Articles
This is a listing of articles, arranged by subject.
Articles under "design" will help the developer make decisions about gameplay. Articles under "implementation" will help with algorithm design, and offer various methods of implementing features. Headings are arranged in a general chronological order of development. Large lists of ideas (items, spells, themes, etc.) are in bold.
Development
Fundamentals
- What a roguelike is
- Dungeon
- Items
- Monster
- Character
- Race
- Class
- Skill
- Permadeath
- Shops
- Random generation
Project management
Roguelike developments are complicated projects to handle; if you have weak goals, the project will slip out of your control and its success may be compromised.
Game modification
Communities
Design
- Aspects of playing
- Fun Factor
- Power Curve
- The Role of Hunger
- Alternatives to Permadeath
- Third dimension in an ASCII-based roguelike
- Time Systems
- What a RL should be
- Roguelike Alphabet
- Spatial Consistency
Setting, story, and mood
- Theme
- Roguelike Themes
- Creating a Story
- Horror in Roguelike Games
- Horror in Roguelike Games, Part I : Gore
- Roguelike Mood
- Big List of RPG Plots
Roleplaying
Dungeon features, terrain
Combat
Magic
Religion
Interface
Game ideas
Ideas for roguelikes are posted regularly on rgrd, but over time are forgotten. In an attempt to preserve the more interesting ideas these pages were created:
- Magic Tower
- Modern Dungeon Exploration
- Roguelike DM by Timothy Pruett
- Magical Dungeon by Patashu
- GalaxyRL by tongHoAnh
- Time-gate roguelike by anchor0057
- Murder Mystery RL by Shedletsky
- World of Rogue by Gamer_2k4
- Shopkeeper RL by Antonie
- Fire Brigade RL by Antonie
- TraderRL by alsagoz
- OrcRL by DrGong
Implementation
Programming languages
The best language for your roguelike is the one you know well (or want to learn).
Portability
Extensibility
Map
- Cellular Automata Method for Generating Random Cave-Like Levels
- CreatingAForest
- Dungeon builder written in Python
- Data structures for the map
- Simple maze
- See also: Category:WorldGeneration
Combat
AI
- A Better Monster AI
- Complex NPC Interaction
- Implementing interesting townsfolk AI
- Need driven AI
- Pathfinding
- Plug-In Monster AI
- Quick Pathfinding in a Dungeon
- Ratio AI
- Roguelike AI - Doing it the generic way
- Roguelike Integlligence - Evolving State Machine AIs
- Roguelike Intelligence - Displaced Actions
- Roguelike Intelligence - Genetic Algorithms and Evolving State Machine AIs
- Roguelike Intelligence - Intrinsic Information and State Machine AIs
- Roguelike Intelligence - Stateless AIs
- Tracking by Scent and Sound
Line of sight, field of vision
- Field of Vision
- Line of Sight
- Spiral Path FOV
- Ray-Ttracing Field-Of-View Demo
- A Bucket Of LOS
- An Efficient Observation Algorithm
- Computing LOS for Large Areas
- Extremely fast simplified LOS
- FOV using recursive shadowcasting
- FOV using recursive shadowcasting - improved
- Isaac s fast beamcasting LOS
- LOS by Odd
- Line of Sight - Tobias Downer
- Simple Line of Sight
- Breshenham's Line Algorithm
Magic
Graphics
Sound
Useful algorithms and code
Game reviews
May give some idea of what people like and don't like in other games.