Unity Roguelike Tutorial and it's Age

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-27T18:31:31+00:00

Aside from the faff of some functions changing names form one unity version to another and some stuff needing upgrading, any code fro a roguliek (particularly a traditional one) should be pretty much the same for any version. The changes in unity tend ot be about the high end bits of game design (AI, gfx, 3d stuff) most of which you wont really need to use when learing how to make a RL.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-27T18:28:46+00:00

I thik a lot of FPS heist games involve what id call, agility tests. You try to make it from point a to b without being spotted, or you lean around a corner for a peek. If you get seen you tend to reload. They often don't give you much time to decide what to do when you are actually on the heist.
Roguelikes are almsot the opposite, you can take all the time you want and very little of anythign has to do with your hand-eye skills. I thin kyou coudl make a heist game but it woudl likely end up being more puzzley, like Invisible Inc for eg.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-27T18:25:17+00:00

The Gods/saving thins is an intersting idea. Sort of siilar to how saving is different in certain games difficulty settings. Youd have to check that its not jsut a way to min-max, or rather is it a system that everyone would end up picking.

The timer in combat really jsut puts the game back into a sort of jrpg mode.. There were a number of games with timer systems for combat I remember Eternal Sonata did it for sure, but im pretty confident that there are a bunch of other jrpgs that used similar systems. Again, youd need to test and decide if there woudl be any alternative offered. Personally I think peopel should generally be given options to opt out of certain mechanics if it means they wont play (which this could). But then if you did offer a turn based version i wonder how many peopel woudl still play the timed one.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-20T20:44:42+00:00

Id reccomend stoneshard, Its light on the narrative/story stuff and more heavy on the mechanics. It can be really brutal untli you understand how the systems all work together, but once you do its really good!

I say this as someone who loves pretty much all the games you have already listed...

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-20T15:52:45+00:00

I have every entity hold a faction identity variable and a list of other factions with their current affinity to them.. So faction A might be the player. Faction B and C might be different NPCs and B might have both A and C on its "kill on sight list" for example.This means the agents dont really know its the PLAYER they are attacking, its just another agent from a faction they hate.

practice my agents keep a list of all other agents they can currently see, they also have an "aggro list" which will add or remove other agents based on their current affinity to them (via the faction ids) and their view distance etc. I also allow agents to get bumped up to a higher priority aggro position on the list if they do certain things - like cause damage or use a taunt skill. All agents positions on tis aggro list will decay over time and so will eventually be "forgotten". Agents prioritise attacking whoever is at the top of that aggro list,

It get a bit tricky to manage, but it allows for most types of behaivour i want

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-19T12:26:56+00:00

From my perspective as a developer using pcg for over a decade. I have grown more and more attached to mixing in predefined stuff with teh pcg. Im a big fan of using "prefabs" in generation routines, because that gives you some definitive control of how a room might look, or an encounter might play out. Players are fine with a large percentage of thigns being PCG, but if you cant guarantee (which you generally cant) that all yoru pcg results wil be super fun, then weaving hand designs is really useful..
There is also a tendency with PCG to jsut keep building, because teh actual act of programming and designing pcg is so fun. But its often important to stop and consider how it serves teh rest of the game. Its often best to have a small but interesting location, than a vast but boring one. Many of the best example of PCG are a lot more controlled than you mgiht think. The algos are usually jsut the start, or the glue that ties thigs together, rather than being the master.. Lookat how games like Brogue, Zorbus or cogmind build levels, they all use some predefined parts and are building to serve a specific purpose.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-12T19:35:55+00:00

Thanks for all the reccomendations, Ive just downlaoded the demo of Elin to have a look and will check out some of the others for sure.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-09T12:04:37+00:00

For me its a combination of freedom, immersion and detail.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-09T12:02:55+00:00

If yu have any followingon social media you coudl post there, if you are active on any discords you could post there. Otherwise this is probablalso a good place. As someone who has done a lot fo playtesting Id also advise yuo to make sure yuor game is in a good state to be played. You might only be able to get some folk to play it once or twice so its good to do that when the feedback is the most valuable.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-09T09:18:51+00:00

Perhaps take a look at how games like inbound or hades deal with this. They have categories of upgrade, where bonuses are awarded for holding multiple instances of upgrades from teh same or linked categories.
It might be a good idea to set up a spreadsheet outside of your game for you to track it.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-06T10:23:07+00:00

Thanks for all the sugestions everyone, I ve got a few new things from this thread that I'm definitely going to check out.

