Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Incubator => Topic started by: TheCreator on July 10, 2012, 07:35:36 PM
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Fame has been present on the Temple of the Roguelike for months, but I haven't received much feedback so far. And I desperately need it, because while I always know what to implement next, I'm not so sure I know what players want. I can see that for some reason incubator threads are much more effective way to collect feedback, so I've created this topic. All your opinions are welcome!
Download:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/untitled-rpg/
RogueBasin entry:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Fame
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It needs a name. It really really needs a name. "Untitled" is not a name, and you will never get anyone to play it whilst it's called that.
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So I downloaded and tried a few games.
I liked the main menu first of all. After admiring it for a good 6 seconds, I pressed New Game.
I set my stats, age, and such first. Kind of wish there was a way to tell what things such as "Appearance" or "Founding" do. Also, does age do anything, or is it just there?
I moved around, but I couldn't figure out the controls other than that. After checking the controls screen, I can safely say I don't like them. Not sure why you really need to add "Shift" or "Ctrl" into so many commands. Anyway, I accepted some quest from a lady to go into her basement and kill some monsters. After going in, I tried to fire some arrows with my bow at some orcs and skeletons, but they did absolutely nothing, and the baddies ended up killing me.
In my second game, I just used a sword and killed everything with no problem. What really annoyed me is that whenever I check my inventory (i) I have to move my already comfortable right hand from the numpad over to the mouse and press the "Close" button with it. Shouldn't I just have to press "i" again to close the inventory? Oh well. Also it took me a while to figure out how to drop items. Maybe make it more obvious that the left of the inventory screen is what's on the ground? I also found a telekinesis spell, but attempting to read it told me that it's too complicated for me. Does that mean that my intelligence is too low? Or what? About a third of the doors in this dungeon triggered a trap and I never figured out how to tell if a door activates one or not.
After the lady paid me for killing all of the baddies in her basement, I accepted another quest from some guy to deliver something to some mining camp. I went through a few wilderness levels, until I finally died to some green things named something that started with "T".
For my third life I decided to go north to the tower on my map. After just running through 10 or so levels without any problems I entered a new level that made an error pop up on my screen. It said that it couldn't load some npc script or something, and upon pressing "Ok" it closed my game.
Something that makes the game incredibly easy when going through the wilderness is that enemies cannot pass to other levels. So if you can quickly run through a level then the enemies don't have enough time to reach you.
I found some rocks with paint(?) on them, but I didn't know how to mine them, if I even could, so I continued onward. I found some sort of snow fortress, which was neat. One thing that I like about this game is the the amount of things hidden around the wilderness. It really encourages exploration. I continued exploring until the error popped up again and the game crashed.
More games, more exploring, more errors and crashes. Is this happening to anyone else?
(http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums/ff373/ZeroG3651/untitlederror.png)
Other than that, I really recommend adding some sort of tutorial with a test level or something that shows how the game works for new players.
What did I like? Well the menu for one thing. Other than that, exploring was actually pretty fun. Some people may hate this, but I liked that the world was not randomly generated. It made for a much more directed adventure with a much more defined goal (Not that I played enough to figure out what that goal was). This is probably the only roguelike I've played that has its own world editor with its own programming language. There's a lot to like in this game, but too bad that it kept crashing on me.
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@Mosenzov: Many thanks for the feedback!
I set my stats, age, and such first. Kind of wish there was a way to tell what things such as "Appearance" or "Founding" do. Also, does age do anything, or is it just there?
Yes, I should definitively add some tips to that window. Currently Age does not do anything and neither does Appearance, that could be quite confusing for a player, I must admit.
I moved around, but I couldn't figure out the controls other than that. After checking the controls screen, I can safely say I don't like them. Not sure why you really need to add "Shift" or "Ctrl" into so many commands.
I could assign those commands to other, "free" letters, but I would be harder to remember (at least for me). Anyway I plan to add a feature for customizing keyboard layout, so that [almost] everybody should be happy.
After going in, I tried to fire some arrows with my bow at some orcs and skeletons, but they did absolutely nothing, and the baddies ended up killing me.
Yeah, I always liked swords more so I didn't pay much attention to different types of weapons... My bad. Bows are currently much more difficult to master than "ordinary" weapons. Generally the game needs more balancing, I guess.
What really annoyed me is that whenever I check my inventory (i) I have to move my already comfortable right hand from the numpad over to the mouse and press the "Close" button with it. Shouldn't I just have to press "i" again to close the inventory?
You should! I don't know [yet] why it doesn't work for the inventory window, used to work in the past. Anyway, you can still use the Esc key to close windows.
About a third of the doors in this dungeon triggered a trap and I never figured out how to tell if a door activates one or not.
You need the 'Traps' skill for that. Detecting traps is not very smooth even if you have mastered the skill, though. Perhaps it's not that big problem, on the other hand. Traps in Untitled are not as dangerous as in other roguelikes. You should not die unless you are very low on HP. I'll rethink the problem.
For my third life I decided to go north to the tower on my map. After just running through 10 or so levels without any problems I entered a new level that made an error pop up on my screen. It said that it couldn't load some npc script or something, and upon pressing "Ok" it closed my game.
That's a very weird one as the script file it complains about actually exists in the data archive. I was unable to reproduce the failure so far, but I will surely not ignore it. The error looks quite easy to fix, as soon as I manage to reproduce it on my computer.
Other than that, I really recommend adding some sort of tutorial with a test level or something that shows how the game works for new players.
Tutorials are quite hard to implement and I always hated them as a player, so I decided not to have them in Untitled. Perhaps I'll change my mind at some point, but for now I'll rather stick to the idea of making user interface more friendly/intuitive, that should be enough...
It needs a name. It really really needs a name. "Untitled" is not a name, and you will never get anyone to play it whilst it's called that.
