Roguelike game

Story

"La Speluna", a company from San Escobar contacted us and asked about creating a roguelike game for them. They didn't tell us much about their needs, just a few details about the framework of the game. They are big fans of old-fashioned RPG games from the days when graphics didn't matter that much, and the most important things were gameplay and a story.

The game should be about a creature (human? alien? ant? hacker?) travelling through a dangerous and wild world (forest? planet? table? meetups?). In the beginning, the creature is weak and fragile, but through the game they be level up, get tougher, collect powerful items, and finally become able to defeat the final boss. Of course, the way to the final boss is not a bed of roses: there are lots of obstacles (rivers? craters? drops of milk? firewalls?) and many dangerous enemies. Use your imagination!

In this project, your job is to implement a Roguelike game.

What are you going to learn?

• variables, functions, loops and conditionals
• nested lists
• dictionaries
• print formatting
• user input handling
• error handling
• clean code

Tasks

1. Implement a basic board generator function to return a rectangular board of the given size.

   • The engine.create_board function returns an empty, rectangular board as a list of lists of the given size. The board contains characters according to the field type (such as spaces all around and wall icons on its edges).
   • The game has at least 3 boards/levels with different inhabitants.
   • Gates are added on the edges (one gate character instead of one piece of wall).

2. Implement board and player display. The player always sees the current board only.

   • The function ui.display_board displays a board (passed as an argument).
   • The function engine.put_player_on_board places the player icon on the board.

3. Implement player movement on the board using the WASD keys.

   • The WASD keys move the player up, left, down, and right on the screen, respectively.
   • The player cannot move through walls.
   • Going through a gate loads another board (the same door always leads to the same place).

4. Implement items that can be added to the player inventory by moving over them.

   • The items have at least two attributes, name and type. You can add others as well.
   • The items are displayed on the board.
   • The items disappear from the board when the player moves over them. The items do not reappear when the player reenters the board.
   • One type of items is food – these update the player state and disappear.
   • Other types of items are added to the player inventory when picked up.
   • Implement at least two features connecting to items (such as keys for opening gates, weapons, armors, and so on).
   • The inventory is displayed upon pressing the I key.

5. The player has various (constant and variable) attributes.

   • The player character has a name, a race (such as elf or dwarf), and health. You can add others as well.
   • The player can choose or configure their character before starting the game.
   • The player character can die if its vital attributes become too low.
   • The character's main attributes are always displayed on the screen.

6. Implement other inhabitants around the player character.

   • Other characters have three mandatory attributes: name, type, and health.
   • Create at least three different types (in addition to the player and the boss).
   • The characters move autonomously, and do not go through the walls. The characters move only when the player moves.
   • Implement a creature that says something upon meeting the player.
   • Fight is implemented against enemies. A fight consist of rounds (hits). A hit happens when the player tries to move over the enemy. Hits on the health of the player and the creature are calculated based on their attributes, the inventory, and randomness.

7. A roguelike game needs a boss fight at the very end.

   • The boss is a larger (at least 5-by-5), autonomously moving character.
   • An extremely hard boss fight is implemented (for example, special weapons are needed, or the hit chance is low).
   • There is a secret code that makes finishing the game easier.

8. [OPTIONAL] Somebody already created an implementation of GameUI and GameInputReader, which can draw the board on a simple graphical user interface. Use it.

   • When the command line argument --gui is given, the game displays the board in a window, not in the console.
   • Tiles are drawn with simple, colored squares.
   • Some tiles are drawn with images.

9. [OPTIONAL] Create a Hall of Fame with the highest scores.

   • The top 5 achievements are displayed.
   • The top achievements are saved into and loaded from a file.
   • Cheat code wins are excluded from the Hall of Fame.

10. [OPTIONAL] Save relevant data and show statistics to the player about the current game.

    • Collect statistics about important game events, such as fights, discovered boards, or items.
    • The player statistics are displayed upon pressing P.

11. [OPTIONAL] Create a story that grabs attention.

    • There is an intro screen about the game world before the game begins.
    • There is a final screen after winning or losing the game.
    • There is an information screen on the authors.
    • There is an information screen on how to play the game.

12. [OPTIONAL] Implement further board generating algorithms.

    • The engine.create_board function has optional parameters that modify its base behavior to add extra inner walls.
    • The engine.create_board function has optional parameters that modify its base behavior to diverge from the rectangular shape.

General requirements

• Always use predefined constants for icons in your code. You can modify them though.

Hints

• It is time to start thinking in "objects". Objects are bundles of attributes and behavior: players have names, coordinates, inventories, things may have a type, a weight, a price, and so on. There are also functions that deal with players or things. We do not necessarily need proper object-oriented programming for this, plain dictionaries can also get the job done. For example, the dictionary item = {'name': 'Needle', 'type': 'sword', 'weight': 42} holds together three attributes in one variable which can be passed between functions that expect these attributes (for example, the 'name' attribute to print it).
• Objects usually have states that may or may not change during its interactions. For example, "strength" is a player attribute that can change during a combat or after a meal. It can also trigger other state changes, such as character upgrade or death.
• Try to abstract the differences and create categories as general as possible. The differences live in the data attributes assigned to general things. And not just "things", you also can distill abstract interactions, such as "fights" or "conversations". With this, you get a flexible and extendable game.
• Try to generate data. Read attributes from data files or use randomized logic to create or mix components when creating things in your world. You also can try creating playable boards.
• The util module contains two basic OS-dependent functions, one for clearing the screen and one for getting user keystrokes. Do not bother too much with terminal emulation.
• Be aware that there is a shallow and a deep copy of a list.
• Ideal team size is 5. Maximal team size is 7

Background materials

• Dictionaries
• Modifying objects
• User input
• Clean code
• About Python modules (until the section "Python Packages")