Something a bit different

[Bandobras]

Well, if you really want to get serious, Angband seems not too bad for this kind of activity. In particular the limited, but not small, levels seem OK and can possibly be generated on the basis of some online maps of your town. Randomly generated rectable of your town chosen for each level, perhaps prefering locations near to your current GPS location, unless for a level with a bad feeling, but randomizing orientation and the exact starting coordinates.

What seems unfitting is the time scale of Angband and monster/treasure distribution. Running a promising character for 10 years, then YASD, would be devastating. Quckband or an even smaller variant would be better, I suppose.

I'm not sure about dungeon->outdoors mapping. Perhaps variants with wilderness would be better and perhaps, in dense cities or town, dungeons are closer to the mood, actually.

[Nick]

There exist games now which sample the wireless environment and adjust gameplay accordingly - you could do a similar thing with Angband where dungeon generation is affected. It's a bit more abstract than actually mapping dungeons by physical features, but it still might be interesting.

[Aknight]

Do you have a link to an example of what you mean? I'm aware of the seamful games: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pdas/pock...ame-032813.php that get around the limitations of current wifi coverage by intergrating coverage into the game mechanics. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by abstract. Can you describe the sort of abstract map generation you had in mind to clarify? I'm with you though, I think that we would have to think outside of the box to translate a lot of the mechanics. Teleportation and word of recall for instance, I've got to admit I'm stumped as to how that might work.

To Bandobras, I agree. Simpler would be better and scaleability would also be an issue. What do you guys think? Would increasing the rewards (xp and items) and making the game easier destroy the integrity of the gratification system Angband employs so well when translated to a massively larger (in terms of time and space) environment?

[Aknight]

I did a bit of research this morning to try and find potential development platforms. I'm no programmer or developer so I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for but this website looked promising: http://iperg.sics.se/tech_space22.php

If there is anyone who knows more about this sort of thing who can provide links or advice on the sort of platform that would be best suited for the potential development of an ubiquitous Angband please speak up!

[Bandobras]

What is the license?

[Narvius]

I guess the programming part won't be the problem. The devices would require some more work.

[Aknight]

I just read through the documentation for the toolkit and it's only free to use for research institutes and academic purposes so, maybe not. I'll keep looking for one that has a free license; anybody got any pointers?

I did a quick bit of research on devices and found this website: http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/04/16/...e-video-games/
Obviously this is just an overview.

I've got a busy couple of days ahead of me but once that is over I'll try and collate as much reference material as I can and provide some sort of design statement as a basis for discussion.

[Patashu]

For a short time scale roguelike, how about Shiren the mysterious wanderer? Surely someone else here has played it.

[Aknight]

Never heard of it mate
Do you have a link so we can check it out and I can add it to my list of reference material?

[Bandobras]

Am I mistaken it's commercial? You'll probably have no luck convincing the authors to let you use it as a base for anything...