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27:10 · 39K views · Jun 10, 2015
Brian Bucklew of Freehold Games discusses design decisions behind Caves of Qud and Sproggiwood at IRDC 2015. The talk centers on data-driven, event-driven engine design.
HN points to it for insight into how the Caves of Qud developer thinks about game engines.
3 comments from Hacker News
If you're interested in how Brian thinks take a look at this video: this video I've learned a lot from this back in the day!
I'm pretty far into a project to create a Typescript framework for turn and tile-based (think roguelikes) client/server games: [LINK] . Mix of entity-component and event-driven design (inspired by Brian Bucklew this video and Thomas Biksup [LINK] , though looking now I'm surprised I landed on a similar but imo more robust event system as I was only looking at EC pattern at the time). Typescript means entity factories and their components can be fully written in the language rather than XML per the videos above, and people can for example distribute a package that is basically DnD5e or Pathfinder rulesets, custom world generators, or anything else to be plugged into a published game. Typical Minecraft "infinite" world data structure, handles binding up event system to component listeners automatically, (will soon) handles serialization, listeners are async generators ala Redux Saga for neat inversion of control and advanced patterns as needed. It doesn't have any specific frontends or clients (APIs and react hooks+utils exist but not super advanced yet, and a small WebGL renderer + react component), it's more a collection of objects that recursively process state updates in response to a user input until it finishes (like a classic console roguelike), and produce a serialized stream of events clients of any kind can listen to, completely agnostic to how any client may choose to represent it, so you could easily make a DM interface vs an interface for players connected to the same
I come back to it from time to time and play for a week. It looks like it's been getting more accessible over time, with a new UI update having been rolled out recently. There's definitely a certain mindset that helps make it more enjoyable. Imagination being key! From the technical side, the developers have peeled back the curtain on how they've created parts of the game: this video [LINK]