Well, maybe you are right. I'll reconsider that. But if I ever change the name, it shall be changed to something big, I will not just pick the first idea that comes into my mind, so it may take some time :).
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Well now. Let us just hijack this thread with names.
Millennium [since you've been developing since the millennium]
Bedarogue [Your name]
Decadence [Get it? Decade?]
ZOMGIHAVENAMEPLAYME
I'm not keen on those, but you do need a name. Seriously. If you want much feedback.
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Just to clarify on why a name is important:
1. It's the first impression anyone gets of your game. It can define the theme, tone, and playstyle of the game, and just having an interesting name can motivate people to try it.
2. It's a way of getting people to remember your game.
3. It lets people talk about your game out of context without being confusing.
4. It allows your game to show up on Google searches.
5. It lets you stand out from other titles (I've seen lots of other projects called "Untitled" or something similar).
6. It shows you have imagination and creativity. If you can't think up a name for your game then I must presume you can't think up interesting monsters, items, combat, etc. Are the monsters just called green creature, white creature, etc?
7. It shows you have something unique to offer. Calling your game "Untitled" makes me think "Generic Fantasy Roguelike 2574". Reading your RogueBasin article I'm guessing this is *not* what you want.
8. "Untitled" is at best pretentious, and at worst boooooooring. Do you want to be either? :P
Example of a good game name (with some hubris thrown in): Broken Bottle
Recognisable term, alliterative, and easily memorable. Stands out as a strange name for a roguelike (I know some people tried the game out just because of this) which is good because as a roguelike it is a bit different. It straight away implies that this is not a fantasy roguelike, and has a gritty, violent theme (well, most RLs are violent, but then that's why so many have violence or quest themed names). The name ties in with the theme (alcoholism) and some of the gameplay elements, whilst also being an allegory itself for the main character and the whole game world. Reference to a broken bottle is made in two important pieces of the game text.
All of that in two words.
Someone once asked me on IRC why I called the game "Broken Bottle". I started with a long description of how it represents the mental state of the main character, the social state of society and the physical state of the world in the game. After my long explanation I started going into it's connection with the mechanics, at which point I was interrupted by the guy who said "Oh, so it's about an alcoholic then. Why didn't you just say that?" :P
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I don't know latin but is there some fancy way of saying "untitled" in latin? That might be a nice way to make it stand out but keep the original meaning to some extent. Just a thought.
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A latin word for 'title' would be 'titulus'. No idea how to change form to make it into untitled.
I downloaded Untitled and found out it was the third version I had on my disk. Looks like I wanted to try it earlier but was not even motivated to extract it. That brings me to another point. Rar is fringe archiver in the Linux world. Some of us will need to get and install unrar first. Then it turns out the executable does not have execute privileges.
No real name for the game + uncommon archiver for target platform + lack of correct file permissions = turn off.
I shall try again some other day. Right now all my motivation to try the game out was killed.
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A latin word for 'title' would be 'titulus'. No idea how to change form to make it into untitled.
I downloaded Untitled and found out it was the third version I had on my disk. Looks like I wanted to try it earlier but was not even motivated to extract it. That brings me to another point. Rar is fringe archiver in the Linux world. Some of us will need to get and install unrar first. Then it turns out the executable does not have execute privileges.
No real name for the game + uncommon archiver for target platform + lack of correct file permissions = turn off.
I shall try again some other day. Right now all my motivation to try the game out was killed.
You similarly mentioned that execute permissions were missing from epilogue when you extracted it. They were there when I put it in, so is there any chance the issue is on your end? I don't know enough about specifics with Linux so if there is something we are missing feel free to enlighten us :)
I ditto the rar sentiment. I actually didn't download this when I saw it specifically because I didn't want to install something to open a rar. Why did you choose that?
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For Epilogue, yes, there could be some kind of issue on my end. On the other hand in the second archive you made (the one after I pointed out the .gz suffix was not right) execute permission was there.
For Untitled this is most probably author's fault. Rar does not store file permissions at all according to this (http://superuser.com/questions/170171/file-permission-in-zip-7z-rar).
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Okay, I'm already convinced :). Will need some time to choose the best name, though.
I shall try again some other day. Right now all my motivation to try the game out was killed.
Oh no, that's not the proper point of view. The Linux version just contain an extra quest. You need to obtain an ancient artifact called RAR, then use it to access the secret dungeon, Archive. There a powerful mage lives under the name of Chmod. He knows a legendary magical spell a+x which will open the gateway to all other quests.
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I shall try again some other day. Right now all my motivation to try the game out was killed.
Oh no, that's not the proper point of view. The Linux version just contain an extra quest. You need to obtain an ancient artifact called RAR, then use it to access the secret dungeon, Archive. There a powerful mage lives under the name of Chmod. He knows a legendary magical spell a+x which will open the gateway to all other quests.
And that is not the proper response to a legitimate question/complaint.
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Zip is more accessible to Windows users too. At work I'm not able to install the likes of WinRar and must rely on Windows' native zip support.
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People are becoming so lazy nowadays. I remember my first encounter with the RAR file format, some like 15 years ago. The game was stored on 40 floppy disks or so, each one contained a RAR archive. I had to find a program called "unrar", learn how to use it, copy all of the floppy content to a hard disk, note down the damaged floppies (if you had something on 40 floppy disks, 5 out of them would always be damaged), request from a buddy to copy those damaged disks again (and hope that he'll copy the right ones), wait until another day, bring home new 5 disks, attempt to copy them to a hard disk, find out that 2 of them are still damaged... Yeah, those were the days. And now we download a game and we are too lazy to run it. Myself I currently have about ten new roguelikes I have recently downloaded but did not find time to unpack and play them. That's what internet has done to us :).
