Talk:Roguelike/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 17:21, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Always nice to see a key slice of video game history come up in GA. It would be my pleasure to give this a go. Indrian (talk) 17:21, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay, here we go. This is a great article, so I just have a few language tweaks and the like. Detailed comments below. I am going to have to do this in a couple of chunks. I will let you know at the end of the review when I am finished. Indrian (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

My holiday travel plans got screwed up but I will get to this by next week if not sooner if others don't step in. Most of these are changes easily fixed or confirmed, the only aspect of immediate concern being the sourcing of general gameplay which can be done but will take access to sources. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No problem; I'm in no hurry. And don't worry about sourcing every last statement in the first section since we are only at GA, I just need to see a little sourcing here and there. Indrian (talk) 18:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Lead

•  Done"characterized by procedural generation of game levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, permanent death of the player-character, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting following the nature of a dungeon crawl" - The bit about high fantasy really breaks the flow and does not fit in with the rest since its a "typical" feature rather than a core feature. I think that should be broken off into its own sentence.
•  DoneSince the article spends some time on Beneath Apple Manor and Sword of Fargoal there should probably be something in the lead about how even though the genre takes its name from Rogue, there were a couple of earlier games. Less than a sentence should do it.

General Gameplay

 DoneThis section is entirely unsourced. This is GA, not FA, so I don't feel that every last statement needs to be attributed, but an entire section without a source is problematic.

Key Features

•  Done"The genre of roguelike broadly encompasses the gameplay that was introduced in the text-based game Rogue" - As the article itself states, Rogue did not technically introduce much of this gameplay, though earlier examples were, of course, obscure. Maybe "popularized" instead of "introduced"?
  • You did not do this one, so I took the liberty of making the change myself. Let me know if you object to the new wording. Indrian (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
•  Done"RogueBasin, a wiki dedicated to roguelikes and their development, lists several hundred roguelike games as of November 2015." - We really should not use a wiki as a source.
•  DoneTomeNET - Redlink. Is this important enough to keep, or should it just be delinked?

Early popularity

•  DoneThis section covers 20 of the 35 total years discussed in the article. I don't think that qualifies as "early."
•  Done"such as the dungeon crawling games like Colossal Cave Adventure (often simply titled Adventure) (1975), Dungeon (1975) and DND/Telengard (1976). Much of the development of the early roguelike games were based on these games as well as several dungeon crawlers written for the PLATO system, like the multi-user games dnd (1975) and Moria (1975)." - I have never seen any indication that any of these games save Adventure actually influenced the development of Roguelikes. Certainly the PLATO games did not, as Worth, Toy, Arnold, and Wichman have never mentioned having access to PLATO at the time they created their games. I cannot see every cited page of the Barton source through Amazon preview, but what I can see indicates that the source makes no claim that any of those games influenced Rogue or similar games; he just provides a chronological listing of mainframe computer games. This should be redone.
•  Done"Roguelike games were initially developed on computers with limited memory, including mainframes and early home computers" - Mainframe systems had quite expansive memory, though the demands of timesharing often limited what an individual programmer could actually use. This should be tweaked.
•  Done"Further, Rogue was considered to possess a tougher gameplay challenge, leading to it becoming the namesake for the genre" - It became the namesake of the genre because it was more widespread and popular than Beneath Apple Manor. Tougher gameplay had nothing to do with it.
•  Done"which was not released until BSD v4.3" - Do we have a date on that per chance? No big deal if not.
•  Done"most variants of Rogue could be classified into two branches based on two key games, Moria and Hack, that were developed in the spirit of Rogue." - I know this is true, but it should be sourced.
•  Done"he had placed the ultimate goal to locate and defeat the Balrog at the deepest level of the game, akin to the game's boss battle" - Lost an antecedent here. Which game's boss battle?
•  Done"From Moria spun off Angband (1990), by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand at the University of Warwick" - Awkwardly worded.
•  Done"Morgoth became the game's final boss to defeat" - Awkward wording.
•  Done"Further deriving from the concepts in NetHack was Ancient Domains of Mystery (1994), or ADOM for short." - Passive voice and awkwardly worded.

Growth of the Rougelike-like

•  Done"The roguelike genre saw a resurgence in Western markets through independent developers after 2000" - This seems like it should be the first sentence of the preceding section, which discusses Roguelikes created after 2000. Its not really about roguelike-likes.
  • I tweaked this a little more myself. Indrian (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
•  Done"Spelunky (2008), released shortly after the formation of the Berlin Interpretation, is considered to be a major contribution to the growth of indie-developed roguelikes" - Roguelikes, or roguelike-likes?
•  DoneIn general, this section apepars to use the terms "roguelike" and "roguelike-like" interchangeably and without distinction, creating overlap with the previous section as well as some confusion. Perhaps the "Continued developement" and "roguelike-like sections need to be merged and reorganized? At the very least the language needs more precision.

And that's it. I made a lot of grammar tweaks in addition to the comments above. Content-wise, the article is fantastic, but structurally it may need some work. Nothing that cannot be fixed in relatively short order, however, so I will place this article  On hold pending improvements. Indrian (talk) 21:21, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

@Indrian: I believe I have addressed all the issues identified above now, including the sourcing on the gameplay section. --MASEM (t) 16:29, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Masem:Sorry for the holiday-induced delay there. I made a couple of small changes myself on top of your revisions, and I am now satisfied the article meets the GA requirements. Well done! Indrian (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)