From Hobbyist to
Full-time Roguelike Developer
Josh Ge
Background
- !CS
- Languages
- Freelance everything
Pre-2006
First Game
- Brother vs. Brother AI
- SRPG, not roguelike
- Learning experience
- ~10,000 hours
2006.2 ~ 2011.6
My Year of the Roguelike
- "Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup"
- Amazing genre never heard of
- Wanted to make one immediately
2011.6
Research!
@
Exploring Options
- All-time favorite
2011.6
X@COM
(XCOMRL)
- Roguelite
- Good starting point
- Technical/UX focus
2011.6 ~ 2013.12
Mods
- Battlescape fun
- Community + fan base
Branching Out
- New engine
- New game
- New tools
Rogue Engine X
- Based on SDL
- Fully object-oriented (C++)
- 32-bit color console
- Command-driven input processing
- Sound/music support
- Archived resource access
2011.11
7DRL
- BattleTech
- Thailand / Planning
2012.2~5
- Almost too ambitious
Cogmind
- Crazy week
- Two months
- Tournament
- "The End"
2012.2~5
- ASCII Art
- Other uses
2013.5+
Community
- Avoided social media
- Blogging
- Forums / Twitter
- Pulse of roguelike world
Roguelife
- @ + @ = @@@
- Now or never
- Made possible by previous years
- Turn 7DRL into a small game
2013.6
"A Small Game"
- Polished 7DRL, limited scope
2013.6 ~ present
Greater Goals
- Share methods to help devs
- Expand roguelike audience
1.0?
- Good reception
- Want impressive first commercial game
- Always more you can do
with a grand roguelike!
How?
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- Polish
- EXTREME
POLISH
- (Then polish some more)
Important Features
- Audio
- Accessible & Intuitive UI
- UX / Player convenience
- Eyescii candy
Audio
- Immersion
- ASCII + SFX + imagination
- >1,000 samples
Accessible & Intuitive UI
- Mouse support
- Drag-drop
- Context help
UX / Player Convenience
Auto-labeling
Inventory sorting
Smart inventory management
Data visualization
Tileset
- Accessibility
- ASCII characteristics
Pixels by @ThKasparrr
Particles & ASCIIplosions
Animated UI
(Gameplay)
"Working" so far...
- A first roguelike for many
- Reviewers see mix of old and new
- Lots more data on dev blog
You
- Resources
- Dedication
- Do it for the love of roguelikes!
