Author Topic: Project: Roguelike Renaissance  (Read 173850 times)

magellan

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #15 on: May 31, 2009, 10:32:08 PM »
Erm ok.
Looks like i am on the same page with Nahjor here.
I am uncertain what exactly you want to do with my poor little prospector (Who, i hope, has never done anything to you and right now huddles in a corner scared)

playtesting? go ahead, grab it, and tell me what you hate about it.
tiles? ... well it does have tiles (as of today), and i drew them myself, and it really really shows. If you want to improve on those i'd be delighted, and of course give you credit.
help programming? trust me, you don't want to. It's a barely readable hack from line 1 to the end. (also can't really see how that could work to be honest)

Or do you want to do something entirely different?

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #16 on: May 31, 2009, 10:53:15 PM »
Erm ok.
Looks like i am on the same page with Nahjor here.
I am uncertain what exactly you want to do with my poor little prospector (Who, i hope, has never done anything to you and right now huddles in a corner scared)

playtesting? go ahead, grab it, and tell me what you hate about it.
tiles? ... well it does have tiles (as of today), and i drew them myself, and it really really shows. If you want to improve on those i'd be delighted, and of course give you credit.
help programming? trust me, you don't want to. It's a barely readable hack from line 1 to the end. (also can't really see how that could work to be honest)

Or do you want to do something entirely different?

Woo hoo!  How in the world did I miss that Prospector got Tiled?  I'll update that part!   :D

As to any specifics, again, yours counts as one viewed in general terms down the line.  Perhaps I can eventually find and help document some bugs, or come up with some nifty something AND be able to put forth how it might go code wise as opposed to just the nifty notion outright...all just depends on how things shake out as time rolls on.  Otherwise, being able to decipher, even partially, bits(blobs?) of hacked up coding would probably be a good thing that could come in handy down the line with other projects and such.  Greater the variety of things I can come to understand and be exposed to in terms of the different languages probably the better I'll be for it.  I forget where I heard it, but something to the tune of:  "No matter how horribly you think you've written something yet it somehow works, there's always somebody who rigged it together even worse and is an even bigger miracle it runs likewise."
« Last Edit: May 31, 2009, 10:55:52 PM by getter77 »
Brian Emre Jeffears
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magellan

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #17 on: June 01, 2009, 07:17:07 AM »
Well, they have been there for less than a day and are really, really tiny, so it doesn't suprise that you didn't see them :)

gotta confess still not sure what you want to do though... rennaissance? This thing is 3 months old. the romans are still trying to figure out on what hill they should build.

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #18 on: June 01, 2009, 12:10:29 PM »
Well, they have been there for less than a day and are really, really tiny, so it doesn't suprise that you didn't see them :)

gotta confess still not sure what you want to do though... rennaissance? This thing is 3 months old. the romans are still trying to figure out on what hill they should build.

The goal is to spur progress and awareness in terms of having a greater body of realized works for people to get into and enjoy.  To get things as lively as they can be/should be in the grand scheme of things considering how utterly fantastic the Roguelike notions of things can be yet have been largely ignored and squared away in deep niche territory all these years despite being one of the most venerable old times in videogame history.  Plenty of folks find one game randomly that came out years ago and think, "Oh cool, there's something like this now!"  I'd like more folks to discover many games and think "Wow, there's lots of good stuff now!"

In terms of the hopeful industry angle, the perspective I would hope to bring to various other games and genres would be one of not neglecting to look at some of the Roguelike hallmarks when hashing it all out---a champion of what they can bring to the table of sorts.  Look at what the FPS advocates have accomplished over the years in terms of building presence!   :D

On my reasoning, the marginalization of Roguelikes is just something that shouldn't be period.
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PaulBlay

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #19 on: June 01, 2009, 01:01:41 PM »
Quote
On my reasoning, the marginalization of Roguelikes is just something that shouldn't be period.

If I was you I'd drop every game that has been updated within one year from your list.  Conveniently I have a list of Recently updated roguelikes  ;D

If you also drop all those that aren't open source and all those that already have tiles you should have a much more manageable list to work with.

mariodonick

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #20 on: June 01, 2009, 01:34:33 PM »
Okay ... after reading all posts I am still not sure what you want to do. I assume helping people in finishing development of their roguelikes?

