Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to make roguelike games in Rust

bfnightly.bracketproductions.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#41

Post by gbmor »

babuskov wrote: post #10
kris-s wrote: post #3

Are there commercially successful roguelikes that use ascii art only? Dwarf Fortress is the only one I know of and it's getting an official makeover for the Steam release.

I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spent about 2 months making Rogue Bit just over a year ago: https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/ And it sold over 25000 copies so far.

I've not heard of Rogue Bit before, but it looks really cool and intriguing, so I just bought a copy. Thanks for contributing to the indie game world!

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#42

Post by elabajaba »

darksaints wrote: post #31

Are there any AAA studios using rust yet? I personally think it's not going to happen any time soon, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong. My theory that it won't happen without some form of inheritance-like structure. Games, like many forms of simulation, are inherently stateful and tends to fall hard on the OO-side of the Expression Problem spectrum. Traits tend to give you the best of both worlds, but in very import…

Ready at Dawn's (Lone Echo, The Order 1886) CTO said that going forwards everything new would be in Rust in 2018[1] (however, looking at their careers page all the dev jobs are asking for C++ and don't say anything about Rust). EA's SEED research division was also experimenting with Rust.

As someone who's poked around in the current Rust gamedev ecosystem a bit, the publicly available libraries and frameworks aren't quite there yet for mid-large games (and are probably 1-2 years away at least for serious 3D development), though recent developments like the Legion ECS[2] (Amethyst, imo the most promising Rust 3D game engine seems like it will be switching from specs to Legion[3]), and Ultraviolet[4] (linear algebra library specifically for games & graphics which is faster than the alternatives for both runtime and compile times) are very promising.

1. https://twitter.com/AndreaPessino/status/1021532074153394176

2. https://crates.io/crates/legion

3. https://github.com/amethyst/rfcs/issues/22 for a discussion about potentially moving from specs to Legion

4. https://crates.io/crates/ultraviolet

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#43

Post by babuskov »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #34
babuskov wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing gameplay would be pointless because 99% of the gameplay is in player's head, analyzing the code, maybe even writing some down on paper. If you just look at the screen, it doesn't make much sense. Here, try looking at this gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RskXHDLzo&t=183s It's hard to pick any point in that 75 minute video that would be a good trailer material. There's nothing visually spectac…

Every game that Zachtronics releases has a gameplay trailer, for comparison. Perhaps it would be useful to look at some of those for inspiration: http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/?curat... https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/?curator_... I think a gameplay trailer could be made from content from that video, by stringing together a series of short…

Hm, it does make sense. Perhaps I should make another, gameplay trailer as well. Steam allows multiple trailers anyway. Thanks.

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#44

Post by babuskov »

jere wrote: post #35
babuskov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spent about 2 months making Rogue Bit just over a year ago: https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/ And it sold over 25000 copies so far.

25k? Interesting. I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch.

> I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count.

I have 4 games on Steam, and "review to sale number" ratio is all over the place, so it isn't that easy to use for estimation. You can get some idea, but 2500 is nowhere close really.

> Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch.

About 2/3 of the sales were on Switch. I was surprised as well. I meant the game to be Steam-only, and then some of the players asked for a Switch version. I was blown away after the first month of release.

IMHO, turn based (or just slow paced) puzzle games are awesome for Switch because of the portability. In the evening when the kids have finished playing their Zeldas and Dragon Quests, you can lay back and solve a couple of puzzles until it's time to sleep. Looking at my personal play times, the game I play on Switch the most is "Baba is You".

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#45

Post by gbmor »

planetsmashr wrote: post #15
kris-s wrote: post #3

Are there commercially successful roguelikes that use ascii art only? Dwarf Fortress is the only one I know of and it's getting an official makeover for the Steam release.

DCSS isn't commercially successful, but I think it has the potential to be if it went that direction. The tiles version is probably most popular though: https://crawl.develz.org/download.htm

DCSS is ridiculously fun. I've spent more hours playing it than any other roguelike.

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#46

Post by babuskov »

master-litty wrote: post #36
babuskov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spent about 2 months making Rogue Bit just over a year ago: https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/ And it sold over 25000 copies so far.

Tangential question, was it difficult for you to receive the development kit for the Nintendo Switch? I'm creating a game right now and I can't get them to respond. I'd love to hear what worked well for you.

Well, I have another, much more popular game that I pitched to Nintendo to get the dev kit:

http://sonofawitchgame.com/

It's got features from festivals like IndieCade, and had really good Steam reviews during Early Access, so getting a dev. kit was relatively easy.

Rogue Bit came afterwards.

BTW, I tried to check out your game, but your websites (both .com and .us from HN profile) seem to be unreachable? If you're pitching to Nintendo, you need to make sure everything works and you present yourself as an established studio.

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#47

Post by jere »

babuskov wrote: post #44
jere wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25k? Interesting. I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch.

> I would guess about 2,500 copies based on your Steam review count. I have 4 games on Steam, and "review to sale number" ratio is all over the place, so it isn't that easy to use for estimation. You can get some idea, but 2500 is nowhere close really. > Did you sell a lot more on Switch or something? I really would be surprised if an ASCII game could sell 20k on Switch. About 2/3 of the sales were on Switch. I was s…

No doubt. I have a one year old and playing Slay the Spire on Switch is the greatest thing ever because I can just fit it into whatever I'm doing. Maybe I should pursue this console harder...

I know that review ratio isn't perfect but it's still a good rough estimate. It did in fact clue me in that the majority of your sales were probably from Switch.

Thanks for the response!

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#48

Post by PudgePacket »

darksaints wrote: post #31

Are there any AAA studios using rust yet? I personally think it's not going to happen any time soon, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong. My theory that it won't happen without some form of inheritance-like structure. Games, like many forms of simulation, are inherently stateful and tends to fall hard on the OO-side of the Expression Problem spectrum. Traits tend to give you the best of both worlds, but in very import…

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/78bowa/hey_this_is_ky...

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#49

Post by astrobe_ »

Pamar wrote: post #19

Ask HN: are there any roguelike games that can be played (collaboratively) by two players on remote connection? Mac OS would be a plus because both me and my friend use mostly Apple stuff at home.

Not exactly roguelikes, but MUDs [1] are multiplayer games with a roguelike feel, but they are more like the ancestors of MMORPGs, TBH.

A telnet program should basically be enough to start playing. There are some "MUD client" programs that enhance the interface (dunno about MAC OS), and some sites offer enhanced web interfaces as well.

One of the most popular, Aardwolf [2] is very newbie-friendly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

[2] https://www.aardwolf.com/

Re: How to make roguelike games in Rust

#50

Post by Kyzrati »

nyolfen wrote: post #5
kris-s wrote: post #3

Are there commercially successful roguelikes that use ascii art only? Dwarf Fortress is the only one I know of and it's getting an official makeover for the Steam release.

cogmind has done pretty well even if a bit niche. not pure ascii but pretty close, like df. really excellent game, as well.

Indeed, Cogmind's been my full time job for over 6 years now so far and still pays the bills every month. 11% of players even use pure ASCII mode :)

So it's... technically doable.

Post reply on HN