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Announcements => Other Announcements => Topic started by: Slash on June 20, 2014, 02:44:11 PM

Title: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on June 20, 2014, 02:44:11 PM
http://www.roguetemple.com/2014/06/19/2013-roguelike-world-survey-results/

The new major roguelikes:
* Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
* Faster Than Light
* TOME 4
* Dungeons of Dredmor
* Rogue Legacy
* Spelunky

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Zireael on June 20, 2014, 02:54:02 PM
How many nerdy girls is 'not enough'?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: DaBeowulf on June 20, 2014, 11:01:32 PM
This whole thread so far (apart from the link): LOL and :rolleyes: :)
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Kevin Granade on June 28, 2014, 08:27:37 AM
1.18 players?!?  Couldn't even get two players to rub together, how sad.

p.s. Yes I know . is British for comma or something.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 01, 2014, 07:27:50 AM
FTL and Spelunky are not roguelikes, so they can't be major roguelikes either.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 01, 2014, 08:52:50 AM
Agreed. Another survey that tells us nothing except that the current mavens of the roguelike tradition are giving away the farm to six man indie gaming companies' marketing departments (that is, the sixth guy).

"Yeah, so our definition of roguelike is: It doesn't have to have a terminal interface, it doesn't have to be fantasy themed, but it is supposed to have monsters that are the same as players (even though we don't even know what that means and no existing roguelikes have this feature), and the most important thing is permadeath, and also random dungeon generation is a high value factor. Also you have to have tiles, like hexagon tiles, or Penrose tiles, or a tiling of hyperbolic space. But remember, it doesn't have to be a terminal! But actually you don't have to have tiles, because platformers can be roguelike, that's just another high value factor."

"Oh yeah, and Mario has tiles."
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 01, 2014, 10:40:27 AM
Har har, better get with the times, fellas. No doubt the watering-out of the genre definition these latter years has been problematic in ways (and make no mistake: FTL and Spelunky may be cool stuffz, but it's a stretch to term them RLs). When the hype around procedural generation dies down a bit, and maybe some terms like "roguelite" or "stochastic bifurcating death whatever" sinks in with the general consciousness of gamers, we might come out the other end with a more solid understanding of the core RL genre. If we're seeing a kitschification/commercialization of the RL term, many of us have the advantage of being independent in the old sense – ie. not making money as developers, and so the $-guys can just bungle around all they will – they can't make us fall, as long as we're already crawling 8)

Terminal support, though, while nice, is no more of a requisite for calling something a RL than wooden pieces are a requisite for calling something chess? Ditto fantasy theme, I think. A rose by any other name, and all that.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 01, 2014, 11:33:56 AM
Terminal support, though, while nice, is no more of a requisite for calling something a RL than wooden pieces are a requisite for calling something chess? Ditto fantasy theme, I think. A rose by any other name, and all that.

The terminal interface is far more important than wood vs plastic.  It is a minimal interface with the primary effort of development put into the logic of the game itself, *not* the display.  This is a crucial difference.** 

The current usage of the term 'roguelike' would rewrite history, I'm sure many C64 and Atari games from the 80's would qualify as roguelikes today.  Perhaps we should consider Rivers Of Mud Multi-User-Dimension as the first multiplayer roguelike.   If not, then surely EQ or UO.  The 90's brought forth a bonanza of commercial roguelike offerings... by today's standards.

Today its like, "We've made a Roguelike game, it has a display and a user interface and you move stuff around - see its a roguelike!"  The term is currently meaningless.

**If you must have graphics, sounds, alternative input sources, these can be added later by, even by a third party (NotEye as an example).
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: reaver on July 01, 2014, 11:44:29 AM
Not this again
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 01, 2014, 01:59:04 PM
Well said, Omnivore. It continues to boggle my mind that people think a terminal interface is not a core element of what it is to be roguelike. It's heartening to see others recognize the importance of focusing on game logic as opposed to media (in roguelikes).
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 01, 2014, 03:34:00 PM
It continues to boggle my mind that people think a terminal interface is not a core element of what it is to be roguelike.

It's not. Original Rogue was also released with graphical tile version and it wasn't less a Rogue than ascii version. The gameplay is what matters, not how it looks.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 01, 2014, 04:14:45 PM
It continues to boggle my mind that people think a terminal interface is not a core element of what it is to be roguelike.

It's not. Original Rogue was also released with graphical tile version and it wasn't less a Rogue than ascii version. The gameplay is what matters, not how it looks.

Tile version was an add on to later ports.  Much later. 

[EDIT] However I agree that game play is what matters.  Had it been quicker and easier to implement tile graphics (and had the hardware been capable then) than it was to implement ANSI/ASCII I'm pretty sure they would have used it.  Not because of the looks, because it would have been simpler, faster, and less work.  Any development team, small or large, only has a limited amount of time and money to invest in producing a game.  Time spent doing 'gee-whiz' graphics is time not spent doing 'gee-whiz' game play.

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Darren Grey on July 01, 2014, 04:42:49 PM
Agreed. Another survey that tells us nothing except that the current mavens of the roguelike tradition are giving away the farm to six man indie gaming companies' marketing departments (that is, the sixth guy).

You really think indie game-makers have a whole person dedicated to marketing? Here's a pointer for you - Spelunky was made by *1* person. FTL was made by 2, with the music contracted out. I've never heard of any studio I'd term "indie" as employing a marketing person.

There's a lot of ignorance around about the term "roguelike" but it's not down to some evil marketing men in the background plotting to overthrow roguelikes.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: getter77 on July 01, 2014, 07:45:01 PM
LOOK UPON THY WORKS OF A FOCUS ON OVERWROUGHT TAXONOMY AND DESPAIR!

The essence of the thing is the spirit of the thing---Gestalt will dwarf bullet points looking for seemingly notable trees in the vast, primeval forest always and forever.

Discussions of Rogue should bear in mind a sensible requirement to watch all parts of the Matt Chat interview:

http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=3828.0
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 12:51:01 AM
It continues to boggle my mind that people think a terminal interface is not a core element of what it is to be roguelike.

It's not. Original Rogue was also released with graphical tile version and it wasn't less a Rogue than ascii version. The gameplay is what matters, not how it looks.

I'm astonished that someone who has been doing this for as long as you claim to have could believe that. You've probably never even seen the kind of computer that the original rogue was "released" for.

You really think indie game-makers have a whole person dedicated to marketing? Here's a pointer for you - Spelunky was made by *1* person. FTL was made by 2, with the music contracted out. I've never heard of any studio I'd term "indie" as employing a marketing person.

There's a lot of ignorance around about the term "roguelike" but it's not down to some evil marketing men in the background plotting to overthrow roguelikes.

No, I don't just think that. I think some of them employ entire companies to publish their games and that these companies are the worst offenders in trading on the prestige of the roguelike genre (see Risk of Rain -- stay tuned for the 2014 Roguelike World Survey for more on that). I think it's interesting how quick you are to go the other way and trade on the success of games that have little to do with the genre properly understood.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Rickton on July 02, 2014, 02:46:31 AM
Genres only matter for marketing anyway. I have no idea who first used the term "roguelike" to describe their own game, but I'm sure they did solely it to attract people who enjoyed rogue.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 02, 2014, 03:02:32 AM
Genres only matter for marketing anyway. I have no idea who first used the term "roguelike" to describe their own game, but I'm sure they did solely it to attract people who enjoyed rogue.

Which brings up an often overlooked aspect of Rogue and its early successors; free and open source**.  I wonder how many of today's games would be calling themselves roguelike if Rogue had been commercialized, properly trademarked, and closed source.   I believe ADOM was the first to violate the open source nature of the 'genre'.

**Rogue actually predates most FLOSS licensing.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 04:01:11 AM
Genres only matter for marketing anyway. I have no idea who first used the term "roguelike" to describe their own game, but I'm sure they did solely it to attract people who enjoyed rogue.

Not true. Genre is a notion from literary criticism and its usefulness is primarily critical. Whoever was first to describe their game as roguelike, probably did so in response to common usage that had developed among players. I would guess that they probably also did so to credit the ideas in their game appropriately, as at that time, the idea of a "roguelike genre" probably hadn't developed.

In particular, if a game publisher comes along and claims they are marketing a "roguelike game," which does not in any reasonable way reflect the idioms of the genre except in rather superficial ways (see Risk of Rain), that publisher is in for some well-deserved criticism. When someone claims their game is roguelike, then they are not just saying, "Hey, do you like roguelikes? Then buy my game!" They are asking that their game be judged on its position within the genre. Any fair-minded critic would have to then say: This game deals only superficially in the themes and idioms that make the roguelike genre unique and fails to engage in a meaningful way with previous work in the genre. Their claims to be selling a roguelike game can only be viewed as a cynical marketing ploy.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 02, 2014, 05:15:29 AM
I'm astonished that someone who has been doing this for as long as you claim to have could believe that.

ADOM for example has both ascii and tile version you can switch even during gameplay. When you switch to tile version does it suddenly stop being a roguelike? Besides most major and other roguelikes have tile versions. So what is your problem?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: chooseusername on July 02, 2014, 06:06:45 AM
Meaningless results, presented using graphical means that confuse any remaining meaning.  Even if the definition of roguelike is put aside, it could be argued that the games shown as larger type in the tag cloud, are simply relevant to the time the survey was made, and nothing identifiably more.

Regardless of what is or is not a roguelike, it would be nice to distinguish between authentic roguelikes, and what needy developers who want some of whatever cache associating with authentic roguelikes produce and label as such.  Authentic roguelike?  Classic roguelike?  Genuine roguelike?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 06:20:06 AM
I think tiles are okay as a fan add-on. I don't think it's good for people who produce actual roguelike game content (i.e. not tiles) to work on tiles, though.

There is a difference between an ascii interface and a terminal interface. A terminal interface is one where a stream of text with control characters is sent to a terminal or terminal emulator and this is how interaction is accomplished. This is the kind of interface you get on a public telnet server. ADOM has this kind of interface. It's okay to have other types of interfaces in addition to the terminal interface, although I don't think it's good for developers to spend too much time on them. On the other hand, you can have an ascii interface that looks like a terminal interface but is actually faked using something like SDL. A game with this kind of interface may not even have a terminal interface.

There is good work on this being done by the developer of NotEye and also itkatchev of diggr and incavead, on using terminal/telnet in ways that are more tile like. Personally, I like what tkatchev is doing with his wide character based telnet interface and tile enabled telnet client (especially the wide character stuff). This kind of stuff is good because, at least in principle, it could lead to standardized tile enabled clients for roguelike games that interoperate well with traditional interfaces. In principle, it could release developers from even thinking about tiles.

The value of terminal interfaces is not confined to nostalgia. Despite remaining one of the simplest ways to put together a game interface, it also remains one of the most flexible ways to deliver game content, share game records, provide multiplayer environments with spectating, etc. etc. Anyone can use a terminal interface on a remote server on any computer: just download putty if you're on windows, type telnet if you're on a real computer.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 02, 2014, 07:45:39 AM
type telnet if you're on a real computer.

I thought you were just trolling, but looks like it's worse than I thought. Your "definition" of a real computer can be easily replaced by even earlier type of computer, which were more real, of course. Linux or even unix are way too modern inventions to be associated to real computers.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 07:54:04 AM
type telnet if you're on a real computer.

I thought you were just trolling, but looks like it's worse than I thought. Your "definition" of a real computer can be easily replaced by even earlier type of computer, which were more real, of course. Linux or even unix are way too modern inventions to be associated to real computers.

This has been another technical insight from Krice, roguelike tile engineer.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 08:05:57 AM
I think tiles are okay as a fan add-on. I don't think it's good for people who produce actual roguelike game content (i.e. not tiles) to work on tiles, though.
I'm glad that most developers don't agree with you on this :)
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 08:15:30 AM
I think tiles are okay as a fan add-on. I don't think it's good for people who produce actual roguelike game content (i.e. not tiles) to work on tiles, though.
I'm glad that most developers don't agree with you on this :)

It's the players' loss. With most of the current fare, you'd be better off playing commercial games from the 90s. Better graphics, better mechanics and so numerous replay value doesn't matter. Which is why survey says a bunch of indie games written by clever undergraduates and a few real roguelikes that have existed in one form or another since the 90s.

But yeah, keep those tiles coming, devs!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 02, 2014, 08:35:36 AM
Lol. So much junk in this thread already. However, this:
Genre is a notion from literary criticism and its usefulness is primarily critical. Whoever was first to describe their game as roguelike, probably did so in response to common usage that had developed among players. [...] In particular, if a game publisher comes along and claims they are marketing a "roguelike game," which does not in any reasonable way reflect the idioms of the genre except in rather superficial ways (see Risk of Rain), that publisher is in for some well-deserved criticism.
is spot on. Just as an excellent collection of poetry will mostly suck as a novel1, a platformer with random level layouts does not a RL make. Also, some of the "new major RLs" here might turn out rather ephemeral (or there is a new demography of "roguelite" players, which is simply much bigger than the community of roguelike players – we gotta go in with our hyrdraulic systemses and blast'em out). Standing on the barricades to keep the RL definition alive and meaningful is a noble cause. Re: terminals etc. Whatever floats your boat, humans ::) I'm more interested in gameplay myself, and have always seen the usage of terminal UI as a practical solution rather than a holy doctrine. If the whole point is that gameplay trumps display mode, well, of course something like Dungeons of Dredmore is and remains a RL.

(Having said that, a terminal is indisputably better than a graphical display in oh so many ways, but a GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there in ASCII). A good graphic design for a RL should be simple to allow flexible development. However, I'm happy with curses or SDL, or a f*ing team of dedicated artists, if that's what fits a game's particular vision. Take something like URR: The dev is sinking a lot of work into procedural graphics, because that's an integral part of his game idea. Dismissing that as a waste of time is just stupid stubborn. There's already been many discussions on the forums about the pros and cons of displaying your game with typography or tiles.

As always,
Minotauros

1 The exception to this rule being, of course, Nabokov's Pale Fire ;)
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 09:00:18 AM
Re: terminals etc. Whatever floats your boat, humans ::) I'm more interested in gameplay myself, and have always seen the usage of terminal UI as a practical solution rather than a holy doctrine. If the whole point is that gameplay trumps display mode, well, of course something like Dungeons of Dredmore is and remains a RL.

(Having said that, a terminal is indisputably better than a graphical display in oh so many ways, but a GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there in ASCII). A good graphic design for a RL should be simple to allow flexible development. However, I'm happy with curses or SDL, or a f*ing team of dedicated artists, if that's what fits a game's particular vision. Take something like URR: The dev is sinking a lot of work into procedural graphics, because that's an integral part of his game idea. Dismissing that as a waste of time is just stupid stubborn. There's already been many discussions on the forums about the pros and cons of displaying your game with typography or tiles.


A terminal interface does not mean ASCII. See tkatchev's work with unicode.

