proposal for Roguelike Release Party
jice
The 7DRL contest is great because it brings lots of new ideas in the
roguelike genre and is a great occasion for people to step into the
genre, or to actually release something instead of working on never-
ending vapourware (unfortunately, I know what I'm talking about...).
But a lot of entries end in failures or lack enough polish to be
totally enjoyable.
A release contest, on the other hand, would force every participant to
release something at a specific date. They may have been working on it
for days, months or years, whatever. What's important is to give
everybody the motivation to reach the release stage and increase the
number of high quality roguelikes.
Of course, this contest is not intended to replace the 7DRL contest.
We could do that in autumn so that we have enough time to reload the
dev mana lost during the 7DRL week.
Here is the current proposal :
--------------------------------------
The Annual Roguelike Release Party
Too many roguelikes can languish with half-fixed features. If we can,
once a year, ensure our roguelikes are polished and updated, we can
avoid this trap.
All active roguelike developers are encouraged to release an update to
their roguelikes on September 19th.
A simultaneous release will :
* provide moral support as we struggle with resurrecting code we left
in an untenable state three months earlier
* encourage developers to release at least yearly through the wonders
of deadlines
* celebrate the size and vibrancy of our community
An open poll will follow the release day in order to determin the
community's preferred games in following categories :
* Best of the Show
* Best Newcomer
* Best Aesthetics
* Most Changed/Improved
* Best Writing
--------------------------------------
--
jice
George Oliver
> All active roguelike developers are encouraged to release an update to
> their roguelikes on September 19th.
I'll second the motion. But I'm curious about the choice of date?
Is there a RL equivalent to an annual awards ceremony currently?
Dana
> All active roguelike developers are encouraged to release an update to
> their roguelikes on September 19th.
I rather like this idea. Deadlines are indeed a good motivator.
I'm also curious about September 19th.
Erwin M.
Besides the fact that it's Talk Like a Pirate Day?
Nate
Heroic Fisticuffs
Sounds like perfect timing to me! It's on!!
HF
Ido Yehieli
First Sunday that is over 6 months after the 7DRL Challenge dead line.
It is theoretically right between the 2010 and 2011 7DRL Challenges.
-Ido.
purplearcanist
Wait, are we releasing updates to our 7DRLs? Or making something new?
hmp
some declaration of participating: that's where the pressure of 7DRL's
comes from, once you announce your project there's no backing out :)
Krice
wrote:
> Sounds like perfect timing to me! It's on!!
It's on, Jim. It's on.
Dana
Maybe there can be a sign-up page on the wiki at roguebasin? We can
declare ourselves there?
In the meantime: I announce that crashRun 0.6.0 will be released on
Release Party Day. (Hopefully 0.5.0 will be out in the later spring
or early summer) Furthermore, while it won't be complete by far, it
will have a winning condition implemented!
pol
Release Your Binary Week.
Maybe the world just wasn't ready for such a frightening idea back in
2006....
Dana
> Good luck! Hopefully it will have more success than my previously proposed
> Release Your Binary Week.
>
>
> Maybe the world just wasn't ready for such a frightening idea back in
> 2006....
Hopefully in the weeks leading up to it the community will nag each
other and remind ourselves that we gotta have something to release on
September 19th. It sorta sounded like you posted, "Hey everyone! Post
your game this week!".
jice
Anything ! Might be an updated 7DRL, something completely new, or your
10 years old genroguelike... Of course, this has to be a significant
release, if you release a small bugfix, everybody will laugh at you
and kids will throw stones to you :). Yet, a small release is better
than no release.
--
jice
Nate
> Anything ! Might be an updated 7DRL, something completely new, or your
> 10 years old genroguelike... Of course, this has to be a significant
> release, if you release a small bugfix, everybody will laugh at you
> and kids will throw stones to you :). Yet, a small release is better
> than no release.
Hilarious! Certainly as an enthusiast of Roguelikes I wouldn't mind
playing a couple more finished RL's, and this seems like a great way
of getting them out of the dark. :)
jice
Ok, apparently there's a lot of positive feedback :)
To be perfectly fair, this matter has already been discussed amongst
the 7DRL evaluation committee members and most of the proposal's text
is from Jeff Lait.
If everybody agrees on the concept and the date, what remains to be
discussed are the award categories.
From the initial text, I may add another "Best UI" award :
* Best of the Show : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
releases (new or updates), what would it be ?
* Best Newcomer : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
new releases, what would it be ?
* Best Aesthetics : concerns visuals, and sound and music when they're
present
* Most Changed/Improved : sort of achievement award for the work done
since last year
* Best Writing : concerns the setting, the characters, the story, the
dialogs
* Best UI : concerns keyboard and/or mouse controls and general user
interface (inventory screen and so on)
Is this complete and relevant?
--
Jice
purplearcanist
> 10 years old genroguelike... Of course, this has to be a significant
> release, if you release a small bugfix, everybody will laugh at you
> and kids will throw stones to you :). Yet, a small release is better
> than no release.
>
> --
> jice
Ok. I will make a new roguelike then. When this contest is more
fleshed out, I will make my entry post.
Krice
> Is this complete and relevant?
It's on.
