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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Dwarf fortress
« on: April 22, 2013, 06:00:36 PM »QuoteThat said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
This is pretty rich. This is a forum devoted to a genre that is completely derivative by definition -- indeed, a lot of discussion goes into whether new games are enough like the classics to fit within the genre and therefore merit attention as more than just a throwback to the C64 era. The question here isn't "Is it original?" It's "Is it unoriginal enough?"
That said, by any sane definition Dwarf Fortress is roguelike -- it's fantasy roleplaying, with turn based play if the player wants it in terminal graphics. If your fortress goes to hell, there's no recovering it. Adams has moved the ball so far forward with Dwarf Fortress, people are still in denial about it. Developers are talking about building the successor to ADOM or the next iteration of the zangband legacy. They should be thinking about how to incorporate aspects of Dwarf Fortress into more middle of the road roguelikes and how to improve on what Tarn's accomplished with his game, by, yes, straight up stealing mechanics from his game and chewing on them. There's a lot there to be chewed.
Dwarf Fortress is THE development in roguelikes of the last decade. After twenty five years of talking nethack, there has to be something new in the endeavor of wrecking one's GPA despite sitting alone in front of a computer terminal 15 hours a day or we risk losing the next generation to facebook and sex.
Alright, first let me make something clear. If I say "rip off", I don't mean taking features from DF. I mean outright clones, or semi-clones or what ever you want to call them. If you incorporate some mechanics from DF into your roguelike, that's fine. Heck, I actively appreciate it. Because DF is awesomesauce ffs. If you take DF, give it nicer graphics and cut out 50% of the advanced features of DF, that is at least partially ripping off IMO. If you take not only the gameplay, but also a large number of features and possibly even the setting, you should at least acknowledge that you are re-making DF in a way.
Now, you may say, what's the difference? Us devs make games that take the gameplay and many features from Rogue, or Angband, right? Yes. That's why we call our games "roguelikes". To acknowledge the history of our genre. If someone went and said "Hey! I'm making a DF-like!" or something like that, wonderful. I love it. No problem for me. Making a DF-like and not acknowledging DF would feel like someone saying "Hey! I'm making a game where you run around a dungeon killing monsters in turn-based combat on a grid! This is completely new and revolutionary! Give me all of your moneys!" (last sentence optional).
I'd also like to debate your point on DF being the first innovation in the Roguelike scene since Nethack. There have been numerous games doing new and exciting things in the scene. For example, take Crawl. It's a roguelike that has become itself a classic, but introduced or at least championed many new features that have been adopted by others since. Another good example would be ToME. It is radically different from most contemporary roguelikes, yet unmistakably roguelike. True, the level of simulation reached in DF is unparalleled so far (except maybe in some WIPs that have since popped up), but to claim that DF is the first "new thing" in the scene since Nethack is far overstating the importance of DF's Adventure mode.
And yes, I said Adventure mode. Because Fortress mode is not a roguelike. kraflab has elaborated on that aspect already, so I won't go into it. I will say, though, that some of us are increasingly annoyed at the increasing misuse of the term "roguelike". There have been many discussions on #rgrd, and many users seem to be of the opinion that "it's hard, and it has permadeath" is not enough to qualify as a roguelike. I'll happily agree with those who postulate a sliding scale of roguelikeness, but there is a point where a given game just isn't really roguelike anymore.
Now, if you want to talk about roguelikelikes, that is something different. I can see Fortress mode being roguelikelike, depending on how you define it.
