Roguelike Radio Episode 127: IRDC 2016 - New York
Sep 28, 2016
Mark Johnson, longtime contributor to the roguelike scene and experienced developer, joins lively conference-floor conversations. He talks tooling discoveries, programming craft, procedural storytelling and time-travel demos. The group praises playtesting, community energy, simple AI tricks, and expanding procedural generation into richer player experiences.
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Episode notes
Community Energy Drives Rapid Idea Exchange
- Roguelike gatherings concentrate deep, diverse expertise which accelerates idea exchange and fosters strong community bonds.
- Participants praised talks that applied philosophical craft principles to programming and shared resources like BFXR and Markov techniques, widening procedural possibilities.
Tabletop Playtest Revealed Immediate Fixable Issues
- Putting a game on a table for free play yielded immediate, concrete feedback from genre-savvy playtesters.
- Developer Mark Johnson watched multiple players and got several direct, implementable suggestions that revealed usability and design issues fast.
Procedural Systems Expanding Into Narrative And Behavior
- Procedural generation is expanding beyond dungeon floors into narrative, lore, and unpredictable player experiences.
- Examples included Markov-generated text in Caves of Qud and dynamic systems like Dijkstra maps used for emergent enemy behaviors.