Messages

1

Player's Plaza / Re: Ever felt weird playing a roguelike?

« on: January 22, 2025, 09:21:37 PM »

This is an interesting discussion.

It's not too often that one finds roguelike threads discussing whether a game's design makes the player feel alienated in some subconscious way or not.

There are cases were I don't mind weird mechanics and game feel, but there are also other cases where it does bother me.

I think it is a nuanced kind of thing overall and depends on how all the pieces of the game fit together overall, like so many other things in game dev.

Games certainly don't need to correspond to reality, or even a fictional reality, but that doesn't change the fact that sometimes things can feel out of place and could have been done in a more natural feeling and compelling way.

This thread was good food for thought. I will try to remember it for my own upcoming roguelike project that I'm just starting but have been wanting to make for the past decade. It should be fun getting back into dev more tangibly!

And, even though this forum gets way less activity than it once did (like many forums), I am happy that this (and other forums) still exists and is alive. The more traditional forums remain active the better, because social media in contrast socializes far too much power of censorship and groupthink in the hands of just a few entities.

I've always loved traditional forums a lot more than social media and they are a lot less anxiety inducing and so it is good to be back after so long! 

2

Player's Plaza / Re: Looking for the next Roguelike

« on: January 22, 2025, 09:04:29 PM »

Your (OP's) criteria are a bit broad/vague, but here's a few of my own favorites that might fit that you may like:

• Spirits Abyss (similar to Vagante, but more whimsical... I like Spirits Abyss more overall)
• Infra Arcana (perhaps my favorite horror-themed roguelike, elegant and compelling)
• The Last Stand: Aftermath (actual 3D roguelike game, closest to procedural Resident Evil I've found)
• 1-bit Survivor (feels like a very tight and minimalistic turn-based Resident Evil)
• 868-Hack (best ultra-minimalistic roguelike I've played perhaps, quick game sessions too)
• Moonring (interesting mist theme that reminds me of the setting (world theme) of Legend of Legaia (a PSX game), but as a roguelike)
• Brogue (awesome color effects and gameplay, traditional fantasy but imaginative and polished)
• Curious Expedition 1 (not 2 though, personally) (an awesome strategy game with wonderful pixel art and very fun)

These are all fun ones and I bet you'll love at least one of them, but probably more than one.

I hope that helps! Have fun! 

3

Early Dev / Re: MudGate: Heroes of the Sanctuary

« on: January 20, 2025, 08:35:51 PM »

I went to try the game out, but when I saw that it required an account creation and login then I decided not to.

I imagine that many other players are likely the same way.

You may be losing a lot of prospective players by putting the game behind a login wall!

Changing that so that people can try the game before they make an account would likely substantially improve how many players you get, I'd imagine! 

4

Early Dev / Re: Feedback appreciated: a turn-based roguelike platformer: Clean Space Corporation

« on: January 20, 2025, 08:33:38 PM »

The game's premise is unique and has potential. It reminds me slightly of Dust Force in that it is rare for janitorial services to be turned into the setting for a game.

I liked the CRT-like and chromatic aberration post-processing effect you used.

The music also had some good energy to it.

The splash screen art of the astronaut is also quite well drawn/painted.

However, it'd be good to have keyboard controls too and not just mouse controls.

Also, when I tried the game, your procedural generation system made the second level impossible to get through as far as I could tell. The terrain seemed impassible.

The game feels incomplete and I'm guessing that it indeed is and that you may have moved on to other things by now. I just felt like giving you some feedback anyway though, to be supportive of fellow creative people.

Good effort and best of luck!

5

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

« on: January 20, 2025, 08:10:04 PM »

Thanks! Looking forward to it!

I'm going to break my cycle of self-sabotage and finally move forward.

I'm glad the forum is still up. 

6

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

« on: January 18, 2025, 04:57:01 PM »

Hello everyone! 

I actually originally made this account way back in 2012, then wrote a couple of posts expressing my great joy for having found the forum (and also more broadly speaking the entire roguelike community) and also sharing my ambitions to create a 3D roguelike and to explore some associated prospective innovation ideas for procedural generation... and then I disappeared for over a decade.

