This is episode 84 of Roguelike Radio, where we discuss Nethack, on the 10th anniversary of its last release. Talking this episode are Darren Grey, John Harris, Jeff Lait, David Ploog, Patric Mueller, Derek Ray and Pasi Kallinen. You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.
Topics raised: - A history lesson from John Harris, and - What made the game so popular? How did it become so ubiquitous? - The influence on Nethack on all of roguelikedom, and the old hack/band split - What makes a game Nethacky? Interactions with everything (especially items), special cases, spoilers / learning the details, shop you can steal from... - Who are the devteam? Will there ever be a new version? - So many variants, with specific talk on Slash'Em, Nethack 4.0, UnNethack, SporkHack, and the interface-tweaked server version - Grind, and the onus on the designer to remove beneficial grind instead of leaving players to choose - Nethack's basis on D&D, including its many polearms (Gary Gygax loved them) - The difficulty in removing features from games and the reactionary nature of communities - Sokoban, grr!! - Gehennom! *yawn* - Nethack discussed as "the roguelike", both inside and outside the genre, such as in the That Was History's History of Rogue - The disconnect between what developers hate yet players don't mind or actively embrace. Many devs are disparaging of Nethack yet players are still playing it in droves to this day. - The toy/sandbox nature of Nethack, such that you can mess around in it a lot, giving the game extreme longevity - The dated interface (almost unchanged in 20 years!) Will there ever be a good mobile version? - The role of the alt.org server in keeping the community alive - Project management, leadership and design goals in a large game's development - Remembering the role of Izchak Miller - The future of Nethack..? Why do people keep playing? Is it now an unchanging piece of history?
Join us next time on Roguelike Radio for potentially an end of the year show!
Topics raised: - How it used to be viewed as a requirement to be a roguelike, or considered a roguelike element - Why do we still use ASCII? - ASCII as a retro aesthetic, much like pixel art - Developer freedom and ease of game design without graphics - Quickly parsing what's going on across the screen with an ASCII interface - How the Roman alphabet is something we grow up with and can recognise easily - Chinese or other symbols roguelikes aren't so easily parsed - Thinking through character sets, symbol/letter reuse, colour categorisation, rare colours, etc. Deciding what scheme you use at the start of game creation can be important. - Conventions across games, such as & meaning different things in Nethack and ADOM - Emulating the console in libtcod or the T-Engine or other graphical systems - Using Necklace of the Eye to improve the visuals of many ASCII games - The benefits of console games, such as ssh and accessibility to the blind, but the restrictions of trying to play them on modern systems (especially Windows) - The purity of ASCII in game design, and the artistic statement of using ASCII in the representation of the game's elements and mechanics - ASCII supporting procedural environments - many #s don't look so bad, but adding tiles requires more detailed decoration - Simple ASCII tiles have no decoration, no confusion over what are game elements - The danger of ASCII making it too easy to add new content, thus resulting in junk-filled games (though it can be great if you want a junk-filled game) - Disagreement over whether Brogue is beautiful or ugly - Making a clear interface (not always possible with just ASCII, such as no healthbars) - Deciding on a restricted colour palette (ColorSchemeDesigner is a handy tool) - Fonts! Why is there no Comic Sans roguelike?! Darren's recommendation: DroidSansMono - The chaos of ANSI / Unicode, and the danger of too much noise from extra characters - The difficulty in getting new players to accept ASCII - Hex in ASCII - The learning curve with ASCII games, both for new players and people switching between major games - The easy availability of excellent tilesets (such as the monochrome Oryx Roguelike set) making it harder for players to accept ASCII, especially when tiles can have functional advantages like showing weapon held - The @ Symbol in the New York Museum of Modern Art - The iconicism and neutrality of the @ symbol, letting you imagine whatever hero you like - ASCII art (Jeff hates it) - Kawa's ASCII Let's Play series
Join us next time on Roguelike Radio for a discussion of one of the giants of the genre - Nethack!
Show schedule: - Zeno's many projects and wide involvement in the roguelike community - Roguelike-playing history, including Valhalla/Ragnarok, ADOM and IVAN - RogueBasin, the rogueiest wiki around - Zeno's International Roguelike Database (IRDB) which pulls information from RogueBasin and lets users search for roguelikes by categories and leave ratings and reviews (it's great, go check it out!) - The mathematics behind Hydra Slayer and HyperRogue, and their development history - Vapors of Insanity, Zeno's attempt at an epic roguelike and the struggles to get players for the game - The history of Necklace of the Eye, the universal roguelike frontend that lets you play DoomRL as a FPS! - The integration of Necklace of the Eye into ADOM as a graphical frontend - Zeno's Roguelike Bundle, with NotEye included - Future plans for Necklace of the Eye as a roguelike hub and server - The lack of traditional hit points in both Hydra Slayer and HyperRogue, and the resulting original game design - Taking inspiration from Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) - Zeno wants more hacklikes!