The discussions on the forums here, as far I can tell, show not that there's a strong argument for tiles or even any real recognition of the technical advantages of the terminal (see persistent talk about "ASCII"), but that many people are personally invested in projects involving tiles (in some cases primarily or nothing but tiles).
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Darren Grey on July 02, 2014, 09:54:20 AM
I thought you were just trolling, but looks like it's worse than I thought.

I think he's trying to out-troll you, Krice!

No, I don't just think that. I think some of them employ entire companies to publish their games and that these companies are the worst offenders in trading on the prestige of the roguelike genre (see Risk of Rain -- stay tuned for the 2014 Roguelike World Survey for more on that).

Risk of Rain does not anywhere on its entire web-site use the word "roguelike". Not a single instance. There's not even "roguelite", "roguelikelike", "rogue" or even, heaven forbid, "rougelike". This marketing company they're employing to debase the term roguelike is doing a really bad job of it!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 02, 2014, 10:10:06 AM
(Having said that, a terminal is indisputably better than a graphical display in oh so many ways, but a GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there in ASCII)
A terminal interface does not mean ASCII. See tkatchev's work with unicode.
Obviously, a "GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there" in Unicode or other kinds of terminal display. *yawn* Please excuse me for assuming you could make that quantum leap of interpretation ;)

The discussions on the forums here, as far I can tell, show not that there's a strong argument for tiles or even any real recognition of the technical advantages of the terminal (see persistent talk about "ASCII"), but that many people are personally invested in projects involving tiles (in some cases primarily or nothing but tiles).
So what if some developers (and a growing amount of players) like tiles? As long as a game is playable locally on my machine, I couldn't care less which tools the developer used, whether the application opens a separate window, plays in the terminal, or whatever. (I'd even try something that required telnet, even if the prospect seems about as abhorrent to me as playing Crawl or ADOM with tiles.) I happen to have a window manager installed, and I care more about how a game plays than self-congratulatory whining about how everyone are less hardcore than me. Show us the code, man.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 10:47:50 AM
Risk of Rain does not anywhere on its entire web-site use the word "roguelike". Not a single instance. There's not even "roguelite", "roguelikelike", "rogue" or even, heaven forbid, "rougelike". This marketing company they're employing to debase the term roguelike is doing a really bad job of it!

"Risk of Rain is a platformer with roguelike elements." First sentence in the Steam description and conspicuously ubiquitous wherever Risk of Rain is mentioned, including the wikipedia page. It's almost as if there's a coordinated campaign to associate the game with the word "roguelike." But you're right, the developers show a lot of integrity not letting their publisher write their web page for them.

I'm impressed with the careful arguments you've made here, Darren. I should've just checked the developers' web site. Then I'd know what's up.

(Having said that, a terminal is indisputably better than a graphical display in oh so many ways, but a GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there in ASCII)
A terminal interface does not mean ASCII. See tkatchev's work with unicode.
Obviously, a "GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there" in Unicode or other kinds of terminal display. *yawn* Please excuse me for assuming you could make that quantum leap of interpretation ;)

It also closes off possibilities. Unicode is not a trivial point, as you would have it.

Quote
So what if some developers (and a growing amount of players) like tiles?

Where are these players? What I see is that the roguelike games that have developed recently are still in the round off error range on google trends and the older ones have been in steady decline. Maybe you meant proportionally more, as players come to grips with the reality that the nethack dev team is gone.

Quote
As long as a game is playable locally on my machine, I couldn't care less which tools the developer used, whether the application opens a separate window, plays in the terminal, or whatever. (I'd even try something that required telnet, even if the prospect seems about as abhorrent to me as playing Crawl or ADOM with tiles.)

I'm amazed how disconnected from traditional roguelikes you profess to be. And it's not about being hardcore, it's about recognizing what's unique and excellent about the genre and focusing on that.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 10:58:00 AM
I'm glad that most developers don't agree with you on this :)

It's the players' loss.
Which players? Mushroom patch and a couple others? If I stuck to ASCII, admittedly that 10% of development time I spend on graphics could go into gameplay. But wait, the game would long be dead, because there'd be no chance to sell it, and I'd have to be back working at an office. Thank you, tiles!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 11:09:11 AM
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=nethack&cmpt=q

Those players.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dwarf%20fortress%2C%20nethack&cmpt=q

And those players.

Dwarf Fortress is way bigger than any roguelike game written in the last fifteen years. It's not a real terminal interface, but if you have ideas and a simple, nongraphical interface, there are players.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 11:15:40 AM
Both of these games have both ASCII and graphical interfaces...
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 11:17:16 AM
Irrelevant. You really believe nethack needed tiles to get people to take it seriously?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 11:20:35 AM
Well it did for me. But irrelevant, have a nice day.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 02, 2014, 11:35:31 AM
A "GUI also opens up some possibilities that are not there" in Unicode or other kinds of terminal display.
It also closes off possibilities. Unicode is not a trivial point, as you would have it.

Obviously, it closes off possibilities – if not, there wouldn't be this discussion. And yes, you can do wonderful things with Unicode. The fact remains, though, that GUI vs. terminal UI have differing strengths/weaknesses, and there's nothing inherently "un-roguelike" about going for a graphical display. The genre is developing with the times, and it seems to me that trying to shape and benefit from this evolution is a better course of action than complaining about the recent deployment of 20 year old technology in a 30 year old genre.

Quote
So what if some developers (and a growing amount of players) like tiles?
Where are these players? What I see is that the roguelike games that have developed recently are still in the round off error range on google trends and the older ones have been in steady decline. Maybe you meant proportionally more, as players come to grips with the reality that the nethack dev team is gone.
Not quite sure where you're headed with this. Yes, I guess I meant "proportionally more", or maybe even that a decline in eg. nethack player recruitment has something to do with the fact that "a growing amount of players" prefer GUIs to games that can be played on a terminal. And at the end of the day, I don't give a rat's ass how google trendy RLs are. Also, you'd be surprised disgusted at how many people on this forum actually prefer tiles, if given the choice.

Quote
As long as a game is playable locally on my machine, I couldn't care less which tools the developer used, whether the application opens a separate window, plays in the terminal, or whatever. (I'd even try something that required telnet, even if the prospect seems about as abhorrent to me as playing Crawl or ADOM with tiles.)
I'm amazed how disconnected from traditional roguelikes you profess to be. And it's not about being hardcore, it's about recognizing what's unique and excellent about the genre and focusing on that.
Heh. Is your point seriously that using curses and being able to play over telnet constitute "what's unique and excellent about the genre" (rather than actual gameplay)? If so, I really just don't get where you're coming from.

Re: Dwarf Fortress. Its big because of innovative and well executed ideas, not because it uses a terminal interface, you silly billy. Do you think DF would have flopped if it could only be played with tiles? :D

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 01:26:53 PM
Quote
So what if some developers (and a growing amount of players) like tiles?
Where are these players? What I see is that the roguelike games that have developed recently are still in the round off error range on google trends and the older ones have been in steady decline. Maybe you meant proportionally more, as players come to grips with the reality that the nethack dev team is gone.
Not quite sure where you're headed with this. Yes, I guess I meant "proportionally more", or maybe even that a decline in eg. nethack player recruitment has something to do with the fact that "a growing amount of players" prefer GUIs to games that can be played on a terminal. And at the end of the day, I don't give a rat's ass how google trendy RLs are. Also, you'd be surprised disgusted at how many people on this forum actually prefer tiles, if given the choice.

I would say this reflects regression to the mean. As the standard bearers faded out of active development (nethack, ADOM, mainly), nothing really picked up the ball, until much later with DCSS. (Probably ToME deserves mention here as well.)

Quote
Quote
As long as a game is playable locally on my machine, I couldn't care less which tools the developer used, whether the application opens a separate window, plays in the terminal, or whatever. (I'd even try something that required telnet, even if the prospect seems about as abhorrent to me as playing Crawl or ADOM with tiles.)
I'm amazed how disconnected from traditional roguelikes you profess to be. And it's not about being hardcore, it's about recognizing what's unique and excellent about the genre and focusing on that.

Heh. Is your point seriously that using curses and being able to play over telnet constitute "what's unique and excellent about the genre" (rather than actual gameplay)? If so, I really just don't get where you're coming from.

I'm saying that using the minimal, most flexible method of interfacing with game logic is a huge part of what makes roguelikes great. And you wildly underrate the importance of university mainframe and later multiuser (both university and public) UNIX systems in popularizing and sustaining interest in roguelike games from the beginning to this very day. DCSS grew out of this environment and seems to be the only big new thing in roguelike games other than indie games trying to be even more retro. (Or so survey says.)

Terminal interfaces are straightforwardly better for the type of games that have traditionally been called roguelikes. As terminals have become more capable (or rather, more capable terminals have become more widely/easily available) and the internet has brought more people into its social aspect, this is even more true now than it has been in the past. Terminals provide quick, powerful interfaces with instant multiplayer.

Quote
Re: Dwarf Fortress. Its big because of innovative and well executed ideas, not because it uses a terminal interface, you silly billy. Do you think DF would have flopped if it could only be played with tiles? :D

Innovative and well executed (well enough anyway) ideas that took form in a graphic free setting. Tarn realized graphics were holding him back and looked to the roguelike approach for a solution. So to answer your question, I don't think Dwarf Fortress would have been made at all by a developer who spends his time on tiles.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 01:30:51 PM
Do you realize that using basic tiles is almost as easy as using ASCII? I believe the ASCII interface of DF are just unicode symboles rendered into sprites.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 02:58:40 PM
I've seen some bad tile sets, but I don't think I've ever seen one so bad it would've been more work to render a code page in MS paint.

It still seems counterproductive to do something almost as easy, but worse than, using a terminal.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: reaver on July 02, 2014, 03:25:47 PM
Bad tiles are a pain -- they look like drawings of action figures for 5yr olds. Inventory items shown using 4x4 tiles or something horrendous like in some games make my eyes bleed.
That said, graphics offer new possibilities that ASCII can only try to emulate.

Mushroom, how would you visualize a pile of items at the feet of an orc standing in a poison cloud with an arrow that is just about to hit him, whereas the tile that the orc is standing is semi-illuminated by a nearby torch?
All this is trivial with graphics. What would you do with ASCII? print 'o', and 'l'ook to read a paragraph?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 04:07:05 PM
Well, reaver, I would go with the 'o' option, perhaps with a colored background to indicate that he's standing in a poison cloud.

I don't think your example is trivial with graphics, or at least if it is, I haven't seen any instances of it being successfully rendered with tiles in a roguelike game. I think it could be trivial in a first person shooter with an actual graphics engine, but that's another story. I'm curious about where you've seen a roguelike game that features the kind of time granularity where an orc could be "just about" to get hit by an arrow.

Obviously, graphics offer new possibilities. I don't see a lot of evidence of those possibilities blowing away the old standards within the genre, but I grant you that someday someone might come up with a really great way to use tiles in roguelike games (well, maybe DCSS webtiles). Even so, I would much rather see these innovations come in the context of a widely used standard for tile-enriched terminal/telnet interfaces than some local play only SDL-based download, which is locked into an isolated one player mode.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: reaver on July 02, 2014, 04:35:07 PM
I don't think your example is trivial with graphics, or at least if it is, I haven't seen any instances of it being successfully rendered with tiles in a roguelike game.


Because tile devs are lazy ;)

I'm curious about where you've seen a roguelike game that features the kind of time granularity where an orc could be "just about" to get hit by an arrow.

ADOM, when a rock hits you, the rock character overwrites the player character and then it vanishes.

Obviously, graphics offer new possibilities. I don't see a lot of evidence of those possibilities blowing away the old standards within the genre, but I grant you that someday someone might come up with a really great way to use tiles in roguelike games (well, maybe DCSS webtiles). Even so, I would much rather see these innovations come in the context of a widely used standard for tile-enriched terminal/telnet interfaces than some local play only SDL-based download, which is locked into an isolated one player mode.

You don't see evidence because nobody bothers, unfortunately. If people spent more than 1% in graphics like they do now, we could have better games. Graphics CAN enhance gameplay and the overall experience.
Widely used standard? We must be living in parallel universes, or you're being *very* optimistic that you entertain yourself that this is even remotely a possibility.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 02, 2014, 05:34:46 PM
I'm curious about where you've seen a roguelike game that features the kind of time granularity where an orc could be "just about" to get hit by an arrow.

ADOM, when a rock hits you, the rock character overwrites the player character and then it vanishes.


Well, I guess that goes to show no tiles are necessary.

Quote
You don't see evidence because nobody bothers, unfortunately. If people spent more than 1% in graphics like they do now, we could have better games. Graphics CAN enhance gameplay and the overall experience.
Widely used standard? We must be living in parallel universes, or you're being *very* optimistic that you entertain yourself that this is even remotely a possibility.

Well, I don't really want them to bother. I want them to bother less than they currently do. I think graphics enhance certain kinds of games, but not as much roguelikes.

On widely used standards, I think the general idea is to assign non-character code point to tiles defined in some bitmap -- ideally downloaded automatically from the connected server or some repository. A nice feature of unicode wide characters is that they produce glyphs set in a square shaped space on the terminal equal to two standard width characters side by side. You can therefore make a map display with nice square map tiles (this is already supported in every major terminal emulator in common use, e.g. xterm, gnome-terminal, putty, etc.) and standard ascii characters (centered in the square tile) and various Asian characters (perhaps less interesting). Moreover, you can freely mix standard width and wide characters. This allows for a lot of fun and games with block elements and box drawing characters as well.

Anyway, throw in tiles and you've got something. As I've mentioned, this tkatchev guy already has a telnet client that does this sort of thing with tiles (haven't tried it), although I believe his client uses a tile set for his own game. If tile sets were pretty standard, usable via curses, and didn't require a custom client, then I'd be totally fine with them (though I still wouldn't use them, probably).
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 02, 2014, 06:24:14 PM
... how would you visualize a pile of items at the feet of an orc standing in a poison cloud with an arrow that is just about to hit him, whereas the tile that the orc is standing is semi-illuminated by a nearby torch?
All this is trivial with graphics. What would you do with ASCII? print 'o', and 'l'ook to read a paragraph?

I think of roguelike games as being abstract games in the first place.  @, and o, in the context of a roguelike display, are symbols, not visualizations.  They're like the lowercase 'k' in a diagrammed chessboard in a newspaper chess column, or like the carved wooden horsehead on a chessboard.  They represent the *idea* of a warrior mounted on a horse, to some extent - but they are an abstract symbol, not a depiction.

So, yeah, the orc is an 'o'.  The gas cloud is a background color.  That's the top-level tactical display that the player needs to see.  All the rest of that stuff is available to the 'l'ook command. 

But let me ask a different question:  How do you make a tile that is instantly recognizable as an orc, and absolutely does not get mistaken for anything else, if you keep varying your symbol for all these nontactical or para-tactical considerations?  If the player sees a different symbol (because you decided that the lighting was different or whatever) how does the player know - for sure - that it isn't a different kind of creature? 

