DND like game...
Angbandit77
I was wondering how much interest would there be among you in a DND
like game? I am refering to the telengard style one, only without the
real-time stuff, the one that was released by RO Software back in the
80's. I played it a lot as a kid and have always thought it could be
really something with some color and other such updates.
Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
Amy Wang
> Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
A roguelike game that's based on DND? Genius! How did you think of
that? I mean, here's this PnP game that's played by the same spastic
nerds who play roguelike games, but for some reason, nobody ever
thought of adapting it for play using a roguelike interface!
Oh wait, I'm mistaken. DND is the inspiration for almost every
roguelike game in existence. The mind of the roguelike developer is
filled with fear and anxiety about breaking the mold and taking
chances. It's no surprise, really. Someone who is emotionally unable
to reach a foot away from the Dragonlance section of the bookstore to
read something that's slightly different than the generic DND formula
can't be expected to go out and have real life experiences that would
allow him to come up with original ideas (of course, I'm joking. Few
of these neurotics have the courage to go outside, much less go to a
bookstore, where they would have to deal with store clerks).
Original ideas, of course, are too much to ask for. Even saying "rip
off something else, please" is too much to ask for. Sure, it wouldn't
take any more creativity or effort to rip off Conan, Harry Potter,
Final Fantasy, or any of the hundreds of awful supermarket paperbacks
in the medieval fantasy vein (not to mention other genres). In fact,
it would take less, because it would be easier to create a more unique
product.
That's not going to happen, though. Anything other than DND is scary!
Sure, we have some witless attempts at scifi (space orcs!), and a few
roguelike developers have an inexplicable Lovecraft fetish (demonic
orcs!), but a fresh perspective just isn't allowed. It's not just
about the genre, either. If someone made RainbowSixHack, you know it
would just be a dungeon crawl that's full of terrorist orcs.
Welcome to the most insular, exclusive society of social rejects on
the planet. Thank you for your contribution.
Juho Julkunen
> Welcome to the most insular, exclusive society of social rejects on
> the planet.
Spoken by the most elitist social reject on rgrd.
> Thank you for your contribution.
No, thank you. Your contributions are so much more worthwile.
--
JTJ | http://www.kolumbus.fi/j.julkunen/
"Schwarzenegger won by an impressive 3:2 margin despite the opposition
playing the sexual harassment card as their last, best hope to stop
him. Which bit of tactics now means... He has crushed his enemies,
seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentations of their
women."
? John Schilling (rec.arts.sf.written, 10-20-03)
Graeme Dice
> Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
>
>>Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
>
>
> A roguelike game that's based on DND? Genius! How did you think of
> that? I mean, here's this PnP game that's played by the same spastic
> nerds who play roguelike games, but for some reason, nobody ever
> thought of adapting it for play using a roguelike interface!
We are talking about DND. Why are you talking about a pen and paper
system that has little to do with DND?
Here's a clue. Learn about the subject before you make yourself look
like even more of an ignorant fool.
http://members.tripod.com/~rancourt/default.htm
> Welcome to the most insular, exclusive society of social rejects on
> the planet. Thank you for your contribution.
Welcome to the mind of somebody who doesn't even know what direction
they should be flailing in.
Graeme Dice
--
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire
is in the East and the sun sets in the West.
Jeff Lait
> Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
> > Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
>
> A roguelike game that's based on DND? Genius! How did you think of
> that? I mean, here's this PnP game that's played by the same spastic
> nerds who play roguelike games, but for some reason, nobody ever
> thought of adapting it for play using a roguelike interface!
>
> Oh wait, I'm mistaken. DND is the inspiration for almost every
> roguelike game in existence.
I wonder why you are surprised at this?
Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
If the game wasn't inspired by rogue, it really isn't roguelike. The
D&D component is, of course, more mutable. The ruleset or specific
monsters can be easily replaced. But the essential core of hack &
slash munchkinism is very much one of those qualifying flavours of
Rogue.
If this were a generic games development newsgroup and people only
developed roguelikes, you would be correct in calling down the need
for more variety in thinking. But your admonishments are as silly as
going to rec.games.roguelike.angband and demanding that people should
stop basing variants on Angband! Would you be surprised if a chess
programming newsgroup had an unhealthy focus on chess alone, ignoring
all the AI issues in a Quake-like FPS?
The real place where you should demand genre breaking change isn't in
which set of monsters people use or how many dice you roll to make a
hit. It is in the underlying assumptions of the game. Crawl was
genre breaking for many reasons - none related to the choice of
monsters! It wasn't ADOM's use of a bizarre and broken stat system
that allowed it to reforge people's expectations of roguelikes. You
approach this point with your space-orc/terrorist-orc example. If
renaming monsters and changing damage mechanics doesn't affect the
nature of the game, what does?
People do not need to stop using Orcs as their generic monster.
Instead, people need to stop reflexively including the *features* of
past roguelikes. Why should recovering hit points while resting be
present? Why should there be food? Why should there be light
sources? Why should there be equipment slots? Why should there be 8
way movement? Why should there be a varying-speed system?
Your previous rants better focussed on these issues rather than the
chimera of the D&D usage. I had hoped for better!
> Welcome to the most insular, exclusive society of social rejects on
> the planet. Thank you for your contribution.
Out of curiousity, what ever did happen to that group roguelike
project? I haven't heard anything for a long time, and am wondering
if there is development going on in the background?
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Graeme Dice
> blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
<snip>
> Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
> That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
Actually, Amy is just confused by the similarities in name between DND
and D&D.
Graeme Dice
--
"WARNING: Do not look into laser with remaining eye!"
-- Sign found at MIT's Junior Lab.
Erik Piper
> Amy Wang wrote:
>
> > Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message
> > news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
> >
> > > Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
> >
> >
> > A roguelike game that's based on DND? Genius! How did you think of
> > that? I mean, here's this PnP game that's played by the same spastic
> > nerds who play roguelike games, but for some reason, nobody ever
> > thought of adapting it for play using a roguelike interface!
>
> We are talking about DND. Why are you talking about a pen and paper system
> that has little to do with DND?
>
> Here's a clue. Learn about the subject before you make yourself look like
> even more of an ignorant fool.
> http://members.tripod.com/~rancourt/default.htm
>
> > Welcome to the most insular, exclusive society of social rejects on
> > the planet. Thank you for your contribution.
>
> Welcome to the mind of somebody who doesn't even know what direction they
> should be flailing in.
>
> Graeme Dice
The mixup was easy to make; on the one hand, the writer hints several times
that he's not thinking of D&D (or DnD, if you will), but on the other hand,
they are only hints.
It is true, however, that someone going into such diatribes as Amy might want
to be a little more careful to ensure that they know what they're talking
about than would someone writing a calmer message.
(/me considers downloading DND -- curiosity piqued...)
Erik
Angbandit77
<grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM> wrote:
I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
Paul Pekkarinen
> really something with some color and other such updates.
> Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
No. Can you be more specific? What made it "really something"?
Color for instance doesn't sound too much of a revolutionary update:)
Jeff Lait
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 05:11:56 GMT, Graeme Dice
> <grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM> wrote:
>
> I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
> arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
I disagree. Pulling Amy Wang out of hiding is quite an
accomplishment.
BTW, please append your post to the end of the quoted text here rather
than the front. It makes it easier to follow when replies get several
deep.
Kornel Kisielewicz
Uzytkownik "Angbandit77" <vash...@charter.net> napisal w wiadomosci
news:p5r1p05mocjlh7p7a...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 05:11:56 GMT, Graeme Dice
> <grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM> wrote:
>
> I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
> arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
You just were lucky to stumble upon one of the great rgrd guardian angels :)
regards,
Kornel Kisielewicz
(Amy's back! Maybe I should come back too?)
Jeff Lait
> Jeff Lait wrote:
> > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
>
> <snip>
>
> > Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
> > That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
>
> Actually, Amy is just confused by the similarities in name between DND
> and D&D.
I was confused as well, as evidenced by my reply morphing DND to D&D.
All of Amy's concerns still apply, however. DND and D&D are
indistinguishable in terms of genre. DND and Rogue are pretty
indistinguishable in terms of play style. Snippet from the DND
source...
11020 PRINT "Help" &
\ PRINT "Commands are:" &
\ PRINT &
\ PRINT "0 OR S stay and wait a turn" &
\ PRINT "1 OR W Move north" &
\ PRINT "2 OR D Move east" &
\ PRINT "3 OR X Move south" &
\ PRINT "4 OR A Move west" &
\ PRINT "C Cast spell" &
\ PRINT "R Drop the orb (if you have it)" &
\ PRINT "<RET> Lists stats and equipment" &
\ PRINT "<LF> List experience,gold,hits and spells" &
\ PRINT "<ESC> Replots current position" &
\ PRINT "K Fall on your sword" &
\ PRINT "Q Temporarily quit expedition" &
\ PRINT " (It will be restarted where you left)" &
\ PRINT "U Utter a pray for escape to the Nameless God."
&
\ PRINT "H Types this list" &
Besides which:
8600 REM *ALTERS*(S=8) &
8605 PRINT "You have found a Holy Altar" &
Have things changed at all in 30 years? We certainly haven't learned
how to spell altar in the interim... :>
Amy Wang
> blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
> > > Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
> >
> > A roguelike game that's based on DND? Genius! How did you think of
> > that? I mean, here's this PnP game that's played by the same spastic
> > nerds who play roguelike games, but for some reason, nobody ever
> > thought of adapting it for play using a roguelike interface!
> >
> > Oh wait, I'm mistaken. DND is the inspiration for almost every
> > roguelike game in existence.
>
> I wonder why you are surprised at this?
>
> Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
> That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
>
> If the game wasn't inspired by rogue, it really isn't roguelike. The
> D&D component is, of course, more mutable. The ruleset or specific
> monsters can be easily replaced. But the essential core of hack &
> slash munchkinism is very much one of those qualifying flavours of
> Rogue.
Quite right. But *should* it be?
>
> If this were a generic games development newsgroup and people only
> developed roguelikes, you would be correct in calling down the need
> for more variety in thinking. But your admonishments are as silly as
> going to rec.games.roguelike.angband and demanding that people should
> stop basing variants on Angband! Would you be surprised if a chess
> programming newsgroup had an unhealthy focus on chess alone, ignoring
> all the AI issues in a Quake-like FPS?
That's not how I see it. In my opinion, the analogy to use would be,
for example, that if this was a chess-style development group and 99%
of the ideas people had were lame variants on chess. Someone gets all
excited that they got an idea of making it so that rooks can only move
5 spaces at a time, or someone decides that it would be cool if you
could get an extra king when you promote a pawn. Meanwhile, people
like me are saying, you know there's checkers, there's hneftafl,
there's board games everywhere from Egypt to China that you could be
imitating, and knowing that, I'm not impressed by these cookie-cutter
variants.
>
> The real place where you should demand genre breaking change isn't in
> which set of monsters people use or how many dice you roll to make a
> hit. It is in the underlying assumptions of the game. Crawl was
> genre breaking for many reasons - none related to the choice of
> monsters! It wasn't ADOM's use of a bizarre and broken stat system
> that allowed it to reforge people's expectations of roguelikes. You
> approach this point with your space-orc/terrorist-orc example. If
> renaming monsters and changing damage mechanics doesn't affect the
> nature of the game, what does?
>
> People do not need to stop using Orcs as their generic monster.
> Instead, people need to stop reflexively including the *features* of
> past roguelikes. Why should recovering hit points while resting be
> present? Why should there be food? Why should there be light
> sources? Why should there be equipment slots? Why should there be 8
> way movement? Why should there be a varying-speed system?
Those are all good points, and you're right, it's not the monster
names (or characteristics, for that matter) that are what I should be
arguing against. It's these features, and it's the expectations that
the developers have that force them into creating these bland games.