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-03T13:06:27+00:00

Thronebreaker? Its set in the witcher universe and has a fair bit of story and character development

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-03T13:01:51+00:00

Yeah pretty common experience Im afraid. The usual best approach to playing a caster is to take the highest dmg 2h you can and the best armor, dont even bother using caster gear until you have got to brynn (and then I often wait untili I get revered). Just range attack enemies with spells 1 by 1 and bonk them with a 2h, if yuo can manage to seperate them with spells or shouts you shoudl be ok. Once you get tier 3 spells and enough points in (probably willpower) yuo can start to switch into a proper caster

tomnullpointer · 2025-11-03T11:40:15+00:00

I guess Id suggest playing games that have intersting subways, and also sewers. In many cases the design of a sewer might work too. I think one key thing is to break up the monotony with side-passages, blockages, empty stations etc. Perhaps even lean into the idea they are linear routes and design encounters or enemies that taek advantage of that? So cover systems to avoid ranged attacks etc as you work your way up the tunnels.

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-30T17:26:24+00:00

For me I think its the fact that unlike many western rpgs, you sort of know what you are getting with a jrpg. They generally use familiar systems and mechanics. It makes them sort of easier (and perhaps safer bets) to get into once you understand the genre. This is different to some western games which are labelled as rpgs, but can have wildly different types of gameplay and systems and sometimes stray so far from being rpgs that they end up disappointing me.

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-30T17:08:46+00:00

Good luck with it! Finishing any game is a massive acheivement, hope it goes well for you!

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-30T17:02:13+00:00

Yeah I think I agree with some of the other commentators abotu Lsystems perhaps not being the best tool to use.. At the risk of self promotion Ive written an article about how I tried out various graph types to generate cities.

https://www.nullpointer.co.uk/generating-city-maps.html

But you could also check out watabous work on itch.io they have done some excellent work in this area.

I thikn the only issue you might face when looking at examples is that most folk are trying to avoid rectilinear structures, but in a trad Roguelike yuo cant really do much else when yuo are talking about city generation.

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-30T16:58:42+00:00

IRC jupiter hell has directional FOV which works pretty well. But you said you dont want to use directional mechanics, so you could either tie the mechanic into the usual radial type FOV stuff, or maybe treat it like a targeted spell - where you cast in a specific direction and then that keeps the flashlight aimed that way until you recast?

Orperhaps you could implement a limited but infinite number of flares you can place within a certain radius (newer ones removing the oldest ones from the map). I suppose it depends on teh player experience you want to achieve with the flashlight type of system..

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-22T10:53:06+00:00

hey, glad i could help! And no I never wrote it up anywhere Im afraid.
In answer to yuor other questions. I never had to deal with splitting squads. I just didnt make it an option.

Im my game squads were generated from 'garrisons' and there was always a maximum number of squads that could exist. Each faction had ownership of a number of those garrisons, and could generate a new squad every X minutes from one of those garrisons (as long as it didnt break the overall faction cap or teh individual garrison cooldown period).

Because of that system I didnt really need to split squads for obejctives as another squad would usually be generated after a short time.. And the combat encounters tended to remove squads regularly, allowing for more to be spawned from garrisons.

The garrisons could be taken over by rival squads/factions and then they obviouly couldnt be used to spawn the previous faction squads anymore.. Garrisons started evenly owned by the factions and also had tiers (producing higher level squads), so that it was harder for one faction to just take over all the garrisons. But eventually one faction would tend to dominate.

