Messages

1

Design / Re: Corridors considered harmful

« on: July 23, 2016, 09:47:50 AM »

Why are you still talking about this bullshit?

This is as pointless as arguing wheter permadeath is a good or bad thing! Come on, everything has good and bad sides, you know?

Because corridors are bad and it's worth comparing ideas on what would be better? I shouldn't have to explain this, but good points and bad points don't cancel each other out 1:1, and at some point a thing has so many bad sides it's better to just put it in a box and bury it forever.
Just saying "things have pros and cons, now let's not think about them" is so deviously clever. A really subtle way to post, yet have it be completely without content or meaning or merit.
As an aside, there's no argument about permadeath. If you're against it, roguelikes are not for you.

Well, while I think corridors are perfectly fine to have in your roguelike I think a discussion about how to make them more interesting is still worth having.
But by my impression maybe not in this forum. What a shame.

Don't say such reddit things. You're better than that.

As for what I actually favor, amorphous cavern formations with soft walls (vegetation, fog, etc.) as described by AgingMinotaur seems to me to be the most compelling model for connecting rooms.

As I read  this I was reminded of Incursion's forest rooms, chasm rooms, slime pits, graveyards and kobold warrens.
And I definitely see the attraction. If only they got generated more often.

2

Design / Re: Corridors considered harmful

« on: July 04, 2016, 08:30:46 AM »

No, they are a by-product of a fairly literal-minded transcription of dungeon generation routines from dungeons and dragons. There are many ways a collection of rooms can hang around in an ambient 2-dimensional space. The particular choices made in rogue reflect what it says in the dungeon master's guides of the time.

I'm not seeing the alternatives (then again, I'm also not very imaginative). There's already been mention of wider corridors as a semi-viable option.
If you just use ONLY doors like in this below monstrosity I just made, you're creating an "optimal fight place" IN the doorways, which is the tactical equivalent of fighting in hallways.
http://imgur.com/VR9pkIB

Are you saying that that is STILL preferable to having hallways? It's true that you have more real estate now for "rooms" and the tactical advantage is slightly less compared to a hallway, but you're still soft-forcing the player to fight in a certain location.
Wouldn't the better solution be to give any entity inside of a hallway an across-the-board speed penalty (because of the cramped quarters)? Seeing as how ranged attackers outside of the hallway would get more attacks and the "faster" ticking of the food timer, you'd have given a sufficient trade-off for the safety you get from the tunnel.

The thing with maps from dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder or what have you is that walls don't take up space.
In a roguelike you're dealing with the following

..#..
..#..
......
###

(^ 3x4 grid, yes?)
but in a dungeon crawler that very same architecture would be

..|..
......
___

which is in fact JUST a 2x2 grid, with some squares being non-traversable in certain directions.

If there was a way to leverage THAT in a roguelike, then you'd REALLY open up options for good/creative map generation.

3

Design / Re: Corridors considered harmful

« on: June 28, 2016, 08:12:24 AM »

Most of the thread boils down to "Guys corridors are bad; trust me I'm right and also all the classic roguelikes are shit." though.
Please offer an alternative.

I'll agree that corridors are almost always the worst element of a map, right up there with the porous cave bullshit often seen in certain *bands.
[edit: most of what I said was already covered, snipetty snip]

Game design aside, aren't corridors more of a by-product of room generation? Certainly in Rogue, if you want to fit 9 (variously shaped) rooms on the screen in a 3x3 grid, you're going to end up with a lot of connecting corridors.
So your options boil down to what?
Generate rooms connected by doorways? People'd just fight in the doorway, so that's straight out.
Generate big rooms connected by 2-3 tile wide "tunnels" (totally NOT corridors!) that curve around? That might help a little...

I don't think generating one big room is the answer. As has been said, people will just fight with their back against a wall (or get swarmed and die). I wouldn't want to play a game where I go down the stairs and find myself standing in a wide open space facing 20 enemies AGAIN and AGAIN.

