Biggest Project Yet - ADarkRoom
About 2 weeks ago in my computing class, we were set this task to replicate a online text-based game called a Dark Room. In the space of 2 weeks I have completed from scratch my version/take on the original game.
You can download my game from here.
This has been the hardest and most challenging projects that I have worked on to-date. There were multiply features that I really wanted to replicate from the actual game, that I wasn't sure if it could even be possible. So naturally I turned to Google, where I taught myself a variety of different approaches to specific tasks, some of the tasks that I wanted to add, were more trial and error, simply because google didn't have the exact answers I was looking for. I also used some of my previous projects to help in certain aspect of my re-creation of the game.
Summary of the game:
The game begins with the player in a room and the option to . As the game progresses, the user can gains the abilities to collect resources, start a village and explore the rocky paths. Throughout the game, the type of resources will change and the amounts will differ based on how you play the game.
Struggles:
There were many struggles that I faced simply because I once I had an idea on a feature that I wanted to add, I was determined to get it to work however long it would take to figure it out.
1. A major issue was getting the my progress bars to emulate that of the games. When the button is pressed the level of progress is going down and then restarts at full one it has completed one full loop.
I eventually managed to do this, and this is a feature that features at different points within the game
Original Game My Game
2. In the actual game, when 'gather wood' is pressed, it will randomly increase the value of wood, unfortunately, I wasn't able to replicate that. Instead, I have set it so the values of wood increases by 2 every 10% of the bar.
Original Game My Game
3. The last major struggle I had was in relation to the jobs that the villagers could do. Once the player has built a at least one hut, and a lodge, tannery or smokehouse, they will unlock different jobs. The amount of huts, set the amount of villagers that are in the village that are accessible. So my struggle here was making sure that when selecting how many people are assigned to each job, the total will never exceeded the amount of villagers i.e if you have 4 villagers, you can have a max of 4 hunters or 2 hunters and 2 trappers etc. Also, when the player hovers over the title of each job, it tells the player how much of each resource is gained per 1 person
Original Game My Game Original Game My Game Original Game My Game
Final Screens:
So through different paths, the user will eventually unlock everything that the game has to offer. The title of the 2nd tab changes based on the amount of huts, i.e. A Silent Forest, A Lonely Hut, A Small Village etc
The Firelit Room The Firelit Room The Village Scene
Exploring:
For the exploring worlds part of the game, I chose to incorporate my rock-paper-scissors game into it as I found that it would be very daunting and unrealistic for me to attempt the actual game's version which involves moving around (using the arrow keys), and exploring different Places.
The first screen is some resources needed for the 'travel', in the actual game, you can chose the amount of each resource before starting/embarking on the 'journey'. However, it was challenging to emulate that, and so I instead chose to set a 'base cost' for each round, this is fixed and preset.
As you can see in the picture, the actual game's 'journey' is a map, but I chose to have the user play r-p-s against the computer. If the user loses/draws, they don't win anything. However, if they win, they can pick 1 of 3 reward options
Original Game My Game Original Game My Game My Game
I did add some extras to my game:
So once the user has built a trap (+Check Traps), the user is can enter cheats (if they know them). These cheats will increase the value/amount of different resources.
The cheat used in the example is the biggest cheat that enables every option possible in the game
Before the Cheat After the cheat
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