Monthly Archives: January 2008

The 7DRL Challenge 2008 draws near!

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The 7DRL Challenge 2008 Logo

The time is NOW, accept the 2008 7DRL Challenge!

The 2008 7DRL Challenge will run «March 8th» to «March 16th». We hope to see you there!

What is a 7DRL?

A Seven Day Roguelike is a roguelike created in seven days. This means the author stopped developing it 168 hours after starting.

The idea behind 7DRLs is forcing developers to finish a showable product instead of adding features endlessly to their grandiose, never to be released projects, a common pattern in the roguelike development world.

Incidentally, they are also useful as a way to test new ideas as non-traditional, experimental, scrapable roguelikes, thus allowing the genre to expand beyond its barriers.

You are welcome and encouraged to write a 7DRL anytime you want, as a great exercise to increase your odds as a sucessful roguelike developer; however, in 2005, the roguelike community established a yearly event, the 7DRL Challenge, in which all the world is challenged to create a roguelike in a one-week span.

The annual event occurs during a week in late February or early March. There is a chance that some other challenges may arise out of schedule, thus allowing more than one challenge per year.

7DRL Challenges are NOT about being a /fast/ coder, but rather proving you can release a finished, playable roguelike to the world. There is no winner of the challenge, but rather all those who finish are honoured for their work, the criterion is completeness.

There are some light rules for this event

  • Post on rec.games.roguelike.development when you are about to start development (You will have exactly 168 hours left after this) (Use google groups for easy usenet access)
  • You CAN use external libraries, game engines, pre-existing generic code/algorithms, pre-existing generic art, etc. You can even start your game from an existing game, if you are willing to turn it out into something unique, you must however say what resources were reused.
  • It is allowed and recommended to have a rough design idea of your project before starting
  • 168 or less hours after your initial post, post your results on rec.games.roguelike.development; if you were sucessful, post your announcement on rec.games.roguelike.announce

To the date, there have been four 7DRL challenges

  • March 5th to March 13th 2005.
  • February 25th to March 5th 2006.
  • October 15th to October 23th 2006
  • March 10th to March 18th 2007

Check This Roguebasin Article for further info, also, keep an eye on Roguetemple’s 7DRL Shrine

ADOM has a new website

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ADOM

Good news for all ADOM-maniacs out there, Mr. Thomas Biskup, soon to be interviewed in roguetemple, has released his most awaited facelift for the ADOM and JADE website. It features a blog, through which you will be able to follow development closely and which will hopefully encourage him to work continuously on his project.

So, all you people that said ADOM and JADE were dead… you were wrong! :)

New website looks pretty nifty, congratulations Thomas! hopefully this is a goodbye to all those December-only post years :D

Browse http://www.adom.de/index.html and http://www.adom.de/blog/ for further info

BAM!

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The FightA magnificent archeological discovery has been made!

While tracing the prehistory of rogue and its roots… we have found what could be called its “Rogue’s long lost and forgotten brother”… the so called “Beneath Apple Manor” video game by Don D. Worth, predates rogue for two years, and sports most, if not all of its main features.

How could we not see this, in front of our own eyes, for so many years?

You also learned that just about everything was out to hurt you, which is kind of par for the course in a Roguelike. Monsters would pop out all over the place. On top of that, even items could hurt you. I remember finding a treasure chest with a potion in it. The game asked me if I wanted to drink the potion. In my youthful exuberance I naturally had to quaff the thing… and promptly lost all my memories. See, learning through forgetting. It’s the Rogue way to do things!

The game plays a lot like rogue, though it lacks its ASCII display, but as you can read, it even has some “hack” kind of effects, turn based gameplay, semi-complex items… the game also gives you some tips, which are helpful for the newbie. It even features simplistic shops, which is great for its time. The game is much more than just interesting for its historic value (like… *gasp* Escape from Mt. Drash), it is actually a fun game, worth giving a shoot!