Besides the fact that most roguelikes are never "finished", you can help me with LambdaRogue in the following ways:

- create a series of quests that fit the existing game and its in-game history (I would even wait with releasing 1.5 until you'd be finished)
- proof-read and correct all the texts
- create better sound effects than I currently have

You can do any point from this list ... just drop a mail.

Mario Donick
https://mariodonick.itch.io/lambdarogue-the-book-of-stars
-- LR: The Book of Stars graphical roguelike RPG

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #21 on: June 01, 2009, 02:56:50 PM »
Quote
On my reasoning, the marginalization of Roguelikes is just something that shouldn't be period.

If I was you I'd drop every game that has been updated within one year from your list.  Conveniently I have a list of Recently updated roguelikes  ;D

If you also drop all those that aren't open source and all those that already have tiles you should have a much more manageable list to work with.

Remember: the list is meant to be far-reaching in terms of time AND what actually needs figuring.  I hope nothing amiss happens with any of the recently developed Roguelikes as that'd be a downer, but should things go astray somehow or another during the next couple-several years, I won't have to rely on a fuzzy memory as it'll be listed as something to keep tabs on/keep in mind down the line.  Some of the ones I list with Tiles either only have some, or they need help in some other aspect like the stability, realization of the planned feature set, and so on.  Since efficiency is king along this thing by and large in my mind, the more complicated/time consuming what a game "needs" constitutes, the later it'll be that I'll get around to it and even within that there's bound to be a "best" or at least most logical order to tackle things.  It took a good many hours in the database and some wavering to get the list as it currently is.

Mario:  In large part, yes, the goal is to get as many Roguelikes better situated as is possible that either interest me personally and/or I can see the utility value in doing so across the spectrum of ideas and concepts in general.  "Finished" in my mind only amounts to:

1. (Probably) Tiled or some other graphical interface.  Surely, there will be exceptions where it just won't work.

2. Stable in terms of nothing going horribly wrong like bad memory leaks, crashing, etc.

3. Working as intended in terms of bugs, balance to some degree, and so on.  Nothing will ever round out totally perfect, so there's no sense in worrying about it.  Overall, for the experience the players have to follow logical intentions based on the gameworld's setup.

Bonus(But effort hopefully made..):  Available!  Be fantastic if the project in question could work on the Big 3 OS wise and anything else applicable so as to help engender digital immortality for it.

4.  Known!  I strongly believe there isn't some "rule" to where only a few Roguelikes can have visible discussions across the internet and in general consideration for what they are and accomplish as a game at large.  With the above 3 conditions roughly met, there's nothing to say it shouldn't be sought for the game to be an Evergreen in terms of people being aware and enjoying it for a long time to come as opposed to something that appeared briefly and did cool stuff then vanished along with all that hard work and cool stuff.  I don't want what has happened to the likes of the Jaunt Trooper series to happen ever again going forward if I can come to affect the outcome as it amounts to a cultural loss.

-As to your LambdaRogue bits:

-I'm not fit for #1 on account of not having played the game anywhere near enough to wrangle such a thing, nor completed enough of it.  At this stage, my time for actually "playing" games and Roguelikes in general is intentionally tremendously limited on account of now being the time for me to develop the technical and artistic skills to be able to ultimately help out in more substantial ways---can't put off the pursuit of knowledge as this junction.  The exception to the last game I played while getting all my affairs in order was that it was a nominally paying job closed beta testing that upcoming PC Retail RPG as it falls under the umbrella of my industry aspirations/not starving to death clause.  So, surely don't wait for 1.5 on my account with this as there must be other more qualified folk to help out.

-#3 I've yet to come to grips with anything on the audio side of things, again, in terms of programming, art, music, sound---all of these are starting at zero for me with no prior experience whatsoever.  The list largely reflects aspirations of skills and the levels I aim to reach at them as quickly as possible.  I spent the outstanding majority of yesterday wringing my hands in rage at the fact that GIMP doesn't want to display at all correctly to where I can follow along with the user manual and tutorials on my current PC and nothing I could find FAQ wise or even anybody at an online chat at an enthusiast site has a solution.  Plus it seems there might be an issue with getting FLoops to work on this PC as well but I'll look into that today.  In general, if you've got tool and program suggestions then by all means since I don't want to be stuck completely while one or more things are acting up upon trying to come to grips in the first place...

