Community-driven roguelike development project underway. Want to design a game?

[Tuplis]

This is wonderful and classic situation. A java button coder who believes in development theory X and thinks he can create a roguelike just like that.

And this person is a typical Finnish person - someone wants try something new and original (I don't know if this in fact is new and original, but it is for me) and he dislikes it and can't shut up about it by either ignoring it or following it from a distance. Instead he insults the one doing it. Hello, Finnish Guy. I'm Finnish too. Please leave.

Also, I already created a roguelike, just like that. It's not nethack or dwarven fortress but thanks to "development theory x", it's already playable.

[Krice]

Also, I already created a roguelike, just like that. It's not nethack or dwarven fortress but thanks to "development theory x", it's already playable.

So it's not a roguelike. I don't want to be skeptic, I'm just interested to see what happens, as always.

[Tuplis]

So it's not a roguelike. I don't want to be skeptic, I'm just interested to see what happens, as always.

What do you mean it's not a roguelike? Also, please don't call me a java button coder. I'd rather stop the name-calling here.

[Darren Grey]

Krice is trolling you - you're best ignoring him before he derails your thread.  His definition of roguelike is more exclusive than anyone else's.

[Krice]

What do you mean it's not a roguelike?

Well you said it's a game with a test map and you can kill some enemies. I guess it's not a roguelike. The way to reach the features of a roguelike is a big question. No one has reached that fast or easy, maybe except Biskup with ADOM. But if you do succeed in that it's a victory for everyone, because then we know what has to be done. I have to say it doesn't look good with all that help you need in game design, because it should be the starting point.

[Tuplis]

Well you said it's a game with a test map and you can kill some enemies. I guess it's not a roguelike. The way to reach the features of a roguelike is a big question. No one has reached that fast or easy, maybe except Biskup with ADOM. But if you do succeed in that it's a victory for everyone, because then we know what has to be done. I have to say it doesn't look good with all that help you need in game design, because it should be the starting point.

Why don't you actually play it before you guess what it isn't. Because it's obvious you didn't. I put the outdated-tags around it over a week ago. Also, I don't _need_ help. It was my choice to acquire help because that was a challenge I wanted to undertake. We've already taken a distinctly different path that I originally had thought before I decided to crowdsource the design. Why? Because in my opinion, if we have people that know what they like in roguelikes and can convey those ideas, that'll make for one hell of a good game.

[Krice]

if we have people that know what they like in roguelikes and can convey those ideas, that'll make for one hell of a good game.

People like different things. I think it's best to have one person as a designer who really knows why games are good, rather than ten random guys who all have their own ideas. If you had an idea that anyone can be a good game designer you will soon learn how wrong you were. It looks like you don't respect game design really that much, maybe because your background as "real" programmer. Well, that view is going to change too.

[Tuplis]

Haha, obvious troll is obvious. You still had me before that last one (even despite the fact Darren Grey explicitly pointed it out - I'm gullible). Please go be a sad, lonely troll who hates his job somewhere else

[Darren Grey]

Well, he does actually have a point here.  You will get conflicting desires (and ideas that are just outright bad).  A designer must know what suggestions to reject.  Still, I think it's a worthy project, and just because it's done differently than the established norm doesn't mean it has no potential.  Plus the release early, release often model is excellent for keeping up a good development pace.

[Tuplis]

Well, he does actually have a point here.  You will get conflicting desires (and ideas that are just outright bad).  A designer must know what suggestions to reject.  Still, I think it's a worthy project, and just because it's done differently than the established norm doesn't mean it has no potential.  Plus the release early, release often model is excellent for keeping up a good development pace.

He definitely has a point that I can understand - a point made already by others. But then again, I'm not setting out to make a game that should be designed by one person alone. Sure, one person has designed whole games in the past so it's not impossible. But am I that person? Probably not. So I'm looking for help. Instead of putting in the work to design myself, I'm putting in the work to moderate what other people suggest. In my mind, the end result should be at least equivalent.

[guest509]

  Krice generally has good points. It's his delivery that turns people off. My take is that you should go and experiment however you want. Design by committee is almost always a bad idea, as long as you maintain a firm hand with your 'team' it should be alright.

  We'll see.

EDIT: Confused as to where to put suggestions. So I'll do it here.

Smelling and Hearing should not be treated the same. Smells may have a small radius but they should linger on tiles so that a wandering creature is activated and follows the smells. Some can smell better so can detect older smells, some cannot smell at all. Hearing is totally different, it is a radial feature (extends out from the player), it can also activate zombies who will go straight at the sound as opposed to following a trail. Also, some creatures are deaf.

Just my two cents. I like the Hearing, Seeing, Smelling modes of activating and detecting the player.

[Tuplis]

This place is just fine for suggestions.

Technically, hearing and smelling is almost exactly the same. Both would work best through an influence map. It's like you said - smell lingers (there's a source of smell which will start to weaken as time passes and every turn propagates until it's completely disappeared) and sound is an impulse (same thing except that the rate it weakens at is 100% - you only hear it for one turn.)

However, I'd rather have people do less technical design which you just did and more gameplay design, eg. "I would like it if creatures could hear" (which is already on the backlog) and so forth.

Edit: just added the rules for adding stuff in the backlog, go read the original post if interested. Also updated the version link to the latest version. We're actually approaching the release if version 1 - sayaks almost has a complete "scenario" done. After he finishes it, I will wrap it up to a more complete gaming experience and release 1.0

[guest509]

  Oh cool. I think I'd be better of a commenter after playing.

  I was only really commenting on what was said on the back log, about smell/hearing being the same.

[Tuplis]

  Oh cool. I think I'd be better of a commenter after playing.

  I was only really commenting on what was said on the back log, about smell/hearing being the same.

Well, you can already play it. Go to the original post, download it and try it out

[Tuplis]

Hey hey. In case anyone is still following, I'll give you a small update on the progress.

Zombies! is now actually a game because there's a purpose now. I've added a quest system with objectives, with users able to create quests and objectives and a reward with xml files. The only objective type atm, however, is a Kill objective. There are two in-game quests atm.

There's a pretty important discussion going on in the other forum regarding the way we want to take the game. Here's the original question I asked:

That's why I'd like people to explicitly state which way they want to go:
1. Stealth-centric (for example, cone-like field of vision, greater emphasis on finding ways to avoid zombies through mitigating smell, sound, etc)
2. Arcade-style (piling 'em up with big weapons like rocket launchers, miniguns, etc)
3. Survival style (sleeping, eating, drinking, shelters, barricading, etc a la Rogue Survivor)

Currently we're leaning toward a combination of 1 & 3 with 1 probably being favored more because at least my feeling is that Cataclysm and Rogue Survivor explores question 3 pretty well and I'd like to think differentiation would be a good thing for us.

Based on people's answers I tried to describe a vision of the game, it's something like this:

We start out in a city, Zombies everywhere. You are comparatively weak so you're best off trying to avoid combat. If you need to kill, silent melee skills are preferred to firearms. While in the city, the player could have some tough optional objectives like trying to find and rescue someone from an infested apartment building or something like that. Or perhaps someone is sick and needs meds from the hospital which, of course, is an absolute deathtrap.
Like Immortal proposed, we could then head out to the rural areas where we could perhaps center the game around the player (and his friends?) achieving long-term survival. Since sleeping is, in my opinion, already covered pretty well, I'd abstract it away. We could definitely go for this pheromore thing you seem to be interested in, though.

In other words, it's still not too late to join in and you'd really get to give input into probably the most important aspect of the game.