And in typical Mega style, I shall continue anyway.

Almost funny how these competitions keep cropping up, just in time to distract me from my other projects; all my own fault, of course.

So, with a title in hand, I set forth to craft Search for the Transvestite Dungeon. And as is typical of my games, I already have more than an idea, and a decent bit of artwork.

As far as the game goes, here's some progress:

The art, before you complain, is placeholder art only, though it will do in a pinch if I fail to meet the deadline. NES style art has it's uses, I can assure you (Actually, I'm working on purist NES limitations based on the NTSC region consoles, which keeps things simpler and makes production of artwork simpler).

If I find myself with time to kill after the game itself has been finished, I will try to make some perfectly fitting and nice-to-look-at graphics.

Something to note about that image: It's a randomly generated dungeon level, with lots of winding passages. For once, I have had minor success with the creation of a level generator, and this pleases me.

As you should be able to tell by the title of the game and by the screenshot, this is going to be an RPG. I'm leaning to a mild mix of console RPG (Based on Lufia 2, in most areas) and the Roguelike (Procedural generation, lots of 'unknowns' and randomness). This means less overall content creation on my part, more work on the core game.

My work as it stands is seperated into two main sections: Field programming and Battle programming. An RPG isn't merely a single game, but a collection of games with a common dataset. The 'overworld' segments follow their own rules, while battles (initiated from the field) have another set of rules.

For the battles, I'm going for a Dragon Warrior/Lufia style layout (Characters represented either visually or textually at the bottom of the screen, enemies shown facing towards the player in the top half).

I want to add some of the simpler roguelike elements to the gameplay, such as cursed/blessed items (And the identification thereof), class based play, scrolls, wands and spellbooks, and perhaps the concept of Skills.

This all depends on the time I have available to me (16 days as of writing this).

Some of you may be wondering what I'm developing this in. I'll tell you: C# and Game Maker. I'm testing new concepts in GM, then implementing them in C#. Made the design of the level generation code a lot easier.

I'll just leave this here…

You may recognize the tileset from one of my earlier blogs. This is my C# platformer, my first 'big' game that I intend to, and I won't be shy about it, sell. Therefore, I'm making it as professionally as possible, with a couple Megalitres of Fun added to it. It also follows strict NES art rules.

I've picked up quite a few new tricks for my coding arsenal, some that I never thought of before. One of them I picked up from the Minecraft source code:

Class methods that return a reference to their calling class instance, allowing for a 'chain' of calls like the above. Makes things a bit neater in some cases, and means I don't have to have a "YE OLDE FUNCTION OF 1001 ARGUMENTS" for precise initialisation.

I'm still trying to think up something of interest to write up for that 'mini-book' I was planning; though thinking something up isn't the problem, it's choosing. Perhaps a few choice words on the Singleton class design method?

I haven't dropped in on the Minecraft server in a few days, mostly due to the stressing workload I inflicted upon myself (And I repaired somebodies computer two days ago), and the amount of sheer information I have to absorb during my single hour on the internet (Or downloads that I have to run).

Speaking of which, I picked up a multiplayer game yesterday that brings back great memories, and it's free: Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch. A complex and well crafted Doom 2 overhaul. Crapcom should just give up and let the fans take over. Only true and truly capable fans need apply.

Why don't some of you try it out? If we get enough people together, a 64Digits frag-fest would be great. And it'll be slow-connection friendly, since it comes from the days of Dialup (The netcode, that is).

Here's some more info, hidden to try keep the blog a bit shorter:

If you're wondering why this blog has an odd tone to it in general, or may be slightly not-quite-as-Mega-as-usual, it's probably because I've only gotten 4 hours of sleep (If that) several nights in a row, due to the horrid hot weather (Which broke yesterday. Nice and cool now).

Now make Internet Noise in the comment box below.