Bidden day #1
time so far: 8 hours
Nothing playable yet; just created a mockup in libtcod after making some notes and sketching out the code structure with Leo. The extent of my design:
I had the basic idea a couple of weeks ago and I figured the rest out in the notebook this morning. You play a bidden, a creature brought into a fantasy world to fulfill the wishes of the summoner.
In trying to keep this simple, yet still interesting and a roguelike, I’m planning the following:
* summoners bind you to a task, either to hunt (kill something), to seek (get or activate something), or to bear (deliver something).
* these summoners represent groups of different interests in the game world, but this aspect will be largely cosmetic.
* tasks take place in a terrain (valley, mountain, desert, cave — mostly cosmetic), and a place (tower, ruin, temple, labyrinth, slum) that influences what creatures are encountered (elevated, ancient, divine, beastly, mutated).
* Your bidden can wield one weapon and wear one piece of armor; these will be somewhat unlike conventional weaponry (in a cosmetic sense), and generated.
* Your bidden can have two boons (powers), with one active at a time. I have six boons planned, three each for combat and movement.
* Your bidden also can be warped. Each warp changes the active boon. I’ll have two warps, so counting the unwarped state, there are 18 possible powers. Particular victories and items/locations create warps.
* all attacks hit automatically, with a chance to destroy weaponry (based on the weapon/armor involved), or inflict a wound. The bidden can take five wounds before death. Particular items and victories heal wounds, and there’s a heal up when the bidden completes its task.
* the command interface:
* cardinal movement only
* use boon, ‘x [direction]‘
* pick up or manipulate, ‘ [ctrl + direction]‘
* cancel or main menu, ‘[escape]‘
* confirm, ‘[space or return] ‘
* switch active boon, ‘[shift]‘
* wait, ‘.’
* scroll message history, ‘ [pageup or pagedown] ‘
* command help, ‘?’
* bump to attack or open doors (maybe open doors is configurable)
* a list of achievements (tasks completed)
* a victory file
* a death file
So….probably way too ambitious! We’ll see.
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