Author Topic: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)  (Read 524161 times)

amjh

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 6
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
I'm not good with introductions, can I skip this?  :P

Slash

  • Creator of Roguetemple
  • Administrator
  • Rogueliker
  • *****
  • Posts: 1203
  • Karma: +4/-1
    • View Profile
    • Slashie.net
    • Email
No!!

amjh

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 6
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
 :(

Well, I like ADoM, IVAN and DF. I know some programming; c++, java and python. I am interested in game development, especially design.

I generally don't care about graphics in games, but I think ascii graphics are beautiful.

Etinarg

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 424
  • Karma: +1/-1
  • Idea archivist and game tinkerer.
    • View Profile
    • Gedankenweber Blog (German)
Welcome to the temple!

Game design is a very interesting topic, looking forward to many interesting discussions :)

Nolithius

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 25
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla
    • View Profile
    • Nolithius.com
Hi everyone!

Quick self-intro:

I've been participating on r.g.r.d. for a few years now, and more recently, in #rgrd and RogueBasin. Just a few months ago did I start lurking these fine fora, and have posted once or twice.

My background is in Computer Science. I've worked developing educational games, small commercial games, and web back-ends and front-ends for a few years now, in the South Florida market, where I presently reside.

In February of '10, I began on my current roguelike project, Dance of Death, whose progress I document regularly in the development blog, http://www.nolithius.com

Dance of Death is a fantasy-themed Flash-based roguelike written in AS3, with influences from ADOM and UnReal World, playable in your browser at http://www.nolithius.com/dod

Cheers!

Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla

getter77

  • Protector of the Temple
  • Global Moderator
  • Rogueliker
  • *****
  • Posts: 4956
  • Karma: +4/-1
    • View Profile
Welcome Nolithius---keep on a Dancin'!   8)
Brian Emre Jeffears
Aspiring Designer/Programmer/Composer
In Training

Bear

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 308
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
I'm Ray Dillinger, probably better known as "Bear."  If you saw a photo of me you'd understand why.  I'm very tall, very large, very muscular, and also fat.  People have been calling me "Bear" since once I dead-lifted the rear end of a pickup truck when I was a junior in high school.  I'm originally from Kansas but these days live in the San Francisco Bay area. 

I have a computer science degree and some decent programming and writing skills.  My background is in Artificial Intelligence and I've worked a lot with various compiler and interpreter internals, Lisp dialects and, in particular, with parsing and generating natural language. These days I work mostly in software QA, chasing bugs in other people's code in nine different programming languages. I've undertaken to create something as a work of code-art and a personal challenge to myself.

I'm striving to create a game which is a synthesis of old-school interface and gameplay aesthetic with new-wave design and programming technique. 

Firstly, it's written in C, because I like the old-fashioned hardcore-ness of C. I could do it more easily or more simply in other languages, but it wouldn't have the same old-school aesthetic integrity.  The old-school aesthetic extends to user interface, meaning it runs in an ordinary text-mode terminal window and is playable in full over a telnet or ssh connection, never requiring the user to touch the mouse. 

My primary inspiration for the gameplay was Nethack, because I like the way items, intrinsics, etc can interact and have multiple effects and uses there, and the way monsters behave differently from one another.  I like the complexity and depth that kind of complicated behavior can give the game.  But that complexity's been added to Nethack one case at a time over many years, on top of a codebase that wasn't really initially designed to support it.  So I set for myself the task of constructing a codebase that really is designed to support a highly complex roguelike game in which items, behaviors, attacks, effects, intrinsics, etc can all interact in pretty arbitrary ways, and building a game on top of it.   

So, since this idea came to me, I've been hanging out on rgrd.  I've started over from scratch a couple of times because I realized important parts were missing, or would be too difficult to add given the design mistakes I made on the first two attempts. I've taken 'hiatus' from several months to two years from the project before coming back to it several times.  But at this point I'm pretty sure that I have the right overall design and know what the constraints are.  From here to the releasable game is just the long march of coding and occasional smaller design decisions that fit into the now-established framework. 

