Trigger Discipline

by 0xb34f

Trigger Discipline is an action roguelike. The level layouts, the enemy spawn positions, and the weapon given to the player are semi-random.

I intended to give players some opportunities for some tactical thinking and some straight up fast-action gameplay. I think I got a bit of each, but not as much as I could with some time to really tune the level generation.

The code is about 1800 lines of C++ (though I used no classes, and malloc and free instead of new and delete). I used curses for graphics and a handful of standard library functions.

To run: Unzip and run the Trigger_Discipline binary. For better (more fun!) results, start up a terminal/cmd window and resize it to something like 100x40.

OSX terminal window settings: I built and tested the game using xterm-256color.

Comments5

goerp23 Sep 2013, 17:01

OS/X? That's too bad. I don't have that. Is there some kinde of emulator for it?

0xb34fauthor23 Sep 2013, 19:59

I just posted a Win32 console version! Hope that helps!

Should also be "easy" to modify for Linux, etc., since the OSX terminal is pretty much that. The only bit that won't play nice is the timer, which uses Mac or Windows-specific calls (for no good reason).

bvanschooten24 Sep 2013, 17:11

Thanks for the Windows version! I played it on a 80x50 terminal. I like the game concept. The graphics and levels look nice too. The idea that enemies start moving when they see a path towards you is interesting. However, often, half the enemies start moving when you shoot one block. And you can kill them all by just waiting for them, guns blazing. I would be interested to see a more balanced version, where you'd be overwhelmed by more than 3 enemies or so when in a tight spot, and you'd have to choose your path carefully. Also, enemies with variable number of hitpoints would make the game more interesting.

goerp25 Sep 2013, 13:31

Great, thanks for the windows version. it save me the teouble of learning how to compile C (already downloaded a compiler).
I like the game. It's a bit tactical, because you decide when the game starts and then you start shooting.
The graphics work too. I like the way the health is shown.
Using two hands independently is usually too difficult for me, but this worked OK.

I feel this game could be expanded, some more options and stuff. Like bvanschooten says.

0xb34fauthor25 Sep 2013, 17:46

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree that splitting the enemies into smaller groups would be good. The current "killing hall" effect is a side-effect of the super-simple level generator. If there were one or two unbreakable blocks along each side, those cases wouldn't come up so often.

I also think that breaking the level up would allow for more tactical moments (e.g., you get more breaks in the action where you can decide which enemies to "let out"). It would also allow me to tune down the fire rate/damage of the player's weapons so they're less dominant vs. small groups.

My local copy of the game has slightly different enemy movement (they wander even when they can't get to you). This makes them look more threatening, but it really just gives the player the option of timing the breaking of a wall so there's time to reload before enemies pour in.

Thanks for playing!