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Uh, dude! This is plain hypocrisy. You are putting obstacles in front of other people for no real reason. Many Linux users will have to spend 15 minutes to get to Untitled. First getting unrar and learning it. Not every repository out there has it since it is not free software. Users of Ubuntu or similar distributions might have no idea about execution privileges stuff and fail to run your game at all. In contrast you could spend 15 minutes yourself to save that headache every person that does not have rar installed. To top it off you accuse other people of laziness.
To make an analogy I would have to put my feedback in a .txt file but rename it to .exe and then pack it with xz archiver.
If a game is very good people are willing to jump through hoops. Your example with floppies is one such proof. For something without excellent reputation this is not likely. Wondering why you did not receive much feedback? Hint: using rar has something to do with it.
That said my thoughts on Untitled will come.
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I'm thinking UglyTroll gets the original notion from when it was raised a bit back and just responded a bit tongue-in-cheek folks, a bit of levity.
I half expect this chapter of it all to be translated into a referential crafting mini-quest in some future update.
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This is not hypocrisy, just some random thoughts :). Of course it's not a problem to switch to tarballs, if you really miss them so much. I don't. I also think that using any Linux distribution without knowing a thing about file permissions is next to impossible. But nevertheless the oncoming version of Untitled (or how it will be called) will be stored in tar.gz. Lesson learned.
(By the way Michał, where is your patriotism? One Polish game is going to conquer the world and you are refusing to play it just because the file format is not your favorite one? ;) )
I half expect this chapter of it all to be translated into a referential crafting mini-quest in some future update.
Why not :).
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Of course it's not a problem to switch to tarballs, if you really miss them so much. I don't.
Huh? What do you have against tarballs? Universally used by Linux distros, robust, fast, and easy to use (in a terminal, if you're so inclined, or with some GUI application). Personally, I loves me a tarball.
On a side note, it would be an interesting experiment to offer up a game as .deb and .rpm, and see how many downloads one gets.
I also think that using any Linux distribution without knowing a thing about file permissions is next to impossible.
Really? Are you, like, still running Yggdrasil, but insisting on unrar as the standard? :D Lots of people use Linux, who have no interest whatsoever in the techincalities. They're not visibile to the geek community, since these are the kind of users who don't visit forums. I have dozens of friends in this category. They wouldn't know a tarball if they saw one, but would expect your software to work if the download is labelled "for Linux".
As always,
Minotauros
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Yes, me loves tarballs. With gzip/bzip2/xz on top of it please. Pretty please?
I would like Untitled to reach wider audiences which is why I complain about seemingly unimportant details. Rest assured that I will aid Untitled on its march to glory with feedback. Maybe even write a review if I get good at the game.
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Lots of people use Linux, who have no interest whatsoever in the techincalities. They're not visibile to the geek community, since these are the kind of users who don't visit forums. I have dozens of friends in this category. They wouldn't know a tarball if they saw one, but would expect your software to work if the download is labelled "for Linux".
Either that Linux is called 'Windows' or you come from another planet or you're just not telling the truth. Well, I can imagine a user like that anyway. Assuming that the user gets every program they need installed and working, and that no program will ever break, and that actually the only program they need is a browser, then yes, I think such a user will not need any technical knowledge at all.
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How Windows users get along with no technical knowledge at all then? Linux users act the same way. Some distributions go great lengths to become user-friendly and actually have some success at that. Yes, stuff will break. Usually reinstalling a program (which is trivial in distros with graphical package managers) solves a problem.
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I am one such user, and frequently get frustrated trying to get things to work on my Linux netbook. Many many developers seem to assume that Linux users are tenacious bastards that will crawl through shit to get a simple program running. I am not one such bastard :P
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Well, some distributions indeed try very hard to be user friendly. They have nice semi-transparent windows, desktops with wallpapers and icons and so on. But whenever you try to accomplish something, anything, you end up browsing some geek forums, typing some mysterious commands in a console window, finding out that these commands do not work, looking for another set of commands... Sorry, but this is how it actually works. Linux is still powered by console, even if it is nowadays covered by a nice shiny desktop wallpaper.
But hey, we have just started another flame war. Even if I don't believe in existence of non-technical Linux users, I don't want to make life more complicated for people who download Linux version of my game, so let's change the topic. Are there any other Linux issues I was not aware of, apart from archive format and file permissions?
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IME, both in Windows and Linux, when you don't know how to do something, you go to Google and look for an answer. In Windows the answer is usually a sequence of 20 mouse clicks, and in Linux, the answer is usually a command. I don't think that lots of technical knowledge is required here, since there is no need to understand the command, and after some times, I suppose they would enjoy the conciseness of the solution.
Anyway, this happens when you want to do something special. Technical people like to tweak the system, and that's why they run into more difficult things. A typical non-technical user would just do common typical things, which work in a newbie friendly way.
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Hee, hee. The far away planet I live on, is Berlin, where you actually see Linux (Ubuntu in particular) being used quite alot, especially by leftwingers of different shapes and sizes. I guess this is still a slightly weird city. And I might add that any other place I've been, most people never even heard of Linux.
As always,
Minotauros
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Had a more serious go at Untitled lately. I wish the ability to shift-click items to specify amount in trade window was also specified somewhere in the game. So far I found that piece of information in manual but it does not seem to be accessible anywhere else.
I found Untitled to crash at me several times. Most cases were quest related. Some examples:
- I forgot to get the cheese delivery and entered mine site. Crash.
- Recovering the book with no title gives you appropriate line at the blacksmith. If you have not talked to basement owner about the book first asking blacksmith for reward crashes Untitled.
- Received a cannot find up portal on entering dungeon near to village when forgot to take up alchemist quest.
- After bringing froghead corpse to the miner I was at 0% energy but well fed. Choosing to sleep at that point crashed the game and produced some kind of dump suggesting I send it to you. However, it sounded like it was message from vendor of some library you use so I am not sure you want it. Oh, the dump was placed in some strange user configuration directory. Had to run find file to find the dump.
