Messages

1

Programming / Death in Roguelikes

« on: January 31, 2010, 03:47:21 AM »

I have a confession to make.  I actually like dying in roguelikes.

Seriously, dying is part of the entertainment value of roguelikes.  It actually boils down to a bit of basic logic when you think about it, and I assume several others will be with me on this.  You start a game of a roguelike fully expecting to die.  If I play Mario, or whatever, I really don't expect to be killed in under a minute.  However, if I start playing a new roguelike I fully expect my first death to be around the corner.  If that death doesn't seem to manifest itself I get bored and assume that the game isn't for me.  The manner of the death is often quite contrived in a roguelike and it almost makes a play session worth talking about afterwards on it's own in many games.

I'm not the biggest fan of difficult games.  I recently completed Assassin's Creed on the XBox and enjoyed every second.  I also play games such as Transport Tycoon and remove all of the enemy AIs from the game, enjoying a free sandbox.  However, if I play a roguelike I want to struggle from the start and feel that my player is barely alive after at least the first level.  Perhaps this was brought about by my introduction to roguelikes being Nethack.  A game of Nethack can go on for a long time, but ultimately your next move can instantly finish even a healthy character.

I recently played Triangle Wizard for the first time.  It's a game that didn't immediately gel with me, although I'm very prepared to give it a few more goes.  I think that my viewpoint towards the game was negative before I began and that's for one reason only; the tutorial.  During the tutorial your chances of death are very slim.  This isn't what I ask for in a roguelike but it's the entire purpose of a tutorial.  As I mentioned beforehand I'm not finished with the game and will certainly play some more of it, but this is just my initial reaction.  Could it be possible for a tutorial to feel game-like?  Could the RNG be allowed in a tutorial to make it more entertaining and dangerous?

So, if you're developing a game, how do you feel about tutorials?  Are they boring scenarios that detract from the real game's very purpose?  Or are they necessary learning you hope any gamer will take upon themselves to finish just to grasp the basics, and do they really have to be boring?

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Programming / Re: Any tips on how to do monster/monster interaction?

« on: May 22, 2009, 11:06:57 PM »

At a risk of making things more complicated, you could always add priorities to factions and their hatred of other factions.  This might make an elf forced with the choice of attacking a goblin or a human always go for the goblin first.

Also, be careful with infighting.  You could have some pretty boring dungeons if the player gets there to find that the monsters have already had a huge royal rumble and killed each other first, leaving one badly injured minotaur in the middle of it all.  You may want to leave the AI silent until they notice the player (ala doom) and sit still until a noise awakens them, but this leaves yet another question to be answered; if they hate each other so much why did they leave it until the player showed up to kill each other?

A possible solution is to show a constant on-going battle between two factions and allow the player to battle amongst them all.  Many MMOs including World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online do this, but they often involve the respawning of monsters to give a feel of an almost infinite number of army members on both sides.  It's not the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a roguelike and I'm not so sure it'll sit so well with your target audience.

You could of course make it look like the player just happened upon a very short battle at the right time, but this would require a lot of atmosphere setting to pull off.  Using a RNG to create this effect would be extremely difficult.

3

Other Announcements / Re: Any news?

« on: December 19, 2008, 12:23:37 AM »

Sorry, it's ASCII based (using libtcod-net) but it should look somewhat different to other roguelikes.  I'm keeping everything monochrome until a spell is cast, then the plan is to light up the dungeon with the glow from the spell.  Colours will represent elements and should mix appropriately, with (if it's not too slow) shadow casting using the same code as line of sight.

That's why I'm so determined to fix the LOS bug before moving on.

I'll put up a thread & webpage once I've got it running smoothly enough for screenshots, but it's on pause for a few weeks while I nurse two broken fingers.  I came across a door that had bonuses to finger crushing whilst under the affect of "potions" sold to me by a barman, and it won unfortunately.  Typing for any length of time is painful.   

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Other Announcements / Re: Any news?

« on: December 18, 2008, 12:19:07 AM »

I'm new here, so hi all.

I'm working on a roguelike that concentrates on magic, leaving class selection to longer ranged magic based classes.

There's nothing revolutionary here, but removing close combat makes a nice change. The magic system is based on a few simple rules that interact quite nicely though.

It's on the horizon, but i've just been informed by a friend that the working title may have religious meanings that i didn't know about, so i'd rather do a bit more thinking before announcing a name.

Oh, and it's being written in c# which i think is somewhat uncommon.

I'll get an early release out once i've fixed an annoying and game breaking line of sight bug.

Not wanting to steal the thread, i just thought that if you're stuck for new roguelike news, you may want to look forward to some long ranged action for a change.