The core problem might be that the player occupies 1 tile and doesn't require any external tiles to be unoccupied in order to swing his weapon and bring the hurt.
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Swift_Swurd
The above tried to do position-based fencing. Judge for yourself how fun/successfull it was.

4

Design / Re: "Fun" Maps

« on: February 04, 2016, 08:33:35 PM »

If possible, change the font color in themed levels. Ie use a cyan or whatever for underwater/coastal levels and a deep green for forest levels. It's a welcome change of pace in ascii roguelikes. Just don't go overboard with it.

5

Other Announcements / Re: Arcen Games in trouble

« on: February 01, 2016, 07:47:37 PM »

It`s also - of course - a bit of a cry for help, but nothing this old cynic would consider unfair or inappropriate. And they`re really worth supporting - even if I don`t like all their games,  I have huge respect for them for trying original concepts in stale genres.

This. I don't know if I could honestly call any of their games great (or even good...), but I never felt like they made "safe"/boring games.
Big fan of both A Valley Without Wind games, despite the presentation.
I'm not surprised to see them in trouble, but it still sucks.

6

Player's Plaza / Re: How you guys feel about the new wave of rougelike games?

« on: January 06, 2016, 04:48:37 PM »

I can partially understand where Krice is coming from. Once you've had the best, why settle for the rest? Ie. if a certain game in a series reaches a zenith of gameplay perfection (and gameplay is what you care most about), why would you ever play earlier/newer games or games from other series? [disclaimer: not how I feel]

I'm also somewhat sympathetic regarding the quality/type of games that got made in ye olden days, but that's both partly off-topic and I don't think that money was any less important back then. Rather I think older games had to work around their technical limitations, allowing more room for player imagination to provide immersion, rather than the modern approach of throwing millions at game development in order to try and force immersion through cutting edge realistic graphics (which isn't helped at all by the garbage design of simplistic map design etc etc etc etc) If anything modern game devs have more access to money than ever before, it's just that instead of the golden age of rockstars-of-design we are now in the poop age of design-by-focusgroup.

7

Player's Plaza / Re: How you guys feel about the new wave of rougelike games?

« on: December 22, 2015, 11:21:34 AM »

I'm never going to make any money off it, and that's fine, because I want to make something interesting and deep and beautiful instead.

Include a donation link/reference somewhere? You'll probably still never make any money off it, but who knows.

8

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Brut@l ASCII roguelike for PS4

« on: December 06, 2015, 09:32:56 AM »

Did you maybe post a wrong image because that's neither ASCII nor a roguelike? 8^)

9

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!

« on: November 20, 2015, 03:14:53 PM »

Well damn, I wasn't expecting all that. Thanks for writing it all out, firstly.

You're right, it IS very easy to forget that Biskup's working with a team (who have to be paid), since Biskup is the guy who handles all the PR/communications (which is understandable). The official site even says;

Since 2012, after a 9 year hiatus, development has been resumed by Thomas Biskup on ADOM as well as its successor. ADOM Release 60 has been made available for public download.

...there's other people there too, but eh. Out of sight, out of mind?

As for the free updates: from the official site;

Q: What's the difference between the Free and Deluxe ADOM versions?
A: In general everything that was part of the original ADOM stays free. Plus all extra content added until the Steam release. Plus sound/music, interface and graphics. The Deluxe version contains all new features such as new game modes, extra gameplay customization, quality-of-life improvements etc. See below for a more detailed list:

Which is decidedly a different thing from ToME4's model which offers the same experience (eh) through the paid Steam version as that which you get from simply downloading it over at te4.org.

But what confuses me here is that both Steam Adom and Adom Free get the notEye graphical stuff; what's "held back" from Adom Free is customisation switches (ie. toggles and Free Starsign Selection).
If the notEye tileset was paid-only, I'd understand fully since I imagine that being something he's had to put much of his funding into (ie. paying for art and getting it integrated and whatnot). As-is I'm just confused at his choices (certainly global shared hi-scores is made easier by integrating Steamworks or something, but the rest...).
[disclaimer; this is just me being a greedy miser, since I care not for tiles but care much for options. Woe is me!]
Well, at least it's a generous model. I remember waiting for free releases while updates were still fresh and ongoing, and thinking I'd be missing out on all the "cool new content", like the Mist Elves and ratlings and what have you.

