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[Pixelulsar]

A space roguelike would be cool, maybe one where you can explore and go to different space stations to steal find treasure.  If it is set in space then it should have more long range gun or laser based combat unlike the usual ones that are more melee based. Could make it a neat game.

[eigenbom]

See DoomRL to see long range RL combat in action

[VortexCortex]

Well, it seems most folks (including myself) like the idea of a Roguelike.  However, that could cover a pretty broad range of gameplay.   Assuming that's the genre chosen (not that I'm saying it is), the features would need to be proposed and decided upon before any real work is done, or even just to decide between this roguelike design, or another competing design.

It's not required that anyone have experience with a roguelike to continue, but just FYI here's what Wikipedia says about the genre:

The gameplay elements characterizing the roguelike genre were explicitly defined at the International Roguelike Development Conference 2008. Some of the "high value factors" used in this definition include:

    Roguelike games randomly generate dungeon levels, though they may include static levels as well. Generated layouts typically incorporate rooms connected by corridors, some of which may be preset to a degree (e.g., monster lairs or treasuries). Open areas or natural features, like rivers, may also occur.

    The identity of magical items varies across games. Newly-discovered objects only offer a vague physical description that is randomized between games, with purposes and capabilities left unstated. For example, a "bubbly" potion might heal wounds one game, then poison the player character in the next. Items are often subject to alteration, acquiring specific traits, such as a curse, or direct player modification.

    The combat system is turn-based instead of real-time. Gameplay is usually step-based, where player actions are performed serially and take a variable measure of in-game time to complete. Game processes (e.g., monster movement and interaction, progressive effects such as poisoning or starvation) advance based on the passage of time dictated by these actions.

    Most are single-player games. On multi-user systems, scoreboards are often shared between players. Some roguelikes allow traces of former player characters to appear in later game sessions in the form of ghosts or grave markings.

    Roguelikes traditionally implement permadeath. Once a character dies, the player must begin a new game. A "save game" feature will only provide suspension of gameplay and not a limitlessly recoverable state; the stored session is deleted upon resumption or character death.

That said, it's OK (even encouraged) to diverge from previously designed games (see eigenbom's mention of

).

Here's some of the currently suggested ideas:

• on an island, based around survival?
• instead of always being in a dungeon you could explore a world.
• Roguelike... in spaaaaaaace!
• long range gun or laser based combat
• It has to be easy to mod.
• It can't really have a story ... without some sort of director.
• It has to be 2d.
• easy to make art for.
• tile based (my suggestion)

RE: the last two points: Roguelikes are typically easy to make art for, even simply substituting ASCII / ANSI text for graphics.  However, in my experience, while the ASCII/ANSI route is neat, it's also more complex than a simple tile engine (don't have to efficiently encode ANSI escapes).  A faux textmode tileset could be used if that look is desired.

That still leaves a lot to discuss.
For instance, Would there be procedurally generated levels, or be exclusively hand-crafted, or a mixture of both.  If a mixture: where would procedural and hand-crafted zones exist -- Procedural "dungeons" only, or procedural parts of an overworld too?

What level of randomization would there be?  Randomized quests, randomized item effects vs descriptions / images?  Eg: Green leaves could heal one game, then red potion could heal the next?   Would the world be procedurally generated but static?  Eg: generated world that's the same each play for near infinite exploration + saves to focus more on shared exploration and discovery? You can't very well tell someone to go experience some neat event in a fully randomized world...

Would there be permadeath?  Would there be limited save/continue system?  Perhaps a tradeoff could be made between permadeath and saves so that a "magic seed" number would allow you to re-play or share the generated parts of the world with others (you could tell folks to play world 1234 then go somewhere in the game to experience what you had before).

Would the combat be turn based or real-time or some sort of time dialation while deciding the next action, etc.   Real-time action would be more akin to Action RPGs.

If tile-based graphics are used do any tiles animate?  Do the character, items, and/or enemies have animation.  Is the character customizable?  Can you level up?  How?  Do monsters level up / get harder or easier or stay the same as you return to a visited area?  Do monsters spawn randomly, do THEY have permadeath? -or- do the monsters respawn each time you enter the area?  Some mixture of these?

One of the things about rougelikes is that they have a steep learning curve and some have rather unintuitive controls.  If a graphical engine is used you could have hotkeys as well as menus to make actions more discoverable.  Even so, roguelikes with randomized item effects and monster weaknesses, etc, retain a steep learing curve each time you die and restart (this is even part of their appeal to some).  Think on that when making design choices.

Once the particulars and the scope is better defined it will be easier to see what tools (if any) or engine must be created (or utilized) to build the game.

[koiwai]

World exploration is a very interesting idea. Simply because this route is rather convenient, when several people are involved: Say, we have a world with 5-10 islands. Given that the basic engine exists: Each island requires unique map/dungeon generation, or pre-designed maps, unique items and NPCs. It can be done in parallel by different teams. Moreover, you can give your favorite flavour to your part of the world.

Even though I'm not a fan of all those fantasy goblins & kobolds rls, fantasy world is still the most viable choice, imo.

