Roguelike Radio podcast

[guest509]

  I liked the ones that focus on a game and the ones that focus on a developer. Bonus when the developer shows up to talk about his own game. When the Binding of Isaac developer came on you could tell he was impressed by the questions. He's probably not used to our niche. Guys not afraid of permadeath are not your typical game interviewer I think.
  I really like the guy that wrote Brogue. You could tell he wasn't a hardcore programmer type guy but his game shows such creative depth. Very inspiring.

[st33d]

Well done with this podcast. Got me to try out Brogue, which was a good game.

And the episode on prayer mechanics gave me an idea that helped me complete the list of spells and enchantments in my game:  A collectable Holy spell that fullfils the role of prayer - thus paying homage to the mechanic without making it a core element.

[Darren Grey]

We've had two episodes lately:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/11/episode-13-mystery-dungeon-2-shiren_23.html

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/11/episode-14-resource-management.html

Also The Binding of Isaac interview got featured on Rock, Paper, Shotgun a couple of weeks ago, which conveniently crashed our server due to the spike in traffic.  All seems smooth now though 

[Z]

Resource management is a very big subject, Episode 14 is mostly about food clocks and alternatives, which is just a part of resource management.

I actually think that Crawl does food really well. You need to care about food in order to win (I have never felt that food is meaningless like in e.g. ADOM... and when playing a Troll my food store was running out in the end and I knew that I need to finish the game soon). Also it is very immersive (food works very differently for Elf and Troll characters, and I think it is still different for small carnivores like Kobolds or large herbivores like Centaurs), contrary to extremely bland food systems of Rogue or Brogue.

[getter77]

Scallywag: Lair of the Medusa had a decent such mechanic---finely controlled player light.  When it is out, you are dead, but it can be finely tuned to be rather bright or super dim or anywhere in between.  Considering that lower the light the less visual feedback you have on enemies in the area, yet conversely the greater the light the more you can engage at once----it is quite a thing to manage the needed shifting about while keeping a limited stock of oil refills on hand.

[Coffeespoons]

I just wanted to say thank you to all the contributors to this splendid series of podcasts. 

[Darren Grey]

You're very welcome.  I quite enjoy it to be honest.

Two latest episodes:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/12/episode-15-quickband.html
http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/12/episode-16-history-and-future-of.html

Next week we're talking about the Roguelike of the Year poll, after which we'll be taking a few weeks break over Christmas.

[guest509]

  man your podcasts are a real hit. At least with me.

[st33d]

Unless I missed that the presenters were just talking about roguelikes, the repeated sentiment that we're going to see more randomness and more permadeath is the opposite of my experience.

If anything, the growing trend of checkpointism in games, an option in Mario on the Wii to autocomplete the level and smarter save points suggests that games as a whole are moving further away from permadeath. Personally, I thought that permadeath wasn't about any sort of masochistic difficulty setting, but about exploration and exposing the player to a breadth of content.

Same for randomness. It's not the bottom-up emergent randomness of roguelikes that's making it's way into the mainstream but the top-down designed randomness of graphics programming. I think a lot of indies are paving the way for bottom-up random, but there are still people who don't want that sort of game.

My boss for example hates randomness. I always wondered why he insisted that Zelda was an RPG, yet he hated RPGs. I recently figured it out: Zelda is an RPG with all the random elements removed.

[XLambda]

Since the last 'cast brought up the whole commercial vs. freeware controversy, let me add my 0.02$.

What worries me about the recent success of commercial roguelikes - which I don't oppose, just to be clear - is that we run the risk of confusing graphics with accessibility. Obviously, graphics are pretty much needed for a commercial game to be successful, because ASCII or amateurish tiles will scare many people away. The question I have been asking myself is, have they been successful because they are graphic or because they have an easier-to-use user interface (that includes controls) or because they have a shallower (less complex, but also easier and faster to get into) gameplay than most roguelikes, as some imply?

