Messages

46

Development Process & non-technical / Re: roguebasin wiki, pcg wiki and articles deteriorating

« on: March 31, 2015, 08:21:00 AM »

I have no guidelines.  I neither own, nor control, nor have any authority over either resource.  Whether roguebasin, or the PCG wiki.

Roguebasin articles have links that are dead.  It undermines the articles.  This can be avoided.  Perhaps someone who cares can try and find the images and come up with a permanent solution.

47

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 30, 2015, 06:10:24 AM »

Use Visual Studio. It has the best debugging facilities ever created by man, while GNU tools can't even display contents of a string properly. Remember that debugging is 90% of a programmer's work. Slight compiler differences, even if they speak in favor of the GNU stuff, will never compensate an inferior debugging system.

I was thinking about it, and it's the user friendliness that makes the difference.  Visual Studio just seems to provide a simple, yet capable and featureful, interface to debugging.  Somehow these qualities are never quite cloned into open source, without losing what makes it so smooth and easy to use.

However, if Casey Whatshisface from Handmade Hero is to be believed, Valve are on the job and are funding some uber-Linux debugger that'll finally make debugging on Linux a pleasure.

48

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 29, 2015, 10:43:00 PM »

Yes, all your problems are created by mingw.

You mean gcc? I've always thought it's better than VC's compiler. There are some differences in C libraries, but in most cases those can be changed depending on which compiler is used, using #ifdef blocks. When people say there is something wrong in the compiler they actually mean there is something wrong in their source code, they just can't admit it. Or they don't know it.

Read the full post I replied to.  A bad mingw install (and by that I mean anyone who would have installed it would have ended up with similar problems) was the cause of it.  mingw is a buggy unreliable piece of garbage.  It never used to be that way, but it became that way over time.  I used to be able to compile the Python programming language under mingw and run the full test suite with same behaviour as I would see on Linux or under Visual Studio.  But over time, mingw deteriorated.

49

Development Process & non-technical / roguebasin wiki, pcg wiki and articles deteriorating

« on: March 29, 2015, 10:37:27 PM »

Anyone want to do some volunteer work for the developer community? 

Going through the various articles on roguebasin and sorting out the dead links would be a good step.  They're pretty well referenced by people who have used them, but they could use a bit of maintenance.

Delving a connected cave is littered with links to images on low quality image hosting sites.

Scrolling map has a link to a C# implementation on some random site that no longer exists.  Really, the Python implementation that is there, is pretty unhelpful for that matter.

For that matter the PCG wiki is stagnating.  The only occasional activity is someone doing a minor edit to the page for a specific game.  But the majority of it's referral traffic is from game development related sources, and related to generation.  And similarly it's other traffic.  One advantage it has, is that images can be uploaded and used in the pages - which presumably the inability to do so for roguebasin is part of the problem.  At one stage I think Doull had plans for fancy interactive javascript tutorials, but that never eventuated for lack of anyone willing to do the work.  The wiki hosting for the pcg wiki is likely also a bit more commercial and ad-driven than it used to be.

50

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 29, 2015, 07:23:59 PM »

Yes, all your problems are created by mingw.  It used to be solid as a rock, now it bobs and weaves like a turd on the waves created by the people at the public pool trying to swim away from it.

I personally, install VS2013 community edition, and have my own nmake makefile for it.  My own program compiled separately in VS links against it, and finds the source via the PDBs, so I get the full power of the VS debugger.

51

Design / Re: Wargame+Roguelike+Terminal=???

« on: March 23, 2015, 05:42:23 AM »

what would be the correct way to check feature support?

I once tried to come up with a protocol to work out which terminal program, or telnet client was being used, to connect and detailed it here.  It's definitely possible to detect Putty, and other high class terminal programs.  You just need to work your way to it depending on how many badly implemented telnet programs you wish to support as well.  If I correctly, my roguelike mud would detect what the client was and knowing it supported unicode, would use that rather than the graphical characters.  Eventually I ended up using a Chinese language version of Windows and even when I'd injected English into it, Putty was never able to get decent unicode characters and I ended up stabbing myself in the eyes repeatedly with a used needle to try and forget the pain.

Last I looked Putty also looked awful for a Roguelike, as it had antialiasing set to a mode by default (on?) where it distorted the shapely characters like the blocks.

52

Early Dev / Re: The Veins of the Earth development feedback BETA 7

« on: March 22, 2015, 03:48:47 AM »

I'm deeply deeply appalled by this announcement.  Soon, Incursion will be a dated dinosaur that has been left in the dust.  Keep up the good work!

53

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Incursion (open source) 0.6.9Y16 -- The GPL violation solved release

« on: March 09, 2015, 08:03:46 PM »

Did something get changed with the 4d6 + perks chargen?
It still reads: "Each set comes with 2 feats and a magical item" but I only got _one_ special accompanying each set of rolled stats.

Last thing I remember it has always been two specials.

Likely the way it has always been.  I've not changed this in any way.

54

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Iron Fist

« on: March 07, 2015, 06:56:15 PM »

Wow, that is spectacularly unclear. Thanks for answering.

It seemed to me he gave you the answer.  If you completed the lower left club tile, then you would have got whatever.  If not, then you didn't or bug.  Which is it?

