HowToMakeAnRPG
@howtomakeanrpg
Interested in everything related to making computer roleplaying games. Check out my site: #gamedev #rpg
It's an early single-player dungeon-crawler for the Intellivision. Arguably a first person roguelike
I don't how soon I'll get to it but I've also been taking a look at Treasure of Tarmin. This is a visualisation of it's level generation (some liberties taken here to make it more visually readable, but the final output is the same)
The grammar is a plain text but it gets built into the spark procedural generator page when I update it, so it's easy to extend. I'd like to make these grammars available somewhere too - maybe github.
How the original Rogue built corridors between it's room, this worked because it laid out the rooms on a set grid.
Got the Fenlason Hack code running locally. The final level is a maze - a neat idea! (It was a bunch of 16 year olds who made in the early 80s.) Hack will be the next game entry I add to howtomakeanrpg.com/r/l/g/. I also want to deep dive into how #Rogue did it's levels as a separate article.
Interestingly for Hack, the level generator is built as a separate exe, that's run by the main game and then it imports a data file.
After Rogue but before Nethack there's a game called Hack and source code was recently released here: github.com/Sustainable-... I've been recreating the random dungeon generator:
Interesting post comparing the tension to be found in Wizardry to that in Nethack. (from: crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2014/03/wiza...)
After bouncing off them a few times I've managed to get into : Steven Erikson's Mazalan series of books. It's interesting how often a home-brew RPG world helps define a rich setting. (Also see Disco Elysium and many others)
Want some grimdark inspiration? Check out the lore primer for Trench-Crusade. Some gory but beautiful art. static1.squarespace.com/static/637c0...
Westwood had an engine - or codebase - that's called Kyra, that's used by a number of their games. And SCUMM VM supports it. There are specific EOB opcodes like this function for healing party members. Though I don't know how it was all reverse engineered.
In my library of games howtomakeanrpg.com/r/l/g/ I still want to fill a few more 80s entries but I've poking around Eye of the Beholder 1 recently. There's surprisingly little information around. But it seems to use a virtual machine which I wasn't expecting. I thought it'd be all hard coded.
Akalabeth kind of had it but the overworld map was line drawings and not that readable today. Ultima 1 is definitely a lot more legible as to what it's supposed to be :)
imo for games that feel alive Ultima 7 was a high point that later games have rarely approached. #rpg
The next game I'm going to add to my "Library of Games" catalog is Ultima 1, I don't know if I'll get on Ultima 2. These Ultima liked to mix in a little scifi to the mainly fantasy world. https://howtomakeanrpg.com/r/l/g/
For World Building done right what would you recommend, apart from the Alien franchise? #worldbuilding #gamedev
One neat system in the Eye Beholder was finding new companions by discovering their bones and then resurrecting them.