I think we can safely say that the third point doesn't apply - just look at Dredmor, I don't think that's shallow gameplay. Now compare Dredmor with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

Now let's look at the two options that are left. What I've been trying to figure out is: Suppose we had two commercial roguelike games, one with stunning graphics, but crappy UI and one with crappy graphics, but wonderfully intuitive UI. Which one do you think would be more popular? I think the answer to that question is what worries me, because I think it would be the first one, although the second one sounds like the better game to me.

(I might sound like an idiot now, and maybe I am assessing the situation completely wrong. In this case, please show me where I am wrong. )

[Leaf]

Maybe I'm not hardcore enough, but personally I don't have a problem with graphical roguelikes.  Indeed, I much prefer to play Dwarf Fortress (admittedly the only roguelike that I still play heavily) with a graphical tileset.

It by no means has to be pretty graphics, though.  I think the problem isn't a graphics vs. UI intuitiveness issue, but that the problem occurs when bling takes precedence over good design in general.  An intuitive UI is an integral part of a well designed game, and a well designed game pulls you in for the long haul.  A pretty, blingy game that has too much focus on the art and not enough on the design pulls you in for a little while while you oogle at the pretties, but you master it too quickly, become bored, and quit playing.

I'd take the intuitive UI and crappy graphics.  The horrid keymaps of Angband and Nethack are what turn me off.  They may have great depth of play, if you can get past the klunky interface, but I posit that they're still /very poorly/ designed (or became that way through feature-creep evolution).  I think DF could do with better mouse integration, but the menus are what make it (barely) intuitive enough for me to not get too aggrivated with.

We one or two-man hobby hacker teams just don't have the resources to sink enough man-hours into both art and design.  I think design wins out in the long run, but gosh....  There are tons of public domain graphics out there and using them (and with mouse-driven context menus in addition to the keyboard even!) is easy with a good high level UI library.  They're certainly not great graphics, but I think they're still more intuitive than an orange 'o' and a keymap that consumes the entire 7-bit ASCII space.

[st33d]

I will say again on the Internet (capitalised by the iPad) for the umpteenth time that graphics IS gameplay. You have to communicate to the player what is happening. Unless your game is purely sound based I doubt you can do that without graphics that effectively illustrate what's happening. Brogue for example. Great gameplay and graphics that communicate well to the audience. And it doesn't matter if a monkey could kill me or be my friend. Somehow I realise I'm still in control and I'm delighted to discover my new monkey friend. He's just a letter "m" but I get it, that's the style and the style has won me over with its charm. His humility is to be applauded. Come along and lets lay waste to this hostile lexicon before us...

[ido]

Now let's look at the two options that are left. What I've been trying to figure out is: Suppose we had two commercial roguelike games, one with stunning graphics, but crappy UI and one with crappy graphics, but wonderfully intuitive UI. Which one do you think would be more popular?

They will both be unsuccessful, like the vast majority of indie games.

You need both a good UI and decent aesthetics (which could also be done with very low-fi graphics, e.g. Cardinal Quest or Legends of Yore, or even Brogue).

[guest509]

Now let's look at the two options that are left. What I've been trying to figure out is: Suppose we had two commercial roguelike games, one with stunning graphics, but crappy UI and one with crappy graphics, but wonderfully intuitive UI. Which one do you think would be more popular?

They will both be unsuccessful, like the vast majority of indie games.

You need both a good UI and decent aesthetics (which could also be done with very low-fi graphics, e.g. Cardinal Quest or Legends of Yore, or even Brogue).

+1 to this.

[Darren Grey]

Pure UI has to be recognised as an important thing. It's kind of funny that people moan about Dredmor only having 4-way movement, yet wasd control is part of its success. Could you imagine it with vi keys? *shudders*

As well as graphics I think sound shouldn't be underrated either. Cardinal Quest is good for this too. Not just music but appropriate sound effects that make one less reliant on reading a combat log.