[Miscellanous / Other] TESTFUNGEON - An ARPG Dungeon Crawler with Procedural Generation

[otariidae]

TestFungeon is a Roguelike and Risk of Rain inspired Dungeon Crawler featuring perma-death, ARPG styled gameplay, and a generation system that produces a randomized yet persistent environment. Supporting it are a wide variety of other systems. I'll try to talk about a few of these in a really unengaging manner.

But before I bore you to death, here's some gameplay videos.

STATS

In TestFungeon, heroes start with identical base attributes. Attributes are further assigned with the Stat Allocator. While most players will be tempted to specialize only into their main stat, they may find that there may be good reasons to invest into offstats.

COMBAT

The most important thing to note in combat is that players have no HP/MP regeneration in TestFungeon and potions aren't just "HP and MP batteries" that recover their entire worth instantly. In exchange, abilities are balanced around not having any cooldowns at all. This means the ability to extensively use your abilities is directly tied to the size of your mana pool and management of mana expenditure becomes much more important due to a lack of passive recovery.

INVENTORY

Items in TestFungeon have a merging system that allow for certain identical items to stack and provide more benefit while taking no additional inventory space. This allows some common items to be worth hanging onto in favor of other rare equipment.

_{Merging in action.}

SATCHEL

The Satchel is a specialized inventory system providing not only 6 slots for general item storage, but storage for consumable items within the ability bar. You can directly use these consumable items from within the satchel when they are stored in the ability bar. You can also pick up items directly with the satchel and put items into the satchel from your hero.

_{Example image showcasing a fully loaded satchel. Note the ability bar holding potions and being filled to the brim with assorted consumables.}

ITEMS

No ARPG would be complete without loot. One of the things you can find are wisps. Wisps are essentially power-ups and come in a myriad of flavors. You can bottle them for later use, sending them right to your satchel's ability bar. Some equipment in Fungeon also does not merely confer simple stats. Sometimes you'll even find items that won't give any stats at all. There are items with significant passive and active effects that can be found.

_{Here are a few interesting examples that you can find.}

ENCOUNTERS

Along the way you may encounter things more noteworthy than usual.

The first of these things is elite mobs. Usually elite mobs are only a mob that require more effort to kill but sometimes you may want to stop and plan on how to best deal with the situation lest you suffer the consequences in an ill-prepared manner.

Another is shrines. Shrines are scattered throughout the map and their effect is only revealed when activated. After which, a random effect will immediately occur for better or for worse.

Gold wouldn't be useful without merchants. Merchants are also scattered throughout the map and have their own randomly generated wares for sale. You may find something that comes in handy and offload your excess equipment for some gold at merchants.

There may be more encounter types as the map is updated. Currently there are 4 encounter types.

We are actually in dire need for feedback and playtester support. Any opinion and comment that you have helps us immensely. Please bother us, by all means.
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DOWNLOAD DISCLAIMER : TestFungeon is in development hell early alpha and we are in dire need of feedback. A good number of bugs were fixed but we barely have anybody for testing so we might have missed something. Debug messages will flood your screen. The map currently only has 83 equippable items, 12 heroes, and 4 completed zones.

~~TUTORIAL VIDEO~~

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Interesting project. I have also been working on concepts for something like this in my game.

But I see that you only use (standardized) rooms in your generator.
Maybe you could try to experiment with an actual procedural generated dungeon layout with rooms and corridors of variable size.

A possible generator (along with the algorithm as open source download on the website) for that can be found here:
https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

 

[Avahor]

If War3 were allowed to build terrain scenary in game it would be epic for this kind of game... ahhh dreams...
a very interesting project mate.
Do you manage some Ai for your creeps. I'm actually working on Ai into my map. I got some inspiration from this Tinykeep AI demo.

 

[otariidae]

I'm printing out what the mapmaker said using some touched up chat excerpts. Thanks for your feedback.

Interesting project. I have also been working on concepts for something like this in my game.

But I see that you only use (standardized) rooms in your generator.
Maybe you could try to experiment with an actual procedural generated dungeon layout with rooms and corridors of variable size.

A possible generator (along with the algorithm as open source download on the website) for that can be found here:
https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

MAPMAKER'S RESPONSE
A more complex procedural generation method would be too much effort at this point for gameplay reasons mainly since a lot of the stuff was tuned with the grid system in mind and how much xp you can typically expect from a clearing. Things like players blocking eachother and whatever else problems that would arise from changing to whatever generator they linked would require a very significant overhaul to how things are laid out and done currently. Also, corridors and halls don't work as well when you have all heroes capable of moving past obstacles (by design)

If War3 were allowed to build terrain scenary in game it would be epic for this kind of game... ahhh dreams...
a very interesting project mate.
Do you manage some Ai for your creeps. I'm actually working on Ai into my map. I got some inspiration from this Tinykeep AI demo.

