Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Xenocide

« on: November 03, 2010, 01:30:04 AM »

I don't have XP anymore. But as far as I can recall, try hitting the windows key and r to popup the run command. Then just type "cmd" and hit enter to launch the console. There's a ton other ways to do so (including an entry in the startmenu somewhere) but this one should definitely work.
There you can just right click the Icon (in the title bar) and select properties (or options).This is from memory so there's a slight chance i'm off. Especially since I never had an english XP.

Anyways, Xenocide is a great game. It's a pity it never was finished but even with that which is there, it's a lot of fun. There were some rumors about it being restarted but those seem to have been just that: Rumors.

2

Other Announcements / Re: Essen Spiel 2010

« on: September 01, 2010, 08:59:50 PM »

I'm guessing you're referring to the "Internationale Spieltage"? Not to be a bummer or something but isn't that an expo with a primary focus on traditional board and cardgames like Chess, Magic or Risk? I know there's also some comic stuff going on there but it would never have occurred to me to go there for news on Videogames.

I can't help you as university is about to kick into gear in the coming weeks and Essen is a bit too far away from Switzerland. But good luck nonetheless. A success on your side would be a success for roguelike popularity in general.
And keep it up, Legerdemain is one pretty interesting roguelike.

3

Other Announcements / Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project

« on: August 30, 2010, 01:59:01 PM »

It really was all about the Shock Value. Generate some fluffy discussions and there you go.
It was also playing into the hands of two very troll heavy topics: Games as Art - how far can and should games go, as well as the violent games discussion. If that game had seen the light of day and some game-repressive countries media found out about it, it would have just been another nail to the coffin. Think Australia or Germany where politics are very eager to banhammer games.

Concerning the support of games, I've tried to do so in the past. I went on advertising rampages for some Roguelikes, I tried to be as active as possible in the respective forums, intentionally bumped release threads on other sites with sometimes really stupid questions, just to get it back up at the top for folks to see the game release/update. But alas, a single person can't generate enough "feedback points" to keep projects alive. And lately I've lost all my drive as well: Why bother with feedback in a community where the status quo seems paramount?
As a player, roguelike projects often look dead to me. There's a release, some short aftermath if you're lucky and the project then goes silent for several years. You don't hear anything, not even rumors. It's kinda like the Developer(s) fell off the earth. I never know whether its finished, abandoned or simply takes its healthy time for progress. On the flipside, too much progress in too short a time puts me off trying a rl because it gives me the feeling that by the time I'm done downloading, it's already outdated. But luckily that's just me. I don't know how others feel about this.

About DoomRL:
Oh dear. There it goes again.

4

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Crawl 7.x Harder than previous versions?

« on: July 30, 2010, 04:48:28 PM »

They introduced a bunch of early uniques. Maybe that's whats causing the problem? Though I also felt that the game got harder somehow.

5

Programming / Re: Resolution and Fonts

« on: July 17, 2010, 09:28:07 PM »

You're trying too hard Krice. Your flamebaiting and intentional misunderstanding is a "bit" obvious. Mind telling me where I hurt your feelings?

------

Not all monitors cope well with non wide-screen or smaller resolutions. There's a wide array of methods Monitor Manufacturers use. There's simple stretching, which results in unreadable fonts and severely skewed tiles on lower quality monitors. Then there's a method where they just center it in the middle of the screen and be done with it.
Some more expensive monitors come with pretty decent interpolation and can deal with upsizing lower resolutions, many others can not. As a result, things get worse the lower a resolution is enforced. Colors and shapes start to bleed into each other which means two letters appear as one smear. Some monitors even try to adjust to the lower resolution by constantly shifting and re-focussing. Then fail. Then try again. Constantly. So that's the bane of lower resolutions on newer monitors.
And windowed but small resolutions which I called Stamp, which seemingly inspired Krice to his berserker rage, are fine for old graphics based games with low amounts of text. Roguelikes however can't really be played that well because it's too hard to read anything.

6

Programming / Re: Resolution and Fonts

« on: July 17, 2010, 07:27:46 PM »

but with tiles it could mean huge amount of work and all that for pussies who cry when their full hd monitor isn't used in all its glory.

/edit: response edited out, not worth it.
Short note: That was uncalled for. Feeling envious, buddy?