Darren Grey
> Ok, apparently there's a lot of positive feedback :)
> To be perfectly fair, this matter has already been discussed amongst
> the 7DRL evaluation committee members and most of the proposal's text
> is from Jeff Lait.
> If everybody agrees on the concept and the date, what remains to be
> discussed are the award categories.
> From the initial text, I may add another "Best UI" award :
>
> * Best of the Show : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
> releases (new or updates), what would it be ?
> * Best Newcomer : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
> new releases, what would it be ?
> * Best Aesthetics : concerns visuals, and sound and music when they're
> present
> * Most Changed/Improved : sort of achievement award for the work done
> since last year
> * Best Writing : concerns the setting, the characters, the story, the
> dialogs
> * Best UI : concerns keyboard and/or mouse controls and general user
> interface (inventory screen and so on)
I personally think the last two are quite irrelevant. They're too
subjective for a start - I'm extremely unfond of any mouse control
myself, and there's the whole debate over simplicity/diversity or vi-
keys vs numpad. There's no way we could get a consensus on what type
of UI is best, so how can a vote on the matter produce anything
relevant?
Same again for writing. I love text-heavy roguelikes, but a lot of
people can't stand them. A lot of people play roguelikes for pure
dungeon-crawling fun. Arguably the top two of the genre, Crawl and
Nethack, have zero storyline and spartan writing. The poll for
Writing would ultimately only have relevance for a small minority of
the games.
Aesthetics is well-defined enough to be judged by the community, and
there's enough new games that sport excellent graphics and sound. I
don't find it personally relevant (I'm a pure ASCIIist), but I can see
that it has its place. Best of the Show, Best Improved and Best
Newcomer also are all obvious good awards to have, with all three in
my opinion being particularly focused on gameplay.
I think we need a specific definition of "Newcomer" though. New
within the last 12 months or new on that very release date? I support
the idea of the latter more - it'll encourage the release party to be
a time of completely new games and updates. In particular it'll
encourage the many shadow developers to get their releases out on that
very date.
In the same vein should "Best Improved" be about how improved it is
since the last release or since 12 months ago? The problem with the
former is that it would discourage developers from making premature
releases, which seems a bad thing. The problem with the second option
is that it leaves no place for games released within the last year.
--
Darren Grey
Darren Grey
There's the Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year Award. It tends to get
very dominated by which game has the strongest community though.
Still, it's a good indicator of which are the more popular and fun
roguelikes being played.
--
Darren Grey
Darren Grey
> On Mar 26, 5:23 pm, hmp <humpo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Good idea, but I'm afraid it won't work so well unless you require
> > some declaration of participating: that's where the pressure of 7DRL's
> > comes from, once you announce your project there's no backing out :)
>
> Maybe there can be a sign-up page on the wiki at roguebasin? We can
> declare ourselves there?
Hmm, excellent idea... Maybe once we've fleshed out the details and
come to a consensus on some areas.
> In the meantime: I announce that crashRun 0.6.0 will be released on
> Release Party Day. (Hopefully 0.5.0 will be out in the later spring
> or early summer) Furthermore, while it won't be complete by far, it
> will have a winning condition implemented!
Hurrah! I too shall announce that I intend to release a much more
function complete version of Gruesome by that date. Perhaps I'll even
give libtcod a try (though it means learning python, so it probably
won't happen). I have another game idea too, but I doubt I'll have
time to work on both.
--
Darren Grey
Heroic Fisticuffs
AarrrRL will be there! I too am somewhat curious as to the best way to
define "best newcomer". If you "released" a 7DRL does that mean you
are not a newcomer? We want to be careful to give people the proper
motivation. Should I NOT release any more AarrrRL updates between now
and september? Seems like that would deprive me of some potentially
great feedback / bug testing. OTOH, discouraging people from giving us
daily bugfix releases every week between now and September seems like
a good thing. There has to be some middle ground in there somewhere.
HF
win
wrote:
newcomer probably means that they didn't have anything released before
september 20th of last year
Darren Grey
wrote:
I think your game will be better if you don't worry about what trivial
points it'll get in an online poll :)
--
Darren Grey
Matt_S
I'll definitely be releasing something for this release party. I
don't know what, but I've got a lot of ideas and I want to see if any
of them are any good. Hopefully I won't wait until the last minute :S
Jeff Lait
> On Mar 27, 10:32 am, jice <jice.nos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > * Best of the Show : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
> > releases (new or updates), what would it be ?
> > * Best Newcomer : if you had to keep only one game from this year's
> > new releases, what would it be ?
> > * Best Aesthetics : concerns visuals, and sound and music when they're
> > present
> > * Most Changed/Improved : sort of achievement award for the work done
> > since last year
> > * Best Writing : concerns the setting, the characters, the story, the
> > dialogs
> > * Best UI : concerns keyboard and/or mouse controls and general user
> > interface (inventory screen and so on)
>
> I personally think the last two are quite irrelevant. They're too
> subjective for a start - I'm extremely unfond of any mouse control
> myself, and there's the whole debate over simplicity/diversity or vi-
> keys vs numpad. There's no way we could get a consensus on what type
> of UI is best, so how can a vote on the matter produce anything
> relevant?
That is why I personally believe that UI should be in the Aesthetics
category.
