Messages

1

Design / Re: Corridors considered harmful

« on: June 24, 2016, 10:04:53 PM »

Is there any chance you could write a long essay detailing this confusing notion about corridors?

As it is, it's like that one guy who makes a post alleging some unsupported contentious thing, and then he pops back in to make further unsupported contentious confusications over anyone's responses that try and make sense of it. 

Insert picture of someone urinating into the global air flow which happens to be flowing their way at the time, and any time they happen to be standing in that location.

2

Programming / Re: Libtcod can go jump in a lake

« on: June 24, 2016, 09:56:20 PM »

After 3 hours, I have hit a wall because I'm running 64 bit (like, you know, the whole rest of the world) and libtcod won't compile.

I assume there would be an option with your compiler to do a 32-bit build. Which will run on a 64 bit OS. 

A large part of the problems people have in compiling libtcod are mingw-related.  It's gotten to the point where we have ditched mingw for libtcod 1.6, and only support Visual Studio which is free.

You can just get the source for libtcod 1.6 from bitbucket, install Visual Studio 2015 community edition, open the solution and with a few minor steps it should just build (getting SDL2 in place).  Or you can after installing VS, not open the solution and run 'build.bat' which should fetch the dependencies (SDL2) and do 32 bit and 64 bit builds.  Then you can open Visual Studio if you want and it will just work.

However, the tutorial needs to be updated for libtcod 1.6, which hasn't happened.  So at that point, anyone doing the tutorial needs to be able to master their own destiny to some limited extent.

3

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Roguelike Archive

« on: October 25, 2015, 06:15:23 PM »

You should put the information online, so others can go over the list, and help out.  I know you live in a russian bunker and only venture out while wearing full body tinfoil  , so IIRC do not have a google account, but a google docs spreadsheet would be ideal for this.  More cumbersome would be a specialised page in the roguebasic  wiki.

In any case, if you did so, you could post updates to /r/roguelikes on reddit, and people would likely jump in and help out.

4

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Write an article for the next issue of Imaginary Realities

« on: September 01, 2015, 01:49:39 AM »

Are you involved with text-based gaming?  If so, whether your involvement is in mudding, roguelikes, interactive fiction, gamebooks, browser games or maybe even something else, please consider writing an article for Imaginary Realities.

Imaginary Realities is an online journal which first ran from September 1998 to December 2001, originally focused on mudding.  It has been revived, and had published a new issue just recently, which you can find here:

http://journal.imaginary-realities.com/

Find more details about suitable article topics here:

http://journal.imaginary-realities.com/contribute.html

Please email me before writing an article, to confirm that the topic you are interested in writing about, is both suitable and within our range of coverage at this email address:

richard.m.tew@gmail.com

Articles should be in the range of 1000-4000 words, and need to be received by September 30th, 2015.  Longer articles are possible for serialisation, with approval required.

5

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Incursion (open source) 0.6.9Y19

« on: August 14, 2015, 04:22:51 AM »

Incursion (open source) 0.6.9Y19

An updated download is available on bitbucket: 0.6.9Y19.

Changes:

• Issue 207: Incursion domain names finished transferring from Julian.
• Issue 209: Make a standalone module compiler.  This is as done as it can be, and it is now possible to invoke the debug Incursion executable with the '-compile' argument to get it to build the default core module 'main.irc'.  '-compile <modulename.irc>' can be used instead to build other modules.
• Issue 217: When Google Breakpad minidumping was first added, it was promptly removed when people started complaining that Error() would crash trying to do a minidump.  Now in release builds, which are the only ones with Breakpad support, the Error() function allows the user to choose to try and drop a minidump.
• Issue 222: Spelling and grammar fixes.  Pull request from Carl Minden.
• Issue 231: Help menu entries were present for content which was not present.  Reported by Vornag.
• Issue 233: Cancelling crashed when fields were encountered with no associated effect. Reported by Vornag.
• Issue 235: Typo in text displayed when attempting to climb.  Reported by Vornag.
• Issue 236: Moving between levels crashes when an illusion stops as days pass and then the UI is refreshed but the 'between levels' coordinates of -1, -1 choke everything that consumes them.  Reported by Esran Zarnath.
• Issue 239: Secondary skill kit bonuses should be one per item type, not one per each of item type held by player.  This is not ideal as there may be multiple different visual item types for instance, but at least it no longer exploitable by holding 20 viewing lenses.
• Issue 240: Your best type of rope in your inventory should add a given bonus to climbing attempts.  However, the wrong value is looked up and all ropes give +2 bonus (which is less than any rope bonus).
• Issue 243: Remove reference to Julian, and feedback on game design.  Reported by Dave Duckett.
• Spelling fix: ressurrection/ressurection -> resurrection.
• Documented script constants, noting which were unused.  These are used for dungeon creation, defining how gods interact with players, and more.

6

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Allure of the Stars/LambdaHack 0.5.0.0 are out, open, supported (Haskell/ASCII)

« on: August 04, 2015, 04:51:41 AM »

Are there screenshots?  I can't speak for anyone else, but the chance of me not paying an announcement any attention for a game I've never looked at before, is directly related to the number of screenshots.

7

Early Dev / Re: Hengelight: A modern co-op take on classic ASCII Roguelikes.

