Pretty GameCast is a podcast about videogames. Our main segment is taking a game each week and talking critically about its successes and failures. One way to interact with Pretty GameCast is to treat it like the videogame equivalent of a book-club. To that effect, the game for our first episode is

Rogue Survivor, by Roguedjack

I’ll update with the link to the audio and podcast subscription link when it’s ready to go!

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There are two more major outstanding things to be done before the next release: Adding the ai selection buttons (should be easy, a couple of hours at most) and adding faction generation code, so new factions come into play if old ones get eliminated (a little trickier, this means taking out some assumptions that live in the code).

Anyway, I think I’m basically on schedule for the 9-15 alpha.

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The internal representation for PyGame’s rects are integers. This is why characters in TinyTyranny either moved strongly in one direction or not at all! I think this is also why Run! Jump! Forever! (windows version) had some time dependencies on jump height. Python was casting my floating point positions to ints whenever I put them into a Rect. So frustrating!

After the jump, the alternative FloatRect I wrote. I didn’t bother to include all the functionality of PyGame rects, but  just picked out the functions I actually use.

class FloatRect():
    def __init__(self, left, top, width, height):
        self.left = float(left)
        self.top = float(top)
        self.width = float(width)
        self.height = float(height)
 
    def centerX(self):
        return self.left + ( self.width / 2.0 )
 
    def centerY(self):
        return self.top + ( self.height / 2.0 )
 
    def y(self):
        return self.top
 
    def x(self):
        return self.left
 
    def __getitem__(self, key):
        if key == 0:
            return self.left
        elif key == 1:
            return self.top
        elif key == 2:
            return self.width
        elif key == 3:
            return self.height
        else:
            return None
 
    def setLeft(self, left):
        self.left = left
 
    def setRight(self, right):
        self.left = right - self.width
 
    def setTop(self, top):
        self.top = top
 
    def setBottom(self, bottom):
        self.top = bottom - self.height
 
    def getLeft(self):
        return self.left
 
    def getRight(self):
        return self.left + self.width
 
    def getTop(self):
        return self.top
 
    def getBottom(self):
        return self.top + self.height
 
    def collideRect(self, rect2):
        myLeft = self[0]
        myRight = self[0] + self[2]
        myTop = self[1]
        myBottom = self[1] + self[3]
 
        itsLeft = rect2[0]
        itsRight = rect2[0] + rect2[2]
        itsTop = rect2[1]
        itsBottom = rect2[1] + rect2[3]
 
        inX = False
        inY = False
 
        inX = (( myLeft >= itsLeft ) and ( myLeft <= itsRight )) or (( myRight >= itsLeft ) and ( myRight <= itsRight ))
        inY = (( myTop >= itsTop ) and ( myTop <= itsBottom )) or (( myBottom >= itsTop ) and ( myBottom <= itsBottom ))
        return inX and inY          
 
    def collidePoint(self, point):
        return ( point[0] >= self.left() and point[0] <= self.right() ) and ( point[1] >= self.top() and point[1] <= self.bottom() )

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The solution to this is to add factions like the bandits shown above. These guys represent groups that think you’re the weak link. Their hostility counter grows each turn whether you attack them or not, causing them to attack every so often.

I also fixed up the resource code, so now it’s possible to gather wood, stone, gold, gems, food, and corpses. I also added wooden walls and fixed the costs of the structures that I have so far.

In short you can build your kingdom, but you still have no chance of survival.

So that’s the next step. I think the main thing is adding the weapons and inventories. Once ranged weapons are added to the game it will be a lot easier to defend yourself. I want to do weapons in a really solid, data-driven way, so it can handle melee weapons, ranged weapons, and spells. Also it needs to be moddable so people can add in new stuff.

One more thing I did this week was change the way the water tile looks, which makes me incredibly happy for reasons unknown.

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Another goal for Tiny Tyranny is to let players mod all aspects of it. This includes letting modders add new characters, monsters, places, and factions. Therefore, the name generators need to be moddable too.

I just finished coding the way data driven name generators work in Tiny Tyranny.

