Rogue

I'm creating a roguelike definition that is partly an answer to rather poor one they made in International Roguelike Development Conference 2008. Then I heard that Rogue didn't have player classes. At least the original Rogue which I actually had never even played. My only contact to Rogue was in Atari ST era when I played a commercial Rogue published by Epyx. It had graphical tiles and I could swear it was more complex than the original (I guess it's 3.6 from Roguelike Restoration project).

The problem in my definition is that it makes Rogue itself a non-roguelike game, because you can't select a player class. Yeah, it's kind of funny. In my definition Rogue is an adventure game. I had this idea of building the definition on top of role-playing, but it seems that Rogue itself is hitting this definition hard from beyond the grave. My first contact to "roguelikes" was Nethack so it was always my idea of a true roguelike and the foundation of the definition.

The absence of role-playing in Rogue makes it harder to define a roguelike, but maybe it's still possible to create a decent definition including adventure games (simple form of role-playing).

LambdaRogue 1.0

This time I was able to actually kill something, some worms, but the game told me that I shouldn't kill them. Like.. why. They are worms and enemies. The I was quickly killed by ant-something when I was trying to find out why numpad diagonal keys don't work. I didn't land a single hit, maybe because diagonal keys don't work in numpad? I tried both num lock on or off.

The user interface is still confusing. You have Space, Return, Esc and both mouse buttons to perform actions, but they seem to work different way in some situations. For example Esc doesn't always exit the current window, you need to use Space to continue. It's just confusing. I'm hitting all the wrong keys and buttons all the time! Well, it's not that bad actually, it's just an user interface.

The game itself seems to be pretty simple. I can't say, because I always die very soon when I can't hit the monster for some reason. This is becoming a game I love to hate.

Hero

Let's first go back to discussion about traps. The first problem is that even if not harmful random traps are just too random. They make the game world look like a random generic place which I think it not good. Then Numeron said something interesting: "even damage traps can be used to get monsters to walk over when chasing the player."

Then why monsters can't set traps for the player, making the same mechanism work against the player? It's because setting traps is hero exclusive. The traditional or high fantasy design is based on the myth of hero, who is some way more gifted than anyone else in the world. In fact this design is familiar from the first computer games like Pacman who can eat pills and use the magic power of that big special pill. And how about Link from Zelda-series? He can use the master sword to beat evil monsters. That design is like a lock and key, they both must exist.

But what if the hero didn't have any special skills? It would pretty much also remove the lock or high fantasy evil & big monsters. Well, maybe not if there are other ways to defeat them, but I guess it requires more original design and therefore rarely used in games.

One of the important hero exclusives is magic. It's probably the most commonly used exclusive and that's why many role-playing games can't be won without magic. Sometimes wizards become more powerful than fighter characters, because magic in entire form is hero exclusive. Some monsters can use magic, but it's usually restricted for tactical reasons, so that the player can prepare for the spells and have a key for them.

The obvious problem in low fantasy is then how to make the player character survive in the first place? It's an interesting question and from my point of view it's so much better than following the same old road of high fantasy. Everything feels new and you can expect to have gameplay balance issues that need to be solved in some clever way.

Frozen Depths 1.03

Frozen Depths is a roguelike written by Glowie. It has a cold world theme, but I didn't have time to notice the effect of cold since I died in the first level. I think the coldness is a gameplay clock, but I'm not sure.

A distinctive feature is the large number of floor traps. This I always thought was bad design, because you usually can't avoid traps unless you search after every step. Searching while moving is so annoying that I never do that. Floor traps make you wonder how the native inhabitans of the level ever survive. Do they all know where the traps are?

In my main project Kaduria game objects are trapped, so when you handle something you can be sure that it's your fault if you didn't check for traps. There are floor traps also but I plan to create them on specific levels that are trapped for a reason so you know there are traps. Or if traps are found elsewhere they are in obvious places (guarding something etc.) I believe that only the player's wrong actions should lead to death and there should be less random accidents that has nothing to do with how good you are as player.

The cave

New screenshot from Teemu:



It's a cave. But, there is something different in this cave. It's not just any cave, it's there for a reason. The inhabitants of the cave made it like that. It's a functional cave and a real part of the game world. This small difference made me think "why, of course..." If you create a random level with random monsters that has no other function than be a level, it's going to be poor.

A new feature is unexplored tiles shown in dark grey color. It makes navigating easier when you see what areas you have visited and makes a clear distinction between floors and walls that are obstructed by the field of vision.

Teemu news

Making good progress with Teemu. Today I spent only about an hour to add a new feature which is super fast and very different than adding a feature in Kaduria. The game world of Teemu is going to be very simple, but I try to create interactions with the world to make it more interesting as a gameplay experience. Here is a screenshot from Teemu:



The development of this game is actually fun, which is something I can't say from Kaduria.

LambdaRogue

This one is pretty interesting new roguelike project by Mario Donick. Unfortunately it's also an example of game design issues that seem to plague roguelike development. There are two important factors of erratic design. One of them is that most roguelikes borrow user interface styles from ancient roguelikes like Nethack and ADOM, and they probably honestly think they are good user interfaces while in reality they are not.

The other more important reason for failure in game design is that some people think their ideas must be the best way to implement a feature. They are too selfish and don't realize why common interface rules were invented in the first place. User interface knowledge is something you need to learn to understand it and never just create something you think is cool and working like a charm.

LambdaRogue has these issues in user interface and its role-playing system too, but it's still a promising roguelike project and I'm going to follow the development of that game as much as I can.

It's actually the only interesting roguelike project at the moment, because you can see the effort he is putting into the development. It's something opposite than 7DRLs which are nothing more than simple ASCII action games. If I want to play an action game I play Pacman or something else with graphics (invented in 1970's).