« on: August 01, 2015, 11:04:23 PM »

It looks like a great result for 9 weeks work. And I think it's a valid and interesting direction to take text-based roguelikes.

Personally, I think kickstarter is a bad idea.  It locks you into having to finish the project, or give refunds.  How much money you actually get in the long run after all the rewards and mucking around and taxes and whatever.. I don't know.  Especially out of a low amount like 15k.  Patreon is a better fit IMO, if you have a compelling enough project for people to take attention.  But that's really a problem shared between both outfits.

That said.  Good on you for making a go of it.  Hope you get enough people who fund you.

8

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Roguelike Mega Collection Torrent Has 700+ Free Games

« on: July 29, 2015, 10:38:22 PM »

The person doing this is doing the good work.

Although, is anything really free?  If I put half an hour into getting Binky's WooWoo RL working, and then half an hour into trying it, and decide it has no value or enjoyment to me, I've paid with an hour of my time and there are no refunds!

But there's tremendous value to making sure that some of these aren't lost.  I know of two roguelikes for which the downloads are no longer available.  I should look up their names and see if they're in there.

9

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Imaginary Realities volume 7, issue 3

« on: July 27, 2015, 08:42:10 AM »

Our latest issue has been released.  It features only one article on Roguelikes, but that one article is titled "How integral are letters and text to ASCII gaming?" by Mark Johnson, frequent forum favourite for URR.  In addition, there's an article on interactive fiction in the USSR and there rest are related to mudding.

Read it online.  We used to provide EPUB and PDF e-books to download for offline reading, but for now additional work needs to be done to bring them back.

Enjoy! Or not!

10

Early Dev / Re: Armoured Commander Alpha 1: WW2 Tank Commander Roguelike

« on: July 21, 2015, 11:32:15 PM »

Alpha 8.32 is up! New animations, sounds, bugfixes, and images for some (but not yet all) in-game units.

http://www.armouredcommander.com/downloads.html

Keep up the good work.  Why did you leave reddit?  Was it to do with the people being banned for hating on fat people and that being censorship?  Are you back there yet for sharing saturdays?

11

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

« on: July 12, 2015, 05:43:59 AM »

Your efforts are inspiring.  At worst, it'll be a magnum opus.

I used to work in commercial game development, and one of my coworkers was hired out of university on the strengths of his modding work.  This to me is the sort of thing, along with your self motivated productivity, that makes his "portfolio" look like tiddlywinks.  When you move onto the next thing, I'd be surprised if this and your blog of continued work didn't help you get it, if it's to something applicable.

12

Early Dev / Re: Space Grunts - in development

« on: July 12, 2015, 05:13:36 AM »

so what's missing in your opinion? would love to know, cause perhaps I can still work some of the things in, that's why I joined these forums after all!

Every man and his dog has their own set of definitions.  You'll get Person A fervently saying that if it's not turn-based, then it's not a roguelike.  And Person B emphasising some other different point on the scale as more important.  I've played procedurally generated, turn-based, grid-based, etc games that were definitely not roguelikes.

Ultimately, it's not enough to want to make a roguelike, your game has to bear enough of a resemblance when seen and played.  And you have to be willing to say it's not a roguelike, but it is a whatever "with roguelike elements" or use a nonsense term like roguelikelike or roguelite, if it's more honest.

If you can look in the mirror and say without being self-serving, that it is a roguelike, then just say it's a roguelike.  But if you hold it up and compare it to a traditional roguelike, like Brogue, Rogue, Moria, DCSS, etc and it bears no resemblance, then what is it worth to call it a roguelike?

Trying to please people on forums is standing there while they're pissing in the wind.  You'll feel confused and unclean, and certainly won't be any better off.

13

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

« on: July 05, 2015, 08:05:41 PM »

Looks great, as usual.

I've been going over old libtcod projects looking at the unique and interesting ones, and looking at this reminds me of Cult/Empyrea.  When the kickstarter funded effort was abandoned, he released the source, and people were all like "duh, no surprise, he has a 1 MB python script, WTF, trust me I'm an armchair expert".

Are you still fighting the good fight for one file Python scripts?  How large is it now?

And how have you upped your game to counter the Kaduria threat?

14

Programming / Re: Visual Studio so close to awesome

« on: July 05, 2015, 07:49:42 PM »

Evidently Krice has taken his toll on the forum. I did state that I do not want flame and I did state I believe you are know what you're doing (credibility based on your other posts) but do not understrand why and therefore curious. "I do not care if you mortals do not understand" was uncalled for but kind of ironic taking into account thread participants.

Why do I need to convince you of this?  Perhaps you should read it as, I don't have the time or interest to sit here and construct time consuming posts to defend it.  You admit you haven't tried it.  It's common sense that when you do, if you do, that you might gain a different perspective.  I am not here to change your mind, just to vouch that it has potential.

15

Programming / Re: Visual Studio so close to awesome

« on: July 04, 2015, 01:06:23 AM »

Trying to do something "smart" is programming in C++ 

I like how that comment tells everything about your problems on which you yourself have no idea. Even "normal" C roguelike source codes tend to get very messy after they reach major level. What do you think will happen when you start to play with esoteric stuff like that? Good luck, man.

To paraphrase: My comment tells an undefined everything.  Code sometimes gets messy as it evolves.  A rhetorical question based on unclear statements?  Not sure I understand.