I figured it was about time for another oldschool review. This time I'll be talking about LASER, a game written by Mike Goldberg (and his cat) as part of his series of graphics programming articles in Acorn Computing magazine. The game was released on the subscription disc for the February 1994 issue of the magazine, along with a level editor so users could make their own puzzles.
 
 

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

Game over, man
 
The competition is nearly at an end, which can only mean one thing - tomorrow's article will be the conclusion, and will (hopefully!) feature a copy of the game to download.

...and here it is.
 
 

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

Next time I'll be talking about monster AI. I'm not going to be creating an Einstein, but I will be able to talk about a few of the basic features I'm hoping to implement.

But before I talk about monster AI, I might as well take the time out to talk about the time system that the game will use. Also, I don't have much other material for this article.
 
 

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

Next time I will be tackling combat. Having never written a roguelike combat system before, it will be an interesting exercise in deciding how mechanics such as strength and armour class will work, and attempting to get the numbers right first-time to reduce the amount of balancing required.

Forsight, there.
 
Combat is an important aspect of all roguelikes. But having never looked at a roguelike combat engine in detail before, I don't really know much about how they work. Monsters have strength, dexterity, and armour class attributes, but how do those translate into how hard the monster hits with a weapon?
 
Note that a lot of the values and equations presented in this article aren't set in stone yet, and will require tweaking during play-testing. But hopefully I'll be able to shed some light on the different aspects of combat, and the thought processes involved in creating a balanced combat system.
 
 

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

...

Yeah, looks like I forgot to write anything to lead onto this article.

Anyhoo, this article will be discussing visibility and pathfinding. Both are important aspects of many roguelikes, and both have some important implementation issues to try and overcome. Line-of-sight algorithms are a popular topic on rgrd - right now I can see two threads talking about LOS algorithms, and know of at least one other that talks about them.

 

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

Previously, on Bob and Trev: Resurrection...

The current dungeon level.
For simplicity, I won't be having a scrolling map. This means that the largest level possible would be 40 by 25 tiles; in reality I'll only be using 40x22, as 3 rows will be required for displaying the players' status and game messages. And since the dungeon is fairly simple in design, I'll only need at most 1 byte per tile - so a full map of the current dungeon level will require 880 bytes of memory.

Until now, I haven't really gone into any detail about what the dungeon structure will be like. Since you don't find many BBC users in Gnomish mines, I realised quite early on that the traditional underground dungeon setting wouldn't work very well for this game. So instead I turned the game world on its head - you'll start at the bottom of a skyscraper and work your way up. In particular, if I have the time I'll make the first and last levels unique - the first level will be an underground parking lot, and the last level will be the rooftop, where you will find your nemesis (Don't ask me who he is - I haven't decided yet!) These unique levels will require only simple generators, but how will the office levels inbetween be generated?
 
 

David Braben, co-author of Elite, has been interviewed by the BBC technology programme Click at the Science Museum's Game On exhibition.
 
He discusses whether it is still practical for bedroom coders to write games: "I'm a little skeptical - I hugely think it's a very good idea for people to be able to learn to program at home ... I was very lucky - machines like the Acorn Atom and BBC Micro were very easy to program. I was in the right place at the right time; it's much harder to get started now. So anything that people like Microsoft [XNA] can do to encourage that is a good thing."
 
We also get to see a PDP-1, a super computer used for space research in the 1960s, which ran one of the earliest computer games, Spacewar, on an oscilloscope.
 
Seems like the programme was recorded some time ago - they keep mentioning the Wii will be coming out soon, and the exhibition finished in February - but it was broadcast last night and you can watch it again here