To me, the "Aesthetics" of a roguelike is the inverse of "How much
crap do I have to put up with to get to the fun game?"
Sound, graphics, and controls are all things which, especially in a
roguelike, don't speak to the actual gameplay, but can either draw you
into that gameplay or try and keep you away. The best aesthetics
award thus is given to the roguelike who presents the most attractive
veneer to myself as a player.
> Same again for writing. I love text-heavy roguelikes, but a lot of
> people can't stand them. A lot of people play roguelikes for pure
> dungeon-crawling fun. Arguably the top two of the genre, Crawl and
> Nethack, have zero storyline and spartan writing. The poll for
> Writing would ultimately only have relevance for a small minority of
> the games.
There is a lot of non-storyline writing in a roguelike. Item
descriptions and monster descriptions, for example.
I do take your point, however. Poorly/painfully written roguelikes
are better judged on their absence of aesthetics than as their own
category. Ie, if a roguelike is missing a story and forces me to
invent one to get anywhere, that is some crap in the way of my
enjoying the game. Alternatively, a properly written story (which
does not require walls of text) can keep me in the game long enough to
discover the internal gameplay, thus helping me discover the core
gameplay value.
> Aesthetics is well-defined enough to be judged by the community, and
> there's enough new games that sport excellent graphics and sound. I
> don't find it personally relevant (I'm a pure ASCIIist), but I can see
> that it has its place.
I think pure ascii games can be judged on their visual aesthetics.
There is a lot of ways to go horribly wrong. They can also definitely
be judged on their controls!
> Best of the Show, Best Improved and Best
> Newcomer also are all obvious good awards to have, with all three in
> my opinion being particularly focused on gameplay.
Agreed. Best Aesthetics is the non-gameplay award, in my mind. The
rest address what is there when you get past 88any deficiencies of
presentation.
> I think we need a specific definition of "Newcomer" though. New
> within the last 12 months or new on that very release date? I support
> the idea of the latter more - it'll encourage the release party to be
> a time of completely new games and updates. In particular it'll
> encourage the many shadow developers to get their releases out on that
> very date.
I do see what you mean about the benefits of making it truly brand
new. But doesn't that encourage people not to run their roguelike
through some rounds of open testing? And if people are releasing on
that day exactly, we are liable to end up with lots of stupid first-
release bugs that would be patched in a week, the exact opposite of
our higher goal of improving roguelike polish? And does that mean the
7DRLs are all invalid for Best New Comer?
> In the same vein should "Best Improved" be about how improved it is
> since the last release or since 12 months ago? The problem with the
> former is that it would discourage developers from making premature
> releases, which seems a bad thing. The problem with the second option
> is that it leaves no place for games released within the last year.
Best Improved would, I think, not be compatible with Best Newcomer.
New comers can't really be improved...?
Best Improved would, in my mind, measure the difference between the
roguelike on the release party and its state 12 months earlier.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Heroic Fisticuffs
Well, I agree that is not a good reason to release a game. :)
However, the whole point of the "release party" is to motivate people.
I think this year's 7DRL contest was proof of that power. The more of
that sort of thing, the better IMHO! :)
HF
Darren Grey
I think you may be thinking of UI from too much of a negative angle.
A good UI should go unnoticed - it's only a bad UI that becomes really
obvious to a player. This was especially noticed in many of the
unpolished 7drls. For supposedly complete games should we celebrate
them for doing something that they should do by default? The other
categories are about going beyond the norm, whereas once you get past
a basic judgement of good/bad it's very hard to say one game's UI is
better than another's. It's especially hard when players have been
playing many games for years and gotten perfectly used to that game's
interface, finding it to be faultless.
Of course I don't think these voting things should be taken too
seriously, but I also don't want a game touted for being the "best" in
such a hard to define category. I think it has no meaning for other
players and celebrates little about that game above the majority of
other titles.
As an example, is there any single of the 7drls that you would say has
the best user interface? (other than Smart Kobolds of course :P) Do
you think an open vote on the matter would return a relevant result?
Or even any sort of consensus?
As for lumping it in with the Aesthetics Category, I think that
somewhat takes away from what I feel to be the importance of that
award. It's celebrating the expanding range of visual and aural
artistry present in roguelike games. It isn't about simply a clean
and functional skin that lets the player get to the game content -
it's about providing an additional experience beyond that which may
well take the player's breath away by its own strengths. It may not
be relevant to gameplay, and may even be irrelevant to what many
consider a true roguelike (myself included to some extent), but it is
worthy of its own special merit.
In comparison UI is just not so important. It's there to do the
basics, not to be anything special. The difference between a good UI
and an excellent one is no huge thing. Having the basics is important
of course, but it's not something to be awarded on.
> > Same again for writing. I love text-heavy roguelikes, but a lot of
> > people can't stand them. A lot of people play roguelikes for pure
> > dungeon-crawling fun. Arguably the top two of the genre, Crawl and
> > Nethack, have zero storyline and spartan writing. The poll for
> > Writing would ultimately only have relevance for a small minority of
> > the games.
>
> There is a lot of non-storyline writing in a roguelike. Item
> descriptions and monster descriptions, for example.
