So I’m halfway through the week and making okay progress on my Auto RL.  In the last 3-plus days I’ve replaced the fantasy graphics from last year’s RL, ripped out all the sword-swinging and put in a vehicle system with multiple mounted weapons and variable actions per turn based on your vehicle’s speed.  Forward and back accelerate your vehicle and left and right will turn and advance…  but I wanted to keep the feel of “one result per action” of typical Roguelikes.

So, if the player gets, say, 5 actions per turn (100 MPH), they have to choose each action whether they turn, shoot (which forces them to move straight that turn), change speed or wait (which will also result in moving forward).  However, since each weapon has a fixed-duration cooldown, you have to switch to weapons on different sides of the vehicle if you want to attack multiple times a turn.  Why exactly do you get more attacks when you’re driving at higher speeds…?  Adrenaline!

I had to start doing some cutting if I want to be done Sunday morning.  I don’t think I can do getting out of the car or vehicular enemies and my world generation quality may take a hit, but I know now that I’ve got a lot of work to do on UI and selling the movement of the car.  My major improvement will be to hook up the “Grip” system, which will force players to balance speed with control and allow for skids.  I’m excited so far!

This year is my second 7DRL, and this time I wanted to push some systems I’ve been tossing around in my head for years.  The plan is to get the player driving an armored car through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, battling bandits and salvaging gear while hunting down bounty contracts.  I chose to strip down last year’s entry Huge and use it as a starting point, focusing on significant core mechanical improvements that will hopefully set it apart from that entry.

Day 1 was a busy one, ripping out the fantasy graphics and putting in sci-fi themed ones from Oryx and other sources.  I added facing and vehicle functionality to my entity system, with a variable turn-length based on speed.  I also roughed in an ugly HUD with the various systems I wanted to track. Unity makes a lot of the early stuff fairly simple, but now I actually have to make this stuff work and hopefully fun!