That's what I want in a roguelike interface; I want a stable set of symbols, where I can tell exactly what I'm looking at because all instances of the same thing do in fact look exactly alike.  I don't want to play chess with a chess set where the pawns look like different pieces; they are all pawns, they present the same kind of threat, they should be represented by the same symbol.  If one of them looks different, I as a player want there to be a reason why, and it needs to be a reason important enough to justify the cognitive load of learning what a different piece looks like. 

If I've been playing some tiled game long enough to look at a tile and say "orc" when there are fifteen little things that are a tiny bit different because of lighting, arrow about to reach, sickly, low on hitpoints, armed with different weapon, etc, etc, etc, ....  and then it turns out that thing I looked at isn't actually an orc but instead some kind of thing that presents a tactically different threat;  at that point I feel that I've been abused by the game's interface.  If it happens a few more times, and especially if little induced mistakes like that cost me games - I am likely to rage-quit and go play something else.

And that's why I prefer character displays.  Specifically because they do NOT invite that kind of infinite variation in symbols. 
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 02, 2014, 07:01:23 PM
I'll try not to be too redundant/trollish ;)

I'm saying that using the minimal, most flexible method of interfacing with game logic is a huge part of what makes roguelikes great. And you wildly underrate the importance of university mainframe and later multiuser (both university and public) UNIX systems in popularizing and sustaining interest in roguelike games from the beginning to this very day. DCSS grew out of this environment and seems to be the only big new thing in roguelike games other than indie games trying to be even more retro. (Or so survey says.) <snip relevant arguments>

I'm not really underestimating the importance (current, as well as historic) of this, just saying telnet play doesn't particularly interest me, personally. And I definitely agree that as a format/api/whatever, something that fits into terminal output is extremely portable. For my part, though, I just like running my applications locally, and fiddling with my little game projects from time to time. Terminal support is on my current project's wishlist (also because it's a mode I'd use myself), but for now I'm just plugging away with pygame, even having fun experimenting with tiny animations and stuff :P

re: "the only big new thing", consider that making a major RL takes a decade, as well as immense skill and luck, and also that these kinds of polls will always be flooded with ignoramuses voting for stuff like The Binding of Isaac.

Tarn realized graphics were holding him back and looked to the roguelike approach for a solution. So to answer your question, I don't think Dwarf Fortress would have been made at all by a developer who spends his time on tiles.

This almost becomes a tautology: If Tarn hadn't had the time to design DF, there would be no DF :'( I see your point that opting for a terminal(like) interface leaves more time and room for game development. There's also the argument that there are no fancy graphics to lead attention away from bad gameplay. If your aesthetically awesome game sucks underneath, people might still get fooled by the graphics, but a game with very basic UI just needs to be well designed to raise any positive attention at all. All of this has been discussed to death already, perhaps.

At the end of the day, UI is mostly just look and feel, though. Earlier, you're talking about how "the internet has brought more people into its social aspect," and one effect of this is that the cost of game art also goes down. Why shouldn't a designer team up with a graphical artist or tap into game-icons.net (http://game-icons.net) or opengameart.org (http://opengameart.org), if s/he so wishes? And for one-person teams, finishing a relatively fleshed-out RL takes years. If a few weeks or more is spent by the developer making crappy (or awesome) art, it probably just amounts to a drop in the ocean. Terminal output of RLs are almost inherently beautiful and pleasant UIs, I'll grant you that, but if someone wants a more specialized GUI for their game, I see no fundamental problem in that.

@bear: I think there's room to experiment with graphical UIs that extrapolate on the abstractness you're talking about. For instance, my current game is (going to be) using footprints for critters (atm, they're mostly bitmap fonts). Too bad it's a pseudorealistic setting, with most opponents/NPCs being represented by shoe/boot prints. It would probably work better for a setting with humanoids (represented by a pair of barefoot prints), or even furries (DuckburgRL, based on Carl Barks)! Anyway, footprints can for instance be colorcoded to distinguish types (yellow feline paws for lion, red feline paws for tiger). In comparison, take something like Gearhead, with lots of NPCs to keep track of, and it's a hassle to find the one you're looking for. In a GUI, they could have name tags with their initials, or attached icons to indicate they are questgivers, or whatever. Using a GUI also makes it easier to put more tactical info directly in the map (health bars, animated hits/misses), relieving the player of having to glance over at the message log every turn. Although CoQ is one example of a game that cramps a lot of info into a terminal, I think that in itself represents a lot of work. And I'm sure something based on cave paintings might be awesome, or lifting some ideas from Oryx (artist for Brogue and Infra Arcana, amongst others) and abstracting them even further, or someone finally making the ultimate 3D typography RL (http://www.adom.de/adom/gallery/adom.jpg).

tl;dr: I wouldn't dismiss GUIs out of hand ;)

As always,
Minotauros

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 02, 2014, 07:07:03 PM
And that's why I prefer character displays.  Specifically because they do NOT invite that kind of infinite variation in symbols.
How about mistaking a blue 'h' with purple 'h', i.e. a dwarf with a mindflayer?

Tiles have one big advantage over characters. You are able to see the terrain underneath items and creatures. Ever searched a whole level to find a staircase hidden below an apple?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 02, 2014, 07:14:44 PM
And that's why I prefer character displays.  Specifically because they do NOT invite that kind of infinite variation in symbols.
How about mistaking a blue 'h' with purple 'h', i.e. a dwarf with a mindflayer?

Tiles have one big advantage over characters. You are able to see the terrain underneath items and creatures. Ever searched a whole level to find a staircase hidden below an apple?

Wow, I just realized, you don't even  play classic roguelikes!  I can't remember seeing a roguelike where it was possible to drop an item on a staircase.  Maybe my memory is more shot than I think but...
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 02, 2014, 07:29:41 PM
Try ADOM.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 02, 2014, 07:31:09 PM
Try ADOM.

As always,
Minotauros

That explains it.  I don't play ADOM due to it being closed source.  I feel it was a betrayal of the rogue-like community. 
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: chooseusername on July 02, 2014, 07:49:30 PM
Try ADOM.

As always,
Minotauros

That explains it.  I don't play ADOM due to it being closed source.  I feel it was a betrayal of the rogue-like community.
If you have views which are so extremely uncommon and to the common view unreasonable, then perhaps the relevance of your other views is questionable?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 02, 2014, 08:01:46 PM
Try ADOM.

As always,
Minotauros

That explains it.  I don't play ADOM due to it being closed source.  I feel it was a betrayal of the rogue-like community.
If you have views which are so extremely uncommon and to the common view unreasonable, then perhaps the relevance of your other views is questionable?

My views are neither uncommon nor unreasonable within my peer group.  And before you ask, no I don't support commercialized roguelikes either.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 02, 2014, 08:19:08 PM

@bear: I think there's room to experiment with graphical UIs that extrapolate on the abstractness you're talking about.
....
In a GUI, they could have name tags with their initials, or attached icons to indicate they are questgivers, or whatever. Using a GUI also makes it easier to put more tactical info directly in the map (health bars, animated hits/misses), relieving the player of having to glance over at the message log every turn.

Oh, definitely true that.  Attaching name tags, health bars, quest giver icons, etc. is all extending tactically and strategically important symbolic information, and I like all of it!  The more the merrier, that isn't the problem at all!  Where I have a problem is when we allow (visual) depiction to start distorting or obscuring (symbolic) representation - when I can observe that something is different but not know whether the difference is intended to represent something tactically or strategically important. 

There is a very necessary role for symbols in an abstract game. Symbols must not be distorted (or embellished or added to...) if there is even the slightest chance that distortion will make their interpretation as symbols uncertain.  As long as you can avoid that possibility, I have no problem with sighted people getting all happy about pretty pictures.  And if you find a symbolic vocabulary that allows you to graphically add more unambiguous information to the display (health bars, etc) that's awesome too - but then don't distort those symbols either!

Roguelike games present a sort of extreme here, because we need to distinguish, with certainty, among literally hundreds of different kinds of tactically different entities within the games.  We need those tactically different entities represented as symbols to show their tactical identities, and we need to know whether anything we're looking at does or does not represent a different symbol as opposed to some minor variation or circumstance applied to a known symbol. 

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 02, 2014, 08:32:53 PM

How about mistaking a blue 'h' with purple 'h', i.e. a dwarf with a mindflayer?

If you're playing on a term that uses blue and purple colors you can't differentiate, and you haven't gone and fixed your term color settings, that is not the developer's fault. 

On the other hand, if the developer used colors for blue and purple that you can't differentiate, and attached tactically important differences to the distinction...  and you have no access to the palette because it's not in your term settings? Then you can't distinguish blue from purple in that game, and it is unfair and it is the developer's fault, and you're almost guaranteed to lose.

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 03, 2014, 12:15:26 AM
And that's why I prefer character displays.  Specifically because they do NOT invite that kind of infinite variation in symbols.
How about mistaking a blue 'h' with purple 'h', i.e. a dwarf with a mindflayer?

Tiles have one big advantage over characters. You are able to see the terrain underneath items and creatures. Ever searched a whole level to find a staircase hidden below an apple?

I've definitely played games with terminal-ish interfaces where monsters' identities are sometimes confusing, but then again I come across a lot of line graphs with color coding I find confusing as well. A lot of people are fairly insensitive to the issue of color deficiency. It's definitely better to provide high contrast UIs -- tiles could help there, but they don't always. Some games provide a text summary of monsters in view in one of the margins to the side of the map, which I think is the right way to go on this issue. You're absolutely right that this is something can be and often is done badly.

re: "the only big new thing", consider that making a major RL takes a decade, as well as immense skill and luck, and also that these kinds of polls will always be flooded with ignoramuses voting for stuff like The Binding of Isaac.

I don't think it's been true historically that major roguelikes have needed a decade of development to catch on and achieve prominence in the genre. It surely takes a lot of work, skill, and luck.

Quote
Tarn realized graphics were holding him back and looked to the roguelike approach for a solution. So to answer your question, I don't think Dwarf Fortress would have been made at all by a developer who spends his time on tiles.

This almost becomes a tautology: If Tarn hadn't had the time to design DF, there would be no DF :'( I see your point that opting for a terminal(like) interface leaves more time and room for game development. There's also the argument that there are no fancy graphics to lead attention away from bad gameplay. If your aesthetically awesome game sucks underneath, people might still get fooled by the graphics, but a game with very basic UI just needs to be well designed to raise any positive attention at all. All of this has been discussed to death already, perhaps.

I don't see it being a tautology. It's not purely a matter of time either.

Quote
At the end of the day, UI is mostly just look and feel, though. Earlier, you're talking about how "the internet has brought more people into its social aspect," and one effect of this is that the cost of game art also goes down. Why shouldn't a designer team up with a graphical artist or tap into game-icons.net (http://game-icons.net) or opengameart.org (http://opengameart.org), if s/he so wishes? And for one-person teams, finishing a relatively fleshed-out RL takes years. If a few weeks or more is spent by the developer making crappy (or awesome) art, it probably just amounts to a drop in the ocean. Terminal output of RLs are almost inherently beautiful and pleasant UIs, I'll grant you that, but if someone wants a more specialized GUI for their game, I see no fundamental problem in that.

UI is not just about look and feel. I really can't believe how far people here have gotten from the roots of the genre. It's not about look and feel. It's about functionality. Graphical interfaces are less functional than terminal interfaces in critical ways. (Also, regarding mouse support, all modern terminal emulators understand mouse events.) They don't have the kind of interoperability and built-in network friendliness that terminals have.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mounta1nman on July 03, 2014, 12:36:28 AM
It's not a real terminal interface, but if you have ideas and a simple, nongraphical interface, there are players.

I haven't caught up with this thread yet, but this made me chuckle.. First terminal interface was necessary, but then it shifts to non-graphical is A-OK. Haha.

anyway, besides that funny... er, and what is non-graphical? you mean text-adventure? haha. (no offense to text-adventure-enthusiasts.)

and yes, people prefer less abstract symbols over more abstract symbols. for instance, I prefer somewhat-artistic chess pieces over P-R-K-B-Q-K etc. I hope that appreciation isn't less than obvious.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 03, 2014, 12:40:42 AM
It's not a real terminal interface, but if you have ideas and a simple, nongraphical interface, there are players.

I haven't caught up with this thread yet, but this made me chuckle.. First terminal interface was necessary, but then it shifts to non-graphical is A-OK. Haha.

anyway, besides that funny... er, and what is non-graphical? you mean text-adventure? haha. (no offense to text-adventure-enthusiasts.)

and yes, people prefer less abstract symbols over more abstract symbols. for instance, I prefer somewhat-artistic chess pieces over P-R-K-B-Q-K etc. I hope that appreciation isn't less than obvious.

Wow, good post.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: getter77 on July 03, 2014, 03:41:33 AM
The terminal is just one thing---where history truly went wrong is Hyperbolic planes never taking off proper!   Also, the predominant terminal focus on Squares shall rouse The Old Ones...the Hexes...from their murderous, deified slumber.   I also blame too much impetus on Bitmap in the formative years without proper mind being paid to Vector wranglings outside of the damned Flash situation/Adobe's lack of vision---they should've advanced together roughly apace for what wonders each may bring.


Imagine an ADOM in the trappings of HyperRogue 4.x!  A world to truly explore~   8)


Beware the Alice's rabbit hole that is tremendous minutiae folks---it robs you of the ability to dream big and feel things out.

Surprised there's been no chatter on The Ground Gives Way yet...but it is good to see incavead and such getting some love of a sort.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 03, 2014, 04:39:07 AM


Imagine an ADOM in the trappings of HyperRogue 4.x!  A world to truly explore~   8)


Yeah, ADOM in a setting where the area enclosed by a circle increases exponentially with its radius. Sounds awesome! Imagine HyperADOM where a town contains more tiles than you see in an entire game of ADOM.

Truly a world to explore~!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: miki151 on July 03, 2014, 08:22:07 AM
Tiles have one big advantage over characters. You are able to see the terrain underneath items and creatures. Ever searched a whole level to find a staircase hidden below an apple?

Wow, I just realized, you don't even  play classic roguelikes!  I can't remember seeing a roguelike where it was possible to drop an item on a staircase.  Maybe my memory is more shot than I think but...
Wow, good one! I've won Nethack more than a dozen of times, and ADOM too. The only game I know where you can't do this is Brogue (?). And I was talking about things obscuring other things in general. Boy, it's difficult to get an argument across in here...
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 03, 2014, 08:31:31 AM
Try ADOM.
That explains it.  I don't play ADOM due to it being closed source.  I feel it was a betrayal of the rogue-like community.

