Messages

1

Programming / Re: Curses, python and windows - riddle?

« on: May 01, 2015, 03:16:03 AM »

I cannot run scripts using curses in pycharm. New application will not start. Even simplest curses code what should be run with pycharm's built-in terminal doesn't work. Ok, there is problem, because this makes debugging more difficult.

But as I say earlier, standard curses works under windows without problems.

Probably what this means is that the terminal emulator baked into PyCharm doesn't not support all of the escape sequences that curses uses, while whatever terminal emulator you are using outside of PyCharm does. If this is the case, unfortunately there isn't a whole lot you can do about it.

2

Programming / Re: Pro-D, a procedural terrain generator we've made was selected for sale event :)

« on: February 21, 2015, 07:09:05 AM »

I think the problem is that you've come to a place where people think these algorithms are worth thinking about and understanding, that progress relies not on implementing them, but producing meaningful variations on them, and having actual ideas.

This is exactly the reason why I've asked the OP (twice) what (if any) contributions this package makes in the space of algorithmic innovation. Since I see none, I cannot see much reason to recommend it.

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Programming / Re: Pro-D, a procedural terrain generator we've made was selected for sale event :)

« on: February 20, 2015, 01:56:37 AM »

Not trying to be negative, as I don't use Unity nor do I care if someone overprices a product ( people can decide for themselves if a product is worth the high price). That said, could you clarify exactly why your generation algorithms are worth the price you are asking? From the screenshots I saw, it doesn't look like the generation algorithms are much more than what could be found on basin and other similar resources. Or is the main contribution that you packaged those existing algorithms up for easy use inside Unity?

Thanks for keeping an open mind
http://produnity.blogspot.nl/ gives a good description of what we're selling. It is all that, under a Unity hood. It can take a lot of time to set it up. With Pro-D you get it, and you're ready to generate. Making all those things work from scratch on Unity, may take a considerable amount of time (depending your skill with roguelikes and unity). We're told that it saves people time.

Yup, those were the screenshots I was referring to. You didn't really answer my question about what if any innovations you made in terms of generation algorithms.

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Programming / Re: Pro-D, a procedural terrain generator we've made was selected for sale event :)

« on: February 20, 2015, 12:09:04 AM »

- No, we did not just take algorithms from Rogue basin and selling them for 75$. We put considerable amount of work into this, over several months, and slowly created a tool that is compatible with Unity3D framework, gui, documentations, 3d tilesets, tutorials, documentation, and a subreddit on its own. We have received nothing but praise so far from many professional developers and roguelike enthusiasts. We are not selling re-packaged freely available stuff, we are selling a time saving and comprehensive tool for Unity3D.

Not trying to be negative, as I don't use Unity nor do I care if someone overprices a product ( people can decide for themselves if a product is worth the high price). That said, could you clarify exactly why your generation algorithms are worth the price you are asking? From the screenshots I saw, it doesn't look like the generation algorithms are much more than what could be found on basin and other similar resources. Or is the main contribution that you packaged those existing algorithms up for easy use inside Unity?

In any case, I find that the hard part of (good) procedural generation is not coming up with the algorithms to generate basic dungeons and such. The hard part is in fact tying multiple game systems together into the generation process so that you actually get meaningful procedural generation. This I think, depends very much on the individual game, and cannot easily be packaged into a prefabricated asset.

5

Design / Re: 7DRL challege advice tips idea

« on: February 17, 2015, 10:52:28 PM »

The best advice I could give is to scale back your design. I am not a great developer by any stretch, but what I have learned is that all the projects I've undertaken which large scope fail to even get off the ground (and that is without the 7 day restriction). For a 7DRL, you *need* to start small. Start with a framework you are familiar with (perhaps libtcod), and work towards getting a simple game with a single, (hopefully) interesting mechanic.

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Programming / Re: How to improve math skills?

« on: February 12, 2015, 07:22:55 PM »

How can I know what I want if I don't know anything about math.

If you really are Jon Snow when it comes to math, then I suggest that you start with Principia Mathematica. It attempts to describe all the basics of mathematics, and should serve as a foundation for all the other useful maths you might need for your roguelike endeavors. Volume I can be found at the internet archive here: https://archive.org/details/PrincipiaMathematicaVolumeI

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Programming / Re: How to improve math skills?

« on: February 12, 2015, 05:15:59 PM »

You know I live in a middle of nowhere, right?

If there is no good library near you, there are quite a few good books and other useful resources online as well. For example, Algorithms by Dasgupta et al is provided by the authors as free pdf (http://beust.com/algorithms.pdf). This book is used in various CS courses as the first exposure to complexity analysis, and basic algorithms like sorting and graph stuff. If you have an interest more specific than just "maths", I suspect better recommendations could be made.

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Design / Re: View Styles

« on: February 04, 2015, 07:54:34 PM »

netbook guy, this is a reasonable point, but even on a netbook there's no reason to limit the horizontal dimension to 80.

Fair enough lol. For what its worth, on my netbook, using size 12 Inconsolata font, my maximized terminal size is 102x30. Using size 10 and hiding my panel, I get 127x35. Fonts smaller than that are just annoying.

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Design / Re: View Styles

« on: February 04, 2015, 06:44:18 PM »

If you actually have conceptual ideas behind better looking menus and map viewing, go ahead and post because I'll be listening.  If you want to yell about terminal sizes from the 80's, start another thread please.