>
> I do take your point, however. Poorly/painfully written roguelikes
> are better judged on their absence of aesthetics than as their own
> category. Ie, if a roguelike is missing a story and forces me to
> invent one to get anywhere, that is some crap in the way of my
> enjoying the game. Alternatively, a properly written story (which
> does not require walls of text) can keep me in the game long enough to
> discover the internal gameplay, thus helping me discover the core
> gameplay value.
My point was that some people just want the gameplay straight up, and
barring the worst cases (inadequate descriptions, grammar mistakes)
they care not for flavour text. If anything some consider it to get
in the way of the pure gameplay fun.
However the same argument could be made for aesthetics, so I suppose
writing could deserve as much a place. I just feel that for
roguelikes in particular this is such a minor thing. Very few
roguelike titles shine out for their writing style and detail. In
particular original settings and characters are extremely spartan.
Perhaps we should encourage more quality in this area, but it seems
wrong to do so with a yearly award.
> > Aesthetics is well-defined enough to be judged by the community, and
> > there's enough new games that sport excellent graphics and sound. I
> > don't find it personally relevant (I'm a pure ASCIIist), but I can see
> > that it has its place.
>
> I think pure ascii games can be judged on their visual aesthetics.
> There is a lot of ways to go horribly wrong. They can also definitely
> be judged on their controls!
Well, I somehow foresee this aspect being dominated by the games with
nice graphics and sounds. Many ASCII games will score reasonably well
I'm sure, but there's a difference between not going "horribly wrong"
and actually managing to impress the player.
> > I think we need a specific definition of "Newcomer" though. New
> > within the last 12 months or new on that very release date? I support
> > the idea of the latter more - it'll encourage the release party to be
> > a time of completely new games and updates. In particular it'll
> > encourage the many shadow developers to get their releases out on that
> > very date.
>
> I do see what you mean about the benefits of making it truly brand
> new. But doesn't that encourage people not to run their roguelike
> through some rounds of open testing? And if people are releasing on
> that day exactly, we are liable to end up with lots of stupid first-
> release bugs that would be patched in a week, the exact opposite of
> our higher goal of improving roguelike polish? And does that mean the
> 7DRLs are all invalid for Best New Comer?
Overall I guess the specialness of new games on the date is outweighed
by the thought that we shouldn't interrupt regular development cycles
and we should allow the newcomer field to apply to everything from the
previous year. We would still only consider games with a new release
on that date though, right? So only 7drls that get updated then could
be considered.
Anyway, just wanted this clarified now so we all have the same ideas
in mind.
--
Darren Grey
Darren Grey
wrote:
> On Mar 27, 5:40 pm, Darren Grey <darrenjohng...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 27, 8:11 pm, Heroic Fisticuffs <heroic.fisticu...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 27, 3:11 pm, Darren Grey <darrenjohng...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > AarrrRL will be there! I too am somewhat curious as to the best way to
> > > define "best newcomer". If you "released" a 7DRL does that mean you
> > > are not a newcomer? We want to be careful to give people the proper
> > > motivation. Should I NOT release any more AarrrRL updates between now
> > > and september? Seems like that would deprive me of some potentially
> > > great feedback / bug testing. OTOH, discouraging people from giving us
> > > daily bugfix releases every week between now and September seems like
> > > a good thing. There has to be some middle ground in there somewhere.
>
> > I think your game will be better if you don't worry about what trivial
> > points it'll get in an online poll :)
>
>
> However, the whole point of the "release party" is to motivate people.
> I think this year's 7DRL contest was proof of that power. The more of
> that sort of thing, the better IMHO! :)
Very true. But a 7DRL medal is normally given to all who declare a
success (uh, haven't seen any medals about this year yet though...)
There was a poll set up by Cymon's Games last year, and an invisible
committee this year - none done with the prior knowledge of developers
being judged in different areas. I personally don't think it's
healthy for developers to be thinking along the lines of winning this
or that award.
...But then, if it encourages them to release, to heck with it. Let
them have their carrot on a stick :)
--
Darren Grey
jice
>
> newcomer probably means that they didn't have anything released before
> september 20th of last year
That would encourage developers to release less, which is certainly
not the goal of the release party (it's the exact opposite).
I think "Newcomer" should be defined by "a game that was never
released during a release party".
Of course, it means that every entry will be a newcomer this year,
including well established roguelikes like doomRL or Powder, but I
don't think it's an issue. You can be a newcomer only once !
> I personally think the last two are quite irrelevant. They're too
> subjective for a start - I'm extremely unfond of any mouse control
> myself, and there's the whole debate over simplicity/diversity or vi-
> keys vs numpad. There's no way we could get a consensus on what type
> of UI is best, so how can a vote on the matter produce anything
> relevant?
The UI award is not here to force you to use mouse control or abandon
vi-keys. But some RL are unplayable without reading some big README
and learning dozens of shorcuts, while some other can be played out of
the box without having to wonder at any moment how to do things. Maybe
UI is not the right term. Best ergonomy ? Best accessibility ?
>
> Same again for writing. I love text-heavy roguelikes, but a lot of
> people can't stand them. A lot of people play roguelikes for pure
> dungeon-crawling fun. Arguably the top two of the genre, Crawl and
> Nethack, have zero storyline and spartan writing. The poll for
> Writing would ultimately only have relevance for a small minority of
> the games.
