Messages

1

Programming / Re: Why Auto-Explore is Missing the Point

« on: December 06, 2012, 02:02:21 PM »

Just to be clear I like Auto-Explore (at least in Crawl and Brogue), I just think it's missing the point (in Crawl at least).

Brogue is a great example of a game that does things right. To the veteran player the first few levels are just a slot machine to see what goodies you get. Auto-explore allows them to clear those levels quickly and efficiently and get to things that are more challenging for their skill level.

At the same time those first few levels are a real challenge to the beginner, and provide a lot of fun.

The key point with Brogue is that by the time you get into the meat of the game (level 5+), Auto-Explore is no longer a viable option due to the density of decisions you need to make to be successful.

One thing I do like about Crawl's Auto-Explore is that you can use it as a "do what I mean" button. If I'm standing three tiles away from a scroll and hit "o", I know I'll go over and pick it up.

Really I guess my whole point with this post is that many Roguelikes have very sparse and uninteresting levels. If we could make more games with the density of interesting things like Brogue and DoomRL have, it'd be a good thing.

2

Programming / Re: Why Auto-Explore is Missing the Point

« on: December 04, 2012, 08:19:03 PM »

Thanks for the link! I think I've got Darren's RSS feed link messed up. I haven't seem most of these blog posts

3

Programming / Why Auto-Explore is Missing the Point

« on: December 04, 2012, 07:52:00 PM »

There's something that really bugs me about most Roguelikes, and I'd like to take a moment to air the complaint: Auto-Explore.

Why do we provide an auto-explore feature? Because exploring the dungeon is tedious, repetitive and uninteresting. Auto-explore is a means to get the player to the interesting bits of the game quickly and efficiently. But isn't that missing the point? Rather than giving players a way to skip past the uninteresting portions of the game, shouldn't we strive to make every portion of the game interesting?

This phenomenon isn't constrained to exploration. This is just the most common case. In Angband combat is also quite uninteresting in most cases, leading to "hold left to continue" syndrome. In Frozen Depths most items are quite uninteresting.

When I think back on the games I have played, the only one in which I can honestly say I enjoyed the exploration was DoomRL. I think it's because there is a small map size (like Rogue / NetHack), but with very complex layouts (like Crawl) and widely varied level generators.

On a side note, I think the more confined spaces of DoomRL also help the pacing of the game and the combat.

4

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: HTML+JS Tech Demo

« on: October 09, 2011, 01:43:10 AM »

This does not use canvas. It's a lot faster to render text using divs and JS. I did a bit of research on all this stuff

I suppose I could make a canvas / graphical version. But yea, I prefer CP 437

5

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / HTML+JS Tech Demo

« on: October 06, 2011, 01:44:01 PM »

Link with Demo: http://code.google.com/p/dhack/

Hi folks! I have just completed a tech demo using HTML and JavaScript to render Code Page 437 characters within a browser window using a Unicode font. The display technique is the result of several research and development projects, but is still quite slow in Internet Explorer for full-screen updates.

Anyhow, there's a little game here with a snazzy user interface, help documents, equipable weapons, usable items and castable spells. Can you find the Goblin King and destroy him? Probably

Now that I've got the technology and fundamental systems down I am putting some actual design work into a game using that technology. Let's hope I finish it

6

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New Diggr release

« on: October 05, 2011, 06:02:18 PM »

Definitely a new take on things. It's nice to see a roguelike with a very clear vision of what it is intended to be and how it will get there.

Not remembering the terrain where you've been is disorienting to me though.