Blog d’un « connard amer »™

The three past days have not been very productive. In fact, I spent a lot of time thinking about an idea I had, rather than coding (an idea that gave rise to another post). But this does not mean that I have not advanced.

I could work on the step 7 which is about create a basic combat system. We can fight against monsters. Once they have no more hit points, they disappear. But the player can not die yet. His life points go in the negative. It's just an ease of development to test the game more easily.

For the step 8, I created data files for monsters. In addition to outsource hardcoded data, it allowed me to easily add a new type of monster. I will just have to create more (because two is not really enough). I also took the opportunity to create a class that manages the dice. So the damage a monster can do is not anymore a constant value but a dice like 1d4+1. It's the same for its hit points. All this helps strengthen the randomness of the game, and brings some consistency that strengthens the whole.

Currently I am trying to take care of the step 9. I started by placing (false) items on the map and allow the player to pick them up. I then managed to display the inventory. I'm rather pleased with myself on this one, because with very few lines, I have a very acceptable result. ncurses really deserves that I'm interested more in it. For example, I could create another window in addition to the main, display it above the base window, then close the new window and return to the one below without having to completely redraw myself, as does X. And it's very nice.

As can be seen in the screenshots below, in addition to the display of the inventory, I also managed that the player can throw items. I took care to use a color code for both displays, which although identical, have very different uses.

The next step is to create real items and to use them, equip them, etc.