I've argued that many roguelike designs are too complex for their
creator's good, but that's another issue. Taking it from another
angle, you have all of these designers including these features that
you've listed for absolutely no reason, while they could put the
*same* effort into implementing a feature that's actually innovative.
You've hit the nail on the head: it's reflexive.
And it's not just features, either. For me, at least, it's *concepts*.
If roguelike developers were more numerous and more competent, they
would be churning out dozens of roguelike games with the same stupid
themes that have kept the genre unpopular for two decades.
As a quick example, there's attack-on-sight monsters. Monsters attack
you for NO reason. Why don't they attack each other? Why don't they
talk to the PC and at least come up with a reason? I don't have a
problem with orcs attacking elves on sight, or the Guardians of the
Purple Flame attacking the Guardians of the Green Flame. It's the fact
that roguelike developers shamelessly keep this same concept, only
mitigating it with stupid one- or two-dimensional alignment systems.
How about a game that's entirely quest-based? You go around, talk to
different dungeon residents[1], and get hired for assassination, body
guarding, regular guard duty, etc., and rack up fights that way. How
about a game that's based on politics? You talk to the NPCs and get
them to join your army and fight each other. It took me less time to
think these things up than it did to write them, so this just *can't*
be that hard to do.
[1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not have a
game in which the residents of a village dynamically create the
structure of their above-ground town before the game starts? Does that
sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be, if you're willing to
divest with one or two useless features that have no place in the
game.
Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
1. Roguelike developers, in general, actually ARE more stupid than I
would like to believe. As I just got done saying, if I can come up
with these ideas, why can't they? Well, maybe I'm giving them too much
credit. And it's not necessarily that they're retarded; it's just that
they're a bunch of 15 year olds with "How to Program in C" books in
their laps, and are too busy trying to figure out how to use pointers
to be bothered with 30 seconds of actual creative thought.
I'm hoping that #1 isn't the case. Not that the next is much better,
but it gets back to the point of my previous post:
2. The typical roguelike developer has deeply-set emotional issues,
and is pathologically afraid of change or taking risks of any kind. He
has few real-life social contacts, and has reacted to this situation
by becoming hostile towards normal society, expressing this attitude
by becoming an elitist game developer in a niche environment. It's
like one of those artists in the black berets who cry out "you don't
understand my art!". As such, roguelike developers try to snub their
noses at 'lesser' gamers who are supposed to be inferior for liking
games with good graphics. Many of them extend this to other features,
such as having a good interface or playability (yes, I have been
alluding to the extremely high difficulty level of roguelike games).
Despite this snobbish attitude, the developers are afraid of being
shunned by roguelike gamers for making a game that bends the unspoken
rules of the genre, so they just rehash Rogue. They are paralytically
afraid of someone playing the finished product and saying "this isn't
roguelike".
>
> Your previous rants better focussed on these issues rather than the
> chimera of the D&D usage. I had hoped for better!
Few people are willing to talk about these issues. I thank you for an
intelligent response.
>
> Out of curiousity, what ever did happen to that group roguelike
> project? I haven't heard anything for a long time, and am wondering
> if there is development going on in the background?
It never materialized, unfortunately. I got plenty of emails reading
(in essence): "I don't have any programming skills, but I'd love to
make a webpage for your project", and quite a few people who knew
languages like Pascal and Java, but nobody had the skills needed to
participate in actual game development using a common
roguelike-capable language (i.e., C). Of course, I was only
half-serious about it, and if I was dead serious, I would have gone to
alt.games.programming and web forums looking for programmers who
wanted to add to their skills or resume.
That's not really my big disappointment, however. My big
disappointment about that project is that nobody had a game idea to
add. As you may recall, I had the project structured around the
typical idea->design->implementation paradigm. In the idea phase, I
was expecting to have at least one programmer who had an idea, and a
non-technical person saying something like "I can't program using any
language, but I think this is a good idea...". Of course, I had (and
still have) a half-dozen good ideas of my own, but I wanted to involve
the other team members in the creative process, rather than just
saying "this is my game, and you guys are now my code slaves".
Without a second candidate, there couldn't be a vote, so there was no
point going to the next phase. Perhaps that was the wrong structure.
Indeed, I might have had more wide-spread enthusiasm for the project
if I had just taken my best idea, done most of the design for it, and
looked for coders to implement it. In the end, though, I can live
without having any more good roguelike games come into existence. Real
life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from that, Halo
2 just came out.
Graeme Dice
<snip>
> Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
> that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
You missed the most obvious one but that shouldn't be surprising for
someone as long-winded yet intellectually limited as yourself.
Designers make games that they themselves want to play.
>>Out of curiousity, what ever did happen to that group roguelike
>>project? I haven't heard anything for a long time, and am wondering
>>if there is development going on in the background?
>
>
> It never materialized, unfortunately.
In other words, you are one of those very people that you hold so much
contempt for. Let me know when you can do something besides rant like a
lunatic.
>Real
> life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from that, Halo
> 2 just came out.
I'm sorry, but are you actually holding up a standard derivative first
person shooter as an example of a good game. That is, after all, a
genre that hasn't advanced anywhere since the days of doom.
Graeme Dice
--
Reasons to Leave that 100lb. Diamond on the Altar 9
You see a hat and a whip on a pile of ash nearby.
Mike Blackney
>
> That's not how I see it. In my opinion, the analogy to use would be,
> for example, that if this was a chess-style development group and 99%
> of the ideas people had were lame variants on chess. Someone gets all
> excited that they got an idea of making it so that rooks can only
> move 5 spaces at a time, or someone decides that it would be cool if
> you could get an extra king when you promote a pawn. Meanwhile,
> people like me are saying, you know there's checkers, there's
> hneftafl, there's board games everywhere from Egypt to China that you
> could be imitating, and knowing that, I'm not impressed by these
> cookie-cutter variants.
You say you like chess? Well here's checkers using chess pieces!
That's a brilliant idea and still like chess!
> As a quick example, there's attack-on-sight monsters. Monsters attack
> you for NO reason. Why don't they attack each other? Why don't they
> talk to the PC and at least come up with a reason? I don't have a
> problem with orcs attacking elves on sight, or the Guardians of the
> Purple Flame attacking the Guardians of the Green Flame. It's the
> fact that roguelike developers shamelessly keep this same concept,
> only mitigating it with stupid one- or two-dimensional alignment
> systems.
I did not realise that this was a problem restricted to roguelikes.
> How about a game that's entirely quest-based? You go around, talk to
> different dungeon residents[1], and get hired for assassination, body
> guarding, regular guard duty, etc., and rack up fights that way.
What a new idea.
> How about a game that's based on politics? You talk to the NPCs and
> get them to join your army and fight each other. It took me less
> time to think these things up than it did to write them, so this
> just *can't* be that hard to do.
You're right. You can create games simply by thinking about them.
Nice GDI .exe by the way.
> Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
> that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
>
> 1. Roguelike developers, in general, actually ARE more stupid than I
> would like to believe. As I just got done saying, if I can come up
> with these ideas, why can't they? Well, maybe I'm giving them too
> much credit. And it's not necessarily that they're retarded; it's
> just that they're a bunch of 15 year olds with "How to Program in C"
> books in their laps, and are too busy trying to figure out how to
> use pointers to be bothered with 30 seconds of actual creative
> thought.
You're right. Roguelike developers *would* have to be retarded to not
come up with better ideas than you.
> I'm hoping that #1 isn't the case. Not that the next is much better,
> but it gets back to the point of my previous post:
>
> 2. The typical roguelike developer has deeply-set emotional issues,
> and is pathologically afraid of change or taking risks of any kind.
> He has few real-life social contacts, and has reacted to this
> situation by becoming hostile towards normal society, expressing
> this attitude by becoming an elitist game developer in a niche
> environment. It's like one of those artists in the black berets who
> cry out "you don't understand my art!". As such, roguelike
> developers try to snub their noses at 'lesser' gamers who are
> supposed to be inferior for liking games with good graphics. Many
> of them extend this to other features, such as having a good
> interface or playability (yes, I have been alluding to the
> extremely high difficulty level of roguelike games). Despite this
> snobbish attitude, the developers are afraid of being shunned by
> roguelike gamers for making a game that bends the unspoken rules
> of the genre, so they just rehash Rogue. They are paralytically
> afraid of someone playing the finished product and saying "this
> isn't roguelike".
Catch 22. Make a roguelike and Amy Wang doesn't like it. Make a game
that isn't roguelike and you're not a roguelike developer.
> [Regarding Amy Wang's group development]
>
> It never materialized, unfortunately. I got plenty of emails reading
> (in essence): "I don't have any programming skills, but I'd love to
> make a webpage for your project", and quite a few people who knew
> languages like Pascal and Java, but nobody had the skills needed to
> participate in actual game development using a common
> roguelike-capable language (i.e., C). Of course, I was only
> half-serious about it, and if I was dead serious, I would have gone
> to alt.games.programming and web forums looking for programmers who
> wanted to add to their skills or resume.
I thought Kornel was helping? Hasn't he already implemented much of
Genrogue, the most advanced roguelike in history? Surely with his
skills and your ideas you'd be able to make *something*.
> That's not really my big disappointment, however. My big
> disappointment about that project is that nobody had a game idea to
> add. As you may recall, I had the project structured around the
> typical idea->design->implementation paradigm.
Sure is better than most other paradigms. Like
design->implementation->idea. That one's pretty bogus.
> In the idea phase, I was expecting to have at least one programmer
> who had an idea, and a non-technical person saying something like
> "I can't program using any language, but I think this is a good
> idea...". Of course, I had (and still have) a half-dozen good ideas
> of my own, but I wanted to involve the other team members in the
> creative process, rather than just saying "this is my game, and you
> guys are now my code slaves".
So you didn't want to be project leader? You poor thing.
> Without a second candidate, there couldn't be a vote, so there was no
> point going to the next phase. Perhaps that was the wrong structure.
> Indeed, I might have had more wide-spread enthusiasm for the project
> if I had just taken my best idea, done most of the design for it, and
> looked for coders to implement it. In the end, though, I can live
> without having any more good roguelike games come into existence.
> Real life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from that,
> Halo 2 just came out.
Well there you go. Proof that Amy Wang has no business complaining
about the state of current roguelike development.
--
michaelblackney at hotmail dot com
http://aburatan.sourceforge.net/
Latest version 0.95 2-5-4
R. Dan Henry
Lait) wrote:
>Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<p5r1p05mocjlh7p7a...@4ax.com>...
>> I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
>> arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
>
>I disagree. Pulling Amy Wang out of hiding is quite an
>accomplishment.
No, getting the Wang to spew ignorant bile isn't any great
accomplishment. It is, however, also not a sign of any fault. It is
certainly no reason to stop posting.
R. Dan Henry
danh...@inreach.com
Björn Bergström
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
>
>>blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
>>
>>>Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
>>>
>>>>Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
>>>
> could get an extra king when you promote a pawn. Meanwhile, people
> like me are saying, you know there's checkers, there's hneftafl,
If you're going to be picky it's Hnefatafl (a viking game). But
considering the name it's understandable if you don't get it right :-)
[snip]
--
Björn Bergström
roguelike development [http://roguelikedevelopment.org]
dweller - cellphone roguelike [http://roguelikedevelopment.org/dweller]
Mike Blackney
>
> Amy Wang wrote:
> >
> > Real life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from
> > that, Halo 2 just came out.
>
> I'm sorry, but are you actually holding up a standard derivative
> first person shooter as an example of a good game. That is, after
> all, a genre that hasn't advanced anywhere since the days of doom.
Haven't you heard? Halo is a roguelike. It's just that Bungie decided
not to be inhibited by the shackles of 'standard' roguelike elements.
Once they got rid of the overhead view and the ASCII graphics, released
themselves from the bonds of oppression known as 'turn based gaming'
and eliminated hit-point levelling (and levelling in general) they
decided all it would take is to take it out of a generic fantasy
setting and put it in a futuristic orbital.
