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Hey there, I still working on that but RL stepped in hard, had almost no time in the past month (job change). Will continue to work on it now.

Thanks, yes I've looked it up, what a nice game indeed!

Thanks so much for your feedback. At least one seem to be interested and that's even you is fantastic!

Yes, I've seen that in Cogmind as well even though it looks better in your game.

I'm going to add some enemies next both for a real time and turn based game and will provide prototypes for that to see what's finally better.

I mean this could be done:

• turn based
• real time
• real time where everything stops when the player stops
• pausable real time (FTL)

Alright, I've uploaded another tiny prototype where you can just walk (creates noise) and ping in that randomized boxes world. Nothing meaningful yet, just want to show a little progress:

http://www.sonobots.com/game/html5

If you prefer an executable: http://www.sonobots.com/game/b002.zip

Use WSAD or cursor keys to move and SPACE to ping.

It's pretty real time at the moment, next steps will be to put in some other bots and test both turn based and real time environment. Thanks!

Haha, thanks for that tweet! I will do some prototyping now. Might take some time, I do this part time as all of my other games before. Unfortunately live is quite expensive here in Germany.

Thanks so much for your answer.

I see you currently have it set to allow facing in any direction--is this going to be a truly turn-based grid-based game?

That's a tough point and good question. Definitely grid based, I know it looks not like that atm, but actually every cell is made up of 8x8 sub cells just to let the sonar look better. About facing in any direction I think it's better than just having it with kind of a spot light. That would work better for real time environments I guess. About turn-based... Hmm. I'm still not 100 % sure. I mean this could work for as well turn-based and real time. I've read your blog post about animations in RLs and I think such a sonar ping would fit into that as well. So a ping would be kind of instant like your shoot animations even though it takes some "time".

I imagine enemies will also be out there pinging as well, and you would see their location via that method?

Yes. And that would be one way of detecting your enemies before they can "see" you. Plus you will obviously generate noise while walking which would make the nearest environment visible on your sonar as well without pinging!

Currently my biggest headaches is still the decision between roguelike (turn-based) and roguelite (real time). I know that's something you cannot decide for me but do you think out of your experience this could work turn-based and could be fun? Might be a stupid question, I know... I just ask because I often hear that this would quite nicely fit into the real time world but NOT into the turn based one...

Additionally I think about to not only rely on this sonar. There could be rooms where you really can see your environment like in "normal" games too. So you could "overlay" the real world with that sonar image in terms you need it.

Dear all,

I'm currently doing my very first rogue like (did other turn based games before) and would love to get some feedback and ideas.

So the basic idea of my game is that you stranded somehow somewhere (story is not set yet) in kind of a dungeon/cave. You have no lights, the only thing you have is a sonar. You will "see" the world around you using this sonar and can create pings to see more around you. But those pings generate noise (obviously) which can be heard by other creatures/robots (personally I prefer a sci-fi setup).

So give you an idea, I've put together a tiny prototype here: http://www.sonobots.com/game/html5

Basically all you can do there for now is pinging. The "world" is filled with random squares just to have something and test all the sonar occlusion stuff.

So my question is: Could this be fun, is this something you'd consider to play (will probably a free game anyway)? What stealth ideas do you have, what could be added?

I already have an idea for that hunger stuff. You see a battery symbol at the top left which would force you to find battery packs or places where you can recharge your batteries...

Would love to get some feedback on this, thanks!

Thanks, will do that then! Much appreciated!

Thanks again for all this input. Just to let you know that I just started with kind of a stealth sonar approach like RL, not with submarines but using sonar as your only way to "see" the world around you. I can post a small working HTML5 prototype if you want to take a look (dunno if that's allowed here I don't want to advertise anything!)?

Thanks again! Well I might give it a try, I always wanted to make an atmospheric game playing in the distant future (very dark atmosphere).

Your game cogmind is an incredible good inspiration and fun, thanks for creating it! And thanks for your help.

Awesome, thanks so much for clarification and all your time trying to explain this to me!

Turn based projectiles might be cool too, because I'd like to make kind of a submarine based (in the future like Schleichfahrt/Archimedean Dynasty) one where torpedoes play quite a role. I'm still not sure how to handle that...

Cheers - Xaron

Hey there,

first, congrats for this gem of a game!

Currently I'm in the process to starting to develop kind of an own rogue-like as some questions came up about that which I would like to ask here because you've solved them quite nicely.

1) Time/Energy system
I understand the way you're doing that and it's great. I still don't get when a new turn starts!
Does it start when all actors have used their energy? So the player does his move, then all actors use their energy and the next turn starts?

Can it happen that energy is saved for later or is there a cap of energy you cannot cross?

2) Slow moving projectiles
Let's take missiles for instance. Once fired, do they continue to move to the player even though he doesn't take any action (and no new turn is generated?)?

3) Enemy movement
As far as I understand it, enemies never can move as long as the player hasn't done some action, right? Or is there kind of an elapsed time where a turn just ends and a new one starts, no matter if the player did some action or not?

Thanks and keep up the great work!