Rest:
Why not scale it up proportionally? 2x, 4x? Black-Bar the leftover pixels. The issue with big screens is that the games that do enforce fullscreen do stretch, instead of proportionally scaling it. This leads to really odd and unplayable results. I've already explained the issue with windowed games running a small resolution.

P.S.:
slashie, sent you some bug report a couple of weeks ago, did you receive it?

7

Programming / Re: Resolution and Fonts

« on: July 16, 2010, 05:34:48 PM »

What's wrong with small stamp window, if you can see what's happening in the game? Lot of programs are smaller than the resolution size.

Ye, if you can see what's happening in the game is the keyphrase here. There's no chance with a native screen resolution of 1920x1080. Games with small resolutions aren't bigger than a thumb in length. That's far too small to see what's going on, let alone read text.

8

Programming / Re: Resolution and Fonts

« on: July 09, 2010, 08:28:42 PM »

There's a topic over on Tigsource about the very same topic, might help you out.
Also note the Links to other Surveys a bit further down.
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=13389.0

Can't you just make a set internal resolution and just scale it up proportionally to a user's choice of resolution? I generally skip games with fixed resolution because they either force fullscreen on me, which does atrocious things to my monitor or they leave it windowed, which turns the game into a stamp.

9

Programming / Re: Theme Idea Dumping Ground

« on: June 02, 2010, 07:54:42 PM »

I think the roguelike community is a tad burned by the vaporware syndrome.
Too many people came up with great ideas, shared them and discussed them, some even received praise for them only to disappear into thin air while the game never saw the light of day. There's also the case of one person posting several dozen game ideas, some of which quite generic and whenever a game came out that even remotely looked like one of his sketches, he went ballistic. Not saying you will, just mentioning that there were several similiar cases. I think that's why people generally frown upon themes, concepts and ideas unless they're fully realized.

I mean everybody has ideas, some of which are great. Heck, I think even I have a couple of at least interesting ones. But in the state they're now in, they're just text. Just concepts. Pointless, worthless and useless for anyone but myself. And even in my case they're mostly a vanity item so why should I bother others with it? Not to get you down. Keep pumping out ideas. It's a good exercise for yourself. Just don't expect people to celebrate or honor them. Also if you want comments on those themes, flesh them out a bit. Oneliners won't spawn lengthy comments. A well thought out longer concept might attract good feedback - if the moon doth shine and the planets do align.

10

Other Announcements / Re: Where to begin

« on: May 19, 2010, 09:47:08 PM »

There's no easy way into the realm of roguelikes. Most people will advice you to download one of the easier roguelikes to help you start out but I'd advice against that. Pick the one that's most intriguing to you. When you start out you need to keep some concepts in your mind. These are based on my personal misconceptions when I started out and from having tried to introduce others to the genre, observing their progress. Consider this some "conversion" guideline for folks switching over from other genres.

Realize that you won't beat the game anytime soon.
This is something we're used to from basically every single game genre out there. With a bit of effort and determination you can win them in no time. There's never a task that's insurmountable. Sure, there's some difficulty but you can just keep on battering your head against it and they'll go away. Roguelikes on the other hand aren't like that. You will get yourself into situations which you just can't beat with what you have at that time. While in every other game, persistence is key, in roguelikes Cowardice is survival. It teaches us a basic law of human nature: Heroes die.
Once you stop trying to be a hero, you will experience a huge spike in survivability. Still, even if you're fairly experienced one day, you probably still won't have beaten your favorite roguelike. Don't play to win, play to have fun. That's actually one of the hardest things to understand when starting out with roguelikes.

Understand that you don't need to understand.
You know what caused me great frustration when I started out? Thinking I had to memorize all those absurd key combinations to be able to play these games. After all in every other game, knowing the controls is important for your survival. Roguelikes love showering their players with sometimes well over 100 keys to memorize. Trying to think off them all when you start off will only result in you trying to fiddle with the controls as you keep on forgetting the basic stuff.
So here's my second hint about roguelikes:
Ignore everything (at first). Ignore stats. Ignore races and classes. You really don't need to know about those things yet. You only need to know how to move your character. In most roguelikes, you also attack by bumping into enemies. So, really, that's all you need at the beginning. Use that and play, you'll be surprised by how far you'll get with just that. From that point on, learn on demand. Look up things as they come up. Some enemy dropped a bunch of scrolls? Look up how to pick them up. You need to know how to read? Look it up. The key is to only learn what you really need. Everything else is superflous fluff until the time you need it.
So with some common conceptions and the most basic controls, you'll find yourself exploring dungeons. Chances are if you're feeling lost and overwhelmed, it's because you're trying to grasp too much at once. I know I had a lot of trouble dealing with that, partly because I approached roguelikes too arrogantly.