In this way it's incredibly innovative. Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman
would be proud. But the bad guys are still pretty much Space Orcs.
ABCGi
ROFL! Space Orcs...
--
ABCGi - ab...@yahoo.com
Currently Playing: H-World = http://h-world.simugraph.com
SZDev - Slash
news:cmro1s$6k7$1...@inews.gazeta.pl...
>
> Uzytkownik "Angbandit77" <vash...@charter.net> napisal w wiadomosci
> news:p5r1p05mocjlh7p7a...@4ax.com...
> > On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 05:11:56 GMT, Graeme Dice
> > <grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM> wrote:
> >
> > I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
> > arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
>
> You just were lucky to stumble upon one of the great rgrd guardian angels
:)
>
Yes! from time to time rgrd need a fresh bath of wangism... it was getting
pretty boring lately...
hey hey, there is only one Guardian Angel in rgrd ;)
> regards,
> Kornel Kisielewicz
> (Amy's back! Maybe I should come back too?)
>
--
SZDev - Slash
Slashing, the Outcast Dragon of the -={UDIC}=-
Weblog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/szdev
Website: http://szdev.cjb.net
>
SZDev - Slash
news:62acd54d.04110...@posting.google.com...
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message
news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message
news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
> As a quick example, there's attack-on-sight monsters. Monsters attack
> you for NO reason. Why don't they attack each other? Why don't they
> talk to the PC and at least come up with a reason? I don't have a
> problem with orcs attacking elves on sight, or the Guardians of the
> Purple Flame attacking the Guardians of the Green Flame. It's the fact
> that roguelike developers shamelessly keep this same concept, only
> mitigating it with stupid one- or two-dimensional alignment systems.
> How about a game that's entirely quest-based? You go around, talk to
> different dungeon residents[1], and get hired for assassination, body
> guarding, regular guard duty, etc., and rack up fights that way. How
> about a game that's based on politics? You talk to the NPCs and get
> them to join your army and fight each other.
Somehow out of my stupidity I could also think of these things! Ooohhh!
Somehow out of my incompetence I have IMPLEMENTED these things! OOOOOHH!!!
> It took me less time to
> think these things up than it did to write them, so this just *can't*
> be that hard to do.
>
You are not the first one to think about these things; have you tought that
some developers have decided to trash these ideas because they didn't fit
what they wanted in the game? Do you think you have the authority to decide
what they must want for their games?
When will you actually begin working on a game, so that you can enlighten us
with your superior design skills, and provide this newsgroup with a fresh
logos to be followed??? how will you name your sucessors, wangielikes???
> [1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not have a
> game in which the residents of a village dynamically create the
> structure of their above-ground town before the game starts? Does that
> sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be, if you're willing to
> divest with one or two useless features that have no place in the
> game.
>
This is true...
> Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
> that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
>
> 1. Roguelike developers, in general, actually ARE more stupid than I
> would like to believe. As I just got done saying, if I can come up
> with these ideas, why can't they?
They can and they do...
> Well, maybe I'm giving them too much
> credit. And it's not necessarily that they're retarded; it's just that
> they're a bunch of 15 year olds with "How to Program in C" books in
> their laps, and are too busy trying to figure out how to use pointers
> to be bothered with 30 seconds of actual creative thought.
>
> I'm hoping that #1 isn't the case. Not that the next is much better,
> but it gets back to the point of my previous post:
>
> 2. The typical roguelike developer has deeply-set emotional issues,
> and is pathologically afraid of change or taking risks of any kind. He
> has few real-life social contacts, and has reacted to this situation
> by becoming hostile towards normal society, expressing this attitude
> by becoming an elitist game developer in a niche environment. It's
> like one of those artists in the black berets who cry out "you don't
> understand my art!". As such, roguelike developers try to snub their
> noses at 'lesser' gamers who are supposed to be inferior for liking
> games with good graphics. Many of them extend this to other features,
> such as having a good interface or playability (yes, I have been
> alluding to the extremely high difficulty level of roguelike games).
> Despite this snobbish attitude, the developers are afraid of being
> shunned by roguelike gamers for making a game that bends the unspoken
> rules of the genre, so they just rehash Rogue. They are paralytically
> afraid of someone playing the finished product and saying "this isn't
> roguelike".
How can you judge and stereotype a roguelike developer based only in what
you sense on a newsgroup? I agree that some people is too closed into the
definition of the genre, but still, how do you know that "...he has few
real-life social contacts, and has reacted to this situation by becoming
hostile towards normal society.."????
If this is true, then I am afraid I am not a rl developer, but wait! I am
developing a RL!... SO what am I???
>
>
SNIPPED GDI thinguie
The Sheep
> "Kornel Kisielewicz" <charon...@magma-net.pl> escribió en el mensaje
> news:cmro1s$6k7$1...@inews.gazeta.pl...
>>
>> Uzytkownik "Angbandit77" <vash...@charter.net> napisal w wiadomosci
>> news:p5r1p05mocjlh7p7a...@4ax.com...
>> > On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 05:11:56 GMT, Graeme Dice
>> > <grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM> wrote:
>> >
>> > I really need to stop posting in newsgroups. Seems like it starts
>> > arguments everytime I open my mouth. :p
>>
>> You just were lucky to stumble upon one of the great rgrd guardian angels
>:)
>>
>
> Yes! from time to time rgrd need a fresh bath of wangism... it was getting
> pretty boring lately...
>
> hey hey, there is only one Guardian Angel in rgrd ;)
Well, tehre's also Bateau, but I woudn't call him an angel... ^^)))
--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! Create your own computer role playing
`The Sheep' ('') } game using the great H-World engine!
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVVvVVvv.v. http://h-world.simugraph.com/
Angbandit77
Specifics, you say? Very well, now you won't be able to shut me up!
Here a some of the many ideas I have come up with:
1 Randomize those dungeons with an option for persistant layouts.
2 More Weapons, Armor, Rings, Boots, Shields, and Cloaks
3 Put something at the bottom of each dungeon to go after, like a
foozle or an artifact of some kind.
4 Add more structures besides the FNT (fountains) and such... maybe
STU (statues) or TMB (tombs)
5 The store option is in need of some serious tweaking, like being
able to sell stuff that you pick up whilst in the dungeon, perhaps an
insurance agency to go get a previous players corpse, a temple for
healing, posion cure, stuff like that. Player homes...
6 Auto map? This is a nasty one for me because half the fun of
playing that game when I was a kid was a pencil and pad of graph
paper. But not every one would want to do that.
7 I would use color sparsly to preserve the retro feel of the game,
perhaps a yellow color for "you have found 300 gold pieces". The 300
would be yellow. That sort of thing.
8 If the RND should grant a player an artifact of some kind, make the
player wait for it by printing "You have found...", and then a good 5
second pause, and then whatever it is you have found. Build up the
tension and excitment a little.
9 Include an editor for building your own dungeons, maybe some
scripting for quests.
10 Of course by artifacts I refer to the same thing that you find in
Angband.
Now, I am aware of Steve Sergato's attempt at an update of this game
and while I thought it was excellent and ambitious, I did not agree
with the added races and classes like elf and dwarf and ranger and
paladin and such. I felt that while those additions add a huge
replayability factor, it had no place in DND. It sort of took away
from the feel of it. I also disliked that way his combat screen was
done. Instead of the regular monster on top of the X, he changed it
to a roguelike setting. Again, I felt it was not DND. Still, I would
glady continue to play his version were he to update and maybe even be
satisfied by it, but always would that lingering desire be in the back
of my mind to do it my way. I type like Yoda talks, I just noticed.
Yikes.
Here's the worst part of it all, folks. I am barely proficiant in
QuickBasic and am just learning C. The whole thing already feels
hopeless.
Archibald
blueme...@hotmail.com says...
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message news:<ptono01vt42anm6g3...@4ax.com>...
> > > > Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
> > >
> that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
>
> 1. Roguelike developers, in general, actually ARE more stupid than I
> would like to believe.
>
> 2. The typical roguelike developer has deeply-set emotional issues,
> and is pathologically afraid of change or taking risks of any kind.
3. They don't think that a game have to be innovative and prefers to
make it playable rather than overcomplicate things only for sake of
"originality".
--
Archibald
ABCGi
> On 9 Nov 2004 15:30:09 -0800, pau...@mbnet.fi (Paul Pekkarinen) wrote:
>
>
>>Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message
>>
>>>I played it a lot as a kid and have always thought it could be
>>>really something with some color and other such updates.
>>>Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?
>>
>>No. Can you be more specific? What made it "really something"?
>>Color for instance doesn't sound too much of a revolutionary update:)
>
> Specifics, you say? Very well, now you won't be able to shut me up!
> Here a some of the many ideas I have come up with:
>
> 1 Randomize those dungeons with an option for persistant layouts.
> 2 More Weapons, Armor, Rings, Boots, Shields, and Cloaks
> 3 Put something at the bottom of each dungeon to go after, like a
> foozle or an artifact of some kind.
>
> 4 Add more structures besides the FNT (fountains) and such... maybe
> STU (statues) or TMB (tombs)
>
> 5 The store option is in need of some serious tweaking, like being
> able to sell stuff that you pick up whilst in the dungeon, perhaps an
> insurance agency to go get a previous players corpse, a temple for
> healing, posion cure, stuff like that. Player homes...
>
> 6 Auto map? This is a nasty one for me because half the fun of
> playing that game when I was a kid was a pencil and pad of graph
> paper. But not every one would want to do that.
H-World has a map you can toggle off or on. I suspect the pen and
pencilers are pretty thin on the ground though...
> 7 I would use color sparsly to preserve the retro feel of the game,
> perhaps a yellow color for "you have found 300 gold pieces". The 300
> would be yellow. That sort of thing.
>
> 8 If the RND should grant a player an artifact of some kind, make the
> player wait for it by printing "You have found...", and then a good 5
> second pause, and then whatever it is you have found. Build up the
> tension and excitment a little.
>
> 9 Include an editor for building your own dungeons, maybe some
> scripting for quests.
>
> 10 Of course by artifacts I refer to the same thing that you find in
> Angband.
>
> Now, I am aware of Steve Sergato's attempt at an update of this game
> and while I thought it was excellent and ambitious, I did not agree
> with the added races and classes like elf and dwarf and ranger and
> paladin and such. I felt that while those additions add a huge
> replayability factor, it had no place in DND. It sort of took away
> from the feel of it. I also disliked that way his combat screen was
> done. Instead of the regular monster on top of the X, he changed it
> to a roguelike setting. Again, I felt it was not DND. Still, I would
> glady continue to play his version were he to update and maybe even be
> satisfied by it, but always would that lingering desire be in the back
> of my mind to do it my way. I type like Yoda talks, I just noticed.
> Yikes.
Nice, the list is. Save it, I shall. Simple, it is, take note of such
things, one does need to do.
> Here's the worst part of it all, folks. I am barely proficiant in
> QuickBasic and am just learning C. The whole thing already feels
> hopeless.
If you can take the Angband source, follow the instructions and get it
to compile. And then make one simple change, recompile and test you are
well on your way... and you will learn coding as you go. This is how I
learnt programming typing in Vic20 and C64 code for games out of
magazines...
Hansjoerg Malthaner
> You may be happy to know that roguelike authors are both more
> competent and more numerous. By my count, there are at least 37
> roguelikes that have seen a release in the last six months.
> (http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/) I'm pretty sure all 37
> have the same theme in your eyes, however.
You've missed the latest H-World update :)
http://www.simugraph.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=11&t_id=30
My fault, I didn't post it here, because it's about mouse control and I
was afraid of the keyboard lovers living here ;)
c.u.
Hajo
Angbandit77
wrote:
>Angbandit77 <vash...@charter.net> wrote in message
>> 8 If the RND should grant a player an artifact of some kind, make the
>> player wait for it by printing "You have found...", and then a good 5
>> second pause, and then whatever it is you have found. Build up the
>> tension and excitment a little.