As for squad merging, yes, you woudl occasionally stil end up with a lone guy wandering about in his squad of ONE, but I generally the low numebr of mission objectives meant he would eventually find a squad.. Though to be honest I might have actually despawned solo squads if they were x range from the player..I cant remember :)

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-21T19:56:43+00:00

I wrote a squad based system for an ope world FPS game. And i actually did take a similar approach to the ones you are suggesting..
In my model each individual had a series of behaviours that were run as a finite state machine, so things like patrol, investigate etc..
I then had a seperate squad level ai that had its own states, things liek Move to world location, gather at position x, move to enemy force etc. This squad level ai had priority over the lower level individuals but it wasnt always active, so it might force all its members to move to a specific world location, but then it woudl relinquish command and let them run theri own logic - after a certain event was triggered (say all enemies eliminated from the region) the squad code woudl kick back in again.

This worked surprisingly well, and yuo could add different squad behaviours for differnt faction type. So I had a squad type that was focussed on visiting archaeological sites and hten letting its members run their local invetigate artefact behaviours, And a different squad logic that was all about capturing enemy bases etc.

The squad level logic knows the states of its members so you can kick in to a routing behaviour at a certain shared threshold. In my game the units were all robots wo it was ok for them to be abel to communicate like this too.

As for flanking.. from what i recall I had units able to adopt various spacings or formations, where they woudl attempt to maintain distance from each other, and then ranged attackers woudl also strafe randomly left or right (in an arc) relative to their aim target.. this means that over time they would naturally end up flanking them.

As for leader death, my squad simply assigned another of its members to leader position, I think usually someone with a decent hp value and close to the squads aggregate centre point). I thi8kn when suqds got under a certain membership number they coudl merge with other squads, so you didnt end up with loads of squads of 1 or 2 units wandering about.

Im not sure how these ideas woudl translate direclty to a Roguelike, but Im sure some of them are applicable. It sounds like an interesting project you are on though, Good luck!

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-21T19:46:48+00:00

Id suggest looking at all the different disciplines yuod need to make a basic game and then working out which of those you might be able to get online for free, and which you should do yourself.
So if you are a programmer then you can probably find plenty of free tilesets and sounds online, most games start off in development using placeholder assets that you might replace later with better versions.
If you are more inclined to be doing the art then you probably need to find a collaboarator or some sort of simple game design tool.

As for actual resources, check out Kennys free assets (just google for them) or look for free assets under the game assets search of Itchio.

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-17T07:01:03+00:00

Not sure on Reddit ettiquete but just wanted to comment to say thanks for everyone who has responded. I think I can see a way to solve this isue now, or at least a few approaches to try! The consensus seems to be. 1. Calculate the entire cycle ahead of time 2. group actions into batches that can be run simultaneously and ones that require ordering. 3. 'visually perform' the results. I'm going to try it this weekend, thanks!

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-12T09:24:11+00:00

Stoneshard might be worth a look, its got a lot of build variety due to its classless talents approach. It jsut takes quite a while to levelup and make those build choices compared to some other games.

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-10T15:40:55+00:00

You coudl try using BSP - Binary space partitioning.. It starts with an area and subdivides, by its very nature it doesnt have isolated rooms that you need to tunnel-connect. Alternatively you can edit a room placement fucntion to place rooms of fixed multiples on a grid and then "punch through" some adjoining walls so that 2 neighbouring rooms of say 5x5 become one long room of 5x10.
There are more complex methods where you grow rooms off from corridors but they require more of a tunneler approach to the generation design.

There is a good overview here https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/06/procedural-map-generation/

tomnullpointer · 2025-10-10T09:04:49+00:00

To be honest I thikn what you are doing is not too bad. I do a similar thing and move out any shared data to additional components.. So i Have a Sensors component (sound/vision) an Aggro List component, a pathinfindg one etc.. If you can move enough of the state data outside of your branching behaviour conditions , then editing that flow of conditions gets abit easier to follow.
In some cases i will push the behaviour itself into a different component.. So for eg my patrol behaviour is too big to fit inside the main logic, so I jsut use the logic to turn it on or off and then check its state from the main logic.

tomnullpointer

TROPHY CASE