Most roguelikes follow a pretty similiar ruleset.
That's partly because most of them are "just" variants of another roguelike game. As silly as it may sound, if you're getting stuck in one roguelike, go and play another for a couple of days. You'll learn a great new things with a fresh perspective without getting frustrated with the same old problem. Still, because games are so vastly similiar, something you've learned in roguelike b can very well be the solution to a problem in roguelike a.
Same for conventions and expectations:
Classes and races, pick the one you like and then just play. For the beginning its best to stick with usual race/class conceptions. You know the book stuff where elves are always nimble and magical creatures while orcs are dumb but strong. You hooked up an elven rogue? Don't go berserking. You play a hideous troll? Don't try charming your fellows. Strength is about damage and Intelligence is about spells. And finding a sword +2 is prolly a good thing. It's these simple truths of every gamegenre that also apply to rogulikes. Very few try to break out of this cycle and those are mostly obscure rogulikes. While the beautiful thing about roguelikes is that you probably can play an orc seductress and have great success with it, it's hard to venture outside conventions when you start out.

Don't play prototypes
People will really hit me for saying this, but prototypes are for experienced players only. They often introduce new elements into the roguelike genre. Why would you want that when you're still struggling with the basics? You can't practice for some Formula One Racing Sim by playing Destruction Derby or Carmageddon. They are all racing games but they're still from another planet. Prototypes are often in a very early state of development too. Chances are there isn't a lot of content and it might be grossly unbalanced. Don't get me wrong, prototypes are great gaming experiences from time to time, we also need more games to venture away from the "variant" deal. They're just not a good choice when you're starting out. Keep them for when you can truely enjoy them.

11

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Greeks

« on: May 10, 2010, 09:32:34 PM »

Why blame Greece?
There's a whole market for parasites out there, sucking the country dry and planting economic nukes to dismantle the Euro Currency altogether. All in light of further soaking up money in the process. To them its a business opportunity and at that, especially one they'd like repeated as much as possible. This has such a bad taste of managers gone crazy again it makes me feel nauseous.
Yes, greece had some government issues but the real demon comes dressed in Armani and thrives on unregulated markets.

12

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Dwarf Fortress

« on: April 03, 2010, 06:48:16 PM »

whining about the UI

Well, what can I say, the Interface IS rubbish. It's a great game with plenty of options and I love it but the interface couldn't be any more useless. Comments about the UI are not whining, they're valid concerns. I'm strictly talking Fortress Mode here.
Sadly you can't improve the interface with the current crowd around, even mentioning things like organized menustructure and context sensitivity will make them want to tear a whole universe of new behinds. I guess they like DF as niche as it is.

13

Programming / Re: Restricted Actions

« on: March 23, 2010, 09:38:15 PM »

For some obscure reason context sensitive (or partially restricted actions) keys are generally considered a really bad thing for a roguelike. I don't quite get the reasoning behind that but while it might technically be a good idea to go for a more intuitive input you can expect your roguelike to be shunned because it breaks with an archaic tradition which was born out of historical limitations.
Just mentioning that you might get some negative feedback if you go down that road.

14

Other Announcements / Re: How I found Roguelikes

« on: March 11, 2010, 10:35:36 PM »

While not technically roguelikes, there actually is some sort of "game" where you actually get to program your very own bots with a limited script language and then send them to combat other people's programs. Really looks like you're doing some coding.

15

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: CastlevaniaRL 0.7 released!

« on: March 05, 2010, 02:32:09 PM »

Can't comment on the shadow thing you mentioned, the screenshot doesn't load for me.
About Holy Axe, Holy Water etc, they're passive Skills. Having those Skills means you can find those Powerups as Drops. You actually use these holy weapons with your Action Key - usually [space]. You can easily find out whether a skill is active or passive; passive Skills don't cost hearts. Active ones do.