The 7DRL competition starts tomorrow. Basically, if you are not familiar with it, you have seven days to implement a roguelike game.

My mudlib at an earlier stage had the beginnings of an alternative "move the cursor around" type interface and I am tempted to give it a shot to see how far I can take it, and my MUD code base into hosting a multiplayer roguelike game world.

Anyone else thinking of giving it a shot, whether with a MUD-based approach or not?

Could be fun. I may get involved if I have enough free time in the next week.

I couldn't possibly get involved in something like this: my 168 hours would be more like… 10, 20 at most. :smile: But it sounds fun and part of me is sad that I couldn't participate.

What are the rules regarding how much code you can start with?

As much as you want using whatever libraries you want, as long as you declare it on an honour based system.

I don't think that's really a whole week devoted to it, but rather the moments you can fit in. 20 hours is probably reasonable. I don't know that I have enough time to complete a game, but it is a good short term milestone that I can see will encourage me to expand my code base and will inspire me with ideas.

I'm entering (with a textmode game, not mud-based). I spend a lot of time in the RL community as well as muds. There's pretty much no limit to how much existing code you can use (as long as you declare it) and usually the games are quite modest in scope. However some of them are plain awesome.

You certainly don't need to spend the full week on it, I doubt many do. It's more about, to quote, 'knowing you're not alone in chasing down that bad pointer at the 167th hour'. Though that doesn't apply so much to us Python users. :wink:

edit: it's also recommended to have your basic game idea before you start the week.

Well that would give me all of a few hours to think about it, then! :wink:
I haven't thought about this at all in the past, really (designing a game in so short a time) so I might pass on this round and look into it the next time around.

I'm curious of how broad the concept of a rogue-like is.

It seems to be pretty flexible.

It seems like everyone is calling their game a roguelike these days really. However there was the Berlin interpretation at one of the international roguelike developer conferences somewhat recently, which you'll find linked on that page donky referenced. I think it breaks it down well.

That said there have been 7DRLs about all sorts of things. In one of them I think you were a Dad rescuing your kids from a....

It's noteworthy that this game was made by a dev of a very traditional RL, POWDER. So I don't think anyone (well, very few) would frown on a more unconventional entry.

This all seems rather subjective, like an exercise by some to assert their own preferred meaning on others. Sure some of the elite can get together and make a manifesto to try and redefine the natural meaning of a general term, but.. it's just a circle jerk.

The only rogue-like I've really spent any time on was Castle of the Winds series. And it wasn't a true rogue-like, I guess. Since it used tiled graphics.

I think tiles vs. textmode is low on the list in most definitions I've heard.

The Berlin thing was more of a joke than anything…I think they did it deliberately like that to get the people who do get concerned about that kind of stuff.


edit: also, DH – I think donky's timezone is ahead of most of us, so the 'official' US start time wouldn't be until Saturday/Sunday. I'm not starting until Saturday.

Hah, good catch. I didn't realise I had written tomorrow in my original post and wondered why DH only had a few hours left :lol:

Meh, wouldn't you know it. I go to make my commit my first change and suddenly google project hosting claims the action is forbidden. Insert hostility and expletives.

Well, the day after I started, I got notice there was a death in the family so I had to head out of town to engage in the usual related activities. But I did get a reasonable amount of the ANSI support done.

If you want to check it out, I will leave it up for a short time at: rmtew.dyndns.org 3000

You will need a telnet client that supports ANSI to a reasonable level. Windows Telnet works. Putty works. Press escape in game to get the menu that will let you quit, and look at the debug options (exploring what character sets your client lets the server choose, and whether your client supports switching to unicode mode).

I wish I had been aware of this. I've toyed around with making a roguelike a few times and things like this spark my creativity. :P

I see at least two people have logged in, although you were both using telnet clients that I had not tried. Was it working for you?

If you check out http://www.MudReading.com's Personal Blog section. Someone else (Kooneiform) also entered 7DRL and it looks like they came up just short with Bidden. The section on the 7DRL (and the whole blog really) is pretty interesting if you're interested in RL. It shows a very detailed process of designing it over the course of the 7 days. And the most recent post shows pretty much the whole outline! Maybe we should add an IF section here to the forums. 'course it's in python. So it's not for everyone ;)

Kooneiform is Idealiad, btw.

And yeah, Python – not for this crowd. People only know Ruby here. :tongue:

…Well then. Good stuff Idealiad! Love the blog :)