Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Tfcrl release (0.0.2)

« on: July 31, 2012, 07:28:31 AM »

TFCRL 0.0.2 is released
Post about that is here http://roguelikesme.blogspot.com/2012/07/tfcrl-version-002-release.html

Not a whole lot of new stuff there, but more importantly a dev blog post of the story premise.
Post here: http://roguelikesme.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-tfcrl-story.html

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Tfcrl release (0.0.1)

« on: July 19, 2012, 07:49:32 PM »

Nothing terribly interesting on the tech side. More of what I plan on working on is on the features side.

Ill release a blog post soon on what I am planning for a few things, ill make sure to post it here as well.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Tfcrl release (0.0.1)

« on: July 19, 2012, 09:00:45 AM »

It should be a few weeks till it gets more interesting, though basic features will be coming in quickly I hope. I don't foresee anything that will completely stump me but I have been wrong on that before.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Tfcrl release (0.0.1)

« on: July 18, 2012, 08:49:09 PM »

I am afraid this release is little more than a tech demo at the moment, but I am releasing it in the hopes that it will motivate me to increase development speed. Feel free to download and try it out if you like!

From my development blog at http://roguelikesme.blogspot.com/

TFCRL 0.0.1
The Four (forty?) Challenges Roguelike release 0.0.1

 Instead of a lengthy post on design decisions for what I want this roguelike to be, I opted instead for a relatively quick and dirty post in the interests of getting stuff out there. At the moment it is more of a tech demo than game, but this should change over the next few months. My hopes is that this blog encourages me to put out updates quickly and often.

Interesting(?) feature list so far:

Line of sight algorithm implementation - As this was something I did with almost zero research, I am surprised at how well it turned out to be honest. It seems fast enough for a java implementation. Only problem is the lack of sight range of long walls when a character is right next to them. I plan of fixing this if it seems to create too many problems. Included is a basic map for looking at the line of sight stuff.

Completely customizable controls - A feature that I feel is lacking from roguelikes I play is a customizable control set. Mine should allow a player to remap (almost) any key to any function in the game. It should also be easy to make presets, and I plan to have presets for some of the basic roguelike control schemes. (angband, nethack, adom, ect)
 After putting down this feature list it sadly doesn't seem to be very much. Most of what I have done so far though is lay the groundwork for more features down the line. This should hopefully pay off with increased speed of development.

 Special thanks to Slash and his wonderful java roguelike library! http://slashie.net/libjcsi/


If you would like to try out what I have created:

 Download runnable .jar file and source code at: http://minus.com/lf95EHYK5b4Hr

I plan on doing posting small updates often but I will only update here for larger ones.

5

Other Announcements / Re: Roguelike Radio podcast

« on: September 20, 2011, 06:32:43 AM »

Hey just in response to the 3rd podcast comments. Mainly in the confusion of mine and Erez's like of the interface of Brogue. I probably overstated how good the graphics were, (and as podcasts are live it is difficult to always fully think out something before you say it) but I would very much stand by my statements that the game has a good interface/ controls.  Particularly it bypassed some of the hardships of learning a new roguelike(hey, all items are used through just one button? And all the somewhat complicated items and monsters are explained through an easy to use tooltip!) and combined it with familiarity from other roguelikes (num pad movement? Oh boy!)

The thing is is that there is no one size fits all solution to UI, depending on your audience you need to use a different solution. Not every game is trying to draw in players from outside the genre (I would argue that very few actually do). For instance in the case with cardinal quest. I actually had more trouble (or at least annoyance) with the controls than I did with Brogue. Primarily because they were different than what I was used to. Even after I got used to those controls, I was still annoyed with how limited they were in some ways. Where I can fly through many games with more traditional controls, after several hours with cardinal quest I was playing about as fast as I was after the first 30 minutes figuring out the game. Obviously playing a game really fast isnt the best way to look at a ui, but not being able to play as fast as you would like becomes a problem and an annoyance after a while.

Now certainty cardinal quest has a UI and control scheme that is really nice for new players, and if that is your audience for the game then that is perfect. But saying all games should be designed for players of that level of familiarity of the genre is silly IMO.

What I would realy like to see more in roguelikes are more options for control schemes. Sure, make a newbie friendly control scheme default. But throw the hardcore roguelike fans a bone, add in a more traditional control scheme as well. They will look for it in your game (or at least I will).