DEV Community: Matthew Parke

Battle Engine Devlog #3 - Turn Based Combat

Matthew Parke — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 14:36:35 +0000

Now that we're adventuring, the next core part of Battle Engine is searching a zone for a monster to fight. You and your friends can then take turns using skills to defeat the monster that spawns.

When thinking about how combat would play out, how people would interact with a monster when it spawns, a turn-based flow made the most sense. Here are some of the questions that went into the decision for turn-based:

how will characters be allowed to attack the monster?
how do we prevent spamming commands in a text channel?
how does everyone get a turn to act in the group?
how do we pace the monster's response to being attacked?
does the monster attack everyone or one person at a time?
does the monster wait until everyone is done attacking or react to the player characters?

Each character gets a turn to use a skill while in combat, and in-between character turns, the monster gets a turn to react.

To start a combat with your party:

.beng fight

A monster will spawn and you're now in combat!

Next up, we can use a skill, by naming the slug we want to use. For starters, the primary attack skill all novice characters have is a good ole' punch.

.beng use punch

Ouch! Looks like the wild boar fought back with a head butt skill. Every attack calculates the damage done based on a min/max damage range for the chosen skill, and responds with the remaining HP.

A few more punches, and we can defeat the wild boar!

At the end of combat, win or lose, a summary will show. If the result was a win, the summary includes some assigned XP for all members of the party. If you lose however, your character will become incapacitated and you will need to return home before fighting again. As of writing it's unlikely that you will lose a combat, since skill additions and skill effect interactions are still in early stages.

That's all for now, come say hi to us on discord! Join Battle Engine Discord.

Want to help out or report a bug? check out active issues and contribute to Battle Engine on GitLab. All skillsets and levels of experience welcome, whether it be content writing, art, development, or just ideas!

Battle Engine Devlog #2 - Adventure Time

Matthew Parke — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 14:18:08 +0000

Welcome back to the Battle Engine devlog! I'd like to show off the next major technical hurdle and core mechanic of beng, starting an adventure.

We had to decide how an adventure is started, where it's started, and how it's maintained.

in a group DM started by beng?
in a text channel created by beng?
in a pre-defined channel created by server admins?

We landed on pre-defined channels intended for adventure use for now, as it was the easiest to setup and clearly define. You can enter one of these pre-defined rooms on the server:

Once in a room, simply ask beng to start an adventure. If there isn't already an active adventure in this channel, a new session will be created.

.beng adventure

Once you're adventuring, you can decide where you want to travel. We figured we would define different locations(zones) for variety. As of writing, one starter zone has been defined, the Crescent Woods!

.beng travel woods

This is a good time to stop and mention slug(s), as "woods" is the slug for Crescent Woods. All designed information in Battle Engine will necessarily have a consistent identifier to be used via text to interact with that thing. Yes, slugs can be changed, but it is unlikely as we will want to maintain consistency, backwards compatibility.

The last, and possibly most exciting part of starting an adventure is inviting your friends. We wanted the best of two worlds:

interacting with an adventure as a group of friends
allowing other people to watch, and comment on the adventure without necessarily being engaged

To accomplish both of these goals, the party leader ( the person who starts the adventure ), can invite other users in the discord by name.

.beng invite @Blaschko#2026

Now we're ready to party! Up next time is the basics of turn based combat.

Come say hi to us on discord! Join Battle Engine Discord.

Battle Engine Devlog #1 - Introduction

Matthew Parke — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 14:41:08 +0000

In this first devlog post, I'd like to introduce Battle Engine, beng for short, an adventure game discord bot.

beng is based on a game from a long time ago, revived to bring back a text-based, rogue-like dungeon crawler you can play with your friends.

Setting up the game, everyone needs a user and a character,
which you can create with the following command:

.beng create

You'll then receive a DM from beng asking what you'd like to name your character.

Providing your desired character name will create a user and character.

To check user status,

.beng user-info

To check character status,

.beng info

Next it's also possible to look at the complete list available commands:

.beng help

Next devlog, I'll walkthrough starting an adventure and inviting your friends.

Battle Engine is brought to you by creators Jeff Secord (blaschko) and Matt Parke (munkymachine).

Come say hi to us on discord! Join Battle Engine Discord.