TROGBlog - Labyrinth v0.08

RSS Bot · July 14, 2006

Kenjutsu has mutated into the game Labyrinth.

Labyrinth is a fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the dragon's lair. Lead on, adventurer. Your quest awaits!

Yes, some concepts from Dragon's Lair will be integrated into this game. I liked the premise of Dragon's Lair, even if the gameplay was dry. The idea was you are presented with a series of rooms, and each room contains a challenge that must be overcome before you can move on. I've already come up with ways to implement the gas trap room, the whirling hall of knives, and the black knight encounter. But there will be a lot more to this game. Here is a planned list of features:

- Randomly generated mazes of rooms.

- There will be a challenge in each room. Complete the challenge to get a key and gain access to other rooms.

- Find your way to the stairs to decend to the next level.

- A variety of traps and puzzles. Pressure plates and trip wires that fire darts from the wall. These traps can be detected by observant players. And the 3 trap rooms from Dragon's Lair mentioned above. Also a multi-button puzzle at the end of each maze.

- A wide variety of monsters. Goblins, Skeletons, DeathKnights, Berzerkers, Doppelgangers, Zombies, Wights, Blobs, and Bats, to name a few. Each creature will have its own fighting style.

- Treasure chests, gold, and health packs to restore health.

- Probably a hitpoint system for you and the monsters.

- Progressive difficulty. As you go deeper into the maze, the speed and reaction times of your opponents will be faster. You will also encounter larger quantities of enemies.

- The game will have an end goal, so you can "win" the game.

This game is in no way associated with the 1986 Jim Henson / David Bowie movie of the same name.

As for the storyline of the game, I may move away from the "kill the dragon and save the princess" plot, but so far that's undecided.

Features:

l05.asm 07/12/06

- Reworked kernel to use 2LK and half vertical resolution. This will free up many cycles for other effects.

- Added animated warrior.

l06.asm 07/12/06

- Added enemy goblin player.

- Updated kernel to display both players and swords on same scanline.

- Added preliminary dungeon wall.

- Added goblin AI.

l07.asm 07/13/06

- There are now 4 enemies. Select an enemy by holding down the select switch. The enemies are:

- A green Goblin.

- A grey DeathKnight.

- An orange Berzerker.

- A blue Doppelganger.

- Each enemy has a different fighting style.

l08.asm 07/14/06

- Added sword-to-player collision detection.

- Added sound queue and rudimentary sounds for victory and defeat in a sword battle.

To Do:

- Make the sword rotation of the DeathKnight more fluid.

- Add a vulnerability to the Doppelganger so he can actually be killed.

- Implement the background graphics for the labyrinth.

Known Issues:

- None.

Development Notes:

There was no escaping the HMOVE bars. I need HMOVE motion in both directions for the sword effects, so I'll just have to live with it. I tried a brown background, but that provides much less contrast to the players, so they're harder to see. The black background seems to fit nicely with the Labyrinth theme, so I'll probably stick with it, and it allows me to ignore the HMOVE bars entirely.

If anyone has ever played Swords and Serpents for the Intellivision, you'll notice some similarites. However, my game will have a lot more variety of fighting styles.

I'm pretty sure it's impossible to kill the Doppelganger. Let me know if you figure out a way to kill him. I'll be adding a weakness to his attack method in a later revision.

As is the case in real life, if you tie in a sword battle (you and your opponent simultaneously skewer each other), you still lose.

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