Original Post
Hi,
For the next Ludumdare competition I've decided I want to do some kind of roguelike game. Not necessarily set in ancient times with monsters and the such (it might possibly be contempory). But, I wanted to do this in javascript as a learning experience. The main question is, what would be the best way to do this? I can think of a few options. I've done a big project in javascript before, but it wasnt for a game, and for graphics I was using dojox.gfx which was an experimental wrapper for both canvas (pre HTML5) and the proprietary MS / Adobe one that everybody used to complain about; I've not done something in pure text before.
For those not familiar, a roguelike is a top down, turn based game where the characters and environment are represented using ascii characters.
For example, this would be a guy in a 3x3 room:
This is a guy being attacked by 3 dogs in a room where the door has inextricably locked itself:
Because its not using sprite graphics, this changes the approach I might need to use when rendering the game. I've done this type of game in other systems, so the technical side is not an issue, its more a case of getting performant drawing on the largest number of machines possible. As far as I'm aware, there aren't a lot of browser roguelikes implemented in pure javascript; usually they use flash, java, etc.
For the next Ludumdare competition I've decided I want to do some kind of roguelike game. Not necessarily set in ancient times with monsters and the such (it might possibly be contempory). But, I wanted to do this in javascript as a learning experience. The main question is, what would be the best way to do this? I can think of a few options. I've done a big project in javascript before, but it wasnt for a game, and for graphics I was using dojox.gfx which was an experimental wrapper for both canvas (pre HTML5) and the proprietary MS / Adobe one that everybody used to complain about; I've not done something in pure text before.
For those not familiar, a roguelike is a top down, turn based game where the characters and environment are represented using ascii characters.
For example, this would be a guy in a 3x3 room:
#####
# #
# @ #
# #
#####
This is a guy being attacked by 3 dogs in a room where the door has inextricably locked itself:
#####
#dd #
#d@ +
# #
#####
Because its not using sprite graphics, this changes the approach I might need to use when rendering the game. I've done this type of game in other systems, so the technical side is not an issue, its more a case of getting performant drawing on the largest number of machines possible. As far as I'm aware, there aren't a lot of browser roguelikes implemented in pure javascript; usually they use flash, java, etc.
