(Part 2) Best products from r/roguelikedev

I agree that books explicitly devoted to Roguelikes are rare, let alone for Roguelike Development. In fact, I only know of 3 related to either:

• Dungeon Hacks
  
• One Week Dungeons
  
• @Play: Exploring Roguelike Games
  
  That said, I imagine there are other books that are directly applicable to Rogulike Development, such as that PCG book I linked in the OP. Maybe there are some strong AI, Game Design, or even UI books that roguelike devs here have found applicable?

Divided Kingdoms

I've been very busy at work, so development time was limited this week:

• Added health bars above NPCs with their level
  
  
• Containers are now working; it is possible to add and remove items.
  
  
• More work on the item generation algorithm; items now have levels, prefixes and suffixes with stat modifiers working. I still have a ton of work ahead as I only have a few modifiers in my data files and they don't really make sense yet.
  
  
• Inventory list view now only displays categories that have at least one item
  
  
• Fixed blood particle animations after migrating to party system
  
  After reading a book on AI (Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI) and a book on emergence (Emergence in Games), I started reading Game Design Workshop; it's a great book so far. I want to read Designing Virtual Worlds next.
  
  See you next week!

I'd recommend this book, though if new to coding it may be a bit overwhelming https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Gregory/dp/1466560010/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=NC95XNX16602MDF2SG80

If I had 40 bucks I would buy this right now
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1138743313/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Uh... I only noticed now that you were looking at the first edition... I actually meant the second edition. But by comparing it I guess your comments on the chapters still apply, with only part of 6 being relevant.

I prefer Uncle Bob's view:

> It is well known that I prefer code that has few comments. I code by the principle that good code does not require many comments. Indeed, I have often suggested that every comment represents a failure to make the code self explanatory. I have advised programmers to consider comments as a last resort.

Other times he puts it more bluntly:

>Comments are always failures. We must have them because we cannot always figure out how to express ourselves without them, but their use is not a cause for celebration.

or

>"Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression."

I know it's not always practical, but I like Uncle Bob's extremely demanding perspective, because I feel it sets a really high bar and struggling to work toward it is something that stretches me.

If this is a wildly shocking view, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Uncle Bob's book Clean Code which I learned about from this IRDC talk. I saw that talk, bought the book, read it, and my views were changed. I now refactor a lot more and comment a lot less.

Uncle Bob's minimally commented code doesn't come cheap though, he spends a ton of cycles after the code works, retooling it specifically to make it readable.

Also, for the record, I ain't no Uncle Bob. Don't misunderstand me as saying I live up to his standards please!!

While 2d math is common in roguelikes, 3d math is much more rare. Chapters 1-5 on coordinate systems, and vectors apply, but chapters 7-17 do not. While familiar with matrix math, I don't find it applicable to roguelike development. The visibility systems described in chapter 16 is not as far as I can tell from the preview on amazon applicable to roguelikes. In fact I'd be more confused if I read that and then tried to use it in a roguelike.

> By any means I would say that geometry (at any level) wouldn't be enough even for a RL. But right now I plan to focus on geometry, since it seems to be the most fundamental subject and the one I lack the most.

If I had to put together a primer on roguelike math:

• Cartesian Coordinate System
  
• Euclidean Vectors
  
• Pythagorean Theorem
  
• And maybe sine cosine tangent
  
  I wouldn't start with wikipedia either. Instead https://www.khanacademy.org/math/geometry-home and https://www.khanacademy.org/math/trigonometry are a likely a decent means of starting.