I will be really interested in doing programming/art, if the game will be compilable in linux.

[Impmaster]

Let's keep the level generation the same between each island. That way, we don't have several different games all in one. We could maybe change the tilesets and objects in the levels, though.

Does anyone still make games in java? It seems like it might be good for this project, with the whole cross-platform thing, and the fact that it is easier to learn than C++.

[VortexCortex]

I still make Java software, but nowadays I use C for my cross platform desktop game coding (Lin/Mac/Win).

However, were I going to make a modular and easy to develop for tile engine I'd go with HTML5 + JavaScript.  It's performance would be good enough for roguelikes, and there's no toolchain setup to get started developing: Just point your (not ancient) browser and notepad at some text files, no compiler required.  The code would then be open source by default as well.

IMO, HTML5 Audio isn't quite up to snuff for something with tons of sounds playing at once in close succession (eg: a shoot 'em up), but for something simple like a roguelike it would handle music and sound effects fine.  Flash is fine too, and has much less sound issues, but I personally don't use it.  When the audio tag was announced I added support for HTML5 audio to a pacman clone.  There's a few issues I haven't revisited to iron out, but it's generally OK.  The game crashes some chrome/chromium browsers because it uses over 2500 image elements -- It was made before canvas existed, so the graphic engine needs to be overhauled.  Never bothered updating it for IE, but it seems to still work OK in Firefox.

Another thing to consider: Some folks are wary about running Java or .EXEs from folks they don't know, but they'll point a browser at a webpage without a care in the world.  Most browsers support localStorage too so you can have multi-meg persistent saved world data too.

If you wanted to use HTML5/JS then I might be able to locate the HTML4 tile-based editor I wrote to make those snackman levels with.  It uses marching squares to automatically select the proper tiles for making curves / T's etc, so you just "paint" with walls for example, and it stitches things together.

JavaScript might not be the best choice for very computationally intense stuff.

[Impmaster]

Hey guys, just one thing. I know someone said that they were tired of having roguelikes set in dungeons, and that they wanted to explore something. But if we don't have limits on where the characters can go, the world will be really boring. Most of it will be forest or something, and because it is turn-based, you will move even slower. I suppose you could make the forest a huge dungeon, but without walls or anything, you would just fall upon goblins encampments or something littering the forest.

TL;DR: No open world exploring.

[Ant]

Well you could make it both. So for example you could choose to explore the randomly generated open world hoping to uncover dungeons and what-not, or when you're in a settlement you can choose to accept missions which fast-travel you to the area.

[koiwai]

Well you could make it both. So for example you could choose to explore the randomly generated open world hoping to uncover dungeons and what-not, or when you're in a settlement you can choose to accept missions which fast-travel you to the area.

I like this.

Though I see Impmaster's concerns. But I think that if the world is fun, then one huge dungeon is ok, e.g. Cataclysm is an open world roguelike, and it is a nice game.

However, large worlds have some problems with simulation bounds: what part of the world must be simulated around the player? What if the player wants to build a base with traps and stuff like that? And do you have to simulate that base, while the player is far away from it?.. So, somehow the world must be bounded, even if it is open world. Any creative and original solutions?

Player can have open world experience, even if the world is not particularly persistent and really consists of separate zones. So, in some sense, it is technically made of dungeons, but still feels like an open world. Some zones like cities can be more persistent than others.

[VortexCortex]

Typically in a roguelike you only see the areas you've explored already, and there's a sort of darkness or fog-of-war so don't see monsters and such that aren't in your current view area.   You could simply expand the visual range to cover a wider area in the above ground area and have a smaller limited field of view in the dungeons.

Still undecided is whether the world will be different every play, or procedurally generated as you go from the same seed each play -- everyone sees the same game.  IMO, the latter is a better choice if you want to add manual content.

To start with you can let the entire world be procedurally generated, and in the game editor you can move to some place, have the game procedurally generate the area, then manually modify the area to your liking to blend manual creations with the randomized world (for cities and what-not).

Prior to rendering a section of the world, the engine could look to see if that area ID has any manually created world data, and if not then it would generate the area procedurally.  This would allow you to add variety to the gameworld while also having it be an open world exploration game.   The dungeon entry points could then be fixed to the world map: dictated by pseudo-random or manual placement.

The dungeons themselves could also take advantage of the same random w/ manual patches design.  Say, the 7th level of a certain dungeon was built by hand to have some quest item, but those above and below are randomly generated -- getting that quest item could still be different each play if the dungeons are different each time, but the overworld is procedural yet consistent between plays.

Additionally, you can stop processing the logic for actors / traps / collision, etc for things that are too far away (say 2 dungeon floors up, or down, or two screen areas distant in the overlands.  That's how most scrolling games work.

Edit: Different tilesets can be part of the procedural generation, but they would then all need to exist prior to generating the overlands -- Adding a tileset would change the world, maybe make a city stand out from the surroundings it once blended into.