What I had in mind here is not walls of text. I don't like them
neither. Maybe "Best setting" would be better. I think a good game
should have a setting, a universe of its own. Of course, you can have
some very good games without setting (tetris?), but in the case of a
roguelike, which is a subcategory of computer rpg, having a real
setting is definitely an advantage. For example, adom has a great
setting while nethack is a mixing of everything and anything. That
doesn't mean one is better than the other, but I think nethack with a
real setting would be even better.
> Very true. But a 7DRL medal is normally given to all who declare a
> success (uh, haven't seen any medals about this year yet though...)
> There was a poll set up by Cymon's Games last year, and an invisible
> committee this year - none done with the prior knowledge of developers
> being judged in different areas. I personally don't think it's
> healthy for developers to be thinking along the lines of winning this
> or that award.
While the release party goal is to increase the number of releases,
the poll goal is to increase the overall quality. Hopefully, having
awards in mind will force you to push the quality a bit further than
you would have done without them.
--
Jice
Ido Yehieli
>
> newcomer probably means that they didn't have anything released before
> september 20th of last year
I think that's as good a definition as any.
it should probably be included in the definition to avoid ambiguity.
-Ido.
pol
I concur.
Darren Grey
> On 27 mar, 21:55, win <andersdh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > newcomer probably means that they didn't have anything released before
> > september 20th of last year
>
> That would encourage developers to release less, which is certainly
> not the goal of the release party (it's the exact opposite).
> I think "Newcomer" should be defined by "a game that was never
> released during a release party".
> Of course, it means that every entry will be a newcomer this year,
> including well established roguelikes like doomRL or Powder, but I
> don't think it's an issue. You can be a newcomer only once !
I'm not too fond of that idea myself. For a start it makes the "Best
Improved" category irrelevant for the first year. I thought the idea
is that we have both Best Improved and Newcomer to encourage both new
and old games to continue development? If we start basing it on what
happens to be released on a certain date in September then it loses
all sense of comparing like with like. Best Newcomer should not be
won by Crawl or Nethack!
The distinction of being over/under a year old seems much easier to
define and compare. It lets us appreciate the improvements in ongoing
titles, whilst also celebrating up-and-coming games for their own
merits.
> > I personally think the last two are quite irrelevant. They're too
> > subjective for a start - I'm extremely unfond of any mouse control
> > myself, and there's the whole debate over simplicity/diversity or vi-
> > keys vs numpad. There's no way we could get a consensus on what type
> > of UI is best, so how can a vote on the matter produce anything
> > relevant?
>
> The UI award is not here to force you to use mouse control or abandon
> vi-keys. But some RL are unplayable without reading some big README
> and learning dozens of shorcuts, while some other can be played out of
> the box without having to wonder at any moment how to do things. Maybe
> UI is not the right term. Best ergonomy ? Best accessibility ?
My problem with this, as I've discussed with Jeff elsewhere in the
thread, is that there's no clear distinction between "good" and
"best". A *lot* of roguelikes are playable out of the box. There are
none, simply none, that actually shine out as being best.
Also your definition of not having to read a readme is instantly
favouring smaller roguelikes with less commands and complexity. One
of the things people love about roguelikes is their complexity, and
the sheer variety of actions available to the character. This award
shouldn't encourage simpler games.
--
Darren Grey
Nate
inventing a bloated wheel.
In my mind I thought of the release party as a big-dog version of
7DRL. I think the participation is the key, the comparison of the
results may sometimes seem detrimental towards the developers
motivation to continue. I would appreciate more of the 7DRL idealism
where we're helping motivate and push each other with ideas and
criticisms necessary to continue development, again, not comparing one
game to another.
Dana
> In my mind I thought of the release party as a big-dog version of
> 7DRL. I think the participation is the key, the comparison of the
> results may sometimes seem detrimental towards the developers
> motivation to continue. I would appreciate more of the 7DRL idealism
> where we're helping motivate and push each other with ideas and
> criticisms necessary to continue development, again, not comparing one
> game to another.
I'm onboard with Nate, here. I know from my experiences in NaNoWriMo
that the fun in these things is in participating and commiserating on
forums and in the IRC channel. I'd hate for someone to decide that
their game doesn't stand a chance so why bother participating.
Although I suppose on the other hand, the goal here (unlike NaNoWriMo)
is directly to produce something we're going to give to others to
play.
I'm not against awards, but I don't think they should be featured as
an important part of the Release Party.
jice
> > The UI award is not here to force you to use mouse control or abandon
> > vi-keys. But some RL are unplayable without reading some big README
> > and learning dozens of shorcuts, while some other can be played out of
> > the box without having to wonder at any moment how to do things. Maybe
> > UI is not the right term. Best ergonomy ? Best accessibility ?
>
> My problem with this, as I've discussed with Jeff elsewhere in the
> thread, is that there's no clear distinction between "good" and
> "best". A *lot* of roguelikes are playable out of the box. There are
> none, simply none, that actually shine out as being best.
>
> Also your definition of not having to read a readme is instantly
> favouring smaller roguelikes with less commands and complexity. One
> of the things people love about roguelikes is their complexity, and
> the sheer variety of actions available to the character. This award
> shouldn't encourage simpler games.
