The Seven Day Roguelike Contest Begins!

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development,rec.games.roguelike.announce,rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Within the week of March 5th to March 13th, you are hereby challenged
to write a roguelike in 168 hours!

To participate, follow these simple steps:
1) On either March 5th or March 6th in your local time, post to
rec.games.roguelike.development your entry form. This consists of a
message in which you publicly accept the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge.
2) Write a roguelike.
3) After 168 hours, stop working on the roguelike. If you have, by
your judgement, finished a playable roguelike, you have "won" the
challenge. Make your roguelike publicly available and post your first
(and last) release notice to rec.games.roguelike.announce. Otherwise,
post of your adventures and how that one bug stood between you and fame
on rec.games.roguelike.development.

Good Luck!

The following is from:
http://roguebasin.t-o-m-e.net/inde [...] L_Contest.

The Seven Day Roguelike FAQ
---------------------------

Q) What is a Seven Day Roguelike?

A) A Seven Day Roguelike is a roguelike created in seven days. This
means the author stopped writing code one hundred and sixty eight hours
after they started writing code.

Seven Day Roguelikes are, for roguelike authors, what 24 hou­r comics
would be to comic authors. (cf. http://www.24hourcomics.com/)

They are also for roguelike authors what the National November Writers
Month is for novel writers. (cf. http://www.nanowrimo.org/)

Q) Is this really the best way to make a great roguelike?

A) Probably not. However, the short time frame forces the deve­loper
to actually plan on finishing. Normal roguelike design is open­ ended.
One will still be working on the same roguelike years after ­starting.
This can become dispiriting, as one may have new ideas that ­cannot
fit inside one's current game. A Seven Day Roguelike is a way t­o
experiment with the genre without fearing creating another l­ife-work.
After seven days, one can wash one's hands of the roguelike.

Q) Why Seven Days? Why not 24 Hours?

A) Comic authors are clearly harder core than us wimpy roguelik­e
developers :>

Programming isn't an activity that I'd recommend be done in ­24 hour
marathons. Sure, it can be fun. But you don't learn much o­ut of it,
except maybe that programming with little sleep makes unread­able
code.

Q) Why Seven Days? Why not one month?

A) Novel writers clearly have longer attention spans than us easily
distracted roguelike developers :>

Q) How do I do a Seven Day Roguelike?

A) Choose a week to work on the roguelike. Post to
rec.games.roguelike.development that you have started. Afte­r seven
days passes, post to rec.games.roguelike.announce your succe­ssful
creation. Or, you can beg for more time in
rec.games.roguelike.development :> (You don't have to annou­nce
starting, of course.)

Note that while a 7DRL could be written at any time, the denziens of
rec.games.roguelike.development may on occasion organize a specific
week for people to accept the challenge in. This allows one to have the
shared misery of knowing you are not the only one tracking down a bad
pointer at the 167th hour.

The first such Seven Day Roguelike Challenge will be held March 5th to
March 13th 2005.

Q) My roguelike took 10 days, but is really playable! Does i­t count?

A) It counts as a Ten Day Roguelike. :>

Q) Can I use external libraries? Graphics files? Design Doc­uments?
Code I wrote in the past? Existing roguelikes?

A) This is entirely up to the developer.

It is recommended one has some design idea going into the pr­oject.

You should say what pre-existing code you used. The goal is­n't to see
who can retype existing algorithms the fastest. The goal is­ for
people to write playable and complete roguelikes.

Remember: if you spend seven days patching Nethack, you like­ly will
end up with something that looks a lot like Nethack, so thus not­ be
considered very impressive. However, if you spend seven day­s patching
Nethack and create an amazing new roguelike, you will be sui­tably
honoured.

Q) How do we judge the Winners?

A) The primary criterion is completeness. The resulting game s­hould
be complete and playable. The author is encouraged to not rele­ase
another version.

That being said, the only true judge of your "Winnerness" is
your­self.

Q) My friend and I want to work on a Seven Day Roguelike toge­ther...

A) Sure! This is definitely a Seven Day Roguelike. Keep in mi­nd that
your seven days occur in parallel. Also remmeber that addin­g more
manpower to a late software project only makes it later...

Q) What about licensing?

A) Clearly, the compiled roguelike itself must actually be rele­ased.
No good claiming you have it, but won't release it :>

Source code does not have to be released, but it is strongly­
encouraged that you release it. Heck, release it public domain! It
wa­s only seven days work, after all. (Of course, if you patched
exis­ting code, follow its licensing agreement...)

Q) How many Seven Day Roguelikes have been done?

A) Two so far, but we are hoping the number will grow. The following is
the list of certified Seven Day Roguelikes (7DRLs):

Dungeon Monkey
Written by Joseph Hewitt, on October 28 2003.

The first! It was the pioneering piece of performance art known as
Dungeon Monkey which is guilty for having created the 7DRL phenomon.

Link: http://www.geocities.com/pyrrho12/ [...] ndex.html.

Of course, it was done before anyone invented this categoriz­ation, so
is retconned as a Seven Day Roguelike.

MPR7DRL
Written by Martin Read, on January 30th, 2005:

"Done it. There's a load/save bug that's probably down to my­
imperfect understanding of Berkeley random()'s operation, but I don't
­care; the game is playable

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ [...] drl.tar.gz

Disclaimer: Source code distro, not expected to work on thin­gs that
aren't Linux. "