Jan. 30, 2021
A Hand-doodled Roguelike Tileset

I've been working on a free hand-doodled roguelike graphics tileset called Doodle Rogue. It's an alternative to the standard console and pixel roguelike graphics tilesets out there.

I'm relatively new to drawing. It's taken a couple of years of drawing badly to get to the point where I am comfortable enough for a tileset. This post is to show you some betas of the tileset I'm working on, and also the art that has inspired this work.

Doodle Rogue work-in-progress sketches

Here are the tileset beta sketches.

Doodle Rogue scenery sketches

Doodle Rogue scenery sketches

Doodle Rogue item sketches

Doodle Rogue item sketches

Doodle Rogue character sketches

Doodle Rogue Characters sketches

Doodle Rogue mockup sketch

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There is a ton of work still to do on these. I need to redraw them as vectors and clean them up, and finsh drawing the remainder of the tiles.

Research & references

I used Pinterest to explore different reference styles for the tileset. Here are some of the artists I am using for inspiration and referencing. There are actually a lot more references than this but these are some anchor points that have stood out.

You can find my game-draw reference pinterest feed here if you care to follow along.

Dom 2d

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Dom2d has been a big inspiration for my drawing in general. I love the balance he strikes between quick-draw simplicity whilst still looking good.

Slowquest (Bodie H)

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I love the gritty detail in Bodie's drawings of items and dungeons. Studying his work has taught me a lot about texturing with lines.

Timecowboy

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Timecowboy is a web comic artist.

Varguy

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Varguy has the rare skill of the ligne claire artists, combining seemingly simple shapes and lines into images that really come to life.

Mike Yamada

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I found Mike Yamada's work when reading The Noisy Garage to my kids. I love his animal characters.

Moebius

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That's everything for today. I hope you've enjoyed these images.

Jan. 6, 2021
A procedural MIDI melody generator

I've just released a melody generator that I've been working on for a while. It's a small web app that you can use to procedurally generate looping MIDI melodies and then use them in your own music.

The fractalesque algorithm it uses to generate melodies is one I came up with when I was writing a lot of algorave music a decade ago. The MIDI melodies are rendered to sound using the wasm port of Timidity by Feross.

Enjoy!

Oct. 30, 2020
It's Asterogue Launch Day

Since I was a kid I've always loved the roguelike genre. These procedurally generated mostly-text-based games have a wonderful depth and I've long been fascinated by the leverage and replayability you get from the procedural aspect.

Asterogue gameplay gif

For the past 10 weeks I've been working on my own roguelike. It's a sci fi game with tile graphics set in the interior caverns of an asteroid. I've had heaps of fun building this and I hope you'll have as much fun playing it.

Here's the announcement on Twitter if you care to help me out with a retweet. Thanks so much!

Enjoy!

Aug. 31, 2020
Roguelike Browser Boilerplate

Recently I launched this web based template project that you can use to make your own roguelike game. If you've ever wanted to make your own roguelike game and you know a bit of web development then this is for you.

I'm also recording a series to screencasts which show you how to customise the template to make your own game. It's a walk-through of the whole process, basically a graphical javascript roguelike tutorial which you can follow along with.

Enjoy!

Aug. 14, 2020
Space Elk's Lounge Room

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