What of settings?  If different tile-sets are allowed then you could have a "spaceport" in one area and castles/dungeons in another.  You could even have the regions pit against each other Tech vs Magic is a classic RPG trope.  Kind of like the real world has with 1st and 3rd world nations...

Any idea for a name?

Edit2:

What if the player wants to build a base with traps and stuff like that? And do you have to simulate that base, while the player is far away from it?.. So, somehow the world must be bounded, even if it is open world. Evil Any creative and original solutions?

I'm not sure if "building a base" is within the scope of a roguelike...  I was under the impression that playing and building the world would be different activities.  However, aside from just not simulating things that are far away, other MMORoguelikes simulate the entire world on a server, and clients only directly affect the part they're in.  I have a bit of experience with emulating the appearance of time, actually, check this thread.

[koiwai]

What if the player wants to build a base with traps and stuff like that? And do you have to simulate that base, while the player is far away from it?.. So, somehow the world must be bounded, even if it is open world. Evil Any creative and original solutions?

I'm not sure if "building a base" is within the scope of a roguelike...  I was under the impression that playing and building the world would be different activities.  However, aside from just not simulating things that are far away, other MMORoguelikes simulate the entire world on a server, and clients only directly affect the part they're in.  I have a bit of experience with emulating the appearance of time, actually, check this thread.

Thanks for the link. I think, I overestimated importance of simulating things, which are far away. It's just somewhat important in my current project, so I falsely extrapolated..

Even though building bases is not in the scope of RLs, in a persistent open world player can end up with a base at least in a rudimentary form like a house or chest surrounded by traps. Anyway...


About the setting. IMHO, it is nice to give designers some freedom, if there is a conviencing story that links different worlds together. Diablo II was fun because settings were changing.

[VortexCortex]

Even though building bases is not in the scope of RLs, in a persistent open world player can end up with a base at least in a rudimentary form like a house or chest surrounded by traps. Anyway...

Ah, no, I agree with you.  I wasn't trying to say there shouldn't be bases, just that it might become more than just a simple roguelike if there were.

About the setting. IMHO, it is nice to give designers some freedom, if there is a conviencing story that links different worlds together. Diablo II was fun because settings were changing.

Ah that's easy: You play as Devin McIndie, a part-time game developer who has just been hit by a bus and is suddenly re-playing his unfinished game worlds in the various visions that flash before his eyes... 

Eventually the players get drafted into service of helping us build the game worlds -- That's when the plot twist happens, we PM them a message IRL to let them know, "You're actually in Hell, and you'll be slaving away in these pixel mines forever due to infinite feature creep!  Bwaha haa ha!"   

On a less serious note: Magic has returned to the world along with various beasts of yore.  The magic users scoff at those who still toil away with only their inferior technology, while the non-magical purists fear magic -- not for its power, but because it had once left the world and could do so again.  Craft some conflict and and overarching tale about discovering the source of magic. Maybe for a climax, defeat (or get defeated by) C'thulhu whos half awake eldrich dreams have bled over into the world imbuing twisted souls with dark powers and generally weirding up the livestock.

Alternatively: Whelp, the Dinosaurs tried to warn us with records written in stone, but we just fought petty oil wars until the next big earth ending meteor was detected.  Too late to stop the meteor there's only once chance -- A dangerous breakthrough in temporal sciences could send a warning back in time to avert the disaster.  ::Blam:: The experiment goes awry and parts of every continent are transported diagonally back in time and sideways into an alternate dark-age dimension that has magic.  Cue the pan-dimensional Uber jet-lag.

Or, perhaps the tech-advanced folks are aliens who've crash landed on a primitive planet where the inhabitants seem to possess even more advanced technology: The ability to control the energies of the universe without so much as a single machine.  "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

If there's any element you want to have that needs explaining via story it's simple to just make one up.  Writers really have no problem inserting Zombies, Aliens, Norse Gods, Ware-Rabbits, Super Heroes, ancient evils to their heart's content -- Welcome to how the sausage of modern media is made.

[tnr]

I kind of like the alternative option better. It has a Chrono Trigger/Zelda feel to it, which I love.

....

And suddenly I wonder how Zelda elements would translate to a roguelike. Probably pretty well.

[VortexCortex]

I kind of like the alternative option better.

Ah, well the thing to remember here is that almost anything I say is said half jokingly, but that means it's OK to take it half serious and run with that too.  Life's too short to be serious ALL the time.  50% is nice ratio, IMO. 

Here's the thing, Everyone likes the potential a community project has, but it's just not feasible unless it's done right, and by right, I mean where you can slack off for years and others can seamlessly pick it up and run, like a TIG World thread.

Besides, it's actually against the rules to post in Feedback

4. Only post if you have a build for players to test. Use Devlogs for games earlier in their development, Workshop for feedback on non-game aspects (like screenshots, trailers, sites, etc), and Announcements for finished games. Feedback is to receive direct feedback for the playtesting part of your game.

So, really should stop posting in this thread.  That includes YOU, me!

... Okay. 

I went ahead and started a Devlogs Thread.  Please contain any further discussion in the Devlog thread, so that we
DO NOT BUMP THIS TOPIC.