Kaduria

Roguelike game - Version 0.64

History

The year was 1995. Game development at that time was still working on its way to became an industry it is now. There was a new generation of game developers pushing out from the weeds, creating both commercial and non-commercial games like roguelikes. Doom and its sequel Doom II (id Software) were released in 1993 and 1994. It was a time of growth for game companies and developers who became rich literally overnight. I chose a different path with my roguelike game Kaduria. It was by no means the only of its kind. There were many projects brewing, promising more than first generation roguelikes. Young, foolhearted developers were exchanging their thoughts at rec.games.roguelike.development mainly, because internet forums were not yet invented. Some examples of these projects are original Dungeon Crawl (Linley Henzell), Legend of Saladir (Erno Pakarinen) and ADOM (Thomas Biskup). Some games were abandoned, some finished and others still in development.

Nethack was the reason I began to create a roguelike game. It was and still is the best roguelike ever created. Other influences were games like Dungeon Master (FTL Software), Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (Origin Systems). For a long time Kaduria had an Ultima style centered gameview that was scrolling every time you took a step. It was changed only recently to a "regular" gameview.

The first version of Kaduria had text mode, but it soon became a graphical roguelike with the first tile-based version using 320 x 200 VGA graphics. This would eventually change during years and decades, along with the tile size. Some of the graphics tiles, items and monsters in particular, were originally designed by Risto Saarelma who is the only main contributor of this project. Programming language of Kaduria was always C and C++. In 2005 I made a decision to switch from procedural programming style to object-oriented style. Kaduria had a demo released a while before that change, and some people even tried it. Object-oriented programming offered a rigid structure and modular style which helped me to manage the project at least in some way.

In 1998 I went to study 3D-modeling and graphic design. This happened in the end of 8 years of severe depression and panic disorder phase which was never diagnosed. Those three years in school were nice, almost like a holiday from my so called life. I'm almost sure I wouldn't be here now writing this history would I not had experienced that small amount of self worth coming from the success of studying. During those years I was still developing Kaduria, but it was less intense. After the school I never found a job from graphic design industry and was mostly unemployed and dirt poor until I found some kind of career in 2005 that lasted until 2019. During that time I also began to work on my second roguelike project Teemu, first released in 2008.

The story of Teemu is intertwined with Kaduria closely. Teemu was originally a 7DRL (7-day roguelike) project that became a three months of frantic development effort. With Teemu I had not set any goals so it was much easier to create and that experience gave me hope of ever finishing Kaduria. I was able to test dungeon generation and other stuff in small scale and then use it in Kaduria. Teemu is in development even now, slowly becoming a true roguelike it was always destined to be.

As years and decades passed I was always making the wrong assumption that it would not take too long to finish Kaduria. But weeks turned to months and months turned to years. Game development has changed tremendously from those early years of 1990's. These days indie developers use mostly game engines while large companies are drowning in codes of conduct and minority hiring practices. As a result there is hardly any new innovation in games. If anything it's even more important that we have independent game developers working on game projects that can turn the next page in the history of computer games and show everyone what is true creativity.