After the jump, my code and sample name generator file for human male fighter characters, like the lovely human captain (shown above) .

word
prefix
Iss
Grieg
Ky
Sam
Ash
Ler
Mat
Matt
Hen
Pet
Jod
Jad
Jar
Jim
Yel
syllable
ild
erv
ton
ach
thryn
thrin
em
hin
suffix
er
rich
rick
tian
son
sin
stan
stin
styn
ino
ero
mir
imir
stan
word
prefix
Chris
Dav
Brown
Far
All
Black
Mull
Simp
Mort
Fult
Mc
Barn
Mill
syllable
id
ing
laugh
suffix
tian
son
ing
en
well
son
ston
stan
brun
on
ler

Basically what we have here is a list that gets translated into two word generators (the text ‘word’ indicates the start of a new word generator). Word generators are made up of up to three parts – prefixes, syllables, and suffixes. These are where the magic happens – for the most part anyway. Word lengths are generated according to a pretty boring distribution that weights short words more heavily. Here’s my class in Python.

class WordGenerator:
    def __init__(self):
        self.prefixes = []
        self.syllables = []
        self.suffixes = []
 
    def getWord(self):
        prefix = random.choice(self.prefixes)
        word = prefix
        if len(self.syllables) > 1:
            numSyllables = random.choice([0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3])
            for i in range(0,numSyllables):
                word = word + random.choice(self.syllables)
        if len(self.suffixes) > 1:
            word = word + random.choice(self.suffixes)
        return word

Next up is the name generator. The name generator contains all the word generators and simply uses them to generate the different words that make up a name. It’s also responsible for parsing the files containing all the parts of names the name generator can use. Here’s the name generator source.

class NameGenerator:
    def __init__(self, nameGeneratorFile, name):
        self.name = name
        self.wordGenerators = []
        self.adding = 0
        firstWord = True
        newWordGenerator = WordGenerator()
        for line in nameGeneratorFile:
            line = line.strip('\n')
            if line == 'word':
                if firstWord == True:
                    firstWord = False
                else:
                    self.wordGenerators.append(newWordGenerator)
                newWordGenerator = WordGenerator()
            elif line == 'prefix':
                adding = 0
            elif line == 'syllable':
                adding = 1
            elif line == 'suffix':
                adding = 2
            else:
                if adding == 0:
                    newWordGenerator.prefixes.append(line)
                elif adding == 1:
                    newWordGenerator.syllables.append(line)
                elif adding == 2:
                    newWordGenerator.suffixes.append(line)
        self.wordGenerators.append(newWordGenerator)
 
    def getNumWords(self):
        return len(self.wordGenerators)
 
    def getWord(self, wordNumber): #wordNumber is 0 based!
        return self.wordGenerators[wordNumber].getWord()
 
    def getName(self):
        name = ''
        for i in range(0, len(self.wordGenerators)):
            if i == 0:
                name = self.getWord(i)
            else:
                name = name + self.getWord(i)
            if i <= len(self.wordGenerators) - 1:
                name = name + ' '
        return name

Finally – one more file/class, the nameGeneratorManager encapsulates the loading and storing of the name generators in a dictionary:

from nameGenerator import *
nameGenerators = {}
 
class NameGeneratorManager:
    def __init__(self):
        pass
 
    def load(self):
        path = os.path.join("../data/default/nameGenerators/")
        fileNameList = map(lambda x:x[len(path):-4],
                           glob.glob(os.path.join(path,"*.txt")))
 
        for name in fileNameList:
            fullName = os.path.abspath(path)
            fullName = os.path.join(fullName, name+'.txt')
 
            nameGeneratorFile = open(fullName)
            newNameGenerator = NameGenerator(nameGeneratorFile, name)
            nameGeneratorFile.close()
            nameGenerators[newNameGenerator.name] = newNameGenerator

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This game is not enjoyable at this stage. If you decide to try it out, please let me know if it crashes or you get any bugs along those lines. To run it, all you have to do is extract the zip and then run tinyTyranny.exe located in the src folder.

Soon I’ll decide what the goals are for the next version, which I’ll release on September 19th.

Leave a comment if you try it out!

Download Tiny Tyranny Alpha 1

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So far I’ve completed the basic game loop. Starting a game, scouting, attack factions, defending yourself, but nothing else though. Also, the map editor is done. I plan on releasing this basic 0.1 version tomorrow. I’ve created a list of goals that I want to address before version 1.0. I plan on releasing a new version every month until all of the goals are complete.

Check in tomorrow for version 0.1 of Tiny Tyranny.

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Also, if you don’t have an iPhone, no worries:

Play Run! Jump! Forever! on your Windows PC. Just extract the zip and double click on runJumpForever.exe! Playing is easy. Start a game with enter, arrow keys move, x runs, and z jumps!

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You can get it on App Store as we speak.

If you buy it, write a review or add something to a blog or something.

And thanks to Mark for making this all possible!

I am so happy I have become giant sized:

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