>
>Like opening a chest in Legend Of Zelda.. you get.. 50 rupees! (wow..:)
>
>> done. Instead of the regular monster on top of the X, he changed it
>> to a roguelike setting. Again, I felt it was not DND.
>
>Hmm, so DND is not like roguelikes? I mean most of those features
>are in Nethack and ADOM, and some other roguelikes too.
>
>> Here's the worst part of it all, folks. I am barely proficiant in
>> QuickBasic and am just learning C. The whole thing already feels
>> hopeless.
>
>It doesn't sound hopeless. Actually sounds quite simple and "easy"
>to do, if you compare it to the projects some of us have here:)
>And learning C (or C++ preferably) is not that hard at all.
Is DND a roguelike? No, it's not. But the elements are very much the
same. The only difference between DND and say, Rogue, are the display
screens- plus Rogue was a tad more advanced in terms of detail and
depth of play. But I only ask here because the structure of the game
will be the same as with any roguelike. Hack slash level up sell buy
hack slash level up (check fridge for Walmart brand soda and leftover
french fries) hack slash... so on.
But cmon, now, tell me you folks wouldn't just love to see that
message at the top of the Angband screen...
You find... (pause for effect) ..a scroll of *Aquirment*!
or better still...
You find... )again, pause for effect) ...nothing!
Some of you old timers may recall a game called "Moraffs Revenge",
that's where I got that from.
Another thing that I want to add before I decide to stop screwing
around and start coding is simplicity. It abounds in the original
Rogue and DND. I would like to preserve that in remake of DND
as much as possibe, keep things behind the scenes.
That is all.
The Sheep
> Another thing that I want to add before I decide to stop screwing
> around and start coding is simplicity. It abounds in the original
> Rogue and DND. I would like to preserve that in remake of DND
> as much as possibe, keep things behind the scenes.
It's not something you add. You get simlicity when you remove most things
^^))).
Juho Julkunen
> Amy Wang wrote:
> >Real
> > life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from that, Halo
> > 2 just came out.
>
> I'm sorry, but are you actually holding up a standard derivative first
> person shooter as an example of a good game. That is, after all, a
> genre that hasn't advanced anywhere since the days of doom.
Have you actually played any FPS since Doom? (I know I haven't, until
Halo. Okay, Max Payne too, but that's not technically a first person
shooter.) Halo really is a great game, and shows quite a bit of
advancement* since the days of Wolfenstein 3D. You should try it
sometime.
*[Things like limiting the number of weapons you can carry to force
strategic choises, enemies that are intelligent enough so you can
actually benefit from tactics (try using suppressive fire in Doom), use
of vehicles (even flying ones) smoothly integrated into the game,
seamless transitions from indoors to huge outdoors locales, support
from friendly troops, etc.]
--
JTJ | http://www.kolumbus.fi/j.julkunen/
A european says: I can't understand this. What's wrong with me?
An american says: I can't understand this. What's wrong with him?
-- Terry Pratchett
Antony Sidwell
Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Graeme Dice (grd...@sasktel.net.NOSPAM) wrote:
> > Amy Wang wrote:
>
> > > Real life has much more charm, and if I need a distraction from
> > > that, Halo 2 just came out.
> >
> > I'm sorry, but are you actually holding up a standard derivative
> > first person shooter as an example of a good game. That is, after
> > all, a genre that hasn't advanced anywhere since the days of doom.
>
> Have you actually played any FPS since Doom? (I know I haven't, until
> Halo. Okay, Max Payne too, but that's not technically a first person
> shooter.) Halo really is a great game, and shows quite a bit of
> advancement* since the days of Wolfenstein 3D. You should try it
> sometime.
>
> *[Things like limiting the number of weapons you can carry to force
> strategic choises, enemies that are intelligent enough so you can
> actually benefit from tactics (try using suppressive fire in Doom),
> use of vehicles (even flying ones) smoothly integrated into the game,
> seamless transitions from indoors to huge outdoors locales, support
> from friendly troops, etc.]
I think his point was approximately this:
However good or bad Halo 2 may be, however much better than Doom or
Quake it may be, it's still just an FPSlike game. Why didn't they do
something radical, like remove the shooting element altogether, or maybe
drop the tired old 3D interface which puts off so many gamers and switch
to a simpler 2D text-based interface which the gamer can instantly get a
grip on thanks to their already-taught character recognition skills? In
essence, why have they stuck in their genre rather than looking around
and making some genuinely interesting choices?
</satire>
No, honestly, it was satire. Cue someone telling me that Halo 2 does in
fact do those things. I'm afraid I speak from ignorance on the topic,
but I won't let that hold me back. ;)
--
Antony Sidwell.
Pfhoenix
Adeo shouldn't qualify, as it's to the point where it's not a roguelike at
all any more; about the only roguelike properties it has is being turn-based
and grid-based. Beyond simply using graphics, I've now structured a texture
archive format, I'm working on a map editor (for specific locales), and I've
made better the popup menu usage. Adeo's next release, 0.1.4~5, will also be
the last announcement I make on this newsgroup, as I will be looking for a
more appropriate place to categorize my project.
- Pfhoenix
http://pfhoenix.com/adeo
Jeff Lait
> I'm surprised to see Adeo on that list.
Really? Why on earth would you be surprised?
Let's see... Adeo is listed on the directory underneath Roguelike
Games:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Games/Video_Games/Roleplaying/Rogue-like/Independent_Developers/
Next, if I were to look at the FAQ on Adeo, I read:
-----
What is Adeo?
Adeo is a roguelike-in-progress
-----
What prompted you to start Adeo?
A long while back, a couple friends of mine and I were talking about
our favorite roguelikes, what we liked and disliked about them, some
neat ideas for roguelikes, etc. It got to the point where one friend
and I decided to start our own. Of course, my big thing is I'm a fan
of isometric view games, and having not found a roguelike which
satisfied that particular craving, I used the chance to make my own.
-----
Adeo isn't a roguelike, and you should stop calling it one.
That depends on how you decide what constitutes a roguelike. I've
heard myriads of different definitions, and invariably, Adeo shares at
least one or two common characteristics with any given roguelike
definition. If you want, I could start describing Adeo as a
roguelike++.
-----
Come to think of it, you are right! I must suffer from poor reading
comprehension to ever have concluded that Adeo should be listed under
a list of roguelikes!
> I'm pretty sure the next release of
> Adeo shouldn't qualify, as it's to the point where it's not a roguelike at
> all any more; about the only roguelike properties it has is being turn-based
> and grid-based. Beyond simply using graphics, I've now structured a texture
> archive format, I'm working on a map editor (for specific locales), and I've
> made better the popup menu usage. Adeo's next release, 0.1.4~5, will also be
> the last announcement I make on this newsgroup, as I will be looking for a
> more appropriate place to categorize my project.
I don't think "turn based and grid-based" have anything to do with
being roguelikes. Civilization is turn based and grid based, yet I
would definitely not call it a roguelike. Roguelikenes isn't a matter
of checking off features (Look! Civ has random maps!).
I'm also quite confused as to why map editors or texture archive
formats have absolutely anything to do with the game's genre? I'm
sure Diablo had both of those, yet is definitely a roguelike.
If you desire, I can remove Adeo from the list. I don't see any
reason why you should want to be removed, however?
Amy Wang
> blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.04110...@posting.google.com>...
> > torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > >
> > > > roguelike game in existence.
> > >
> > > I wonder why you are surprised at this?
> > >
> > > Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
> > > That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
> >
>
>
> Are you suggesting we should make a roguelike game that is not
> inspired by Rogue? Wouldn't said game then *not* be a roguelike?
The exact thing that I actually was referring to was this:
"But the essential core of hack & slash munchkinism is very much one
of those qualifying flavours of Rogue."
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of hack'n'slash gameplay, nor am I a
fan of munchkinism. I'll concede that there's a place for it. It's not
that I mind that these themes are used. I mind that they are the theme
*every* roguelike has as its driving force.
You also know that I'd like to avoid the 'definition of roguelike'
flamewar. Roguelike or not, I'd like to see some kind of
roguelike-like game that has key concepts that are different from what
are reflexively used by developers of today. One of the big reasons
why roguelike games never gained widespread popularity is because
developers stubbornly held onto this ideal of a roguelike game being a
glorified exercise in minimaxing.
But to answer your question, yes. It would be awesome to see a
'roguelike' game that has no attachment to Rogue. I am quite aware
that this is *not* impossible, because I more-or-less did it years
ago. Of course, if I had known of Rogue or its derivatives, I would
have taken inspiration from them, and my creation would have, in fact,
been less unique. As it was, I succeeded in creating a turn-based,
text-based, top-down strategy game.
Yes, I did just say that RGRD *hurts* roguelike development.
> It is always your perogrative to be unimpressed. However, wouldn't
> discussion of the checkers variants be properly placed in the
> checkers-style development group?
And what if checkers, or any of these other games, were never
invented, because chess-style developers were obsessed with tweaking
chess? I know, it's not a perfect analogy. But it addresses the
difference in perspective that we have.
>
> > And it's not just features, either. For me, at least, it's *concepts*.
> > If roguelike developers were more numerous and more competent, they
> > would be churning out dozens of roguelike games with the same stupid
> > themes that have kept the genre unpopular for two decades.
>
> I don't know where you get the idea that the roguelike genre is
> unpopular. Diablo certainly sold enough copies.
Here's my perspective. During the 80's, roguelike games should have
DOMINATED. The market should have been flooded with impressions of
Rogue from development studios big and small. Some would have been
good, others bad. Instead, what happened? Early, text-based gaming was
not just ruled, but was *exclusively* text adventures like Zork. There
may be exceptions, but certainly nothing meaningful.
Text-based games have, for the most part, lost marketability, simply
due to advances in technology. But where's the hobbyist following?
HERE? A half dozen actual developers and their dreamer disciples who
have collectively rehashed old hack&slash, generic D&D, and wishlist
features that range from mundane to stupid? Making a roguelike game
COULD be a rite-of-passage for every CS major in the world. That isn't
the case. Why?
Diablo is often held up by roguelike apologists as an effort to say
"now we're popular too!". There's no doubt that there's similarities.
I might even go so far as to say that Diablo is a roguelike game.
However, there are important differences between what Diablo is, and
what's developed by RGRDers. Diablo doesn't require any kind of
cerebral effort. You go out and fight monsters until you run out of
potions or your inventory gets full. Then you come back, sell or stash
the items you won, buy some more potions, and repeat. It's an
addictive exercise for the same people who play Everquest. They like
to level up and get new spells and equipment. You can't tell me that a
standard roguelike is the same experience.
>
> You may be happy to know that roguelike authors are both more
> competent and more numerous. By my count, there are at least 37
> roguelikes that have seen a release in the last six months.
> (http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/) I'm pretty sure all 37
> have the same theme in your eyes, however.
>
> > As a quick example, there's attack-on-sight monsters. Monsters attack
> > you for NO reason. Why don't they attack each other?
>
> Because having them fighting each other usually occurs off screen, so
> is a waste of time to simulate? Before POWDER 053, when creatures
> fought each other, I'd receive bug reports that the kill count was too
> high. It was just offscreen monsters happily killing each other off.
Nah, I'm pretty sure I've had a PC walk into a room with a bandit and
a rat sleeping a few squares next to each other, just waiting to run
headlong zombie-like against a better-armed opponent.
That's not the point, though. It's a munchkin-themed world. You go
into a dungeon with the mandate "kill everything you see so your
experience can increase". Dungeon inhabitants seem to live by the same
philosophy, but are curiously hypocritical about it. They all make a
bee-line towards the PC, ignoring all sense of caution or
self-preservation (not to mention civility), in a desperate attempt to
kill him for experience, all the while ignoring each other.
