7DRL Challenge 2007: Date is Chosen!
Jeff Lait
A Seven Day Roguelike is a roguelike created in seven days. This means
the author stopped writing code one hundred and sixty eight hours
after they started writing code.
--------------
A Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) can be written at any time. However, a
general agreement was reached that it would be fun to schedule a
specific week for a challenge. This allows the various authors to know
that others are also desperately tracking down a bad pointer reference
on the 167th hour.
The week has been chosen for the Third Annual 7DRL Challenge!
After an unscientific straw poll, the following scientific-looking
graph was generated:
Feb 24 - Mar 4: #####
Mar 3 - Mar 11: ######
Mar 10 - Mar 18: ########
Mar 17 - Mar 25: #######
Mar 24 - Apr 1: ###
A discursive analysis of this shows that the use of the # sign makes
for an aesthetically pleasing method for representing bar graphs.
The week for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge has been chosen!
Within the week of March 10th to March 18th, you are hereby challenged
to write a roguelike in 168 hours!
To participate, follow these simple steps:
1) Any time on March 10th or March 11th (as measured in your time
zone), post to rec.games.roguelike.development that you have started
work on your Seven Day Roguelike.
2) Write a roguelike.
3) After 168 hours, if you have completed a playable roguelike, post
your success to rec.games.roguelike.announce! If not, post your lack
of results to rec.games.roguelike.development, where we will all
commiserate and agree that given a few scant more hours, it could have
been great.
Good Luck!
I will try to post a reminder message the wednesday before the
challenge.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Icey
*someone screams in the background* *looks of horror* *someone drops a
glass on their foot*
I've been thinking about how it'll work and these are my initial draft
subject-to-change thoughts:
* It'll be a player vs player game. There will be no monsters.
* It'll be for 2 players. More would slow down the gameplay and
writing a game for 3+ players is significantly more time consuming
than 2 players.
* It'll be turn-based.
* It'll be controllable with the keys on the numberpad, except for
typing messages to each other.
* It'll be text output.
* It'll just have one small dungeon, because searching for the enemy
is boring. The dungeon will be random each time.
* It'll be open source.
* It'll be written in Visual Basic 6 and will therefore be Windows
only.
The game will be very heavily focussed on magic. This is because
moving around one step all the time trying to find the other player
would be really boring. Some ideas for spells:
* Bring to Caster - Moves the opponent nearer to the caster.
* Life Detection - Shows the location of the opponent.
* Blink Self - Teleport caster to random location.
* Detect Traps - Show any nearby traps.
* Identify Items - Identifies all items in the casters inventory.
* Random - Casts a random spell.
* Blink - Teleport caster or enemy to random location.
* Material Destruction - Blast apart walls.
* Level Switch - Generates a new dungeon layout.
* Poisonous Smoke - Makes a cloud of smoke which floats randomly
around the dungeon and poisons people.
* Laser Ray - Fires a ray through walls, which goes to the edge of the
dungeon.
* Fire Storm - Fire flows from the caster in all directions, up to 5
to 10 squares.
Each turn the player will be presented with 3 random spells (keys /, *
and -) or they can move around (keys 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9) or
they can pass their turn (key 5) or they can use an inventory item
(key +).
Pressing enter will bring up the chat prompt and pressing it again
will send the message. Pressing del will clear and close the chat
prompt.
Items that can be found in the dungeon will be:
* Potions. I'm not sure if potions will be automatically identified or
not.
* Traps. These will be identified. They can be set by the person who
picks them up and then triggered later by the enemy.
Just to reiterate, it wont have monsters and it'll be a player vs
player game. So it may not count as a roguelike to some people, but it
has every other characteristic associated with roguelikes.
Will I meet the challenge, create this game and be remembered forever
as a hero? Or will I fail miserably and be forced to live in the
dungeons of a local castle, where I'll catch a horrible disease that
makes my eyes turn inside out?
tongHoAnh
> I'm going to make a multiplayer roguelike!
*scream in the background* *look of horror* *drop a glass on their
foot*
Crap, I'm about to make a multi player RL with features that's very
similar to yours xD Its concept is still under constant change though
so I cant say anything, in case it turn out differently.
Pointless
> I'm going to make a multiplayer roguelike!
>
> *someone screams in the background* *looks of horror* *someone drops a
> glass on their foot*
>
> I've been thinking about how it'll work and these are my initial draft
> subject-to-change thoughts:
>
> * It'll be a player vs player game. There will be no monsters.
> * It'll be for 2 players. More would slow down the gameplay and
> writing a game for 3+ players is significantly more time consuming
> than 2 players.
