Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Incubator => Topic started by: Darren Grey on August 26, 2012, 04:13:51 AM
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Hey folks,
I apologise for being quiet here. Both my work and home life have been very busy, and that's not a good combination :/ However I'm still hoping to have a polished version of Rogue Rage ready for 15th September. Actually the polish is pretty much finished on it, and there's just a few touches here and there I want to make.
I've also been working on the web-site design which you can see here:
http://www.roguelikebundle.com/
Need to have pages on what is a roguelike, game descriptions, etc. Daniel Earnshaw, who did the Roguelike Radio logo, has kindly produced one for this site and has offered to make icons to represent each game in the bundle. I figure Rogue Rage will have a stylised red @ with a red mist rising (as in the game's rage mode). What would other's like?
I'd also like to cover the bundle via Roguelike Radio. We could have individual eps on each game, or have a bunch of us on a single ep talking about the lot. What do people think?
So, some things I need to confirm for people:
1. Are you still on for a September 15th launch?
2. Would you like a game icon produced by Daniel and how would you like it to look?
3. What are your thoughts on a Roguelike Radio ep and when are you free in the coming weeks?
Just to note I'll be away on holiday myself from 30/8 - 5/9.
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I'm not a part of the bundle, but speaking merely as a fan I think games should have their own episodes, except in the case of smaller games and whatnot. Of course, if there is not a lot to talk about and individual episodes end up being short, there's no reason not to just string them together I suppose.
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1. Yes! There will be plenty of time to reach remaining goal and to cram something extra too.
2. I'd better leave this question to Psiweapon. Maybe he will pixel something for us.
3. No problem after ARRP I think. Note I need to sync with Psi for RR episode. Not going to do it with only half a team. Maybe with Jo too if he can spare the time.
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1. Yes. I am waiting for your feedback :) (otherwise not much changes from the current version)
2. I have some icons of my own, so I think this will not be necessary.
3. I don't want to be in the episode for now, sorry :(
BTW do we have someone to build the Mac ports?
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Sadly I didn't even get an incubator beta done in time :'(
The real life hits! The real life hits! Your free time is gone. The real life laughs at you.
Will the Incubator live on after the bundle release?
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The Incubator wil hopefully remain as a permanent feature. All it needs is willing devs.
Z: I can't do Mac builds myself, but we can try and get some other devs or able players to help out.
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Oh, and regarding icons, I mean for the web-site, where a consistent style would be good.
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1. Yes! There will be plenty of time to reach remaining goal and to cram something extra too.
2. I'd better leave this question to Psiweapon. Maybe he will pixel something for us.
3. No problem after ARRP I think. Note I need to sync with Psi for RR episode. Not going to do it with only half a team. Maybe with Jo too if he can spare the time.
As always I am available at your leisure for whatever you may need. :-)
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I've e-mailed Mario Donick to see if he's still up for releasing LR 1.7 as part of the bundle. I'm a bit worried that if there's just 3 of us it's not much of a bundle :/
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1. Yes! There will be plenty of time to reach remaining goal and to cram something extra too.
2. I'd better leave this question to Psiweapon. Maybe he will pixel something for us.
3. No problem after ARRP I think. Note I need to sync with Psi for RR episode. Not going to do it with only half a team. Maybe with Jo too if he can spare the time.
As always I am available at your leisure for whatever you may need. :-)
Icon description...
A ninja grey-type alien with a mop???
A sludge vat?
A gun and a mop making an X behind a computer screen?
Some sort of space marine fending off an alien with a laser sword?
A skull-marked canister?? :3
Really, how many pixels and what style are we talking about?
Radio show: I'm all for it but it'll need some weeks for planning and synching and to give me time for buying a microphone X_D
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I just discovered that my laptop has a built in microphone, always on. It was not a known feature. Maybe you system is similar? Probably not...
-Jo
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An icon for Hydra Slayer could be simply a hydra (see http://www.roguetemple.com/z/animatedhydras.gif ) or a hydra + a weapon (like the icon, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roguetemple.hydroid ).
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I just discovered that my laptop has a built in microphone, always on. It was not a known feature. Maybe you system is similar? Probably not...
U.S. security forces. Always looking for terrorists everywhere. Hope you haven't sung any anti-government songs in front of your computer.
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Headsets are much preferred for podcast recordings. Laptop mic + earphones might be okay in some circumstances, but generally is not ideal.
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Just to note I'll be away on holiday myself from 30/8 - 5/9.
