Recent Posts

1

Early Dev / Re: Golden Krone Hotel

« Last post by jere on June 25, 2017, 10:09:22 PM »

Continuing the "Things I hate..." series with Part 2 about Identification: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wordpress/2017/06/25/things-i-hate-about-roguelikes-part-2-identification/

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Early Dev / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum (v 0.7 released, 18th April!)

« Last post by UltimaRatioRegum on June 25, 2017, 04:17:07 PM »

Maybe you are still trying to do too many things at the same time. I know what it is, but I'm possibly different kind of personality, because I don't need to get results fast and I know it's not going to happen fast. Roguelike projects are deceiving, because it feels like you should be able to finish one in some countable amount of time, but it's often not that easy. So many developers have found it out the hard way.

Thanks for the message Krice. I do understand what you're saying about still trying too much, but I think this reduction, and this change, will be what I need. I do understand what you mean about not "needing to get results fast" - but both in my academic life (because I need to secure future positions) and in URR (becaues 0.8 is *so* overdue) I do feel some pressure for results, and I think that's inevitable; but I'm working to push that out of my head and take things a little more slowly, and to allow myself the time to get ideas and work develop a bit more fully.

So… this is what burnout feels like.

You seemed super human in your output before. Any long term project gets you to this point eventually.
Good luck with readjusting your work/work/life balance. The second work is the game. 

Haha, thanks my friend. Yeah, any long-term project does that. I definitely had a "small" version of this feeling towards the end of my PhD, but that was a) lesser in intensity and b) shorter, lasting only around a week; this is still a very new experience. And I really appreciate the good luck wishes - I'm confident I can make it happen .

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Announcements / Re: Angband (Now at v4.1.0!)

« Last post by Avagart on June 25, 2017, 03:27:14 PM »

Traps overhaul sounds sensible, I;m curious how it's going to work in practice.

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Programming / How to maintain a large Level class?

« Last post by Krice on June 25, 2017, 01:21:45 PM »

I have a Level class from which some special level types are derived, but most of the code is in Level class. It has also a member Level_Map class which is kind of strange, because it could have more low level generation code. Also, there are separate classes for most feature generation (corridors, rooms, rivers, etc.).

Since Level has roughly two main operations: generation and then actions that happen in level during the gameplay, my plan is divide the class to "base" class with generation and actual Level class with gameplay operations. In a way Level_Map is redundant so it could be a part of that base class.

The deriving style is probably not important, because I just want to split the class to those two main operations, because it's so huge. I may have to open the base class to public access I guess. I'm mostly thinking out loud, but if someone has more experience on OOP I'm happy to know your opinions.

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Announcements / Re: Angband (Now at v4.1.0!)

« Last post by getter77 on June 25, 2017, 12:17:18 PM »

v4.1.0!   

This has release has been a massive team effort by many people over a long time. The wonderful community on these forums has been a big part of that team. This is your game, I hope you like it.

This version has the first major gameplay changes since 3.5.0. Some of these changes have significant impact on the game, and affect longstanding parts of the game quite radically. Given that aver 750 individual changes have been pushed to the main game repository since the last release, what is presented here will be more of a summary than a detailed changelog.

Traps
    The general philosophy is that all players will hit traps at some time
    Magical trap detection has been removed, except as a spell for mages
    Active searching has been removed
    Characters have one chance to detect a trap, on seeing the grid it is on; this chance is dependent on searching skill
    Traps are either physical or magical, and there is a corresponding split in the player disarming skill
    Many new traps have been introduced, and old ones amended
    Traps are placed almost exclusively at corridor intersections or other chokepoints
    Trap density in vaults is reduced by 75%

Identify
    ID is now "rune-based"; once an object properry is recognised once, it will always be recognised on all future items
    The only forms of magical identify are scrolls and the mage spell, both of which identify a single unknown rune
    All scrolls, potions, mushrooms are identified on their first use
    Most wands, staffs and rods are identified on first use, the main exceptions being when they affect monsters and are tested in the absence of monsters
    Ego item names become known once all the relevant runes are known

Player knowledge
    Changes to previously known terrain outside the player's field of view (doors opening, etc) are no longer immediately known by the player
    Secret doors are now always found on stepping adjacent (or at a distance by the mage spell)

