A Roguelike Turn-Based Tactical Fighting Video Game
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Eggopolypse: A Roguelike Turn-Based Tactical Fighting Video Game Matthew Ottomano Alex Williams Middlebury College Middlebury College Astoria, NY Greenwich, CT [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT and The Darkest Dungeon.Each contributes something new We had no experience with game design or development. to the genre unlike the game we eventually created, but each Given that we have grown up playing video games, we took inspired us in some way. an interest in learning about the development process. We We built the game in the Unity engine. Unity is perfect also wanted to create a game up to par with the industry for our needs because of its large free library of textures standard. We decided to create a Roguelike game. Roguelike given our lack of artistry. It also meets the industry stan- games are defined by two aspects: permanent death and dard mentioned earlier, as many large game development random levels. Roguelike games are modeled after Rogue, companies use Unity to build their games. On top of Unity, a primitive dungeon crawler from 1980. Its introduction of we used the ORK framework to assist with the level design those two aspects mentioned spawned a new genre of game. and battle system. We were inspired by three particular Roguelike games: Slay Our finished game is Eggopolypse. The player controls the Spire, Wizard of Legend, and The Darkest Dungeon. Jason Grant, our professor, who has to navigate Middlebury Each one has a unique play style and twist to the genre. College after a horrific accident transforms all the students After recognizing what has already been done and realizing and faculty into eggs. However, some eggs believe that their that a card based battle system would be too complex, we new form is better and try to stop him. Jason commands set out to build a turn-based Roguelike that uses minion an army of students who fight for his cause to transform combat on a two-dimensional board. everyone back. Each student has equipment that boosts By the end of the semester, we built a fully functional their status values and can attack in battle. Students can be Roguelike game, complete with grid battles, minion com- one of two classes: physical fighter or magical fighter. They bat, items, and a storyline. The player is our professor, can wield different weapons and unlock different abilities Jason Grant, who enters a horrific Middlebury where all the that are better or worse based on their class. students and faculty have been turned into eggs. He must Upon finishing the semester, our game met all of our goals. command an army of his students willing to fight against We created a turn-based Roguelike game with a grid-based some eggs who believe they are better off that way. Each battle system and different classes for our playable charac- student, or minion, has a certain level of health, mana, crit- ters. Even though our game was not on the same caliber ical strike chance, etc. They can either be a physical melee as other games we have played, we understand that as two fighter or a ranged magical fighter. They can wear armor undergraduate computer science students, we cannot create and trinkets each with different perks, and can also equip games on the same level as large game development com- different weapons allowing access to different attacks. With panies, especially when we had no artistic or development more time, we would have improved the user interface during experience. battle and when recruiting new minions. We also would have created more levels, a final boss, and a third class for the 2. PROBLEM STATEMENT minions. We were unfortunately overwhelmed by Unity?s Our game focuses on creating a Roguelike turn-based role- complexity during the first part of the semester. playing game using a tactical grid-like combat system. These elements combine a series of elements in games that devel- Keywords opers have made in the past. The challenge was being able to mix these elements that have not been mixed before into CS701; LATEX; Roguelike; Video Game a game that runs well and is aesthetically pleasing to the gamer to provide an enjoyable gaming experience. 1. INTRODUCTION Pulling from games like Slay the Spire and Rogue, we Our biggest problem at the start of our project was our in- needed to put familiar elements that we as gamers under- experience with game development. We set out to learn how stand very well, and translate them into what we know using to develop a game with professional standards. Our original an unfamiliar API, Unity. Marrying our expectations with idea was to build a Roguelike Deckbuilder game, but after what we could realistically learn in the span of twelve weeks seeing what other Roguelikes have been made and testing proved difficult which was part of the problem. After weeks our own abilities, we decided to build a grid-based minion of trying to create something in our minds, we decided to combat system instead. The other Roguelikes we looked at take another approach. were the original Rogue, Slay the Spire, Wizard of Legend, We decided to forget our ideas for the time-being and simply learn the different tools that Unity has and what can you play as an egg. prove useful for a video game in general. Thus, instead of This sums up how the second approach to creating a game trying to fit Unity to the game in our minds, we tried to fit worked; learning about the tools we have and then framing the game in our minds to the limitations of our knowledge the game we have in mind with the limitations of those tools. of Unity. Using this method, we were able to make more This process proved to be difficult, yet more effective than progress learning Unity rather than just learning what we trying to dive right into the game we wrote on paper. wanted to know about Unity. This proved to be a successful tactic which led to our discovery of the ORK Framework. 3. RELATED WORK The ORK Framework is a tool designed for making Role- Playing Games. It has packages that proved useful for mak- The first Roguelike game is unsurprisingly Rogue(1980). ing our grid-based combat system, both in creating the grid Also known as Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom, and also managing the logic that is connected with the move- it was inspired by text based adventure games. Its creators ment in the grid. The Framework also had pretty useful pre- Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman wanted to incorporate pro- fabrications with already written animations. Animation is cedural level generation to this adventuring genre. Thus, an element of gaming that we didn't realize was so complex Rogue was born, a dungeon crawler with procedural level and we soon learned that big gaming companies like Blizzard generation and permanent death. and Epic have dedicated teams strictly for animation while We have played a number of Roguelikes in preparation the developers of the logic are part of a whole other team. for our game and in general growing up. These are: Dark- This is just one of our realizations of the many components est Dungeon(2016), Wizard of Legend (2017), and Slay the that go into building a game. Spire (2017). All of these games were influential in our de- The other part we had to tackle was creating object- cision process while building our game. oriented code that served to create the fun stuff in our Slay the Spire is a turn-based, deck-building Roguelike, game such as the armor, weapons, abilities and miscella- and is the game that pushed us to want to build a Rogue- neous items. We soon realized that these items mean noth- like over another genre of game. We also started our de- ing without status values for the actual characters in our velopment with the idea that our game would use cards as game i.e. the health, mana, critical chance, and more. So a combat mechanism. Slay the Spire sends the player up a we decided to work on creating status values for the enemies towering dungeon with a starting deck of cards that they use and player. to attack enemies and block them. However, Slay the Spire After the status values, we decided to return to the ar- is relatively simple since there is no movement involved, thus mor, weapons, abilities and miscellaneous items. We de- we decided to use a grid-based battle system. cided to create a few of these so that the player can add a Wizard of Legend is a real-time, run-and-gun Roguelike. customizability element to the game. This was just ordinary The player plays as a wizard undergoing trials, and enters object-oriented code. the trials with a set of abilities they can use to damage Next, we decided to work on the interactions between enemies. As a run-and-gun, the player has complete control players and enemies when in combat. We had to implement over where the character can go and must react quickly to certain rules and formulas for different abilities while also the enemies. The real-time nature of the game makes it very checking to see if such ability was possible given the amount difficult, and so we decided to make our game turn based to of mana or energy one had. The other element of interac- allow players of any age group to enjoy the game. tions we dealt with, central to our game, was the movement.