Update: this game has made a successful entry! check out the page here - https://numeron.itch.io/dungeon-cards

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Hello all! My name is Numeron, and this will be my 15th 7DRL entry - Dungeon Cards (possibly with a future name change)

15 entries sure is a lot (check my stuff out if you're interested!), but at this point I'm not so sure that's an advantage any more. I'm not the bright minded youth I once was, more like I'm becoming a risk-averse grouchy old dev who shakes his fist at new fangled technologies haha. Maybe it's time to break that cycle though -

Unlike the last bunch of years, I won't be building this entry on the bones of last year, I'm starting fresh with a new codebase! I'm exploring into the world of 3 dimensions (just graphics wise for now, not for the gameplay), so there will be plenty of new things for me to learn this year. This also means the scope will be lower, I'm going to try to make more of a tight puzzle-like tactical game than long-form RPG as is more typical of my entries.

I'll try to keep this thread up to date with my progress at the end of each day, but for now the simple idea is - a deck builder, with cards representing attacks/abilities on the grid, taking place in small single room levels (unless I find myself with a lot more time than expected)

Day 1

To assist my ramping up with the 3d tools, I have completed a little 3d vignette for the menu screen. I'm trying to keep things clean, but it's tricky - there are quite a few components to 3d work (especially when you aren't importing models) so it took longer than I hoped to put this together. Still it looks pretty good. I also have a rain animation that I might try to fit in, but we'll see. Another cool thing is that it currently runs at an eye watering 1600 fps, and while I have a kinda beefy computer it's good to know there's a lot of room for extras even at the low end.

Thankfully I ended up with some time left over after putting the little scene together, so I got a start on the hand of cards, and ray-picking when I mouse over to focus on that particular card. In the menu screen, I'll use cards as a stand-in for a more boring button menu. Ups downs tilts zlayers it's way more complex than 2d work but much more rewarding...

Moving the camera like this makes gifs huge though, so sorry about the quality!

Day 2

Polished off the menus screen with working card options, as well as sound and music. It's really hard to find good SFX, I bought several SFX/music bundles from humble but they're all useless jangling chimes, squelches, zapows, and kachonks all with reverberations, faint staticy noise over the top like a bad recording, start at like 300ms into the clip and other stuff that makes it all really hard to use. Where is a soft quick paf for a click, a short soft sh for moving cards? Finding good sounds is like finding good graphics, it they're bad they can put the whole experience off...

Anyway, also got a transition into and back out of the game screen, as well as some basic structure for the game itself, including moving guy. I need to remember to stop nit-picking minor details though, considering this year I still need to write the whole engine from scratch.

This looks incredible. Excited to see how it turns out!

Day 3

Got some load-in working for the hero and enemies (which currently cannot be interacted with),, as well as hatches to the next level and reload for the following level. I also hacked in the win/death screen from last year's 7drl because well why reinvent the wheel - has a bit of touch up of course to suit 3d look and feel.

Also did a lot of work on the hand, drawing, discarding, and refreshing the draw when empty - it looks nice!

Day 4

Progressing alright, but definitely feeling the pressure - I'm hoping the time left is enough, it sure helps that I've taken the week off work but I still only have 3 days!

The code base is really turning into a mess, I have a lot of animations and transitions and stuff, and rather than having a central controller for timing and input handling under certain conditions (e.g. disabled while transitioning) I've just added timer after timer, and there's a mess of "if this timer running do not do". I also have a lot of magic numbers to place things just so, which in some cases need to be kept consistent with other magic numbers making changing things hard. My HandHandler class is now 1600 lines long because it handles logic it's not supposed to and so much more! I will definitely be throwing this game in the bin after the competition is over, but keeping on with 3D in general for sure. I'm learning a lot!

I have effectively completed the card handling, and I added functionality to view the deck, upgrade/delete cards, and select new cards from an offering.

This is pretty much done, including card upgrade ability which as can see below adds a + to the attack title, and doesn't allow upgrade of energy cards above level 5.

I did this after the "level up" cards though so they are added to the hand and handled there - I'll probably move them over to the new system

This looks fantastic. Seriously great job. Is that your art?

Thanks, lots is bought or acquired through creative commons, but most of it in some way yes! The tile sets I get help set a consistent design language (which I'm bad at doing from scratch), but often don't fill all the holes I'm after, so from there I extend and alter and re-color and re-size quite a lot.

Day 5

With only 2 days to go I'm swinging between feeling like I have it under control, to being behind. I keep getting pulled back by additional clean-up detail like audio, and dual control with mouse/keyboard - I've never had audio or mouse in any game I've made before, so this really is a mold breaker. I got a start on all the attack cards, including working out what they do, how they upgrade, and how they go from being picked in the hand to applied on the board (different cards have different ranges, directions, may or may not be blocked by enemies etc). They aren't quite ready, but I really need to focus on a complete game to feel better about my timeline so that's today's job - enemy types, AI, and dungeon generation. Where previous years map generation has taken multiple days thanks to the sprawling nature of my past games, this will pretty much just be placement in the one room per level. Once that's done I can go back to the extensible stuff, like more or less cards, depending on how much time I have at the end.

Below is the current state of shield, spear and wand, but I also have sword, bow, axe, and dart

Looks great!

Oh incidentally, altering the graphics so often leads to a great bug if I forget to update the sheet - all the textures get mixed up haha it's a different trip every time

Day 6

Finally got all the enemy types in as well as moving and dying when injured, as well as card graphics, and also damage indicators which will be be important for an understanding of the consequences of a particular move. Also three level themes, starting with the forest seen below (having just jumped down a hole in a forest, this seems apt for the first levels).

This is going to sound crazy, but the game doesn't really play yet - the enemies have AI that positions them for attacks, but doesn't execute them yet.. so for 6 days I've been running on the hope that this whole idea actually works, because if it doesn't I've really painted myself into a corner! I may be starting on the last day, but it's technically Saturday morning and I started on Sunday midday - so really have until then and I can pull an all-nighter to keep polishing if I need, effectively giving me an additional day's of dev time. We'll see...

Dungeon Cards - https://numeron.itch.io/dungeon-cards

Deep in the forest lies an ancient temple built upon a cursed ruin. Evil radiates from the depths, but you know that great risk comes with great reward. You're a rogue after all...

Dungeon Cards is a tactical deck-building roguelike. The cards in your deck are weapons you pick up along your descent. Positioning is very important, and taking a wrong step can put your limited health pool at risk, but as a sneaky rogue you're adept at maneuvering into the right place for the right attack.

I am crazy tired, I had to pull that all nighter after all, and even so I only really got a few hours to actually play test the game... the balance is probably completely shot, but hey, it's ready to goooo!