ruSSH

ruSSH's title screen, with a simple ASCII graphic shaped like a bulletin board.
A screenshot of a randomly generated level of ruSSH, taken during the development process.

Inspiration

ruSSH was inspired by text-based (in other words, ASCII art) roguelikes, especially those which were played (and still are played) by members of public access Unix systems (pubnixes) and BBS communities. We wanted to make a game that felt retro but has a modern backend. This inspiration is the source for the name itself of the project, as a reference to the Secure Shell Protocol (and telnet, to some extent) that makes communities like this possible.

What it does

The gameplay loop of ruSSH itself is fairly straightforward- kill as many enemies as you can and try to get to the bottom of the dungeon before escaping eventually. Beneath the hood, it implements several different algorithms, including two separate NPC AIs (non-generative; we mean this in the classic sense of the term AI) and a random dungeon generation mechanic.

How we built it

Mostly, trial and error. We went back and forth between each other a lot with trying to solve various bugs and crashes, and we were able to problem-solve relatively effectively.

Challenges we ran into

We had some difficulty with implementing some of our algorithms, particularly the A* algorithm for monster pathfinding and the random dungeon generation algorithm. Our team also ran into some challenges with git itself, since we did not set up a .gitignore file as soon as we should have.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Though we didn't get to implement every feature that we wanted to, we're proud of the fact that we made as much as we did, and that we showed up and made something in the first place.

What we learned

That we can get pretty far in a project in a short amount of time, even if we don't finish every last detail that we wanted originally.

What's next for ruSSH

Ideally, we would like to continue development on ruSSH to get it into a more complete and polished state. We have several feature ideas that we didn't get the time to implement, and overall we feel that the project could use some more time spent on it.