Hey everyone,
I originally made this post on the temple of the roguelike forums and one person suggested I might also find interested people in here. So here goes:
I'm Tuplis, a new guy here on the forums. I'm a 25-year-old fresh Master of Science in Technology with software engineering as my major. I'm currently coding full-time for a software company. I specialize in agile software development processes.
I've been playing roguelikes on and off for about 15 years now and decided I'll finally make one of my own. During these years I've come to realize that one person can make a really great roguelike because of the ability to focus on "the good stuff" instead of drawing 3d models and all that stuff. So, here's my attempt at combining my specialization - agile development - with the process of making a roguelike.
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I currently have a very simple game, simply called "Zombies". There's only one test map and a player character can run around and kill a bunch of zombies that will be randomly generated on startup. That's it. And there's where you lot come in.
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The central idea in agile development is to constantly publish release-level-polished functionality in small increments. This allows the product to rapidly evolve in face of changing requirements. So my idea is to have the community of players playing the game define what those requirements are - literally (nearly) almost all of them. Here's the complete run-down of the functionalities I've so far "locked", everything else is up for discussion:
-Roguelike. No emphasis on graphics beyond what ascii can represent. I've committed to writing in Java with the blacken library which I find sufficient.
-Zombie apocalypse theme. It's just what I want to do.
If I can gather a group of 5-10 active people, I can start churning away at it. I can work perhaps around 10 hours a week as I work full-time on the side. Agile development hinges on writing continuously excellent quality code in order to avoid rework and the idea is to constantly (weekly to monthly) release everything made up to that point so there will be constant progress. That amount of active people should suffice in creating me a backlog of work to chip away at. More are also welcome of course!
TL;DR : I'm looking to crowdsource the design of a roguelike game project run by an agile software development process.
So, who would be interested in this project?
Latest version:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/84930267/Zombies-0-12-8-6-0.rarKeybinds & help:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZK3IR_2ra0mXIB25uAFNfHphHMRocTD309Zuw-P-SY/editCredits:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QcJteqBK42ryW0cNPrvW_JHCWXU5n_RpW_0gEBs45Tk/editChangelog:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vgiqPBb-hJozND57uWOs2mRmPbKJfXF4BY97iZD23Nw/editBacklog:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar3Z_84uVAcldDNNeW14SUI3N2VpN1lUU2tPajMzTkERules for the backlog:
-Anyone can add stuff but use common sense about whether we need to discuss the feature first (eg. don't add stuff like magic spells)
-Every new backlog item needs to have
end-user value. The value can also change over time: A random map generator is nearly useless in a game with almost no features and thus will increase in value over time. Conversely, a minor shift in game scope might make an otherwise important feature obsolete.
-When adding a new item, consider whether you can break it down to independent functionalities out of which at least one has end-user value in itself. Iterate this process until you can no longer break the feature down.
-Add yourself a column in the value-area if you want to contribute on that
-Ignore Effort unless there's a ? in there
-Add yourself a comment column if you need to. We'll need to address that if it becomes too wide/unreadable.
-Don't remove/change anything other people added (outside of typos)
-If you know what you're doing, you can stylish the file. Just remember that usability comes first.
Need troubleshooting?
-Check that your java path is set (
http://java.com/en/download/help/path.xml)
-Target Java version is 1.6, make sure you have that or higher.
Regards,
Tuplis
