1 - Introduction

May 26, 2021 tdd rust srl | Next

This post is part of the series Making a Roguelike - A test-driven approach.

In this series, I will explore how to make a simple roguelike using Test Driven Development (TDD) and related techniques.

What is a roguelike? We will go with the definition found on Wikipedia:

Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing video games characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character.

I wanted to use this genre because I like to play it, and its turn based and somewhat discrete nature lends itself well to automatic testing.

To be clear, this will not be the next Nethack, ADOM or ToME. But I do want to create a certain challenge for the player, as well as for the maker (moi), while ticking the boxes of the definition.

And since I like doing TDD and also game development, well … here we are.

At any rate, this is what I want to look at:

Writing software from the outside in using TDD, inspired in part by this book
Writing software incrementally, driven by features (or “use cases”)
Building that clean architecture everyone is raving about
And whatever else comes up!

The code is hosted on Github. The top of each post will contain a link to the revision relevant to it.

Rest assured, I have no idea what I am doing. Please have a wonderful day.