Somewhat weird is case of sign reading. The information that you have troubles reading goes to the log but if you can read a pop up window with sign content appears. Things like sign writings could be placed directly in the log.
Also, the game seems to ignore whatever age I set for character and always save it as default 25 years.
I have ventured to 25th level of dungeon near three ingots. It is a version of infinite dungeon?
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Thanks Ancient, I did not expect so many crashes to exist :). I guess that's because of very little time devoted to testing. It was also very unwise for me to crash the game after some unexpected circumstances occur - I could just display some warning message and continue. That would encourage scumming, but it's still better than crashing.
The dugeon you have wandered into is not infinite. There are 100 levels. Congratulations on making it to the 25th :).
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Well, I sure learned to save often. Black mambas working together wasted me that time.
Untitled seems to be very much ADOM-themed. The spiders laying webs on the fly, plethora of quests, wilderness map and the bugs (yeah, that too) remind me of it. Quarrels as ammunition for crossbow are also specific to ADOM or games inspired by it. I haven't seen any roguelike not influenced by Thomas Biskup's game featuring quarrels. It is bolts for all others. Also you encounter "a lone wizard/necromancer" is copied phrase. That said I'm enjoying Untitled's theme. Such a fine game badly needs a title to complement its world.
Oh, in the manual you wrote I should upgrade my hardware. Well, I agree. :-)
More crash situations:
- If you read fireball scroll and click somewhere not on a map (I clicked empty spell slot by mistake) leads to crash with message that fireball is not supposed to search for targets.
- Sometimes just wandering around random wilderness has Untitled check for CitizeM and die without apparent reason. Hard to avoid.
My error.log file has grown to 9KB now. Most are CitizenM.u file checks. That bug is interrupting the game quite often. Here is error message for each distinct situation triggering crashes:
Details: Spell 'Fireball' is not intended to look for a target.
Source file: Spells.cpp
Function: CSpell::FindTarget
Line: 784
Details: Portal not found: up
Source file: World.cpp
Function: CWorld::ReadyLoc
Line: 399
Details: Quest 'q_book_no_name' not found.
Source file: Gameplay.cpp
Function: CGameplayInterface::EndQuest
Line: 91
Details: Script file not found - Data/Scripts/CitizenM.u
Source file: Loc.cpp
Function: CLoc::AddNPC
Line: 1926
There is possibility to easily obtain unlimited gold. Here is how (order of steps is very important):
1. Enter trade with person with gold.
2. Put up two items for trade. One has to be something the trader will buy but the other needs to be something he will reject.
3. Click sell button.
4. Remove item the trader rejected from your bargain side.
5. Remove gold from trader's bargain side by right-clicking it.
6. While trader has gold: click sell button. Each time worth of your item trader is interested in will be subtracted from his gold and given to you but the item you placed on sale will stay there.
For example switching steps 4 and 5 means the trade goes correctly. Discovered this by mistake when trying to figure out what the trader will buy by offering items in bulk. I bought the necro evil book for scummed gold but it does not seem to be wanted by anyone anywhere.
Some more issues:
- When you hold L for look you can only move the cursor using arrow keys, numpad is ignored. That came as a surprise because hero can be controlled using numpad.
- Entering the alchemist dungeon draws whole map to terminal. Is that intended?
- Terminal is spammed with region name not found or some such when look command is used.
Here is a small feature request. Let shift-click (or ctrl, or alt) on ground item when at inventory window try to stuff it into your backpack. Try merging of course. Maybe while the modifier key is held give background to items? Blue: you have free space in backpack or this item can merge with some stack you have. Red: cannot fit this one due to weight or space issues.
Another useful addition would be reporting full mass of stacks. Right now for a bundle of seven javelins status line says:
Javelin (3-11) 18/20 Weight:2
It would be a bit more helpful if it read:
Javelin (3-11) 18/20 Weight:2 Total weight: 14
Total weight can (and perhaps should) be skipped if the item is a single thing. I had those seven javelins and wondered why it would not let me pack them up. Turned out I needed fourteen free weight points, not merely two. Also for arrows it would help immersion if you said "Weight: negligible" instead of "Weight: 0". If something has negligible individual weight (arrows) skip total weight naturally.
Make talk command used in presence of hostile humanoids say they are more interested in killing the player instead of pretending there is nobody to talk to.
I will wait for the crash bugs to get fixed. Meanwhile the 100-level dungeon should keep me entertained. At least this place does not crash and gives good old hack 'n' slash roguelike style fun.
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Choosing to sleep at that point crashed the game and produced some kind of dump suggesting I send it to you. However, it sounded like it was message from vendor of some library you use so I am not sure you want it. Oh, the dump was placed in some strange user configuration directory. Had to run find file to find the dump.
Actually it's not from an external library and I do want such dumps, especially if I cannot reproduce a fault myself. I think I should make it more clear in the message as you are right in that it resembles standard Windows crash messages too much.
Untitled seems to be very much ADOM-themed. The spiders laying webs on the fly, plethora of quests, wilderness map and the bugs (yeah, that too) remind me of it. Quarrels as ammunition for crossbow are also specific to ADOM or games inspired by it. I haven't seen any roguelike not influenced by Thomas Biskup's game featuring quarrels. It is bolts for all others. Also you encounter "a lone wizard/necromancer" is copied phrase.
I never tried to hide what was my primary source of inspiration :). Used to play ADOM in the late 90's, when it wasn't completed yet, but it was already a shining star in the roguelike world. I discovered the genre in 1998, having read a large article about it in a gaming magazine. Never really liked Angband or Nethack, but fell in love with ADOM from the first sight. I didn't want to copy entire phrases, but couldn't resist the temptation in case of the "lone wizard" :). Let's treat it like a tribute to ADOM.
The bug with trading is very interesting. It seems to be present in the game since several years and I was aware of it, but never managed to reproduce it. I guess I owe you a lot of beer for the list of reproduction steps ;).
