I’ve decided to take the jump and enter the Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) competition starting next month. The challenge? Write a complete “rogue-like” adventure game in just seven days. The additional challenge is that these include WORKING days, so there’s far less time in which to do it.
My first inclination was to do it in Python with the PyGame SDL libraries on Linux. Trouble is, nobody will ever see the game that way. So while talking with Kasul last night, I decided to reach deep into my past and write it as a Java applet.
Years and years ago, I worked for a company called Harcourt, a publisher of textbooks that at that time was looking into running an online university for distance learning. Since the courses were to be web-based, they had a vast need of interactive web applications. I wrote a couple dozen small applets to support the courses, and along the way, I wrote the beginnings of a Java game engine to help make things pretty. The below applet illustrates the dual-slit diffraction experiment that helped prove that photons could be considered both as waves and as particles.
The smooth operation of the controls, the double buffered graphics…. The package also included a graph paper canvas which I used for several applets, including this one illustrating the tangents to arbitrary curves….
So, I have my old game engine available, and examples of my older applets to start with, and I think I’ve just shown I can get sophisticated programs working in a browser. It’s a start! All those years ago, I bet my career on Java Applets instead of Flash. That was a bad bet. Maybe someday they’ll make a huge comeback.
Good luck! I don’t know much about applet writing (or any of that stuff for that matter), but you do, and thats what counts! I read your blog every day, and It’s really great! I enjoy reading your witty stories, they make me smile. 🙂 Keep it up Tipa!
Whoa! Awesome. I love me some roguelikes…. well, in the same way anyone does: I often hate them with a burnign passion, but then always come back to them.
If you’re a podcast listener, then you might enjoy the most recent Retronauts episode – they discussed roguelikes: http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3156908
Oops – it was the last Active Time Babble, not retronauts: http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3176689
Damned shows with the same host.
Good luck to you. If it were me, I’d try to go the Python route, but that’s mostly just because I use Java at work and Python makes a nice break from that. Looking forward to seeing the results.
Good luck. I look forward to seeing what comes out of it.
I hate to tell you, but this isnt working in my browser. I see two black areas where your apps are trying to run. Yay java!
Yeah, I had trouble on other browsers. I think I am going to do it in Python like I was going to from the start.
I’ve been writing a rogue-like game development library for python based on pygame in my spare moments over the past couple of months. It’s basically a text-based interface library. It’s been fun. I thought of using it to make an RL for the 7DRL contest, but I don’t think I’ll have enough time to–and I don’t want to rush it.
Good luck on your attempt!