After lots of struggling, frustration, and exhaustion, I basically just burnt out on this whole turn-based RPG thing. So here’s a kobold with a rocket launcher instead.
This game’s title was provided by Brandon Ferguson.
Game 35: RPG: the RPG,Top Games
Here I’m expecting an epic roguelike from you and you end up giving me this? Do you think this will satisfy me?
… yeah, okay, it’s pretty mindless fun. If Missile Command and Robotron had relations I imagine their (somewhat buggy) bastard spawn would be something like this. Not as clever as … well as just about any of your other games, but like I said, mindless fun.
First play thought I netted 382, highest wave 16. Killed by 5 ninjas raping me in the corner.
The genre that has slain many an indie programmer. It stalks the borders of our imaginations, so enticing, yet so dangerous. Most anybody who even casually codes as a hobby for long enough will an unfinished RPG somewhere, not a scar, but more of a birthmark, a note from your history that yes, you’ve been there too.
Hey, what program do you use to make your music? I know John Axon made it this time, but how did you make your music for your other games?
I normally use PXTone, this particular song was a foray into FamiTracker.
Don’t worry, the original game design is still on the back burner; for my sanity’s sake I needed to publish something and move on for now, rather than burning out completely. I’m just as disappointed as the rest of you that I couldn’t get this done, but after nearly a week of struggling with it past the deadline, I had to make the difficult decision that it was better to back off than drag down my entire project.
Nice work, Nathan. It must have been difficult to completely redesign your game and for that, this game is pretty cool. Shooting ninjas with rocket launchers is pretty boss. I wish the the space bar was for jumping instead of the “Z” key. It’s difficult to be running away, firing missiles, and jumping with the “Z” key. It’s awkward to move and jump with all the letters and cramped there. With the space bar allocated to jump, you can leave your thumb on it.
I was surprised that you remixed the song I did but its well within your CC rights =P. Are you thinking about using the original song for original game design when you finally create it? That could work.
Talk later!
-John
Yeah, I was saving your version for the proper RPG; it seemed a shame to waste it on this, hence the “demix”. Plus, yours will now seem to be a brilliant orchestration of this tune.
Lol. You’re such a gentleman =P. Actually, it says remixed, but demixing sounds like your unravelling the piece or something.
When do you wanna finish the original design? I wanna improve the piece for it =)
-John
The game was very funny, I kept alive until wave 16, the only thing is…. why I never leveled up ? I killed a lot of monsters and I remained the same weak kobold with only one rocket launcher !!!
I really like your blog and all your game prototypes, keep your work
I agree that the jump button needs to be moved to space; Z is way too awkward of a position. Adding arrow key support as well as WASD would also fix it.
It was mindless fun. It’s interesting that it doesn’t explode on whatever it hits first, it explodes at the point that you clicked, so that adds a little bit of strategy to it. Plus, there’s a juggle bonus, which is neat if you can time things right.
I think slightly limited ammo could make this more fun, then there would be an incentive to focus on large groups. Like, have Dragondot fly over and drop ammo every 10 seconds or something, I’m not sure.
This might be cheating but what if you just used one of those rpg makers where you can write the story, design the levels, and draw the sprites? What if you reverse engineer the programming of those rpg makers and make your own rpg maker application?
Even with a rocket launcher, a kobold is just a kobold, after all.
Cheating (and unappealing), and absurdly impractical, respectively.
Okay, after playing your games for a while, I’ve been inspired to take up game programming. Besides the amount of hard work, how did you actually get started, Nathan?
Depends on how you define “started”. It wasn’t the earliest, but I’d say the most defining moment for me was tinkering with the source code of Gorillas and Nibbles in QBASIC. While I wouldn’t recommend starting with QBASIC these days, tinkering with existing source code is an excellent way to get into things. I don’t recommend my own code, though, as it’s full of bad examples and not well-commented. If you’re interested in Flash, http://wonderfl.net/ (which I have not explored much, but I heartily approve of in concept) seems like a brilliant way to get into that tinkering approach.
Wow, wonderfl has LOT of source code! Thanks a bunch. Also, are there any tutorials you’d recommend to me for actionscript, or would it be best just to learn from source? Sorry, I’m really new at this.
Am I the only one who can’t get it to start?
Never mind, had to give it a minute.