And I will be very busy from 6/9, so I will not be able to do/test any larger things after that date.
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1. Yes.
2. No necessarily -- LR has already an icon.
3. Would be happy to hear a LR episode on RL radio. Regarding date/time I don't know yet.
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The icon is for the web-site so we have a unified graphical style on the site. If you can give me a decent res version of the icon you have then that could be used as a base.
Also, at some point we'll need about 2 paragraphs of text for each game, stating what it's about and what separates it from other games. I'm happy to write this up myself and check it with people.
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I see. Will send thisto you via email.
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We are having second thoughts. The release planned for ARRP is sure thing but participation of Prime in the Roguelike Bundle may be undesirable.
The 15th/16th Sep release will have missing lore, tiles, and profession introductions. The game simply feels very much in development. It could reinforce the stereotype that roguelikes save for few big games are largely unpolished products ridden with bugs. Since this will be first graphical release for a game that lived a decade as pure ASCII creation a bugfix version released soon after is highly probable event. Of course the impression of buggy game will be made already. In a way the Roguelike Bundle will represent the whole genre. To be honest I have doubts whether Prime should really be included.
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Depending on how long you estimate a fix/completion....it might be well served to make it a shadowy outlined "mystery" release to "unlock" later for bundle purchasers. Indie Royale and whatnot often have special unlocks and such that show up later in a given release campaign.
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I think anyone who is downloading a roguelike bundle would be fine with this as long as you indeed patch it quickly. Of course, I cannot offer perspective from the outside.
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The Bundle is too small to lose PRIME...
To me, it seems that we have been too enthusiastic about this bundle.
The Incubator project was surely a great idea. Hydra Slayer got huge improvements as a result, and I had great fun playing the other games.
But to release the Bundle... Every game would have to be accepted by every member. PRIME is great, but I would have to test the graphical version, and think whether I really can call it "100% accessible". I am not sure whether Darren will be able to polish Rogue Rage in time (and I doubt that its ASCII is that accessible), and I have not played LambdaRogue at all.
Maybe we should just admit that ARRP was not realistic, and release it when it will be done.
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Vacations ended and both my and Psiweapon's time is more limited now. Quick patches can be done easily, but longer operations like finding and crafting lore for almost one hundred items (PRIME has 286 distinct item types at the moment but lore only for 194 of them) does take time. Graphical port also takes more work than pure ASCII.
I managed to compile windows build. On Tuesday there will be incubator-only release of what we managed to assemble up to this point.
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I didn't really have vacations, I merely switched activities.
These days I'm trying hard to add as many tiles as possible to PRIME... but really, how much time I have available and for what activities is something that fluctuates wildly.
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Hmm, well I'd really prefer to stick to the ARRP deadline, but I do agree that it's important we have a polished release. Since I've not publicised the Bundle widely we can easily push it back to a later date. When do folks think would be appropriate?
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I feel like Halloween is suiting for a roguelike bundle...does Europe do Halloween?
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Widely recognized even if only as a costumed binge drinking night.
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I think the wider audience that the bundle is supposed to cater for, at this point probably has little consciousness of ARRP and the bundle itself. So if I were you, I'd set up a later deadline for the release, focusing on a polished product rather than a prompt release. Then again, I'm a proponent of the SAD (slow application development) method, where a main principle is to "release late, release infrequently".
A boon that would come out of sticking to the September deadline, would be to create more awareness of ARRP, but that can probably be considered a secondary goal (at best) for the bundle. Maybe ARRP 2013 will see another Incubator bundle.
Sticking my nozzle where it doesn't belong; as always,
Minotauros
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Okay, I was just coming here to state that the LambdaRogue release will probably be just a 1.6.5 instead a 1.7 (because I think the changes do not justify such a big step in version number).
So if we say it is Halloween, I'd agree. I could use the time.
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Playing devil's advocate (or devil's PR) a bit: I think you guys need to decide if you haven't already, or make clearer if you have, what the actual purpose of the bundle is from a player's perspective.
What I mean by that is that I think it's clear what you guys all hope to get out of it: a concrete outcome to drive the first stage of the incubator, a bit of cross-promotion, maybe a mention on a couple of gaming sites, bring in some players who haven't tried roguelikes before and so on. But what isn't so obvious at least to me is what exactly is in it for the prospective player. What are the key selling points? What's the 'story'? Why should I, Mr. John Q. Videogamesplayer, give a crap?
The humble bundle etc. offer the purchaser a chance to buy a load of games a lot cheaper than they usually would (or a lot more expensively, if they choose to be very generous) and in doing so try out some games that they might not have done otherwise.