Regardless, it is helpful to be reminded of certain things, as I (for one) have a habit of selectively forgetting key factoids in order to tailor events to my pessimistic worldview.

10

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!

« on: November 20, 2015, 10:10:54 AM »

He didn't even deserve it, because ADOM is so much about D&D and Nethack. Not only that, I hate the way he brushed up ADOM from dust when crowd funding was becoming a thing. He did practically nothing, he even had help from those other guys working on the project.

I think even ADOM 2 was just a way to get interest back on ADOM. I was more interested about 2 than ADOM the commercial version.

...The hell?  This is quite far afield of reality Krice---alongside a nasty side of vitriolic.     Probably best to tone it way on down and/or not at all broach the subject all things considered.

Nasty or not, there's a kernel of truth in there. (Aside from the DnD talk, but that's Krice's pet peeve.)
Biskup DID kind of lay ADOM to rest around 2002 and start work on ADOM II sometime afterwards. Only "in recent years" (after the rise of kickstarter) did he revive ADOM as a commercial endeavor, giving normal access to backers and (later) paying customers. While sporadically releasing versions for free. [edit: If I'm wrong about any of this, please feel free to point it out. It's always possible I'm operating on misinformation.]

Of course Biskup has bills to pay and working on ADOM is a side thing for him, but I can see why taking a free game after 10ish years of radio silence and resuming updates IF you pay him can cause some people to question your motives and morals. Especially since previously his stance was "send me a postcard if you enjoy my game!".
The NotEye integration also gives the impression of being purely money-motivated (ie. if you want to make money on Steam, ASCII won't cut it; ToME4 already gets flak for being "super ugly").
Naturally it's his life and livelihood, I just don't feel like it's right to expect unanimous cheering each time he does something...

(Also, I think it's more worthwhile to fix misconceptions through dialogue than just go "hush now". If it's just a circlejerk you want you can just as easily move the entire forum to reddit lol)

11

Development Process & non-technical / Re: a question regarding balance

« on: November 01, 2015, 10:05:31 PM »

Roguelikes usually don't think in terms of dps?
A dagger traditionally does 1d4 (a four-sided dice roll, ie 1 2 3 or 4) damage, while a greatsword would be 1d10.
A broadsword could be 2d4 (two four-sided die, so 1 2 3 or 4 + 1 2 3 or 4, total result anything between 2 and 8 ).
Which comes down to a bell curves and so on and so forth.

In in-game practical terms, maybe there's a monster with 3 defense; a dagger would do 0 damage 75% of the time, while a greatsword would do 0 damage 30% of the time. However, that broadsword would ALWAYS do damage (unless you roll 1+1).
I guess that's one way to balance things.

Dungeons and Dragons balances things by giving different weapons a different chance to crit, and a different damage multiplier ON crit.
For example a Kukri or rapier will crit more often, but a Greataxe crit multiplier is higher than a rapiers.

If you talk about 20 damage in 2 turns, maybe the greatsword "locks" you into an attack for 2 turns, which means an enemy can hit you twice for every 1 swing you do. In that case I'd make it do FAR more than 20 damage, because fighting more than 1 enemy would be very deadly.


Take a look at how Brogue does weapons (pay attention to maces, axes, etc). Then take a look at how The Slimy Lichmummy does weapons.
I think you'll get a feel for balance from TSL .

12

Design / Re: Thoughts on this "Hunger" system.

« on: August 20, 2015, 07:00:02 AM »

As I understand it now you first run through Hunger/Thirst, THEN Starving/Dehydrated AND THEN the maxHp damage kicks in.
Better to have max Hp damage tick at the same time as the Starving/Dehydrated bar; you should be dead once you're fully Starved/Dehydrated, not become a mummy first and THEN take Hp damage 

I don't care much for having 0 str when both hungry and thirsty; multiplicative instead of additive, so it's 0,25 would be slightly more bearable I think. Perhaps have Str tick down at the same rate as maxHp, with a small up-front percentile/flat penalty. I get a little weak when I'm hungry, but I don't immediately turn into a vegetable when I get thirst+munchies.