-#2 I'm not an English Major by any means, but if there's a need for another pair of eyes on it then I could take a crack at it in short order and offer my possibly correct thoughts as I'm a fast reader.  If there's some way you could just send me all the text in the game as it now stands in some kinda intelligible blob that'd be something I could pitch in with immediately.  I'll shoot you an email now so that you'd have mine to send this to.  Thanks in advance for a chance to help out a bit.
Brian Emre Jeffears
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PaulBlay

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #22 on: June 01, 2009, 03:13:15 PM »
Quote
Thanks in advance for a chance to help out a bit.

Well if you're up for a bit of C++ debugging I could really do with some help working out what I broke in the *_info / *.raw initialization process in JBand.

I'm currently trying to "sneak round" the problem by working with SQLite in order to bypass the whole mess.  ::)

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #23 on: June 01, 2009, 06:24:24 PM »
Quote
Thanks in advance for a chance to help out a bit.

Well if you're up for a bit of C++ debugging I could really do with some help working out what I broke in the *_info / *.raw initialization process in JBand.

I'm currently trying to "sneak round" the problem by working with SQLite in order to bypass the whole mess.  ::)

Well, in theory, and I really hope this isn't the case, if you remain stuck on this issue for the X amount of days/weeks/months to come to where my friend can make it over(I'm hoping the process will begin sometime this week, but it could just as easily be next week...) and begin crash coursing me in C++ and the like in general programming....then surely at a time where I've some C++ understandings I'd be glad to help out.  Definitely hoping you manage to find outstanding success in solving this and such LONG before then though.   ;)
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mariodonick

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #24 on: June 01, 2009, 07:01:13 PM »
Quote
-I'm not fit for #1 on account of not having played the game anywhere near enough to wrangle such a thing, nor completed enough of it.

Oh, this wouldn't be the problem as I would brief you with everything you needed to know ;)

But I'm fine with this, too:

Quote
I'm not an English Major by any means, but if there's a need for another pair of eyes on it then I could take a crack at it in short order and offer my possibly correct thoughts as I'm a fast reader.  If there's some way you could just send me all the text in the game as it now stands in some kinda intelligible blob that'd be something I could pitch in with immediately. 

I got your mail, you'll get one soon.
https://mariodonick.itch.io/lambdarogue-the-book-of-stars
-- LR: The Book of Stars graphical roguelike RPG

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #25 on: June 01, 2009, 08:54:57 PM »
Quote
-I'm not fit for #1 on account of not having played the game anywhere near enough to wrangle such a thing, nor completed enough of it.

Oh, this wouldn't be the problem as I would brief you with everything you needed to know ;)


Well, then perhaps we'll see then.  I did manage to come up with some nifty things that should make it into the final build of that upcoming PC RPG...so I'm not averse to helping out with this, or at least being one of the ones helping out, either if you are sure about it.  Timely progress is timely progress.
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Slash

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #26 on: June 03, 2009, 04:50:56 AM »
It is late and my eyes itch a bit, but I will reply :P

I am not sure I understand your health issues (?) but I hope you make the best use of your time, which may not be devoting yourself 100% to this time comsumpting project.

On the other hand, I understand your desire to leave a legacy, and I appreciate your offer to the roguelike community. I'd recommend spending half your spare time in this, and look for another way to spend the rest of time (This will be useful when you look back in some years, we human are never happy with the way we invested our time).

I see one of your goals is to add tiles into the games if possible; while I understand this would lift the barrier of usability and make them accesible for a much wider audience, I see one way you could cooperate and propel forward the development of the game in a much more direct and strong way:

1. Provide excessive feedback to the developers of the games
2. "Market" the games around the web (I think you already proposed that)

(see, you don't even need to know how to program :) )

I am not sure you are aware of what it means to hack thru the source code of a lone, overnights-coding developer which codes for fun and not always for standards, mantainability or readability. It is not fun and it is not very rewarding.