MAPMAKER'S RESPONSE
Things die too quickly for complex AI but we're already adding simple mechanics to the mobs that allow them to feel more distinct. Like how faerie dragons heal or how spider poison ignores armor and shields, causing you to need to treat them differently rather than the enemies approaching players differently. So yeah, mob ai isn't going to be very complex since they die too fast.

In other news, the map was updated.

+25.5kb in filesize
5 new items, all potion related
New encounter: Wishing Wells
New Shrine effect.

 

[Killer_Mushroom]

great stuff my man i'll give it a 9/10 best i can do

 

[otariidae]

OH JEEZ SOMEONE BUMPED THE THREAD BEFORE I EDITED IT TO MAKE IT LOOK BETTER TIME TO POST A NEW VERSION I GUESS

+65.3kb in filesize
+5 items, 2 new on-kill related, 1 on-spellcast related, 2 on-use related.
New hero: Ranger
Fixed a shitload of bugs

 

[Tleno]

This is pretty great, always wanted to see something close to actual roguelikes in WC3.

 

[Almia]

At last, a Dungeon Generator

This reminds of the Infinite Zelda game (where every room is procedurally generated)

 

[otariidae]

I should have updated this 2 weeks ago.

+44.9kb in filesize
+1 item, passive related.
New hero: Paladin (probably needs balance adjustments but it's all functional)

 

[otariidae]

Hello, people. Sorry for the long wait.

If there's even anybody waiting for any of this.

Here's a big change log. It's quite a bit. I'll summarize a few things in the thread.

+139KB in filesize
New Hero: Huntress (Balance and testing pending)
New Hero: Dragon Turtle (Balance and testing pending)
+1 new tileset, Water themed
+2 items, 1 when-hit related, 1 low HP related
Significant numerical balance changes to Paladin and Ogre
Prettied up the starting area

I'd also like to reiterate that we are in dire need of feedback and playtester support. Please bother us if you're at all interested in the map.
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[otariidae]

Changelog link

+34KB in filesize
+8 new items
Minor item balance changes

 

[namnume123]

A litle review:

I try it solo (warrior), and that wasnt possible, so i've add a computer .
This isnt soloable , since the monsters are too OP .
I think u should categorize monsters from common-> legendary.The begining of levels shouldnt have stronger monsters , more starting money , and idk more since i kinda got KO so fast.

//

And if possible , a way to restart if all players are dead,
Maybe a system using save/load to increase hero status , depending on the highest floor cleared / mob kills / boss kills

 

[otariidae]

A litle review:

I try it solo (warrior), and that wasnt possible, so i've add a computer .
This isnt soloable , since the monsters are too OP .

Did you allocate your attribute points? Every player starts with 15 attribute points to put in to their STR, AGI, and INT. This is very important to do because abilities usually scale off of attributes.

Did you buy potions? Usually new players make the decision to buy two items instead of five potions and one item. Five potions and one item usually ends up being a significantly better decision.

Did you use your abilities? Enemies in general will need to be killed not just with basic attacks, but with abilities. They have no cooldown (except movement skills) because they're intended to be used very very frequently.

Did you control group your satchel so you could easily access it to consume potions? Wisps aren't the only way you can recover HP and MP.

Also, there's no AI for computers so they don't help you at all. As a matter of fact it makes the game more difficult because it increases enemy HP per filled player slot in game.

Also, you could try a different hero if you found it too difficult. The Dragon Turtle is a very good hero to try because it comes with an ability that allows you to recover HP and MP for free.

I think u should categorize monsters from common-> legendary.The begining of levels shouldnt have stronger monsters , more starting money , and idk more since i kinda got KO so fast.

Monsters come in two levels of power. There's Elites and regular mobs. Elite mobs are visually larger and you can usually see them before getting into their aggro range so you can choose to go elsewhere to get enough XP and items to become strong enough to take them on.

And if possible , a way to restart if all players are dead,
Maybe a system using save/load to increase hero status , depending on the highest floor cleared / mob kills / boss kills

The map initializes a lot of stuff in general and is extremely unstable. It's a lot of stuff so it needs to reload the map from the very beginning to start "fresh" every time to avoid potential problems and errors.

The map was designed so that all players start with nothing. A save/load system would break that balance.

I'll ask the map developer to see if he might add an "easy mode" for people who might need it to play.

 

[namnume123]

Maybe the problem was the hero , i will try using others , overall the map its something new , and not that bad.

I like the stack implement , and i have no idee what that random potion do , maybe u should put a message after using one (like : " Lucky you , you drank poison")

 

[otariidae]

I like the stack implement , and i have no idee what that random potion do , maybe u should put a message after using one (like : " Lucky you , you drank poison")

We discussed adding a text message for potion effects but the developer chose not to since each effect has a distinct effect that plays every time something happens. Also, players usually consume potions in extremely rapid bursts in large quantity which would result in an unsightly wall of text.