YOU_ARE_DEAD, a 1D Roguelike | Hacker News Reader

YOU_ARE_DEAD, a 1D Roguelike

github.com

72 pointslysol42 comments

The missing instructions:

You are the ‘x’. Your immediate goal is to beat the level by reaching the right side. Press D to walk right one step. You can press A to step back left, but there is never a reason to do so.

The ‘~’ and ‘.’ are obstacles; you will die if you walk onto them normally. To safely step onto the obstacles, press W or S to turn your x temporarily into the same character as the obstacle – W for ‘~’, S for ‘.’. Then, when you move right onto the obstacle, it will be removed, and your character will be an ‘x’ again.

When you walk past the right edge of the level, you are arrive at the left side of a new level, with randomly-generated obstacles and spaces. When you die, your score is equal to how many steps right past the start you are.

If you are careful not to step right unless you’ve transformed yourself to match any obstacle to your right, you cannot lose the game. Beating the last level, level 10, is simply a test of perseverance and thinking before you step.

Some tips:

Resize your terminal window to change the length of each level. Note that beating a level provides no bonuses to your score. The maximum possible score is the width of a level times 10, so make your window wide if you’re aiming for that.

It does no harm to transform yourself before stepping on an empty space. Thus, if you have a series of obstacles such as ‘~ ~~ ~’, just repeatedly press WD to safely step across. This is easier than deciding whether to press D or WD before each step.

You kidding me?

Also, The Crying Game was a dude, Lost was all a dream, Maggie shot Mr Burns, and games just aren't fun.

I haven't seen the whole of The Crying Game yet. Why would you do that?

Don't forget that Samus is a girl!

> The ‘~’ and ‘.’ are obstacles;

Surely, they are not obstacles. They are hideous monsters and the only way to survive is to fool them by wearing the skin of one of them.

For anyone eager to have a go at writing a small roguelike, the 2013 seven day roguelike festival will be March 9 to March 17. http://7drl.org/2013/01/31/we-have-dates-for-7drl-challenge-...

Roguelike Radio episode on making a 7drl: http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/03/episode-26-how-to-make...

This year's developer conference is in Poland, http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=I...

Last year's challenge was the best ever. Looking forward to 2013! Highly recommended.

Oh god, rupa's most popular repos are named z, j, sprunge, j2, and v. His blog domain is un.ix.io and his email is @lrrr.us. He sounds like a great developer, but I wouldn't want him naming my variables for me :)

don't worry those are actually commands. i used to use 'j', but im now using 'z'.

> his email is @lrrr.us

Wait, you can do that?

Not according to RFC 2822 (a mailbox is a dot-atom, so must have at least one character). Looks like he's actually using rupa@lrrr.us.

Lrrr is ruler of Omicron Persei 8. Seems cromulent to me.

Funny that. I just forked and fired up Sprunge yesterday. Works great: http://paste.stackgeek.com/

I found this highly amusing.

First Port: Dvorak Version : https://github.com/cavedweller/YOU_ARE_DEAD

Take this as the perfect example of how not to document a project.

That's the point. The idea is you have to figure out how to play the game.

  zarel@Serine:~$ ./YOU_ARE_DEAD -h
  KEYS: WASD. YOU ARE DEAD.

The rest is actually pretty easy to figure out.

In OS X (well, Snow Leopard at least), YOU_ARE_DEAD throws an error because `seq` doesn't exist in OS X and brew doesn't have it. This script does the trick: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/step_through_count_numeric_valu...

The seq dependency has been removed in HEAD.

BSD userlands have jot(1) instead of seq(1). Annoying that the arguments differ, but no need for a new script.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin...

My only objection is that it is unfairly hard for people with wide screens. I've made a narrower terminal because I got annoyed with having to play such a long level in order to make attempts at advancing the level (I've done it once by accident but not sure what I did).

EDIT: I've now figured out how to do it. Thinking I'd found all of the special rules I read through the source. There are some real gems in there :).

EDIT2: Huh, it looks like I was overthinking the level-advancing. There is no code for the problem I thought I was solving; I must have imagined it.

Really? I read the source and it really is as simple as it looks, although there are some clever optimizations such as SCORE also being used to keep track of your current location.

I also like the CHOICE variable in which the probability of encontering a monster is decreased by adding more spaces.

  CHOICES="~.     "

> EDIT2: Huh, it looks like I was overthinking the level-advancing. There is no code for the problem I thought I was solving; I must have imagined it.

Isn't this what `tput cols` is for? You advance to the next level when you reach the right edge of your current window, however wide your window is.

I thought you had to do some magic involving walking left for a little while before reaching the right edge. I'm sure a few times I reached the right edge only to be told I was dead.

It looks as though that was a bug which is now fixed. If your current level started with a . or a ~, you would die when you finished it (but that one wouldn't kill you at any other point). Now all levels start with a ' '.

Up next, a post-apocalypse JRPG mod: YOU_ARE_ALREADY_DEAD

And the M. Night Shyamalan film adapataion: YOU_WERE_DEAD_ALL_ALONG

So, another The World Ends With You?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenshiro

Old-school manga trivia fail! (They were probably making a reference you were missing this whole time.)

Added a moving monster https://github.com/shultays/YOU_ARE_DEAD

~ is like a bird and . is like a rock. I should move down to escape the bird and up to jump the rock :p ...well, back to work...thanks for the game, a good refresh

Do you suppose the author is a lefty? I'm right-handed, and one of the challenges for me was using my left hand on the WASD keys.

wasd is basically the standard for movement control in pc (as opposed to console) first person shooters

192!

Though I died on the last char of the line :( WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REACH THE END OF THE LINE!!!

sorry, that was a bug.

You get to the next level of course!

Speaking of ASCII games I found out that there are tons of rogue-likes, but no C&C/starcraft-like games. Or I couldn't find one except for very old DOS games maybe.

FWIW the project is updated with a whole new gameplay mechanic and 'the missing instructions' are no longer relevant.

The missing instructions: Win repeatedly at rock, paper, scissors.

harder than it looked!

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