[Completed] Caveman Prophecies

[Zied]

Intro
This game was created in Java with the Swing library for GUI by a group consisting of me and three others: Michael Schrandt, Jeff Butler, Sijie Xia, and Aleksandr Melnikov. The purpose of creating the game was to implement design patterns and practice good OO techniques. Towards the end, the code got a little... meh, but we definitely learned a lot along the way. Don't take the game too seriously, enjoy the randomness (whether it's with you or against you), and have fun

Overview
The Caveman Prophecies is a dungeon crawler featuring a series of randomly generated maps littered with items and monsters. Touching an enemy during your travels will trigger a battle between your party and a monster party.

Objective
Navigate to the bottom floor of the dungeon by going down ladders to acquire the sacred meteor shard. You must then make your way back to the surface while staying alive.

The Battle System
You must select one of your party members (displayed on the left) and one monster (displayed on the right). Once two participants are selected, you may perform a regular or a special attack (by toggling the "Special Attack" button and clicking "Attack"). Be aware, if your attack does not finish off the enemy, it will respond with a regular or special attack against you! Once all monsters are defeated, the battle is won, and you return to the map. If your entire party is defeated on the other hand, the game is over.

Tips
-Items provide a permanent stat bonus just by picking them up.
-Special Attacks are chosen at random at the beginning of the game. You must discover their effects through trial and error.
-Your party is fully healed after each battle.
-Enemy encounters can be dangerous! Try avoiding them when possible.

Procedural Elements
Maps

Random Elements
Character creation (name, stats, picture, special attack)
Treasure (random item is selected)

The jar
http://ubuntuone.com/0Jhfpn6xnjVFZxtiL64ZhR


Screenshots

The beautiful title screen, courtesy of Aleksandr Melnikov.




The overworld (my part).




The battle. (Jeff's GUI, Sijie's characters and special attacks, Aleksandr's battle logic).

[Juzek]

I just played Caveman Prophecies, and thought was fun. do the spiders follow after the player, or do they just mozy around?
also, I am very curious to see what the meteor shards do, but I haven't been able to live long enough to find out.
good job with the special attacks.

[Zied]

Spider movement is completely random! I thought about making them move toward the player, but even with only 10 or so roaming around they ambush you and it's quite overwhelming. Also, don't be too disappointed when you finally get the meteor shard :p (all it does is unlock the top floor stairs allowing you to "win" the game)

[Frod]

In my first battle my party nearly wiped. Not realizing their health refilled after combat(I didn't read the tips section), I liked how there was some strategy involved with avoiding where the spiders might move to whilst seizing every treasure possible.

I also liked the idea of the characters being randomly assigned Special Abilities that the player had to discover on their own.

Personally, I would of liked to see some sort of stats screen on the map(or be able to access from), and a message if I lost the game.

[Zied]

Yeah, a stats menu was definitely in the original specifications but we never got around to doing it. Items were also supposed to be useable/equipable but that never happened either. The enter battle system was kind of thrown in at the last minute to be honest :p

[Moosader]

In my first battle my party nearly wiped.

Yeah, I played three times, and two of those times I hadn't picked up any items before getting into a battle, and I got creamed.
It seems like the items really make a huge difference.

[Spacechicken]

I think it was because two of my characters looked like Batman, but I was mostly able to spam regular attacks to win all of the fights. I was confused about the special attacks, one of them seemed to do a lot of damage and then also make you take a lot of damage. Regular attacks seemed a lot more reliable. I was able to win the game.