Oh, a Design Would be Nice

Forty-Five minutes until I can start coding. But I don't have to start at midnight; as I understand the rules, I can start any time on the tenth, and I have 168 hours from whenever I start.

Maybe I should use this evening to really spec out the game I'm going to write. I have it pretty well set in my head, but it's a hodgepodge of ideas.

I want to capture the essence of Rogue, but also be minimalist enough to be sure I can finish (let's face it, I probably have less than 60 hours in which to actually get work done).

I'm going to make the whole level map visible all the time; no dark rooms, no secret doors. The "stairway" won't show up until you are next to it, though.

Distance weapons and wands are kind of complex, but I don't think I can leave those out.

I could leave out armor. The original Rogue didn't have armor for a long time; folks at UCSC still loved playing it. Maybe I'll just push that out to the end, so I can skip it if I get behind.

I don't know if it's cheating to create the graphics files outside the 168 hour window. The rules are a bit vague. I think other 7drl's have used existing graphics, so it seems reasonable.

Still, I haven't created any, so I better get on it.

Yendor

As far as I can recall, the Rogue backstory has never been documented.

I always had at least a foggy idea of what it was in the back of my head. I dunno if it matches with Michael's or Jon's, or if they ever really thought about it.

So here it is in bits and pieces -- probably I'll flesh this out somehow in the novel.

Yendor was a wizard, who once ruled all known lands -- all the Chronicles agree on this. Well, most of the chronicles. There's actually nothing that all the Chronicles agree on, and there's precious little that hangs together even in a majority of them, so really, most of them agreeing on Yendor is pretty impressive. If you think about it.

Yendor's power to rule was insured by his fabled Amulet. Growing weary of constantly having to vaporize beings who tried to hork it, he determined to hide it deep within a vast series of dungeons. He summoned many ferocious beasts to guard his dungeon, and put a number of spells on the dungeon itself as well.

But all of this was thousands of years before Rodney began his quest. Long ago (the Chronicles disagree on exactly how long, but none of them think it was recently), Yendor mysteriously disappeared. The beasts within his dungeon remained, reproduced, went wild. Legend maintains that Yendor's Amulet remains there, deep within the dungeon, and whoever can brave the dungeon and find that amulet will have the same power that Yendor once had -- the power to rule the whole earth.

Which is a lot more power than Rodney wants. Rodney just wants a nice castle with a big hearth. And maybe a princess. But he figures he could sell the amulet to someone for whom ruling the entire world had some appeal.

Preparing for whatever this is

I'm at a low point in my life.
Struggling at work to even do a mediocre job.
Realizing that I'm just not really nearly as good a person as I always thought of myself.

But I got this idea in my brain a couple months back, and I've decided to pursue it. I don't know what to call it, maybe the Creative Endurance Triathalon or something. Suggestions welcome.

I don't think anyone has done this before: Completed a Seven-Day Roguelike, a 24-hour comic, and a NaNoWriMo (one month novel). I'm going to try to do all 3 this year.

I plan to tie all of them together thematically. In fact, I'm considering this blog plus the game, comic and novel (assuming I succeed at all three) to constitute a single, multimedia work of art.

First up is the seven-day roguelike. This year's contest begins March 10th. I will be at somewhat of a disadvantage because I work full time and most of the rest of my time is owed to family, church and sleep.

I can't start writing code until March 10th, but I think I'm allowed to start thinking at any time.

The theme (and name) of my adventure game is The Seven Day Quest, a parallel of course to my own seven day quest.

Classic Rogue consisted of a single dungeon of 26 levels, a single quest to find a single magic item, the Amulet of Yendor. 7DayQuest will consist of seven, sevel-level quests. Each successful quest will result in finding a magic item, and that item will be necessary to succeed in the next day's quest.
I'm working on the backstory of the game.
I'm figuring that that will be the novel.

I need to make sure I don't get overambitious with the thoughts of the game, because I have to have it completely finished in one week of spare time, and I am starting from zero.

7DayQuest will be written completely in Javascript (and DHTML). To my knowledge, it will be the first Roguelike to be written that way.

Next step: Overall design, and an implementation plan with daily milestones.