Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) => Topic started by: mariodonick on March 19, 2010, 05:39:54 AM
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Hello everybody,
I'd like to know if you ever play(ed) LambdaRogue. Use the poll above. And please answer honestly ;)
Thanks,
Mario (LR dev)
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Yep, it pretty much got pushed back/lost in the shuffle and to this day I couldn't manage to come up with any nifty specific questing. :-\
Good to see you around again Mario. 8)
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Never tried, but that's mostly because I haven't been on the scene very long. Perhaps I should give it a try and then come update my vote. ;D
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It seems to be a game that I should try, but I have not done it yet.
I think one of the main reasons why I have not played it yet is the name. It strongly suggests to me that it is some clone of Rogue written in Lisp (Lisp is based on Lambda Calculus, and one of the most important operations in Lisp is named lambda), i.e., it is not interesting except for Lisp fans. I know it is not true and it is in fact an original game written in Free Pascal and lambda is probably just a coincidence (or maybe not? I don't know actually), but somehow... (I also don't like the name CalcRogue, which suggests that it is a clone of rogue that is playable on a calculator, while in fact it is a good original roguelike, no matter whether you play it on a calculator or on a PC.)
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Yep, a good name is the first thing a project should get. I never used to judge a RL by its name but nowadays I do more and more. And Lambda Rogue has a fairly uninspiring name, to me the word lambda brings up visions of sleepy sheep, or my mathematics brains tell me something about empty sets. However OTOH I would play a game with a name sheepRogue because it brings up to mind a comical mash of a fluffy white animals with hack and slash gameplay, hehe die you fluffy bastards!
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This name thing is quite depressing *lol* Maths does not belong to my professional background, thus "Lambda" is just a beautiful greek letter for me. So now I ask myself: If I had given the game some menacing, heroic name, had it become more attention?
Well, it's too late anyway. Perhaps it's really time for something new.
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It's never too late to re-brand your game! (as opposed to scrapping it entirely)
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I think one of the main reasons why I have not played it yet is the name. It strongly suggests to me that it is some clone of Rogue written in Lisp (Lisp is based on Lambda Calculus, and one of the most important operations in Lisp is named lambda), i.e., it is not interesting except for Lisp fans.
Actually, that was my first thought too when I first heard of LambdaRogue :P
Mario, I was playing it a bunch at my previous job because I was frequently bored and slacking. Not so at my current position and I don't have a Windows machine at home to play it on.
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I don't have a Windows machine at home
If you have Linux at home, you might try the Linux version ;) The source should also easily compile under BSD. (Somebody even made it run under MacOS).
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It's never too late to re-brand your game! (as opposed to scrapping it entirely)
Pay heed to this man! 8)
For me when I saw "Lambda" I just reckoned a Greek backdrop of some sort, but then the big sell were all the various trailers which other Roguelikes didn't really have going. I'm immune to most Maths references, being absolutely terrible and generally ignorant on the subject. :D
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Well. This night I was thinking about restarting LR development, leading to a 1.6 release, which then could be released under another name and version 1.0. Any suggestions for a proper name?
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I don't have a Windows machine at home
If you have Linux at home, you might try the Linux version ;) The source should also easily compile under BSD. (Somebody even made it run under MacOS).
Oh! If someone got it running on OS X, then there's hope for me!
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One thing I meant to ask you earlier:
Do enemies level with the player or get stronger as time passes or anything? I've played a few times, but it seems no matter how conservative I am, forces outside of my control conspire to destroy me. Something feels unfair, as opposed to the good fair-but-merciless feeling roguelikes typically go for.
I think it would also help to explain more of the game's mechanics. Doesn't one of the choices at character creation mean that you aren't supposed to kill a certain type of enemy? The player doesn't have any way of knowing this as they make their dude.
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Do enemies level with the player or get stronger as time passes or anything?
There is an option "growing enemies". If it is activated, enemies become "big", "strong" and finally "mighty", depending on the number of kills of this type. It is activated by default, but you can deactivate anytime.
I've played a few times, but it seems no matter how conservative I am, forces outside of my control conspire to destroy me. Something feels unfair, as opposed to the good fair-but-merciless feeling roguelikes typically go for.
Can you give me an example? In general, surviving in LR means a lot of micromanagement, item buying/selling etc. Also, keep away from monster hives if you're not strong enough. Finally, read all the help pages.
Doesn't one of the choices at character creation mean that you aren't supposed to kill a certain type of enemy?
Yeah, Ares believers aren't allowed to kill caveworms, due to some strange religious codex. They don't get EXP for this.
The player doesn't have any way of knowing this as they make their dude.