>
Well, the idea was not to encourage simpler games, but fight the
stereotype that a deep and complex game requires a complex interface.
Also note that the UI award does defines what is a good UI. That would
be a good way to discover what the community considers as a good UI.
Anyway, I guess falling back to Jeff's proposition of an "Aesthetics"
award including visuals and UI/controls is fine.
--
jice
jice
Well if awards are that controversial, I quite agree that we should
put them aside. I really think the release party would be really
positive for RL community and is more important than the awards. We
can still organize awards case by case, or rather year by year, but
let's make this independent of the release party.
--
jice
jice
> On Mar 26, 5:23 pm, hmp <humpo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Good idea, but I'm afraid it won't work so well unless you require
> > some declaration of participating: that's where the pressure of 7DRL's
> > comes from, once you announce your project there's no backing out :)
>
> Maybe there can be a sign-up page on the wiki at roguebasin? We can
> declare ourselves there?
>
Ok I've created a ARRP (Annual Roguelike Release Party) page on
roguebasin :
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=The_annual_roguelike_release_party
I didn't put the awards but they can be added later if a consensus is
reached.
along with a (crude) page for the 2010 event. Feel free to improve :
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=2010_ARRP
--
jice
Darren Grey
> On 28 mar, 18:15, Darren Grey <darrenjohng...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > The UI award is not here to force you to use mouse control or abandon
> > > vi-keys. But some RL are unplayable without reading some big README
> > > and learning dozens of shorcuts, while some other can be played out of
> > > the box without having to wonder at any moment how to do things. Maybe
> > > UI is not the right term. Best ergonomy ? Best accessibility ?
>
> > My problem with this, as I've discussed with Jeff elsewhere in the
> > thread, is that there's no clear distinction between "good" and
> > "best". A *lot* of roguelikes are playable out of the box. There are
> > none, simply none, that actually shine out as being best.
>
> > Also your definition of not having to read a readme is instantly
> > favouring smaller roguelikes with less commands and complexity. One
> > of the things people love about roguelikes is their complexity, and
> > the sheer variety of actions available to the character. This award
> > shouldn't encourage simpler games.
>
> Well, the idea was not to encourage simpler games, but fight the
> stereotype that a deep and complex game requires a complex interface.
Is it for us to decide what features of roguelikes should be fought or
encouraged? We should more be happy with diversity, than encourage
any specific line of design. Much of the stereotype does come from
fact - roguelikes often have complex interface, and yet we still play
them and love them so it can't be that wrong!
> Also note that the UI award does defines what is a good UI. That would
> be a good way to discover what the community considers as a good UI.
> Anyway, I guess falling back to Jeff's proposition of an "Aesthetics"
> award including visuals and UI/controls is fine.
Well, as others have said, the idea of awards can be treated
negatively. Like with the 7drls it shouldn't be a set feature of the
competition, or have any official clout. If someone wants to host a
poll on their site then ultimately it's up to that host to decide what
he/she wants to have rated. I think overall I'd be happiest with just
"Best Improved" and "Best Newcomer", but neither are particularly
import for the release party itself.
--
Darren Grey
Jeff Lait
> On Mar 28, 4:02 am, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That is why I personally believe that UI should be in the Aesthetics
> > category.
>
> > To me, the "Aesthetics" of a roguelike is the inverse of "How much
> > crap do I have to put up with to get to the fun game?"
>
> > Sound, graphics, and controls are all things which, especially in a
> > roguelike, don't speak to the actual gameplay, but can either draw you
> > into that gameplay or try and keep you away. The best aesthetics
> > award thus is given to the roguelike who presents the most attractive
> > veneer to myself as a player.
>
> I think you may be thinking of UI from too much of a negative angle.
> A good UI should go unnoticed - it's only a bad UI that becomes really
> obvious to a player.
Negative space, positive space, it is the same thing we are looking
at.
Good visuals in a roguelike should go unnoticed. Roguelikes are not
paintings. We shouldn't be going "Wow, so many polygons per second!"
We should be saying: "Wow, what a fun game!" Likewise, roguelikes
are not songs. Excellent music and sound effects set the mood,
provide game feedback, *without* dominating.
> This was especially noticed in many of the
> unpolished 7drls. For supposedly complete games should we celebrate
> them for doing something that they should do by default?
Nethack still had an atrocious UI last time I used it. Calling a good
UI the default for roguelikes is like calling tiled graphics the
default :>
> Of course I don't think these voting things should be taken too
> seriously, but I also don't want a game touted for being the "best" in
> such a hard to define category.
That is why I wanted it rolled into Aesthetics. I don't like the idea
of separate "Sound", "Visual" and "UI" categories for the very reasons
you raise.
> As an example, is there any single of the 7drls that you would say has
> the best user interface? (other than Smart Kobolds of course :P) Do
> you think an open vote on the matter would return a relevant result?
> Or even any sort of consensus?
IIRC, Laser Spigot. Checking the list it scored a perfect 3 on
Aesthetics too, likely due to the controls that just felt natural.
Hex grids are often hard to navigate but that part clicked together
surprisingly quickly.
