Never played Rogue...?

[Frosty]

First of all hello, long time lurker first time poster so they say - I finally decided to join in with the community having (as of a week ago) begun programming my first real roguelike - technically it's my second attempt, the first attempt I made a year ago quickly resulted in frustration - I was getting no satisfaction from the coding and for me, that is half the point, especially for something you plan to release for free. The secret - I learned - was in writing all of my own code from scratch, figuring out my own solutions to problems rather than reading tutorials. Look up example code for sure, but don't just copy and paste, be inspired and come up with your own solution that works for you. So in just over a week I've got basic movement working, a scrollable map, doors, stats and a very early combat system - the job for the last two days has been coming up with an interesting AI, but I digress.

It was today that I realized something, I've never actually played the original Rogue  ... It strikes me as weird and I know I'm probably stirring up the hornets nest in admitting it - how can you make a roguelike without ever having played the original - it seems a bit like trying to compose jazz without ever having heard jazz music before. But that is also a good point - for me, I'm not aiming to remake the original rogue, I just fell in love with the roguelike style of gameplay and the various features that make roguelikes, well rogue-like - and my game is simply trying to capture the spirit of that.

Don't despair, I have got myself a copy of Rogue just this evening and am about to launch into a few games - but I just thought I would open it up to the floor, is it possible to make your own roguelike inspired by a game you've never played? Is it enough just to be inspired by something that was itself inspired by Rogue - I'm not sure of the answer, nor do I think it really matters, I'm playing Rogue not because I feel like I have to but for fun, and to see what all the fuss is about - seeing pictures of the most beautiful paintings on Google is one thing, but seeing them for real is quite another. Anyway, I guess that is a long way of saying hello!

[Krice]

I think Nethack and Angband are more like standard roguelikes you should start with anyway, then try to make something better from that. I was inspired by Nethack almost solely, I haven't played other roguelikes nearly as much as Nethack.

[AgingMinotaur]

I think a lot of RL fans haven't played Rogue, so there's nothing weird about that. Rogue plays an important role for the genre, of course, but as Krice noted, something like Nethack is arguably at least as influential. Rogue has a small scope and challenging game play, and most who tried it seem to agree it is very well designed. From a developer's perspective, it's interesting to note how tightly integrated aspects like hunger and item identification are. Even the annoying RL trope of having different commands for e.g. "q"uaffing potions and "r"eading scrolls somehow makes sense in Rogue.

As always,
Minotauros

[Pickledtezcat]

I playey rogue once when I was  a kid but I died and then gave up.

[KhaoTom]

Assuming that what the dev considers as "roguelike" is actually like Rogue (or Nethack, *band, TOME, Crawl, etc), I think it's absolutely possible and in no way harmful to never have played Rogue before developing a roguelike. I do think that not having played Rogue or a true roguelike would be detrimental, for example if all you ever played was Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Spelunky or any games billed "with roguelike elements". I've met younger game players that have been tainted and actually view these as roguelikes, and sadly when showed examples of more traditional roguelikes, they took one look and said "Oh hell no! Not playing that!"

I'd be interested to hear a followup from the OP. After finally playing Rogue what might you take away into your future designs? What did you appreciate about it? Are you now able to detect traces of Rogue in the roguelikes that you had played first?

[guest509]

Rogue is interesting because of the simplicity. It really hammers home the genre strengths. The difficulty, the thinking your way out of situations, the different abilities you are going to get each game. It's all there right from the beginning.