i am making an open world roguelike. i have been imagining this world for years, and i want to make this game so people can go there and live many lives in it! the game features whole-cloth, accessible design, deep mysteries, and a meticulous generated living world.
Hi @lorenschmidt.bsky.social! IDK if you remember me but we used to chat on (X)itter about procedural generation, programming, game-dev and related stuff... Anyway, I retired a week ago (from Sumo), and am planning now to get into some indie development and make [1/2]
some of the games I have only been dreaming about for the last few decades. Anyway (anyway), my point is I am around and I (theoretically) have more time now, and I would be delighted to discuss whatever topics come up... I'm currently mid OS upgrade, but I am defo going to check out [2/2]
check out your talk when I get a little time. [3/2]
what an exciting transition point! that sounds great. i hope you enjoy the talk if you end up watching it, and i look forward to seeing you around and seeing what you end up working on!
And absolutely count on me as a beta tester and/or person you can bounce ideas/problems off... I've started to put some of my ideas together here: emnf-ideas.ianbadcoe.uk/welcome Although only "Turrets" has much written down, and nothing about procedural generation... Starting your talk, now...
Thanks! And likewise with your current project, it sounds very interesting, although I've not had much time to think about it other than scanning your posts and replies above, so I'm not even totally sure how much you've made public, but looking forward to learning more as and when...
Sooooo sick
thank you!
You seem to be making great progress! I'm envious of the amount of free time you must have! 🙂 (I really need to get back to mine, but I think it'll be at least a couple of weeks before I can dedicate any significant time. 😔)
it's my job! but thank you.
Then I *think* I'm jealous still, but I strongly suspect that if you're a lone developer, it's difficult and nerve-wracking as hell. I couldn't do it because I have family obligations, but I would love to be financially independent so that I could work on things I would consider fun.
Mental note: remember not to use bot-trigger phrases like "f*n*nc**lly ind*p*nd*nt".
yeah it's incredibly tenuous and some parts (like self promotion!) are really awful. i hate hustle and just want to make things, haha. but i love the work!
i honestly think doing games around a day job is every bit as legitimate as doing it full time. stability is huge.
I've done both. The latter is definitely better in a lot of ways.
Probably gets asked a lot but what’s the game being developed in? (Looks awesome)
javascript! it's a bit opaque because it's not really using the built in canvas API in obvious ways, it's all in a custom terminal.
Looks very interesting. Keep up great work!
thank you!
Sounds incredibly cool!
This looks super cool! I can't wait to see your progress!
been stoked for this since the og 7DRL and been even more excited to see the idea start to properly bloom!
thank you so much! i felt like it was time for an explainer post since there were so many new folks on blue sky!
Where can I find the original 7drl? Tried to google and look at your itch but I must be bad at looking! Anyway this looks amazing, looking forward to it
the game is turn based and will have both a graphical mode and a text mode. controls are simple, remappable, and texturally rich. there's native gamepad support. the game has dense, tactical combat, but noncombat playstyles are first class citizens too. healer, merchant, mendicant wanderer...
the world is an ancient one, peopled by many technological species which have complex relationships and histories. there are humans, but also many other species, both natural and made. bodies and selves are more mutable there, the delineation between animal and person which humans cling to blurred.
magic is very much alive and woven through the veins of the land. there are living cities, complex magical ecologies, ancient wells which descend into the depths of the earth. the gods are real, but everyone there is as full of questions as we are.
the world is inspired by a love of biology, history, philosophy, decolonial thought, and queer embodiment.
the game is a huge endeavor, but i have been releasing bite sized interactive demos on patreon as i work so folks can at least catch a glimpse of it along the way! and i have been open sourcing tech and art as i go.
as part of the project, i'm developing a permissive licenced sprite pack for other folks to use in their own games. you can get it here! (new version inbound in the very near future!) lorenschmidt.itch.io/phosphor
i have developed a number of new procedural generation techniques specifically for this game. i gave a talk on some of the techniques i'm using to generate landscapes at this year's roguelike celebration, which you can see here. i'll likely tidy up + open source this soon. youtu.be/FaLUhh_Vfmk?...