So yeah, hunger system. The idea is there but you could/should tweak the numbers and mechanics some more.
Thought about having *any* potion FULLY restore thirst? That way you can "force" the player to quaff un-id'd potions. A clear reward, but with a nice risk (depending on whether you have potions/what they do).

Edit: Derp no wait, I think you didn't mean an immediate drop to 0 Str.
Also, the maxHp damage is permanent? I'd reconsider.

13

Design / Re: My thoughts on deep mechanics.

« on: August 13, 2015, 09:09:19 AM »

See, that's already a lot better than your blog post.
Because trying to eat a suit of armor is silly if you're a human. Not only would it not fit in your mouth, nobody would think of doing it because there's nothing to be gained. You don't get nutrition from it. Eating anything you pick up is very "videogame" behavior, and it breaks immersion. I know I didn't read no books about Conan trying to eat his enemies' shoes, or Arthur choking on a Greatshield. Robin Hood, not Robin Rat-devourer, thank you. 

As for eating rings for a small bonus; usually rings already confer a SMALL bonus (like +1 AC, or 1 Fire Resist or 1 Str etc etc) so eating one of THOSE would either give you nothing or the same bonus they gave when worn on your finger.
In that case, why ever wear rings? Just eat them all.
So you'd have to make worn rings a lot more powerful (ie. BIG bonus when worn) in order to enable them to give a SMALL bonus when ingested.

Is your game going to have that many magical rings lying around that it's suddenly "normal" to swallow them all?
In the end you end up with the player wearing his two (?) favorite/strongest rings and blindly eating any other rings he finds, slowly building up permanent bonuses. That's not good game design at all, in my opinion.

Wielding a silver helmet as an improvised weapon against a werewolf is decent, but is it worth implementing "wield anything" just to deal with monsters that are only affected by silver/cold-iron/magical?
"If you encounter a ghost and you don't have a magical weapon, don't have means of escape (potions/scrolls), and are slower than the ghost, you're usually doomed." So you want to fix that by letting the player improv-wield a magical wearable.
But if he doesn't have that he's STILL doomed.

Suppose the player DOES have a magical amulet; 9 out of 10 times he's going to run or teleport because he won't think that he CAN wield the amulet as a weapon. So if you want to force the player to beat a ghost to death with an amulet, you'll have to make the ghosts faster than the player. I think you'll end up with a lot of players complaining about unavoidable, unkillable ethereal monsters, instead of them thinking they're clever for finding the "solution". For what it's worth, this type of problem is only rewarding to solve once, imo. Lastly, you try beating a werewolf to death with a silver plate; see who gets mauled :V

Wouldn't it be better to have "ethereal" creatures just be SLOW (and able to walk through walls)? Imo that's much more interesting, and removes the need for oddball systems.

14

Development Process & non-technical / Re: Releasing a Commercial ASCII Roguelike, a Post-Mortem [Cogmind]

« on: June 30, 2015, 07:59:06 AM »

Those launch sales graphs... that x-axis annoys me so much 
(You should be able to merge them into one graph, or one for sales+views and another for sales+sessions. Might be more informative that way.)

Great write-up! That was very interesting to read. I am looking forward to finding out whether you'll get a boost in sales once you release 1.0! Also, congratulations!

15

Player's Plaza / Re: How you guys feel about the new wave of rougelike games?

« on: June 21, 2015, 03:11:48 PM »

No. A game you`ve got "tens of hours of enjoyment from" is worth its price, end of. Buyer`s bias is an interesting mental device , sure, but so is  logic where somebody might spend 50 hours on DoD and yet claim it`s garbage. "RL cred?". Please. Seems  you want to have the cake and eat it - play the game and yet still be able to join in with the cool kids on the "hey, there`s a fish in that barrel" exercise. 

No yourself.