Obviously, that doesn't quite work here because (presumably) all of these games would be released for free anyway. So there's not a lot of financial incentive to waste bandwidth downloading them as a bundle when you could just grab the one(s) that you might be interested in individually and ignore the others - like you can with any other freeware game. You could emphasise the 'for charity' aspect of it but it seems like that's entirely optional anyway and something of an afterthought - the current website doesn't put a whole lot of emphasis on it. Of course the danger with really pushing that aspect is that it might seem a little disingenuous to people familiar with the origins of the bundle, but what the hell - I won't tell anyone if you won't.
Alternative spin, and I guess the one you're probably going for, is quality: i.e. these games have been through a rigorous and intensive development 'boot camp' and are the best of the best of the bestiest, quality 100% guaranteed. Of course in this case the games need to actually be really really good (as I'm sure they are), but then this is still really more of an outcome of the incubator itself, and the bundle is fairly irrelevant - the incubator is the focus of that story. Where the bundle might gain some ground however is if it were selective - if it represented the 'best' n games to have been developed in the incubator as selected by peer review (or public vote, whatever). It seems like you don't really have the number of games to do that, however, and so should delay. And of course it's maybe not the strongest pitch in any case - most people won't know you from Adam (or your games from ADOM) and have no idea what any guarantees of quality you might make would be worth - while those of us that do will probably play the games anyway, bundle or no.
Alternative alternative spin would be something more akin to something like the 7DRLs - that creating these games was a specific challenge/accomplishment that took place under certain conditions and restrictions and the bundle is the result of that incubator 'experiment'. In which case you shouldn't change the release date because what's on trial is not just the games themselves but also the process/environment that they were created in. This doesn't really present any benefit to the players but it's still something that might pique their interest and get them to try out the games.
Anyway, you get the idea - I think you need to focus in on what exactly you want the bundle to achieve and then from that make the decision about what should go into it and when it should be released. At the moment it seems a little like you're doing a bundle just because indie bundles are like, so totally in this season and I don't think that's a good enough reason on its own.
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For the bundle accessibility and quality are the two big selling points. These are traditional style roguelikes with an emphasis on polish, both in UI and gameplay. This stands out a little from general Incubator-ness which is mostly about improving games in whatever way the creators want. The Bundle has a more unified vision about making the games open to all players, as well as having the ideals of open source etc. Future bundles may have different visions and requirements.
So on the note of polish it makes sense to push back the deadline to achieve the quality desired in all projects. I'm not sure Hallowe'en makes any sense, but certainly around then seems like a good timeframe. Maybe Friday 2nd November? In the meantime we should all aim to have interim releases for ARRP regardless :)
Z, I do agree that we have to be stringent in what gets admitted to the Bundle. Do you really think Rogue Rage's ASCII is not accessible? Cause I can't contemplate putting graphics on top of it, easy though it would be to implement. The whole setting and style of the game is based around ASCII. What I could try and do is remake one of my older games (Gruesome or Toby the Trapper) with graphics.
On a further note, with a pushed back deadline it does open up the possibility of encouraging other games to join if we feel they can make the cut in time. It may be worth looking at some of the ARRP results for people we should pester ;)
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I think that many people avoid ASCII. But since it is a bundle, maybe they will learn that an ASCII game also can be interesting.
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Whoa, look at that "1000" in Darren's post count number. You sure are
spposting a lot!
2nd November, eh? Let me be blunt: PRIME + graphics = huge can of worms open. There is no way we can polish that beast until second of November. PRIME falls out of the Bundle despite our best wishes. We simply need to stop hurrying to met deadlines with it or we risk experiencing burnout. The game is a hobby project so it is a real threat for both me and Psi.
edit: Almost forgot. I will be providing feedback for new version Rogue Rage and LambdaRogue to make things more even. Then I'll consider stay of PRIME in the Incubator complete for now. We got tons of feedback for which we are grateful. Some conclusions still await implementation. There is lots and lots of things to do. Happy times!
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Hmm, perhaps the whole Bundle isn't a realistic endeavour... Most indie bundles are of pre-existing, finished games. Of course roguelikes are never really finished... ;)
I'd really like to have a bundle released, but 3 games just isn't a bundle.
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Thanksgiving bundle? Just in time for vacations when people have time to play?
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Uh, are there any American developers involved? :P
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You mean the entire planet doesn't revolve around US traditional holidays? No way!