Keep in mind that the reason you are having problems figuring out how to layout your menus and map view is due to the fact that you are constraining yourself to a small terminal size, so the responses about terminal size aren't totally unrelated since the obvious solution to the problem is to drop that constraint.

That said, I too prefer smaller terminal sizes since I do most of my roguelike gaming on a small linux netbook. While this device is certainly not from the 80's the screen size has led me to *not* play certain roguelikes in the past. For example, if I were to try out the previously mentioned The Ground Gives Way, which apparently requires a 92x38 terminal, I would have to reduce the font size to something pretty small to fit all 38 of the rows on screen. More likely, I'll just never play it because I have other awesome games which do run fine on my netbook.

One solution is to take an approach similar to what Angband does with the extra menus and windows it has when run in the terminal. On a large terminal, it displays extra information on the side of the main window (things like inventory, equipment, current monsters in view, etc). When played on a small terminal, those extra things are hidden, but available through an extra key press (ex. you can hit 'i' to make the inventory list appear in the main screen area). Perhaps the best solution to your problem is to simply hide the things which are not crucial to what the player is doing at any particular moment and make the extra info easily available through other means. The trick then becomes determining what information is crucial at any given moment, and what info is important enough to be easily accessible but not needed on the main screen.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Games that you are anxious for playing

« on: December 19, 2014, 06:00:39 PM »

Any news on Before?

There is a new trailer to get you excited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSfMVYlhHA.
I don't think it gives any new information, but it sure does make me want to play the game!

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Programming / Re: Neohack progress report - I'm being chased by wolves!

« on: October 22, 2014, 07:15:27 PM »

And, yes, I want smart play to be at least *AS* important as character level.

I'll admit that I haven't been following this thread very closely, but the game you just described in high level terms sounds awesome.

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Design / Re: Damage reduction algorithm - looking for advice

« on: October 08, 2014, 05:26:26 PM »

Just throwing out another possibility:

Damage Reduction Factor = Armor / (Armor + Modifier * Damage)

I think it is easiest to see what this does with a picture:



This plot was done with the modifier set to 1. Playing with that modifier changes the slope of the surface, but not the overall trends. As you can see, when the amount of damage is low relative to the armor, the percent reduction is high, though damage is never completely eliminated. Imagine throwing rocks at a guy in full plate armor - its not gonna do that much, although if it hits it will probably do something. On the other hand, if you use a firearm or something on our armored opponent to do a large amount of damage, the armor does a lot of damage reduction, but it has a lower damage reduction factor. In this way more armor always helps damage reduction, but you get some diminishing returns on the damage reduction factor, meaning that you don't have to increase the damage to extraordinary amounts in order to hurt heavily armored opponents.

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Design / Re: Positional Combat System

« on: August 25, 2014, 02:53:36 AM »

Most roguelikes I've played have a simple bump to attack melee mechanic - frankly it is pretty boring so I tend towards mage-like characters in general simply because the gameplay is more interesting and tactical. The system you described on the other hand sounds pretty interesting. I imagine it will be somewhat tricky to balance, and it will the design will certainly be iterated upon as you play test, but I think the end result could be very fun. If you are interested in this system, I would say you should start coding, with the goal of getting something others can playtest out early. Then you can iterate your design based on user feedback and (finally) show the world a roguelike with interesting melee combat.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Games that you are anxious for playing

« on: July 15, 2014, 07:10:43 PM »

Many of the games already mentioned are on my list. One additional game I really want to see done is Before (http://www.beforegame.net/). Its done by Bill Lowe and Päl Trefall. Both have been active in the roguelike community previously, although this game is a God-game with the aim of survival for a tribe of stone-age humans. I absolutely love the concept and the aesthetic these two have put together.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Batch game and legal help

« on: May 12, 2014, 06:01:29 PM »

When you publish your work, you automatically retain all rights to that work. The licence gives other people permission to do certain things such as redistribution that they otherwise couldn't without breaching copyright. For software, adding a license is as simple as including the license with the source code. This is typically done by including a file called LICENSE or similar containing the text of your licenses along with the source. Another common practice is including a header in each source file which reiterates how the source code is licensed. There is no cost involved.

There are a variety of software licenses to choose from, including the GLP software license. I would recommend against using a Creative Commons license for software though, as there are licenses which more specifically tailored for software and source code (the Creative Commons FAQ echos this sentiment). Other good options include permissive licenses like the BSD licenses, or the Apache license which is a bit more modern.

Choosing a license depends entirely upon what restrictions you wish to leave in place for your users. Open source licenses generally give users freedom to use, modify and share the software. The main differences are on how the software can be shared. For example, the GPL requires that any changes made to the source be shared under the terms of the GPL (earning the GPL the reputation as a "viral" license). Other licenses like the BSD license are more permissive, and only insists that users retain the copyright notice when they share the software.

So which license do you choose? It is entirely up to you. I personally use the BSD license for my roguelike endeavors, as I don't really care how people use that code. If they wanna include a bit of it in their closed source money making app, so be it. If I were working on something a little more infrastructure-y like an OS kernel or something, I would want the entire community to benefit from any changes users make, so I would be more inclined to choose something like the GPL. In the end though, the advice pat gave is probably right - this is a smaller project in the grand scheme of things, so do a little bit of research on Wikipedia, choose something, stop worrying and start coding.