspacing movement commands between attacks. Is that intentional for dealing multiple quick hits, so you don't have to give up ground so much? It's entirely possible I'm just playing wrong, though I don't recall the tutorial mentioning this (hidden?) mechanic.

Most maps typically feel like a mixture of corridors and rooms to me, but sometimes I run into ones where I simply cannot disengage from a monster for 15 seconds to de-aggro them because it's mostly corridors with one or two large(r) rooms on the entire map. That's when the clump of bad guys feels worst. This is especially true if the only big rooms are near each other, since that's your arena for fighting and going into the corridors basically dooms you. It's not offensively packed/cramped/claustrophobic, but there's definitely a lack of legroom overall.

Skill list sounds promising. I have no problem with starting a new game, especially with the debug mode available. Vinculopedia collectors may disagree... But hey, it's a prototype in the end. One shouldn't get too attached.
 
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tearsbecomemelodies

tearsbecomemelodies

Newbie
Sep 23, 2019
15
31
Damn. I was considering trying to contribute but the codebase and Pascal are a bit intimidating to me. I wish you good luck though, this project looks cool and I'll keep it in mind for the future!
 
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