Questionairre about Roguelike development

[tromboneandrew]

I'm not quite sure where would be a better place to put this questionairre, so I'll try this. Plus, if anyone else who has created a Roguelike wants to contribute, please feel free.

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Hello, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup developers; my name is Andrew Meronek and I am a student at Macomb Community College, located outside of Detroit, Michigan. I am writing a paper on the economics of Roguelike computer games for a business class, and I would love if you can answer the below questions. I can only offer that if you do, once I complete the paper, I can share it with you. I will be distributing this questionairre to many different Roguelike developers, to get as well-rounded a picture as possible given my limited resources and the limited scope of this assignment. The answers to some of these questions may already be published online, but I think that it's still a good idea to include them so that you can understand what I'm focusing on.

I have been a fan of Roguelikes for a long time, and I plan on someday making my own small contribution to the genre. The business class is part of a de-rusting of my computer-industry skills. I recently finished a stint with the U.S. Army as a musician, and I currently work as a professional trombonist and composer in the greater Detroit area. If I find your feedback particularly interesting, I may have some follow-up questions after you answer these:

What can you tell me about yourself? Do you develop software professionally or do you have another profession?

How long have you been working on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

During the busiest time, can you approximate how many hours per week you spent on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

What can you tell me about other people who have contributed to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

Why did you choose the production environment? What advantages and disadvantages have you noted?

What can you tell me about how Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup raises funds? Was it successful?

What can you tell me about significant changes to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's software and economic development?

What can you tell me about any serious legal or security problems with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that you've had to deal with?

What can you tell me about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's inspirations?

[khalil]

I'm not one of the devs, but the biggest change in development was probably Linly's dungeon crawl being turned into DCSS when the original creator stopped developing.
As far as Linley's inspirations, I'd assume rogue was chief among that list.

[roctavian]

I'm not a dev either, but I think this questionnaire is, for the most part, inapplicable to Crawl: it's a volunteer project and doesn't raise funds.

You might find some insight on this page, but otherwise it would be hard for many people to answer your questions.

[mumra]

What can you tell me about significant changes to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's software and economic development?

In terms of software and economic development, I can tell you that at some point not long ago, shop prices were overhauled; and also that a Gold God is in the pipeline.

[brendan]

What can you tell me about any serious legal or security problems with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that you've had to deal with?

Some enterprising player figured out how to get access to the random number generator state. This would have, with sufficient lua tedium, to play a perfect game. I replaced the RNG with something that should resist this sort of attack.