Messages

1

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)

« on: July 24, 2015, 07:44:01 AM »

Hello,

I'm an avid gamer who also enjoys designing his own games, though I rarely produce anything publishable. My favorite genres have been adventure and RPG (anything interesting from Zork to Dragon Warrior), but I also enjoy turn based strategy titles with tactical elements (anything from Chess to XCOM: UFO Defense).

Roguelikes and I have had a pretty rocky love-hate relationship over the years. I'm not good at them, mostly because I don't have the patience to work my way through the insanely complex series of interactions necessary to have a good shot at winning them, and am not interested in studying mountains of spoilers to accomplish the same thing. But I do love aspects such as the randomness, character development, and permadeath.

Anyhow, I'm getting back into game design and hoping to do a few things that incorporate a lot of the roguelike traits.

Hi, it's me again. It's been quite the interlude since I've poked into the forums, but I guess I've been feeling the itch again. I've most recently been playing ToME.

Still tinkering with game design, though I haven't produced anything publishable yet. I might play around with developing something in T4.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: [Sil] Goodbye Leron the Noldor...

« on: April 20, 2012, 08:38:07 PM »

Ah, ok. Sil looked like the name of a character. Wasn't familiar with it being the name of a roguelike. I'll have to check that one out, thanks!

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: [Sil] Goodbye Leron the Noldor...

« on: April 20, 2012, 06:22:56 PM »

Uhm... which roguelike was this again?

4

Programming / Re: Working on new Roguelike (Sci-fi setting?)

« on: April 18, 2012, 08:54:08 PM »

If you're still in search of a good initial premise, I'd suggest finding a few science fiction books/series/games that you enjoy the most and projecting some of the ideas that make them enjoyable into your roguelike concept, then designing everything around whatever premise you come up with.

5

Programming / Re: Working on new Roguelike (Sci-fi setting?)

« on: April 18, 2012, 03:13:07 AM »

That's really going to depend on who your target audience is. I'm not a hardcore roguelike junkie. I've never beaten a roguelike before, with the exception of one game that played like a RL but was mapped out like an adventure game, if you count that. And I can't even remember the name of that game as I played it so long ago (somewhere around 1990). So my opinions on this are probably going to differ from someone who's beaten more than half all RLs in existence.

Assuming I'm *still* the dealer, though, I don't care about unlockable classes. I probably am not going to get far enough in a RL to unlock much of anything, that's why I didn't form an opinion on it. So any class you lock is a class I probably am not going to get to play. I'm okay with that as long as you don't lock the stuff considered to be normal fare for roleplaying games.

Movement? Arrow keys and numpad are fine for me. Numpad is probably harder to do on my netbook since it doesn't have one, so I'd want the control system to be mappable.

Everything else I didn't answer are things I consider highly dependent on your game's initial premise, and that's a part of the game you're going to have to come up with yourself if you haven't already.

One other thing: if you make the object interface arcane, counterintuitive, or otherwise indecipherable and difficult to remember from game to game, I'm probably not going to play for long. That's likely one of the reasons I've never beaten a roguelike. I get bored with having to look up commands I can't remember because I hardly ever use them. Concerns like this are also why I use the word 'intuitive' a lot when talking about game design.

6

Programming / Re: Working on new Roguelike (Sci-fi setting?)

« on: April 18, 2012, 02:16:40 AM »

I'm getting ready to make an attempt at this kind of game myself, just to say I did it and see how my version turns out. Since you asked, here are my thoughts:

Complexity: Aim for MiddleGround.5

Character building:  Develop a system that derives directly from your setting and situation. Forget the races and classes, unless they have a purpose related to that. Arbitrary randomness is great in a roguelike, but not when it extends to the character attributes.

Movement: Whatever seems intuitive.

How to utilize future setting: Get creative. Come up with the start of a story or a setting and run with it. Create an interesting situation for the player to explore.

Hub town/persistance: If it works with your setting, go for it. If it doesn't, don't worry about it, or else stick one on a dungeon level somewhere to be discovered later.

Unlockable classes etc:  Dealer's choice here. It's your game, man. I wouldn't lock more than half the options, though, and probably not even that many.

7

Early Dev / Re: Dungeon Dashers - Multiplayer Co-op Dungeon Crawling

« on: April 16, 2012, 09:04:24 PM »

Very nice. The wheel menu interface looks like it might be a tad awkward, but I like how the rest looks. By the way, though your other site talks about changing up the graphical style, I do like the tiles being muted and dark. One wouldn't expect a dungeon to seem bright and cheery, after all.

If this came with tools (or at least the ability) to edit my own maps and script quests, I'd seriously consider paying for it.

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Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)

« on: April 12, 2012, 01:12:22 AM »

Hello,

I'm an avid gamer who also enjoys designing his own games, though I rarely produce anything publishable. My favorite genres have been adventure and RPG (anything interesting from Zork to Dragon Warrior), but I also enjoy turn based strategy titles with tactical elements (anything from Chess to XCOM: UFO Defense).

Roguelikes and I have had a pretty rocky love-hate relationship over the years. I'm not good at them, mostly because I don't have the patience to work my way through the insanely complex series of interactions necessary to have a good shot at winning them, and am not interested in studying mountains of spoilers to accomplish the same thing. But I do love aspects such as the randomness, character development, and permadeath.

Anyhow, I'm getting back into game design and hoping to do a few things that incorporate a lot of the roguelike traits.

9

Other Announcements / Re: I Have To Be The Worst Roguelike Player

« on: April 12, 2012, 12:53:18 AM »

You're not the worst. I have yet to get past level 7 on any roguelike. Doesn't stop me from occasionally trying, though. I usually wind up getting frustrated at the obscure interface and giving up after a few runs. The tiled games with decent documentation are slowly improving the genre for me though.

I'm finding DoomRL fun enough to keep trying.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: glorg

« on: April 12, 2012, 12:48:41 AM »

I came across glorg recently as was interested what this community thought about it as a roguelike.

I think about glorg as a roguelike the same way I think about Progress Quest as a roguelike.