7DRL Challenge

In the spirit of a 2009 7drl post, here are some ideas for your seven day roguelikes.  I will continue to update this list as I get more ideas.  Have fun:

http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=320.0

Army roguelike – Instead of being a single @, you are the commander of an army.  Instead of  hp, you have masses of recruits, and attacking (either with the melee force of your army or using ranged troops to engage from a distance), causes casualties instead of lost hp.  Find recruits, and drive back enemy armies to achieve victory!

Bunny roguelike – You are a rabbit, trained in the ancient art of bun fu.  Fight the foxes, dogs, and other predators that are attacking your hole.  The boss is the determined human exterminator who came to flush out the rabbit extermination.

Escape the light - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7a8hmoOsx0
You cannot survive in the light, so run right as fast as you can.  Killing monsters and using items will give you a boost of speed to endure.  How long can you last?

Evil Overlord Roguelike – A horde of adventurers are attacking.  To stop them from coming, place towers that shoot ranged attacks, camps that house attacking monsters, and traps.  Come out personally to deal with the invaders and collect their treasure, but if you die, it takes time to respawn.

Immobile wizard roguelike – You are a wizard rooted to the spot.  Blast the legions of foes coming to kill you!

Invulnerability roguelike – You are immune to death.  However, you still have a food clock.  Enemies will try (ineffectively) to kill you, but they may try to prevent you from getting your food…

Internet Meme Roguelike – Make a roguelike based off of internet memes/characters (but it cannot be for mature audiances only please)!  You could play as Nyan Cat, or Annoying Orange, or Hatsune Miku.  Items could be a Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Noms, or cake (but its a lie!).  Enemies could be Trollface, animals that are really Nope! Chuck Testa!.  The adventure could take place at candy mountain…

Parallel Universe Roguelike – You have multiple copies of yourself, existing on different z planes but always the same x and y of a dungeon that may or may not be similar.  Be careful, as you can only move or attack if none of your doubles can bump into a wall, and damage is shared among your parallel selves.

Philosophy RPG – A roguelike where everything is a reference to something philosophical.  For instance, the dungeon is plato’s cave.  You attack with the four Aristotelian elements.  Enemies could be nihilists or something.
The following is a good source of ideas:
http://dresdencodak.com/2006/12/03/dungeons-and-discourse/

Positive/negetive energy roguelike – You have a positive/negetive energy bar.  Casting spells of the appropriate element will bias the bar towards that element, and make those spells more powerful, while reducing in power spells of the opposite element.  Positive energy spells provide effective healing and protection spells, while negative energy spells provide powerful offensive attacks. Be careful, as getting too far in either element will spell the death of your character.  A food clock and mana bar will balance this mechanic.

Possessor Roguelike – You are a lost soul, aiming to get to the bottom of a dungeon into the next life.  However, you can only hitch temporarily on recently deceased creatures.  Kill creatures, and you can slip under that creature’s skin.  This is like a disguise, some monsters will ignore it, but some may attack you on sight, so be careful!

Potion mixing roguelike – potions, when drunk, will have a temporary effect.  If you drink another while the effect of one is still going, a random positive or negative effect happens, sort of like nethack’s fountains.  It may be lethal, or both effects could cancel, or one of the effects could be permanent!  Ideas for effects: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20060401b

Warped time roguelike – While your movement is turn by turn, enemies will move in real-time.  You can take turns quickly in desperation, but doing so will deplete your Energy bar, and if it reaches 0, game over.

Weapon Stacking Roguelike – As you level up, you gain access to “connectors” that allow you to stack your weaponry, which means that each weapon on the stack can attack simultaneously.  Make insane weapon combinations to defeat the monsters.  You can also have armor stacking for an extremely silly roguelike.

Unfortunately, this blog has been getting quite a few spam registrations lately, even though I’ve installed reCAPTCHA and SFS plugins. So, for the time being, I’ve activated new user registration moderation—new accounts will have to be approved. I’ll try to approve genuine account requests as quickly as possible.

Again, if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to e-mail me@tomlarsen.org!

After much discussion, I abandoned the idea of a multiplayer roguelike with simultaneous turns.  Too much complexity, and too many issues.  I think simultaneously moving all the monsters is a good idea (controlled by a central intelligence, methinks?) but this can complicate things in multiplayer.  Could be a good idea for a seven day roguelike, if anyone is paying attention to this.

Anyways, I am going to implement a multiplayer roguelike that is both turn based and real-time.  If you are adventuring alone, or away from other adventurers, the game runs in either turn based or real-time (you choose).  If other players in combat are in fov, and at least one of these players is in combat with a monster or has not escaped, the game will shift to real-time, to allow both players to play with an equal footing.  The real-time shift will not end until all but one of these players has sufficiently escaped from this combat.  To address the problem of a player luring monsters to another idle player, I will provide an option to allow a player outside of combat to escape to safety.