Dungeon generation
    A new generation algorithm has been introduced, and appears roughly as often as the classical generation algorithm
    There are many new vaults in the new algorithm, and also new room types - huge rooms, rooms of chambers, and interesting rooms (like small vaults)
    There is also an infrequently occurring generation type, the "moria level", which features large rough-edged rooms and many orcs, trolls and ogres
    Lava has changed from being a visual curiosity in town in 4.0.x to being generated in the dungeon; it will burn those without fire immunity
    Another new type of terrain has been introduced: passable rubble, which behaves like regular rubble except it can be walked through

Monsters
    Monster breaths are now cone-shaped starting at the monster, instead of being indistinguishable from ball spells
    Monster pathfinding has been improved (mostly), with monsters tracking explicitly by sight, sound or scent
    The relationship between player stealth and monsters waking has changed

Random artifacts
    Lights, rings and amulets are now fully randomised instead of based closely on the standard special artifacts
    The artifact set generation algorithm has been changed so that random artifacts no longer correspond to individual standard artifacts, but rather are generated so as to get a statistically similar distribution
    Calculation of object power has been simplified
    Generating a set of random artifacts now actually writes a data file like artifact.txt, which can be used for future games

Curses
    Sticky curses have been removed completely
    A large number of new curses have been introduced
    Items can have multiple curses
    Curse removal targets individual known curses on items
    Failed curse removal causes an item to become fragile
    Fragile items have a chance to be destroyed on future failed curse removals

Status effects
    Monster status effects have been redone to rebalance reliability and effectiveness, so that they may actually be interesting to use
    New types of status-inducing spells and magic devices have been included

Other
    Much more detail has been moved out to text files in lib/gamedata
    Many underlying code improvements

Here we go---the big time arrives anew!

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Early Dev / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum (v 0.7 released, 18th April!)

« Last post by Tzan on June 25, 2017, 12:32:45 AM »

So… this is what burnout feels like.

You seemed super human in your output before. Any long term project gets you to this point eventually.
Good luck with readjusting your work/work/life balance. The second work is the game. 

7

Early Dev / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum (v 0.7 released, 18th April!)

« Last post by Krice on June 24, 2017, 09:34:59 PM »

Maybe you are still trying to do too many things at the same time. I know what it is, but I'm possibly different kind of personality, because I don't need to get results fast and I know it's not going to happen fast. Roguelike projects are deceiving, because it feels like you should be able to finish one in some countable amount of time, but it's often not that easy. So many developers have found it out the hard way.

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Early Dev / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum (v 0.7 released, 18th April!)

« Last post by UltimaRatioRegum on June 24, 2017, 09:02:53 PM »

Cross-posted from my blog: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2017/06/24/burnout-and-the-future/

So… this is what burnout feels like.

I’m almost now ready to submit the manuscript for my first academic monograph. It will have taken two months longer than anticipated, which was a great disappointment to me – it’s the only piece of academic work I’ve ever had to ask for an extension on. There were many factors at play there, some within my control, and some outside of my control, but the bottom line was that had I taken on less than I wound up taking on (and had the circumstances I was working within been different), I would have been able to get it submitted on time. Although I’m very happy with the final product, and I’m confident the work will be a valuable contribution to the study of unpredictability in games (of all its forms), I find myself reflecting specifically on the process by which the final parts of it – the crunch, if you will – were written. From around the start of March until the start of June, I can truthfully say I did effectively nothing with my spare moments except writing the book. All day on both days of every weekend was book writing; every evening was book-writing; every train journey and flight and coach trip was book writing. During this period I spent effectively no time with friends, no time exercising, and no time whatsoever doing any programming, much to my chagrin.

During this period, I began to experience for the first time what I believe is called “burnout” – my appetite dropped, I developed some anxiety (a deeply new experience for me), I developed some depression (similarly), and it felt at times as if there wasn’t really any point to what I was doing; that was I just speaking into the void because nobody else would read it; that I was letting everyone down by not working on URR (which I still feel quite acutely); and other feelings I’m not going to share here. Although certainly not the darkest time in my life, it has been, in many ways, a deeply unpleasant three months. Travelling a lot in this period helped me, and finding some times to engage with nature – whether meeting wild bison and wolves in the frozen tundra of Northern Canada or meeting wild tropical birds and lizards in the equatorial jungles of Hong Kong and Singapore – helped my mood a lot, but it only stemmed the bleeding, without addressing the underlying issues.

