While Rogue Wave started out as a simple prototype as an exercise for our Discord community some of us have continued to work on this open source First Person Roguelite Wave Shooter. It’s still a long way from a complete game, but it is taking shape nicely.

Here’s the latest update.

Character Advancement

It was a bit of a challenge playing the game if you got the worst possible start, that is no weapon in your initial recipe offerings. Without a weapon there was nothing much you could do. In this release you are guaranteed at least one weapon in the first set of offerings. Though there is no promise it will be a good one!

A game like Rogue Wave there can never been too many upgrades. One rich source of upgrades is character movement. Chris, from Neo FPS, had created a system for managing and persisting movement upgrades during the original development jam, but we weren’t making a lot of use of it. This prompted a refactoring of the Recipe system so that we could have movement and movement ability upgrades. As a result, we can now adjust a great many of the movement stats quickly and easily with upgrade recipes. This release includes upgrades for:

• Base Movement Speed
• Movement Multiplier
• Dash Speed Multiplier
• Max Jump Height Multiplier

These kinds of upgrades make sense as stackable upgrades. For example, we can have multiple speed additions. So, we implemented this too. It’s now possible to jump insanely high or move impossibly fast. These feats might be fun, but only those with the fastest reactions will want to go all the way.

Another update to the upgrade system is the addition of dependencies between recipes. This system means that we can prevent a recipe being offered unless 1 or more other recipes have been obtained first. So, for example, we can (and now do) have an upgrade for shields that make them more effective, but you can only get this upgrade if you already have the “Shield 1” upgrade.

Now that we have enough upgrades to make it impossible to remember what you have already, we needed to help the player decide what to buy between levels. The hub screen now shows a list of upgrades that are already owned.

Game Feel Improvements

Enemies are spawned in waves. In the previous version there was no indication when a new wave was going to start. This made it difficult for the player to plan their attacks on the spawner. To address this, we added a wave start audio signal, there isn’t currently a visual signal but that will come. For those using the audio signals the chosen sound adds a sense of dread and urgency, we need something similar for the visual feedback too. Let us know if you have any good ideas.

Shield depletion sounds in the previous version were buggy. They were triggered too frequently resulting in a screaming noise, which wasn’t too bad, but it was also exhausting the available audio channels. We fixed this. Now the draining audio will be played only once in each damage cycle.

AI and Enemies

The enemy ballistic weapons had a big advantage in that they could fire on the player immediately upon spawning while the player had to wait for them to emerge from the shield. This has been resolved by putting a warmup time on the firearm. This is long enough to ensure that the enemies have moved outside the shield. However, higher level enemies may have buffs that reduce this time, simulating more advanced shields and/or weapons that do not interact with one another.

Conclusion

This version brings more detail to the existing gameloop, but has not changed the loop at all. This seems to be pretty steady at this point, which is a good sign.

The way you have to play the game is highly dependent upon the upgrades made available to you… which is exactly what a roguelite is should do. For example, I normally get a pistol or assault rifle in the first run. This enables the first level to be cleared out quickly, so it feels like a run and gun. But in my most recent game I was saddled with a shotgun. My strategy had to change completely as a result. It became a tactical hit and run until eventually I was offered a pistol upgrade.

Try it out and let us know what you like and don’t like.