I see a more powerful interaction would be becoming a "nuissance" (:P) to each and every developer in their forums, spam their emails with feedback about their projects. Raise their willpower so their projects leave that mediocre half finished status, and become decent games.

What do you think?

(And yes, CvRL needs you :))

getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #27 on: June 03, 2009, 12:26:35 PM »
It is late and my eyes itch a bit, but I will reply :P

I am not sure I understand your health issues (?) but I hope you make the best use of your time, which may not be devoting yourself 100% to this time comsumpting project.

On the other hand, I understand your desire to leave a legacy, and I appreciate your offer to the roguelike community. I'd recommend spending half your spare time in this, and look for another way to spend the rest of time (This will be useful when you look back in some years, we human are never happy with the way we invested our time).

I see one of your goals is to add tiles into the games if possible; while I understand this would lift the barrier of usability and make them accesible for a much wider audience, I see one way you could cooperate and propel forward the development of the game in a much more direct and strong way:

1. Provide excessive feedback to the developers of the games
2. "Market" the games around the web (I think you already proposed that)

(see, you don't even need to know how to program :) )

I am not sure you are aware of what it means to hack thru the source code of a lone, overnights-coding developer which codes for fun and not always for standards, mantainability or readability. It is not fun and it is not very rewarding.

I see a more powerful interaction would be becoming a "nuissance" (:P) to each and every developer in their forums, spam their emails with feedback about their projects. Raise their willpower so their projects leave that mediocre half finished status, and become decent games.

What do you think?

(And yes, CvRL needs you :))

Thanks Slash, look after your eyes!   :D

-While it may seem time consuming, because it is, that is because this learning phase is the trickiest one.  I still do other things in the day, and once this "rough start" phase is cleared, I should then be able to actually DO things with less of a time investment by far than was needed to come to understand it in the first place.  As I am rather boxed in at the moment and for the next foreseeable while, I reckoned to make the best of it as opposed to staying stuck in the same situation and never changing, or worse, stagnating.

-Remember:  The Roguelikes are only part of the focus as I enjoy them so much.  The hopeful career plan is game making and perhaps going as an indie if I can't manage to break into the industry and inject some fresh ideas from a different perspective.  In any case though, what is needed are skills relative to game making.  Once you learn those skills, one needs to practice and sharpen them so as to do work of increasing quality.  "Oh, what have we here?  Lots of projects with which to sharpen skills at programming, art, and music somewhat?"

Thus, the Roguelikes have a dual purpose aside from my inclination towards them---exercise AND portfolio material.  Gain skills>>>gain job in relevant field>>>enjoy passionate work within my interests for as long as I can.

-With the more crazy coding parts, step one is to see if I even get there in terms of working on the easier projects first.  The other part of the graphics equation, well, as is the funny legend around here---I simply can't play/comprehend any ASCII game outside of Triangle Wizard for some reason.  Thus, for me to become a nuissance, I'd first need to be able to play the game...and there's surely some good ones I anticipate on that front.

-I do agree that frequent playing would be quite handy in many cases, as it is also something that needs doing.  I have one day a week alotted for playing games so as to not forget the fun, though this is all games including Roguelikes and I have a large backlog of titles.  Yet again, once I am capable of making progress past the learning stage, I surely want to get in more gameplay time.

One thing I plan to do somewhere in all this, and I encourage other people to do it as well(perhaps some collaboration is in order when the time comes) is to learn how to use the capture programs and have a substantial run at putting up Let's Roguelike and such videos on youtube for a large variety of games...perhaps with a weekly and/or monthly themed game of rotation.  The POWDER Let's Play was a great start and surely similar things could be attempted.

For today, I will take a break from being smacked around by programs like Blender which has been a daily thing since Sunday, watch some anime, and dive into LambdaRogue's texts.
Brian Emre Jeffears
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getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #28 on: June 04, 2009, 02:18:56 AM »
Good progress on LambdaRogue helping when I finally got around to it in the latter part of today.  Just the "book" folder remains and I doubt it will take very long.
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getter77

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Re: Project: Roguelike Renaissance
« Reply #29 on: June 04, 2009, 11:54:55 AM »
Brian Emre Jeffears
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