4DRL Success: Chronophase

[scaught]

scaught, Chronophase is closer to Rogue than a stake is to a house.

Please don't confuse the analogy with the criticism.  That was't a value judgement, it was an analogy ad absurdum. 

Look, I am just trying to posit something that is an extremely important facet of communication.  There's (apparently) a concept in linguistics called 'focal vocabulary' - "a specialized set of terms and distinctions that is particularly important to a certain group; those with a particular focus of experience or activity." (wikipedia)  As soon as a specific label is attached to something, that something is effectively transformed by that label.  By attaching "roguelike" to your game, you set a level of expectation, merited or otherwise.

Fenrir, apples are orangelike.

If you went for breakfast and asked the waitress for something "like an orange" and she brought you a nice, crisp red apple, you'd be ok with that?  What if she was attractive, would that change your judgement?  (As off-topic as that second question may seem, it's exactly what's been going on here.  Lucky for you, you're that attractive waitress. )

Please realize that, as members of this community, you have a responsibility to not be abrasive and disrespectful to others.

If you are taking anything I'm saying to be disrespectful, please PM me.  I only have issue with your use of the term "roguelike" as applied to your Chronophase game, nothing more.  I have nothing but respect and admiration for your body of work.  The bizarre assumption that I'm out to insult you (or that it even should be insulting to question your choice of vocabulary) is completely without merit.

I am truly saddened by the pedantry and poignancy of this conversation.

The devil, as they say, is in the details....(and careful with 'poignancy'...it doesn't always mean what it sometimes means...if you know what I mean.)

...So, anyway, I'll stop posting.  This obviously won't go anywhere.  I'll just leave you with a quote from your original post:

Chronophase! A space-shooter-inspired 4DRL

...and juxtapose it with...

Chronophase! A rogue-inspired space-shooter

...and hope that the difference strikes a chord somewhere.

As always, continued success.
-scott

[getter77]

From the start, the simplest thing to me was to reckon this a 4DRL project, in the sense that it was intent on that particular competition's overarching designs.  As such, to me, from the GIST of the screens/writeup, I'd reckoned that by the time this gets out of the early-Alpha state that is most any 4DRL, and a great many 7DRL, project on the way to a proper v1.0---THEN I'd reckon upon the state of it versus the other currently frontrunning examples/interpretations of Spacey Roguelikes like ASCII Sector, Transcendence, and Lost in Flatspace II: Rise of the Scarrid.

So...I'd say this early glimpse into the alchemical goo is only worth so much salt.  I mean, Diablo, as we found out well after the fact, was full-on turn-based in its early Alpha state---and we all know that, for that time, dramatic mutations kind of happened that led it along a different, yet ultimately nifty, track.

TLDR:  Meh, Taxonomy is overrated in large part and seems more primed to derail threads versus the sort of constructive plotting to transmute that base metal on up to Gold or some sort of enchanted Tungsten.

[Fenrir]

If you went for breakfast and asked the waitress for something "like an orange" and she brought you a nice, crisp red apple, you'd be ok with that?  What if she was attractive, would that change your judgement?  (As off-topic as that second question may seem, it's exactly what's been going on here.  Lucky for you, you're that attractive waitress. )

Yeah, that, and I was saying to him that he was telling us that apples ARE oranges, not that apples were orangelike, and it was just a figure of speech. He completely ignored my sewing machine/automobile analogy, which was the one I applied to the situation.

Please realize that, as members of this community, you have a responsibility to not be abrasive and disrespectful to others.

Disagreement is not disrespect, unless you suppose yourself too sacred to be thought wrong.

[jim]

You know, after thinking about this for a while (shoot me in the face for even thinking about this for any serious length of time) I've decided that both sides of this discussion are correct.

It's been a while since I worked in software development, thank jesus, but I remember what it's like. Nomenclature is extremely important because half of daily communication is spent discussing the effects of acronyms on project iterations. In that way, I think I can see the real importance of naming the game properly.

But the thing is that roguelikes (and roguelikelikes) are also intended for popular consumption, and anything that makes its way out into the public sphere inevitably changes as the result of a million unquantifiables. The definition of what is and is not [name] changes: they've got decaying quilts made by nameless african-american slaves hanging in art museums now alongside Renoir, and that's possible only because our definition of what is and is not "art," oh-so-sacred art, is subject to change.

Now, Rogue is a weird, old, obscure, bizarre damn game and roguelikes still very much constitute a fringe gaming market. My personal opinion is that I'm not really sure how much shoring up the Old Academy needs where roguelikes are concerned. There really isn't much of one to speak of, which I think is what getter was saying.

Again, personally, I think that if your vested interest is in promoting roguelikes because THEY ARE AWESOME, that your foremost concern should be either writing them or trying to create a welcoming environment for those who do, including those who make games even vaguely like roguelikelikes. We nerds are touchy people and the internet is already so full of showy one-upmanship garbage. TOTR doesn't need it. For my part, I apologize if I was rude.