Okay. Nethack, then ;)

As always,
Mintauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 03, 2014, 08:36:27 AM
I plead lack of sleep and caffeine.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 03, 2014, 08:44:00 AM
Surprised there's been no chatter on The Ground Gives Way yet...
Seems interesting ... No joy with Wine, though, I'm afraid :(

Imagine an ADOM in the trappings of HyperRogue 4.x!  A world to truly explore~   8)
Yeah, ADOM in a setting where the area enclosed by a circle increases exponentially with its radius. Sounds awesome! Imagine HyperADOM where a town contains more tiles than you see in an entire game of ADOM.

Truly a world to explore~!
Yes, god forbid anyone should try to make something innovative.

I don't see it being a tautology.
That's because, if you did, you might have to revise your preconceived notions a tiny bit ;)
We're probably not getting much further with this discussion right now, so I'll leave the dead horse for you to keep floggin, if you wish.

As always,
Mintauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 03, 2014, 10:09:15 AM
You should watch Youtube videos of Gordon Overkill playing ADOM (recent Litithia ones, but can't remember which). He makes interesting observations about good and bad things about tiles. One of them is that you can see immediately how much HP the monster has. It's a simple but very effective thing. Also, the movement of similar kinds of monsters is easier to understand when they slide from tile to another. There are also some problems like less visibility because tiles are large and poor visibility of rocks from the dungeon floor (this could be easily fixed). He is sometimes switching to ascii mode to see the entire level and detect missing rocks.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 03, 2014, 11:42:14 AM
Imagine an ADOM in the trappings of HyperRogue 4.x!  A world to truly explore~   8)
Yeah, ADOM in a setting where the area enclosed by a circle increases exponentially with its radius. Sounds awesome! Imagine HyperADOM where a town contains more tiles than you see in an entire game of ADOM.

Truly a world to explore~!
Yes, god forbid anyone should try to make something innovative.

[...]

I don't see it being a tautology.
That's because, if you did, you might have to revise your preconceived notions a tiny bit ;)
We're probably not getting much further with this discussion right now, so I'll leave the dead horse for you to keep floggin, if you wish.

Yeah, I have preconceived notions, like how hyperbolic geometry works and how many people have been attracted by the wonderous innovations of oughties roguelike development. Good thing we have people to remind us that if you haven't heard of it, it's innovative, and innovation is awesome.

[edit:] to clarify, it is not my intention to denigrate HyperRogue -- I am merely reacting to the idea of a project on the scale of ADOM set in hyperbolic space, thrown out above as another gee-whiz idea. HyperRogue is a cool idea for a small project and it's a nice technical achievement. And hyperbolic geometry could make for some cool computer board games, particularly if you worked with a compact quotient with a tiling, e.g. hyperbolic Go on a double torus etc. But I don't see it working as a dungeon exploration setting.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: getter77 on July 03, 2014, 12:06:03 PM
The seemingly lost, root point with all heavily tongue-in-cheek was mainly that The Terminal is just another approach, one that got some historical traction, but should not be seen as neither a summit nor an albatross as surely there are yet more varied approaches out there given computing is still in an absolutely infantile state versus other endeavors of human culture.

Rogue and Roguelikes are generally RPG's that, wittingly and unwittingly, pluck a bit from The Future, historically owing back to Tabletop D&D wranglings and Choose Your Own Adventure books in terms of bringing a world to life and making things happen that were "impossible" outside of a Dungeon Master/non-computer context.

They are the historical Amiga, but unlike that, progress did continue even if not as roughly apace as we'd all like.   Thinking of Roguelikes in an O/S + Hardware sense may also prove handy for reckoning things...


Also, the rules of math are a means to an end/a bitter enemy---theoretical Parabolic ADOM would be surely forged into better form with the time honored Roguelike tradition of impassible terrain/high mountains to craft the world so much moreso against the tyranny of infinity~
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 03, 2014, 04:27:00 PM
I gotta say I'm doing the term approach for a bunch of reasons, including but not limited to:

* standard interface fully addressed by standard library maximizes portability achievable without turning code into a pile of ifdefs and introducing dependencies on nonstandard or platform-dependent libs. The ncursesw library is pretty stable, so there is no vendor whose next (or last) version of a library I depend on will break the game or introduce build-dependent bugs in some versions.

* network play via universally available ssh/telnet, with no need for anybody to download & install anything on their local machine.

* term interface is standard and users who have visual difficulties will already have their font sizes and colors adjusted to compensate (and/or a screen reader configured for it).


I don't claim that these things I care about are the same things everybody ought to care about; just that using the term interface seemed obviously the best way to achieve these things. 
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 10, 2014, 06:29:12 PM
Classic Roguelike: Turn based - Grid based - Randomly generated levels - Permafailure
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 11, 2014, 12:16:03 AM
Classic Roguelike: Turn based - Grid based - Randomly generated levels - Permafailure

My favorite classic roguelike is Conway's Game of Life.

(And no, I don't want to get into another long thread about why you're wrong.)
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 11, 2014, 02:09:05 AM
Yes, please don't waste your time trying to prove me wrong.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 11, 2014, 02:11:48 AM
As they say, that which is asserted without proof can be safely dismissed without proof.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 11, 2014, 07:48:34 AM
(And no, I don't want to get into another long thread about why you're wrong.)

Lol. Please enlighten us wrt the loss condition of Conway's Game of Life, though.

Yes. No. My own all-time favourite RL must be vim, I think. I runs most beautifully in a terminal, and even includes support for vi keys by default!

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 11, 2014, 09:41:26 AM
This thread gives me an idea to write a complete, strict definition of a roguelike. Remind me to do it!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 11, 2014, 12:19:09 PM
(And no, I don't want to get into another long thread about why you're wrong.)

Lol. Please enlighten us wrt the loss condition of Conway's Game of Life, though.


The game either halts or it doesn't. Once it halts, it doesn't restart.

HTH.

This thread gives me an idea to write a complete, strict definition of a roguelike. Remind me to do it!

The basic mistake in thinking here is the idea that you can give a "clean" or "complete" definition without reference to existing work in the genre, particularly without reference to the classic examples.

Moreover, the term is too fraught to be recoverable at this point. When some of the major outlets of discussion on the subject run affiliate programs with people selling "roguelikes" and at the same time claim to have the definitive word on what constitutes a roguelike (one which is very convenient for those looking for retro cred in their efforts to market the least you can do and still have a commercial product), you know you've gotten to the party way too late.

The word as it is now often understood is little more than cover for producing and marketing schlock.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 11, 2014, 01:59:56 PM
Lol. Please enlighten us wrt the loss condition of Conway's Game of Life, though.
The game either halts or it doesn't. Once it halts, it doesn't restart.

So what's your point: That you don't see the difference between this and losing a Roguelike, or just that you willfully misinterpreted Slash's post1? Would Game of Life be a RL by your standards, if we labeled the cells "kobolds" and ran it over ssh? (Not even entering into the hermeneutic feat needed to equate Game of Life with "random level generation".)

As always,
Minotauros

1 Should perhaps come as no surprise, considering your earlier implication that DF's use of a simplistic interface is somehow due to the nature of non-Euclidean geometry ;)
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 12, 2014, 04:13:32 AM
Lol. Please enlighten us wrt the loss condition of Conway's Game of Life, though.
The game either halts or it doesn't. Once it halts, it doesn't restart.

So what's your point: That you don't see the difference between this and losing a Roguelike, or just that you willfully misinterpreted Slash's post? Would Game of Life be a RL by your standards, if we labeled the cells "kobolds" and ran it over ssh? (Not even entering into the hermeneutic feat needed to equate Game of Life with "random level generation".)


I've seen a game that shipped with oem windows machines in the 90s that randomly seeds game of life boards. I think this kind of application is pretty common.

I took Slash's comment to be his proposed definition of "roguelike." His definition is vague and would include things that clearly are not roguelike games (for example, the Game of Life). Now maybe what he meant is that those factors taken together with his other notion, the so-called "Berlin interpretation," of "roguelike" would constitute a special class of roguelikes, "classic roguelikes." This seems even more problematic -- just more dodging, trying to carve out space for a maximally inclusive and correspondingly meaningless definition.

You must know, given your hostility, that I have a definition of roguelike much narrower than yours and that's much better grounded in the history of roguelike games than the one you support. And you know very well that I don't think the Game of Life or anything like it is a roguelike game.

A definition like Slash's or like the Berlin interpretation cannot capture what a roguelike (or "classic roguelike") game is because it makes no reference to the history or tradition -- something that had existed long before r.g.r.d and its remaining active alumni came along. It can only capture what a certain group of people want the word to mean.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 12, 2014, 11:40:45 PM
shroom, I'm not trying to aggress you, although I do enjoy the hyperbole of the discussion :) and I think some interesting points have come up. However, Slash's bullet points doesn't include something like Game of Life, and by reading them as if they did, you just make yourself out to be stupider than you probably are. Sure, something like "turn-based play" should be taken to imply "turn-based play, with continuous player agency", which does exclude GoL; but there are yet innumerable implied meanings in such a simple statement, that you could nitpick at will, so it would be impossible to cover all of them (for instance, permafailure doesn't include keeping a pet, and procedural space doesn't include a game of Go). I'll grant you that GoL takes place on a grid, but the other points frankly do not apply. In this context, we should allow ourselves to assume that people know the first thing about what is being discussed, and constrain ourselves to not pretending as if we don't; filling in blanks is part of language, human, and stubbornly failing to do so just to score rhetorical points, isn't very productive.

You obviously put a lot of weight on the technological origin of Rogue et al. While that's interesting, I don't see how it constitutes the actual gameplay of the genre, much like how modern novels are considered epic literature, even though the earliest epics were part of an oral, rather than a written, tradition. This history of literature's origin is hugely significant, but still, the sorry sods who most assuredly claimed that Gilmgamesh or The Iliad stopped being "real" literature once they were written down, have been forgotten (probably because they refused to have their own arguments put in writing, but that's going off on a tangent here). And there was much rejoicing.

I'd be very interested in a more systematic break-down of what you would consider a proper Roguelike. So far, that's remained vaguely implied in your posts (IMHO).

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 13, 2014, 07:01:45 AM
Slash's bullet points do include the game of life, but I don't think there's any reason to argue over that point. The bullet points fail to capture what a roguelike game is on one hand and fail to differentiate roguelike games from other types of games on the other. It has nothing to do with rhetoric.

But sure, let me try to give a definition.

A roguelike game is a computer game that implements roleplaying (in the sense of pencil and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons) game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of early computer games on UNIX and VMS including rogue, moria, hack, and larn.

A "systematic breakdown" is somewhat beside the point, as it would really just be elaboration on the meaning of the words "tradition" and "idiom" as they relate to rogue, moria, hack, and larn.

A couple of things about this definition: First, it can be and often is pretentious to call one's game "roguelike." Roguelike games are not schlock.

Second, a game can be roguelike in large part by virtue of pedigree. For example, if a game is built from code bases that go back to the originals with reasonable continuity in spirit from one iteration to the next, it can be roguelike while differing from the originals in substantial ways. For example, tomenet is obviously a roguelike game, even though it's not "turn based" as understood by r.g.r.d alumni, it's not single player, and its permadeath mechanics are a bit iffy. It's more important to be able to point to how the game fits into previous work in the genre than to tick off a checklist of features.

Arguments about whether a game is roguelike shouldn't be "well, it doesn't have this feature, that feature, and it has this mechanic that's not allowed," as if it's a question of scoring something. The argument against a game should question its connection to existing work, especially the so-called "major roguelikes" (and that doesn't mean spelunky, btw), and what its contribution is (i.e. is there something new here or is it at best an homage?). If it does differ crucially in mechanics, are these differences so radical as to better place the game in another genre or do they address an issue in previous work and suggest a way forward?

You obviously put a lot of weight on the technological origin of Rogue et al. While that's interesting, I don't see how it constitutes the actual gameplay of the genre, much like how modern novels are considered epic literature, even though the earliest epics were part of an oral, rather than a written, tradition. This history of literature's origin is hugely significant, but still, the sorry sods who most assuredly claimed that Gilmgamesh or The Iliad stopped being "real" literature once they were written down, have been forgotten (probably because they refused to have their own arguments put in writing, but that's going off on a tangent here). And there was much rejoicing.

There's an obvious conceit here. Are graphical "roguelikes" (in the sense understood by many here) producing genuine improvement and innovation over more traditional roguelikes? You imply the answer is something like "Oh God, yes!" My answer would be, "Not really." I've played my share of recent games with no terminal interface, etc. I don't see the transition from cavemen sitting around a fire to robed scholars stroking their chins over a pile of scrolls. I see traditional roguelike efforts going on pretty independently of the discussion here and making real strides (see DCSS, Sil) and I see projects with lots of graphics that don't strike me as anything new. It doesn't help that so many of the latter have names like CommercialFranchiseRL.

Anyway, I wouldn't put graphics up there as a matter of definition, but I think a roguelike game needs a reasonable excuse to have them, for example, "some guy from my mailing list put them together and sent me a patch and they seem to work okay and aren't likely to cause trouble down the road, so I put them in as an option." I do think you need a damn good excuse not to have a terminal interface though.

This getting way too long, but two more things about my emphasis on the history and technical origins. These are things that seem to lost to current thinking. First, roguelikes were originally very social games. People played them on multiuser systems at universities, traded war stories, etc. (And war stories, in my opinion, remain one of the best things about the genre.) Then PC users started getting DOS versions via shareware catalogs and some of them seem to have thought that's how it all began. Well, it's not and multiuser systems remain popular and vital. Second, the centralized server-oriented aspect, while just a fact of life back then, represents an untapped opportunity now. There are significant technical advantages to delivering a roguelike game via ssh or telnet, even aside from the multiuser considerations (which are also particularly relevant in the current climate). Telnet is widely available and requires no installation of software. On the other hand, a game that runs primarily on servers can be made of whatever you want -- you want to use an integer programming engine, a numerical linear algebra package, a graph theory package, an image processing library, and ten other things your user is guaranteed not to have installed? You want to use lots of different programming languages, big databases of precomputed whatever? No problem. All your player needs is telnet.

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 13, 2014, 03:12:00 PM
I don't think anybody is going to come up with a definition of roguelike games that satisfies everybody.  That said, I'll throw something at the wall.

I think that roguelike games must give the player as much time as he or she needs to plan and input the next move.  Being turn-based single player games is the easiest but not the only way to accomplish this.  If having slow reflexes or a motor impairment is a handicap then you are not playing a roguelike game. 

I think that exploration of procedurally generated maps in the presence of opposing forces is an essential part of roguelike games.  It doesn't really matter whether the player is playing a medieval-fantasy character, or the crew of a starship, or a cockroach.

I think that an unambiguous 'game over' condition is essential to roguelike games.  How much of the game's objectives a player can accomplish (and how much of the game's content a player can interact with) before the 'game over' condition is met, must be limited by player skill rather than just by how much time the player spends playing. 

Those three conditions are the ones I think are absolutely essential. And they already leave out some games that people consider roguelike.  I'm okay with that; I don't think that those games are in fact roguelike. 

