4:40 am

I started recording the latest Roguelike Radio podcast (on Imbroglio) at 4:40 am in order to accomodate both UK and US based guests which is why I have such a slow start to the show.

One point I touched on is how Imbroglio has the ingredients of a roguelike with a very different set of outcomes, which justifies Michael Brough's labelling of it as 'roguelike?'. This missing piece is close to the tactics versus strategy debate but it doesn't fall on the same axis. It's also close to a puzzle form but it isn't just procedural puzzle solving. I'd like to label it "improvisation" because it feels very much like improvisation (in theatre) or how I imagine musical improvisation plays out. Imbroglio has improvisation, but the core design discourages it in some of the ways we talked about (at the level I'm playing at).

I don't think I've seen anyone write clearly about improvisation in depth in the context of game play (Feel free to point me to articles I may have missed) except perhaps relating to Far Cry 2. More significantly, I'm not sure if there are games which have improvisation as their primary mechanic (Spelunky?) and I'd be interested in hearing about whether there are any games which do so.

Interview with David Ploog

If you're at all interested in game design, you should listen to David Ploog (former lead designer of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup) get interviewed by the Roguelike Radio team.

Roguelike Radio - Episode update

We're doing so many episodes and interviews for Roguelike Radio, I'm not going to bother post updates to the blog any more - it's getting too hard to keep up. I'm just going to repeat a comment I made on that site:

I think it is worth pointing out in the last 2 months we have recorded and released 12 separate podcasts (9 episodes and 3 interviews, not counting the spoilers bonus content for 100 Rogues). That's an absolutely incredible amount of output. We need to pat ourselves on the back.

Of course, we've released another episode since then, and are in the process of lining up at least one more interview... and it's been my week off.

The first rule of Band club

[9:37:22 AM] Andrew Doull: its probably a good thing i had babies screaming at the time that jeff was talking about his ultimate roguelike

[9:37:53 AM] Andrew Doull: because i didn't want to point out that'd explain the fermi paradox

[9:38:24 AM] darrenjohngrey: Uh... it would?

[9:39:08 AM] Andrew Doull: millions of civilisations not travelling into space because someone writes a game too good to not spend every second playing it :)

[9:39:26 AM] darrenjohngrey: (New RL idea - FermiRogue, where you fight an evil Fermi and his various subatomic particles)

[9:39:59 AM] darrenjohngrey: I don't think RLs will ever achieve that  :P

[9:40:09 AM] Andrew Doull: don't be so sure

[9:40:51 AM] Andrew Doull: now would be about the time to explain i belong to a secret centuries old organisation dedicated to preventing such a thing from happening

[9:40:59 AM] Andrew Doull: but of course, no such organisation exists

[9:41:06 AM] darrenjohngrey: Ah, hence your support for band mechanics!

[9:41:12 AM] Andrew Doull: :)

[9:41:14 AM] darrenjohngrey: Trying to make the whole genre unpopular  ;P

Roguelike Radio - Episode 8 (Progression Systems)

Has been up for a short while now at Roguelike Radio. I've been too busying playing bRogue to be posting this in a timely fashion - as you may guess from listening to the podcast. However, it appears that I was not busy enough not to have anything to say. I was also involved in episode 7, on 100 Rogues, which I neglected to post earlier.

We're on iTunes so please rate and comment on the podcast there to help spread the word.

Brogue 1.5 released

I seldom mention other roguelikes being released, but I think this one is a little special. We recently discussed Brogue on Roguelike Radio and the first line of the Brogue 1.5 change log caught my eye.

Dungeons now include interactive “quest rooms,” which include lock-
and-key puzzles, collapsing/flooding terrain, hidden items, elaborate
traps, challenges, boss monsters and more. 

I asked Pender the obvious question 'How random are these? Will you get the same lock and key puzzle in the same room every time?'. His response has got me genuinely excited:

Pretty random, and definitely not. The level geography is generated
randomly, and then the quest room function takes over, picks a quest
room type (of which there are currently 17, defined by the data in a
master blueprints table) and scans the level to find discrete areas
that meet certain requirements of that quest room -- e.g. a dead-end
area of certain size range that is dominated by a single chokepoint
cell. Then it adapts that area to serve as that kind of quest room.  

He goes on to describe a nifty flood trap (that you may want to avoid reading to not spoil yourself) which is completely dynamically generated and triggered when you get a key from the centre of the room. And the puzzles can have dependencies on each other:

So the key that you take from the room, assuming you escape, will be
used to unlock a door elsewhere on the level. These locked rooms can
be nested within each other, as can the rooms that guard the keys, and
it is always possible to unlock them all in a single game

For the full explanation, change log and download links, see the Google groups thread.

Roguelike Radio - Bonus Episode (Interview with Ido Yehieli)

Is now up at Roguelike Radio.

I've been trying to persuade my fellow podcasters that we should be calling these bonus episodes @sides, to little effect.

Roguelike Radio - Episode 6 (Dungeons of Dredmor)

Is up at Roguelike Radio.  It's another episode where I say I really enjoyed the game and then spend most of the episode bringing up flaws and making over the top statements that I already regret making. I'm going to follow up with a blog post to clarify some of the stuff I'm talking about.

We're on iTunes so please rate and comment on the podcast there to help spread the word.

Roguelike Radio - Episode 5 (Frozen Depths)

Is up at Roguelike Radio.  I really enjoy how effective Frozen Depths is at conveying its theme.

We're on iTunes so please rate and comment on the podcast there to help spread the word.

Roguelike Radio - Episode 4 (DoomRL)

Is up at Roguelike Radio. Episode 3, if you missed it, was on Brogue last week - I was on holiday in Fiji so wasn't able to attend. Luckily, this meant I was able to enjoy the first podcast dedicated to roguelikes I've had the pleasure of simply listening to.

We're on iTunes now so please rate and comment on the podcast there to help spread the word.

Roguelike Radio - Episode 2 (Desktop Dungeons)

Is up at Roguelike Radio.

We're on iTunes now so please rate and comment on the podcast there to help spread the word.

Roguelike Radio - Episode 1 (Cardinal Quest)

Is now up at Roguelike Radio.

I've had a blast putting this together with Darren and Scott.