In Dungeon Survival, we must provide a counterpoint at all times to the mundane aspects of survival, maintaining one’s health in an environment of slimy subterranean walls, and avoiding the denizens of such places (or dispatching them with one’s ingenuity).

I am speaking of course of the all encompassing dread reaper: Death!

In other words, the Dungeon Survival project now features death and respawn.

In addition to this, since the last update (which was somewhat out of date) the game has:

Inventory System

This is sort of the basis for much of the game, as most of the objects will be “smart” – with some gameplay associated with how they work or interact with the environment/other objects in an intuitive way. I’ll follow up with a good example of this in a minute.

Items when on the ground are physics objects, much like in the Elder Scrolls series. When picked up, the object is attached to the player’s hand.

Currently, only one item can be carried at a time, not counting the “utility” slot (the right hand – which is at the moment occupied by the torch and isn’t completely hooked into the inventory system). In future, the player will be able to craft pouches which attach to the player and will be able to carry certain amounts of items of their own, depending on size/type.

As with the rest of the game, all of these things are networked for multiplayer – including kicking around physics objects (this may change depending on if it presents problems later) and having it sync to everyone.

When picked up, the item is not destroyed – it is taken into the character’s inventory, and attached directly to the hand (or will be “stored” in pouches if available). This is important because the item system in the game will also be persistent – a half-eaten apple will stay half-eaten even when dropped (and as that example implies, the player does not eat food all-at-once). Items will have persistent state.

The above behavior is for the default item type. All specialized item types derive from this type of item and include its behavior (though in special cases they may override it).

As of yet there is only one specialized type – the food item. Which brings us to…

Hunger and Thirst

First, some rationality for even including what some might consider a micro-management gameplay feature.

I’ll always remember my first few forays into the realm of Nethack, that character-based dungeon crawler with timeless charm and a rich set of gameplay.

In particular was when I first made it to level 3 (this was probably not Nethack itself but a derivative, so forgive inconsistencies, those Nethack aficionados in the audience). I had no food. I was dying of hunger, and a dwarf attacked me.

I dispatched the little fellow with little health left to spare, crawled around a corner and took the only option that remained to me. I ate the dwarf.

I ate his corpse and promptly died from dwarf-poisoning.

For those that don’t know – Nethack and its like feature “permadeath”, meaning you must start over if you die. Instead of being (justifiably, since the 3rd level of the dungeon was the farthest I’d ever progressed) irritated, I was cracking up with laughter.

I loved the fact that I was able to improvise in that way and eat the body of a dwarf I’d slain. And even more that it distinguished poison from normal food.

That’s why I wanted to make the Dungeon Survival project in the first place – to capture the magic of the “emergent gameplay” that roguelikes provide, but with a focus on natural interaction with the environment, and on survival gameplay (with, of course, VR heavily supported).

What’s done:

* Hunger ticks town every 5 seconds (numbers here are subject to change with testing).
* When hunger runs out, the starvation meter kicks in. It ticks down ever 5s as well, but at a different rate (you have more starvation meter than hunger meter, but it depletes in larger chunks).
* When your starvation meter runs out, you start to take damage to your health.
* As mentioned before, food items exist and can replenish your food meter.

Thirst and dehyration work in a similar way, but are not hooked up at the moment to aid in testing (and because I haven’t hooked up any drink items, though that doesn’t take much time).

To come:

* Cooking, and uncooked food causing sickness.
* Starvation and eating too quickly after having starved for a while will also cause sickness.
* Poisoned/contaminated food.
* Dehydration and drinking too much water when dehydrated causing sickness.

Other Stuff That Works Now

In addition to all that, I’ve added:

* A proper blend for the torch hold animation, so that you can right click to sheathe/unsheathe the torch. The character’s arm will smoothly blend up and down.

* An oil slick blueprint, which includes an oil decal, trigger volume and fire effects.
* Code so that if the player walks over an oil slick with his torch out, it will light on fire (and does damage).
* A destructible barrel – damage accumulates over time, so that if thrown/hit against stuff enough it will shatter.
* An oil barrel version that spawns an oil slick when it breaks.
* A torch physics item using the inventory system, and the ability to throw the torch via clicking without anything in held in the left hand inventory slot.

This is the sort of “smart object” gameplay I referred to before. Eventually things like the barrel spawning an oil slick, the slick being flammable, and items that have fire lighting the slick up will be generalized so that items will simply be able to specify what types of smart gameplay they use (by both deriving from special item types and settings in those types).

The basis for this system is already in place, and is how the food items work – but currently the torch and barrel do not use the system (that will change).

To come in the short term:

* Thrown torches will light oil slicks on fire.
* Throwing your torch will remove it from your hand,
* Being able to pick up the torch to re-equip it to the utility/right hand slot.
* A two-hand pickup system for picking up things like the barrel (luckily though I’m no animator, I’ve figured out how to build an animation for that and make it work myself).
* Being able to throw two-hand pickup items.
* Kicking/punching physics objects, like the barrel.

After that, I’ll be adding the first enemies to the game (rats!) and building out the first level of the demo dungeon.

Soon I’ll be taking some screenshots and video of the oil barrel gameplay.