David Foster

Dungeons

Dungeons is a game in which you explore a maze, avoid enemies, pick up treasure, and try to find the exit for the level. In this game you try to maximize your score and stay alive as long as you can. Dungeons consists of about 4,600 lines of code. This was my first large project.


Features

There are items called pickups that you can find that perform special actions such as revealing the entire level, transforming all enemies into treasures, or automatically solving the current level.

It is possible for the user to define their own custom external pickups by writing specially formatted text files that contain the HyperTalk script that should be executed upon using the pickup.

In addition:
  • levels are dynamically generated
  • games can be saved and loaded
  • enemies have two types of AI to seek the player
  • there is a wide variety of pickups that perform special actions
  • high scores are persisted across launches
  • there is a full help system

History

The inspiration for this game came from a similar game described in a Macintosh game programming book that I read while I was at National Computer Camp. (It should be noted though that the final version of my game is significantly improved from the original.) I then proceeded to write the game while at camp. It became so popular with the other campers there that I had people lining up to play it during break times. At the end of that week at camp I received a Special Award from the camp director because the game was so impressive.

Screenshots

A typical level in Dungeons
A typical level in the Dungeons game. In this screenshot the entire level has been displayed; normally the player can only see the parts of the level that have already been explored.