They say that no one knows everything about everything in the dungeon.

November 11, 2017 10:58 AM

Roguelike Celebration 2017 is currently streaming on twitch and scheduled to run throughout the weekend. Last year's celebration was covered on Metafilter; the talks were consistently interesting and fun, and they're all available on Youtube and The Internet Archive. This year's talks will be archived as well. What's a roguelike?
posted by naju (24 comments total)

@
posted by leotrotsky at 11:13 AM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

&
posted by PMdixon at 11:19 AM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have a roguelike on my phone, and probably because I only sporadically played them over the decades it feels like a good thing to occasionally get past the first level. I should find a basic player's guide.
posted by rhizome at 11:19 AM on November 11, 2017

What's a roguelike?
Well, some of them like it hot, others of them like it cool...
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

This looks like such a fun event!

If anyone's new to roguelikes and wants to try one out, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is free, and it's pretty easy to get into but wonderfully complex and challenging.
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Brogue is a softer introduction, I think.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:44 AM on November 11, 2017

I've only ever been able to get into Roguelites, but I do appreciate people who are very good at actual Roguelikes. It's a keen sort of talent at mastering a system.
posted by codacorolla at 11:46 AM on November 11, 2017

🧙‍♂️
posted by ardgedee at 12:10 PM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

(How is this not a JHarris post?)
posted by ardgedee at 12:14 PM on November 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

#
posted by octothorpe at 12:14 PM on November 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm excited to see Leonard Richardson's talk about RobotFindsKitten, which is a roguelike that surprised me by having both him and another friend of mine in its core creation story.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:24 PM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nice! I've been utterly smitten with Crypt of the Necrodancer for the past few weeks. It's a fascinating mashup of roguelike and rhythm game that shows a deep understanding of the mechanics of both genres. Tons of fun and good music too. :)
posted by xthlc at 1:25 PM on November 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

Is there any Linux console yet with full emoji support? Because in 2017 why roguelikes should be limited to ASCII is beyond me.
posted by anthill at 1:31 PM on November 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

(How is this not a JHarris post?)

It's because he's giving a talk there
posted by aubilenon at 2:34 PM on November 11, 2017 [18 favorites]

Also, why isn't Nethack's slogan "Nethack: It's where you're at!"
posted by aubilenon at 2:37 PM on November 11, 2017 [6 favorites]

$20 SAIT
posted by Reverend John at 3:18 PM on November 11, 2017

I keep wanted to try other roguelikes but I always think that I should actually finish Nethack first and I've never actually managed to do that.
posted by octothorpe at 4:03 PM on November 11, 2017

I love roguelikes... I just wish they weren't all only about combat... It gets boring after a while when everything you do to your environment is about killing things.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:30 PM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Foo my grue will eat your roguelike.
posted by sammyo at 6:17 PM on November 11, 2017

I love roguelikes... I just wish they weren't all only about combat... It gets boring after a while when everything you do to your environment is about killing things.

Have you tried UnReal World.
posted by St. Sorryass at 1:22 PM on November 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Answering my own question, color emoji support was only added to GTK a few months ago. So no emojoo rogues for at least a year /dare
posted by anthill at 10:53 AM on November 13, 2017

I haven't seen anywhere that emoji plays well with regular monospaced text. Usually it pushes everything else out of alignment, but sometimes the emoji overlaps its neighbors. Here look:
+---------+
|.@.......|
|.....☃...|
|.........|
|.....👾...|
|.🔪..🐘....|
|.👻.......|
+---------+
posted by aubilenon at 12:42 PM on November 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's kinda common with modern roguelikes that even if they look like text, you're actually in SDL or something looking at graphic tiles made to look like plain text characters (but these usually also support really playing in text.) And lots don't offer text, just graphics... so using emoji wouldn't really be a stretch.

This could probably keep one busy for a while...
posted by Zed at 8:29 PM on November 13, 2017

Well at least some (e.g., DCSS) you can still play via ssh, which means they really are text. If it's just tiles that happen to look like letters, I guess the advantages of emoji is the same as the advantage of using letters for everything: familiarity to users, and the developers don't have to draw graphics.
posted by aubilenon at 11:03 AM on November 14, 2017