r.g.r.d. Roundup #1

Years ago (we're talking almost a decade ago), in a former incarnation, I didn't have a very good view of rec.games.roguelike.development - it seemed too elitist, too wed in the one true way of C. Part of that was my own fault, and yet it has changed remarkably over the years, and it seems every day now there are excellent threads on many aspects of programming roguelikes.

So, in the absence of my perceptible progress on my own creation, I'll be regularly rounding up some of the most notable (not necessarily the best) recent threads from the newsgroup here and giving my own two-penneth worth.

1. "Keep it simple, stupid". For me, the pertinent post was made in this thread by copx regarding rewrites of Roguelikes. The KISS principle has particular meaning for myself - as I've said before was one of the main reasons the original version of Kharne failed. Although I suspect it won't happen due to the developers seemingly having their heads screwed on correctly, am I alone in thinking that Crawl Stone Soup is heading down the same road as Crawl v4.1 and in danger of becoming an (unintentional) overcomplicated mess? Who rewrites the rewriters?
2. "Intriguing new Line Of Sight algorithm". Why oh why oh why oh why? New FOV algorithms may be interesting from a purely academic point of view (in the same way is probably fun to recalculate the Chandrasekhar limit for White Dwarves from basic physical laws), but do any roguelikes actually use any of these wonderful and new esoteric algorithms?
3. "The Rogue Bard unveiling". Free music for Roguelikes. I've listened to some of these and they're excellent. However, whilst I have vague ideas of including a music engine in some distanct completed version of Kharne, I would not include any music along with the distribution. Music is, to me, too personal a thing for it to work with a Roguelike out of the box (although the idea of exploring a dungeon to the sounds of The Place Where The Black Stars Hang by Lustmord is somewhat appealing).
4. "Crawl YASD - guillotined for no reason & orcs in Lair". Alright, this is a refugee from rec.games.roguelike.misc. But it illustrates simultaneously how evil and how excellent Crawl currently is. Crawl Stone Soup seems to be the roguelike to aim for at the moment, and this is a complement to the developers. It would be a real shame if it jumped the shark.

There have been a few other threads on items, item functionality and attributes which have also been of great interest, but since I intend my next few posts to be on this subject, I won't mention them any further at this point other than to say....go read them!