You know, it's not just a gripe about poor AI. Sure, ADOM has those
monster-filled rooms, and it doesn't help the experience when a room
full of cowardly kobolds lines up single file to melee with me, and
the only strategy I have to apply is to back up a few spaces where the
hallway is narrow and keep an eye on my HP. No, what I'm really
talking about is the theme. Why are these monsters attacking me? If
it's a munchkin-themed game, and they are attacking me for experience,
it seems to me that they should attack each other. If not, they should
have some actual reason to attack the PC.
>
> > Why don't they
> > talk to the PC and at least come up with a reason?
>
> If the purpose of one's game is to emphasize the tactical combat
> nature of roguelikes, the *reason* for fighting is irrelevant. When
> we play chess, do we wonder why we try to beat the other player?
> Should chess have a diplomatic half added allowing players to form an
> alliance and thus keep both kings alive?
Well, that answers the previous question. I thank you again for being
intelligent about your post, rather than giving the group the "Amy
Wang isn't popular, I can just shun her and not respond to her actual
points" drivel that's typical here.
Again, though, I see this differently. Chess is like a duel. It's like
arena combat. You're saying "I want to test my skill against yours". A
roguelike game, however, has RPG and simulation elements. It's
absolutely fine for these elements to be discarded, and like you say,
abstract the reason for fighting away. *Sometimes*. In a group that
has a great deal of interest in RPG and simulationist concepts,
though, I would not say *always*.
>
> > I don't have a
> > problem with orcs attacking elves on sight, or the Guardians of the
> > Purple Flame attacking the Guardians of the Green Flame. It's the fact
> > that roguelike developers shamelessly keep this same concept, only
> > mitigating it with stupid one- or two-dimensional alignment systems.
>
> You are correct the preservation is "shameless". I can't see why
> there should be shame, however? Why is a design decision to use
> attack on sight monsters shameful? You can argue it is shameful to
> *reflexively* make that decision. But the decision itself is quite
> reasonable. Not every game should strive for realism (I'd go farther
> and say *no* game should strive for realism)
I agree wholeheartedly. Reasonable as the decision may be, though, how
can it realistically be possible for everyone to make the same
decision? Empirically, I observe that many or most of roguelike
developers are making the decision reflexively, instead of actually
using their brains.
> >
> > [1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not have a
> > game in which the residents of a village dynamically create the
> > structure of their above-ground town before the game starts? Does that
> > sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be, if you're willing to
> > divest with one or two useless features that have no place in the
> > game.
>
> ...and to think you accused Shockfrost of having impractically large
> goals?
I've qualified my statement. If you remove some features that you
don't need in order to give you space (figuratively) to implement new
features, the difficulty of your project doesn't increase. Think about
the feature I've described. Does it *necessarily* have to be difficult
to implement?
>
> POWDER, from the get go, had zero chance of being innovative. My
> single decision on the *genre* immediately led to what you would term
> as another bland & boring roguelike.
Oh, come on. If you use your imagination, you would see that there are
so many options inside of that genre that would give you a unique,
interesting product. Now, I haven't played POWDER, so I won't
criticize your work. Undoubtedly it's unique enough at least to
motivate you to continue work on it.
Have you forgotten my post describing my main idea for my group
project? (heck, did I even post that thing?) The game would take place
in a dungeon, just like yours, but the catch is that it would be, at
most, five levels. This is facilitated by having a more complicated
dungeon structure (for example, to get to the other side of the 1st
level, you might have to go to the 3rd level and then work your way
back up). There are low-ceiling areas that only small species like
gnomes can travel through. Instead of having monsters waiting for the
PC to arrive (and mindlessly fight), they get spawned from portals
throughout the dungeon. Also, you only end up fighting *some* of the
dungeon inhabitants on-sight. For most, you can negotiate, and based
on determining factors (profession, race, charisma) have a range of
interaction between ally and enemy. All of this occurs basically
within a generic elf versus orc D&D setting.
The reason I'm reminding you of this example is not because I believe
it to be some fit of transcending genius. I believe that this is the
kind of creativity that should be reasonably expected from game
developers. You don't have to start from scratch. You can start with
the generic roguelike game, as you have. But if there's a feature,
whether creative or mechanical (such as the D&D alignment system or
the generic roguelike lighting system, both of which I discarded for
my idea) that you don't like, you can change it or get rid of it. Once
you start making modifications, you go down a path that leads you to a
truly innovative game. You have that power. The reason roguelike
developers consistently fail to exercise that power just *can't* be
because they believe the roguelike archetype is perfect as it is.
>
> > Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
> > that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> > their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
>
> By innovation, you seem to mean "write a non-roguelike game". So the
> question becomes, why are so few roguelike developers willing to write
> non-roguelike games?
That all depends on how narrowly you define 'roguelike'. There's no
point to that discussion, but I honestly believe that there are
countless genres, concepts, themes, and features that would all fit
under a pretty small umbrella of that definition, but have simply not
been part of the discussion here, and certainly not part of the
development.
>
> To rephrase the question a final time: Why does anyone write a
> roguelike game? The answer to this is personal. And, I really don't
> think it is the place of anyone else to tell the author what they want
> to develop.
It's a question that should be asked, though.
>
> I really can't see how a project like that would work without someone
> taking the leadership role. You need some vision.
I had no illusions about not being the leader in that project. I
intended to do the design myself and then partition the coding to team
members. But without multiple team members that were capable of
coding, there wasn't much I could do.
>
> > In the end, though, I can live
> > without having any more good roguelike games come into existence.
>
> Well, I am very happy to hear that! From what I can understand, it is
> impossible for any new roguelike to qualify as "good" or "new". It
> would be sad if you were awaiting the impossible.
Perhaps I am, but like I said earlier, I'm not too attached to the
outcome.
R. Dan Henry
Lait) wrote:
>I'm also quite confused as to why map editors or texture archive
>formats have absolutely anything to do with the game's genre? I'm
>sure Diablo had both of those, yet is definitely a roguelike.
I do not consider Diablo to be a roguelike. It shows influences from
the roguelike genre, but it basically a shooter, the shift from
first-person to third-person perspective being of little overall
importance.
R. Dan Henry
danh...@inreach.com
Pfhoenix
>
> Really? Why on earth would you be surprised?
>
> Let's see... Adeo is listed on the directory underneath Roguelike
> Games:
A lot of the entries on that list I wouldn't have on the list - unless the
point of the list wasn't to list roguelike GAMES but roguelike PROJECTS.
Adeo is by no means a real game yet.
> http://directory.google.com/Top/Games/Video_Games/Roleplaying/Rogue-like/Independent_Developers/
I didn't know this existed, but that's pretty cool.
> Next, if I were to look at the FAQ on Adeo, I read:
>
> -----
> What is Adeo?
> Adeo is a roguelike-in-progress
> -----
> What prompted you to start Adeo?
> A long while back, a couple friends of mine and I were talking about
> our favorite roguelikes, what we liked and disliked about them, some
> neat ideas for roguelikes, etc. It got to the point where one friend
> and I decided to start our own. Of course, my big thing is I'm a fan
> of isometric view games, and having not found a roguelike which
> satisfied that particular craving, I used the chance to make my own.
> -----
> Adeo isn't a roguelike, and you should stop calling it one.
> That depends on how you decide what constitutes a roguelike. I've
> heard myriads of different definitions, and invariably, Adeo shares at
> least one or two common characteristics with any given roguelike
> definition. If you want, I could start describing Adeo as a
> roguelike++.
> -----
>
> Come to think of it, you are right! I must suffer from poor reading
> comprehension to ever have concluded that Adeo should be listed under
> a list of roguelikes!
That was written when Adeo *was* a roguelike.
>> I'm pretty sure the next release of
>> Adeo shouldn't qualify, as it's to the point where it's not a roguelike
>> at
>> all any more; about the only roguelike properties it has is being
>> turn-based
>> and grid-based. Beyond simply using graphics, I've now structured a
>> texture
>> archive format, I'm working on a map editor (for specific locales), and
>> I've
>> made better the popup menu usage. Adeo's next release, 0.1.4~5, will also
>> be
>> the last announcement I make on this newsgroup, as I will be looking for
>> a
>> more appropriate place to categorize my project.
>
> I don't think "turn based and grid-based" have anything to do with
> being roguelikes. Civilization is turn based and grid based, yet I
> would definitely not call it a roguelike. Roguelikenes isn't a matter
> of checking off features (Look! Civ has random maps!).
What else does Civilization share with roguelikes in general, feature-wise?
> I'm also quite confused as to why map editors or texture archive
> formats have absolutely anything to do with the game's genre? I'm
> sure Diablo had both of those, yet is definitely a roguelike.
Do graphics have anything to do with a text-based game genre? What about
non-keyboard interfaces? What about the lack of hacknslash? This all goes
towards what you said, only you're wrong - features have everything to do
with what defines a roguelike. Which features you pick to be representative
of the genre is up to you, but I can definitely say that Adeo no longer has
a roguelike feel.
> If you desire, I can remove Adeo from the list. I don't see any
> reason why you should want to be removed, however?
No, feel free to keep it on your list; independant developers can never have
too much exposure, and whether or not I call it a roguelike (I doubt
Blizzard calls Diablo a roguelike), other people might consider it one for
whatever reason.
--
- Pfhoenix
http://pfhoenix.com/adeo
Jeff Lait
>
> > I'm also quite confused as to why map editors or texture archive
> > formats have absolutely anything to do with the game's genre? I'm
> > sure Diablo had both of those, yet is definitely a roguelike.
>
> Do graphics have anything to do with a text-based game genre? What about
> non-keyboard interfaces?
Umm... I hate to be the one to break it to everyone in this
newsgroup, but Rogue is a graphical game. It isn't a "textbased"
game. That would be Zork or Advent. The limits of technology
resulted in letters being used as abstract icons to represent
different features, but at heart it has always been a 2d tile
representation. Look how quickly early roguelikes jumped on the
ability to redefine characters or use extended characters to get more
"accurate" symbols.
The fact we still use characters for our tiles tells us more about
human visual system than it does anything about graphics vs text as
aesthetics. (Its hard to do anything but abstract in 8x8, it is hard
to have a 80x25 screen with much finer than 8x8)
As for non-keyboard interfaces? Are you suggesting that the keyboard
interface was some essential design choice in roguelikes?
> What about the lack of hacknslash?
Lack of hack and slash isn't a feature. Nor is the presense of hack
and slash a feature. Those would be more development directions.
Development directions and game feel most certainly determine what is
a roguelike or not.
Two games can have combat engines, and yet one feel hack and slash and
the other not.
> This all goes
> towards what you said, only you're wrong - features have everything to do
> with what defines a roguelike. Which features you pick to be representative
> of the genre is up to you, but I can definitely say that Adeo no longer has
> a roguelike feel.
A roguelike feel is the criterion required. Not any features. Thus,
we may agree despite everything :>
Jeff Lait
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.04111...@posting.google.com>...
> > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.04110...@posting.google.com>...
> > > torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > >
> > > > > Oh wait, I'm mistaken. DND is the inspiration for almost every
> > > > > roguelike game in existence.
> > > >
> > > > I wonder why you are surprised at this?
> > > >
> > > > Roguelike games, BY DEFINITION, are inspired by the game called Rogue.
> > > > That game in turn is clearly inspired by DND.
> > >
> > > Quite right. But *should* it be?
> >
> > I'm really trying to understand this...
> >
> > Are you suggesting we should make a roguelike game that is not
> > inspired by Rogue? Wouldn't said game then *not* be a roguelike?
>
> The exact thing that I actually was referring to was this:
>
> "But the essential core of hack & slash munchkinism is very much one
> of those qualifying flavours of Rogue."
>
> It's no secret that I'm not a fan of hack'n'slash gameplay, nor am I a
> fan of munchkinism. I'll concede that there's a place for it. It's not
> that I mind that these themes are used. I mind that they are the theme
> *every* roguelike has as its driving force.
