Author Topic: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project  (Read 72691 times)

AmnEn

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #15 on: August 30, 2010, 01:59:01 PM »
It really was all about the Shock Value. Generate some fluffy discussions and there you go.
It was also playing into the hands of two very troll heavy topics: Games as Art - how far can and should games go, as well as the violent games discussion. If that game had seen the light of day and some game-repressive countries media found out about it, it would have just been another nail to the coffin. Think Australia or Germany where politics are very eager to banhammer games.

Concerning the support of games, I've tried to do so in the past. I went on advertising rampages for some Roguelikes, I tried to be as active as possible in the respective forums, intentionally bumped release threads on other sites with sometimes really stupid questions, just to get it back up at the top for folks to see the game release/update. But alas, a single person can't generate enough "feedback points" to keep projects alive. And lately I've lost all my drive as well: Why bother with feedback in a community where the status quo seems paramount?
As a player, roguelike projects often look dead to me. There's a release, some short aftermath if you're lucky and the project then goes silent for several years. You don't hear anything, not even rumors. It's kinda like the Developer(s) fell off the earth. I never know whether its finished, abandoned or simply takes its healthy time for progress. On the flipside, too much progress in too short a time puts me off trying a rl because it gives me the feeling that by the time I'm done downloading, it's already outdated. But luckily that's just me. I don't know how others feel about this.

About DoomRL:
Oh dear. There it goes again.

getter77

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #16 on: August 30, 2010, 03:36:14 PM »

Concerning the support of games, I've tried to do so in the past. I went on advertising rampages for some Roguelikes, I tried to be as active as possible in the respective forums, intentionally bumped release threads on other sites with sometimes really stupid questions, just to get it back up at the top for folks to see the game release/update. But alas, a single person can't generate enough "feedback points" to keep projects alive. And lately I've lost all my drive as well: Why bother with feedback in a community where the status quo seems paramount?
As a player, roguelike projects often look dead to me. There's a release, some short aftermath if you're lucky and the project then goes silent for several years. You don't hear anything, not even rumors. It's kinda like the Developer(s) fell off the earth. I never know whether its finished, abandoned or simply takes its healthy time for progress. On the flipside, too much progress in too short a time puts me off trying a rl because it gives me the feeling that by the time I'm done downloading, it's already outdated. But luckily that's just me. I don't know how others feel about this.
 

Hang in there!   8)

I will agree that a sense of liveliness is PARAMOUNT for moving things forward attaining/regaining/maintaining the spotlight on a given project.

Ultimately, as things continue to spiral down/chaotically (  :( ) on my end, I'm pretty sure that the "status quo" is just a thing to make use of when possible, but otherwise ignore---what matters is the absolute progress of moving forward and having something better/different than what came before it.   There's no telling what may happen on a given day that can turn a situation on its head entirely, so approaching things earnestly and with vigor might as well be the thing to do.
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Fenrir

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #17 on: August 30, 2010, 04:17:33 PM »
It's not about the theme; it's about the mechanics. Giving a game a unique theme is just slapping a new coat of paint on the same old thing. Sure, some paint colors are more attractive than others, but it's still just a coat of paint.

This hoax was the closest thing that the community has come to an open-ended "roguelike" game like Dwarf Fortress' "adventure mode", which is far from complete enough to stand on its own.

Darren Grey

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #18 on: August 30, 2010, 06:21:48 PM »
I really think the point about having a good Youtube video should not be understated in this case.  Lots of roguelikes get released all the time with long text descriptions of the features, or maybe just a link to download and play it.  It's much easier for people to watch a video and see the unique features of a game than to look through all the text or go to the trouble of installing the game.  Youtube videos generate hype very easily, and I guess this is something we developers should remember well when making new releases.

Of course we've seen this level of hype crop up before, without videos even.  I guess there are other social aspects involved, even as banal as making a post on a weekend when a lot of people happen to be reading a forum.  In this case the post at Bay12 really grabbed a huge number of people's attentions straight away.  Also, similar to the Shockfrost craze we've seen before this was presented as an unfinished game with a lot of potential.  Everyone was very quick to jump in with their own ideas and suggestions, which further fuelled the attention and hype the game was getting.

As for the theme itself... well, I think the fact that it could be so easily stated as "serial killer roguelike" is a good way for it to advertise itself.  A lot of games can't be summed up so easily, nor can they summon up such a wealth of potentials from just three words.  It's an relatively untapped theme, and the simplicity of the idea got people thinking down all sorts of routes.  The hoaxer was obviously fairly clever in many of the ways in which he applied the idea in his video.