One interesting idea I had for breaking the real-time mold is to implement a time manipulation style interface, similar to Achron’s.  Inside of combat, there will be a “final version” of the timeline, that is visible and completely modifiable at all times, which is essentially the “final game”.  However, players can go into the future to change things, and do cool things like send themselves back in time.  There will be “timewaves” that will propagate changes, and people will be able to see how their changes directly affect people in their Field of View.  To encourage players to manipulate the timeline in the future and not the past, there needs to be a reward, such as being able to bend the RNG in your favor.  The difference is that Achron used chronoenergy to limit editing of the “final version”, but this will not work in a multiplayer roguelike where being able to dictate your final actions is a crucial part.  However, before I get this running, I will need to create a working multiplayer game.

I know this might come off a little bit like I’m putting too much back story in but imagine it’s 2036 and dystopian Texas has split from the rest of the United States and now runs state sponsored executions on television with a twist — to escape death — you must make it out of the Citadel of a Texas Justice alive!  This will not be easy.

It highly increases the viewer ratings when a “Texas Runner” is gunned down by Texas Rangers and their companions in the Citadel of Texas Justice, thus ensuring Texas Justice has been served. You are the next convicted felon, or “Texas Runner” on the show. You’ll be given a felony or two to choose that might help or harm your ability to get out alive. Escape alive (yeah right!) or die (this) – at least you are ending your stay at the hellhole Lone Star Execution Camp you’ve been confined in one way or other.

Hopeful features

1. Char Creation
2. Explosives
3. Weapons
4. Consumables
5. 6 Random Grid Levels
6. Each level has a harder boss which allows char to level up some stats?

Basically Running Man the Roguelike.

I’ll be using Python+Libtcod 1.5.0 plus using some map/weapon/level creation code I’ve written for past/other projects.

Expect Windows/Linux binaries. I have no access to a Mac.

I just hope I don’t get busy at work that week (I shouldn’t…)

Initially, when I was brainstorming ideas for a roguelike, I thought it might be a good idea to try to make a 3D roguelike.  The problem with this idea is that it would add complexities to the system.  Still the idea of a magical-girl-esque roguelike game seems too tempting .  Guess its back to 2D.

For my 7DRL I plan to use libtcod.  I may use some starter code from the python tutorial to help me out.

However, I have a good idea: a multiplayer turn-based 7DRL with simultaneous turns (hope to include single player so that people don’t have to find a buddy).  I hope to work in the simultaneous turns to make an interesting strategic game.  I plan to automatically have the main application act as a server or client on an as needed basis.

Unfortunately, looking at past 7DRLs that tried multiplayer, it seems like every roguelike, except for one featured on roguetemple, failed in this regard.  I think I found a library that can help avoid this.  Please post your ideas for a multiplayer 7DRL, and the pitfalls I should avoid.  Unlike other contestants, I plan on starting the 7DRL on March 6th.  Testers are welcome once I start this and get the multiplayer functionality working.

I disabled new user registration a little while after 7DRLC 2011 took place because many spammers were creating accounts. With 7DRLC 2012 quickly approaching, I’m opening up registration again so that you can join and post ideas and suggestions!

If you have any questions or comments about this site, you can e-mail me@tomlarsen.org. (If you’ve forgotten the password to your account from last year, for example, I can reset it for you if you e-mail me from the address used in your profile here.)

—Amathalion Tom.

To quote at length from an e-mail posted by Jeff Lait on the rec.games.roguelike.development newsgroup:

What is a Seven Day Roguelike?

A Seven Day Roguelike is a roguelike created in seven days. This means
the author stopped writing code one hundred and sixty eight hours
after they started writing code.

--------------

A Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) can be written at any time. However, a
general agreement was reached that it would be fun to schedule a
specific week for a challenge. This allows the various authors to know
that others are also desperately tracking down a bad pointer reference
on the 167th hour.

The week has been chosen for the Seventh Annual 7DRL Challenge!

After an unscientific straw poll, the following scientific-looking
graph was generated:

Feb 25 - Mar  4: #########
Mar  3 - Mar 11: ##########
Mar 10 - Mar 18: ###################

A discursive analysis of this shows that the use of the # sign makes
for an aesthetically pleasing method for representing bar graphs.

The week for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge has been chosen!

Within the week of March 10th to March 18th, you are hereby challenged
to write a roguelike in 168 hours!

To participate, follow these simple steps:

1) Any time on March 10th or March 18th (as measured in your time
zone), post to rec.games.roguelike.development that you have started
work on your Seven Day Roguelike.
2) Write a roguelike.
3) After 168 hours, if you have completed a playable roguelike, post
your success to rec.games.roguelike.announce!  If not, post your lack
of results to rec.games.roguelike.development, where we will all
commiserate and agree that given a few scant more hours, it could
have been great.

Good Luck!

I will try to post a reminder message the Wednesday before the
challenge.

Just a note regarding point (1): I’m pretty certain Jeff meant “Any time on March 10th or March 11th.” The 18th is probably not the best day to start (unless you’re planning to make an out-of-challenge roguelike, that is).

I’m looking forward to this year’s challenge week, and I hope you are too!

Hello folks! I hope you’re well and enjoying the new year. Here are a couple of updates.

First, it’s time to decide when to have the Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge for 2012! So post the dates that you would prefer either (a) here or (b) on r.g.r.d. on r.g.r.d. (the rec.games.roguelike.development newsgroup).

Second, I’ve just updated the blog software and plugins. If you encounter any problems, e-mail me@tomlarsen.org.