Well, I consider that one of the essential natures of roguelikes :>
Thus, it seems unsurprising to me that every roguelike has it as its
driving force. If it managed to extricate itself from that, it
wouldn't feel like a roguelike to me any more. I think a lot of
developers have the same feeling, thus the convergence of development.
> You also know that I'd like to avoid the 'definition of roguelike'
> flamewar. Roguelike or not, I'd like to see some kind of
> roguelike-like game that has key concepts that are different from what
> are reflexively used by developers of today. One of the big reasons
> why roguelike games never gained widespread popularity is because
> developers stubbornly held onto this ideal of a roguelike game being a
> glorified exercise in minimaxing.
That would be because they *like* a glorfied exercise in minimaxing!
If I wanted to make a game in another genre, or invent a new genre, I
would. But if I set out to make a game that involves glorifying
minimaxing, should I be accused of being stubborn?
> But to answer your question, yes. It would be awesome to see a
> 'roguelike' game that has no attachment to Rogue. I am quite aware
> that this is *not* impossible, because I more-or-less did it years
> ago. Of course, if I had known of Rogue or its derivatives, I would
> have taken inspiration from them, and my creation would have, in fact,
> been less unique. As it was, I succeeded in creating a turn-based,
> text-based, top-down strategy game.
I've played many excellent turn based, top down, "text based" (ie,
uses a 2d array of characters to represent spatial area), strategy
games. I'm playing several games of one by email right now. (At a
turn a day, it does take a while to win :>)
I wouldn't call such things roguelikes, however. I wouldn't object if
a developer of such were to post here, but I wouldn't be surprised at
the lack of such postings!
> > It is always your perogrative to be unimpressed. However, wouldn't
> > discussion of the checkers variants be properly placed in the
> > checkers-style development group?
>
> And what if checkers, or any of these other games, were never
> invented, because chess-style developers were obsessed with tweaking
> chess? I know, it's not a perfect analogy. But it addresses the
> difference in perspective that we have.
Looking at recently released games, I can't really claim that RGRD's
stranglehold on genre has prevented "checkers" from being released.
Plenty of strategy games have been released, for example.
> > > And it's not just features, either. For me, at least, it's *concepts*.
> > > If roguelike developers were more numerous and more competent, they
> > > would be churning out dozens of roguelike games with the same stupid
> > > themes that have kept the genre unpopular for two decades.
> >
> > I don't know where you get the idea that the roguelike genre is
> > unpopular. Diablo certainly sold enough copies.
>
> Here's my perspective. During the 80's, roguelike games should have
> DOMINATED. The market should have been flooded with impressions of
> Rogue from development studios big and small. Some would have been
> good, others bad. Instead, what happened? Early, text-based gaming was
> not just ruled, but was *exclusively* text adventures like Zork. There
> may be exceptions, but certainly nothing meaningful.
What are you smoking? Roguelike games, meaning tile based 2d
graphics, did dominate. What do you think the CRPG market is? By
your definitions, Ultima III is definitely a roguelike!
> Text-based games have, for the most part, lost marketability, simply
> due to advances in technology. But where's the hobbyist following?
> HERE? A half dozen actual developers and their dreamer disciples who
> have collectively rehashed old hack&slash, generic D&D, and wishlist
> features that range from mundane to stupid?
Most of the following doesn't post on RGRD, I believe. Thirty-seven
games in development implies there is more than a half-dozen
developers, for example.
> Making a roguelike game
> COULD be a rite-of-passage for every CS major in the world. That isn't
> the case. Why?
You got me. If I wrote curriculums, it would be different.
> Diablo is often held up by roguelike apologists as an effort to say
> "now we're popular too!". There's no doubt that there's similarities.
> I might even go so far as to say that Diablo is a roguelike game.
> However, there are important differences between what Diablo is, and
> what's developed by RGRDers. Diablo doesn't require any kind of
> cerebral effort. You go out and fight monsters until you run out of
> potions or your inventory gets full. Then you come back, sell or stash
> the items you won, buy some more potions, and repeat. It's an
> addictive exercise for the same people who play Everquest. They like
> to level up and get new spells and equipment. You can't tell me that a
> standard roguelike is the same experience.
c.f. Angband.
> > You may be happy to know that roguelike authors are both more
> > competent and more numerous. By my count, there are at least 37
> > roguelikes that have seen a release in the last six months.
> > (http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/) I'm pretty sure all 37
> > have the same theme in your eyes, however.
> >
> > > As a quick example, there's attack-on-sight monsters. Monsters attack
> > > you for NO reason. Why don't they attack each other?
> >
> > Because having them fighting each other usually occurs off screen, so
> > is a waste of time to simulate? Before POWDER 053, when creatures
> > fought each other, I'd receive bug reports that the kill count was too
> > high. It was just offscreen monsters happily killing each other off.
>
> Nah, I'm pretty sure I've had a PC walk into a room with a bandit and
> a rat sleeping a few squares next to each other, just waiting to run
> headlong zombie-like against a better-armed opponent.
I had to put monsters in zoos asleep or the PC would show up at the
zoo and find all the monsters had been killed off by the biggest
monster. Basically, I had your dungeon: Monsters happily slaughtering
each other for XP, treating the PC as another target. IMHO, it does
not make for as much of a fun game as the PC feels somewhat insulted
when the monsters ignore him to fight each other :>
> That's not the point, though. It's a munchkin-themed world. You go
> into a dungeon with the mandate "kill everything you see so your
> experience can increase". Dungeon inhabitants seem to live by the same
> philosophy, but are curiously hypocritical about it. They all make a
> bee-line towards the PC, ignoring all sense of caution or
> self-preservation (not to mention civility), in a desperate attempt to
> kill him for experience, all the while ignoring each other.
As Brent Ross likes to point out, that may not be such a bad strategy.
PC is the most dangerous opponent, no? How many exp is he worth,
anyways?
> You know, it's not just a gripe about poor AI. Sure, ADOM has those
> monster-filled rooms, and it doesn't help the experience when a room
> full of cowardly kobolds lines up single file to melee with me, and
> the only strategy I have to apply is to back up a few spaces where the
> hallway is narrow and keep an eye on my HP. No, what I'm really
> talking about is the theme. Why are these monsters attacking me? If
> it's a munchkin-themed game, and they are attacking me for experience,
> it seems to me that they should attack each other. If not, they should
> have some actual reason to attack the PC.
If it is a munchkin themed game, "they" not only need no reason, but
it is meaningless to talk about reason! In a munchkin game, an
individual kobold has no more "volition" than a pawn in Chess does.
"Why did that pawn move towards me? What is its *motivation*?"
Kobolds attack you because the *game* wants to kill the PC, and it
does so by throwing everything at the PC.
> > > Why don't they
> > > talk to the PC and at least come up with a reason?
> >
> > If the purpose of one's game is to emphasize the tactical combat
> > nature of roguelikes, the *reason* for fighting is irrelevant. When
> > we play chess, do we wonder why we try to beat the other player?
> > Should chess have a diplomatic half added allowing players to form an
> > alliance and thus keep both kings alive?
>
> Well, that answers the previous question. I thank you again for being
> intelligent about your post, rather than giving the group the "Amy
> Wang isn't popular, I can just shun her and not respond to her actual
> points" drivel that's typical here.
>
> Again, though, I see this differently. Chess is like a duel. It's like
> arena combat. You're saying "I want to test my skill against yours". A
> roguelike game, however, has RPG and simulation elements. It's
> absolutely fine for these elements to be discarded, and like you say,
> abstract the reason for fighting away. *Sometimes*. In a group that
> has a great deal of interest in RPG and simulationist concepts,
> though, I would not say *always*.
You are seeing a selection effect. The only ones that seem to
successfully bring games to fruition are those who enjoy & focus on
the combat side of things. The simulationists get tripped up by
insanely complicated systems no one will ever see. The narrativists
get tripped up by dreams of having automatic plot generators.
There are exceptions, like ADOM and GearHead. But I'm little
surprised that pragmatism results in more games than romantasism.
This is why there is a gulf between what is talked about in RGRD
(juicy plans for worlds that self regulate into amazingly intricate
plots) and what is developed (kill critters & get the foozle!)
> > > I don't have a
> > > problem with orcs attacking elves on sight, or the Guardians of the
> > > Purple Flame attacking the Guardians of the Green Flame. It's the fact
> > > that roguelike developers shamelessly keep this same concept, only
> > > mitigating it with stupid one- or two-dimensional alignment systems.
> >
> > You are correct the preservation is "shameless". I can't see why
> > there should be shame, however? Why is a design decision to use
> > attack on sight monsters shameful? You can argue it is shameful to
> > *reflexively* make that decision. But the decision itself is quite
> > reasonable. Not every game should strive for realism (I'd go farther
> > and say *no* game should strive for realism)
>
> I agree wholeheartedly. Reasonable as the decision may be, though, how
> can it realistically be possible for everyone to make the same
> decision? Empirically, I observe that many or most of roguelike
> developers are making the decision reflexively, instead of actually
> using their brains.
Sometimes one choice *is* better than another. The lack of square
wheels coming out of the tire plants doesn't show a lack of curiousity
or thinking outside the box in the designers.
> > > [1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not have a
> > > game in which the residents of a village dynamically create the
> > > structure of their above-ground town before the game starts? Does that
> > > sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be, if you're willing to
> > > divest with one or two useless features that have no place in the
> > > game.
> >
> > ...and to think you accused Shockfrost of having impractically large
> > goals?
>
> I've qualified my statement. If you remove some features that you
> don't need in order to give you space (figuratively) to implement new
> features, the difficulty of your project doesn't increase. Think about
> the feature I've described. Does it *necessarily* have to be difficult
> to implement?
Yes. Dynamically creating a village with enough *purpose* inside the
village to support interest is necessarily hard. It's like trying to
automatically create a dungeon where the denziens have a *reason* to
always attack the PC.
> > POWDER, from the get go, had zero chance of being innovative. My
> > single decision on the *genre* immediately led to what you would term
> > as another bland & boring roguelike.
>
> Oh, come on. If you use your imagination, you would see that there are
> so many options inside of that genre that would give you a unique,
> interesting product. Now, I haven't played POWDER, so I won't
> criticize your work. Undoubtedly it's unique enough at least to
> motivate you to continue work on it.
It's primary unique feature is that it runs on specialized hardware :>
I think you could easily find room to criticize it. I'd greatly
appreciate it if you could take the time to criticize it.
> Have you forgotten my post describing my main idea for my group
> project? (heck, did I even post that thing?)
I don't think you posted it? I don't recall it, but then again my
memory isn't that good.
> The game would take place
> in a dungeon, just like yours, but the catch is that it would be, at
> most, five levels. This is facilitated by having a more complicated
> dungeon structure (for example, to get to the other side of the 1st
> level, you might have to go to the 3rd level and then work your way
> back up). There are low-ceiling areas that only small species like
> gnomes can travel through. Instead of having monsters waiting for the
> PC to arrive (and mindlessly fight), they get spawned from portals
> throughout the dungeon. Also, you only end up fighting *some* of the
> dungeon inhabitants on-sight. For most, you can negotiate, and based
> on determining factors (profession, race, charisma) have a range of
> interaction between ally and enemy. All of this occurs basically
> within a generic elf versus orc D&D setting.
Now, let me critique. This is a neat idea, but there are two
essential things to be addresesd:
1) Automatic creation of the levels. If these are to be automatically
created, you really have Shockfrosts random jumping puzzle problem.
It is very hard to make a jumping puzzle automatically. There is a
strong aesthetic component in what makes a jumping puzzle "fun" vs
"boring". (And this aesthetic varies wildly from person to person)
2) The big red flag in my books is the non-combat interaction. We
know, apriori, that we don't have any Turing proof AI. Thus, we need
to devise a fun negotiation system. Ie, how does negotiating with
monsters differ from casting Calm Monster or Charm Monster?