> As for lumping it in with the Aesthetics Category, I think that
> somewhat takes away from what I feel to be the importance of that
> award. It's celebrating the expanding range of visual and aural
> artistry present in roguelike games. It isn't about simply a clean
> and functional skin that lets the player get to the game content -
> it's about providing an additional experience beyond that which may
> well take the player's breath away by its own strengths. It may not
> be relevant to gameplay, and may even be irrelevant to what many
> consider a true roguelike (myself included to some extent), but it is
> worthy of its own special merit.
I disagree. The "presentation" of a game is more than what you see
when you stand back and look at it. It also includes the controls, to
the extent the controls are not gameplay. (There can be a line where,
for example with a light gun, the controls are intentionally awkward
to improve gameplay.) Games are to be played.
Hopefully, everyone has sufficiently polished controls that this
doesn't end up weighting that heavily. But a game can't be considered
aesthetically pleasing if it isn't pleasant to *play*, as opposed to
*look* at.
> In comparison UI is just not so important. It's there to do the
> basics, not to be anything special. The difference between a good UI
> and an excellent one is no huge thing. Having the basics is important
> of course, but it's not something to be awarded on.
I do agree it doesn't deserve its own award, but I'd like to point out
it is hardly a simple task to get a good UI.
I can squint past ugly graphics and turn off bad sound, but it is
often unescapable to deal with bad UI. Playing Mass Effect right now
and, for a polished game, some of the simple UI is painfully
atrocious. Like trying to Omni-Gel half my inventory due to being out
of space.
> > > Aesthetics is well-defined enough to be judged by the community, and
> > > there's enough new games that sport excellent graphics and sound. I
> > > don't find it personally relevant (I'm a pure ASCIIist), but I can see
> > > that it has its place.
>
> > I think pure ascii games can be judged on their visual aesthetics.
> > There is a lot of ways to go horribly wrong. They can also definitely
> > be judged on their controls!
>
> Well, I somehow foresee this aspect being dominated by the games with
> nice graphics and sounds. Many ASCII games will score reasonably well
> I'm sure, but there's a difference between not going "horribly wrong"
> and actually managing to impress the player.
ASCII has a lot of room for nice graphics. Look at anything by
Kornel, for example.
> Overall I guess the specialness of new games on the date is outweighed
> by the thought that we shouldn't interrupt regular development cycles
> and we should allow the newcomer field to apply to everything from the
> previous year. We would still only consider games with a new release
> on that date though, right? So only 7drls that get updated then could
> be considered.
Yes, to be eligible you must release in the release party
Jeff Lait
That is wisdom.
Björn Ritzl
> Hey r.g.r.d.ers !
>
--snip intro--
>
> Here is the current proposal :
>
> --------------------------------------
> The Annual Roguelike Release Party
>
> Too many roguelikes can languish with half-fixed features. If we can,
> once a year, ensure our roguelikes are polished and updated, we can
> avoid this trap.
>
> All active roguelike developers are encouraged to release an update to
> their roguelikes on September 19th.
--snip benefits--
>
> --
> jice
I like the idea, but it would be cool if we could agree on two releases
per year. That shouldn't be too hard should it? One spring release and
one autumn release.
BTW, I hope this "one big release party per year" idea doesn't prevent
people from releasing improvements and bugfixes more often just to make
a bigger impact with their release on the 19th of September.
/Björn
Ido Yehieli
>
> I like the idea, but it would be cool if we could agree on two releases
> per year. That shouldn't be too hard should it? One spring release and
> one autumn release.
>
We already have the 7drl challenge in the spring.
-Ido.
Björn Ritzl
Yes, but that's just 7 days isn't it? I understand that it would flood
this ng with announcements though..
> -Ido.
/Björn
jice
>
> Is it for us to decide what features of roguelikes should be fought or
> encouraged? We should more be happy with diversity, than encourage
> any specific line of design. Much of the stereotype does come from
> fact - roguelikes often have complex interface, and yet we still play
> them and love them so it can't be that wrong!
Well, I don't really see how having the community vote for the best UI
is supposed to encourage any specific line of design.
Anyway I removed the award part from the release party proposal on
roguebasin so I guess there's no point arguing anymore ;)
--
jice
Ido Yehieli
>
> > We already have the 7drl challenge in the spring.
>
> Yes, but that's just 7 days isn't it? I understand that it would flood
> this ng with announcements though..
>
I don't know about the others, but 7DRL weeks are quite strenuous and
taxing for me, which is why the release party is scheduled to take
place as far from both the current and next 7DRL Challenges as
possible.
If people want 2 release parties per year then I think one 4 months
after the 7drl week and one 4 months before the next 7drl week would
be more suitable (i.e. in july and november).
But one 7drl week and 1 release party per year sound like enough to me
-Ido.
Dana
> If people want 2 release parties per year then I think one 4 months
> after the 7drl week and one 4 months before the next 7drl week would
> be more suitable (i.e. in july and november).
>
> But one 7drl week and 1 release party per year sound like enough to me
I'm happy with one official one of each as well. It's not like
there's anything stopping us from doing more than one release, but
having one "official" party feels right to me.
Of course, that may be because I know two release parties will make me
lazy. "Ehhh, I'll just slack off on this release and save it for the
November one."
