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Give me the 30 second version

2 min read hardpointeroguelikedevroguelikesUncategorized

“So, what’s it about?”

I’m probably mis-quoting Darren Grey here, but it’s close enough. I was in London for a visit last year and while I was there I decided to look Darren up. I’ve been a big fan of his for quite a while. We’ve run in the same circles online, from the old rec.games.roguelikes.development (RGRD) to rogue temple and all of the incarnations of the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge to the current rogue-reddit “scene” at (r/roguelikedev and r/roguelikes). He also writes some great games – he’s done a lot for the community.

So of course I was excited to meet him in person. And of course we start chatting about development, what are you currently working on, etc. Turns out being a new dad is not so condusive to programming, but I had been continuing to develop my failed 2017 7DRL Hardpointe. That’s when I get the question: “So, what’s it about?”

Oops. I didn’t have a smooth or particularly convincing answer. Something about tactical combat, maybe?

A few months later, here was my first definition:

Hardpointe is a “medium” sized roguelike with a focus on tactical combat and movement. Managing a limited set of powers, upgrades, and items will be critical to your success.

Here’s my 2nd try:

Hardpointe (name subject to change) is a browser-based roguelike with a focus on tactical movement and finite resource management. Players have 3 power slots that can be upgraded or swapped out as luck and necessity see fit. Combat is deterministic and the numbers are small – almost all attacks do 1 damage and almost nothing in the game goes over 3 hp. (With 1 or 2 exceptions). There are no real ‘vanilla’ enemies. Fighting 1-on-1 is usually easy, but difficulty can scale quickly with multiple foes.

Maybe somewhere in between?

Hardpointe is a browser-based “medium-sized” roguelike with a focus on tactical combat and finite resource management. A lone soldier must infiltrate and destroy an asteroid fortress filled with robotic hordes bent on Earth’s destruction. You will harness unique powers, abilities, and an assortment of weapons that you find along the way. Each enemy has unique abilities and behaviors that will require different strategies. Combat is deterministic and health is extremely limited; positioning and thoughtful movement will be your keys to victory.

How’s that? (They keep getting longer… oops.)

Hardpointe still alive

Hardpointe still alive

2 min read hardpointeroguelikedevroguelikesUncategorized

Despite my lack of posts and entire blog going offline for a bit, I continue to develop Hardpointe in my “free time”. Progress did stall for the last half of 2018, but seeing all of the posts around 7DRLs earlier in Feb really pushed me to get back into making progress.

A lot of work has been behind the scenes since the last version. I did a lot of work to add a ‘radial’ menu. In an effort to reduce on-screen distraction and the number of button presses, when there is an ambiguous action, the radial menu pops up, and the available options always show up in the same spot. (e.g. ‘Heave’ is always the up key) It makes for much smoother gameplay.

Enemy AI was also changed to make them less omniscient and more cautious about doors. There was an annoying habit for  enemies to “wait” behind doors and punch you right as you walked in. This wasn’t really by design. Now enemies take a turn to go from non-alert to alert statuses. So if you walk into a room and they DO happen to be behind the door, they will act surprised for a beat. That gives you an opportunity to attack, back away, or do something else.

I didn’t do any power switching in this video but that menu has been streamlined as well. You can now just hit space + <slot to replace> and not have to page through multiple screens or even read anything if you don’t need to.

Here’s me dying on the 1st level because I messed up a dash somewhere and got hit. In a 3-hp game you really need to pay attention to every single hit. Apparently I’m a bit rusty.

Hardpointe version 0.3 released

Hardpointe version 0.3 released

2 min read hardpointeroguelikedevUncategorized

Latest version is now playable in the same spot.

New for version 0.3:

  • start menu, including daily & weekly seed generation
  • revamped the death & victory menus
  • fixed a few menu bugs (especially on death & victory)
  • added occasional monster spawning 
  • added end-game monster setup for the fight back to the surface
  • changed SHIELD power to also have a timed component
  • improved PHASEWALK power so that enemy attacks now go ‘through’ you – and hit other enemies
  • improved CLOAK power to trigger ‘surprise’ attacks (+1 damage) 
  • better handling of ending timed powers (shields, cloak, phasewalk), along with visual animation when they end
  • added a dedicated key (e) for wait only (useful in a few situations when using Space/Action can trigger the ambiguous input menu when you don’t want it to)
  • Shielded enemies now more intelligently turn on their shields
  • fleeing enemies will not run away forever – eventually they will recover and resume hunting
  • better names and descriptions for blasters
  • Added a new kinetic blaster (knockback effect)
  • Made the Archon a bit tougher (can no longer be stunned or hacked)
  • enemies knocked back into walls are briefly stunned (so you can set up wall attacks)
  • added a score stat, although it doesn’t track anything yet
  • fixed targeting bug that made it too easy to throw grenades and wreckage onto yourself

Next version progress & Phasewalk

Next version progress & Phasewalk

1 min read hardpointeroguelikedevUncategorized

Spent some development time beefing up the Cloak and Phasewalk powers. Cloak is fairly straightforward, but I wanted the enemies to react a little better. Instead of immediately giving up, they will move towards your last location. This means you can easily predict their movements and set up traps for them.

Attacking will remove your cloak, but also add +1 damage, which enables you to take out the tougher 2hp enemies relatively quickly — assuming you have a Cloak charge to spare.

Phasewalk has been in since day 1 – I initially added it as a debugging feature so I could walk through walls, and thought it was a pretty fun mechanic. Now it gets a bit more useful. When phased, your attacks won’t do any damage, but enemies can still attack you. Their attacks will pass ‘through’ you and hit anyone behind you.

This works for ranged attacks:

And melee:

I’ll roll out this version pretty soon. Meanwhile the game is still playable here.

Hardpointe v0.2 Long Play

1 min read hardpointeroguelikedevUncategorized

I did a full play-through of the game so far. Took me a lot longer than expected! I guess that’s a good sign. I also managed to not die. Definitely on the easier side at the moment – there are grenades and powers a-plenty. Here it is on youtube. I’ll try to add commentary next time.

Later versions will get a lot more brutal. More terrain, more enemies, fewer power-ups, and at least two more enemy types. I want to have some support-style enemies, with two in the works: one will keep it’s distance and put shields on near-by enemies, the second will be super-fast with no attacks, but be able to alert other enemies to your location.

I am also toying with some kind of factory-type system or enemy that will spew out countless 1-hp/1-damage enemies. Simple to handle in the right scenarios, but if left unaccounted for, it could make things very difficult.