One year of Asciilands development!

Asciilands is one year old and has just tipped over the 10,000 lines of code mark!

From the very first function written (an AJAX function that renders an array of coloured dots in the browser) to the most recent function written (a function that makes follower NPCs determine whether or not you have enough "personal space" before taking another step towards you) and all the functions that have be re-written in between (probably pretty much all of them), Asciilands has been by far the most fun I've ever had with coding and I think Uli's had an ok time, too.

I just thought I'd briefly sum up what's in those 10,000 lines (in rough development order) and what the next few thousand will contain.

So far we have a grid based ascii ARPG game where you can walk around environments rendered exclusively in coloured text with a combination of tiles and scenery. The maps can feature a variety of objects including pushable blocks, portals to take you between locations or between maps, openable doors, readable signs, talking and wandering NPCs, follower NPCs who follow for you or wait for you at a given location, zombies which can attack and infect the other NPCs, other enemies (e.g., golems and skeletons), collectible items and containers to put the items in. NPCs can also buy your stuff or sell you new stuff for one of any in-game currencies or sometimes they'll just give you stuff for free if they happen to find something in grass as they wander around. Items can boost your characters defence, damage or any number of other stats. They can also set enemies on fire, freeze them, make them run away, explode into a short-range lightning splash damage, have a chance to amp your damage, let you steal live from your attacks or maybe you'll find less complex items like a potion that will restore your health a little bit of a book that has a bunch of text in it. Items can be hand made or generated randomly and their stats are based on the materials from which they are made meaning that you should be able to keep your eye out for useful things based on the materials that best suit your play style.

Soon to come in Asciilands are features like characters's skills and abilities, more robust use of follower NPCs (giving orders or formations), objects that occupy more than one tile at a time (for some bigger enemies), a proper death system, a better economic system, multiplayer, real estate ownership and property development, farming, long distance travel (by boat or cart), time-based events (like day and night / seasons) and of course content, content and more content.

As ever, the blog will be here to keep anyone who's interested up to date on what's going on when major development milestones are reached or something pretty is added.

Thanks for your interest so far in what was year one of Asciilands development!

Token screenshot? I'm working on a new map. I call it "aquecuct.map". Here's a preview taking from maximap.php (that thing that renders the whole map).

I can't promise that we won't do a quest that starts with an NPC saying "Hero, please help us! Our water has gone fetid and..." etc.