There are some other conditions that I consider 'nearly' essential to roguelikes, such as a power curve; the idea that the player makes long-term gains in power and resources during the game.  If a game has no power curve I will doubt that it's roguelike, and suspect instead that it's more sidescroller-like.  I think a symbolic (in the sense of being unambiguous) display is important; character-based displays are an easy way but not the only way to accomplish this.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Darren Grey on July 13, 2014, 09:20:18 PM
Single character focus is an important and oft overlooked aspect, and is why the likes of Civilisation don't quite match. Roguelikes tend to be adventure simulators, with focus on person's actions and experiencing as they would experience, often including field of view, unidentified items, single person resource management, etc. Permadeath and procedural content both enhance this experience.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mounta1nman on July 13, 2014, 10:35:57 PM
my roguelike def: 'a game that sacrifices visual interface for depth of gameplay'

yes, not historical nor technical. trying to restrict a def by those two dimensions is never successful, and as such not worthwhile. extract what really matters an keep moving.


Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 13, 2014, 11:45:33 PM
The problem with the bullet points people are putting forth now is that if someone came along with a new game with a compelling connection to existing traditional roguelikes that had, say, party based adventuring or player-generated maps crowdsourced via an online Dwarf Fortress-like simulation game, you would realize your definition is wrong.

The reason people are constantly arguing about these bullet point definitions is that they're wrong. On one hand, they always include something that has no connection with the genre as it has existed for decades and on the other they restrict the scope of new work.

my roguelike def: 'a game that sacrifices visual interface for depth of gameplay'

yes, not historical nor technical. trying to restrict a def by those two dimensions is never successful, and as such not worthwhile. extract what really matters an keep moving.

This captures an important part of the spirit of roguelikes, probably the most important part. Too often this is corrupted into "a game that sacrifices visual interface so that anyone can make one."
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 14, 2014, 03:53:39 AM
A roguelike game is a computer game that implements roleplaying (in the sense of pencil and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons) game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of early computer games on UNIX and VMS including rogue, moria, hack, and larn.

Everybody is entitled to his own interpretation... in my opinion yours is interesting, super broad and completely useless for the two purposes I consider the most important: 1. To easily let other people know what these games are actually like and 2. To conserve the identity of the genre in time.

I've been thinking about the question of roguelikeness vs. roguelike; the definitions posted in the homepage and defined by the "Berlin Interpretation" were created in a time when our main interest was to allow the evolution of the genre, to make people experiment without fearing to go off bounds of a strict set of features; I think this should continue, but today we need a more strict definition that coexists with the current one, mainly for point # 2.

Second, a game can be roguelike in large part by virtue of pedigree.

I'll then proceed to check out Nethack source code, touch here and there and create the first fps roguelike.


This getting way too long, but two more things about my emphasis on the history and technical origins. These are things that seem to lost to current thinking. First, roguelikes were originally very social games. People played them on multiuser systems at universities, traded war stories, etc. (And war stories, in my opinion, remain one of the best things about the genre.)

Now that's very interesting! but in my mind that can added to the definition as a feature, regardless of the pedigree.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 14, 2014, 05:52:01 AM
A roguelike game is a computer game that implements roleplaying (in the sense of pencil and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons) game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of early computer games on UNIX and VMS including rogue, moria, hack, and larn.

Everybody is entitled to his own interpretation... in my opinion yours is interesting, super broad and completely useless for the two purposes I consider the most important: 1. To easily let other people know what these games are actually like and 2. To conserve the identity of the genre in time.

Your definition (and maybe I am holding you more responsible for the "Berlin interpretation" than is warranted) is already undermining the identity of the genre. It has no sense of history or tradition and suggests that roguelikes are defined by some weighted average of feature scores. It's silly. On the other hand, if your goal is to constrain the genre through a list of required and forbidden features, you're not helping the genre. Genres develop over time as new work builds on, not copies or updates, old work. Identity of a genre is based on the connection and continuity between new work and prior work.

Easily letting people know what something is is not what definitions are for. Definitions are supposed to be definite, not easy. If I want to let you know what topology is, I don't give you the definition. I give you examples and down to earth explanation. The answer to the question of what a roguelike is does not have to be a definition.

And my definition is not overly broad. It excludes a lot of games you would call roguelike.

Quote
I've been thinking about the question of roguelikeness vs. roguelike; the definitions posted in the homepage and defined by the "Berlin Interpretation" were created in a time when our main interest was to allow the evolution of the genre, to make people experiment without fearing to go off bounds of a strict set of features; I think this should continue, but today we need a more strict definition that coexists with the current one, mainly for point # 2.

I think this shows a peculiar attitude toward the genre. It's not yours nor can some central authority define it. If a lot of people find your definition lacking, it's a reflection of a lack of continuity with preexisting notions and work and, I'm sure, a reaction to the idea that you or a group of your associates is in the position to hand down a definition (one intended to guide future development, no less!) of something that you did not create (and had little to do with either at the time of its inception or in its rise to prominence, as far as I can tell).

Quote
Second, a game can be roguelike in large part by virtue of pedigree.

I'll then proceed to check out Nethack source code,


Great, Nethack could really use new developers!

Quote
This getting way too long, but two more things about my emphasis on the history and technical origins. These are things that seem to lost to current thinking. First, roguelikes were originally very social games. People played them on multiuser systems at universities, traded war stories, etc. (And war stories, in my opinion, remain one of the best things about the genre.)

Now that's very interesting! but in my mind that can added to the definition as a feature, regardless of the pedigree.

I'm glad you think so. This part of my comment was less about definitions than explanation of previous commentary on the provenance of roguelike games and its importance in understanding the genre.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 14, 2014, 06:45:55 AM
I'm working on the definition, but writing a scientific article is harder than I thought.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Omnivore on July 14, 2014, 06:54:44 AM
I'm working on the definition, but writing a scientific article is harder than I thought.

You think that's hard, try modeling the Berlin interpretation as a set of simultaneous equations using matrix calculus with Rogue as the identity matrix!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 14, 2014, 07:51:31 AM
I think each will have to rely in part on intuition wrt whether or not a certain game is a RL, and opinions will differ on corner cases. Some aspects that matter to me (why I like RLs to the exclution of almost every non-RL computer game I've played since childhood), are the notion of replayability, and also that RLs play in a lot of ways similar to boardgames. The replayability aspect touches upon typical features like permadeath, procedural/emergent content, and the id subgame (although I find this poorly implemented in most RLs) – consider how Rogue's creators have stated that they wanted to make a game that they themselves would enjoy playing many times over – but might also be achieved in other ways.

So I think it's possible (and may be an interesting experiment, maybe as 7drls) to make a RL that "scores" zero points according to the Berlin Interpretation, or conversely, a non-RL that adheres strictly to the constraints of that definition.

Just to clear up some misconceptions, shroompatch: Slash had no hand in creating the Berlin Interpretation; it was conceived at IRDC in 2008 and put up on this website after that. Slash explains some more about its historical context above. Also, please note that I take this as a personal insult:
Are graphical "roguelikes" […] producing genuine improvement and innovation […]? You imply the answer is something like "Oh God, yes!"
:'( I actually prefer a terminal interface nine times out of ten, but I also consider that a question of taste rather than truth, and graphical representation a question of makeup. And I respect devs who for some reason wrap their system in a GUI (I consider games like Shiren, Powder, and TOME to be RLs without a doubt). My comparison to the evolution of written texts wasn't to make a point that graphical RLs are better or more evolved, just that tradition implies ongoing change rather than constant stasis. After all, oral and written literatures still exist side by side, overlapping at some places, and with their particular strengths and weaknesses. I think it's impossible to talk about "the RL scene" any longer, as one could as little as fifteen years ago. Today, the community have branched out in different (and in places overlapping) communities: you'll come over incompatible conceptions of the genre at rgrd, anband.oook, amongst the 7drl crowd, here, in mainstream "indie" communities (TIGSource and the like), etc. Some will never have heard about Nethack, others nothing but.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 14, 2014, 08:27:10 AM
I think each will have to rely in part on intuition wrt whether or not a certain game is a RL, and opinions will differ on corner cases. Some aspects that matter to me (why I like RLs to the exclution of almost every non-RL computer game I've played since childhood), are the notion of replayability, and also that RLs play in a lot of ways similar to boardgames. The replayability aspect touches upon typical features like permadeath, procedural/emergent content, and the id subgame (although I find this poorly implemented in most RLs) – consider how Rogue's creators have stated that they wanted to make a game that they themselves would enjoy playing many times over – but might also be achieved in other ways.

Yeah, I agree about most of these aspects. I still think it's a mistake to try to think about what a roguelike is in a vacuum. In essence, what people are saying today is "We've looked at a bunch of games we think are roguelikes, including the original examples as particularly representative, we've extracted a set of common features (and non-features) that make them distinct from most other games, and those traits are what we're going to use to define what a roguelike is." What I'm saying is you don't need to reify a particular set of defining traits, you only need defining examples and work that follows them. This is both more specific and less restrictive. In reality, what people are putting forth here with their bullet point definitions are not so much definitions as specifications -- which is ridiculous. This is most true of the so-called Berlin interpretation.

Quote
Just to clear up some misconceptions, shroompatch: Slash had no hand in creating the Berlin Interpretation; it was conceived at IRDC in 2008 and put up on this website after that. Slash explains some more about its historical context above.

I don't think I have a misconception about this. It's the definition he puts forth on a prominent outlet for discussion of roguelikes. I hadn't heard of it before I read it here. He's done a lot to popularize it. It doesn't matter whether he created it.

Quote
Also, please note that I take this as a personal insult:
Are graphical "roguelikes" […] producing genuine improvement and innovation […]? You imply the answer is something like "Oh God, yes!"
:'( I actually prefer a terminal interface nine times out of ten, but I also consider that a question of taste rather than truth, and graphical representation a question of makeup. And I respect devs who for some reason wrap their system in a GUI (I consider games like Shiren, Powder, and TOME to be RLs without a doubt). My comparison to the evolution of written texts wasn't to make a point that graphical RLs are better or more evolved, just that tradition implies ongoing change rather than constant stasis. After all, oral and written literatures still exist side by side, overlapping at some places, and with their particular strengths and weaknesses.

Well, okay. I'm not trying to suggest you're not "hardcore" or whatever. For your reference, when you draw a parallel between an instance of fundamental technological progress (e.g. written language) and any other instance of change, it will be interpreted as "I think this change is awesome" every time. I don't see how you get that I favor stasis from what I've said here. I've said that the current situation wrt to the "definition" of roguelikes (or roguelikeness or whatever) is untenable, that a better way to understand the notion is through the tradition and history of work within the roguelike genre especially as it relates to the original examples, that the genre naturally extends by continuity of new work with old, and that feature/non-feature lists cannot capture this dynamic.

Put it this way: Suppose you're talking about tomenet/mangband and related angband variants. Krice comes in and says "That's not a roguelike, it doesn't have permadeath narrowly defined and I can't think fast enough to play angband in real time." If you go by my definition, you just say, look the game is derived from angband which was derived from moria, it doesn't differ that fundamentally from either game, and where there are fundamental differences, they address a shortcoming of their predecessors in an interesting, playable way (even if it's a little rough and could be improved). On the other hand, with the Berlin interpretation, you find yourself in the peculiar position of having to say, "You know, strictly speaking, you're right, Krice."
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 14, 2014, 09:28:32 AM
Well, okay. I'm not trying to suggest you're not "hardcore" or whatever.
Because, you know, I am, I am, I am! >:( (or rather, I don't exactly see it as a mark of excellence to think that a pretty or costly presentation raises the inherent worth of a cultural artifact)

Put it this way: Suppose you're talking about tomenet/mangband and related angband variants. Krice comes in and says "That's not a roguelike, it doesn't have permadeath narrowly defined and I can't think fast enough to play angband in real time." […] On the other hand, with the Berlin interpretation, you find yourself in the peculiar position of having to say, "You know, strictly speaking, you're right, Krice."
It's probably fair to note, though, that even upon its conception, the ("so-called" :))) Berlin Interpretation wasn't intended to be definitive, but rather to list some typical features. Though I do agree it can form an unhappy condition for defining RLs. OTOH, I think the danger of relying too much on technosocial genealogy is that one risks excluding classics like Powder, the whole spectrum of Japanese Roguelikes, or even ADOM (for being closed source, whether of not you personally consider that a cardinal sin).

Also, regarding "war stories", YASDs and the like, yes, this points to the unique strengths of the RL genre – and relies a lot on both gameplay qualities and Internet culture.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 14, 2014, 02:23:13 PM
Identity of a genre is based on the connection and continuity between new work and prior work.
How is this connection and "continuity" granted from an external point of view if not by assessing the features of the game?

I'll shorten your definition to make it even more definite!"A roguelike game is a computer game derived from rogue. Go look it up and reconstruct the whole story of the genre if you want to know what I'm meaning."
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 14, 2014, 03:24:12 PM
It's probably fair to note, though, that even upon its conception, the ("so-called" :))) Berlin Interpretation wasn't intended to be definitive, but rather to list some typical features.

The definition of roguelike has long been contentious, long before the lightning rod that is the Berlin Interpretation was put out there.

It does not help that when each individual built their own definition, they did it with a different corpus of games.  For example, when I started on POWDER I was a bit concerned people would declare it Not A Roguelike, so added my own definition to the page.  My definition included this interesting item:

Complex interactions of properties. While the commands for a roguelike are simple, the potential interactions are not. My favourite example is equipping a silver ring as a weapon in order to damage a creature vulnerable to silver, but not one's other weapons.

Rogue, which one would naively expect to be the touch-stone for roguelikeness, fails this test.  It is something I got out of all of my playing of ADOM and Nethack and reflects the little experience I have with the huge *band family.

The term "Berlin Interpretation", rather than "Berlin Definition" is rather intentional.  The model is off the Copenhagen Intepretation: an attempt by so-called experts in the field to come to an agreement about something inherently non-agreeable.  Of course, the result is something no-one is entirely happy with.  But what I like about the Berlin Interpretation is it puts a stake in the ground for starting point, something we did not have before.  I know the inclusion of "ASCII display" may seem ridiculous to the modern crowd, but;


It is also important to note that genre construction, as an aspect of taxonomy, is by definition going to be imprecise.  We are not dealing with abstract mathematical constructs here.  There is a precise definition for Topology not because the things that are topologies have a precise definition, but it was decided to redefine things to match a precise definition.  Our goal with a roguelike definition is a functional lens for us to better understand games.  A precise definition for roguelike would be pretty useless.  There is no gain to evenly dividing games into Roguelike and Non-Roguelike camps!

So why bother at all?

There is gain to identifying what is it that causes us to think of some games as roguelike, and some games as not.  We can then choose to keep or discard these items in other games.  Or identify them in existing games and better understand what mechanisms caused us to enjoy/hate those games.  I consider it very convenient to have "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy" and "Romance" as genres, despite the fact that obviously any particular novel may or may not respect those divisions.