Much thanks for the other reported bugs, as well as for all the suggestions. I'll try to implement them all. It's going to be a nice day full of programming ;).
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1. Enter trade with person with gold.
2. Put up two items for trade. One has to be something the trader will buy but the other needs to be something he will reject.
3. Click sell button.
4. Remove item the trader rejected from your bargain side.
5. Remove gold from trader's bargain side by right-clicking it.
6. While trader has gold: click sell button. Each time worth of your item trader is interested in will be subtracted from his gold and given to you but the item you placed on sale will stay there.
That was a very subtle bug. Even that you have provided such a detailed list of steps, I wasn't able to reproduce it for more than hour. I finally figured out that the rejected item must precede the other item at the player's bargain side. Which led me to the conclusion that reproduction could actually be simplier: you should just have an empty slot followed by an item - no need for putting an item that would be rejected, no need to remove gold. And the solution was to replace some 'break' with 'continue' in the code.
Too bad I wasn't able to reproduce some of the other bugs:
1. I forgot to get the cheese delivery and entered mine site. Crash.
2. Received a cannot find up portal on entering dungeon near to village when forgot to take up alchemist quest.
3. After bringing froghead corpse to the miner I was at 0% energy but well fed. Choosing to sleep at that point crashed the game
I hope that you still have the dump :). For bugs like 1 and 2 the current version of the game doesn't offer generating a dump, so they might turn out to be extremely tricky to fix unless you know a quick way to reproduce them.
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I am glad you tracked down the money exploit. Such bugs are big threats to game balance. Congratulations! I remember an error in PRIME that had to do with 'break' instead of 'continue' too. Curiously this was hiding there from ZapM era which means it also survived a few years. The resulting behavior was just improper message so it was not as harmful. On the other hand it was
As for the three bugs you quoted you need to save the game and reload it to experience them. These never show up on me otherwise. For #2 approach the dungeon site, save, exit, reload and enter. On my side this guarantees a crash. Same for #1. Bug #1 also can happen if you take some items from site but not all and try to reenter it after save/load procedure. Never managed to reproduce #3 though. It happened to me only once.
Yes, I kept the dump. It is uploaded on my site. You will receive download link by personal message shortly.
I never tried to hide what was my primary source of inspiration :). Used to play ADOM in the late 90's, when it wasn't completed yet, but it was already a shining star in the roguelike world. I discovered the genre in 1998, having read a large article about it in a gaming magazine. Never really liked Angband or Nethack, but fell in love with ADOM from the first sight. I didn't want to copy entire phrases, but couldn't resist the temptation in case of the "lone wizard" :). Let's treat it like a tribute to ADOM.
Having such obvious and strong inspiration is nothing wrong. Even the identical phases which set familiar mood. PRIME is so soaked with NetHack it would be silly for me to badmouth Untitled for borrowing theme partially. :-)
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Sadly, it seems that I won't be able to do anything with that dump. I thought that having source files for the 0.7.9 version I will just produce PDB files out of them, but apparently Microsoft had another idea: buy yourself a server room and store all your PDB there forever, or otherwise you will never be able to generate them again with correct GUIDs. Doh.
The good news is that #2 can be reproduced easily. I hope to have it solved soon. I didn't manage to reproduce #1, though. Is the location you mentioned ("mine site") actually called "Miners' Camp"? Did you take any quests related to that location prior to the crash?
As of the other bugs, they have been all fixed on Sunday and I have also implemented the features requested by you.
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I can't remember what the mine site was called. It was the place with single miner accepting cheese from Akeram and numerous lodes. I couldn't reproduce the crash either.
However, I ran into another crash. After visiting the 3rd level of 100-level dungeon I came back to Eluny because I caught a cold (very annoying thing). Some corpses immediately decayed when I re-entered location with dungeon entrance. These were only items left there before I descended. Then after visiting Elunny game crashed. The sword I left somewhere in the village may or may not have something to do with it.
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You are obviously skilled at finding such bugs! Luckily, this time I reproduced and fixed the bug with minimum effort. Thanks again! Hopefully I will find the other bugs as well.
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I think that the other crashes were caused by the same bug. I managed to reproduce the one that occured in the miners' camp.
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I think that the other crashes were caused by the same bug. I managed to reproduce the one that occured in the miners' camp.
Excellent!
Perhaps it is good time for a new release? Eliminating so many bugs is quite an improvement of gameplay. Since you have removed a bug causing a whole class of crashes it would be good to have new build so additional ways to trigger that old bug are not reported as new problems.
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Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. But there are still some planned improvements left, and those are important ones. Besides I'm going to change the name soon. Simple as it sounds, it's not a thing that can be done with two clicks :).
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The new version is out. A lot of bugs have been fixed, including all known crashes, so now hostile monsters should be the only challenge ;). I have also implemented most (if not all) of the suggested minor improvements. Oh, and I've given it a real name. And the Linux version is distributed in a tarball. Hopefully everybody will be happy now :).
Saved games are compatible back to the version 0.7.7.
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Here is some initial feedback...
The phrase "this is how your character will look like" is in a tooltip. This is a common mistake non-english speakers make, where they use how and like. It should either be "this is how your character will look" or "what you character will look like".
On the subject of tooltips, they only show up after hovering your mouse over something and not moving it for some time. I initially did not know they existed. Especially in character creation where you have space for the tooltip reserved, it should show up immediately and not disappear if you move your mouse.
Another error in the tooltips, for skills "but ot necessarily", where it should read "but not necessarily"
There should be tooltips on the individual skills. For instance, what is the difference between melee and axe? To me melee means any melee weapon, but perhaps it means non-axe melee weapons here?
Clicking the help button does nothing. Luckily I knew to try '?' when that failed, but others might not.
Dragging a weapon into my hand just sends it back to the inventory instead of swapping with the currently equipped weapon.
