Sherwood: a Stealth Roguelite (MAGS game)

[Radiant]

At orders of Prince John the usurper, the Sheriff of Nottingham has staged a surprise raid on the Merry Men's hideout, scattered them, and taken Robin Hood captive.
Only Much, the miller's son, was not at the hideout and remains free. Although a cook rather than a warrior, it's up to him to gather the Merry Men, sneak into the Castle, and rescue Robin.
After all, the Prince's men are many...
...but they're not Much!


If you enjoy this game, please consider voting in the MAGS contest!

A stealth roguelite for the April MAGS contest.

• Enemies can see, hear, and/or smell you!
• Stun soldiers with rocks and steal their stuff!
• Procedurally generated areas!
• Bribe common enemies with gold and/or raw meat!
• Invisibility potions!
• Probably contains bugs!
• Rescue the gang of Merry Men!
• Art and music courtesy of OpenGameArt dot org!
• Sound effects pending!

https://radiant.itch.io/sherwood

Control your character with the cursor arrows; mouse doesn't control anything in this game.
Press Z to switch between stealth and sprint mode.
Press X to use items once you've got them. For instance, you can throw rocks at enemies to stun them, or at trees to make noise (attracting enemies).
Press C to switch between different items once you've got more than one.
Other than that, it's a roguelite; so normal gameplay is to die a bunch of times while you figure out how it works.

[CaptainD]

All the best with development! I love making AGS do non-AG stuff. 7 days is a really tight deadline though!

[Danvzare]

I remember hearing about the 7DRL ages ago. I didn't realize it was a yearly event. I just thought it was a challenge people did of their own accord.

Good luck! 

[Radiant]

All the best with development! I love making AGS do non-AG stuff. 7 days is a really tight deadline though!

Thanks! Well yeah, but the AGS forums does one-hour game designs sometimes...

Good luck! 

Thanks as well! Yeah, it's like NaNoWriMo; you can "win" simply by completing the challenge.

[Radiant]

Day three. Defined several room types and constructed an overworld connecting a series of rooms with branched paths.

[Radiant]

Well, ok. I had less free time in the week that I hoped, so this is an incomplete entry (the competition suggests to submit unfinished projects anyway). Best of luck to everybody who's still coding in the weekend!

https://radiant.itch.io/sherwood

[Radiant]

And for this month's MAGS contest (with the fitting theme of Finish Your Game), here's the much-improved version of Sherwood.



A stealth roguelite where you sneak through the forest of Sherwood to rescue Robin from the Sheriff of Nottingham.

• Enemies can see, hear, and/or smell you!
• Stun soldiers with rocks and steal their stuff!
• Procedurally generated areas!
• Bribe common enemies with gold and/or raw meat!
• Invisibility potions!
• Probably contains bugs!
• Rescue the gang of Merry Men!
• Art and music courtesy of OpenGameArt dot org!
• Sound effects pending!

https://radiant.itch.io/sherwood

Well, it's a roguelite so normal gameplay is to die a bunch of times while you figure out how it works. Nevertheless, press Z to switch between stealth and sprint mode. Press X to use items once you've got them (there's a bunch on the first level); and press C to switch between different items once you've got more than one. And cursor arrows, of course. Mouse doesn't control anything in this game.

[heltenjon]

Playing this. I gave the old version a run, too, for comparison. Even though the game bugged out on me on both versions, I'm really impressed how smooth you've got it all working. I'm definitely not good at these games, so I'm struggling to make progress. 

I suppose there are no win conditions in the old version, while the mags game can be won if I manage to find Robin (and perhaps his merry men)?

[Radiant]

Please specify how and when the new version bugged out on you, so that I can fix it. Thanks!

Yes, old version is unwinnable, and in the new version the end goal is to rescue Robin (or if you prefer, rescue all of the Merry Men). I wanted to put in a boss fight (with Prince John, of course) but ran out of time.

[heltenjon]

Please specify how and when the new version bugged out on you, so that I can fix it. Thanks!

The game froze, and I had to alt-tab to get out of it. It did this a couple of times in mid-play, with no pattern I could see so far. It could be a memory problem at my end, perhaps? I was running multiple other apps in the background. I may try later today without the "noise" to see if the same thing happens.

[heltenjon]

Okay, here's a bug report.