You see, at the time I had no idea how bad my mental block on game dev and even programming itself would become. I was employed as a AAA game developer shortly after college but the experience so unsettled me (e.g. toxic office politics, unexpected work conditions, etc) and my creative outlook that ever since leaving that environment in ~2013 I've had difficulty actually doing anything whenever I tried to program and have been slowly trying to recover from that ever since.

During that entire decade though I have still been greatly yearning to make a roguelike and the lack of having done so yet even to this day has been one of the heaviest weights upon my mind these many long years. I feel like I have been waiting a decade for my life to begin (running around in circles in the form of analysis paralysis and anxiety) and I have immense regrets about not having done what I promised myself I would yet.

It may seem that I just appeared and disappeared all those years ago, as if it was not significant to me, but quite the contrary is the case: Procedural generation and roguelikes have been the center focus of my ambition and hopes for years now, but my (perhaps traumatized?) state of mind (e.g. "writer's block" for game dev) has been stopping me from doing so. I realize the self-sabotage and hypocrisy of that, but I have struggled to be able to function well at all ever since my AAA game dev experiences and how they contributed to conditioned me to fear every slightest potential flaw in game dev to the point of crippling me and much of my life in effect.

It has become the nemesis of my creative life (my struggle to break my bad pattern of creative stagnation). So, here I am at long last, reviving my profile from so long ago in the hopes of finally closing the circle on my broken dreams and fulfilling the promise I made to myself to make a roguelike game all those years ago in ~2012-2013!

I've wasted a lot of opportunity by taking so long about this, but I can't change the past but can only move forward now.

It means the world to me to finally overcome this somehow and I hope that perhaps participating here again and taking it seriously will help me to overcome the creative and emotional roadblock that has brought so much struggle and frustration to my life.

I am sorry for disappearing for so long and I hope I'm not too late to mend my own folly and to break the cycle that has stopped my life from moving forward how I've wanted it to the past decade.

Anyway, sorry for rambling a bit here too, but I wanted to get my thoughts off my chest.

I am glad the forum is still around and I hope to finally overcome my internal struggle and make peace with what I wanted my life to be and where to guide it next.

Here's to hoping for brighter creative and personal futures for us all! 

7

Programming / Re: Map generation woes

« on: November 08, 2012, 04:36:12 AM »

I'm new here so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but:

I'm not sure exactly what you think is wrong with your map. You said to ignore the "wrongly overlapping" corridors. Are you talking about the walls that break connectivity?

Also, I don't know what your various tile types actually are, so my interpretation is just based on assumptions. It could be that light blue areas in your system are closed walls and dark areas are open floors. I doubt it, but since we don't know your system we can't technically know what each color means. (I'm guessing light blue is open though)

As for loops and gameplay, it's really an arbitrary design decision. It would probably be more helpful if you stated what kind of features you want more specifically.

Do you want a way to generate more loops? Do you want a way to fix the connectivity? I really just don't quite understand what is being asked.

In any case though, the map looks pretty cool to me, connectivity and other visual artifacts aside. It's got a pretty interesting structure to it.

I wouldn't say that there's "too many rooms". In fact, what that even means really depends totally on what kind of game you want to design.

8

Programming / Re: Hello Procedural El Dorado ^_^

« on: November 08, 2012, 04:22:44 AM »

Hey, thanks for all the responses.

I am indeed interested in 3D procedural, but I've been thinking of perhaps working with 2D gameplay (with 3D graphics) first for a while to get practice. Plus, from a game design perspective part of the appeal of 2D is that having fewer dimensions makes things more streamlined and 2D games often require less mental energy in some sense. I've been bouncing the idea back and forth for a while.

And yeah, I often find it pretty intimidating how much great stuff is being produced lately, but its all well and good. A lot of people sure are doing Minecraft engines lately.

@Darren:
Thanks for the links and the welcome. Good to hear from one of the radio show people.

@requerent:
Visual cues are indeed important. It's certainly a very good point . The value of feedback mechanisms (like visual cues and sound) and a smooth user interface can't be understated. It really brings games to life. Atmosphere is important to me and it's something I've been thinking about.

And yes, I've worked some with 3D engines before, but not as extensively as I would have liked to by now.

As for making a roguelike, I'm thinking of maybe using Unity. It would be interesting if there was a nice voxel system, but its seems like that could too easily add unnecessary complexity. I'll probably use straight cubes, because it makes the generation logic more flexible because it's so much easier to understand.

