No Time To Play

Despite sacrificing a weekend’s work to a mini-vacation, Dungeon Romp is pretty much where I expected it to be by now. There are three levels of two types, variable lighting and experience gains, and mobs now have the option to swim or fly (which for now only enables them to cross water).

Unfortunately, the source code has almost reached my self-imposed limit of 2000 lines. Which means I will soon have to make a decision.

As far as I can tell, my options are:

1. Decide this game has just turned into a serious project and split the source code. That will require some changes, and will make it harder to pass around.
2. Write off this version as a prototype and start over with a tighter design I’m thinking of. That doesn’t mean abandoning Dungeon Romp! I was planning to make a Python port anyway.

There is also the question of what to do with the remaining 200 lines until the aforementioned limit. Things which are sorely needed include:

• better AI;
• basic ranged combat (read: throwing rocks);
• more declarative mob and item generation;
• a light source;
• hard-to-spot items, maybe even stealth.

Other features will have to wait for the final version:

• items that require identification;
• advanced ranged combat (slings and such);
• containers;
• breakable obstacles;
• much more content.

But first, there will be a short delay as I help someone with another project and make some experiments on the side. Until then, try it out and let me know what you think.

Major decisions time by Felix Pleșoianu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.