Intro.
Series: The Aesthetics of Roguelikes
Most of today’s gamers, when presented with the ASCII-interface of a typical roguelike, immediately dismiss it as old, graphically unappealing, and boring. These sceptics refuse to have a deeper look into the game’s mechanics and its »inner values« and it takes time and effort to convince them to just try to discover the fun roguelikes have to offer. The outward appearance of the game is not as important for a roguelike as it is for a more modern, commercial game.
However, an interesting task is trying to raise a player’s awareness of aesthetics as they apply to this genre. The current and the next issues of Roguelike. The magazine will cover six aspects of this topic:
We start by having a closer look at different interface concepts, taken from well-known games on the one hand and from not-so-important or even dead games on the other hand. We’ll also address the issue of typography – as ASCII is the default for most roguelikes, the role of fonts is very important.
The next issue of RTM will discuss the various graphical tilesets that can be used to extend the default appearance of many roguelikes. We will also reflect on language in roguelikes, not from a linguistic point of view (although this would be very interesting, too), but in the sense of literature.
Finally, in RTM #3, we’ll first cover soundtracks and music, before we’ll talk about roguelike-influences in other genres of art.
Comment #1 by Slashie (2007-03-20)
Hey Mario, nice work on this magazine. I love it and I am happy to see you decided to continue it, as I told you some week ago via email, this is NEEDED! ;) Thanks again.
I think if you hadn’t wrote that mail, RTM would still be dead, so nice to see you here ;)
Comment #2 by Orcrist (2007-03-20)
Good work, I hope that we can expect nice articles in it :) Let the RNG bless you :)
Thanks a lot. I will sacrifice all my gold to the RNG, perhaps this will help ;)
Comment #3 by Telamon (2007-03-21)
Thanks! I enjoyed reading this issue!
Comment #4 by Dan (2007-03-23)
Interesting. Could you have a links section in the next issue to make it easier to find these gems without digging?
I’m unsure about what exactly you are talking. Some kind of archive which contains links (maybe sorted by topic?) to the articles, regardless of issue numbers? Such a thing will surely be added.
Comment #5 by Andrew Cory (2007-03-24)
Please, please, please: RSS Feeds …
This site is totally static, even the comment forms just send mails to me and I copy the comments manually into the comment sections. So for RSS, I had to create the feeds by my own – and that is too much work (no, I won’t use a blog software for RTM). To get informed about new issues, check r.g.r.d or r.g.r.m, or just come back at the next issue’s scheduled release date (which is visible at the home page.
Comment #6 by Jason Scott (2007-03-27)
If you could make a PDF version of your magazine, I would die of happiness.
As I got mails from other readers who also want PDF-versions, I will think of this.
Comment #7 by Edrobot (2007-03-31)
If I write an article that I think should be here, where should I send it?
Just use the e-mail-address shown in the imprint (on home page)
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