What makes something a roguelike isn't any particular feature.  Just like being "plot-driven" doesn't make something a fantasy novel.  But, you can't just make a checklist either!

Compare it with taxonomy of animals.  Often these do devolve to checklists: species A differs from species B due to a slightly longer clavicle.  But these lists very much are designed merely to distinguish existing species - we could invent an animal that catastrophically fails any checklist based taxonomy system.  Instead, there exists the holotype for each species, which represents the complete animal to match against.

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Though I do agree it can form an unhappy condition for defining RLs. OTOH, I think the danger of relying too much on technosocial genealogy is that one risks excluding classics like Powder, the whole spectrum of Japanese Roguelikes, or even ADOM (for being closed source, whether of not you personally consider that a cardinal sin).

Techno-social?  I guess I should read the entire thread...  But isn't POWDER very much a derivative of Nethack, and ADOM likewise traces Omega and Nethack?  Unless you only count inheritance via code, in which Nethack is no longer a Roguelike, as, AFAIK, Hack is a clean break from rogue?

My main argument against genealogical approaches, however, is that there is a lot of convergent evolution in videogames.  And, the cases of convergent evolution are probably the most interesting for genre definition, as they represent an attractor in the game-play space.  When two games have the same gameplay because one was inspired by the other, it doesn't tell us as much if two independent people were led to the same gameplay.  OTOH, I'm not sure how "clean" the Japanese Roguelikes are from western influence, Nethack had a Japanese port since '93.  And, of course, we know the Diablo designers were aware of *band.

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Also, regarding "war stories", YASDs and the like, yes, this points to the unique strengths of the RL genre – and relies a lot on both gameplay qualities and Internet culture.

War stories apply to all video games worthy to be called video games.  It also seems a pointless thing to add to a definition.  How am I supposed to write a game that has war stories?  Answering this starts to ask the question of what sort of warstories, and runs us into something that is starting to look like the Berlin Interpretation: a list of techniques/gameplay elements found in most roguelikes that seem to be most necessary for generating a roguelike experience.

So, in summary, I'm all for debate about what makes a roguelike, but mostly because I want to learn of new ways of looking at games to understand how they work and how they differ from each other.  In the end, I don't particularly care where anyone draws the line between roguelike and non-roguelike, and find it entertaining how much people are now using it as a catch-all for "Procedural".
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 14, 2014, 05:24:04 PM
Identity of a genre is based on the connection and continuity between new work and prior work.
How is this connection and "continuity" granted from an external point of view if not by assessing the features of the game?

I don't know what you mean by "from an external point of view." Let me give some examples.

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I'll shorten your definition to make it even more definite!"A roguelike game is a computer game derived from rogue. Go look it up and reconstruct the whole story of the genre if you want to know what I'm meaning."

Well, that's not my definition. Moria is a roguelike game, but it's not derived from rogue. It's part of a sort of conversation about an idea (the idea of rogue). A couple of guys at University of Oklahoma played rogue and they liked it, but they couldn't play it on the VMS machines they had around. Each had written a piece of code that could go into a game like rogue, so they decided to put the pieces together and flesh it out into a game. Their game shared the same general outline in terms of theme, interface, and features as rogue, but it had a somewhat larger scale, a town level, and more complex dungeon generation.

There's a story of how moria grew out of other work, how it relates to it, and what it contributes. That's the connection and continuity with other work. There's a story of angband and its outgrowth from moria, which is more direct and similarly with nethack and hack, but the relationship between rogue and moria is, to my mind, the right prototype to have in mind. I think you can trace a similar thread between nethack and crawl.

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo. I'm surprised how thoroughly your post confirms my suspicions about the Berlin interpretation, e.g. its "progressive" stance on graphics versus criticism you expected to receive re: POWDER.

I liked the part about how one might "naively" expect rogue to the prototype for roguelikes. It seems the roguelike world could've been spared a certain amount of trouble had the Berlin interpretation been presented to the public with the candor it has been in this comment.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 14, 2014, 08:43:17 PM
Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.  However, I brought up JNethack because it shows that Nethack was most definitely played in Japan as of '93.  It seems clear that for a JNethack port to be made, it had to be played earlier than that as well, but I couldn't find any historical proof going farther back.  I do not agree with your claim that since 4.2BSD was present, all Japanese game designers must have played Rogue!  By this logic, every video game since '83 is a roguelike since every video game author had access to it.  The proof I think both of us would like would be for the authors of the various Japanese Roguelikes to have made statements that they were influenced by/reacting to rogue or a derivative of rogue.

On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

When we seek to decide what we call a roguelike, it is helpful to know why we are trying to identify such things.  If your goal is to find games that were influenced by Rogue, then Spelunky is definitely a roguelike; and Beneath Apple Manor is not.  And Japanese Roguelikes live in limbo until we find evidence to put them one way or other.

Personally, I'm not interested in that as a metric.  I'm more interested in games that are "similar'" to rogue.  The advantage is you don't need to know where the game comes from to decide if it is a roguelike or not, it can be judged independently of its history.  It is also useful in trying to understand how these games work, as I'd say there is a much bigger difference between Diablo III and Rogue than there is between Beneath Apple Manor and Rogue!

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I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo.

Was it though?  (Embarrassingly, I had to look up pretentious.  I often see it as a generic throw-away insult, so was not sure of its precise meaning.)

At the time, I might have agreed with you... But probably because I feel the Copenhagen Interpretation is also a pretentious name.  (Hell, at least we wrote something down for people to complain about!)  But now?  I think it has very much lived up to the name.

Firstly, note it isn't the Berlin Definition, nor Berlin Solution or Berlin Answer.  The word Interpretation is there to reflect it is how we interpreted the meaning of Roguelikes.  Next, note the inclusion of "Berlin", thereby localizing it to one spot (and somewhat implicitly, time).  This implies there could be a Stockholm Interpretation to compete with it.  So, as to the words themselves, there is no great claim of value present.

So the next question, is it worthy of being associated with the Copenhagen Interpretation?  On an absolute scale, obviously not.  But that is pretty poor yardstick to judge anything to do with roguelikes by.  The question is, has the Berlin Intepretration had the same influence on Roguelikes as the Copenhagen Interpretation had on Quantum Mechanics?

Well, neither of them hopefully had influence: Shut up and calculate vs Shut up and code!  So let us say influence on the discussion of roguelikes.

So what influence did it have?

Prior to it, most "definitions" were just ad-hoc lists by random people on the internet.  Often copied randomly off each other.  I was always surprised to see my own random list used as an authoritative source!  We had these things, roguelikes, that were already taxonomically grouped largely by this "Discussions on Rogue", but no clear idea of what they were.  Well, that is untrue, I'd say there were lots of clear ideas of what they were, we just were unable to articulate any of our reasoning.

This example is rather different.  We actually got a fair number of the interested parties together face-to-face to try to figure something out from this muddle.  This achievement shouldn't be trivialized.  We then continued the conversation on-line afterwards to polish stuff a bit, and created the work that is seen there.  It didn't start from the thin air either, it very much built on all the discussion that had gone prior to it.  So I would claim it does represent a significant amount of work, effort, and dedication on the part of the authors.

And, judging by history so far, it has proven to have a lot of cultural value.  It provided what was entirely missing at that point: a standard to start the argument from.  You may disagree with it, but at least we have a standard point to say: "yes, but..." to.  Proof of this assertion follows simply from the fact it apparently is still being discussed.  More interestingly, when I read the other various definitions in this thread, I can't help but notice most of them are already there in that document.  Indeed, looking over it again I can definitely find a lot to quibble about, but there is nothing particularly wrong about it.

Your own idea of "roguelike means derived from rogue" is entirely missing, but not because we weren't aware of it.  IIRC, Sheep started the conversation asking whether we were trying to find games like rogue, or find games derived from rogue.  And our consensus was to do the former.  And, we did try to be clear about that:

"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue".  The genre is
represented by its canon.  The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband,
Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.


In some ways, if you favour a holotype definition, you can just stop there.  Do you agree with that canon or not?  Everything else is just trying to identify what separates the canon out in a useful manner.

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I'm surprised how thoroughly your post confirms my suspicions about the Berlin interpretation, e.g. its "progressive" stance on graphics versus criticism you expected to receive re: POWDER.

Not sure what those suspicions are...?  And your example makes no sense  to me.  Its stance being "progressive" is entirely IMHO.  If you are suggesting it is aligned with my own views, well, of course.  The intent was to make something that would be mostly aligned with all participants views.  It should be clear it isn't entirely aligned with my views, however, as I wouldn't have included ASCII graphics at all.  Nor likely Turn-based or Grid-based - I'd argue both of those are part of Tactical Challenge that I'd want to move into a high value factor.... But that is the nature of committees.

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I liked the part about how one might "naively" expect rogue to the prototype for roguelikes.

It does seem strange to argue that Rogue isn't a roguelike.  To clarify, I don't argue that way.  I'm in the naive camp, and like to use "hacklike" to qualify the sub-genre that enshrines complexity.

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It seems the roguelike world could've been spared a certain amount of trouble had the Berlin interpretation been presented to the public with the candor it has been in this comment.

The nature of the internet is you can't control how things are presented to the public.  It was presented with frankness and sincerity, and naturally triggered a surprisingly civil discussion about all of its immediate failings.  That apparently people then went around bashing each other over the head in Roguelike Wars by slavishly following it?  Well, I'm actually not too sorry to hear that.  Pedants will always exist.  And the fact that, as imperfect as it is, it remains a go-to definition, certainly means we did something right?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 14, 2014, 09:09:35 PM
Regarding JRLs, I read/heard somewhere that Wizardry was an explicit influence for early Mystery Dungeon games. But I haven't played Wizardy, and the only "Mystery Dungeon-like" I played much, Shiren, draws obvious inspiration from Nethack.

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: getter77 on July 14, 2014, 10:41:40 PM
I can easily see that given Wizardry---helps that the OVA was awesome.

Also, quite likely there's a thread of RPG wranglings to be had via the whole uncanny situation with The Black Onyx

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

Early Ultima'ish wranglings also shaped Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy 1 was D&D with the serial numbers filed off and some flavor thrown in to handwave away the gaps, etc.


Also, Labyrinths & Legends goes back to 1993 at least it seems for the eternally delicious Sharp X68000 as per the UpdateHistory.

http://lnl.sourceforge.jp/en/
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 14, 2014, 11:38:53 PM
Just to clear up some misconceptions, shroompatch: Slash had no hand in creating the Berlin Interpretation; it was conceived at IRDC in 2008 and put up on this website after that.

It should also be clear that Berlin Interpretation is not the same as the "What is a Roguelike" page over roguetemple.com

http://www.roguetemple.com/roguelike-definition/

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 15, 2014, 12:53:49 AM
In response to JeffLait, I think I should say my post from last night was a bit too strongly worded (late, drinking, etc.). Regarding POWDER, obviously Jeff thought it fit into a particular strain of roguelike game (Japanese console roguelikes) and counts Nethack as a strong influence. This sounds like a good story to me and should have satisfied critics, considering other clear points of continuity in terms of idioms and mechanics.

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.  However, I brought up JNethack because it shows that Nethack was most definitely played in Japan as of '93.  It seems clear that for a JNethack port to be made, it had to be played earlier than that as well, but I couldn't find any historical proof going farther back.  I do not agree with your claim that since 4.2BSD was present, all Japanese game designers must have played Rogue!  By this logic, every video game since '83 is a roguelike since every video game author had access to it.  The proof I think both of us would like would be for the authors of the various Japanese Roguelikes to have made statements that they were influenced by/reacting to rogue or a derivative of rogue.

I'm not sure what logic you mean when you say "by that logic." My point was not that every Japanese game designer had played rogue. Rather, it is that rogue would have been widely available in the formative years of Japanese programmers who would go on to create the console games of the late 80s, the 90s, and 00s. Where you see a clear influence, it is therefore reasonable to surmise it is direct influence, not coincidence. As you say, that's not proof. It would be an interesting thing to get one of these designers to do an interview and go on the record about this matter.

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On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

There's a limit to what can be called continuity. Is Spelunky a game that implements roleplaying game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of rogue, moria, hack, and larn? No, obviously not. It shares one idiom with these canonical games: Random level generation, monster placement, and item placement. It's a platformer, it's quite linear. It differs fundamentally in mechanics, theme, style, you name it, and in a way that has no precedent within the genre -- you can't point to a continuous lineage that would show incremental progress toward Spelunky and which might place it in a subgenre. It's a thing unto itself, with a roguelike influence at most.

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Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

I don't have enough information on hand to evaluate the claim that this game is a roguelike. My inclination is to say no, because I don't believe in a Platonic notion of roguelikeness the way some here seem to.

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When we seek to decide what we call a roguelike, it is helpful to know why we are trying to identify such things.  If your goal is to find games that were influenced by Rogue, then Spelunky is definitely a roguelike; and Beneath Apple Manor is not.  And Japanese Roguelikes live in limbo until we find evidence to put them one way or other.

Personally, I'm not interested in that as a metric.  I'm more interested in games that are "similar'" to rogue.  The advantage is you don't need to know where the game comes from to decide if it is a roguelike or not, it can be judged independently of its history.  It is also useful in trying to understand how these games work, as I'd say there is a much bigger difference between Diablo III and Rogue than there is between Beneath Apple Manor and Rogue!


This notion becomes problematic without reference to history and influence. You could plausibly argue that Dungeons and Dragons is the original roguelike. The idea of random content generation comes directly from Dungeons and Dragons. It has all the theme and mechanical aspects, it's just not implemented in software.

Again, it seems crazy to me to presume there was no influence of rogue on Japanese console roguelikes until there is proof one way or another. The standard of evidence usually applied in this kind of situation is one of plausibility more than proof. When material is available to someone and they produce a work that appears to share crucial, nontrivial features with this material, the conclusion is usually that there is a direct influence.

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I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo.

Was it though?  [...]

At the time, I might have agreed with you... But probably because I feel the Copenhagen Interpretation is also a pretentious name.  (Hell, at least we wrote something down for people to complain about!)  But now?  I think it has very much lived up to the name.

I don't think the "Copenhagen Interpretation" is a pretentious name. It's a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to fundamental scientific work by some of the great minds of the 20th century.

A power point presentation style specification for roguelike games doesn't quite match the scale of achievement there.


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Firstly, note it isn't the Berlin Definition, nor Berlin Solution or Berlin Answer.

I agree that the "Berlin solution" or the "Berlin answer" would have been far more problematic names.


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  We actually got a fair number of the interested parties together face-to-face to try to figure something out from this muddle.  This achievement shouldn't be trivialized.  We then continued the conversation on-line afterwards to polish stuff a bit, and created the work that is seen there.  It didn't start from the thin air either, it very much built on all the discussion that had gone prior to it.  So I would claim it does represent a significant amount of work, effort, and dedication on the part of the authors.

