The "How did you get into roguelike development Thread"

[Slash]

How did you get into roguelike development?

I remember I was surfing the web for a new RPG to satisfy my needs after destroying all Final Fantasy games when I found ADOM... after playing some not very sucessful games I decided it was time to make my own... this matched with the time when I was learning Java, so it was a perfect mix up. After some failures and some rewrites I finally got into what seems to be a good path

What about you?

[shinygerbil]

I haven't yet, but I'm planning on doing so in the very near future. I am going to try and learn C/C++ over the summer (no easy task I know, but I'll have a lot of spare time and enthusiasm) and one of the first projects I want to attempt once I consider myself fluent enough to undertake anything would be a roguelike. (Partially because that means I don't have to focus on assets such as art and music, but more because roguelikes are awesome.)

So anyway, I'll probably be around here for a while, asking annoying questions and stuff.

And hi, by the way, I'm just a wannabe game developer who happened to wander in. I'm liking the site!

[corremn]

How did I get into roguelike development?

From a love of roguelikes, of course.  I am a programmer that loves RLs.  However, I played Moria on my Mac some 15 years ago, before I ever saw a line of code.  Here I discovered that being killed over and over again with no chance of survival or winning can be incredibly time consuming and fun of course. I did however win moria with a dwarf priest, i think.  It was the sheer challenge of RL games that kept me playing them.

Since then I have played every RL I could find.  After years of ADOM, I got bored waiting for the next update so while surfing the net I discovered rec.games.roguelike.development.  I rejoyced at the fact that people were still actively creating these games, until I realised the progress was like watching snails paint growing grass.  Two games stood out for me at this time, copx's Tower of Doom (warp rogue) and Kornel's DoomRL.  Reading and playing the progress of these games gave me the idea to write my own.  Three months and 30000 lines of code later I was addicted to roguelike development. However about this time I realised how much time and effort went into one of these games so my development dwindled off.  I still actively develop but at a much slower pace.

Roguelike development is the most fun programming experience I have ever had. Too bad you cant get paid doing it.

[Slash]

Roguelike development is the most fun programming experience I have ever had. Too bad you cant get paid doing it.

yeah... I wish I could be paid for living a roguelike life, but for that to happens roguelikes would have to generate income.

Perhaps it could be done, if enough people gets to know about them the genre would make its own niche willing to pay for new games, or subscriptions, or make significative donations... but I guess only time will tell

[Anvilfolk]

Quite honestly, I'd hate to see paying roguelikes. Already UnReal World annoys me to no end. Right now, it's got the kind of niche I like. Well, except for Krice...

Right now, people are playing and programming this for fun, pleasure, for a good time. If you start commercializing, I think the community wouldn't be as great as it is now, everyone willing to discuss and help a bit. Well, except for Krice.

Donations are another matter, but you can't really rely on them for much.

[Adral]

Quite honestly, I'd hate to see paying roguelikes. Already UnReal World annoys me to no end. Right now, it's got the kind of niche I like. Well, except for Krice...

Right now, people are playing and programming this for fun, pleasure, for a good time. If you start commercializing, I think the community wouldn't be as great as it is now, everyone willing to discuss and help a bit. Well, except for Krice.

Donations are another matter, but you can't really rely on them for much.

A straight hit on the nail. I just think the same as you.

Including the Krice point .

[Tarindel]

I haven't yet, but I'm planning on doing so in the very near future. I am going to try and learn C/C++ over the summer (no easy task I know, but I'll have a lot of spare time and enthusiasm)

I'm working on a side-project C++ tutorial site.  You (or anybody else) wanting to learn C++ might be interested in checking out http://www.learncpp.com.  It's still in it's infancy, but I've been adding new content regularly.

I originally got into Roguelikes when I found Angband 2.4 "Frog knows".  At the time I last learning Turbo Pascal in school, so I tried to write a roguelike in Turbo Pascal, not knowing that Pascal had a 64k code limit.  Once I hit that limit, that was the end of those dreams.  I found Nethack and ADOM mentioned on various Angband sites and got hooked on those.  Eventually I learned C/C++ in college and made a few more attempts at a game, but just didn't have the experience to pull an ambitious project off.  More recently, I found Crawl and it got me reinterested in the genre.  Now that I've been working as a C++ programmer in industry for many years, I have the experience to write a large project, so I figured... why not?  So I started writing Subterrane, which has now been in development for almost a year, even though it doesn't show.    There's a lot of functionality present for which only a few details have been implemented -- eg. a framework for potions, but almost no potions implemented.  Once the game gets toward beta, I think it'll come together really fast.  But it's not there yet.

My recommendation if you are a new programmer is start very small.  Think 7DRL scope without the 7-day constraint.   You can always expand your game later.

[Gamer_2k4]

I played ADOM and Nethack and thought "I could make a game like this.  But mine will be better!"  So, I learned to program my calculator, then QBASIC, then C++, then Java.  My game is being written in C++ right now, and if I ever worked on it, I think it could be pretty good. >_>

[stu]

My interest was piqued when I first played 'Amulet of Yendor', Don Knellers port of hack, doing floppy swaps for saved games.

"Its ascii! It cant be that hard......"

a-huh...

[Ex]

I was an old roguelike news fan back when all I knew was Delphi. That was a long, long, long time ago. Near the beginning of RLN. I did one of the first few articles. I loved roguelikes from the beginning. Alphaman I played a lot before I even knew of roguelikes. My favorite roguelike is ZAngband.

Edit; I didn't know this post was that old D: I should have set the cutoff limit to like, a day or something. Sorry for reviving.

[Slash]

Worry not about thread necromancy. This post is like... immortal

Any roguelike project in development?

[Ex]

Worry not about thread necromancy. This post is like... immortal

Any roguelike project in development?

I work quite a bit implementing different dungeon generation algorithms, but I've yet to work on an actual roguelike. I'm mostly a dungeon generation sortof guy I guess. Most recently I did a dungeon generator for a 2d sidescroller. That was fun. I have been debating starting some sort of roguelike project. Just not sure what.

[Slash]

Well, knowledgment of environment generation is always valuable... may be you would like to write up some articles on it or produce a generic library for people to use if you can work on your own roguelike

[Krice]

I think the community wouldn't be as great as it is now, everyone willing to discuss and help a bit. Well, except for Krice.

Well thank you.
My adventure began.. way back then. Playing Hack, Larn, Rogue etc.. and Nethack (most important) convinced me that I want to make a roguelike too.

[Anvilfolk]

That was a pretty stupid comment on my part. I'm sorry. And yes, I'm being honest... I had been browsing r.g.r.d for awhile, and was a little annoyed by what I saw. Still, I should've kept my mouth shut there.

I look forward to playing Kaduria, and everyone else's roguelikes