Note that implementing this game will be at least as hard as
implementing a simple roguelike game! You still have combat, so you
still need to resolve that. This means you have step #1 being writing
a roguelike game...
> The reason I'm reminding you of this example is not because I believe
> it to be some fit of transcending genius. I believe that this is the
> kind of creativity that should be reasonably expected from game
> developers. You don't have to start from scratch. You can start with
> the generic roguelike game, as you have. But if there's a feature,
> whether creative or mechanical (such as the D&D alignment system or
> the generic roguelike lighting system, both of which I discarded for
> my idea) that you don't like, you can change it or get rid of it. Once
> you start making modifications, you go down a path that leads you to a
> truly innovative game. You have that power. The reason roguelike
> developers consistently fail to exercise that power just *can't* be
> because they believe the roguelike archetype is perfect as it is.
No, I think it is because they *want* to play another roguelike.
Take angband variants, for example. Why do angband variants so often
look like angband? It is not just because they started from Angband's
source. It's because the *goal* was something like angband.
If my goal was something entirely unlike Rogue, why would I start with
rogue?
> > > Anyways, we get to the same issue as with my previous post. Why is it
> > > that roguelike developers are so unable to instill any innovation in
> > > their games? There's only two possibilities that I see:
> >
> > By innovation, you seem to mean "write a non-roguelike game". So the
> > question becomes, why are so few roguelike developers willing to write
> > non-roguelike games?
>
> That all depends on how narrowly you define 'roguelike'. There's no
> point to that discussion, but I honestly believe that there are
> countless genres, concepts, themes, and features that would all fit
> under a pretty small umbrella of that definition, but have simply not
> been part of the discussion here, and certainly not part of the
> development.
If your definition encompasses all 2d tile based games (as it seems to
do), then rgrd is hardly the authority on that genre.
> > To rephrase the question a final time: Why does anyone write a
> > roguelike game? The answer to this is personal. And, I really don't
> > think it is the place of anyone else to tell the author what they want
> > to develop.
>
> It's a question that should be asked, though.
Of course. And I did:
About POWDER
POWDER is a roguelike developed specifically for the Gameboy Advance
(GBA). It is not a port of an existing roguelike as the controls of
the GBA are very different from the traditional keyboard, and the
screen imposes some additional limitations. It is built around
replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning. It
uses actual graphic tiles (16x16) rather than the traditional
characters. You may wish it didn't as I drew the tiles and am not an
artist.
I created POWDER for one simple reason: I wanted a roguelike on my
GBA. The standard RPGs were annoying me with endless battle screens
against weak enemies to unfold a drug induced plotline. I wanted a
game I could just jump into, and start killing things. Having had more
hours than I'd care to log playing Nethack, ADOM, and the Diablos, I
knew the exact type of game I wanted. The problem was I didn't see
anyone publishing it any time soon.
This release of POWDER is for anyone in a similar situation who
doesn't want to spend the time needed to write a roguelike.
> > I really can't see how a project like that would work without someone
> > taking the leadership role. You need some vision.
>
> I had no illusions about not being the leader in that project. I
> intended to do the design myself and then partition the coding to team
> members. But without multiple team members that were capable of
> coding, there wasn't much I could do.
I'd think the partitioning would be a lot easier with only one coder
Erik Piper
[Amy Wang: Why, why, why discard simulation and narration in roguelikes?]
> You are seeing a selection effect. The only ones that seem to
> successfully bring games to fruition are those who enjoy & focus on
> the combat side of things. The simulationists get tripped up by
> insanely complicated systems no one will ever see. The narrativists
> get tripped up by dreams of having automatic plot generators.
>
> There are exceptions, like ADOM and GearHead. But I'm little
> surprised that pragmatism results in more games than romantasism.
>
> This is why there is a gulf between what is talked about in RGRD
> (juicy plans for worlds that self regulate into amazingly intricate
> plots) and what is developed (kill critters & get the foozle!)
Maybe it's just because I'm really really sleepy after a long night playing
Crawl (without once stopping to think why its denizens wanted to kill me,
incidentally), but...
I swear that's the most profound thing I've read on rgrd in the last half
year.
Erik
Mike Blackney
>
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote...
> >
> > I'm really trying to understand this...
> >
> > Are you suggesting we should make a roguelike game that is not
> > inspired by Rogue? Wouldn't said game then *not* be a roguelike?
>
> 'roguelike' game that has no attachment to Rogue. I am quite aware
> that this is *not* impossible, because I more-or-less did it years
> ago. Of course, if I had known of Rogue or its derivatives, I would
> have taken inspiration from them, and my creation would have, in
> fact, been less unique. As it was, I succeeded in creating a turn-
> based, text-based, top-down strategy game.
Posting to RGRD can never increase the chance of this happeneing -
anybody who reads this newsgroup knows rogue or roguelikes.
> > It is always your perogrative to be unimpressed. However,
> > wouldn't discussion of the checkers variants be properly placed
> > in the checkers-style development group?
>
> And what if checkers, or any of these other games, were never
> invented, because chess-style developers were obsessed with tweaking
> chess? I know, it's not a perfect analogy. But it addresses the
> difference in perspective that we have.
But in any case, you're still inviting roguelike developers to develop
non-roguelikes. Wouldn't discussion of these new, non-roguelike games
be better suited to another newsgroup?
> > > [1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not
> > > have a game in which the residents of a village dynamically
> > > create the structure of their above-ground town before the game
> > > starts? Does that sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be,
> > > if you're willing to divest with one or two useless features
> > > that have no place in the game.
> >
> > ...and to think you accused Shockfrost of having impractically
> > large goals?
>
> I've qualified my statement. If you remove some features that you
> don't need in order to give you space (figuratively) to implement new
> features, the difficulty of your project doesn't increase. Think
> about the feature I've described. Does it *necessarily* have to be
> difficult to implement?
Replacing playability with gimmicks? Innovation isn't nearly as
important as making a game that doesn't suck.
> > By innovation, you seem to mean "write a non-roguelike game". So
> > the question becomes, why are so few roguelike developers willing
> > to write non-roguelike games?
>
> That all depends on how narrowly you define 'roguelike'. There's no
> point to that discussion, but I honestly believe that there are
> countless genres, concepts, themes, and features that would all fit
> under a pretty small umbrella of that definition, but have simply
> not been part of the discussion here, and certainly not part of the
> development.
By countless genres do you mean Anime Mecha, Jungle, WH40K, Space Opera
or Apocalyptic - or do you mean D&D like your idea uses?
Amy Wang
> blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.04111...@posting.google.com>...
> > torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.04111...@posting.google.com>...
> > > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.04110...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.0411...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > blueme...@hotmail.com (Amy Wang) wrote in message news:<62acd54d.0411...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > monster-filled rooms, and it doesn't help the experience when a room
> > full of cowardly kobolds lines up single file to melee with me, and
> > the only strategy I have to apply is to back up a few spaces where the
> > hallway is narrow and keep an eye on my HP. No, what I'm really
> > talking about is the theme. Why are these monsters attacking me? If
> > it's a munchkin-themed game, and they are attacking me for experience,
> > it seems to me that they should attack each other. If not, they should
> > have some actual reason to attack the PC.
>
> If it is a munchkin themed game, "they" not only need no reason, but
> it is meaningless to talk about reason! In a munchkin game, an
> individual kobold has no more "volition" than a pawn in Chess does.
> "Why did that pawn move towards me? What is its *motivation*?"
> Kobolds attack you because the *game* wants to kill the PC, and it
> does so by throwing everything at the PC.
Okay, that brings perspective to the whole thing. The monsters aren't
acting on their own: they are treated like actors, or, to use your
analogy, game pieces in Chess. That also explains why there are traps
and a variety of other features that are targetted at the PC. It's not
about the PC fighting monsters, it's about the PC fighting against the
motivation of the game.
I think you're right-on. Developers at RGRD like to fantasize about
what kind of game they would make if they had unlimited resources.
Meanwhile, the developers who are destined to succeed are the ones who
keep their projects focused. Much of the discussion here seems to be a
conscious effort to avoid focus.
>
> > > > [1]: Why does the game have to be in a dungeon at all? Why not have a
> > > > game in which the residents of a village dynamically create the
> > > > structure of their above-ground town before the game starts? Does that
> > > > sound so hard to implement? It shouldn't be, if you're willing to
> > > > divest with one or two useless features that have no place in the
> > > > game.
> > >
> > > ...and to think you accused Shockfrost of having impractically large
> > > goals?
> >
> > I've qualified my statement. If you remove some features that you
> > don't need in order to give you space (figuratively) to implement new
> > features, the difficulty of your project doesn't increase. Think about
> > the feature I've described. Does it *necessarily* have to be difficult
> > to implement?
>
> Yes. Dynamically creating a village with enough *purpose* inside the
> village to support interest is necessarily hard. It's like trying to
> automatically create a dungeon where the denziens have a *reason* to
> always attack the PC.
You don't have to have some kind of emergent AI to create that kind of
purpose. And of course, you don't have to have NPCs running around
cutting down trees and building houses one square at a time. I'm just
talking about having a few randomly-dimensioned buildings created on
an above-ground location (hey, that's just like how dungeon generation
algorithms handle rooms!). If you want to complicate it a little, you
could put richer families in the big houses (along with the goodies
for a thief to steal).
>
>
> > The game would take place
> > in a dungeon, just like yours, but the catch is that it would be, at
> > most, five levels. This is facilitated by having a more complicated
> > dungeon structure (for example, to get to the other side of the 1st
> > level, you might have to go to the 3rd level and then work your way
> > back up). There are low-ceiling areas that only small species like
> > gnomes can travel through. Instead of having monsters waiting for the
> > PC to arrive (and mindlessly fight), they get spawned from portals
> > throughout the dungeon. Also, you only end up fighting *some* of the
> > dungeon inhabitants on-sight. For most, you can negotiate, and based
> > on determining factors (profession, race, charisma) have a range of
> > interaction between ally and enemy. All of this occurs basically
> > within a generic elf versus orc D&D setting.
>
> Now, let me critique. This is a neat idea, but there are two
> essential things to be addresesd:
> 1) Automatic creation of the levels. If these are to be automatically
> created, you really have Shockfrosts random jumping puzzle problem.
> It is very hard to make a jumping puzzle automatically. There is a
> strong aesthetic component in what makes a jumping puzzle "fun" vs
> "boring". (And this aesthetic varies wildly from person to person)
Maybe you're right. I haven't thought about how that algorithm would
work, but it really isn't that big of a feature.
> 2) The big red flag in my books is the non-combat interaction. We
> know, apriori, that we don't have any Turing proof AI. Thus, we need
> to devise a fun negotiation system. Ie, how does negotiating with
> monsters differ from casting Calm Monster or Charm Monster?
It can be different without being overly-complicated. You use the 'T'
button (or whatever) to talk to an NPC. Each NPC class has a criteria
for how they will respond (ally up, etc.). At the simplest,
mercenaries ask for money, and that's it. For most NPCs, the charisma
statistic is used. If the NPC is an allied class (a priest of the same
religion, for example), a bonus is given in the formula.
Complexity can be added to this system with updates of the game. You
can have NPCs hiring and allying with each other. You can have
disguises for thief-type classes so they can fool NPCs into allying
with them. It can all be done one step at a time, and since this
feature is scalable in that sense, I don't feel that it is a difficult
one to implement.
>
> Note that implementing this game will be at least as hard as
> implementing a simple roguelike game! You still have combat, so you
> still need to resolve that. This means you have step #1 being writing
> a roguelike game...
Which is why I wanted to start with a previously-made game as a basis
for it. Just change the right details, and you have a new game.
