Creating a RPG system

Teemu is finally moving from a simple HP only stat to an actual RPG system. It's going to be really simple and fitting the theme of Teemu which is quite wacky game in a non-serious way. The system is not directly based on any other systems that I know, but it's similar to many systems where 'stuff' is derived from couple of basic stats.

To help visualize the results of basic stats I have programmed debug functions to show what happens to things like hit points when you change the basic stat values. Stats for creatures start from the monster family data, then possibly adding special monster data. The by-product of stats is that you can introduce player characater classes at the same cost, so it's going to be fun I think.

Creating a RPG system is not easy in my opinion. Even a simple system like this requires a lot of balancing which mainly comes from playing the game and actually watching what happens, rather than trying to figure out a theoretic model for the system. I guess it could be possible, but it may be too difficult to program for what it is. The rest is left for random factor which can hold a lot of weight for the game designer.

Other than that I have started to change the static level size data to dynamic sizes with each level of theme having different size. Levels of a theme were always the same size in previous version which is not that bad, considering that in most old roguelikes levels were fixed to one size. I think many theme generation routines can already handle scaling quite nicely, but it's still early to know it.

It could be also nice to change the automap in a way that you wouldn't know the size of level by checking out the automap size itself. It could be then possible to add a number of secret places on edges of the level without the player never knowing for sure they exist.

I have a good feeling about development of Teemu and it really doesn't require that much work to get to the next release version. I know what I have to do which is also making it easier. The hardest part is sit down and through it.