@Jo:
Yeah, I looked at some of the 7DRL and they have some pretty awesome concepts. I looked at Man in the Mirror, Vicious Orcs, Nightfall, Demon Hunt, and maybe others(?). Maybe I'll do a 7DRL one day myself if I find the time when it comes around.

@everyone again:

Turn based games and real time games both have their relative merits.

I'm definitely into the Roguelike design philosophy, with respect to the core gameplay feel, character, thrill of struggling to survive, and actions having real consequences etc. The more superficial qualities such as ASCII text and so on I just consider to be tools in a tool box and not an essential part of any roguelike. ASCII text is well suited for a making game design sketches without the art overhead, but has some major limitations in other respects (not just visual limitations , but gameplay ones too).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to working to working on some PCG and Roguelike stuff in the future and using the forums.

NOTE: As a minor clarification to my first post in the thread, one should note that when I said that I'd be putting out a roguelike of some kind "soon" I meant soon in a relative way. I'm a busy college student and I'm mostly new to PCG, so we're talking more on the scale of 6 months+ potentially before anything comes out. Thanks.

PS: This post was supposed to be short too... I must confess I have a history of making long posts on forums...

9

Programming / Hello Procedural El Dorado ^_^

« on: November 03, 2012, 06:59:22 AM »

Hello everyone, I'm new to the community so I figured I'd introduce myself briefly.

Most of my gaming experience has been with playing games from the commercial game industry plus some free/open-source games. Throughout my gaming experience though I've always had a very strong interest in games that featured procedural content generation and frequently sought to find more of them. I would occasionally find commercial games with some procedural generation, but for the most part it was uncommon. Random map generation was always one of my most sought after features in any game I was interested in.

Somehow despite all my extensive searching for games with random map generation, I somehow never became aware of the existence of Roguelikes. I've only recently became aware of the Roguelike genre's existence, but procedural generation is just about as close to my heart as any game feature could be.

I've been reading through PCG Wiki, RogueBasin, and various related sites extensively lately when I've had the free time. In fact, I originally became aware of the Roguelike genre through a combination of reading PCG Wiki and hearing about Dwarf Fortress (DF was the first ASCII based visual game I'd ever seen).

I've also been listening to Roguelike Radio (http://www.roguelikeradio.com/) and it's been quite enjoyable. I particularly like the fact that the contributors have such objective and deep conversations about game design that I haven't ever found anywhere else. In contrast, a lot of mainstream game design conversations I've heard in-person amount to little more than people talking about wanting to copy some already existing game with unsubstantial variation or spewing out nonsense advocating certain game design philosophies that only serve to make the industry more stagnant. It's nice to have a more thoughtful and farsighted perspective on things. The mainstream industry can be almost painfully uninteresting and arrogant on occasion. I give my thanks to the various Roguelike Radio contributors.

Anyway, as for myself I'm an aspiring game developer currently studying computer science in college, with a concentration in game design, and I'm about to graduate after this year. I also have a strong math background and I sometimes do a little bit of music composition and sound editing. Recently, I've started doing some digital 3D model sculpting and am finding it surprisingly easy, especially considering I have no background in art. I'm planning on taking it up as another hobby. It really is surprisingly easy to make good looking 3D models, I've found. I'm primarily a programmer, but I'm a jack of all trades somewhat with respect to some parts of the other disciplines. I'm absolutely determined to make my living in the game industry.

Procedural content generation (or "dynamic content generation" as I usually call it) is really something I've always been passionate about. It's my favorite subject in programming and I'm hoping to specialize in it when I work in the game industry. Working on dynamic content generation as my life would be awesome. It's just really the most interesting subject out there I think.

You can definitely expect a game using procedural content generation from me in the future (probably in full 3D), and some general PCG development contributions also. I've got some concrete new ideas for PCG that I haven't seen anywhere on these sites and I plan to implement them sometime soon in the future.

Oh, and in terms of design philosophy that you guys can relate to, my design philosophies are closer to streamlined/minimalist (i.e. think Brogue, DoomRL, etc). I prefer highly polished and streamlined games that focus on truly deep gameplay mechanics, rather than bloated and clumsy games.

(This brief intro sure got long...)