I feel like the game needs some kind of explanation at the beginning. What type of game is this? What is my goal? Who/where am i? Should I wander around or look for quests? Right now there appears to be no information, and it just drops you somewhere. This might work for some games, but it doesn't even say what the controls are. Even just an initial "press ? for help" in the log would be a good step here, although there is certainly a lot to be done.
When you have multiple corpses stacked on the ground, they show as a pile of weapons and scrolls. This is obviously no good and should be replaced with a corpse image unless there are actually items there.
I came across a traveling family and decided to attack them as I was just messing around. I'm not sure if the ability to kill children is something that countries ban a game for, but I know that most games avoid it (such as the inability to kill children in fallout 3). I don't know the details of that, and it almost definitely doesn't matter, but it's just something I noticed ;)
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As of those tooltips, this is only an initial version. I just couldn't decide how they should work. I'll surely try your suggestions. Tips for skills may not be actually needed (the term 'melee' is of course very ambiguous here, but that's just because of my laziness), but I'll add them anyway.
I feel like the game needs some kind of explanation at the beginning. What type of game is this? What is my goal? Who/where am i? Should I wander around or look for quests? Right now there appears to be no information, and it just drops you somewhere. This might work for some games, but it doesn't even say what the controls are. Even just an initial "press ? for help" in the log would be a good step here, although there is certainly a lot to be done.
I consider it as an advantage of my game! It is extremely annoying for me that in most of modern games you need to click your way through zillions of windows before you have any chance to actually play. I remember times when you only needed to put a disk into a floppy drive and after few minutes (or hours if you were a lucky owner of C-64) your character was displayed on the screen, ready for your commands. No menus, no tutorials, no stories that nobody ever reads. But yes, I realize that other people do care about stories and tutorials may actually be useful (especially in roguelikes). So I guess this is one of the things I will need to think about when planning the next version.
Dragging a weapon into my hand just sends it back to the inventory instead of swapping with the currently equipped weapon.
This is a nuisance when you want to switch from melee to a ranged weapon... But swapping is not a perfect solution, either. Another thing to think of :).
When you have multiple corpses stacked on the ground, they show as a pile of weapons and scrolls. This is obviously no good and should be replaced with a corpse image unless there are actually items there.
Corpses ARE items, but I know what you mean. I was very concerned about performance (long time ago when I implemented this stuff) do I did not want to do an extended check for type of items in a pile, but you are right that now it badly affects convenience instead.
I came across a traveling family and decided to attack them as I was just messing around. I'm not sure if the ability to kill children is something that countries ban a game for, but I know that most games avoid it (such as the inability to kill children in fallout 3). I don't know the details of that, and it almost definitely doesn't matter, but it's just something I noticed
There's a lot hypocrisy about games nowadays. If you create a game in which the player is able to kill, you become a public enemy number one, but if you actually kill someone, all you deserve to is being put in a prison for 15 years, in comfortable conditions. I never wanted to participate in that show. My goal was to create a sense of total freedom. Of course, killing a child would result in a very bad karma or something (to be implemented in the future), but making children immortal or not having them in the game at all would be, well, weird :).
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I came across a traveling family and decided to attack them as I was just messing around. I'm not sure if the ability to kill children is something that countries ban a game for, but I know that most games avoid it (such as the inability to kill children in fallout 3). I don't know the details of that, and it almost definitely doesn't matter, but it's just something I noticed
My goal was to create a sense of total freedom. Of course, killing a child would result in a very bad karma or something (to be implemented in the future), but making children immortal or not having them in the game at all would be, well, weird :).
Yes comrade! I don't even think you need a system with karma/alignment. Since children et al. will realistically not carry any interesting loot, it doesn't have to be a question of min/maxing or not. It should be the player's sick choice if he goes the extra mile to hunt down and slaughter an "enemy" who does nothing but flee and offers no reward when defeated. (Jeff Lait's Smart kobold does this to a certain extent).
As always,
Minotauros
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Hmm, so why Fame? I can't see a link to the game's content at the moment, unless you're planning for something relating to the quests affecting player reputation.
I was disappointed playing it that I couldn't use the mouse to move around and interact with things. When menus and such require mouse use it seems jarring the the game doesn't support it.
I agree on the previous comment of tooltips being too delayed. They should be constantly visible when the mouse is over the relevant area.
Combat feels a bit bland I must say. I'm bumping into things and killing them, and not paying attention to whether I hit or miss or how my health is doing. It's just not engaging. Perhaps I'm spoiled by ToME4's many combat abilities. Would be nice to see more variety to attacks, like every nth turn I do a sweeping attack that hits all enemies around. That would give a sense of momentum to battle, and keep the player a bit more keyed in to the turn by turn action.
For a game that claims to not be generic / based on any individual system, it seems very very D&D and very standard fantasy. Ghouls, goblins, ents... Why not invent your own names for things? Overall I think the game needs more of an individual feel. It mostly feels like a mix of ADOM and AD&D.
In character creation it would be nice to have certain archetypes one could choose so you don't have to fiddle with the stat allocation on every restart. Saving individual profiles would be handy too.
I like the feel of going straight into the game, but some separate readme on the menu screen to say what the game is about or give some backstory would be good.
The widely expansed map is great, but some sort of overview map could be handy (or does this exist already?)
Some of the icons are a bit unclear or misleading. The short sword and long knife should be shorter, for instance. In general I'm not a big fan of the tiles - makes me long for crisp and clear ASCII :(
Minor quibble: Your circles have dimples on them :P A small tweak to your circle calculator (have the range +/- 0.5) and they'll look much nicer.
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Minor quibble: Your circles have dimples on them :P A small tweak to your circle calculator (have the range +/- 0.5) and they'll look much nicer.
You can also de-spike your circles by using a "less than" check instead of a "less than or equal to" check.
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Minor quibble: Your circles have dimples on them :P A small tweak to your circle calculator (have the range +/- 0.5) and they'll look much nicer.
