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Discussion on game development

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Santiago Zapata:
I agree with what Kornel napisaled... developing a roguelike is hard, not only because of its randomness/LOS/pathfinding/AI, etc algorithms and technical challenges, but because of generating playable, interesting and balanced content, tasks which are often underestimated by the fellow roguelike developer which thinks he has the next major game on his pockets.

Also, injecting a theme into your players using a limited symbol set is an interesting challenge.

Karry:

--- Quote ---Depends on the engine quality. Commercial engines are usualy a lot better documented than their OS counterparts.
--- End quote ---
Documentation is good, but it is still a great deal of work to make it serve YOU, to do what you want, instead of what the "stock" version does. And writing a modern graphical engine yourself is not exactly best way to spend your time, these days.


--- Quote ---Compared to behavioral AI with danger-aware pathfinding for a roguelike? xP
--- End quote ---
Never seen any kind of "danger-awareness" in any roguelike...come to think of it - retreating enemies and the like are rarely seen altogether, and usually proclaimed as a key feature of a game.


--- Quote ---Physics engines (I guess you're refering to those) ARE a requirement since about late 2005.
--- End quote ---
Only for A-class shooters. Not really for any other genre. People are reluctant to use even something so old and simple as "Havok".


--- Quote ---Most people seem to think that a text-based application is necessarily simple to code.
--- End quote ---
Mostly because it is. However, roguelikes are not text-based applications. :)
Text-based game would be called Interactive Fiction. And those are very simple to code.


--- Quote ---The biggest trick is NOT to generate content. It's to generate PLAYABLE content.
--- End quote ---
I never said anything about content, my point was about coding skill.

Behrooz Wolf:
Does it really make sense to try to start a pissing contest about what/where/when/how/why code works with someone who might otherwise be spending that time cooking up a new public release? 

I'm surprised that there hasn't been a barrage of flames from people without beta access already. 

All I can say is mad props to anyone who spends their time working on games for free.  I know I don't have the time to do that anymore...

Rabiat:

--- Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz ---Actually the biggest problem with those games is content creation. Just look around on the thousands of projects that have been created that died ONLY because the lack of content.
--- End quote ---

Although the latter is very true, I can't get my head around the idea a 3D graphics engine would be 'much easier' to code than a random level generator for a roguelike.


--- Quote ---Roguelikes on the other hand have a way to cheat that problem -- they create content themselves. But that thing is realy NON-trivial, so that's why most roguelikes fail.
--- End quote ---

Content generation is a major challenge for roguelikes as much as any other game. Roguelikes imo don't actually create content themselves, they arrange content themselves. It is possible to build a pseudorandom content generator which produces random monster types, random terrain types and the like, but I'm not aware of any RLs so far that actually do that.


--- Quote ---The biggest trick is NOT to generate content. It's to generate PLAYABLE content.
--- End quote ---

Also, very true. But the point you made about 'difficulty' was about coding, not about content generation.


--- Quote from: Santiago Zapata ---developing a roguelike is hard, not only because of its randomness/LOS/pathfinding/AI, etc algorithms and technical challenges, but because of generating playable, interesting and balanced content, tasks which are often underestimated by the fellow roguelike developer which thinks he has the next major game on his pockets.
--- End quote ---

I agree. Developing a RL engine is much easier than developing a RL itself. But again, this difficulty is inherent to game design, not to code complexity.


--- Quote from: Karry ---
--- Quote from: Rabiat ---Most people seem to think that a text-based application is necessarily simple to code.
--- End quote ---
Mostly because it is. However, roguelikes are not text-based applications. :)
Text-based game would be called Interactive Fiction. And those are very simple to code.
--- End quote ---

Now don't be pedantic. ;) You know I meant to say 'text mode application'. Your point was that RLs are relatively easy to code. The fact that IF is (usually) easy to code doesn't support that observation. My point was that lack of graphics often leads people to believe that an application is easy to code, where (especially in the case of RLs) they often disregard the complexity of level generators, AI, pathfinding, etc, either in terms of code or in terms of processing. Which isn't the same as saying that RPG/RTS/FPS are easier to code than RLs. They're not.

Karry:

--- Quote ---Your point was that RLs are relatively easy to code.
--- End quote ---
No. My point was that some people think that a roguelike developer is THE 1337 h@x0r, who thinks and talks in assembler with his peers, and the like.

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