The Simugraph Library - RPG ideas, design snippets and articles

[Etinarg]

Many years ago I had started a library of game development related articles. There have been busy times, and long breaks without new updates.

Lately, particularly inspired by the talk about tiles and inventories I began to update the World content page, and starting from there I've updated a whole lot of pages.

Working my way through the library, updating here and there I thought, it might be interesting to the people here, although it's more a (C)RPG centric library than purely roguelike:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.Catalog

There have been many contributing authors, so the style of the articles varies a lot, but all are interesting to read.

Happy browsing

P.S. The name "Simugraph" stems from my old website "Graphics, games and Simulation", which will go out of duty in a while, but I think I keep the name for the library.

P.P.S. Some articles are just stubs or link hubs. I hope to flesh those out some day. The depth of information also varies a lot in between the articles - this is more a treasure box for the researcher type of people, but a tutorial collection for the achiever type. I hope it's still helpful.

Edit: Title changed.

[AgingMinotaur]

Thanks for posting this Hajo.

As always,
Minotauros

[Etinarg]

Thanks for posting this Hajo.

You're welcome

I hope the library will be useful for the one or other. Yesterday when browsing myself, I thought I really should study my own library. There is so much knowledge in there and my own game projects make use of only a fraction of it. Ah well. Some day

[getter77]

Also echoing thanks as the more resources out there for people to discern----the better.  Right along the lines of one of the points people had figured upon peacefully in the Livening up Roguetemple topic as well.

[Etinarg]

I think, a big problem is to make the information more present. I don't really know to put this in words. Libraries, Wikis and such store information. There is plenty of information also in blogs, Usenet groups and such.

But it is very hard to collect the information and keep it present in ones mind. I don't know how to solve that problem, though.

Edit:

in the Livening up Roguetemple topic

I had read it, but upon your note, I thought I'm going to read it again. One posting mentioned player states, and it appeared to me, that I had not mentioned such in the library yet. Now the player character page has a short paragraph what states are, and an example list of states.

http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.PlayerCharacters

Role playing games are such an extremely large field ... and they are only a fraction of all types of games. To cover even all the basics is already a huge task ...

Edit 2:

Player character page no only has a brief into of states. States examples moved to a page of their own. Also added implementation ideas for the example states:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.PlayerCharacterStates

[Etinarg]

Inspired by the talk over here:

http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=496.0

I wrote a first sketch of a new page for my library, covering "Pets":
http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.Pets

Feedback is welcome.

[Etinarg]

Again, inspired by a thread nearby:
http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=549.0

I've tried to summarize ideas about being body structures and wrote this page:
http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.LimbSystems

I feel a bit uncertain about it, but overall is seems to be alright. Feedback is welcome.

[Etinarg]

I've often been pondering about the power spiral of rising weapon and armor values in role playing games, how to avoid the vicious circle of arms buildup which finally will make many game areas boring to advanced players.

I collected some ideas from games and forums, and tried to condense them into an article:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.WeaponSlayProperties

I think this is a good solution to the vicious spiral of arms buildup. Many roguelikes have this already, though, so I don't think I bring news. But maybe it's good to have the idea written down.

[Fenrir]

I just had a look around your library, Hajo. Good stuff! Bookmarked!

[Etinarg]

Wheee, thanks

[Hi]

It's a very attractive site. It is also a little dangerous.
If you've ever been caught in a Tvtropes.org trap you know the danger of too many links, There is no section that you can "complete" so you end up trying to read the the whole site at once.  
I find a tree structure where applicable (with stuff linked to it's children parents and peers) is easier to deal with, I'm not as able to get lost and addicted.  

Redundant information also adds to the navigational complexity for example World Content page is a very nice page, but it both defines decorations, features and items and links to their definitions.

Luckily the site is small enough that this isn't a problem yet, but if it get to even a fraction of the size of tv tropes people would never escape.

[Etinarg]

Well, I considered it a good thing that visitors stay for a long time and read many pages of the library

The site grew 'organically' from a set of a dozen articles. New articles were added and cross-linked from the existing, as they seemed to fit. Sometimes pages that grew too large were split, but not entirely cleaned up, therefore the redundancy. (Just trying to explain the current state, not necessarily defending it).

A better catalog, search options and maybe directory-like pages might help.

A tree-like structure I feel unable to employ. Well, I tried, but it failed already. The information by nature is much more mesh-like than a tree, since it's seldom clearly hierarchical. The picture that fits best is a mesh - each node explaining an aspect of game development,  and from each node there are dangling some more articled with additional views, details and ideas.

I once had a more graphical representation in mind (needs Java browser plugin):

http://www.simugraph.com/library/relview/index.html

That shows the above mentioned mesh, and if you click the nodes you can choose articles (if a node has some). But that was too difficult to maintain. Yet maybe some day I might try to make an overview like this for the wiki pages, too.

Having said that, if you have ideas how to improve the current content and structure, please let me know. I might not be able to do big, particularly structural changes, but improving cross-linking or page contents I can.

[Hi]

I agree with you that there are many things that do not fit a hierarchical structure. There are still some things that are parts of bigger things. When you are on a page it's always nice when the links separate supersets from merely related articles. I think it's just that I like to know where the outside walls of the maze are, before I start exploring.

[Etinarg]

I'll try to improve the structure, with some "hub" pages for the big topics like "magic", and link related articles from there. I've tried this already, but there is still a lot of room for improvements.

You are right, structure helps the readers.

[Etinarg]

Steven "Cowgod" Fletcher from Orbital Cows gave permission to include two of his articles into this library! Thanks a lot, Steven, those will be a nice addition to the library

The articles are two big compilations of ideas about magic in role playing games, and more specific, spells and their effects.

World of Magic:
http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.WorldOfMagic

World of Spells:
http://www.funkelwerk.de/library/index.php?n=Library.WorldOfSpells