Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Roguelikes with focus on ranged combat?

« on: May 29, 2022, 02:00:51 PM »

Hello,

Are there some good roguelikes, preferably with a sci-fi theme, in which you shoot at your enemies rather than clubbing them to death? I've seen X@COM, but I was looking for something where you just control one character, not an entire squad.

No Sci-fi themes, but in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup it is viable to play characters speciallized in ranged combat. Just play a Halfling with a sling and there you go.

I know, probablky not what you were looking for.

2

Design / Re: Major sins in game designs. The ones which ruin million $ games.

« on: April 21, 2022, 05:32:35 PM »

For a lot of games these days, especially bigger budget titles, I feel like bloating is the biggest sin. I'd much rather have a streamlined experience rather than one where every single currently trendy feature and mechanic needs to be stuffed into it. Even worse when this is how the story is treated too, and it ends up just being so elongated and convoluted. I think this is why FTL is one of my favourite games - so streamlined and constrained yet so deep.

I think many people actually like power-bloat. What I mean with this is that they like it that there are complex skill trees and complex combinations of items and equipment. Sometimes the ammount of stuff you can equip and combine gets ridiculous. Lots of RPG-alikes do just this, but the trend has some hardcore endorses, so maybe it has its merit.

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Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)

« on: March 30, 2022, 03:22:32 PM »

I've been meaning to entry the #7DRL Challenge for several years now. Finally this year I managed to join, I had a lot of plans that were not possible in the 7 days but I managed to get the core game play complete. I write and maintain a lot of open source games. I package software for Fedora. I have tried some tabletop rpg publishing on drivethrurpg.

Welcome!

Publishing a traditional tabletop RPG is hard, since there is a lot of people doing it but the market is quite small. Once you get a niche, your followers stay loyal, though.

Which sort of games do you maintain?

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The Roguebasin / Re: Found a copy of Lord of Rage and Death

« on: March 30, 2022, 03:11:20 PM »

I doubt anybody would be interested in compiling a release. Usually, the person hosting the source code compiles it himself and then offers it as a downloadable release himself.

The code is so old that I wonder if it will compile easily on a modern system. It might take some work to do it.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: New version of Ultra Rogue 2.15, testing needed!

« on: November 28, 2021, 10:47:42 AM »

Thanks for the heads up.

I know Elwin, the maintainer of the Early Roguelike Gallery, was working on an Ultr Rogue port, but progress is slow.

Good thing if the game is getting updated by the side.

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Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)

« on: October 08, 2021, 08:53:34 AM »

Hello, my name is (dammit) Victor. I'm an author and (tabletop) game designer from Wyoming. My interest in roguelikes started with NetHack in the mid-Nineties-- I studied the source code in my high school C++ class, until they made me delete it because of the name-- but I didn't really branch out until I picked up DoomRL when it was still fairly new. (Before the classes.) I drifted away for awhile, but found myself drifting back with Jupiter Hell and now I'm branching out into other "modern traditional" roguelikes.

I'm signing up for this forum because I've developed a colossally stupid idea for a game, too amibitious by far for someone's first project... and I think I'd like to start delving into these games in depth.

I am late to the party but: Which sort of tabletop games do you work on? May we see your portfolio?

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Short versions of Brogue

« on: June 28, 2021, 11:50:46 AM »

Hi there!

I must say I have recently become a Brogue fan, despite its multiple shortcomings. I think one of its issues is that it takes too much time to get a character going properly. I think it is unlikely to have a proper character build before the 5th floor and a lot of people waits until depth 8 to 10 in order to commit to a given strategy. This would not be much of a problem if I didn't envision Brogue as a short roguelike (for reference, I am comparing to Angbands and DCSS in my head). If I play "not-long" roguelike, I want to start kicking ass right away instead of spending 25% of the game time building for a particular strategy that may not be viable in a given run.

Therefore, I have started looking into "shortened" Brogue versions, which are versions that condense the game so you can start bashing monsters sooner (and die yourself sooner too). The ones I have tried:

* Rapid Brogue: The most solid so far. It reduces the dungeon size from 26 floors to 6 and maps their corresponding threat level. It gives the player more treasure per level to compensate the fact you are facing nasties quite early. The first floor is no longer a cakewalk and you may expect to face goblin conjurers with your starting equipment unless you upgrade soon. It is easy to get a character build going by level 2 or 3.

* Coffee Brogue: This is a stupid variant, but it is the good sort of stupid variant XD. The idea is that equipment scattered around the dungeon is overpowered, but each time you descend through the stairs, it takes you down to a random level bellow your current one. The idea is that you can get your overpowered gear in level 1, build your character there, and then descend and find yourself at level 18 or 24, fighting the bad guys right away. The ID game is also simplified so you don't have to wait for your war axe to be identified in order to hit people with it.