And, judging by history so far, it has proven to have a lot of cultural value.  It provided what was entirely missing at that point: a standard to start the argument from.  You may disagree with it, but at least we have a standard point to say: "yes, but..." to.  Proof of this assertion follows simply from the fact it apparently is still being discussed.  More interestingly, when I read the other various definitions in this thread, I can't help but notice most of them are already there in that document.  Indeed, looking over it again I can definitely find a lot to quibble about, but there is nothing particularly wrong about it.

I think it's been influential, I just don't think the influence has been good. I agree it shows a fair amount of work and thought on the part of those involved. But it cuts out games that are obviously roguelike (multiplayer angband variants) representing a branch that predates the "interpretation" by more than ten years and could use a lot of work. It downplays the importance of tradition. Its weighted average/requirement-oriented specification nature turns discussion into a garbled mess of trying to figure out how to weight what. Its lack of reference to history and influence mean that literally any game is up for evaluation -- see surprisingly frequent reference to the Civilization series in these discussions.

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Your own idea of "roguelike means derived from rogue" is entirely missing,

I don't say "derived," but yes, reference to a canon is essential in my view.

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: chooseusername on July 15, 2014, 02:50:37 AM
It does not help that when each individual built their own definition, they did it with a different corpus of games.  For example, when I started on POWDER I was a bit concerned people would declare it Not A Roguelike, so added my own definition to the page.  My definition included this interesting item:
There's a difference between having one's own definition and deciding that a public definition should reflect one's own opinion, and just going on and putting it in there.  I'm looking forward to side-scrolling roguelike person adding "* It does got to scrolls sidewaysz.  Thatz the real rougelikez stuffs right there."
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 15, 2014, 09:34:12 AM
side-scrolling roguelike

Which is not a roguelike, so that question is irrelevant.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 15, 2014, 09:38:22 AM
Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.
I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.

Which in turn, to specify, responded to mushroom patch's more or less implied stance that a RL should be playable in a terminal to stay true to its roots. So my point was, well what about RLs for the console? In all fairness, making something for the NES or Gameboy might seem like an acceptable reason to leave out terminal support, even by the "mushroom gold standard" ;) However, it would be pretty arbitrary to accept Powder as a RL, just catering to a different audience than your usual posix-compliant suspects, and then go on to shame something like Dungeons of Dredmor for its way of catering to yet another audience.

By the way, re: Spelunky: It has much more direct references to the genre than just random levels, eg. Nethacklike shops – which doesn't make it a RL in my opinion, but someone with a more flexible definition of RLs (incidentally something like: a RL is a game directly inspired by earlier RLs) might just "point to a continuous lineage" from Rogue and Nethack through a variety of realtime and other experimental "RLs" such as Diablo, and end up with Spelunky.

Personally, I'm just waiting for the definition to get diluted enough that I can launch my procedural jump'n'run infant feeding simulator, "Motherhood RL" 8)

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 15, 2014, 01:25:42 PM
It does not help that when each individual built their own definition, they did it with a different corpus of games.  For example, when I started on POWDER I was a bit concerned people would declare it Not A Roguelike, so added my own definition to the page.  My definition included this interesting item:
There's a difference between having one's own definition and deciding that a public definition should reflect one's own opinion, and just going on and putting it in there.  I'm looking forward to side-scrolling roguelike person adding "* It does got to scrolls sidewaysz.  Thatz the real rougelikez stuffs right there."

At the time I wrote the definition on zincland, I wasn't sufficiently aware of the *band community to realize that some roguelikes didn't scroll sideways.

Which is what is nice about getting together a diverse group of people to try and build a consensus; the result can better reflect the variety of opinions.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 15, 2014, 02:27:01 PM
In response to JeffLait, I think I should say my post from last night was a bit too strongly worded (late, drinking, etc.)

Thank you.  Similarly, if my post seemed too defensive, do not fear if it was out of being offended.  I very much respect the civility with which this discourse is running, and hope to keep it that way!

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Regarding POWDER, obviously Jeff thought it fit into a particular strain of roguelike game (Japanese console roguelikes) and counts Nethack as a strong influence. This sounds like a good story to me and should have satisfied critics, considering other clear points of continuity in terms of idioms and mechanics.

Except....  This is why I don't like a definition which requires knowledge of intent/history.

You are quite right to suspect POWDER to be based on Japanese console roguelikes.  After all, the author obviously had access to a GBA and a Flash card, so presumably would have no limits as to exposure to them.  Embarrassingly, however, I have not played any Japanese roguelikes.  I did not even know about them until Sheep started pointing them out to the community, which was after I already had gone a long way in making POWDER.  So, historically, there was no transfer from Japanese Roguelikes to POWDER.  It was almost entirely from Nethack to POWDER.  Later on, Crawl snuck in (but mostly through a layer of indirection as I never could get into playing it, but I did liberally borrow many cool ideas), but the Shiren the Wanderer remains independent paths.

To me, the key part of your definition would be the "continuity of idoms and mechanics".  Which then raises the spectre of "What are these idioms and mechanics?"  Which leads us into the danger of people treating our musings as checklists...

For example, there are MANY ways of implementing a pen & paper D&D experience on the computer.  The best dichotomy is probably the DND vs Rogue one.  DND is room based encounters with party of adventurers with a sort of JRPG fight screen.  This matches D&D played without figurines.  Contrasting, we have Rogue, which uses a top-down grid, matching D&D with figurines.

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I'm not sure what logic you mean when you say "by that logic." My point was not that every Japanese game designer had played rogue. Rather, it is that rogue would have been widely available in the formative years of Japanese programmers who would go on to create the console games of the late 80s, the 90s, and 00s. Where you see a clear influence, it is therefore reasonable to surmise it is direct influence, not coincidence. As you say, that's not proof. It would be an interesting thing to get one of these designers to do an interview and go on the record about this matter.

True, I just don't see any clear influences listed.  I wouldn't call top-down grid based combat with procedurally generated levels and permadeath a clear influence either.  As that we know can be independently discovered.  There is no need for us to look for such influence, however, as I'm willing to accept either answer.

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On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

There's a limit to what can be called continuity. Is Spelunky a game that implements roleplaying game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of rogue, moria, hack, and larn? No, obviously not. It shares one idiom with these canonical games: Random level generation, monster placement, and item placement. It's a platformer, it's quite linear. It differs fundamentally in mechanics, theme, style, you name it, and in a way that has no precedent within the genre -- you can't point to a continuous lineage that would show incremental progress toward Spelunky and which might place it in a subgenre. It's a thing unto itself, with a roguelike influence at most.

And this is why I am favour of trying to write down what some of these essential idioms and traditions are, so we know when we cross them.

To be clear, I do agree with you that Spelunky is outside of "Roguelike".  But I do not agree with your claim we can just look at the broken continuity and declare it separate.  If we were to erase Diablo I and II from the record, suddenly Diablo III looks like a sudden departure from the roguelike genre.  Yet with them there, we have a strong line of continuity.  Similarly, there could be a series of games we are unaware of that link the two smoothly.

We also have the problem that games are no organisms (or if they are, are more like bacteria...) as they really don't care about straight lines of descent.  Nor do I want them to!  The last thing I want is anyone changing their game to match a genre!

In any case, because of this we have the problem of back-crosses.  Rogue Legacy can be seen as a continued discussion of Spelunky, but it pulls in so many of the idioms and traditions of roguelikes that it almost becomes the cross-over game needed to establish continuity for Spelunky!  The only problem is the temporal issue, but, again, I'm very suspicious of a definition that relies on history...

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Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

I don't have enough information on hand to evaluate the claim that this game is a roguelike. My inclination is to say no, because I don't believe in a Platonic notion of roguelikeness the way some here seem to.

Why do you need information though?  Don't you just need the date?  It was written before rogue.  Therefore it cannot have been influenced by rogue.  Therefore it cannot be a roguelike.

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This notion becomes problematic without reference to history and influence. You could plausibly argue that Dungeons and Dragons is the original roguelike. The idea of random content generation comes directly from Dungeons and Dragons. It has all the theme and mechanical aspects, it's just not implemented in software.

To come full circle, the D&D board game Wrath of Ashardalon is extraordinary close to being a roguelike in physical form.

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Again, it seems crazy to me to presume there was no influence of rogue on Japanese console roguelikes until there is proof one way or another. The standard of evidence usually applied in this kind of situation is one of plausibility more than proof. When material is available to someone and they produce a work that appears to share crucial, nontrivial features with this material, the conclusion is usually that there is a direct influence.

I have seen too much convergent evolution in the world to be so ready to conclude direct influence.  Further, I'd say non-trivial features are not indicative of direct influence.  Non-trivial, necessary, features are those most likely to be there because of convergent evolution.  Like fins on a whale, they will keep showing up whenever people try and solve the same problem.  Using @ for the character, by contrast, is a trivial feature that is a pretty good sign of a direct descent.  Indeed, glyph choice is probably the strongest sign what games the developer was influenced by.

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I don't think the "Copenhagen Interpretation" is a pretentious name. It's a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to fundamental scientific work by some of the great minds of the 20th century.

A power point presentation style specification for roguelike games doesn't quite match the scale of achievement there.

Er...  The fact that nothing involving roguelikes will match the achievements of Quantum Mechanics is moot, isn't it? 

The Berlin Interpretation is a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to a fundamental work on the research of roguelikes.

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I think it's been influential, I just don't think the influence has been good. I agree it shows a fair amount of work and thought on the part of those involved. But it cuts out games that are obviously roguelike (multiplayer angband variants) representing a branch that predates the "interpretation" by more than ten years and could use a lot of work. It downplays the importance of tradition. Its weighted average/requirement-oriented specification nature turns discussion into a garbled mess of trying to figure out how to weight what. Its lack of reference to history and influence mean that literally any game is up for evaluation -- see surprisingly frequent reference to the Civilization series in these discussions.

I don't know if any bad influence is a result of the document itself.  Looking at it again, how does it downplay tradition when the very first general principle is:

"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue". The genre is represented by its canon. The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.

There are your holotypes!

It doesn't cut out multiplayer angband variants.  It intentionally states it isn't meant to cut out anything.

Missing some points does not mean the game is not a roguelike.

(Though, I am a bit curious which one of its criteria cuts out the multiplayer *bands....  Unless you mean Diablo, which does fall a foul of Turn-based.  But some people would define Action-RPG for the Diablo franchise and branch it off Roguelike, so it does seem reasonable that any definition of roguelike shouldn't precisely match Diablo....)

I'd agree that the line This list can be used to determine how roguelike a game is. is problematic.  I am unapologetic about trying to create a list of concrete idioms and traditions for people to identify & debate over, however.  And I'm pretty confident that even if we had said This list cannot be used to determine how roguelike a game is. people still would have used it to bludgeon each other over the head in checklist style approaches.

The fact Civilization keeps showing up is probably because there is surprisingly little work to change a Civilization Game Engine into a Roguelike.  This is why I, personally, would move Single Player Character and Tactical Challenge up into high value factors.  Permadeath, also, is depressingly absent from Civilization as it often encourages a save & restore gameplay.  (In my mind, Permadeath refers to consequences - you can't rewind time and try again.)  I think Civilization would keep showing up whether or not the Berlin Interpretation was ever written.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 15, 2014, 04:21:37 PM
While this discussion doesn't change my view of the Berlin interpretation that much, I've got to hand it to JeffLait who, as a guilty party, showed up to explain himself and take whatever abuse was waiting for him -- and he's done it with impressive equanimity at that. Kudos.

[His most recent comment came after I wrote this as a short post, so the response to the new post follows.]

re: JeffLait's never played a Japanese roguelike, this is a case of what happens when I assume. I think this Japanese roguelike stuff provides a nice angle for situating your work in a broader context after the fact, but sure, it's not exactly influence or continuity. Nethack's a pretty solid source to draw on in any case and developing for a console might be a reasonable excuse not to target the vt100.

About the "idioms and mechanics" part leading to feature/non-feature lists, I think maybe my definition would be improved by saying "rogue, moria, hack, and/or larn" instead of "rogue, moria, hack, and larn" and by emphasizing the chain-like nature of this way of looking at a genre.

For example, suppose you, like most people, take omega to be an obvious roguelike (forgetting for now the details of how it fits into the genre in the kind of picture I'm advocating). A successor to omega might say, like I'm sure a lot of people who played omega have, "this game seems like it's full of ideas, but it doesn't come together into something that seems playable to me" -- let's try to clean this up. In my view, the developer has license to freely use aspects of omega's design that chafe against the template set by the original examples/canon I put forth, e.g. breaking from the "one man, one character" idiom for overworld maps. On the other hand, if this successor devolves into a pastiche of random bits of other roguelikes, many of them being the bits most divergent or controversial, containing a lot of unmotivated "innovation," then this would weaken the argument that it's a genuine successor and a genuine roguelike.

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To be clear, I do agree with you that Spelunky is outside of "Roguelike".  But I do not agree with your claim we can just look at the broken continuity and declare it separate.  If we were to erase Diablo I and II from the record, suddenly Diablo III looks like a sudden departure from the roguelike genre.  Yet with them there, we have a strong line of continuity.  Similarly, there could be a series of games we are unaware of that link the two smoothly.

You raise an interesting point. Perhaps in the fullness of time, a succession of platformers in the vein of Spelunky will approximate something with a clear claim to roguelikeness through an effort to get back to "roguelike fundamentals." I don't know what that would look like, but I would like to see it. If that happened, I think successors to the game that finally makes that link might qualify as "according to mushroom patch" roguelikes. So then you ask, "what is the status of Spelunky?" I think this puts Spelunky as the originator of a separate lineage of games that led to a new branch or subgenre of roguelike games. I don't think we have to call it roguelike. It doesn't have to flow both ways. A definition that takes into account influence, history, and tradition avoids the possibility of rewriting history.

re: Beneath Apple Manor: Why don't I declare it not a roguelike out of hand because of the release date vs. when the rogue developers started on rogue? I don't know what the original release looked like and I'm not optimistic about finding a copy or reliable information about it. I see more about releases five years later -- that's a long time. I also see suggestions that it largely copied another game by another author. These factors make me want to reserve judgement on whether there is an influence one way or another. I'm somewhat suspicious of this kind of exercise anyway.

The closing comments about disclaimers in the Berlin interpretation are mostly fair. It's true that there is prominent mention of a canon, which is mysteriously missing from certain derivatives of the Berlin interpretation and totally absent from discussion based on it that I've seen around here (although I think that part is less mysterious).

About why I say mangband and related angband variants are cut out by the Berlin interpretation: They're not turn based (as understood by posters I've encountered here -- although I find the notion of turn based play put forth in those discussions incoherent), they're not single player, and the notion of permadeath in these angband variants does not correspond neatly to the mechanics of angband or other roguelike games (the closest thing being nethack's amulets of lifesaving). No one really knows how many high or low value factors you can flout and stay in good standing -- it would be better if this were not a debate that ever occurred.