You can also de-spike your circles by using a "less than" check instead of a "less than or equal to" check.
Ah yes, Quendus's unending quest to rid the world of pointy circles claims another victim!
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I am a supporter of that quest! Dimpled circles look horrible.
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Hmm, so why Fame? I can't see a link to the game's content at the moment, unless you're planning for something relating to the quests affecting player reputation.
Thanks for the post!
I wanted a short name that could be used as a backronym and "Fame" was the first thing that came into my mind. Every RPG is about gaining some fame, but most games fail to emphasize the fact. In one of the cities in Fallout 2 you could watch a monument raised to commemorate the player character from Fallout 1 and that's the only exception I can think of at the moment. Perhaps my game will become another one, but that's not my primary goal :).
I was disappointed playing it that I couldn't use the mouse to move around and interact with things. When menus and such require mouse use it seems jarring the the game doesn't support it.
Controlling the character with mouse is already implemented and will be available in the next version. I'm also thinking of actions other than simple movement that could be performed with mouse, like opening doors.
I agree on the previous comment of tooltips being too delayed. They should be constantly visible when the mouse is over the relevant area.
That's another thing already improved, but thanks for confirming that it was a good idea :).
Combat feels a bit bland I must say. I'm bumping into things and killing them, and not paying attention to whether I hit or miss or how my health is doing. It's just not engaging. Perhaps I'm spoiled by ToME4's many combat abilities. Would be nice to see more variety to attacks, like every nth turn I do a sweeping attack that hits all enemies around. That would give a sense of momentum to battle, and keep the player a bit more keyed in to the turn by turn action.
Yes, it's a huge area for improvements. Myself I never liked combat to be complicated, but I know there are people who do like it. I'll try to find the golden mean.
In character creation it would be nice to have certain archetypes one could choose so you don't have to fiddle with the stat allocation on every restart. Saving individual profiles would be handy too.
I once planned to have that as a testing feature, but sure, it could be made available for players too :).
The widely expansed map is great, but some sort of overview map could be handy (or does this exist already?)
Yes, apart from the automap in the corner you can display the world map by pressing M. It's not polished yet and it shows the (temporary) emptiness of the world, but it does exist :).
Some of the icons are a bit unclear or misleading. The short sword and long knife should be shorter, for instance. In general I'm not a big fan of the tiles - makes me long for crisp and clear ASCII :(
That's one of several reasons why I sometimes regret the decision of using tiles. They take time to create and in the end everybody will complain about them anyway. I have been planning an ASCII mode, but that might be a lot of work at this point. All of the (sometimes quite sophisticated) user interface would need to be redesigned completely in order to fit in the ASCII world. All the windows like inventory would need to be implemented separately for the ASCII mode. But I'm not giving up yet :).
And I will fix that circle thing soon ;).
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I had another go at now aptly named Fame. Again I found bugs, but merely two. Only one caused a crash.
When in trade mode you can right click on your gold. It will go to trading space. Right click again and its back in your valuables' sack. However, on the back trip it occupies lower and lower spaces in said display. Overdo it and it wants a space not in the sack triggering a crash. You might need to possess a gem for that to happen.
The cold is devastating. When you lose your last health point to the terrible cold while searching the "Waiting..." window does not disappear. You go back to main menu but it stays.
The inventory screen with fast picking up is great. I would like Fame to have eat mode activation on 'E' while in inventory. Also, do not close the window after eating finishes unless you get attacked or interrupted some other way. It is quite common for me to want eat several corpses in a row. Constantly mousing between eat and corpse is tiring. Fortunately inventory can be opened by 'I' so this is not as tiring.
The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface. It was so bad that I had to hunt for monsters to sell their corpses to have money for curing. Which led me to discover a way to make cash fast ...
There is very easy method to make tons of money quickly. No, not a bug this time. :-) You buy all vials from the alchemist and fill them with blood. Then sell them and buy more empty vials. One trip nets one slightly over one thousand gold pieces. Apparently you do not need to be a vampire to fill vials.
Your sig could use updating too.
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Many thanks for the feedback!
Again I found bugs, but merely two. Only one caused a crash.
I'll take a look at both of them:).
The inventory screen with fast picking up is great. I would like Fame to have eat mode activation on 'E' while in inventory. Also, do not close the window after eating finishes unless you get attacked or interrupted some other way. It is quite common for me to want eat several corpses in a row. Constantly mousing between eat and corpse is tiring. Fortunately inventory can be opened by 'I' so this is not as tiring.
Event more fortunately, this would be easy to implement. Having read your post I realized I had similar feelings about eating in Fame, but somehow I never paid much attention. This is why it is so good to have some feedback from others :).
The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface.
This is quite strange, because the probability of getting cold is so low that it should occur about once a year, assuming that you have an average Vitality level (10). And normal distribution for the random numbers generator. Fame still uses std::rand and so far this has been good enough. Perhaps this is an important reason for a change :).
There is very easy method to make tons of money quickly. No, not a bug this time. :-) You buy all vials from the alchemist and fill them with blood. Then sell them and buy more empty vials. One trip nets one slightly over one thousand gold pieces. Apparently you do not need to be a vampire to fill vials.
Yes, in the real world you don't need to be a vampire, either ;). It's enough to have a sharp item and a container. The only bad thing about this is that there's actually no economy in the game. The price should drop very quickly as you fill the market with... well, blood.
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Ok I don't have much room to talk here since I haven't tried the game... more homework to do!
But anyways, just a generic musing. As time passes I am more and more of the opinion that there should be some room left to exploits in any game - as long as they don't become a dominant / mandatory strategy.
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The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface.
This is quite strange, because the probability of getting cold is so low that it should occur about once a year, assuming that you have an average Vitality level (10). And normal distribution for the random numbers generator. Fame still uses std::rand and so far this has been good enough. Perhaps this is an important reason for a change :).
