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  1. Things which are hard to code
    1. Things which are harder to code than one might initially think

Things which are hard to code


Compilation by Kornel Kisielewicz of the thead on rgrd

Things which are harder to code than one might initially think


Antoine

  • Invisibility
  • Polymorph-self
  • Charm monster
  • Stacking objects
  • Friendly NPCs in the dungeon

The Sheep

  • Selling items
  • Timed events
  • Animation
  • Persistent levels
  • Monsters moving between levels
  • Monsters with FOV
  • Pets
  • Random artifacts
  • Random monster races
  • Doors with keys
  • Throwing items
  • Monster inventory
  • Running

Kornel Kisielewicz

  • Random Quests
  • Random Plot
  • Random Overworld
  • Adding content
  • Balancing
  • Polishing

Stu George

  • Balance
  • Sense of time
  • Food
  • Q&A, Testing, Documenting, Planning
  • Water (infinitely divisible)
  • Fire (I want to burn everything!)
  • Mixing liquids
  • Economy

konjin

  • Stealth

Ray Dillinger

  • Rope

Michal Bielinski

  • Inter-monster fights

Stoolmaker

[Not part of Kornel’s kompilation.] I think it depends on the whole framework of code. In my world, for instance, making critters invisible is a rather simple task because of how I’ve implemented Line of Sight. Making them dead is harder :) That said: I find that balancing everything is a delicate task. Randomizing quests, equipments, races etc. is also an interesting challenge. Regarding these, however, I think its possible to find some short cuts just by writing imaginative pieces of sentences/elements and combining them in unpredictably large structures (needn’t be so huge). For example: put n kinds of “wandlikes” in a list (wands, lamps, bottles (uncork to release effect) etc.), have n kinds of “range models” (cones, rays, single adjacent/far points, zones (eg. fireball), clouds which start to drift and finally dissolve…), and n kinds of effects (elemental damage, teleport etc.). Already you’ll have weird objects popping up: from the presumably predictable (“copper wand: ray of ice”), by means of the useful (“painted calabash: cloud of panic”) and all the way to the outright silly (“ugly conjurers hat: rain of polymorph”).

Ramiro

  • Cellular Automata dungeons. (Even whit all the theory is STILL harder than you can think)
  • Anti-filescumming. (In theory is impossible, but you can make things harder)
  • Running (on ASCII Roguelikes, and turn based ones specially)