Messages

1

Design / Re: Adaptive Difficulty

« on: March 03, 2015, 11:05:10 PM »

I really don't see anything that adaptive difficulty would give you that simply providing different difficulty modes wouldn't do a lot better.

Well, it takes the "designer job" of picking the right difficulty away from the player. Anyone interested in how to do adaptive difficulty right should look into Auro (available for iOS and Android). It effectively features a "single-player matchmaking system" that lets you rank up (and down) between matches to keep the challenge level optimal (just as flow theory postulates). It's a great approach that gets rid of a lot of the typical roguelike problems, e.g. them being about "highscores" (and therefore runs taking longer and longer, results becoming more and more meaningless etc.) or you just never winning (and therefore missing out on an important side of the feedback).

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 03, 2013, 12:53:30 AM »

Oh look, definition arguments, yay

You're right, Darren. These things are for another topic (or PM if you're interested, Vanguard).

To get this thread back on track, what I actually just wanted to say was, that the two things the OP said he dislikes (randomization, permadeath) are to me the major draws of roguelikes. And I am incredibly thankful that the genre kind of introduced me to the importance and intricacies of these concepts, and thereby opened the door to a whole new world of gaming (mainly board games) that has become a far more important part of my life than just a pastime.

So, BTT.

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 02, 2013, 10:02:25 PM »

Accidental double post, sorry.

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 02, 2013, 10:01:47 PM »

Random enemy placement, randomized AI behavior, random items, and random combat results among other possibilities could allow a roguelike to use static levels without becoming a puzzle that can be solved on the first turn.

Even games with no randomized elements aren't necessarily puzzles.  Super Mario Bros. is an action game.  The variation between playthroughs comes from different player inputs, even unintentionally different inputs.  And it is designed to be replayed.

Your first point: Absolutely. That's just what I said.

Second point: Each time you replay the "thing", though, it becomes more and more a matter of memorization and quickly degrades into an execution puzzle. The fact that you probably cannot execute the (physical!) commands perfectly does not make it a game (it actually becomes more of a pure contest if you make it ABOUT the execution... see speedrunning). It's definitely not about making decisions anymore. So, maybe it is a game-like system on the first playthrough(s). But a game would be designed to STAY a game, ideally forever...

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 02, 2013, 04:51:02 PM »

Alright. That means you want to be a puzzle constructor and not a game designer. I see how the word "design" is used in very different contexts here, but I call "game design" the creation of a system of rules. What you described there is "level design", which is usually associated with puzzles not actually meant to be replayed (like Portal, Super Mario or Mass Effect; whereby the latter two have some game-like elements), and not with games.

Not all static levels are puzzles.

Ah, yeah... right. So then Elig meant static levels with random enemy placement or something else randomized? Or multiplayer in fixed arenas? Because it didn't sound like that actually. Sounded more like the "everything handcrafted single-player experience" approach, which tends to be very puzzle-ish.

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 02, 2013, 01:58:43 PM »

In short, I want to design levels, not level generation algorithms. I'm really tired of designing level generation algorithms instead of levels.

Alright. That means you want to be a puzzle constructor and not a game designer. I see how the word "design" is used in very different contexts here, but I call "game design" the creation of a system of rules. What you described there is "level design", which is usually associated with puzzles not actually meant to be replayed (like Portal, Super Mario or Mass Effect; whereby the latter two have some game-like elements), and not with games.

In defence of Rogue Legacy, some people HAVE beaten it with their very first character... so it is possible, but probably only insane people can actually do it.

That's not really a defence, though. Even if that's possible, the game and its rules are desigend around the grinding part.

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 02, 2013, 07:00:02 AM »

What do you mean by "input" randomness? Like, you press the attack key, but oh noes, it doesn't count because the RNG hates you or you pressed it when the clock's millisecond hand was on the wrong number or something? That seems frustrating... surely that's not what you had in mind...

I believe they mean randomness that "sets the stage" for your encounters rather than randomness that determines the outcome of actions.  So randomness in enemy spawn locations, the shape of the map, which items are spawned, etc. rather than random damage and spell failure.

Exactly. The (usually bad) opposite is output randomness where your decisions themselves go through a "random noise filter" before being executed.

You might like Rogue Legacy. It has permadeath, but there is a build-up of money and facilities across games. So you actions still matter, but you never lose everything.

That is THE one thing I hate about this game.

I really like Isaac and I love Spelunky, because they understand what makes them exciting games. It's you as the player who gets better at them, who learns something new all the time. They give you the ability to excel in a system of decision-making (and lots of physical execution, too... but with Isaac and especially Spelunky I think decisions clearly trump execution in the long run).
 
