Roguelike Radio podcast

[Darren Grey]

A new roguelike podcast has been started, and the first episode released, with Cardinal Quest as the initial focus of attention.  You can find it here:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/

Feedback is very welcome, since none of us have done this before  :/

[corremn]

Cool idea, will listen to it when at home.

[getter77]

Congrats on getting a first ep going so speedily.   

[NON]

Very nice idea indeed! Looking forward to listening.

[corremn]

I played the demo of Cardinal Quest while listening to the podcast and pretty much everything you said was spot on.

Love the accents too, except that Australian-buggerised kiwi accent

Its great that 3 grown men can talk about roguelikes for over half an hour and stay on topic.

[NON]

[Darren Grey]

Episode 4, ahoy!

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/09/episode-4-doomrl.html

Discussion this week is on DoomRL.  I'm putting on fireproof gear in advance of the response...

[scott edgar]

Hey just in response to the 3rd podcast comments. Mainly in the confusion of mine and Erez's like of the interface of Brogue. I probably overstated how good the graphics were, (and as podcasts are live it is difficult to always fully think out something before you say it) but I would very much stand by my statements that the game has a good interface/ controls.  Particularly it bypassed some of the hardships of learning a new roguelike(hey, all items are used through just one button? And all the somewhat complicated items and monsters are explained through an easy to use tooltip!) and combined it with familiarity from other roguelikes (num pad movement? Oh boy!)

The thing is is that there is no one size fits all solution to UI, depending on your audience you need to use a different solution. Not every game is trying to draw in players from outside the genre (I would argue that very few actually do). For instance in the case with cardinal quest. I actually had more trouble (or at least annoyance) with the controls than I did with Brogue. Primarily because they were different than what I was used to. Even after I got used to those controls, I was still annoyed with how limited they were in some ways. Where I can fly through many games with more traditional controls, after several hours with cardinal quest I was playing about as fast as I was after the first 30 minutes figuring out the game. Obviously playing a game really fast isnt the best way to look at a ui, but not being able to play as fast as you would like becomes a problem and an annoyance after a while.

Now certainty cardinal quest has a UI and control scheme that is really nice for new players, and if that is your audience for the game then that is perfect. But saying all games should be designed for players of that level of familiarity of the genre is silly IMO.

What I would realy like to see more in roguelikes are more options for control schemes. Sure, make a newbie friendly control scheme default. But throw the hardcore roguelike fans a bone, add in a more traditional control scheme as well. They will look for it in your game (or at least I will).

[Ari Rahikkala]

It's not really surprising that many of the ARRP games are less complete than 7DRL games. After all, the point of 7DRL is to create a complete roguelike, while ARRP is about just releasing what you have, regardless of the level of completion. ARRP gets a lot of the kind of people who have spent two years doing armchair planning, two months coding prototypes and architectures (only to tear them down again) and support libraries, and maybe two days making direct progress toward release.

I know because I'm one of them. :p (Except for the bit about actually releasing the game. Although I did end up putting the code in its current state on github simply because at least now I have a backup of it beyond my aging and often mishandled laptop's HD. I don't think I'm counting it as a release though because in its current state the code doesn't even compile...)

[Darren Grey]

Yeah, a lot of the ARRP releases have many months more coding than 7DRLs, but it's all focused on the engine and infrastructure - useless stuff when you don't have a game.  The release party helps devs focus on forgetting the optimisations and so on in favour of doing what they're meant to be doing.

[Legend]

I really think they hit the nail on the head with their critiques about doomrl. I feel the same way about most of the points they brought up.

Especially how the game almost seems to have changed too much since it's initial inception. The achievements/unlockables can be somewhat frustrating. They mostly seem to be geared towards veteran players. It took me some years to finally get enough silver badges to unlock the second tier of challenges which I would have rather been able to play from the get go. Some of the badges rely a bit too much on chance in my opinion.

The non-random levels can be frustrating as well. Especially since some of them are practically mandatory to get certain items that only appear in them. Like the backpack in the Wall level which is one of the most valuable items in the game I think, but it's kind of a pain to go through the wall in almost every play through because it's the only way to get it. Same with the spear weapon in the unholy cathedral when playing the melee challenge games.  

I also agree with how the game seems too long. 25 levels, not counting the special levels, tends to get tiresome once you have gotten that far. Would be nice to see it knocked down a little bit.

The developer says that he plans on making doomrl 2, but with all the things added already since the early versions of the game, it almost seems like there is not much of a point in making a sequel that could really distinguish itself from the original.  

At this point, they have added so much, it almost detracts from it's original charm.

Don't get me wrong. I still think it's a great game, but they made very valid points.

The only thing about the review is that they were not all up to date on the current version of the game. Some had only played earlier versions. Would have been better if they all had played both earlier versions and the latest.

[jocke the beast]

Keep up the good work!
Looking forwards to listen to the next episode about Frozen Depth.
Infra Arcana would also be Nice if you would cover.
Cheers!

[Darren Grey]

The only thing about the review is that they were not all up to date on the current version of the game. Some had only played earlier versions. Would have been better if they all had played both earlier versions and the latest.

Only one person hadn't played the latest version, and he kept himself out of judgements on the latest version, whilst also providing valuable comments about the genre as a whole.  Having a mix of experiences also gave the discussion a more rounded feel, I think.  It was especially interesting to see that the negative aspects I recognised in the game were the same as those who had played the earlier version first.  It shows that it's not just some old fogies grumbling about change.

jacke: Infra Arcana is on my list to give attention to.  However I also don't want the game to be prejudged based on an early version, so it might be best to let it round itself out a bit more before we cover it.

[NON]

Nice to hear that you're considering IA. I agree that it's a little early for this sort of review. I think at least monster spell casting should be expanded first, and there needs to be more unique monsters (these are my prios for next release).

[Darren Grey]

Latest release about Frozen Depths:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/09/episode-5-frozen-depths.html