Academia, especially early-career academic before one secures a tenured faculty position, is notoriously stressful and time-consuming. One is always in competition with vast numbers of recent PhD graduates for a ludicrously small number of postdoctoral or junior faculty positions; one is constantly bombarded with requests and obligations and things that need to be done; one is strongly encouraged to submit only to top-tier journals, and yet doing so leaves one waiting for potentially years until publication, damaging one’s employability in the short term. The other crucial element of academia is that there is always more one can do. As academics, we don’t really have working hours, as such – just contracts that say we must “fulfil the expectations of the job”, or some equivalent language, using however many hours across however many days per week that takes. Many contracts even explicitly state we are expected to use evenings, weekends and holidays to meet those requirements where necessary – and that, assuming one wants to spend one’s academic career actually doing research, will always be true.

Up until now, I’ve always been able to field this and maintain the other things I want in my life, but in these last three months, I am not exaggerating when I say every spare moment has gone into the book. For the three months before that extreme compression of my time, almost every spare moment went into the book, and looking back, I can see my free time shrinking into a smaller and smaller gap with every passing day. Something inherently enjoyable – and I do enjoy academic work tremendously – quickly ceases to be enjoyable when it is something one must do, and when it is the only thing one is spending one’s time doing. Because of this the book became something of a chore, which itself made it harder to write, and which itself made it more of a chore, and made more painful my inability to spend my time on other things, and so forth. As a result of the stress leading up to and during the book-writing, I screwed up. I made two serious errors of judgement – one being a different but major piece of academic work I submitted, and another being a piece of work I submitted elsewhere. In both cases I made poor judgements about what I wrote, and over-estimated my knowledge of those domains, and was – quite appropriately – brought down a rung by those who do know those domains. They were both humbling experiences, which really brought home how much my judgement had been impaired by the stress of finishing the book.

But now, the book is basically finished, and I’m on my final visiting position of the year, having also just been offered an amazing new two-year postdoc opportunity in Canada where I will be able to drive my own research and make my own hours. However, as I sit here for now in a cafe in Nevada, trying to take stock of things, I realise that there are four things I must make time for, and a fifth change I need to make overall, from now, moving forward, no matter what, in order both to be the kind of academic I want to be, and to have the life I want beyond the academy.

Firstly, I need to make time again for programming, starting now. It’s something I enjoy tremendously, it’s creative work which forms a crucial balance to the intellectual work I make my income from, it’s something a lot of people are following and counting on me for, it’s something absolutely tethered to my online presence, and it’s something I simply deeply want to start doing again, and which gives me valuable balance in my life. It makes me deeply sad that I wasn’t able to get 0.8 out before I went into this period of total time compression and book-only-focus, and I want to put this right and get 0.8 released as fast as possible, and certainly before my new position starts later this year. Once 0.8 is out URR will be more than half-done, and psychologically, that’s an important marker I need to hit. Therefore, starting next weekend, I intend to devote a day per week to programming, no matter what else might be looming over me or might be requiring my attention. Either Saturday or Sunday each week, but probably I think Sunday, my intention is to always spend that day – as a minimum – programming. Despite the long hiatus, URR is not cancelled, but has certainly been on hiatus, and it’s finally time for that hiatus to properly, and truly, end.

Secondly, I need to make time again for fitness and exercise. I haven’t exercised once in the last three months, with the exception of hiking up and down Victoria Peak in Hong Kong and a couple of hikes in Alberta and Nevada. Normally I would exercise for at least an hour at least four or so days a week, but the book has simply dominated my time and my thought to such a degree that I’ve let this slip completely, down to zero. I can tell and feel that I’m less fit now, I’m less strong now, and less healthy now, and I don’t like it. It’s an unsettling and disturbing change from the state of being I’ve become used to, and I want to get back to my previous level of fitness as soon as possible. I’ve now managed to get this back to exercising twice a week, and hopefully I can push that back towards four as I decompress in the coming months. As I’m moving to Alberta, I’m keen to do lots of hiking there, too, and I have some interesting future travel plans which should also help with that.

Thirdly, I need to make time for a personal life. The fact that I am likely moving to a new country/city in a few months feels like a good time to make this kind of resolution – both to renew existing acquaintances in the UK and elsewhere, especially important now that I’m no longer in physical proximity to my friends in the UK, but also to go out there and find new friends and new colleagues. I’ve always been someone with a small group of close friends instead of a far wider social circle, but this, also, has shrunk to nothing in recent months, and my personal relationships have definitely suffered for it. I’m making amends to those I have unintentionally hurt, which I believe to be an important first step, and from this point onward I’m going to make a lot more time with friends and family in the coming months. It seems that the importance of this to one’s mental health only appears after it is lost, and that’s a lesson I don’t want to have to repeat again in the future.