Great talk! Thanks for sharing your process. Always inspiring to see other folks map generation techniques. Will definitely be looking into CA approaches in the future!
thank you! i really love the nitty gritty procedural generation talks. i wish i'd had time to go into more details!
I would love to hear the deep dive version of that talk! Look forward to following your progress here on bluesky.
the current status of the project is that world generation is quite robust, and i am moving on to tying it into the generation of local features. i'm doing a first pass on towns and cities right now, and integrating the underground realms i've made will come next!
and i am planning to do a lot of experimental work in the near future, too- ways of integrating generated narrative glosses and techniques drawn from interactive fiction, modes of interaction, abilities, etc.
i'm really excited about doing 10,000 little weird pieces of procedural generation. houses. dialogue. horrible aristocrats. descriptions of clothing. i am going to get back to work, but i hope it's been clarifying!
📌
Looking good!
thank you!
Happy to find you here on Bluesky (I lost lots of follow in my migration from X, and I am really happy to reconnect to your quality content !)
Looking forward to this! It's an underexplored genre and you are doing really cool stuff. Seems it's likely to be quite a bit of overlap between our games, and a lot of differences! Can I ask about the rough size of your world? (secretly hoping its also really big!)
current size i'm trying out is 640 screens across and generally has at least 3 large continents. it condenses space a bit (eg villages are only a few screens apart) but it currently works out to about 46 km across.
oh it looks like you're doing some long term simulation work too! this sounds really interesting.
Yes, that's the idea :) still quite a bit into the future though. I want the player to have a significant impact on the world through the progress of time and not "you completed the scripted quest, boom the village now has a road!".
And I (and I imagine you) think this ties nicely into an actual large world where travel takes time :)
These maps are beautifully detailed and shaded! The rest of the game also looks very impressive, all the systems wow! 😮
thank you!
Have you read YOU by Austin Grossman yet?
no, i haven't! how would you describe it?
It’s all about the art and passion of designing video games. Genius kid comes up with a roguelike game in the early 80s with an engine that is so efficient at procedural generation the company bases all their games off of the engine until 1997. Written by a game designer (system shock, dishonored).
I gave you the mechanical overview of it, but the heart of it is so pure and accurate to anyone who tries to carve realities out of code. And it captures the feeling of living through the eras of the personal computer and everyone wanting to “make their mark” with their games.
👀💦
looks very interesting I want to play it so hard
thank you! i'm hurtling toward first playable but it is a huge project so there is a long way to go haha
I feel you, I'm also in solo early-stage developments so it's a thing aaa.
As someone who has been playing Angband/Moria since the early '90s, I wish you luck and I'll be watching. :)
i am also an angband player! i'm not very good at it but i really love the lineage. do you have favorite versions?
Always stuck with vanilla Angband...got the farthest with it :)
i have mostly played vanilla too! i like versions from right before they made the town fancy
extremely excited for this
thank you so much! i can't wait to have more of this built out so people can actually see what i'm talking about haha
likewise!
thank you!
what are you using to make this? (as a fellow person who is also trying to make a roguelike i would really like to know)
javascript! though the renderer + some parts of world simulation make me wish i had something lower level. i might learn and dip into WASM.
Wow! 😳 I did not expect that to be the answer! Are you using web workers???
i'm actually not yet, but once it's optimization time i'll definitely consider them! i've used them for generation in other projects. none of the simulation or generation is actually very heavy at this point.
Sounds awesome!
thank you.
yesyesyes!
Thank you so much for this behind the scene thread about your process and all the work that's gone into this project. Super excited for this and great work 🐸💜🐸!
you're quite welcome! i'm really looking forward to being able to share more as it comes together.
Sweeeet! 🐸💜🐸
oh, this sounds amazing. Looking forward to playing it!
thank you! i'll be posting updates on art, world building and tech as i work, and the first playable may be a ways out but i'll post about it here!
Has been wonderful watching all your work culminate into this, good luck!
thank you! it's starting to be less weird floating fragments and more one fabric.
Seems amazing, I can’t wait to play it! I love that you put so many things you like in it, I’ve always loved the kind of project that can accumulate lots of ideas about every kind of topic
thank you! i feel like in recent months of working on it, it got more that way. it's talking to generative art, glitch art, terminal text aesthetics, etc. more now and it feels like it's more itself and more sustainable to work on for it.