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Roguelikes: the Misnamed Genre
ZorbaTHut writes "I've been playing a lot of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup lately. It's a great example of a roguelike (and open source, too). But I can't stop thinking that perhaps 'roguelike' is the wrong term for the genre. 'Roguelikes aren’t about dungeons. They’re not about text-based graphics, or random artifacts, or permadeath. ... Roguelikes are about using an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges.'"
Roguelikes are about incomprehensible control schemes utilizing every single key on your keyboard, twice!
Diablo and its derivatives, Diablo 2 and Torchlight - are they Roguelikes?
Quite crude for roguelikes, but the generated landscape changing with each game, varied monsters, levelled dungeon with ability to backtrace, random-generated items, and generally quite a bit of roguelike elements...
I think the thing that could make them apart from the genre is lack of "turn-based" mode, kinda like an active pause - even entering the inventory does not pause. But is it enough?
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To the rest of us, rougelikes are just that, clones of rogue. Clearly Star Trek isn't a roguelike, yet it's "about using an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges.", no?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
"Roguelike" means "like Rogue", no more and no less. There's no need to try to seek some deeper meaning in there. If the game has top-down view, intricate RPG-like stats, but mostly consists of slaying things rather than heavy NPC interaction and advanced storyline, it's a roguelike. All of these are necessary components - e.g. Stonekeep is not a roguelike, because it's first-person.
As for the "new" definition in TFS/TFA, it's so vague as to be meaningless. Heck, it's broad enough to match contraption games (like Crazy Machines).
"I've been playing a lot of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup lately. It's a great example of a roguelike [short definition goes here]
Maybe im asking a bit much from slashdot though. who knows.....
Is it considered roguelike?
Its a dupe from an earlier submission that was not deemed fit to become a story
http://games.slashdot.org/submission/1543364/Roguelikes-The-Misnamed-Genre
So its actually someone writing a story and then spamming the slashdot submission to get it in here.
Sadly it's not better then the last time this sad story was submitted - can it please die - don't comment please.
Just saying it like it are.
The first thought that came to mind was "fucking hard". The next was RPG (that standa for "role playing game", not a term from a FPS that starts with "rocket").
Someone asked if Diablo is a "roguelike". Well, Yes? No.
The "roguelike" that I've played the most of is Nethack. Even when cheating outrageously (save scumming, fiddling with bones files, all the tricks in the book), I still can't win. It's just too fucking hard! But, I've played a lot of other RPGs (e.g. Exile and Avernum from Spiderweb Software), which are winnable.
Then again, Dwarf Fortress isn't exactly an RPG.
Maybe we need to stop putting everything into little boxes?
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'roguelike' simply means 'like rogue'. I think the poster has a problem with the term 'dungeon crawler', which indeed gives dungeons (and crawling :-) a little too much credit. But 'roguelike' seems like a perfect, if unhelpful, name for the genre.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
If you're not searching for the amulet of yendor, it doesn't count. It all started going wrong with nethack...
Roguelikes are games that are like Rogue both in game play and in appearance (IMHO graphical tiles and even isometric or 3rd person 3D are allowed, as long as it doesn't affect game play, though purists may disagree).
The summary tries to imply there's some deeper meaning behind the word, but really, there isn't.
Yeah, but that is how he coded it -- he pulled it out of his ass. And if you think how big and ugly tetris.sh would be.... I think it's as plausible an origin story for goatse-man as we're likely to get.
Pause isn't the same as turn-based at all. In a real roguelike, you get infinite time to consider your next move. And then you press a key and get exactly the move you wanted. This is the main reason why you can't have a multiplayer roguelike.
MAngband is a multiplayer version of Angband. If I remember correctly, it uses a tick system to handle actions. It's not quite real-time, so you have time to think, but not much. Everyone playing performs their actions and they all happen at the next tick.
The time between actions is configurable, so if you're hosting your own for friends you can make the game faster or slower, whichever is more comfortable to you. If you're accustomed to taking a long time between actions you'll have to readjust, but it works well enough and is fun without ruining the roguelike feel.
Nobody knows, much less cares, what "roguelikes" are.
Well, obviously "roguelike" means like a rogue. :-)
Of course a "roguelike game" might also be a game acting like this.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It seems to be an attempt to promote links to his blog, yeah.
The submitter didn't even bother including such details like yesterday's release of a new major version of Dungeon Crawl with a crapload of goodies. This is what I'd promote. Ok, ok, I do happen to be a member of the devteam so I might be a little biased too :p
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Hiya, Member of the Devteam!
What is Stone Soup and why did you folks make "DCSS" sound a lot like "DeCSS?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Why? Because simply finding the AoY deep in a dungeon is good enough? Let's not make it more difficult by requiring you to actually ESCAPE the pits of hell with the amulet. /sarcasm
I played plenty of rogue, nethack, moria, angband and even a little bit of larn back in the day. Nethack was far and away the best of them, balancing fear of insta-death, inside jokes, variability of game-play, etc. However, moria and angband were solid games in their own right. I particularly enjoyed how easy it was to fiddle with angband without actually touching code. All items/monsters/etc. were defined in plain-text config files.
