History and future

The Past...

The original ChessRogue was written in 2005 as a (successful) attempt at rec.games.roguelike.development's rapid roguelike challenges. The newsgroup holds an annual 7DRL (Seven-Day RogueLike) challenge where a roguelike must be finished to completion within seven days of coding starting. It's great fun, but unfortunately I never seem to have enough time to participate, so instead I wrote the original over a long weekend as a 3DRL. A couple of extra bugfix releases were made after that, and that was that - the idea behind the challenge is that the game is complete after the end of the allowed time.

The Present...

ChessRogue has now been extended significantly from the original (although the 'Classic Pieces' challenge lets you get some of the old gameplay back if you want it) with several new pieces, powers and features.

The 0.1 versions brought the code up-to-date and made it much more maintainable, added several new pieces, and brought in trapdoors and treasure to increase the variety of the late game.

0.2.0 added three more pieces (the Sergeant, General and Lance, based on the Silver, Gold and Lance from Shogi), warnings for being in check, five more levels, treasure vaults to give Mantraps something interesting to do, and various minor interface improvements. The display routines were also completely re-written, which will allow a graphical version to be produced.

The 0.3.0 versions added a new graphical interface in addition to traditional text, and the first mini-bosses and rewards. Now there's a use for all those Pawns on later levels other than getting in the way!

The Future...

Future developments of ChessRogue will include:

• A better website, if I get time.
• More variation in the level maps
• More special levels, bosses and items
• More challenge modes
• ...and more. Suggestions are welcome!