If you know of more short variants, I'd like to know about them.

For the record, I have heard there is a Brogue variant in which you can declare upfront which sort of character you want to play, and the dungeon treasure will be adapted to fit your specified character. For example, if you start your game as a Wizard, the game will generate more staffs and wands as treasure. This probably also mitigates the situation of finding yourself in dungeon level 6, with a bunch of unidentified items, not knowing which strategy to commit to yet.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Do you play on mobile devices or PC?

« on: June 28, 2021, 09:42:21 AM »

Sorry I am late.

I much prefer a proper computer system myself. Most roguelikes nowadays are not coffee-break games. They are complex and require focus. It is much more comfortable to play them with a proper screen and keyboard.

That said, I have played some HyperRogue on Android - yeah, not exactly a traditional roguelike, but you get it. The games are playable but the experience is not the same.

9

7DRLs / Re: [7DRL 2021] A 7DRL about alternate timelines.

« on: March 12, 2021, 03:51:09 PM »

It sounds great.

In fact I can see this mechanic being applied to those classic roguelikes that are more random than strategic. They would make those YARDs that run good runs less painful.

But I think that better than returning back to the last unresolved stack with the inventory of the last resolved stack (which could be very unbalancing, depending on the game) you just return to where you die with some bonus or perks that allow you to escape from the situation that killed you.

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Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Off topic room removed and my thoughts on the Krice ban

« on: February 19, 2021, 10:15:17 AM »

I have just checked Krice's post list and, after a quick perusal, I have found nothing really bad. Should I assume the worst posts have been removed?

Also, kudos for not letting wokeness be a factor. The web is already flooded by cancel culture authoritarians as it is.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: December 27, 2020, 06:15:26 PM »

I have been trying to get Rogue Clone III compiled on OpenBSD and so far I have been successful.

As far as I know, Rogue Clone is a rewrite based on Rogue v5.4. The developer created it because he was tired of bugs and dark rooms.

The Clone is still Rogue as its heart but it has a couple of differences. The main one is that dark rooms are missing. For one, I welcome the change... I like what dark rooms try to do, but since they are so ubiquitous, they end up removing a lot of player agency from the game. When entering a dark room, you either have to wait at the entrance and deal with whatever shows up, or run into it and deal with whatever is in there. In practical terms, it means that if a debilitating enemy shows up (Aquator, Rattlesnake, Wraith), it can damage your resources well before you can do anything about it.

The second one is that monster and item spawn rate has been cranked up quite a bit. This is another change I welcome. In vanilla Rogue I always feel I am lacking options because it is rare for me to amass items until well into the dungeon. In Rogue Clone, you get options - items - but you are also forced to use them more aggressively because there are so many more monsters.

Is there anybody here with experience with both Rogue and Rogue Clone who can comment on the differences in general strategy between the two of them?

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: June 16, 2020, 01:55:40 PM »

What is going on when you have enemies on either side of you?  Because it seems like something really, really bad is happening above and beyond just each of them getting a hit on you.

If you want me to be more descriptive, I'm not sure I can.  But I've noticed taking severe damage in these situations and even when sandwiched by two enemies who shouldn't be a threat I often take a beating.

That is weird.

I had a look into the code and found nothing that suggested such thing would happen. Which version is showing such behavior to you?

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 26, 2020, 02:17:05 PM »

Consensus is that if you don't get at least some ring of slow digestion in your run, you are going to fail hard

If you can get 2, you can grind. If you can grind, you can win. I wonder if you could even win with a mace, so long as you have 2 rings of slow digestion...

Do you mean to hang on a floor, waiting for monsters to spawn and then kill them, level up to 888888, then rush down and up? Not that the idea lacks merit, but it sounds boring.

14

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 24, 2020, 02:58:35 PM »

Consensus is that if you don't get at least some ring of slow digestion in your run, you are going to fail hard

Thanks.  I hope it is possible to find stuff on the way back up, because it seems you would run out of food otherwise.  Closest I've come is going back to level 19, despite falling back through trapdoors 4 times.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 22, 2020, 05:24:40 PM »

1.  When you start going back up the stairs, are the levels randomly generated again?
2.  Will you ever find any food or items on the way back up?
3.  Are the monsters still level-dependent?  I mean once I get to level 17 I don't have to worry about Griffins anymore?

I would have to read the code again since I no longer remember, but:

Most likely you don't have the ISRUN bug (one single identify scroll suggests your version predates Rogue v4 for Unix, which is the one that introduced the bug).

I think monsters are still level dependent.