Fourthly, I need to make time to actually play games. I got into game design and game scholarship and game writing and competitive game play because I love games; because I’ve played hundreds, probably thousands, and certainly own thousands; and I’ve been playing them since I was as young as I can remember. But I no longer find myself with the time to actually play any; in the last year I’ve played only two games for pleasure, which were Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Both were incredible experiences, but that’s only a fraction of the time I would normally spend playing games. Even in other periods of stress – such as when I was simultaneously finishing my PhD and dealing with a life-threatening illness – I still found far more time to play. It’s fun (most crucially), but it’s also important for my ability to be a good game designer and good games scholar. As such, my goal is now to at least double the number of major games I play each year for starters, and hopefully increase this number as time goes by. Right now, The Witness, Demon’s Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, The Bridge, Antichamber, and perhaps even returning to playing roguelikes all look very appealing, and that’s where I plan to start.

Fifthly, and lastly, I need to focus. Forgive the cliched phrase, but I now realise I need to work smarter, instead of working harder. I’ve been trying to be a game scholar, and a competitive game-player, and a game designer, and a game writer, and all the other things in my life outside games. This is just too much. As a result, I’ve decided to permanently “retire” any competitive gaming from my life. I want to really focus on scholarship/writing/coding, and in turn, to present myself specifically at the intersection of those three things. My background in poker remains a major informing element on my academic career – especially as I move toward studying gambling more seriously as a topic of study – but I think I’m spreading myself too thinly, both in terms of my effort, and in terms of how I appear. I want to focus in on my strengths, instead of trying to be everything, and do everything, when it comes to games.I think this will, without a doubt, be for the best, and strengthen my ability to work in my core domains without “distracting” myself with others.

As for the wider future, academia certainly remains my career path of choice. I take tremendous satisfaction from the unfolding of intellectual ideas on paper; I love travelling around the world to do research, to attend and present at conferences, to meet colleagues, and to experience new parts of this earth; I enjoy the freedom of working hours that academia (generally) gives one, even if that same freedom means working a lot of those hours, and the ability to largely work where and when I want. But these last three or four months have shown me what can happen when I take on too much – I make mistakes, and my ability to do anything else with my time beyond academia gets reduced down to a minimum, and then disappears altogether. This is not a “New Year’s” resolution, but this is certainly a mid-year resolution: I need to adjust my life back toward the kind of life I want to have, and I am confident this will have benefits both within and beyond my academic work. So with this written, and with this posted, I’m going to head to the gym in this hotel and work out for an hour, then head back to my hotel room and play something, anything, on Steam, then do some programming in the evening. The change starts now.

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Announcements / Re: Caves of Qud (now at Early Access Feature Friday #94) $

« Last post by getter77 on June 24, 2017, 12:08:41 PM »

Feature Friday #94

We made some tweaks and additions to tonics.
Added a new tonic: love tonic.
Currently, overdosing on a love tonic causes you to erupt into flames. This may change soon.
Added platinum as an unidentified tonic color.
You can now stab people with injectors during melee combat. You must penetrate their armor to successfully inject.
Chronology entries logged while you're in love are now much sappier.
Added a chronology entry for losing the lovesick status effect.
Autoexplore now ignores freshwater if you don't have room to carry it.
Natural missile weapons now require ammo once they're dismembered.
If you go to the worldmap and immediately return to a noted location in the same worldmap tile, you now properly appear in that location.
Fixed some severe memory usage issues during long-running games with thousands of items (mostly ammo stacks).
Fixed Temporal Fugue lag issues in long-running games when there are thousands of items in your inventory (mostly ammo stacks).
Fixed an issue when you canceled out of the pour dialog where you were still asked how many drams to pour.
Fixed an issue preventing you from escaping out of string-entry dialogs (for example, entering the amount you want to pour out of a container).
Fixed an issue causing buggy behavior in the new UI after certain direction selection dialogs.
Fixed an issue where some screens didn't display controls if the new UI was enabled but the new inventory UI wasn't enabled.
Fixed some bad interactions between zoom and panning popups in the old UI.
Fixed an issue that prevented you from clicking on items in the nearby items list.

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Announcements / Re: Larn-NEXT (now at Xvart)

« Last post by Krice on June 24, 2017, 06:37:05 AM »

Is there something that useful in C++17 compared to C++11 which has better support on stranger platforms. I think newer C++ versions are getting weird, like they try to change it to Haskell or something.