[CW] Caves of Mars

Hi folks! My name is Chris. I graduated from Williams in '96, and after doing various other things I ended up back at the mothership, working in OIT as a developer.

I have an ongoing fascination with rogue-like games, starting with Moria, then Angband (and a number of its variants) and ADOM. As a coder, game designer, and GM I've long toyed around with the idea of putting one together but somehow never quite gotten around to it. Over the recent holidays I decided that it was time to do more serious hacking around and I tracked down some good tutorials. I recently finished a decent javascript-based tutorial over at Coding Cookies and now that I have some basic functionality and understanding of the coding domain my general goals are a) add more functionality, and b) make it my own game instead of a more-or-less generic product of a tutorial.

"You were a part of one of the first human exploration crew on Mars. Your team was checking out some interesting looking craters on the lower slopes of Elysium Mons when disaster struck. Some kind of sinkhole opened under your feet and dropped you deep beneath the surface. The last things you remember are the radio-relayed screams of your team mates as you plunged out of sight, the sky vanishing as the edges of the hole fell in after you, a terrific THUMP as you bounced off something on your way down, then blackness.

You awake to discover, to your shock, that you are not dead (as far as you know). Your gear was badly damaged by the fall - there's no way you'll be calling for help with that mess, and your suit integrity is completely shot. About the only thing still working is an emergency light on your helmet and a hand-held analyzer. On the plus side, you've made an amazing discovery! The cave air down here is actually breathable (at least for the short term), the temperature is warm enough that the crushed heating unit won't be what does you in, and through your slightly bloodied and swollen nose you think that you detect a faint, strangely organic aroma! Now all you have to do is figure out how to let your team know that you survived, and-

Wait a moment! Is that *movement* over there in the shadows....!?"

My specific goals for the jam are:

- re-theme what I have for my chosen setting & story
  + come up with story-consistent justification for experience system (and probably modify that system accordingly)
- split messaging display into a separate screen than the main map/play area
  + implement message history system
  + create (and make use of) richer descriptions of observable things and narrative elements/events
- refactor fog of war to use a secondary map rather than the live map (i.e. avoid showing distant map changes)
- implement throwing/ranged action
- design and implement a richer melee combat system (at the least, split out hitting, damaging, other hit effects, dodging, damage resistance, and on-being-hit effects)
- integrate thrown/fired items into the combat system
- improve map generation with a bit more tile variety
  + improve impenetrable map borders
- multi-staged digging
- design and implement a simple loot system (or, rather, give appropriate items to appropriate NPCs, and have those items be used)
- design and implement a simple keyed-door system
- boss key gives you access to win state

I'll be using javascript and the rot.js library.

I don't know exactly how much time I'll be able to put into this, because Life.