>
> > The reason I'm reminding you of this example is not because I believe
> > it to be some fit of transcending genius. I believe that this is the
> > kind of creativity that should be reasonably expected from game
> > developers. You don't have to start from scratch. You can start with
> > the generic roguelike game, as you have. But if there's a feature,
> > whether creative or mechanical (such as the D&D alignment system or
> > the generic roguelike lighting system, both of which I discarded for
> > my idea) that you don't like, you can change it or get rid of it. Once
> > you start making modifications, you go down a path that leads you to a
> > truly innovative game. You have that power. The reason roguelike
> > developers consistently fail to exercise that power just *can't* be
> > because they believe the roguelike archetype is perfect as it is.
>
> No, I think it is because they *want* to play another roguelike.
>
> Take angband variants, for example. Why do angband variants so often
> look like angband? It is not just because they started from Angband's
> source. It's because the *goal* was something like angband.
>
> If my goal was something entirely unlike Rogue, why would I start with
> rogue?
And where does your goal come from? I'm sensing that a lot of the
people here limit their exposure to different kinds of games, and that
as a result, they are limited in what they can create (remember, I
started out talking about misplaced elitism).
One of the games on the list you posted earlier
(http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/), called Liberal Crime
Squad, is a good example of what I'm trying to get at. Considering
where it's listed, I wouldn't consider it to be a roguelike game. Nor
would many people, although if someone does, I respect that, since the
definition of 'roguelike' is different for everyone.
LCS isn't based on Rogue. It's a parody of Oubliette, which I haven't
played, but that's not really the point. Thematically, structurally,
everything about this game is different from what I've come to expect
from roguelike games. It's squad-based, for one. Most roguelike games
that feature this get over-complicated before anything comes out of
them. LCS gets rid of this problem by having an operational-scale map.
To make a game like LCS, you don't have to deal with pathfinding,
line-of-sight, flock behavior, etc, because it's all abstracted away.
That effort is used for other features, such as squad management and
political functionality. It is also *not* a dungeon crawl. Sure, you
get experience ('juice') from doing things like killing enemies, but
there are true goals beyond that.
I'm not saying that this is a good or bad game. I'm saying that it's
different, and if you're one of these rogue-nerds who simply can't
imagine getting out of the hack&slash rut that the genre is in, you
need to play it and expand your horizons.
>
> If your definition encompasses all 2d tile based games (as it seems to
> do), then rgrd is hardly the authority on that genre.
Hey, find me a forum that is, and I'll play their games.
>
> This release of POWDER is for anyone in a similar situation who
> doesn't want to spend the time needed to write a roguelike.
>
There you have it. You have a *real* reason to make this game. It's
not just some sophmoric exercise in mimicking your favorite games. You
had a niche that wasn't already filled.
Mike Blackney
>
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote:
>>
>> You are seeing a selection effect. The only ones that seem to
>> successfully bring games to fruition are those who enjoy & focus on
>> the combat side of things. The simulationists get tripped up by
>> insanely complicated systems no one will ever see. The narrativists
>> get tripped up by dreams of having automatic plot generators.
>>
>> There are exceptions, like ADOM and GearHead. But I'm little
>> surprised that pragmatism results in more games than romantasism.
>>
>> This is why there is a gulf between what is talked about in RGRD
>> (juicy plans for worlds that self regulate into amazingly intricate
>> plots) and what is developed (kill critters & get the foozle!)
>
> I think you're right-on. Developers at RGRD like to fantasize about
> what kind of game they would make if they had unlimited resources.
> Meanwhile, the developers who are destined to succeed are the ones
> who keep their projects focused. Much of the discussion here seems
> to be a conscious effort to avoid focus.
A conscious effort to avoid focus? That's a stretch. The person who
initiates the most threads here is Hajo - and has implemented nearly
all the crazy ideas we've discussed here (like scripting, building a
generic engine, animation, body-parts systems, multiple damage types,
etc.) If I were a betting man I would bet that you don't actually
read most of the discussions here - you just browse until you see
something you can flame.
>> Dynamically creating a village with enough *purpose* inside the
>> village to support interest is necessarily hard. It's like trying
>> to automatically create a dungeon where the denziens have a
>> *reason* to always attack the PC.
>
> You don't have to have some kind of emergent AI to create that kind
> of purpose. And of course, you don't have to have NPCs running around
> cutting down trees and building houses one square at a time. I'm just
> talking about having a few randomly-dimensioned buildings created on
> an above-ground location (hey, that's just like how dungeon
> generation algorithms handle rooms!). If you want to complicate it a
> little, you could put richer families in the big houses (along with
> the goodies for a thief to steal).
How quickly you dropped your lofty goals when faced with the
realities of implementation. What's left is a particularly boring
implementation of a town (for a real-life boring implementation of
the randomly-dimensioned buildings created on an above-ground
location, download the latest version of Abura Tan and see how
amazing this feature isn't.)
>>> The game would take place
>>> in a dungeon, just like yours, but the catch is that it would be,
>>> at most, five levels. This is facilitated by having a more
>>> complicated dungeon structure (for example, to get to the other
>>> side of the 1st level, you might have to go to the 3rd level and
>>> then work your way back up). There are low-ceiling areas that only
>>> small species like gnomes can travel through. Instead of having
>>> monsters waiting for the PC to arrive (and mindlessly fight), they
>>> get spawned from portals throughout the dungeon. Also, you only
>>> end up fighting *some* of the dungeon inhabitants on-sight. For
>>> most, you can negotiate, and based on determining factors
>>> (profession, race, charisma) have a range of interaction between
>>> ally and enemy. All of this occurs basically within a generic elf
>>> versus orc D&D setting.
>>
>> Now, let me critique. This is a neat idea, but there are two
>> essential things to be addresesd:
>> 1) Automatic creation of the levels. If these are to be
>> automatically created, you really have Shockfrosts random jumping
>> puzzle problem. It is very hard to make a jumping puzzle
>> automatically. There is a strong aesthetic component in what makes
>> a jumping puzzle "fun" vs "boring". (And this aesthetic varies
>> wildly from person to person)
>
> Maybe you're right. I haven't thought about how that algorithm would
> work, but it really isn't that big of a feature.
When you take out that feature you're left with Nethack, but a
Nethack where monsters are spawned Gauntlet-style and are warped in
to the dungeon to conduct negotiations. Why are they warped in, if
not to stop the player at all costs? While it does have inspiration
from other genres it fails to make any more sense than the current
roguelikes and there is no additional fun-factor.
>> 2) The big red flag in my books is the non-combat interaction. We
>> know, apriori, that we don't have any Turing proof AI. Thus, we
>> need to devise a fun negotiation system. Ie, how does negotiating
>> with monsters differ from casting Calm Monster or Charm Monster?
>
> It can be different without being overly-complicated. You use the 'T'
> button (or whatever) to talk to an NPC. Each NPC class has a criteria
> for how they will respond (ally up, etc.). At the simplest,
> mercenaries ask for money, and that's it. For most NPCs, the charisma
> statistic is used. If the NPC is an allied class (a priest of the
> same religion, for example), a bonus is given in the formula.
How will this add anything to the game? How is adding a calculation
to monster-pacification rolls 'innovative'? And if most monsters
allow negotiation is the idea to eventually get hundreds of
followers? Or get ten? And then what? Ignore the rest of the
non-combat encounters, occasionally stopping to trade?
> Complexity can be added to this system with updates of the game. You
> can have NPCs hiring and allying with each other. You can have
> disguises for thief-type classes so they can fool NPCs into allying
> with them. It can all be done one step at a time, and since this
> feature is scalable in that sense, I don't feel that it is a
> difficult one to implement.
Here you show that you're not really thinking this design out, in an
identical manner to those whom you criticise. This idea for NPCs
allying with each other implies that there are parts of the dungeon
in memory and being simulated while not directly visible to the
player. How are you going to do that? Or do you plan to dodge this
question the same way you did with the town simulation, by saying
that monsters will be generated already allied?
>> Note that implementing this game will be at least as hard as
>> implementing a simple roguelike game! You still have combat, so you
>> still need to resolve that. This means you have step #1 being
>> writing a roguelike game...
>
> Which is why I wanted to start with a previously-made game as a basis
> for it. Just change the right details, and you have a new game.
I challenge you to try to make an Angband or Nethack variant that
doesn't use standard D&D monsters (which, after all, is what started
this whole conversation) and that is sufficiently different from
other roguelikes to be unique.
>> If my goal was something entirely unlike Rogue, why would I start
>> with rogue?
>
> And where does your goal come from? I'm sensing that a lot of the
> people here limit their exposure to different kinds of games, and
> that as a result, they are limited in what they can create
> (remember, I started out talking about misplaced elitism).
However you 'sense' this, your exposure-o-meter is on the blink.
When did anybody ever state anything to the effect of, "I play only
roguelikes"?
> I'm not saying that this is a good or bad game. I'm saying that it's
> different, and if you're one of these rogue-nerds who simply can't
> imagine getting out of the hack&slash rut that the genre is in, you
> need to play it and expand your horizons.
Here's the part where we say, "No, Amy Wang, I really play all sorts
of other games too!" and waste our time listing them when in fact it
wouldn't matter if I spent every night playing rogue and rogue alone
until my eyes bled if I still made the same interesting games.
>> This release of POWDER is for anyone in a similar situation who
>> doesn't want to spend the time needed to write a roguelike.
>
> There you have it. You have a *real* reason to make this game. It's
> not just some sophmoric exercise in mimicking your favorite games.
> You had a niche that wasn't already filled.
I, however, don't have a real reason for making my game. And why
should I?
Jeff Lait
> torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote in message news:<774acfb8.04111...@posting.google.com>...
> >
> >
> > Take angband variants, for example. Why do angband variants so often
> > look like angband? It is not just because they started from Angband's
> > source. It's because the *goal* was something like angband.
> >
> > If my goal was something entirely unlike Rogue, why would I start with
> > rogue?
>
> And where does your goal come from? I'm sensing that a lot of the
> people here limit their exposure to different kinds of games, and that
> as a result, they are limited in what they can create (remember, I
> started out talking about misplaced elitism).
I think you are being unfair in that claim. But, likely neither of us
has more than a gut feel about how the people here are exposed to
video games :>
> One of the games on the list you posted earlier
> (http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/), called Liberal Crime
> Squad, is a good example of what I'm trying to get at. Considering
> where it's listed, I wouldn't consider it to be a roguelike game. Nor
> would many people, although if someone does, I respect that, since the
> definition of 'roguelike' is different for everyone.
>
> LCS isn't based on Rogue. It's a parody of Oubliette, which I haven't
And that brings us full circle.... Oubliette was based on DND, which
was the game mentioned in the initial question of the thread :>
I take it, then, that you *do* want a DND based game after all? :>
As for why LCS is a roguelike, I believe LCS announced in
rec.games.roguelike.announce, so I put them on the list.
SZDev - Slash
news:1100824893....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Amy Wang communicated:
> >
> > torespon...@hotmail.com (Jeff Lait) wrote:
> >>
> >> You are seeing a selection effect. The only ones that seem to
>
> >> Note that implementing this game will be at least as hard as
> >> implementing a simple roguelike game! You still have combat, so you
> >> still need to resolve that. This means you have step #1 being
> >> writing a roguelike game...
> >
> > Which is why I wanted to start with a previously-made game as a basis
> > for it. Just change the right details, and you have a new game.
>
> I challenge you to try to make an Angband or Nethack variant that
> doesn't use standard D&D monsters (which, after all, is what started
> this whole conversation) and that is sufficiently different from
> other roguelikes to be unique.
>
A shame that Amy never responds to challenges and limits herself to yell at
how wrong we are for not providing her with good games.... Off course, why
would she risk to begin a serious roguelike project? She fears to become as
incompetent as we are!
SNIP
>
> > There you have it. You have a *real* reason to make this game. It's
> > not just some sophmoric exercise in mimicking your favorite games.
> > You had a niche that wasn't already filled.
>
> I, however, don't have a real reason for making my game. And why
> should I?
The fun of making it, that's my game and my reason.