Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate • Hacker News Board

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#21

Post by platz » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

andolanra wrote: post #19

otikik wrote: post #2

If you are interested in both roguelikes and rust, there's an embarrassment of riches for tutorials. In addition to the (very good!) tutorial on the OP by Tomas Sedovic, I wanted to mention the rust roguelike tutorial by Herbert Wolverson / The Bracket: http://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/rustbook/ The main difference is that on this case they use rltk_rs, a pure-rust library for roguelike development, instead of…

The bfnightly tutorial is a very good tutorial, but I do want to warn that it's not always terribly idiomatic Rust: Herbert was using the writing of the tutorial as a way of practicing Rust, so there are places where the explanations aren't quite correct and other places where the code isn't what an experienced Rust programmer would write. An example that jumped out at me (this from Chapter 8) was the use of &s.to_st…

My understanding is that the only reason for example literals can be passed without borrows is because in fact they are Copy

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#22

Post by setr » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #12

platz wrote: post #7

Roguelike creators need to experiment a bit more with different themes and different core mechanics to make gameplayore interesting and diverse. > High Fantasy is the vanilla ice cream of video game themes https://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wp/2018/08/01/things-i-hate... > We have lots and lots of fantasy dungeon crawlers, so naturally if you want to really distinguish your project, go for any unique theme that’s not a…

I'm surprised the context is always fantasy instead of sci fi, given the games are inherently tech dependent.

rogue, and most of its descendants, are really just a computer-implementation of DnD/ADnD -- particularly focusing on the combat mechanics.

This is also where most of the core mechanics come from -- dungeoneering, permadeath, the lack of interest in keeping your character alive & the lack of interest in things like backstory and what-not, the general weapon mechanics (eg [+1, +2] for accuracy, damage bonus) and combat rules, etc.

In this context, anything but fantasy would be surprising

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#23

Post by 0xsnowcrash » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

Where's the actual game?!

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#24

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #8

platz wrote: post #7

Roguelike creators need to experiment a bit more with different themes and different core mechanics to make gameplayore interesting and diverse. > High Fantasy is the vanilla ice cream of video game themes https://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wp/2018/08/01/things-i-hate... > We have lots and lots of fantasy dungeon crawlers, so naturally if you want to really distinguish your project, go for any unique theme that’s not a…

For commercial roguelikes, sure, but the roguelike community overall really is a hobbyist community. It mostly seems to consist of developers who have come to the realization that while CRUD and web apps have been a good way to pay the mortgage, the real reason they got into computers in the first place was to play D&D.

[deleted]

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#25

Post by krapp » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

Wohlf wrote: post #16

yters wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the context is always fantasy instead of sci fi, given the games are inherently tech dependent.

Historical reasons mostly, but also fantasy is a lot easier. You don't have to pretend to be realistic. That said, if fantasy is vanilla then sci-fi is chocolate.

>Historical reasons mostly, but also fantasy is a lot easier. You don't have to pretend to be realistic.

I know what you mean to say but good fantasy tries as hard to be "realistic" (in terms of plausibility and internal consistency) as good science fiction.

Although in terms of providing recognizable game mechanics that resonate with a genre, fantasy is definitely easier thanks to the influence of D&D.

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#26

Post by krapp » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 2:03 AM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #8

platz wrote: post #7

Roguelike creators need to experiment a bit more with different themes and different core mechanics to make gameplayore interesting and diverse. > High Fantasy is the vanilla ice cream of video game themes https://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wp/2018/08/01/things-i-hate... > We have lots and lots of fantasy dungeon crawlers, so naturally if you want to really distinguish your project, go for any unique theme that’s not a…

For commercial roguelikes, sure, but the roguelike community overall really is a hobbyist community. It mostly seems to consist of developers who have come to the realization that while CRUD and web apps have been a good way to pay the mortgage, the real reason they got into computers in the first place was to play D&D.

Might as well make the game you want to play, because chances are the game you want to sell, won't.

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#27

Post by TomasSedovic » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:47 AM UTC

0xsnowcrash wrote: post #23

Where's the actual game?!

The link to the tutorial and its repo is linked at the top of the article:

http://tomassedovic.github.io/roguelike-tutorial/

https://github.com/tomassedovic/roguelike-tutorial

There are no official builds you can download since this is something you're supposed to read and follow along, building your own game in the process.

I have made my own "proper" roguelike (moved away from libtocd, but kept Rust) but that was unrelated to the post.

(I'm the author of the article, but not the OP)

Re: Roguelike Tutorial: Up-to-Date and Literate

#28

Post by TomasSedovic » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #18

> And I'm also unsure whether he needs to build the list of include statements like I do or whether that's somehow captured in the annotation itself. > the workflow could be better. In the example above, we had to define the function body, prelude, if statement, else statement and both if/else blocks. > It would be much better if we could inverse this: defining the whole function block with holes for the if/else bloc…

Thanks for this! I want to check the WEB-inspired approaches at some point, this is super useful.

The Markdown one seems interesting too.

I'll probably stick with this for stuff where there's some expectation of drive-by contributions (the tutorial has seen a bunch, it was one of the motivations behind this) because requiring additional tooling can often be a bar that's too high.

Agreed on the general literate programming note. I'm not sure I'll ever pick it up for something that doesn't have an obvious accompanying article/book to come with it, but if I ever write another tutorial or something, I'll definitely use it from the beginning.

But knowing what's out there is definitely important (and AsciiDoctor is extensible so these things could probably be added as plugins).