I had vitality 14. Got an increase after setting it to 13 at the start. Probably it is important to note I was trying find traps skill twice on each door. This burned food fast but also passed time at an increased rate, perhaps triggering many cold checks. I was eating dozens of rats per day to keep me fed. Disarming takes even more time and food.
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When in trade mode you can right click on your gold. It will go to trading space. Right click again and its back in your valuables' sack. However, on the back trip it occupies lower and lower spaces in said display. Overdo it and it wants a space not in the sack triggering a crash. You might need to possess a gem for that to happen.
You didn't need a gem. Just passing the gold back and forth caused this strange behavior and eventually led to a crash. Once again a bug in the trading system. It's a creepy piece of code, you know. I'm afraid to open it, so it rarely sees the light of day.
I had vitality 14. Got an increase after setting it to 13 at the start. Probably it is important to note I was trying find traps skill twice on each door. This burned food fast but also passed time at an increased rate, perhaps triggering many cold checks. I was eating dozens of rats per day to keep me fed. Disarming takes even more time and food.
Yes, this feature definitively could use some tweaking. It gets much better when you reach level 100 for the skill 'Traps', but it's currently nearly impossible to advance the skill to that level because it's so tedious.
But anyways, just a generic musing. As time passes I am more and more of the opinion that there should be some room left to exploits in any game - as long as they don't become a dominant / mandatory strategy.
I agree with you. Exploits, in general, are fun. They only become a problem when they are too obvious or trivial. The blood exploit discovered here by Ancient is quite easy to take advantage from, but it's not so obvious. I think I'll keep it around for some time.
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Pressing "?" for help does not work for me.
The file "manual.pdf" starts with things which are not important for a new player (like command line options).
Maybe this is just me, but it feels strange that "-" is on the right side when selecting stats.
The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.
What if I want to read a scroll when standing at the sign?
Why does the smith give a "leather cap" after he has promised a helm?
The quest window does not remind me where to find the miners camp. Also the person who gave the quest just expects it to be done.
The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.
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The file "manual.pdf" starts with things which are not important for a new player (like command line options).
Good point, I'll rearrange chapters in the manual.
Maybe this is just me, but it feels strange that "-" is on the right side when selecting stats.
It's just you :). I know that for a mathematician this layout could be pretty weird, but not everyone is a mathematician. Similar problem (but slightly more serious) involves the buttons Cancel and OK. In the Linux world Cancel would be on the left, while in the Windows world it's the opposite. In addition, some Linux users (like, for example, me) would prefer the Cancel to be on the right. To satisfy everyone I would have to provide customizable button layouts... But is it worth it?
What if I want to read a scroll when standing at the sign?
A very good question that never came to my mind until now :). Well, you can enter your inventory and go into reading mode using one the tiny buttons there. However, there should be some kind of choice in the main view as well, I guess.
Why does the smith give a "leather cap" after he has promised a helm?
Because I didn't know the proper English term for that :). I wanted the NPC to say something more general than "leather cap". It's always good to achieve some dose of surprise when it comes to the reward, although in this case it is rather a disappointment, which is definitively not what I wanted :).
The quest window does not remind me where to find the miners camp. Also the person who gave the quest just expects it to be done.
I don't think the quest log should provide any information about the quest target location. That would be a spoiler in most cases. It's not a big challenge if you know from the beginning where exactly to go. Of course, observant players are always rewarded, so that they might either remember the location from the NPC or notice that the location is quite clearly marked on the world map.
The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.
The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.
No, they don't. [That's a clever technique I used in one of my previous jobs to retrieve more information about bugs. Some people will never learn that a bug report is almost worthless (if not harmful) without details.]
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The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.
The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.
No, they don't. [That's a clever technique I used in one of my previous jobs to retrieve more information about bugs. Some people will never learn that a bug report is almost worthless (if not harmful) without details.]
OK, the sleepless lady problem seems to always happen (even on a fresh character who simply goes to her dungeon), and it gives the following error message:
Details: Location not found: yv_base
Source file: world.cpp
Function: ReadyLoc
Line: 371
For the other bug, it was like my first fight, and it crashed. Then I tried again, and it crashed again after some fights. Today I have managed to complete two levels, but then got a "Segmentation fault" (not while fighting). Hard to give any details.
Running on 64-bit Ubuntu.
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It seems to me like it's an issue with a 64-bit system as none of the failures ever occured on my machine. I've also received several other mysterious crash reports I could not reproduce. Unfortunately, I don't have a 64-bit platform available for testing. Hopefully I will be able to fix the problem with some help from my friends. Anyway, thanks for the posts! :)
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I have just released new version.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/untitled-rpg/files/
Please drop some comments if you find time.
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Doubtlessly interesting, yet a bit frustrating game.
Made few runs around town and talked to citizens.
Is it possible to activate talk menu on bumping friendly creature, but not asking "attack yes/no".
And, can you make preselected variant for this menu, like: "attack yes/NO" and activate NO, when player press any key, except y?
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Is it possible to activate talk menu on bumping friendly creature, but not asking "attack yes/no".
And, can you make preselected variant for this menu, like: "attack yes/NO" and activate NO, when player press any key, except y?
Sure. I think it used to be like this in the past (i. e. any key could be pressed to select NO), but somehow this feature has "disappeared" in unknown circumstances :). I will restore it. Perhaps it would be more comfortable to use mouse and/or auto-explore mode (Ctrl+arrow) in a town.
Bumping a friendly creature always causes position swapping, but most likely what you actually experienced were neutral creatures. Bumping them always means attacking. I'm going to change this behavior, but rather to swapping, like with friendly creatures. Talking by bumping is not very intuitive for me (try this in real life ! ;) ).
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Yes, I was speaking about neutral creatures.
But, if you would "found" yes/NO feature, it wouldn't be so urgent. :)