Porting Rogue (the Roguelike) to BG2
saladinsmith
Member Posts: 6
Rogue was possibly the first computer RPG, and it's still a lot of fun. Of course it's more than 30 years old now, it has no graphics and no music, so an update wouldn't hurt. So this is my little project for the moment.
There's actually very little work to be done porting Rogue to BG2 -- since both games were so heavily influenced by D&D, there's a lot of overlap. These are the biggest problems I see at the moment:
1. In BG, a wand of magic missiles looks exactly the same every time through. Even if the player doesn't know there's a wand of magic missiles in that chest (and let's face it, we all do) she will be able to identify the wand by the icon, because the wand of frost looks completely different.
Rogue, by contrast, randomizes the appearance of an item for each new game. In one game, copper wands might be wands of magic missiles, while in another game, silver wands will be. Once you know what one silver wand does, you know what all of them do -- but only for that game. Next game, they may be wands of haste, and you're buffing your enemy up to kill you more easily. Rogue removes the predictability that BG has by forcing you to identify or field test every type of item you find.
2. Rogue generates random dungeons. The map of every floor is completely different every time you play. By contrast, the BG games are very much the same for every playthrough, and have very little randomness.
And yeah. That's all the problems I can find. They're really similar games.
So here are my questions:
1. Is there a way to randomize item icons when a new game is started? I'm thinking something like the Item Randomiser mod, but with regard to the icon, not the location. (Well, location too, but that's already been done.)
2. Would it be possible to build a dungeon out of random encounters? I'm thinking I'd make a bunch of small dungeon areas, each with a staircase going down, and monsters that scale with the player character's level. The player completes the current level, goes down the stairs, and instead of actually arriving in a predetermined area (as traditional BG staircases work) a random encounter is triggered, randomly picked from all the dungeon areas. Obviously this won't allow the player to return to previously visited areas -- but that's how Rogue always worked anyway: the stairs went down, never up. (Well, they did go up, but you had to be a godlike player to see that. I've played the game for fifteen years and never got that far.) So would that work?
3. This one is unrelated, but I never use the Tutorial or Movies buttons on the main menu and the Single Player submenu, and I'm running a minimal install, so no Multiplayer either. Is it possible to edit the main menu so that your options are New Game, Load Game, Quit, and Options? Obviously it's not too important, but it would be convenient, and if it's not too hard, I'd like to do it.
There's actually very little work to be done porting Rogue to BG2 -- since both games were so heavily influenced by D&D, there's a lot of overlap. These are the biggest problems I see at the moment:
1. In BG, a wand of magic missiles looks exactly the same every time through. Even if the player doesn't know there's a wand of magic missiles in that chest (and let's face it, we all do) she will be able to identify the wand by the icon, because the wand of frost looks completely different.
Rogue, by contrast, randomizes the appearance of an item for each new game. In one game, copper wands might be wands of magic missiles, while in another game, silver wands will be. Once you know what one silver wand does, you know what all of them do -- but only for that game. Next game, they may be wands of haste, and you're buffing your enemy up to kill you more easily. Rogue removes the predictability that BG has by forcing you to identify or field test every type of item you find.
2. Rogue generates random dungeons. The map of every floor is completely different every time you play. By contrast, the BG games are very much the same for every playthrough, and have very little randomness.
And yeah. That's all the problems I can find. They're really similar games.
So here are my questions:
1. Is there a way to randomize item icons when a new game is started? I'm thinking something like the Item Randomiser mod, but with regard to the icon, not the location. (Well, location too, but that's already been done.)
2. Would it be possible to build a dungeon out of random encounters? I'm thinking I'd make a bunch of small dungeon areas, each with a staircase going down, and monsters that scale with the player character's level. The player completes the current level, goes down the stairs, and instead of actually arriving in a predetermined area (as traditional BG staircases work) a random encounter is triggered, randomly picked from all the dungeon areas. Obviously this won't allow the player to return to previously visited areas -- but that's how Rogue always worked anyway: the stairs went down, never up. (Well, they did go up, but you had to be a godlike player to see that. I've played the game for fifteen years and never got that far.) So would that work?
3. This one is unrelated, but I never use the Tutorial or Movies buttons on the main menu and the Single Player submenu, and I'm running a minimal install, so no Multiplayer either. Is it possible to edit the main menu so that your options are New Game, Load Game, Quit, and Options? Obviously it's not too important, but it would be convenient, and if it's not too hard, I'd like to do it.
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