> * It'll be turn-based.
> * It'll be controllable with the keys on the numberpad, except for
> typing messages to each other.
> * It'll be text output.
> * It'll just have one small dungeon, because searching for the enemy
> is boring. The dungeon will be random each time.
> * It'll be open source.
> * It'll be written in Visual Basic 6 and will therefore be Windows
> only.
>
> The game will be very heavily focussed on magic. This is because
> moving around one step all the time trying to find the other player
> would be really boring. Some ideas for spells:
Can I make a suggestion? I like your idea of a magic-themed pvp game,
but maybe players can be allowed multiple actions per turn, something
like Final Fantasy Tactics? For example, maybe a player can walk a
maximum of 5 squares and cast 1 spell before the other player gains
control. Unfortunately, this might require another keypress for 'end
turn', unless you give up the ''.", not to mention balance problems.
But I think it could be better in the end.
> * Bring to Caster - Moves the opponent nearer to the caster.
> * Life Detection - Shows the location of the opponent.
> * Blink Self - Teleport caster to random location.
> * Detect Traps - Show any nearby traps.
> * Identify Items - Identifies all items in the casters inventory.
> * Random - Casts a random spell.
> * Blink - Teleport caster or enemy to random location.
> * Material Destruction - Blast apart walls.
> * Level Switch - Generates a new dungeon layout.
> * Poisonous Smoke - Makes a cloud of smoke which floats randomly
> around the dungeon and poisons people.
> * Laser Ray - Fires a ray through walls, which goes to the edge of the
> dungeon.
> * Fire Storm - Fire flows from the caster in all directions, up to 5
> to 10 squares.
I like your spells. They make good use of the dungeon environment, and
some of them work well in conjunction (like laser ray and detect life
or some of the movement spells)
> Each turn the player will be presented with 3 random spells (keys /, *
> and -) or they can move around (keys 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9) or
> they can pass their turn (key 5) or they can use an inventory item
> (key +).
>
> Pressing enter will bring up the chat prompt and pressing it again
> will send the message. Pressing del will clear and close the chat
> prompt.
>
> Items that can be found in the dungeon will be:
>
> * Potions. I'm not sure if potions will be automatically identified or
> not.
> * Traps. These will be identified. They can be set by the person who
> picks them up and then triggered later by the enemy.
Will the level be large? What is the justification for having items
lie on the floor? Why not let the player start out with them?
Icey
Cool ;) Good luck with your RL. I look forward to playing it!
Icey
> I like your idea of a magic-themed pvp game,
> but maybe players can be allowed multiple actions per turn, something
> like Final Fantasy Tactics? For example, maybe a player can walk a
> maximum of 5 squares and cast 1 spell before the other player gains
> control.
Aye, that's an excellent idea. Would speed up moving around a lot, so
I'll do that.
> Unfortunately, this might require another keypress for 'end
> turn', unless you give up the ''.", not to mention balance problems.
That's okay. If the chat prompt is open, it'll be cleared by the "."
key. If it's not, the turn will end.
I'll make it so that movement must be done before casting, so casting
a spell will also signal the end of the turn. This will be the case 90%
+ of the time I imagine.
> Will the level be large?
Levels will be small to increase the chance of finding opponents and .
I'll write in some options if there's time, like level size, disabling
LOS and stuff like that.
> What is the justification for having items lie on the floor? Why
> not let the player start out with them?
Aye, that might make more sense. I might not write in items at all, to
keep it very magic focussed. Anything that could be done with potions,
could be done with magic. Traps could be set via magic spells, rather
than objects. I'm not sure, have to put some thought into that.
Thanks for your comments.
Gerry Quinn
torespon...@hotmail.com says...
> The week for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge has been chosen!
>
> Within the week of March 10th to March 18th, you are hereby challenged
> to write a roguelike in 168 hours!
That's a five-day roguelike for the Irish, as no red-blooded Irish
person will be in a fit state to code on March 17-18 ;-)
- Gerry Quinn
tongHoAnh
> Pointless wrote:
> That's okay. If the chat prompt is open, it'll be cleared by the "."
> key. If it's not, the turn will end.
>
> I'll make it so that movement must be done before casting, so casting
> a spell will also signal the end of the turn. This will be the case 90%
> + of the time I imagine.
How about an "end turn" key if you dont finish acting and moving, and
an automatically end if you did. Casting that take longer then one
turn shall skip your action the required turns or maybe your movement
too.
> I'll write in some options if there's time, like level size, disabling
> LOS and stuff like that.
An option to limit thinking time would be nice too :D
Nik Coughlin
Pfft, I write my best code when I'm drunk :P