Walk a mile in shitty shoes, go ahead. The distance you cover doesn't make the shoes worth their price, even if they were comfortable at first. Your feet are bleeding and blistered; you bought shit shoes.
Eat some half-raw chicken. As you're crapping your guts out, consider the meal worth its price; you did eat some if not all of it, after all.
Read an awful book. You didn't just waste your time and money on drivel; you went cover-to-cover so it was worth its price.

I could write more god-awful analogies, but my point is something is only worth its price if you're happy with the end product.
If a movie has a shit ending, I want my money back or I'm not watching something by that director again. "Worth it" is subjective, but it's also detached from the actual quality of the product.
You can only take "The meek will inherit" so far before it becomes "I love getting my face stomped on!".
Sometimes I pay for shit games, guilty as charged. Sometimes I enjoy shit games! How much enjoyment I get out of them doesn't force me to change my judgement. There's no "cool kids" to join; if something sucks, say so. I'm not going to say "oh but the soundtrack was pretty groovy" or "some of the setting was amusing". No. It's a shit game. If you like it, you like shit games and/or are unable to tell when something is good or bad.

No doubt there`s a need for discussion about roguelikes and money - the arrival of digital distribution is a seismic shift for the genre & community. For me it`s much less about the (rather silly) "should the devs get paid" question but how/if commercial development affects the games` quality itself.

I`m afraid though that the kind of argument you offer - RLs should be free because they always were, because AAA games might be crap but at least they have gfx/music/story and because of some other  "armchair economist" type stuff - is just too ridiculous to work with. No really, talking about dev entitlement when your posts could be prime examples of that dreaded term "entitled gamer"  (hate it because it`s mostly used by people who defend extensive DLC and microtransactions, ugh) is just a little bit too much.

But I AM an armchair economist. I've been following AAA AND Indie. Pc, console AND mobile. Over the years, watching attitudes and dogmas shift. The death of PC gaming and its recent resurrection due to new funding models. The rise of pre-order mentality. The almost-universal catastrophic failure of crowdfunding. People happily buying into "Early Access" games (ie. developers losing any and all sense of shame). Major studios straight up announcing they're quitting consoles to chase the mobile gaming money.
Talking about how their latest major release ended up costing them millions because not enough people bought it. Talking about how they need to CHANGE their franchise in order to DRAW IN more buyers, even if that goes against the wishes of the CURRENT fans. Indie devs talking about fickle buyers and low sales. Mobile devs talking about the race to 0.99c price point due to the insanely overcrowded market.

These things interest me, so I keep tabs. Maybe it all sounds ridiculous, but I'm not inventing some crazy system of economics to fit my agenda of evil and cynicism.

Look at this:

I'm not convinced mainstream gamers want to touch traditional RLs with a 10 ft. pole. Simultaneously, I worry that most serious RLers won't step away from the classics. What's left?

This is the core of the matter.

You're at the Temple of the Roguelike. Go to some major gaming forums, start a thread; tell people you're going to be charging this or that much for a game that may or may not have a tileset. May or may not have ANY sound.
I'M skeptical about their response, but I'm also known for being negative.

All this is speculation, and most of it coming from someone who only mentions the downsides of everything.
So go ahead, release a game. Ask indie devs with multiple games out what their metric for succes is, share some info with other RL devs. (Share some info with meeeee! I'm actually curious, moreso in hard sales figures than whatever morals you have on worth and value and appreciation!)
What's your day-one sales? What's your daily sales in the first week post-release? Second week? Third week?

I think the market for rogueliKes is already small. In this small pool, most will likely already have a game-of-choice (Nethack/Crawl). The pooldwellers may or may not all look favorably on your attempt to sell them something. Once you've saturated the pool of "people who actually like RLs", how much do you think you'll sell to outsiders?
I can't imagine people making bank on such a small niche of games. I said it before, don't blame the consumer. Blame yourself for picking a poor target market. Nobody's forcing you to ask money for a game; perhaps blame yourself if nobody is willing to buy.
If I'm wrong, by all means share some figures. I'm not clairvoyant, unless the future turns out to be shit as far as the eye can see.