There probably is some justice in your claims that the way the lists are used is not in keeping with the spirit of the Berlin interpretation. 2008 was well before the appeal of lists to the reptilian core of the human brain became widely known among internet users. The lack of foresight in employing lists this way might therefore be forgiven. Still, I think the Berlin interpretation (or "7 Weird Reasons Your Game Is Not A Roguelike") ought to be updated to something that looks like a definition more than a Buzzfeed listicle.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 15, 2014, 06:33:34 PM
While this discussion doesn't change my view of the Berlin interpretation that much, I've got to hand it to JeffLait who, as a guilty party, showed up to explain himself and take whatever abuse was waiting for him -- and he's done it with impressive equanimity at that. Kudos.

Thank you!  I certainly wouldn't expect you to change your opinion.  You have a very interesting and logical roguelike definition, just not one I find useful.

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re: JeffLait's never played a Japanese roguelike, this is a case of what happens when I assume. I think this Japanese roguelike stuff provides a nice angle for situating your work in a broader context after the fact, but sure, it's not exactly influence or continuity. Nethack's a pretty solid source to draw on in any case and developing for a console might be a reasonable excuse not to target the vt100.

Having six buttons and a d-pad is the real reason to abandon the vt100.  Further, I looked into vt100 emulation, but you can't fit 80x24 on the GBA screen.  Windowed views of Nethack are *NOT* Nethack, IMHO.  An important part of Nethack is that you see the entire dungeon when blindfolded.  Without this, you have a different game.  As soon as I realized I was not making a 80x24, I had to start to rethink everything.  When you abandon glyphs, 8x8 stops being a useful tile size, forcing me right to 16x16 tiles, which then gave me a very tight window on the action.  These constraints probably sent me right where the Japanese Console Roguelikes already were :>

Again, this is why I like a history-free approach, as you can then validly compare POWDER and Shiren's choices without having to worry if they come from convergent evolution or from direct ancestry.

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re: Beneath Apple Manor: Why don't I declare it not a roguelike out of hand because of the release date vs. when the rogue developers started on rogue? I don't know what the original release looked like and I'm not optimistic about finding a copy or reliable information about it. I see more about releases five years later -- that's a long time. I also see suggestions that it largely copied another game by another author. These factors make me want to reserve judgement on whether there is an influence one way or another. I'm somewhat suspicious of this kind of exercise anyway.

I don't know much beyond the Wikipedia page and what Slash had discovered.  In any case, the author seems to have commented that he had no influence from Rogue, and I'm willing to go with that.

Mind you checking the edits there I see at some point someone claimed that DND was a roguelike that predated Rogue, which is ridiculous as DND isn't a roguelike.

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The closing comments about disclaimers in the Berlin interpretation are mostly fair. It's true that there is prominent mention of a canon, which is mysteriously missing from certain derivatives of the Berlin interpretation and totally absent from discussion based on it that I've seen around here (although I think that part is less mysterious).

Yep, damn internet.  At least anytime anyone bugs you about the Berlin Interpretation you can just throw that back in their face :>

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About why I say mangband and related angband variants are cut out by the Berlin interpretation: They're not turn based (as understood by posters I've encountered here -- although I find the notion of turn based play put forth in those discussions incoherent), they're not single player, and the notion of permadeath in these angband variants does not correspond neatly to the mechanics of angband or other roguelike games (the closest thing being nethack's amulets of lifesaving). No one really knows how many high or low value factors you can flout and stay in good standing -- it would be better if this were not a debate that ever occurred.

Odd, I thought mangband was turn based by my definition.  Single Player is a strange accusation, again showing the danger of putting anything online.  There is nothing in the Berlin Interpretation saying Single Player.  It says Single Player Character: you are playing one character.  Dungeon Master is a single player game, but is not a single character game.  So, Mangband only really violates the last clause of that sentence: "that character's death is the end of the game."  The main reason for that clause, however, is to make it clear each game session is a fresh start.  This is an important nature of roguelikes - you don't bring anything with you - which is violated in a lot of modern variants.  Japanese Roguelikes tend to have a special chest to store stuff in between lives, for example.

I do agree that there should be no debate about how many of these checks you need to be a real roguelike.

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There probably is some justice in your claims that the way the lists are used is not in keeping with the spirit of the Berlin interpretation. 2008 was well before the appeal of lists to the reptilian core of the human brain became widely known among internet users. The lack of foresight in employing lists this way might therefore be forgiven. Still, I think the Berlin interpretation (or "7 Weird Reasons Your Game Is Not A Roguelike") ought to be updated to something that looks like a definition more than a Buzzfeed listicle.

I think we can agree that Buzzfeed has been harmful to human interaction :>

I'm not sure, however, how you could ever hope to present something like the Berlin Interpretation without using a list.  And as soon as you use a list, you'll trigger this behaviour.  It would be interesting to see a more modern interpretation, but I will note that at the various IRDCs I've been to the consensus is to leave it alone.

As you note with the reference to the canon being conveniently dropped, I'm pretty confident any reference to "THIS CANNOT BE USED AS A CHECKLIST" would also have been lost.  Nonetheless, I do agree that it would have been useful to make that more clear.  But, I should caution this is my own opinion.  I don't remember the discussion well enough to confidently assert it was everyone else's, it could be some participants did/do view it as a checklilst...
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 15, 2014, 09:32:27 PM
Wow.  I must have posted a completely uncontroversial definition of a roguelike game.  It's now three pages on, and nobody's even bothered to tell me why I'm wrong!

8)


I don't think anybody is going to come up with a definition of roguelike games that satisfies everybody.  That said, I'll throw something at the wall.

I think that roguelike games must give the player as much time as he or she needs to plan and input the next move.  Being turn-based single player games is the easiest but not the only way to accomplish this.  If having slow reflexes or a motor impairment is a handicap then you are not playing a roguelike game. 

I think that exploration of procedurally generated maps in the presence of opposing forces is an essential part of roguelike games.  It doesn't really matter whether the player is playing a medieval-fantasy character, or the crew of a starship, or a cockroach.

I think that an unambiguous 'game over' condition is essential to roguelike games.  How much of the game's objectives a player can accomplish (and how much of the game's content a player can interact with) before the 'game over' condition is met, must be limited by player skill rather than just by how much time the player spends playing. 

Those three conditions are the ones I think are absolutely essential. And they already leave out some games that people consider roguelike.  I'm okay with that; I don't think that those games are in fact roguelike. 

There are some other conditions that I consider 'nearly' essential to roguelikes, such as a power curve; the idea that the player makes long-term gains in power and resources during the game.  If a game has no power curve I will doubt that it's roguelike, and suspect instead that it's more sidescroller-like.  I think a symbolic (in the sense of being unambiguous) display is important; character-based displays are an easy way but not the only way to accomplish this.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 15, 2014, 10:28:35 PM
Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 16, 2014, 12:56:35 AM
Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?

Well, I think these are questions you'll have to answer for yourself, but as to why lists aren't always awesome (except on Buzzfeed) let me give you a list:

- Lists are bad at expressing interrelated points in a way that exposes their relations. They are most effective when they don't try to.

- Lists have no subtlety. If you combine a big list with some other more subtle points that don't fit into the list, the subtle points will be lost on most readers. Most readers will only remember their favorite points in the list.

- Lists are good for surface level exposition and outlines, but as soon as they get big enough to describe something moderately complex reasonably thoroughly, they start to become incoherent, as it becomes less clear what the main points are and how the points interact. Few interesting things can be fully described by a collection of independent points or propositions.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 16, 2014, 02:52:41 PM
Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?

An ancient question is: "What is man?"

A school of philosophy concluded:

Man will be defined as:

So someone plucked a chicken and threw it into their compound.

Breaking things into lists is a very valuable and useful tool.  The term "Analyse" refers to just this - cutting up the complicated object into pieces we can understand.  Vast leaps forward in knowledge have come because of our ability to do this.  Abstracting "gravity" from all the other stuff that happens when stuff falls gives a nice clean understanding.  The problem is that when cut through the sinew to separate the organs, you lose all of the relationships between the parts.  This "Sum is greater than the parts" problem I think is what mushroom patch is frustrated with.

My own view is the fault is on the reader who decides to ignore all subtlety just because a list showed up.  I suspect such readers wouldn't have read a five page essay on roguelikes either.  If the Berlin Interpretation would have been a five page essay, people would have just sniped key sentences and used them out of context, in effect creating a list for future people to slavishly follow.

I also believe there *is* a genuine advantage to analysing roguelikes.  While we always lose essential relationships between those qualities, it is a lot easier to think of what it means to have a "Single player character game" than it is to always compare back to the holotypes.

So, when someone eventually makes a 7drl that matches all points of the Berlin Interpretation but isn't a roguelike (which people have been threatening since day 1!), it really doesn't prove that there is anything wrong with the Berlin Interpretation.  It merely underscores that "roguelikeness" is not a checklist of features, just like "human" isn't a checklist of features. 

But, it is *useful* to note that "Humans are bipeds", even if "Biped" isn't a necessary or sufficient definition of Human.  (In particular, someone who loses a leg isn't kicked out of humanity! (anymore))
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 17, 2014, 07:49:55 AM
My ground for defining roguelikes will be boobs. You know when you see great boobs, but you can't define them as mathematical set of attiributes.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: JeffLait on July 17, 2014, 02:02:48 PM
My ground for defining roguelikes will be boobs. You know when you see great boobs, but you can't define them as mathematical set of attiributes.

You ask, and the internet delivers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhxAoREt6Pg
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Boobs-on-Mac-Grapher

Which I guess proves your point, as there are at least two competing formulas!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: mushroom patch on July 17, 2014, 03:22:33 PM
I suspect you'll have difficulty convincing people that you have the experience to usefully apply your definition, Krice.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: tuturto on July 17, 2014, 03:48:55 PM
I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Kevin Granade on July 17, 2014, 04:05:56 PM
I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.
(sorry to single you out, I've seen something similar stated many times, just using your post as an example)
If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path ;), but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: tuturto on July 17, 2014, 06:03:21 PM
I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.
(sorry to single you out, I've seen something similar stated many times, just using your post as an example)
If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path ;), but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.

Well, preference as if something should be called to a roguelike and not a preference as if I like something. I can call something a roguelike, even if I don't like the game after all. But I can see how I wasn't particularly clear what I meant.

It's just so funny sometimes that we spent hours and hours debating if something could be called a roguelike or not. Kind of reminds me of music genres: "I only like North-North-Western True Semi-Gloss-Pitch-Black-Quasi-Shine Über-Metal that has exactly 2.5 quitars, everything else I consider not music." Defining a roguelike isn't easy and most likely there won't be a single definition that satisfies everyone.

It's understandable that people who are passionate about their hobby like us are like to talk about their hobby and define it. So, don't stop on my account, I like reading the thread now and then too.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Slash on July 17, 2014, 06:29:05 PM
I'll stick to lists (and rely on a pre existent context from the reader to stick the components together) as a way to outline what the fuss we are talking about.

I'll leave it you, noble people, to craft an absolute definition that gracefully and accurately describes our beloved genre.

Not that these sets of features shouldn't be maintained and updated, which I should be up to soonish.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Darren Grey on July 18, 2014, 01:52:09 PM
If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path ;), but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.

The point is there is no objective definition. Words are defined entirely by their context, and that will change over time and in different communities. Genres especially are not hard and fast, and everyone has different ideas on where the borders lie.

And the worst thing about genre definitions is they tend to be about exclusion. The really interesting stuff, the items that straddle genre boundaries or push into new territory, are delegitimised in favour of samey, repetitive content.

Just to give an example, 3 years ago there was a huge outcry when Dungeons of Dredmor appeared on the ASCII Dreams Roguelike of the Year poll. Seriously, a giant outcry. The very notion that a commercial game could be a roguelike! Horror! Now it seems positively conservative in comparison with the platformers and the real-time shooters that borrow a few roguelike ideas. Any new game coming along in the style of Dredmor is championed as a traditional roguelike in a sea of blasphemy. How times change!
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: AgingMinotaur on July 18, 2014, 06:56:31 PM
 Pretty shaky. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike) Let's bomb it ;D

As always,
Minotauros
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Krice on July 28, 2014, 09:45:36 AM
It starts to look like something, but I'd first like to practice scientific writing with something easier, an article about "How The Old Kingdom pyramids were built?"
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 28, 2014, 04:29:18 PM
Okay, just to throw some fresh provocation into the fray ...  What about the endgame?

We usually think of a roguelike game as being something you can 'complete' - that is, you get the Orb of Zot (or the Amulet of Yendor or whatever) back to the surface, you kill Morgoth, or whatever... 

Is this an essential part of the roguelike genre? High value or low value? 

Or is it just something we tack on because we haven't managed to develop any more interesting content and we've run out of things that the player can do/learn/master?  Are we putting up a "congratulations you win" message where, if we were being honest, we'd be saying  "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I wasn't able to come up with enough game content for you." 

These games tend to have limited capabilities, and once the player has experienced everything the game can "do", we could throw up endless variation that doesn't contain any real surprises, we can just admit that we've got nothing more and apologize for the limitation -- or we can tell the player s/he won.

Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Aukustus on July 28, 2014, 05:22:39 PM
I see roguelikes as a one big quest, whether it is killing a bad guy or retrieving an artifact. Thus it needs to end.
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Bear on July 28, 2014, 06:41:04 PM

I think it's maybe too easy for some players to misinterpret the existence of a possible 'win' as evidence that the game isn't over yet when they get killed. 

Because it is possible to 'beat the game' - in some player's minds, therefore a particular run of the game isn't over until they have done so.  Hence, save scumming, etc. 

But in a game where the only possible ending is that eventually the character gets killed one way or another, it's a lot harder to justify save scumming on the grounds that the player "hasn't finished the game yet".  Which brings us around to Dungeons of Dredmor:  "Congratulations!  You Have DIED!"
Title: Re: Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted
Post by: Ancient on August 02, 2014, 01:19:40 PM
Interesting. In games like Martin's Dungeon Bash and Dredmor the only way to "win" (i.e. live) is not to play.

Endgame is important to me in two major ways.
A time comes to tell the player "you have won, go maybe live your life". I think open-ended games have too much potential to entice a player into boring themselves.
Secondly, if death does not get the character sooner this is another way to giving option for fresh start and possibly trying other options, creating a character that adopts another set of traits, exploring another playstyle, trying some optional challenge.

Finally, when you have already won a game playing it afterwards feels different. I am eager to take more risks and explore tougher areas. In DCSS I stayed safely away from Tomb with my first winner character. The second who got powerful went there and finally died at the top but was close to getting at the rune. The run was very exciting though. If I had not won Crawl before I probably would feel some regret over the death of this warrior.

Endgame is not about lack of content in my case. Not enough fun stuff is likely prompt me to reduce number of levels in game as it already happened once in PRIME. Percentage-wise the most levels were cut from the last part of game - the mainframe. Either the player is tough enough to survive there without taking a scratch or will be dealt with by any two daemons teamed up.