The End of The Beginning

The Alpha Universe rose from the ashes of many generations before it. It bestowed upon me many lessons and many glimpses into future probability, but it was a wild beast and try as I might I could not tame the many heads that sprouted from it. Alas, to every thing there is a season, and the season of the Alpha Universe has come to a close. But not before it bore the fruits of its child. The child of the Alpha has been born and when the time is right, shall be revealed! Thanks very much for reading, and until then!

Of Space and Time, The Beginnings

The Player's Location has 5 different variables signifying the following:
1 - Galaxy, 2 - Star System, 3 - Planet, 4 - Area, 5 - Room. Right now there are two Galaxies and two Star Systems. Debug/Center of the Universe and The Milky Way and The Debug System (1 Main Phase Star & 1 Planet) and the Sol 1 System (1 Main Phase Star & 9 Planets). The Time & Coordinates are displayed in the Debug Menu (Image 2). Each Planet's X and Y coordinate update every in-game hour (60 seconds) which is calculated using its radius.

Lighting has also been added as well as the very first Automatic Messages. Planets orbiting Main Phase Stars are lit for half of their day and dark for the second half. It is not yet possible to see at night (Image 1), but that will change with fire, flashlights, and other forms of light. If a Player is on a Planet orbiting a Main Phase Star, an Auto-Message is displayed at dawn, noon, and dusk.
 

Global Lighting and Auto-Messages

Planetary Clocks - M:H:D:Y

Long Displays & Stacked Mobs/Partners/Objects

As usual it took 5 times longer than I had thought it would to implement this necessary addition. Now, instead of the game crashing when there are more things to display than there are lines in the display box (54), the player can advance through pages of all the Descriptions (Is a room description more than 52 lines long really necessary?), Exits, Mobs, Partners, and Objects in a room with the 'Return' key. If any input, even a blank space, is entered, the pages will stop advancing and the input will be treated as usual. Pressing 'Return' while there is no long page being displayed does nothing.

Now, instead of using a line for each individual Mob/Partner/Object, each of these stack if they are the same. Another long display will be used when examining containers with more types of objects in them than lines in the display box. I'm currently focusing on Time, Lighting, Plant-life, and getting basic Foraging/Gathering/Harvesting (Not sure which commands to use for what and how just yet) and Crafting off the ground. Also, the 'Examine' command, of which I am not looking too forward to programming the long displays for. Will update intermittently.

Long Displays - 'Look'

Stacked Mobs/Partners/Objects

Bags. Bags everywhere.

Containers took a few days longer than expected due to having to redo my spaghetti code. Thankfully the action functions were stable enough to keep so I only had to rewrite the 'Put In/Get From' checks. After many hairs pulled out containers are completed (for now). Containers can carry a variable maximum amount of weight and are used in conjunction with the 'Get X From' and 'Put X In' commands (See Helpfile Image 5 For More Info). I need to update the 'Get/Drop' Helpfile to include that you can also 'Get All From' and 'Put All In' which will attempt to Get/Put objects in a container either in the Player's Inventory, Gear, or on the ground, until that bag is full or until the Player can carry no more. I decided to allow the Player to use 'Get From/Put In' with containers on the ground because NPC corpses will be containers, allowing for easier looting.

Smaller updates include adding support for background colors (See Debug Menus In Top Of Images 1 & 4), which I will be utilizing more in menus and such. An 'Empty' command was added for emptying out containers either Held, in the Inventory, or on the Ground. All the objects in the target container are emptied out onto the ground. I also added a 'Junk' command to destroy objects if the Player wishes to clear a room a bit. The Player can also 'Junk All'. '/Clear' can be used to clear the display buffer if it gets too busy, and lastly, the MUDder in me wanted to go 'hm', so even though this is a Single-Player Game, I decided to add emotes. There are only a few for now; 'Cheer', 'Jump', 'Sigh', 'Scratch', and 'Hm' or 'Hmm'. The next big project will be the crafting system, which I am still deciding how I will go about. What I am 75% sure about is that the basic 'Resource' objects such as lumber and rocks will probably be used to make primitive Tools, which will then be the basis for the entire Crafting System. Primitive Tools will then be used to make more complex tools, and so on. After that I'll have a game I feel comfortable with people testing, so I hope to be releasing a demo once crafting is implemented.

Get, Drop, and Junk commands.

Bags. Bags everywhere.

Seems correct..

Emotes!

Initial Help Files

First update.

After a few months of work and one scrapped project I have built a stable version of Alpha Uni. The game is a MUD-inspired text adventure game set in real time, developed in Python 2.6 using the libtcod library. The game currently supports output displays, player input, player prompt, colors and colorcodes, mobs, partners, objects including prototype armor, weapons, keys, and interactive objects. Also added are the following commands with their functions. 'Target', which allows the player to target any object, mob, or partner, further allowing the player to use commands with no defined target. 'Get' and 'Drop' which allow the player to pick up and drop objects which are not interactive. 'Wear', 'Wield', and 'Remove' allow player to use their picked up armor and weapons. 'Recruit' allows the player to recruit mobs to their allegiance, thus becoming partners. Player can also 'Get all', 'Drop all', 'Wear all', or 'Remove all', to simplify those processes. Cardinal directions are used to facilitate player movement. 'Open', 'Close', 'Lock', and 'Unlock' are used to manipulate doors, followed by a direction. A debug zone, 'Center of the Universe', inspired by the location from the Dragonball Saga codebase, has been created to help implement further code and a map has been included below.

Screenshot of current build.

Current map of COTU.