Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Episode 63: How to Make a Good 7DRL part 2

This is episode 63 of Roguelike Radio, where we continue our previous discussion on How to Make a Good 7DRL. Talking this week are Darren Grey, Tom Ford, Numeron, Eben Howard and Jeff Lait.

You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.




Topics discussed in this episode include:
 - The dangers of messing too deeply with procedural content and clever AI
 - Making what's special about your game stand out more
 - Using a single hit point model to keep your scope down and force some innovation out
 - The pros and cons of scope
 - Motivations for doing a 7DRL and what to expect to get out of it, and the sheer fun of the week
 - Why everyone thinks their own roguelikes were so highly rated (in modest terms, of course)
 - Having a good theme and name and not having them too generic or hard to search for
 - How much time to spend planning and thinking, and retaining flexibility for changes to plans during the week
 - Everyone's game plans for this year
 - What we'd like to see come out of the challenge this year
 - An encouragement to join in discussion on the #rgrd IRC channel


Join us next time for an episode on player challenges.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks yet again! Hopefully I'm ready to make a 'good' 7DRL now :P

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  2. Interesting you mentioned searching for "X@COM" on Google, Eben. I wonder how long ago that was, perhaps back in the earlier days? You said it was "the other day" but I've been following the term on Google for a while now and in recent months growing popularity of the game has brought it to the fifth spot on the first page of results, and "X@COM roguelike" even comes up in the search suggestions while typing in Google. For the longest time it had no idea what the '@' symbol was for, but seems to have figured it out now. Blogspot shows people arriving at the site by searching for "X@COM", but many more come by way of "XCOMRL". Perhaps even better, X@COM now also appears on the first page of search results for "X-COM" :)

    That said, I'd certainly agree about the ease of searching for a name being important for a game (or anything online...). The X@COM name is temporary, in any case, and will change once the game is "ready to be popular" :) Sometime this year or the next...

    On a side note, I remember being surprised that Rogue Basin allows an '@' symbol in page names.

    Good luck to everyone doing a 7DRL this year! Unfortunately I don't have the time I did last year to burn myself out for an entire week, family obligations will do a fine job of that without any help ;p

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    Replies
    1. It was about three weeks ago that I was searching for it, but it was on someone else's work computer.

      Specifically I was looking for a screenshot or somesuch to show him the gameplay and UI of it.

      Probably a failure on my part not to include the word "roguelike" in the search :(

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    2. Ah, yes, precisely what you should be doing at work :)

      I suppose not finding it isn't too surprising since Google does behave quite differently on different users' computers/locations, especially if logged in.

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  3. Note that if anyone is using Unity for their 7DRL I have several trial codes to offer out. E-mail me at darrenjohngrey at Hotmail.com if you want one!

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  4. Don't forget to check out the Retrospectives page at http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Retrospectives. Learn from those who have attempted the challenge before. And/or, share what you learned!

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