The 2009 7DRL Challenge has begun!

[Elig]

I suppose I can make a Windows binary. It'll be out later on tonight.

Edit; Tried MinGW, but their stupid standard C++ library wouldn't compile on my machine. Tried Cygwin, but roughly the same thing happened (Man I'm unlucky). So I'm going to use Visual C++, but it's taking forever to install, so the Windows binary will be a little late.

Edit #2: Attached is the incredibly buggy windows binary. Enjoy.

[Darren Grey]

Played it, and eventually got stuck on an unpassable level (stairs were on a ledge at the top that couldn't be reached).  Can't say it was an overall pleasant experience, but the gravity/jumping mechanic was interesting.  Do you plan on doing further work on this?

[Elig]

At the very least, I'm going to fix the dungeon generator so it doesn't make impossible levels. I've never actually gotten to the "YOU WIN" screen because the dungeon generator keeps screwing up D:. After that, I'd like to add real enemies, items, armor and weapons but I'm not sure how much work I really want to put into it. Originally, I had planned to have three seperate dungeons, with many different types of random dungeon generators, but clearly I didn't have enough time for that.

Anyway, I may work on it more, especially if there's any interest in it.

[Slash]

@Elig: Looks nice, the plataformer aspect is similar to megamanRL, but it seems you went a completely different way regarding dungeon generation, wantz to discuss it?

[Elig]

Thanks Slash! Actually, MegamanRL was partially the inspiration for Backwards Gravity. The dungeon generation is fairly odd in Backwards Gravity because I wanted each map to only take up a single 80x24 screen, similar to Nethack, etc. Originally I had planned to include many different dungeon generation algorithms that would be chosen at random, but I only had time to implement two. The first map has it's own dungeon generator, since it's something of a special map. The player was supposed to start in the "house" on the first map, but I was lazy.

The two dungeon generation algorithms used are incredibly simple. The first randomly picks a location, and then draws a randomly sized filled block that has edges the player can walk on. It remembers the previous block it drew, and upon drawing the next block, links with the previous using a seperate function whose only job is to correctly link any two locations on the map.

The second algorithm is much like the first, but slightly different. It starts by drawing "platforms" that are just rooms with a random length whose height it always 2. The top tile of each "room" or "platform" is turned into an area the player can walk on. Each room is recorded in a list, and all rooms are linked using the same link function as the first dungeon generation algorithm uses. After that, some interesting features are added. First, a few random blocks that are filled and surrounded by walkable area are placed. Then it decides if any edges of the map should be walled off with an area the player can walk on. If it decides any edges should be present, it draws those edges onto the map.

That's about it. Originally I planned something far more complex, but never had time. Though, I may go back and implement more stuff.