Prospector: Space themed Roguelike

User contributed sources that have become inactive, deprecated, or generally unusable. But ... we don't really want to throw them away either.
Galeon
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Post by Galeon »

Any updates?
Just compiled it in Windows, DOS and Linux. Looks great.

Some bugs:
Linux uses "/" not "\" in paths
Sound file names and file names in the source don't match
Please clean some errors in the text
any graphical versions? like DDD (Deep Deadly Dungeons)?

I could help if you want
magellan
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Joined: Feb 18, 2009 17:35

Post by magellan »

Oh, you are right... i have / and \ all over the place... thanks for pointing those out!
Tiles do exist, they are only way too tiny, hideously ugly and incomplete.

Things are going forward, just slightly sluggish.
And i am highly impressed of your offer *after* looking at the code :)
How do you think help could look like?
Galeon
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Post by Galeon »

> Move the code to different modules
> Use Extern's instead of Dim Shared's
> Add a NOSOUND option so it can be compiled without sound (i.e DOS)
> Add more sounds
> Use #ifndef's and #ifdef's to enable disable features (ie. tiles or ASCII)
magellan
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Post by magellan »

As you can propably tell from the source code i rarely have any idea of what i am doing :)
So I am wondering: what would be the advantage of using extern instead of shared?
magellan
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Joined: Feb 18, 2009 17:35

Post by magellan »

Just in case anybody would like to know:
0.1.8 is out.
Some bugs have been squised, new ones introduced and old ones revived, but all in all i think it's net positive.
Some of the bugs discovered in the past 2 days have already been fixed in the Source, so i guess the folks here will want to just grab the source code and compile it. (But the data files you need are in the zip package, so you will want to get that one too)
Enjoy!

Its still over here: http://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/
Galeon
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Post by Galeon »

By using externs, you can divide your sources into modules. By dividing it into modules, you will need less time to compile the program, you only need to recompile those modules where you have made changes.
Also, shared variables are considered as "bad" by some people here, so they don't use it.
rdc
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Post by rdc »

I am going to have to disagree here. Modules are a hold over from the 64k days, and are not necessary in a 32-bit flat memory space. They introduce a lot of overhead into the program, for little gain. No modern programming language uses modules anymore, and they are not necessary in FB either.

I also disagree that shared variables are inherently bad; like anything else, they should be used with care. No one seems to complain about #defines, which are global constructs after the point of definition. In fact I would say that there is more #define abuse than shared abuse. :)

What would benefit a program more is to take advantage of the FB object language extensions which is underused in my opinion. The only thing FB doesn't support in its class definitions is inheritance, and that isn't a show stopper by any means. You can still derive new objects from existing objects, you just have to do it manually, as I did in my Table object. FB objects offer all the normal OOP benefits you find in any OOP language and would benefit any FB program in the same way.
Aave
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Location: Helsinki, Finland

Post by Aave »

Damn, seeing how far you've come and that one can actually play the game, it makes me a bit ashamed that I still lack a release on my own similarly themed project.

Anyway, here's a few things that came into my mind (some are a matter of preference):
* Some of the texts have all chars in lower case, whereas some follow the correct casing.
* In the general view, I'd like some visual clue about how far I actually see. The all black background is a bit dull, and also slightly confusing.
* I would also prefer a bit longer line-of-sight.
* The game quits after dying, how about going back to the menu for another round?
* After asking a yes/no question, the game prints a number after it if an arrow key is pressed.
(* Sounds in a roguelike are something really surprising. Whilst not a bad thing, please don't use much time on them... :P )

Hopefully I didn't report many known issues or things from todo-list (didn't read the topic or documentation too carefully, sry). Looking forward to seeing updates!
magellan
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Joined: Feb 18, 2009 17:35

Post by magellan »

Well, i guess when infiniverse comes out prospector can go and dive into a sun :)

But thanks for the feedback!
Restarting after death is an option you can set in configuration. It's off by default, but you can turn it on if you prefer.
The y/n questions show you what key you pressed. I find that helpfull in a minimal way. Numbers are shown because thats what Prospector translates arrow keys into internally.

Other than that: no, you didn't mention many known or documented issues, wich is partly because there is way too little documentation :)

Actually i just squished some bugs and put 0.1.8a out
Jocke The Beast
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Post by Jocke The Beast »

Sorry for bumping an old-old post like this but I just have to say to you, Magellan,...what a work!
I know I'm not the only one that's really impressed by your super cool RL. You got yourself a big crowd of followers and I understand them.

In other words... keep up the good work!
magellan
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Joined: Feb 18, 2009 17:35

Post by magellan »

Thanks Jocke!

Just released version 0.1.11, btw
(http://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/)
qbworker
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Joined: Jan 14, 2011 2:34

Post by qbworker »

I bumped into this(no pun intended!), and I thought everyone should check it out(if they haven't already). Its got graphics now, and the gameplay is cooler than ever.
Destructosoft
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Post by Destructosoft »

Love the size 24 tiles on this. Would like to see the developer try his hand at size 32, but it looks plenty good. Can't wait to try this out.
Lachie Dazdarian
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Post by Lachie Dazdarian »

Great work since the last time I tried this game. Love the huge amount of content and effort you are investing in this.

When do you plan to release an official ver.1 or do you plan to have such a release? I must say, I was never a fan of extreme and continuous design, and I find it difficult to force myself to play a complex game in development.
qbworker
Posts: 73
Joined: Jan 14, 2011 2:34

Post by qbworker »

Only bug so far was when I was on an Smith Heavy Industries controlled, airless planet, and one of them fired at me. Fortunately I was within radio and LOS of my ship, so I radioed for an airstrike with my rocketlauncher to tell them what I thought of this. Only problem was that a meteorite was streaking on its way to the surface and hit at the same time my guns hit, except not at the same place. All well and good except that the sprites started going haywire where my guns had hit and my messages recorded about 2000+ hits to the SHIco team before I finally force-quitted the program.
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