I did assume, perhaps incorrectly, that December is a big time for vacations.
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I don't think vacations are a good time for game releases. People are off with family or on holiday instead of paying attention to new releases or the gaming press. A bog-standard Thursday is perhaps the best time to release a game.
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This could be interesting depending on how things pan out, so I figured I'd link it up:
http://www.bundledragon.com/
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Of course roguelikes are never really finished...
Actually, LambdaRogue 1.7 will be the last and final release of that game, so at least one might qualify for the "finished games" category ;)
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As an outsider, who is only a player and not a developer - I thought I'd share some thoughts I have about the roguelike bundle.
When I heard about it, I was very excited indeed. It sounded like a hand-picked collection of the best of roguelike gaming, that was collated by "experts" in the genre. The accessibility was one of the key selling points for me.
There are so many roguelikes to choose from and they all present often very different experiences, that it can bewildering for the newcomer to just settle on a couple and explore their depths. As soon as you decide to pursue your interest in roguelikes, you can easily become overwhelmed by the variety of choice available - without much in the way of a useful guide to steer your gaming. MUD's and MUSH'es present a similar daunting choice for the beginner, equally shrouded in mystery and diverse mechanics.
As a player, with only limited experience of roguelikes, it sounded like the roguelike bundle could deliver a "best of" menu of accessible roguelikes.
From what I can gather, at the moment, it's more a showcase opportunity for a small number of roguelikes, and it exerts a development pressure on the developers to "up their game" and polish their current projects to a release standard.
The premise is sound, but the expectations from the bundle buying public will already be set according to various indie game bundles systems now in play.
You could take a sweep of the roguelike genre, scoop the more accessible titles, more palatable to newcomers of the genre, and deliver that FIRST bundle fairly quickly - if the respective developers agree. Definitely hook up a donation/pay as much as you want style mechanic to the bundle - push the proceeds to charity - and deliver a cherry picked chunk of quality roguelike gaming to the masses.
As an example, titles I'd seek to include, would be the likes of Brogue, DoomRL, Zaga-33, TOME4, Powder, Lambdarogue, QuickHack. Established free to play titles, that really deliver on accessibility, and ease of play.
If you could present the current "cream of the crop" to newcomers, opening the door to the genre, you'd set the foundation for the roguelike bundle to become an established mechanism for delivering all sorts of roguelike projects in the future.
It would also serve to ease the pressure from the current bundle developers, and give them precious time to tune up their projects in readiness for the second bundle release. The "Incubator" release?
The 7DRL is an interesting competition style mechanic that showcases a wide variety of roguelike ideas, but not really accessible, established, polished efforts. The roguelike bundle could do this. Be the primary source of roguelike advice, and a focal point for showcasing the developers new projects, once they're at a stage for release.
Anyway, just throwing in my thoughts, coming at it from a purely players perspective. Whatever form it takes and whenever the bundle delivers, I can honestly say I'm still excited by it, and it could become THE definitive place to go for a community showcase of the best or more interesting roguelikes.
Keep up the good work folks.
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Thanks for your thoughts. I've had some thoughts along the same lines myself. Most bundles are not new games, they're established games that are at a complete and polished level. Moreover our attempt at using it as a driver for development hasn't really worked that well ;) It might be best if the Bundle is kept completely separate from the Incubator, and is instead used as a banner to attract the general public to the best of the genre.
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Like maybe the incubator is a tight developer co-op while the bundle might be released, say, after the annual roguelike contest that Doull puts on?
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I think the idea of a bundle of games selected for quality and accessibility is a good one. But, it's still undermined somewhat by the fact that these are (presumably) freeware games that it will usually be easier to download (and make sure you have the latest version etc.) direct from the developer's site.
So, what I propose is that the bundle goes a bit beyond just being a zip file of games and includes a bit more supplemental material as well. Since 'accessible' in roguelike terms still equals 'bleedin' obtuse' in common english the bundle could also contain a bunch of other stuff intended to ease new players into the world of roguelikes in general and the bundle of specific games in particular - simple, easy to understand documentation, introductions that explain the key features of each game, step-by-step player's guides, a suggested order to try the games in, lists of things to try out, tutorial videos... etc. etc. The bundle could then be essentially a 'one stop shop' for people new to roguelikes to help them over the various hurdles that are involved in getting into the genre.
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Big games companies tend to release / announce early in the week. This is because if it fucks up then you've got the rest of the week to fix things. Releasing at the end of the week is the worst because no one wants to spend Friday evening fixing stuff.