Join us next time on Roguelike Radio for another procedurally generated topic!
Show schedule: - Mark's procedural puzzle design in Ultima Ratio Regum - Enjoying one's own procedurally generated puzzles - The various challenges involved in making interesting and involving procedural puzzles - The tradition of Sokoban in Nethack, mazes in games, and other "easy" but boring procedural puzzles that should be avoided at all costs - Aaron's experience of making straight puzzle games like Turnament - "Puzzle roguelikes" - games with low number of elements and deterministic mechanics, like Ending. At what stage does a roguelike feel puzzley? Where does the key difference still lie? - Risk, chance, decision-making in making something feel non-puzzley - When big puzzles become non-puzzley due to complexity - Brogue's puzzle-esque situations with various solutions - Integrating puzzle elements with the gameplay, and making puzzles solvable/breakable through regular game mechanics - Item identification and other elements of roguelike gameplay that have puzzle elements - Andrew gets a surprise vomit puzzle - Puzzle-based combat, a la Zelda-style bosses, with a shout-out to Rogue's Souls (a Dark Souls-based roguelike) - Always solvable = too predictable? Sometimes less exclusions make more interesting content. - The sense of agency in a game that reacts to your actions - Hiding the hand of the designer and keeping the puzzles unpredictable across games - Don't do sokoban levels. Just don't.
This is episode 80 of Roguelike Radio, where we talk about UnReal World, the decades old Finnish iron age survival roguelike. Talking this episode are Eben Howard, GameHunter and Sami Maaranen (creator of UnReal World). You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.
Show schedule: - Imagination in roguelikes as a rewarding experience and life in UnReal World - History of the game, with the old version available at http://www.unrealworld.fi/urw_devhist.html - Repercussions since the game became freeware / donations - LARPing and the possibility of UnReal World LARP rulebooks - Modding the graphics and game - The game's economy - Rate of feature adding caused by people and nature - Inspiration for Sami from roguelikes and other games - Danger, lack of hit points and combat mechanics - Stories told through the game's combat log - Music in the game and in Sami's life - A tribute to Errka, co-developer of UnReal World - Other games Sami has made - Future changes, such as UI overhaul and graphics update - UnReal World is the only official educational roguelike!
This is episode 79 of Roguelike Radio, where we talk about Mobile Roguelikes. Talking this episode are Darren Grey, Eben Howard and Tom Ford. Note that this is predominantly design-focused, and based mostly on experiences with Android roguelikes. You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.
Show schedule: - 2 years now since RLR started, woohoo! - How the mobile roguelike landscape has changed over the last year - Why mobile roguelikes are important - On-screen keyboard vs direct touching, and other control issues - Darren <3 Ending, Eben <3 Hoplite - 4-way vs 8-way on a touchscreen and fat fingers (and hex!) - Length of gameplay, small levels and dense experience - Changes in style of gameplay with mobiles while keeping to the general roguelike formula - Novel sources of inspiration like side-scrolling beat-em-ups - Size of grid squares (5mm x 5mm) - Size of map and visibility requirements, exploration, running away, short goals (short play time per level) - Auto-save on exit, including jumping out to the home screen (very important) - Information on restore is vital - Starting options (classes / race) and replayability - Difficulty in mobile roguelikes - Tom's mobile development experience - How to look good on a small screen, and the traditional problem of bad sprites in roguelikes - Some games mentioned: Dungeon Ascendance (Tom's Game), Powder on GB, Shiren on DS, Crawl on Android, Ending, TraqHack, Brogue X on Android, Hoplite, WazHack, Dungeon Ho!, Rogue Miner, Dweller, Dungelot, Cardinal Quest, Pitman, Elder Signs Omens, Pixel Dungeon, Lost Labyrinth, Tower of The Sorcerer, Desktop Dungeons, Kairosoft, Martin's Descent - Platforms talked about: Unity, libGDX, Monodevelop, CocosX, LIBTCOD, Rot.js, SquidLib
Join us next time on Roguelike Radio for an in-depth look at Unreal World, the Iron Age Finland survival roguelike.
Show schedule: - "German-style Board Games" (aka Eurogames and Designer Board Games) - decision-based games with heavy detail on mechanics design - Features these share with roguelikes and why game designers find them interesting - Ido's work on designing a board games crossing rock/paper/scissors-esque mechanics with checkers - Random map creation in games like Carcasonne and Mage Knight, and evolution of the play area in Hive and Hey, That's My Fish - The emphasis on design and game mechanics in board games - Restrictions on design in board games, like only using low numbers - Having simple base rules with many caveats and extra effects, and the problems of trying to do this in roguelikes - Narrative games and co-operative games - Full view of the map - does it change the game significantly? Is it better? - FTL winning Boardgamegeek Indie Game of the Year 2012
