Dweller 1.8.3. Let's make a Java roguelike! - rec.games.roguelike.development. How to Write a Roguelike in 15 Steps. Bay 12 Games: Dwarf Fortress. 02/06/2019 Various consolidation and small moves to start the month. I traced accounts for embezzlement networks and smoothed out some rough edges there, and made sure the mercenary groups based on organized religions (as opposed to generic worship) functioned correctly. I also fixed some frequency issues with religions and updated the November update to temple profaning to make it compatible with upcoming religious strife. Ruining random temples no longer matters to the deity. In order to be cursed, the act must be against a god the offender worships, for some specific reason (how this manifests in post-worldgen is TBD, but at a minimum it can just check the worship of, say, a tantrumer -- curse one way, religious tension the other.)
In order to avoid werebeasts and vampire curses exploding like popcorn during religious riots, something had to give, and in general, making the curse stories a little more personal seemed appropriate now. COLUMN: @Play: The Eight Rules of Roguelike Design. ['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.] Back in November, in the previous @Play column, I mentioned a number of proposed rules of roguelike design, and promised soon to describe them. It's taken a bit longer than I expected, but here they are.
I call these rules for rhetorical purposes only. I don't think there are any inviolate laws of game design. But given we are talking about roguelikes, there are certain properties that have been important to the genre. Maybe not to all roguelike games; some of these have to do with designing a good item identification system, for instance, and many of the more recent games do not use that. I'm fairly outspoken in my appreciation for item-ID systems, so please calibrate your wonk-o-meter appropriately. I use the term "reasonable play" several times here. Of course game design is not a science. So here is a list of eight rules. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.