Future history of Fallen

It is the sketch part of “About Fallen” page. It would be edited, steamrolled and placed there.

I plan to make this blog real citadel of Fallen, until it would need personal site.
Don'd hesitate to point me something or ask question. It would be really helpful!

History of Fallen the Roguelike

Fallen was completely different game or better say games during its development.

I want to write here short story of this project.

Wish it would be interesting for everyone, who like roguelikes, roguelike development. Would be helpful to roguelike developer to avoid my mistakes and at least, but not the last, would help me to put everything together.

So.

The development of the project, that eventually morphed into Fallen had begun in very late 2008. Maybe 28-30 of November, maybe December. Frankly, it would be better to say, that I have started it in early 2009. Also, it doesn't mean, that it was in development for all this years. At least one year, 2011, I didn't even touched it.

From the very beginning I was the only developer of the game, full of plans and rather inexperienced for the project of that size. Both in programming and game design. I thought, that my previous vast experience of “hand-made” ^_^ board and small computer games would be more then enough.

Of course, I was wrong, but I'll write about it.

First of all, the design document wasn't a design document at all, it was mere “coll stuff” list. Like, we would have golems, labyrinths, robots, lot of items, materials, global map, realistic combat, poisons, factions, bodyparts, wounds, pain, craft, wood, demons, nuclear war, fruit trees and cookies.

Doubtlessly, it was a death march project.

The waves of understanding.

Wave of team

I think, it the most important one. That help me to endure others. I was doubtlessly lucky that GoodSir to join the team. Feel of friend's shoulder, brainstorming, support, art, teamwork etc.
As I wrote for many time, without team, Fallen would be one of many “died in defunct” roguelikes.

Wave of code

Programmist. You need at least one skilled programmist for your roguelike, no exceptions. Sounds rather obvious, isn't it?
Roguelikes looks like really easy program, until you try to make one. There are lot of cross linked data and you have to keep it running smoothly.
It could be you, member of your team, you found, hired, enslaved or mesmerised. But you need this person!
Reading McConnnell's books when you already have bulk of smelly Cobol-style code, could be rather painful. I knew lot of projects, that died on this stage and, it is really pity, would die.
Fall From Heaven the Roguelike (old name of Fallen) gone the same way. Except I was stubborn enough to revive it for many times.
I'll put myself together, overcome terrifying shame and post my old code or “the best” parts of it. Maybe, it would help you to avoid my mistakes. I wish it to be so!
You can learn programming or make roguelike, but not simultaneous.

Wave of game design

Writing a design document after a couple of years of active development is cool tradition of Russian gamedev (c).

My philosophy of game design is that you can create the greatest algorhythms -- but it's in vain if you don't have a REASON to have them.
For example, the Roguelike "Fall From Heaven" had a couple of relatively working versions. It had tons of features, lots of places to visit, monsters to fight, neat pixel art, and etc. There's one thing wrong with it, though -- it was unplayable. This overwhelming swamp of features ended up being boring and useless.
I asked myself a funny questions -- "Why is Fall From Heaven the Roguelike not fun? My previous games were hella fun, but they had 1/100 of Fall From Heaven's features!".
Answer beat me with ugly stick. Lot of features doesn't mean fun. Useless feature would take your work as any other, with one exception – it contributes nothing to aspect of gameplay.
It was the moment, when I armed with big rusty knife, started to cut feature, balancing and reworking the remaining one.

But. Poor project architecture stroke on this stage. It was so fragile and overburden, so 80% of my efforts was put to keep program running with new changes.

This can lead the project to couple of ends.

First, the grave one – the very end of the project. We have seen hundreds of them. To tell the truth, I was close to it.
And the second, put yourself together and move on, step by step:

The King has died, Hail to the King

Old project collapsed at the summer-autumn of 2013, under burden of its unsupportable code. Yes, it was mostly technical fail.
I put my best to refactor it, but.. well.. it didn't survived the operation. I took couple of units, nice algorithms and started Fallen Rebirth at autumn-winter of 2013.
It was Paradigm changing decision.

I was always saying: Don't rewrite your project from scratch and did it myself one day.

Frankly, is there any other way to progress? Learn rules and ideas your workspace has, form the paradigms and them move them on!

Want to be creative game-designer and invent something new? Learn existing rules at first, play great games, write down cool ideas, analyse them, don't hesitate to copy, study, be openminded and then be ready to move forward.

Fallen Rebirth.

It is young, but looks promising. It's design document has, maybe 1/50 of “wannabe features” of demised project, but it isn't an overweight monster on a death row.
It is already ten times more playable, then old, full of features game.
The time will show the results, but GoodSir and I will do everything that we can to make Fallen to rise.