Antumbra Station | The Thirty One Lieutenants of Sorcerer Bedsui

The Thirty One Lieutenants of Sorcerer Bedsui

Squad Tactics Roguelike

About

Chaos blankets the world. From his tower in the southern marches, the illusionist Bedsui manipulates the minds of many great Kings and Emperors, sowing war and discord. But soon the madness ends! Steeling their resolve, a band of adventurers prepares to storm the tower and defeat the sorcerer. However, between them and their goal await Bedsui’s many servants…

‘The Thirty One Lieutenants of Sorcerer Bedsui’ is a turn based, squad combat roguelike with many of the boilerplate roguelike elements (fantasy setting, ASCII graphics, kill monsters and collect loot…). What distinguishes T31LoSB is the combat system, which dispenses with the usual ‘one space per turn movement’ and ‘melee attacks are all to adjacent squares’. I am hoping to incorporate feedback on the combat mechanics into a more ambitious game in the future.

All combatants, monsters and player characters, move about the board like tafl pieces (or the rook from chess), only stopping when blocked by a wall, unit, or wandering into an enemy’s melee range. In most roguelikes, the melee range for units are the eight immediately adjacent squares. In T31LoSB different weapons provide different melee ranges specific to the weapon type.

Units, player and monster, are fragile. Any attack which rolls higher than a unit’s relevant defense stat is fatal. My intent is the create combat that focuses on maneuvering and coordinating a squad of various weapon types, and where trapping enemy units is the primary challenge of killing them instead of relying on more hit points and stronger attacks.

Recent Releases

Development snapshots are released whenever a significant feature is completed; playable on Windows, Linux and Macs.

Recent Development Updates

Re-Balancing Bolt Attacks

Posted on 23 February 2018

This week I spent most of my development time just playing and enjoying my game, but I did get around to re-balancing Long Bows and Spells, the two bolt based attacks in the game. Having spent most of this year so far working out user interface issues, this is the first update this year to make changes to the actual game mechanics.

Dynamically Resizable Game Window - Part 2

Posted on 16 February 2018

The dynamic sizing overhaul is finished! Now players can resize the screen freely, with the font size and widget layout adjusting themselves responsively.

Dynamically Resizable Game Window

Posted on 08 February 2018

This week I started an overhaul of the game’s windowing code to allow dynamic resizing. Hopefully I’ll fufill one of the requests made in my reddit Feedback Friday.

New Year, New User Interface - Part Three

Posted on 01 February 2018

It took a solid month of coding, but the new mouse based interface is in a playable state (check out the latest release!!), and I’ve ripped out the last of the old command line code. I know the last two updates were minimal, so for this update I’m going to take more time to show off the new features and explan the thing behind the changes I made.

New Year, New User Interface - Part Two

Posted on 25 January 2018

The new interfce work continues; I’ve knocked out the new ‘battle preperation’ user interface!

New Year, New User Interface

Posted on 19 January 2018

I’m back at development after a nice Christmas/New Years vacation, and this year starts with a gutting and rework of the user interface. Mainly replacing the command line with a more conventional mouse based interface.

OSX 'Enter' Bug Fix

Posted on 16 December 2017

Slow week, did some code quality clean up and fixed a game breaking OSX bug that prevented the ‘Enter’ key from working.

Adding a Tactics Puzzle Mode - Part Three

Posted on 05 December 2017

This week I sunk some time into further finishing and polishing the tactics puzzle mode. It’s more performant, has a big new feature, and has more varied puzzles.

Speeding Up Combat

Posted on 27 November 2017

This week’s update builds off lasts week’s efforts to improve the core game play. Last week was about balance, this week is about pacing.

Map Generation and Character Balance

Posted on 24 November 2017

I got two things done this week!

Save Games

Posted on 17 November 2017

This week I added the ability to save the game, which was probably the last major feature needed to make this truly playable.

Adding a Tactics Puzzle Mode - Part Two

Posted on 11 November 2017

Continuing from last week’s post, the new tactics puzzle mode, while not finished, is playable!

Adding a Tactics Puzzle Mode

Posted on 02 November 2017

Good games need good tutorials, and a good tutorial should feel like a natural extension of the game, teaching the player without them realising they’re even playing the tutorial. Given the steep learning curve of the average roguelike (especially the Ascii variety), ‘The Thirty One Lieutenants of Sorcerer Bedsui’ especially needs a good tutorial.

Refactoring the UI Into an MVC Architecture

Posted on 28 October 2017

Coding heavy week, but mostly for non visible features. I ported over the previously ad-hoc coded user interface screens to a more traditional Model-View-Controller architecture. It’s made for nicer, better tested code, and with the refactor it was easy to add a shared ‘help’ feature to all the user interface screens.

Improving the Command Line - Better Visual Feedback

Posted on 21 October 2017

The command line auto complete has an issue. For reference on the right is what a user typed, and on the left is what the game thinks the user means.

Project Launch - The Thirty One Lieutenants of Sorcerer Bedsui

Posted on 14 October 2017