55

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Incursion (open source) 0.6.9Y16 -- The GPL violation solved release

« on: March 03, 2015, 10:55:37 PM »

There's a Y18 now.  It will address the few remaining crash problems.  It turns out I rewrote the mapping of glyphs (chest, door, etc) to display characters, so that the Curses support could be implemented.  But along the way, a few small typos were made.

56

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Incursion (open source) 0.6.9Y16 -- The GPL violation solved release

« on: February 28, 2015, 09:27:40 PM »

The primary reason for this update, is to do a release that does not violate the GPL.  If you are using an older version be aware that it includes unused code which was not discarded by the compiler, and that this becomes a GPL violation in some meaningless way.  Other changes not listed below are to make the compilation instructions clearer and more explicit, including a new Windows build script which does all the work.  If you use Windows there's never been a better time to get involved in Incursion development.

Note that the official Incursion domains may go down for a few days while the domains are being transferred due to various issues, like myself and the previous owner, using the same host.

An updated download is available on bitbucket: 0.6.9Y16.

Changes:

• Issue 1: Implemented 'pain tolerance' feat.  Pull request submitted by thehouseoflai@Bitbucket.
• Issue 205: Enabled sub-races support.  This was disabled but has now been reenabled, is untested and generally unsupported.   Pull request submitted by Thydron@Bitbucket.
• Issue 206: GPLv2 violation within unused code compiled into the distribution binaries reported by johnny0@Bitbucket.  Rather than relying on compiler dead code removal, now the problematic file (the Accent compiler compiler runtime) is explicitly excluded from the distribution build.
• Issue 207: Incursion domain name transfers.  Outstanding donations in the paypal account ($28.52US) have been used to fund transfer of the 'incursion-roguelike.org/.net/.com' domains from the original Incursion author, Julian.  This will prevent people finding the old stale domains which refer to old releases, and experiencing a more broken Incursion.  And will provide a better entrypoint than the bitbucket project page.  In the long term, the .net and .com domains may be discarded.

57

Design / Re: Quack Potions

« on: February 25, 2015, 12:55:33 AM »

Hey there.

I'm making a roguelike based on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay systems, a gritty , low-magic setting.

When researching about the identification sub-game, and a lot of people don't really like it or think it is often badly implemented.

Now, one of the things in WFRP2 was that certain potions could have side effects or wouldn't work at all. What if instead of having
to identify potions, the game would assign a random side effect to the potion. This could be a good effect, a bad effect or no effect
at all, maybe even depending on the quality of the potion. In addition, a potion would provide a couple of sips instead of just one.

Thus the first draught of healing would have no additional effect, while the second would drain your stats for a while, while a
potion of poison would have a minor curing effect as side-effect.

Finally, you could have a skill as Apothecary for example which would have a chance of identifying the side-effect of the potion before use.

Do you guys like this idea, and what would some caveats be, and are there examples of rogue-likes where something like this has already been done?

Deciding not to do it based off various opinions (especially ones from people who try to portray their preference as the only proven workable solution without much substantiation) here may be a big mistake, or it may not.  You won't know until you try it.

58

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

« on: February 21, 2015, 08:26:10 PM »

Our package is not pre-compiled if that is what you are getting at. The demo is, but our code has full access. It is not possible to publish something on Unity Asset Store to be pre-compiled . I realized that it is, but Pro-D has no libraries or pre-compiled code. The demo showcases what can be done with the product. It, in itself is not the product

Okay, thanks for letting me know.  I was wrong and assumed the worst of Unity.  It sounds like they've gone for an approach that favours productive development.

A final public announcement, even our simplest maze generator is hand implemented by free range chickens, and is 100% fair trade.  Seriously though we are two brothers, trying to make something fun with roguelike generators and make some money out of it so that we can keep working at it full time. If you do not like it, I do not understand that, but I am not here to make you like it. I am here to share something we did, and we're proud of. Thanks for all the critique and support.

It's good you've taken it so well.  But this forum is full of opinionated programmers who're going to post thoughts and concerns.  You can't expect people to hold back and give you a pass, just because you're doing something for yourselves.  Good luck with it.

59

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

« on: February 21, 2015, 06:03:10 AM »

From that perspective, products like the OP is offering are anathema, an argument could even be made that they impede progress.  However in the commercial Unity3D world, it fits in with most 3rd party offerings, at least from what I understand.

No, it's in the nature of providing pre-compiled functionality for developers to use.  I used to compile against third party libraries which we didn't have source code for, and you'd have bugs you'd have to kind of find by avoiding passing certain input in.  And the time it would take for fixes to arrive, if they were ever going to be released..  It's a bad model.

The way it can work, is if the seller licenses his code under the GPL so that freedoms are constrained.  Then anyone who wants to use it, can debug it, and extend it, but they can use any other license than GPL if they pay to get the code under a more free license.  Like Quake.  But I doubt that fits into the Unity store, in a way that impulse purchases are encouraged.

Nothing wrong with derailing.  We're all reinventing wheels, perhaps ones that can leave the tracks.

60

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

« on: February 21, 2015, 05:57:38 AM »

While I'm somewhat perturbed by the hostility toward commercializing a game library, if the criticism that it's just a bunch of algorithms off roguebasin, inexpertly implemented, is accurate, I can see it.

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. Packaging them for bad CS students to make some garbage to pitch to Steam or an iPhone app kind of cuts against type here. (I should say, I think this is true of most frequent posters.)

Actually, I like that you posted this, because the reaction clarifies certain things and in a more flattering light than I might have expected.

What flattering light?