Ad Lib Game Development Society

Zero Lodge

A.L.G.D.S.

Zero Lodge
Dallas, TX

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Session 3 (Saturday June 12, 2 days, 8 participants)
Project: NetSlack

Participants: Charon, David, Josh, Lucas, Shawn, Squirrel, Tom, Zach

Downloads:

Synopsis: This one was a close tossup between doing a tile-based top-down Zelda/Gauntlet/FF2 type game and a game based on rope physics. At the last minute we decided to go with the RPG idea, calling it "NetSlack" (after the popular unix game "NetHack"). The player has six different spell-attacks, each of which has its own resource meter and recharge time. Gauntlet-style monster generators pump out endless numbers of enemies.

We had a lot of work to do with this one, but we did pretty well anyway. There were a lot of systems written from scratch, including: a general-purpose text parser, tile rendering code, and a materials system (including gameplay properties such as "blocks player", "spawn monster generator", "stairs up", etc). Several really kickass maps were done using a half-stolen, half-hand-drawn graphic tileset, including two desert maps, two dungeon maps, and a near-exact replica of the outdoor map from the original NES Zelda. We also put in a basic attract / play / game over state, complete with catchy screens.

Unfinished business: We only got 1 spell effect, 1 monster generator type, and 1 monster type implemented. Lots of other pieces were missing, too. Part of this was due to coders needing to spend lots of time writing systems rather than gameplay. Production was also halted somewhat when a family of four teeny tiny kittens was found abandoned in a bush in our backyard, near to starvation. Several team members spent a number of hours each feeding and "pooping" the little fellas, as directed by the all-knowing Internet. (For the cat-loving readers out there, the kittens are now in the good hands of a lady who specializes in taking care of infant cats.)

Postmortem notes

What went right

What went wrong

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