When I lose all my lives on the first screen, there's no way to restart (unless there's a key I haven't pressed).

ALT-X quits the game, but it freezes and I have to alt-tab to get out.

When I got to Wryesdale, only the square I entered on was visible, and there was nowhere to go and no way to exit.

Not a bug, I suppose: After rescuing Robin, the game continues. I've found him and Little John. Is there a way to know when I've rescued all? I guess there's no congratulatory messages  and end sequence in this type of game?

[Crimson Wizard]

ALT-X quits the game, but it freezes and I have to alt-tab to get out.

This sounds like an engine bug, because it's one handling alt+x.

Although, quickly trying this now, I do not experience same problem.

[heltenjon]

I hear the quitting sound, but the game screen fails to go away. When alt-tabbing, the thumbnail screen  shows the quit message, and I have to close that window to make the game screen go away. Windows 10.

[Crimson Wizard]

I hear the quitting sound, but the game screen fails to go away. When alt-tabbing, the thumbnail screen  shows the quit message, and I have to close that window to make the game screen go away. Windows 10.

Are you running fullscreen Direct3D mode? Please try with "Fullscreen as borderless window" in the setup.

[heltenjon]

Are you running fullscreen Direct3D mode? Please try with "Fullscreen as borderless window" in the setup.

That made the alt-x quitting work as usual. Thank you!

There still seems to be a dead end after losing all the lives on the first screen, though. Come to think of it, is there a way to get back to the title screen at all? It looks like there is an unlockable mode, perhaps after rescuing Robin, but if we never get back there, we won't see it.

[eri0o]

I thought the alt+tab + exclusive Fullscreen + Direct3D issue was gone in the 3.6.1, I even closed the issue because I couldn't reproduce it anymore. And the alt+X issue is a new one to me, what is the problem? Is it that the message box appears behind the game instead of on-top? I really think Fullscreen Desktop should be the default and that being exclusive fullscreen should require at least some config to not encourage usage or even give some extra barrier to it because it causes lots of issues.

[Crimson Wizard]

I thought the alt+tab + exclusive Fullscreen + Direct3D issue was gone in the 3.6.1, I even closed the issue because I couldn't reproduce it anymore. And the alt+X issue is a new one to me, what is the problem? Is it that the message box appears behind the game instead of on-top?

The game is made in 3.6.0.

Alt+tab was not the problem apparently, the problem is that the message appears behind the game window, so user has to alt+tab to get to it. I don't think this is specific to alt+x, same problem might occur with any error message on quit.

[heltenjon]

Come to think of it, is there a way to get back to the title screen at all? It looks like there is an unlockable mode, perhaps after rescuing Robin, but if we never get back there, we won't see it.

Made it back to the title screen! Yay! And even got something there,1/10 unlocked.

Later on in the game, I spawned as an enemy soldier. At first I thought maybe I had donned a disguise without noticing, but I suspect it is a bug, because...I later spawned as a treasure chest. Could still move about and everything. The game ended when the chest spawned in a non-walkable area and I had to alt-x out. (Which works for me now, thanks to the tip from CW.

[Radiant]

The game froze, and I had to alt-tab to get out of it. It did this a couple of times in mid-play, with no pattern I could see so far. It could be a memory problem at my end, perhaps?

Thanks. It's actually an invalid view being used in the game, I'll fix that. And as CW mentions, I'll fix the default screen type to borderless windows.

When I got to Wryesdale, only the square I entered on was visible, and there was nowhere to go and no way to exit.

This sounds like a bug in the random level generation; I'll look into improving that.

After rescuing Robin, the game continues. I've found him and Little John. Is there a way to know when I've rescued all?

Yes, the title screen indicates how many people you've rescued. This should persist over multiple runs, even if you quit the game.

Also, if you enjoy this game, please consider voting in the MAGS contest!

[Radiant]

Ok, I've updated Sherwood to fix two game-breaking bugs (the crash when an object has an invalid view, and the hang when dying in the first room). Also, as suggested by Crimson Wizard, the acsetup.cfg now uses "full screen as borderless window" to prevent the game hanging when quit, on certain systems. Finally, there's now a readme file, which restates the info from this thread.

I think these changes are valid per MAGS rules; I have a list of other fixes that I've put off until later (such as showing the intro text for long enough to be read). Enjoy!