You know when Spelunky is described as a roguelike, there's some serious issues with genre naming. Defining is a roguelike is pretty simple. Dungeon crawler - saving = roguelike. It's certainly a far better definition than "...an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges." Um... you could say the same about platform games or almost any other genre of game for that matter when you first play them. And the "toolkit" itself isn't unpredictable - even if the items are randomly generated, their behavior and properties are certainly defined.
Other genres are similarly confusing. Like RPG video games - they are actually strategy games. It's the fantasy settings they have that has lead them to be lumped in with real RPGs like D&D and its ilk. We needn't complicate matters further by coming up with vague definitions and proceeding to pat ourselves on the back as we confuse the heck out of everyone.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
That the term "roguelike" is vague is a well-known fact, but there are definitions around much better than the one in the article: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=What_a_roguelike_is
The distinguishing features of roguelikes are random world generation, permadeath, complexity of item interaction, RPG-like stats, killing scores of monsters, grid-based motion, turn-based mechanics and arguably ASCII interface. A game may be a roguelike and not have all of these, but if it has, say, all but two, it is undoubtedly a roguelike.
The reasoning in the article that leads into calling "Super Smash Bros Brawl" a roguelike is just ludicrous. Of course there is no limit to how one can redefine a term, but one should not expect to be taken seriously after saying that every animal with four paws should be called a dog. Saying that "Super Smash Bros Brawl" is a roguelike because it is complex in some way goes against the common use of the word. The author of the article should find a different name for what he means.
ToeJam&Earllike
Roguelikes are about using an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges
I thought rouguelikes were for proving I had more of Teh Nerd than the next guy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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I've never had my pawns mine metal in chess before.
I have been rather disappointed with the lack of rogue-likes on handheld devices such as the Palm. Blackberry, Android, et al. The early reasoning was that there was not enough memory and processing power on a handheld to handle nethack. But that can't be true anymore today. I mean nethack is an old game, having been played on 486s. Handhelds today have a lot more power than that and more memory than my first 486's hard drive (especially when the handheld is paired with a flash memory card).
I've tried Dweller, and it's a nice, short, easily winnable, small feature set, but random levels game. I've tried some of the others and they aren't even up to Dweller's feature set. How hard would it really be to port nethack to these devices? (Hard enough I suppose, as it hasn't been done yet.)
He's hallucinating.
There are several ports of NetHack on Android and iPhone. But in any case just search in the market places / app stores of your device. Don't expect an official version from the DevTeam.
But especially with NetHack the amount of keys normally used is a real problem for a good port. NetHack's interface isn't easily translated on a hand held device.
You might want to try POWDER for a NetHack inspired roguelike that has been designed specifically for running on consoles. Which made it much easier to port to handhelds and smartphones.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
Is it really a misnamed genre if no one has heard of it?
"Like" implies "more or less". Don't you know SQL?
In SQL, LIKE is an infix operator that takes a pattern as its second argument. To continue your analogy, the article is about nailing down the pattern of what kinds of interactions are "like Rogue".
I have been rather disappointed with the lack of rogue-likes on handheld devices such as the Palm. Blackberry, Android, et al. The early reasoning was that there was not enough memory and processing power on a handheld to handle nethack. But that can't be true anymore today. I mean nethack is an old game, having been played on 486s. Handhelds today have a lot more power than that and more memory than my first 486's hard drive (especially when the handheld is paired with a flash memory card). I've tried Dweller, and it's a nice, short, easily winnable, small feature set, but random levels game. I've tried some of the others and they aren't even up to Dweller's feature set. How hard would it really be to port nethack to these devices? (Hard enough I suppose, as it hasn't been done yet.)
Isn't the fact that handheld devices don't have proper (or any but software) keyboards somewhat of a drawback?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I dunno, the keyboard on my Blackberry is pretty darned decent...
The best mobile port of nethack I've played is for the DS. Requires a flash cart, but it's really nice. Much better than the wince and ios ports, imo.
The DS is a pretty good platform for roguelikes. Shiren the Wanderer, Izuna, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeons are commercial roguelikes. Shiren's probably closest to the form.
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The hardware keyboard on my LG Ally makes playing the android port of nethack rather pleasant. Both the GP and you have need of purchasing cluefullness.
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Play rogue
If you play another game, and it seems a lot like rogue, then it's roguelike.
> Don't expect an official version from the DevTeam.
Actually, don't expect anything from the nethack dev team. The last release was on 8. December 2003. It's as close to stone dead as a project that famous can reasonably get.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
> Don't expect an official version from the DevTeam.
Actually, don't expect anything from the nethack dev team. The last release was on 8. December 2003. It's as close to stone dead as a project that famous can reasonably get.
You don't have to tell me :-)
That's why I started that NetHack fork that is linked in my sig.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
Need to turn on sigs again.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Or spelling. :-/
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