Björn Ritzl
This is one of the drawbacks with releaseparties I think. Regardless if
we have one or two release parties per year it may make people release
less often, saving all of their work until the release party and leaving
the rest of the year drained of updates.
/Björn
Darren Grey
It is a concern, but an unlikely one in my opinion. It's hard to
imagine active developers holding off on releases for 12 months
because of one date. Also the idea is to have a polished release for
the Release Party - if they don't release earlier then they'll
obviously have bugs and problems.
We'll see how it goes anyway - I personally think the drawbacks will
small and the benefits vast, but if it turns out otherwise then the
idea can always be scrapped.
--
Darren Grey
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>Hey r.g.r.d.ers !
>
>The 7DRL contest is great because it brings lots of new ideas in the
>roguelike genre and is a great occasion for people to step into the
>genre, or to actually release something instead of working on never-
>ending vapourware (unfortunately, I know what I'm talking about...).
>But a lot of entries end in failures or lack enough polish to be
>totally enjoyable.
>
>A release contest, on the other hand, would force every participant to
>release something at a specific date. They may have been working on it
>for days, months or years, whatever. What's important is to give
>everybody the motivation to reach the release stage and increase the
>number of high quality roguelikes.
>
Seems kinda counter-intuitive. If you want people to play your game it's
important to not get your release overshadowed by competition. There's about as
few roguelike players as actual released roguelikes and they won't be playing
more than one game at a time. It's not as much of an issue with 7drls because
they are supposed to be short, but a big game that requires a substantial time
investment from the player will lose many potential players if another big
roguelike is released at the same time.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Ido Yehieli
>
> Seems kinda counter-intuitive. If you want people to play your game it's
> important to not get your release overshadowed by competition. There's about as
> few roguelike players as actual released roguelikes and they won't be playing
> more than one game at a time. It's not as much of an issue with 7drls because
> they are supposed to be short, but a big game that requires a substantial time
> investment from the player will lose many potential players if another big
> roguelike is released at the same time.
>
The point (as far as I understand) is to improve the games' quality
and developers' moral, not to attract players to any specific game.
-Ido.
Darren Grey
> On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:41:32 -0700 (PDT), jice <jice.nos...@gmail.com> tried to
> confuse everyone with this message:
>
> >Hey r.g.r.d.ers !
>
> >The 7DRL contest is great because it brings lots of new ideas in the
> >roguelike genre and is a great occasion for people to step into the
> >genre, or to actually release something instead of working on never-
> >ending vapourware (unfortunately, I know what I'm talking about...).
> >But a lot of entries end in failures or lack enough polish to be
> >totally enjoyable.
>
> >A release contest, on the other hand, would force every participant to
> >release something at a specific date. They may have been working on it
> >for days, months or years, whatever. What's important is to give
> >everybody the motivation to reach the release stage and increase the
> >number of high quality roguelikes.
>
> Seems kinda counter-intuitive. If you want people to play your game it's
> important to not get your release overshadowed by competition. There's about as
> few roguelike players as actual released roguelikes and they won't be playing
> more than one game at a time. It's not as much of an issue with 7drls because
> they are supposed to be short, but a big game that requires a substantial time
> investment from the player will lose many potential players if another big
> roguelike is released at the same time.
Well, hopefully a release party will lead to a player party of sorts,
and encourage players to try out the latest version of a roguelike
they've thought about trying but never given the time to. The general
hype around the scene may attrract players from other genres too, and
so expand the player base. Or at the very least existing fans of game
x will be happy to see an update of it!
The Release Party is not going to change the world, but if it at least
encourages some developers to release more then it will have done some
good.
--
Darren Grey
Aging Minotaur
> Hey r.g.r.d.ers !
>
> [...]
>
> --------------------------------------
> The Annual Roguelike Release Party
This is most welcome. The yearly 7DRL compo is always too hectic for me,
but I'll try to join the ARRP with my project, tentatively named Squirm,
and written in Python. That's now official.
The date is just six weeks after the expected birth of my second child,
so we'll see how that goes ;-) I guess I'll announce an alpha release as
soon as possible, put together a complete version during the summer, and
fix a bug or two in september to have a fresh release on the actual
date.
Regarding various debates that have been spurred: You people seem to be
doing fine discussing the finer points, I think. If it turns out to be a
competition of sorts, or just a roguelike release party, seems fine
either way. I am just pro in general :) What I do hope for, is something
similar to the 7drl compo, in the sense that a lot of people all over
the world will be worked up about RLs around a certain date, stimulating
debate, criticism, pseudo-official reviewers' guilds, etc. Let the good
times roll, I say.
As always,
Minotauros
Fobbah
It will rock your world :)
Björn Ritzl
You are right Darren. I'll release a Dweller version during the RRP at
least (and a couple of more before then)!
>
> --
> Darren Grey
/Björn
Kornel Kisielewicz
> On 26 mar, 23:05, purplearcanist <ejg_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Wait, are we releasing updates to our 7DRLs? Or making something new?
>
> Anything ! Might be an updated 7DRL, something completely new, or your
> 10 years old genroguelike...
You're tempting me, dammit.
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz
http://chaosforge.org/