There.  Was that a long intro, or a short book?

getter77

  • Protector of the Temple
  • Global Moderator
  • Rogueliker
  • *****
  • Posts: 4956
  • Karma: +4/-1
    • View Profile
Heh, hey there Bear!  8)

Welcome and good luck in your hearty-sounding endeavor---I'm sure many folk around her shall be keen on seeing it when it is settled to be seen.
Brian Emre Jeffears
Aspiring Designer/Programmer/Composer
In Training

Slash

  • Creator of Roguetemple
  • Administrator
  • Rogueliker
  • *****
  • Posts: 1203
  • Karma: +4/-1
    • View Profile
    • Slashie.net
    • Email
Good luck with it Bear!

Some years ago I decided to stop my quest into the perfect roguelike engine, and instead concentrate into having playable games, no matter how messy their source code is :)

Bear

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 308
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
I do understand what you're saying.  And yes, it took a couple of false starts.  But I am now confident that my reach does not exceed my grasp.  My goals for the architecture are high, but at this point I know, not just what I want to do, but exactly how to do it. 

Also I've drawn a very achievable "line in the sand" for a first released version - it doesn't have to have a lot of content right off the bat, but it does need to be a complete, playable, fun game.  The point of the hairy architecture work is to make sure that no matter how much content is in the game, it never gets harder to add new content. 

To quote my changelog.txt, which is also my todo file, the first released version will have ....

".... ten monster types each with at least one different special ability each (list snipped), three well-differentiated character classes complete to level 5 (fighter, thief, magician), ten-level dungeon with some interesting variety in layout generation, five normal items, five magic items, a win condition, save & restore, scoring, and a (local) high score table. This version is basically just a test drive for the game code.  "


JayPC

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 21
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • Email
Well Had I seen this I would have Posted my intro here!!!

anyway Names John im 2, JPC is my initials so its how I got My user name in case anyone asks which I dont get often but Im geting it out of the way now.

Im a Great Designer... because I do the Big picture thing really well and I am good at keeping a tem on track.... the problem is my, Jack of all trades, master of none, knowledge base... my Skills in anything are limited at best, thus I do alot of:

Quote
1)Great Idea
2)Research in building great Idea
3)attempt building great Idea but get stuck
4)Draw Concept art to fill void of great Idea
5)Determine that my art isent what I really wanted to go for and start over
6)Determine tis new art is no good but would totaly work for my next... See step 1

This cycle is common for the most part but there are the couple Ideas I keep coming back too which I try to work on when I can... one of them I have been working on since I was 12and its come a long way since then... I mean come on My character name was Shadow Phantom... Unoriginal much? but the name stuck up until my senior year in highschool.

I hope to actually FINISH my first game here... of course I thought it was going to be alot easyer then its been... and it, as usual, WAY more complicated then I had originaly planned...

needless to say Hi everyone, If I can help Ill try but Ill probably be asking for help more then Giving it Sorry!

getter77

  • Protector of the Temple
  • Global Moderator
  • Rogueliker
  • *****
  • Posts: 4956
  • Karma: +4/-1
    • View Profile
Hang in there fighting the good fight JayPC, bound to get things knocked out at some point and there are many helpful folk around here to boot.   8)
Brian Emre Jeffears
Aspiring Designer/Programmer/Composer
In Training

JayPC

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 21
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • Email
Hang in there fighting the good fight JayPC, bound to get things knocked out at some point and there are many helpful folk around here to boot.   8)

So ive noticed! haha Cant wait to get somthing done! its good to feel welcomed unlike some other places ive gone haha

insectcalm

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 7
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
I joined a couple months back, but never introduced myself :( I love roguelikes sooo much, they are the only kind of video game I can still bring myself to play. I suck at them, however. I beat Zomband but that's it. Still, I'm not gonna give up. I just want to say that I love this forum, I've found some cool games on here. Nice to meet everyone!

Etinarg

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 424
  • Karma: +1/-1
  • Idea archivist and game tinkerer.
    • View Profile
    • Gedankenweber Blog (German)
Welcome :)

The more people interested in roguelike games, the more good ideas may come up.