Some words from the author itself, gathered from Psittacine Labs

I am the author of Beneath Apple Manor. It was released two years before Rogue came out. I was not influenced by Rogue (didn’t see it until something like 1983) and so far as I know the Rogue guys up at UC Berkeley hadn’t seen BAM either. We probably both came up with the same idea independently. But at least I can say Rouge is “Beneath Apple Manor like”. :-)

The manI based the game on Dungeons and Dragons (paper and pencil game) and DragonMaze (the free game that came with the Apple II).
[...]
I think the release dates were as follows:

1978 – original version from The Software Factory (my own little partnership)
1980 – I handed it over to Quality Software for marketing
1982 or 1983 (I forget) – Beneath Apple Manor Special Edition (hires graphics version)

All in all, this doesn’t take away any credit for the original creators of rogue, the game we all love. It is curious and interesting, nonetheless :)

Some links

Don’s page
Post at Psittacine Labs
A thread at gamersquarter discussing it

(Source: Derek at TIGS)

The BAMTemple

The Death of the Level Designer: Procedural Content Generation in Games

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Ionic Orders of GenerationAndrew Doull, mantainer of roguetemple’s friend blog, Ascii Dreams, has put up five articles on his series The Death of the Level Designer: Procedural Content Generation in Games. An interesting read for you all roguedevs out there you. :P

Procedural content generation is yet to set the game industry on fire. It has featured in one of the greatest games of all time, Diablo and it’s successor, who directly trace their roots to roguelike games such as Angband. But the recent implementation of random level generation in Hellgate: London did little to inspire people that this method works well for game level design.

Checketh them out:

Part V

Part IV

Part III

Part II

Part I

Caverns of Underkeep, Alpha

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CavernsA cool new Java roguelike is on the works (Go Java, Go! :D) the Caverns of Underkeep project has reached Alpha status, and it is looking very interesting

But anyway, why won’t Caverns of Underkeep have classes? Because it’s a dungeon romp, theres no real roleplaying going on what-so-ever. Your job is to kill monsters, and to do this you’ll need to be able to fight, use magic and pick locks.

Behind all graphics and infrastructure work (you play the game as a Java Applet), the project has some interesting gameplay and dungeon generation ideas discussed in this blog. Also, his highness CG Barret (you may remember him for, ehm… CastlevaniaRL graphicworks :P) seems to be backing up the project :)

So, welcome Joshua Smyth to the roguelike world, keep on it!

Source: ASCII Dreams

Endlich da, NetzHack

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For all Schurken-spiele players out there, have a look!

NetzHackWir nennen es NetzHack: die deutsche Übersetzung des klassischen Computerspiels NetHack.

Es ist längst nicht fertig – ausreichend testen können wir es gar nicht alleine. Deswegen veröffentlichen wir an dieser Stelle den aktuellen Stand der Arbeit.

Mein Deutsch ist ziemlich null, aber das Projekt sieht interessant!

SewerJacks 0.8.6

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Corremn keeps working on his sewerjacks project with SewerJacks 0.8.6

I have released another version. This one has a new interface and a few new features. All creature icons have been changed to Nick
Kelsch’s blood bowl icons. Thanks Nick. And allies are more “team” based so you can now control a mob of blood-thirsty orcs or angry
dwarfs and go crazy. Hopefully this adds to the atmostphere.

POWDER, 5 Years, 100 Versions

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Pinkie, we loves you!POWDER, the one roguelike game for handheld devices GBA and Nintendo DS by Jeff Lait, has reached its version number 100 on its 5th anniversary!

Wow! Five years and 100 releases!

For those expecting massive changes on the 100th release, I am sorry to disappoint you. Massive changes implies massive instability, so I have acted cautiously in preparation for this milestone.

This is the example of a project in constant evolution, gaining more and more followers recently. It is one of the most mature roguelikes out there, and it is *raw* playability. (And beware Kiwis, I am serious)

The new Dude…Congratulations to Jeff for achieving this important milestone, and I hope we still have POWDER for long :)

Now, if you haven’t given it a look. GO FOR IT

Some Pics

powdermonsters.png powderascii.png

Another London Roguelike Meet

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The London RoguelikerEva Myers has posted about a roguelike meeting soon to take place over London. A good chance to meet fellow roguelikers

The next London roguelike meet will be at 14:00 on Saturday 26 January in the Pembury Tavern (http://www.individualpubs.co.uk/pembury/). Weplan to (e)at, (q)uaff and #chat about roguelikes and related topics. Look for people who are either wearing Nethack T-shirts, or just looking generally geek-like.

Is anybody up to arrange meeting in other latitudes? definitively over Poland and Finland, the Republics of Roguelikes.

A meeting on America would also be nice