They know it when trying to kill a caveworm as Ares-character for the first time ;) Two or three accidently kills won't have any negative effect.
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I've tried to play it, it looks great and atmospheric. But game always freezes in the second level or so. Maybe this is already fixed, because I tried it long ago. Another problem has been difficulty at even low levels and I absense of auto-run key. Some command to travel around the map in comfortable way would be nice too.
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At least since version 1.5 (August 2009) no major bugs should occur anymore. All releases before 1.4 (December 2008) were still very buggy, though.
Balancing has also been worked on in 1.4 and 1.5 release, the game should be much easier than in earlier releases. Less and weaker monsters, better balancing of stats of monsters and items, much smaller dungeon levels.
I won't, however, ever implement an auto run key, because I never use such an option in other roguelikes. It is too much of "let the game be played automatically, because I'm too lazy".
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It's been a while, but doesn't the player need to talk to a handful of NPCs before the game proper gets going? It's usually best to throw them into things as quickly as possible if you can, since roguelikes involve restarting dozens if not hundreds of times.
Doesn't your game have difficulty levels where higher difficulties unlock more content? What is your reasoning behind those?
I'm not saying difficulty levels are bad and wrong, but I can't think of another RL that uses them, and I'm wondering what made you decide to do things differently.
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but doesn't the player need to talk to a handful of NPCs before the game proper gets going? It's usually best to throw them into things as quickly as possible if you can, since roguelikes involve restarting dozens if not hundreds of times.
Your answers to the other thread in the development forum made me came to this guess, too. So you might be right. That's why I already thought of a pure crawling mode where you don't need to care about accepting quests first.
Difficulty levels have been introduced, because Sacred had them. In current versions of LR, the difficulty levels only influence the number of enemies and their respawn rate, as well as the number of randomly scattered items. All actual content is there in all difficulty levels.
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Your answers to the other thread in the development forum made me came to this guess, too. So you might be right. That's why I already thought of a pure crawling mode where you don't need to care about accepting quests first.
My game (that's currently on the backburner) is more story based than the average roguelike, but I'm still keeping multiple playthroughs in mind, because it's still a roguelike. I'm handling this by keeping story sections brief (no fetch quests, missions/quests are short with a high amount of action in them). I'm going to keep the number of NPCs the player needs to talk to low. Any given quest should only require speaking to one person to initiate it, and maybe one other person to finish it, and that's it.
Any story related NPC the player needs to talk to will always have one dialog option to skip everything else they have to say. The only exception is when the player has a decision to make, in which case that option will take them immediately to the decision.
Like say they there's an NPC asking for the player's help against bandits. They might say "We're being attacked by (insert name of bandits)! Help us!"
The player will then be presented with options like this:
> Yes
No
Tell me more about the situation
I assume that the player has played through this before, and saying yes will immediately drop them into the thick of things. If it is their first time, they can choose the third option, which will give more information on what's going on and what they can expect in the mission.
Maybe something like that would work for you?
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Any given quest should only require speaking to one person to initiate it, and maybe one other person to finish it, and that's it. ... Maybe something like that would work for you?
I admit that, if you're given a quest to, say, kill 20 antbees, you need to go back to the person who gave you that quest, because it would make no sense to simply gain the reward without reporting the success, or _always_ go to another NPCs down the road.
Concerning the need of reading text: I expect players to read every text at least _once_, during the first play. Every quest text also has a short, one-line description. So I expect players to know which NPCs offer quests during the 2nd, 3rd, nth... playthrough. Then they can simply skip the texts and accept it or leave it. It should be as fast as your system ...
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Many good names have not taken yet.
Something with Labyrinth maybe. Maze Slayer. Labyrinth Lord, etc...
EDIT: On second thought, go with 'Labyrinth Lord' if it hasn't been taken, as it will slide in smoothly with your already 'L' named game. If you think a name is holding you back...
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Thanks for the ideas, Jo.
The name thing, however, has been solved -- I'll stick with LambdaRogue, because the players who know and play the game, know it under that name.
I emphasize it's subtitle stronger than before, thus I'll often speak of "LR: The Book of Stars". Additionally, I now use a slogan suggested by somebody in the development blog: Per Libris, ad Astra (To the stars, through Books).
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Sweet dude. It's next on my list for a play. As soon as I master Crawl...just kidding...:-)
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Well, wait for patch 1.5.3 -- it brings lots of additional eye candy (including character portraits, player tiles that match the player portrait in the status area and animated earthquakes, wohoo!) and further gameplay enhancements (offensive and defensive mode, more item combination & throwing effects ...)