In Rogue Legacy these qualities are also there somewhere, but far too watered-down through all the grinding. You collect permament character upgrades ALL the time. You grind for money to buy stuff etc. You get better as a player, too, but you're never sure how much it was your skill building up or your character building up when you get further.
 
That really, really bothers me about Rogue Legacy. I think it would have been a lot better without all the grindy crap.
 
That said, it's obviously still far more interesting than 99 % of the AAA stuff out there. 

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Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: August 01, 2013, 09:33:56 PM »

I have been playing a lot of FTL lately. Which some people seem to consider a roguelike for some odd reason... 

Well, it certainly has randomized content and permadeath!

It's kind of funny, because these are really the two things that are most fundamental to why I got into roguelikes and why I still love some of them, and at least why think most of them are far more interesting than 99 % of the AAA titles.

There were many discussions about permadeath, but in fact it actually just means that you can lose the game. And by extension that roguelikes really are games, because if you can't lose you're actually not even playing, you're either just experiencing something (like in all these AAA "press X to win" games) or solving a puzzle.

And input randomness is the other crucial quality of games. In a system without (effectively) random (i.e. uncertain) content you're not making decisions, you're just memorizing things. So, in a single-player game (which pretty much all roguelikes are) you have to have randomization to bring uncertainty into the system. (Many roguelikes also use output randomness to achieve that uncertainty, e.g. dice-rolling for attacks, which I'm definitely not a fan of...)

So these two things are really what I love about roguelikes. In fact, roguelikes are like this bastion of actual games in today's digital entertainment world. Granted, I've consequentially moved on to playing lots of board games now, but I still enjoy a good roguelike from time to time. Good to me means less stuff (e.g. loot, stats, bla) and more gameplay (e.g. positioning, skill usage, tactics in general). Sadly lots of "big" roguelikes are really heavy on the "stuff side" and overdo their randomization in ways unhealthy to the system itself. Therefore my favorites have become 86856527, Shiren The Wanderer, Brogue, 100 Rogues, Zaga-33 and if you stretch the genre definitions a little also Desktop Dungeons.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: bit Dungeon

« on: January 18, 2013, 05:40:00 PM »

Point and click, built for mobile I think. Lots of variety right off the bat.

Yep, it's on iPhone/iPad, too.

Obviously inspired by The Binding of Isaac. A bit more loot heavy, though. I like it.

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Early Dev / Re: AURO Gameplay footage (alpha)

« on: August 12, 2012, 04:43:42 PM »

Thanks!  It's worth noting that the game has a lot of UnRogueLike qualities, such as:

No randomness in gameplay - there's no D&D style To-Hit% type things.

No items (other than scrolls which are just one-shot use abilities)

No equipment

No "exploration" really, or fog of war, or minimap

No complicated D&Dish stats systems


The game is very much a non-random strategy game, that's randomly generated and score based.  More like Tetris in a lot of ways than ROGUE.

None of these are specifically roguelike qualities in my book, and many roguelikes (including several of my own) have all of these features stripped out.

I think it looks great, by the way.  The possible combinations of abilities seems very compelling.

I think the "No randomness in gameplay" is the only important point there, as this leans towards the puzzle genre. 

Well, "no randomness in gameplay" just means, that you KNOW, what your decisions will result in. Still, the levels, items and monsters are all randomly generated and you can get to the end in several ways (some better, some worse). There's not THE ONE solution (like there is to a puzzle). I see your point, though and most people would say it's more "puzzle-like" than most roguelikes or RPGs. But actually in a very good way.

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Early Dev / Re: AURO Gameplay footage (alpha)

« on: August 12, 2012, 10:10:25 AM »

I'm really looking forward to this one.

You may already have though about that, but: The points the player gets through taking less turns seem pretty unclear to me. There's no indication of how many turns you took on the current floor or how many you are "allowed" to take (to still get points for it). Is that intentional or are you planning/willing to make that clearer?

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: QuickHack 1.2.1 (save files and master traits!)

« on: August 01, 2012, 11:06:18 AM »

Yay! Now it's really something for the coffeebreaks. Downloading now.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Tomes of Mephistopheles Alpha pre-order available (Now at v0.09a)

« on: July 26, 2012, 02:10:39 PM »

Yeah, looks like it's coming together slowly but steadily. With more content in the future this can really become a very enjoyable (and replayable) experience, I think.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: A Hint of a Tint - story-driven roguelike

« on: July 24, 2012, 09:06:00 AM »

Yeah, the resolution is small. You can do ALT + ENTER to switch to full-screen if it helps, but that's it.

Oh, that definitely helps! Should have known myself actually.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: A Hint of a Tint - story-driven roguelike

« on: July 23, 2012, 03:18:00 PM »

Alright, it works now. First impression: Fun game, reminds me of Shiren (yes! . Tiny resolution though for a 1920x1080 monitor and I didn't find a way to change something about that. :/