Announcement
Янв 17
Just a little announcement for a russian part of this site`s community.
I’m starting a series of articles about working with DirectX and C# here. Only 2 articles are done right now and i’m going to make another 2 tomorrow.
First, i will show the basics (creating a DirectX device, drawing polygons etc) and then will convert current build of Ignite so that it will use DirectX to accelerate it graphics. Somewhere in between i will highlight creating of simple LUA game under wonderful 2d engine – LOVE.
This articles will be writen in Russian.
Tetris LUA with a little LÖVE
Янв 15
Every true programmer will write own tetris one day (with a card games and pretty women). It`s a screenshot from my variant writen in LUA and powered with LÖVE engine.
You can get source file (main.lua) here. To run it you will need a LÖVE engine. Good choice for 2D applications, i must say!
added: if someone will actualy try to run it, remove line #29 (image = love.graphics.newImage(“images/1.png”)) or you will get error.
Ignite – perfomance on True Color
Янв 14
Sadly, but i found that Ignite have really bad perfomance at True Color monitor settings 
and as developer i can`t really do something about it (beside of rewriting all graphical code for DirectX or OpenGL rendered). If you want to increase your perfomance – change your color setting to High Color (16 bpp).
This sad fact and a lack of positive replies likely will force me to rewrite engine, so it will support graphical acceleration, but it can lead to the fact that it will be a totally different game. I must admit that the decision to use a GDI+ was erroneous.
New roguelike development articles
Янв 10
- Entity Component System - An entity component system is a way to implement your game objects so that you can build their functionality through composition instead of object-oriented inheritance. The prevailing wisdom in current game development seems to be that complex games should have one of those instead of an inheritance-based object system that is likely to lead to unmaintainable blobs of a class. A roguelike is probably a complex enough game that you should use an entity component system in one.
- Rule and Event Systems - Rule systems and event systems describe how a world model evolves in time. They intend to make it easier to describe complex interactions between entities in the world model, compared to writing the behavior out in engine code. Roughly speaking, rule and event systems are to time what entity component systems are to space.
- Use of color - The most common display used in roguelike are monochrome icons with parameterizable foreground and background colors. This makes the choice of color important in making the visual look of the game usable and attractive. Roguelikes intended to be played on a console use a 16-color palette with four bits for setting the red, green, blue and “bright color” channels (the IBM CGA palette). Modern games generally use a graphical display, such as the Doryen library that allows the use of full 24-bit color for the tiles. Full-color graphics present more design options than the 16 color terminal games.
Ignite 0.040b patch
Янв 9
Recent changes:
- Another bugs with inventory is removed
- Stealth added to the game
- player character have stealth modifiers:
- Human – +0
- Orc – -2
- Tiefling – +3
- all creatures have own perception modifier
- Sneak skill will modify your stealth mod
- Sneak skill will grow with every successful hide atempt
- Player will have sneak bonus damage roll against enemies that do not see him
- Sneak damage is nerfed at every Sneak skill level
- Flare ability is buffed to 135% Fire damage (up from 100%)
- Added notification about a new versions availability in main menu (access to internet is needed)
Ignite 0.040a patch
Янв 7
- error with empty inventory fixed
- Master`s Touch spell buffed to give 8 + 3 * arcane_skill % to hit (from + 2 + 0.66 * arcane_skill).
Ignite 0.040
Янв 7
Ignite 0.040 “Big picture”
07.01.2011
New version is here!
Ignite – Favorite items panel
Янв 5
Last addition to 0.040 build is favorite items panel
Player can select any item in inventory as his/her favorite by pressing 0-9 key to have quick access to it.
And another screenshot with consumable items:
Ignite – a story of 0.040 tiefling caster
Янв 5
This is new characater sheet from upcoming 0.040 build of Ignite. In this build you will have 3 character races to select: human, orc or tiefling. I chose last one for this preview.
Tiefling is a demon race .. but description you can read ingame or refer to d&d. In Ignite tiefling rely on their arcane skills and high dexterity. However, their strenght are low so they get penalty on melee damage. They start with simple dagger and arcane missile spell, which makes them a pretty strong ranged class. However, their damage potential is limited with mana pool and various magic miscast effects thay may occur during spellcasting. When tiefling is low on mana, he must try to finish his foes with his dagger.
As you see there is ‘sneak damage’ modificator. You will get this number as damage roll if you managed to hit monster that is unaware of your presence or confused/feared by your actions. It also works for archery and spell effects.
Tiefling may benefit from finding various magical items and spellbook. During adventures i managed to find very good Ritual Dagger with ‘ + 16% critical chance’ enchantment on it. Right now there is no separation between melee, ranged and caster critical chance (and i do not plan to add it), so this dagger gave a good boost to my arcane missile damage. Also, i managed to find arcane magic spell book, but RNG was not smile on me this time and there was no new useful spells for my Destructor Tiefling. Caster character might find useful to join Cynareth religion as she offer good variety of defensive spells, which will be a good support for fragile Tiefling. But, i didn`t managed to find altar Of Cynareth during my adventures.
That was a short story of my tiefling character, that was only at 2nd dungeon level. See ya, good night.
Ignite – fixing bugs
Янв 4
Recent changes:
- characters can invoke non-physical damage now
- characters can use non-item based projectiles to shoot
- ADDED: new characters with ability to do frost/fire/nature damage in melee and range
- ADDED: healing orbs now have chance to replenish your mana (chance are based on mana regeneration value, to a tiefling at the start of the game it is 50% and 25% for orc)
- BUG fixed: unhandled exception when items is destroyed by AOE flame
- BUG fixed: when damaged by AOE flame items at floor considered as items in player inventory
- BUG fixed: knowledge to magic ambustion transition
- BUG fixed: there was no posible to create magical cloak
- BUG fixed: player character now benefit from health regen parameter from own stats and items. Health regen was hardcoded to value of 2.
- BUG fixed: characters now doing own damage in ranged combat instead of projectile damage. This was a bug because character level is calculated with its own damage value.
- starting items and skill progression are normalized
- character information screen redone