Since people have started to announce their projects, I thought I
might as well go ahead and announce mine. It'll be my first "and a
bit" roguelike, and as with the tradition of the competition it isn't
entirely orthodox, nor does it take itself too seriously.

To fully understand it, a bit of background information is required.
Around the time the BBC Micro was popular, there was a magazine called
The Micro User. And in the letters page, there were some humourous,
fictional letters from Bob, writing to his friend Trev. These letters
delt with the trials and tribulations of an 80's home computer
tinkerer, and the way the world around him (particularly his wife)
looked upon his hobby. Some of these letters can be seen online here:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/themicrouser/menus/humour.htm

The letters however were rather tame in nature, and not really
befitting of a roguelike.

The real inspiration for the roguelike comes from a much later letter,
in 1995, in the last ever issue of Acorn Computing. This Bob and Trev
letter sends things down a slightly more surreal and apocalyptic/
dystopian path, featuring cemtex mice, floppy disc drives brandished
as deadly weapons, the dongle squad, the Acron Users' suicide clan,
and the usual smattering of in-jokes. This of course is a perfect
setting for a roguelike.

So, I present to you, (or at least I will do once the competition is
over), Bob and Trev: Resurrection (Working title).

The mechanics of the game will be like most other roguelikes. However
instead of travelling down through the dungeon you will be travelling
up to the top of a skyscraper; and instead of wielding +5 swords of
Ultimate Power you'll be relying on a Stylophone and some mouse
cleaning fluid.

But then I decided this would be far too simple an entry to have any
real impact on the roguelike world, so I decided to take it one step
further. The target machine will be a 2MHz BBC Model B with 32K of RAM
and 100k disc drive. And for maximum portability (and because 6502
assembler would be a step too far), the game will be programmed in
nothing but BBC BASIC. This means it'll run on any authentic Acorn/
RISC OS machine with 32K of RAM, or on practically any other machine
that has a BBC emulator, or has a port of BBC BASIC, or can run the
open-source Brandy (http://jaguar.orpheusweb.co.uk/branpage.html).

Of course this is a rather restrictive computer to aim for, so
planning is key. To help with this I've made a list of around 150
items, monsters, and dungeon pieces. Apart from helping me work out
some of the functional requirements of the game and how some of the
mechanics will work, it's also allowed me to calculate how much memory
is needed. The game should need little more than 3K of RAM to maintain
its working state, and with a 100k floppy inserted it should be able
to support a dungeon around 30 levels deep (Each previously visited
level will be saved to disc, ala NetHack). Savegames, high scores, and
bones files will of course be supported.

Unfortunately memory constraints mean that if I want an interesting
game it will have to be black and white only, and operate in a 40
column screen mode. With the BBC I basically have two options
available - a fully graphics capable mode, or the text-only teletext
mode. There is a graphics mode that gives 80 columns of text in 2
colours (and another that provides 40 columns in 4 colours), but both
require a whopping 20K of RAM. Teletext, on the other hand, provides
40 columns in 16 colours, and only uses 1K of RAM. As far as memory
usage goes, the correct choice is obvious. Unfortunately Teletext in
the UK doesn't allow you to place two letters of differing colours
directly next to each other, so I won't be making any concerted effort
to use colour for the map display. The good news however is that you
can upgrade your BBC to well above 32K of RAM, so if I have time I'll
try adding support for 4-colour operation in a graphics mode, for
those with high-end machines. And colour TV.

There's still a fair amount of planning to do, so hopefully I'll be
able to fight away my urges to start coding until the competition
week.

Now, who's going to be the first to offer to write a 7DRL for a 1K
ZX80?

Cheers,

- Jeffrey