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

• Roguelike Dev FAQ
• How to Write a Roguelike in 15 Steps
• 7DRL
• Motivation
• Open Source

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.

• Rewrite
• Bug and Bug Report
• RFE

Game modification

• Translation

Communities

• rgrd
• The Game Programming Wiki

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

• Quests in Roguelikes

Dungeon features, terrain

• Dungeon persistence
• RL Terrain
• Unangband Dungeon Generation

Combat

• Monster attacks
• Implicit Facing

Magic

• Magic
• Magic systems
• Spell
• The Gramarye A Magic System for FUDGE
• Designing a Magic System

Religion

• Religious Constraints (Rules)

Interface

• PreferredKeyControls
• User interface features
• Icons in Roguelikes
• Roguelike 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

• Language in Roguelikes
• Things which are hard to code
• Portability Issues
• Code design basics

Programming languages

RogueBasin has articles about these languages. That doesn't mean that you can't use other languages. The best language for your roguelike is the one you know well (or want to learn).

• C
• C#
• C++
• Bcx Basic
• FreePascal
• Java
• Python
• Ruby
• Common Lisp

Portability

• Portability Issues
• Unix
• Windows
• Linux
• Mac
• Unicode
• Output libraries

Extensibility

• Roguelike engines
• Info Files
• Info File Variant - Compile-to-Code

Map

• Cellular Automata Method for Generating Random Cave-Like Levels
• Creating A Forest
• Dungeon builder written in Python
• Data structures for the map
• Creating Measurably "Fun" Maps
• Simple maze
• Dungeon-Building Algorithm
• Irregular Shaped Rooms
• Wilderness generation using Vornoi diagrams
• Island and labyrinth map generating algorithm
• Delving a connected cavern
• See also: Category:WorldGeneration

Combat

• Simple Combat in the Dungeon
• Thoughts on Combat Models
• See also: Category:Combat

AI

• 4GAI - The "4th Generation AI" used in many Angband variants
• A Better Monster AI
• Complex NPC Interaction
• Emergent Behaviour in Unangband Monster AI
• 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
• The game AI page

Line of sight, field of vision

• Line of Sight is used to determine when a specific destination square is visible from a source square. This can be used to determine whether a player is visible to a monster, the path an arrow takes to a particular enemy, and as a building block for a field of vision algorithm.
• Field of Vision determines all squares visible from a particular source. This is useful when determining which squares to show a player, what squares are lit up by a light source, etc.

Magic

• Designing a Magic System
• Programming Roguelike Magic
• Representing Magic Skills

Graphics

• Finding graphical tiles

Sound

• Sound and Music
• Finding or Creating Sound and Music

Time management

• An elegant time-management system for roguelikes
• A priority queue based turn scheduling system

Useful algorithms and code

• Compression
• Bit manipulation
• Fractals
• Mersenne twister
• Random name generation
• Random number generation

Java Roguelike Development Guide

A list of articles specific to Java roguelike development

• The Choice of Java
• Java Curses Implementation
• Items in Java

Game reviews

May give some idea of what people like and don't like in other games.

• Rank RLs you have played a lot
• Personalities of different roguelikes
• See: Category:Reviews

Other

• Increasing Challenge in Roguelikes
• Stat Balancing in Roguelikes

The original Dungeondweller articles are archived at [1]. Please do not move them to RogueBasin without permission from the original author.

There are more articles at [2]. Most of these are duplicates of articles here.