All-in-all it was a pretty good hoax!  There's certainly several things to learn from it for presenting ideas in future  :)

insectcalm

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #19 on: August 30, 2010, 07:19:00 PM »
I got stoked on this project because the idea of an urban roguelike is fascinating. I'm kind of sick of fantasy roguelikes (okay, only kind of) and this sounded ingenious. The video definitely helped too. What I want to know is, in the last thread, someone said it wasn't a hoax; his wife made him stop. Why did they say that?
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 09:04:13 PM by insectcalm »

DrOctapu

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #20 on: August 30, 2010, 08:24:23 PM »
It's not all bad. I didn't know about this site before, and now I do! And I'm really interested in playing some Roguelikes. So at least you've gotten some positive traffic from all of this :)
Same.

Ex

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #21 on: August 31, 2010, 03:17:48 AM »
They sucked. I guess the reason is that you need really more than just the theme in small 7DRL type roguelike.
Ouch, that's a mean thing to say to all those aspiring developers. That's also a very relative feeling, they didn't objectively suck. For instance, I find many of them quite good and play them regularly.

Slash

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #22 on: August 31, 2010, 04:14:52 AM »
Elig, they sucked. Leave Krice alone :D

Krice

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #23 on: August 31, 2010, 05:54:44 AM »
Ouch, that's a mean thing to say to all those aspiring developers.

I'm talking about games, not developers. I can understand this matter when I look at my own games, especially Teemu. It's a roguelike type game (vaguely), but it sucks. It doesn't help to make it a better game if I advertise it everywhere. Luckily I have ideas how to improve the gameplay, so it's not over yet!

I think it's important to realize basic stuff like DoomRL not being a roguelike. This scene is infested with small game projects that don't even try to be anything like roguelikes. What is worse, players are bombarded with these games and continuous minor releases. It's like the great shareware boom, if you remember that time (you might be too young). Suddenly you got zillions of games everywhere and the quality of game design is no longer there.

purestrain

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #24 on: August 31, 2010, 10:37:04 AM »
I think it's important to realize basic stuff like DoomRL not being a roguelike. This scene is infested with small game projects that don't even try to be anything like roguelikes.

To be honest; i would call DoomRL much more a roguelike then many other games which are jump'n'runs and sort-of strategy games.

Krice

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2010, 11:37:07 AM »
To be honest; i would call DoomRL much more a roguelike

It's an ascii implementation of Doom. What was the original stuff in it? Or when a simple shooter becomes a roguelike?

Darren Grey

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2010, 05:47:35 PM »
Roguelikes are meant to be original?  Wow, we'd better tell the Nethack and *band and ADOM devs that they've been wasting their time for decades...

I do love originality in games (and I think DoomRL has several original features, at least in the roguelike scene) but they are not necessary.  Sometimes it's nice to have existing game types done well.  To be honest the whole roguelike definition is very stifling and to a large extent discourages originality.

Also I think the 7DRLs shouldn't be compared to the shareware days, since the mini-roguelikes (and roguelike-likes) are clearly advertised as one-off pet projects done for fun.  Many are fun to play too, at least for a little while, but it's silly to think of them as major roguelike releases.  They're more of interest to developers than players in my opinion, and that's reflected in how much attention they get in rgrd compared with elsewhere.  They're not hugely advertised and generally don't deserve to be without some polish and a lot more content (which some do get).

Fenrir

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #27 on: August 31, 2010, 09:52:54 PM »
That's also a very relative feeling...
Feelings can't be objective.
Roguelikes are meant to be original?  Wow, we'd better tell the Nethack and *band and ADOM devs that they've been wasting their time for decades...
If I'm not mistaken, Nethack, Angband, and ADoM are the originals; they just have plenty of imitators.

EDIT: Well, they had plenty of originality in them, anyway. This is the roguelike community, after all.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2010, 10:08:16 PM by Fenrir »

getter77

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #28 on: August 31, 2010, 11:06:43 PM »
That's also a very relative feeling...
Feelings can't be objective.
Roguelikes are meant to be original?  Wow, we'd better tell the Nethack and *band and ADOM devs that they've been wasting their time for decades...
If I'm not mistaken, Nethack, Angband, and ADoM are the originals; they just have plenty of imitators.

EDIT: Well, they had plenty of originality in them, anyway. This is the roguelike community, after all.

I think he meant along the lines of the original "Hack" and Moria---ADoM is pretty well a thing unto itself proper though if memory serves.  I agree in sentiment though that there's nothing wrong with flavourful revisions over time---lots of crazy stuff out there and currently being worked on at least intermittently in the *Band-world.
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Kalasen

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #29 on: September 01, 2010, 06:14:42 AM »
Huh. As I read more into this, it does look like a troll attempt. Now, not all trolling is bad. The guy could have been trying to stir up moral guardians to get more publicity on roguelikes (all publicity is good publicity), and also to make people realize his game isn't making people kill anyone. However... it looks more like an attempt to get us to freak out at the concept. When more people were saying "Oh, cool mechanics!" than "Ew, gross theme", it looks like he gave up.

Could have been a good game. There didn't look to be much moral railroading; how the character behaves is up to the player. But... yeah. Overall, it's a disappointment that is was never in development. But hey, maybe we're more interested in cool mechanics for new roguelikes now.