Messages

61

Programming / Re: Working on new Roguelike (Sci-fi setting?)

« on: April 18, 2012, 07:46:50 PM »

I think what you need to do, before you figure out any of the plot or mechanics (or take any advice from us regarding those things), is if (and how) you want your game to differ from other games. There are pros and cons for both, so you can go either way, but you really want to determine that for yourself. More than anything else, you should try to envision where you want your game to be and what kind of ambition and effort you have for this game: roguelike is the type of genre that produces very short and very long games, both in development time and player time. Inevitably it is these principles that help design the game, and the plot and mechanics are mere afterthought by comparison.

This aside, it sounds more like you're aiming the plot to be "not fantasy" rather than science fiction. Certainly there are topics beyond these two, even if they aren't touched upon often. What about a modern setting, along the lines of Grand Theft Auto? You could also consider a wholly-abstract setting, in which all of the characters begin as "souls" and literally will themselves and their environment into existence. There's also steampunk which fits as a sort of sci-fi/fantasy hybrid, typically placed in an industrial era and involving technomagical devices (not even with literal magic, so to speak, but technology ridiculous enough to be thought of as magical). Or how about a "real but whimsical" setting, like insect worlds or aquatic habitats? There's a lot out there when it comes to designing a "universe" for your story.

62

Other Announcements / Re: a RL that requires skill?

« on: April 11, 2012, 04:07:43 PM »

See, here's the thing. Let's say you're playing a game, and for every single conflict, the odds are in your favor 99:1. Those are pretty good odds. For a single conflict, you can virtually count on a victory. In fact, over 10 conflicts, your odds are still 9:1. However, by 100 conflicts, it drops to a little more than 3:1. By 500, it's a miracle if you've yet to have that one encounter that puts you six feet under.

And that would suck...if that's what we were talking about. A lot of roguelikes give you backup plans and trump cards, which you can use to get yourself out of that one-in-a-hundred chance encounter. Whether or not you get these can be random, just as whether or not you fight an exceedingly hard enemy is random. For "veteran" players of a given roguelike, the odds of impossible scenarios during an important phase of the game are virtually nil (at least if the roguelike isn't stupid-hard, and few are). Sure, sometimes it pops up anyway, but this is about as unfortunate as accidentally pressing the wrong button or getting distracted when playing a game in real-time: it will happen and you just have to accept it.

What is the journey, anyway? That's been mentioned by a few posters, and maybe I'm just not sure what that means. That is, without a plot or character development (in a literary sense), the "journey" is just the game mechanics.

kraflab's example of Dwarf Fortress is a good way to put it, but you could name almost any game with nonlinearity and openendedness and see the same thing. Where's the journey in Minecraft, or Civilization, or Sim City? Where's the journey in League of Legends, or Counterstrike, or competitive Starcraft? Games without an explicit narrative often give way for the player to make one for themselves, and that's usually what roguelikes allow for. For me, if there IS an intended plot, it usually takes a really good one for me to care about it. I tend to be more impressed with games that give me all the tools necessary to make a compelling narrative than games that railroad me into something I may not necessarily find compelling.

That's why roguelikes incorporate randomness into their games: to provide the player with unexpected situations and on-the-fly strategies that build a very unique narrative each time. Permadeath, then, is the driving force that guides this narrative through the ultimate goal of "not dying", as opposed to winning. If you happen to win, that's great, but the successes made by not dying for as long as possible can often be just as interesting.

63

Other Announcements / Re: a RL that requires skill?

« on: April 10, 2012, 08:52:23 PM »

But Infra Arcana is IME too much dependant on luck, and not well balanced yet (did anyone win it?), so it is not what punkbohemian wants.

This is why I'm not picky when it comes to setting: ultimately, I care far more about the mechanics and gameplay than I do the aesthetics, whether sensory or thematic. I barely process enemies as what they look like (or should look like in the case of abstract ASCII) and, instead, parse them in terms of their stats. Granted, it's important that the aesthetics aren't offensive (and by that I mean "hard to look at" or "blow your ears out", not in the prejudicial sense). On the other hand, I can appreciate that a developer doesn't want to spend time designing a whole universe for their game: that's really a second job all on its own.

The direction of this thread seems to less "roguelikes that require skill" and more "roguelikes that fit into an increasingly-narrow set of constraints". I don't mind dicussing specific examples of roguelikes that require critical thinking and careful execution of strategy, but we should probably stay on topic.

I think Fenrir makes a good point here:

The skill in a roguelike is the management of risk.

If we take a look at the prototypical example, Rogue itself, it seems often like a hopeless task to win when you first pick it up, but as you learn the boundaries of the game you start to realize that there are actually a great deal of choices that, chosen poorly, lead you to death pretty reliably. Hunger prevents you from staying on a floor for too long, but you could leave some floors as soon as possible while lingering on others, depending on the particular floor difficulty and what items you've managed to obtain to fight enemies there. Each item is priceless in its own way and it's always a hard decision to use up something that would be just as valuable later on. There are going to be cases where you got screwed, sure, but you can continuously minimize the probability of such situations by optimizing your resources and taking early-game risks that will keep you alive later on.

I think the problem as stated isn't that roguelikes doesn't require skills in order to win, it's that roguelikes usually require both skill and luck to do particularly well. I suppose, for me, this is part of the appeal: luck can help you along when you're just starting out, and skill will push you a good deal farther when you're not so lucky. The mix of the two make it, for me, an enjoyable experience for a good long time. It's one of those "the journey is more important than the destination" analogies, I guess, and even if the destination was never reachable in the first place, it can often still be a journey worth taking.

64

Other Announcements / Re: a RL that requires skill?

« on: April 04, 2012, 03:28:53 AM »

So, uh, yeah...any RLs not contingent upon dumb luck?

In my opinion, this is a pretty legitimate complaint about roguelikes. At the same time, however, it's one of the hardest obstacles to overcome for a developer of roguelikes. Consider:

• One of the fundamental bases of a roguelike-styled game is its ability to render perceptually-random environments through procedural content generation (PCG). This ensures a certain degree of replayability, since you aren't playing the exact same map, or finding the same weapons, or fighting the same enemies at the same times, and does require one to become as flexible as possible when dealing with a constantly-unknown game.
• Games with definitively random elements are, by their very nature, going to require a certain degree of fortune in order to have a successful venture. While PCG isn't necessarily random at all, it is certainly easier to develop one that leans towards randomness rather than tightly bounding the restraints so that only combinations that teeter on the edge of easy death and scrapable victory exist.
• Trying to build a PCG "engine" with such restraints while still feeling random is probably very very VERY hard to do. Tack on the fact that this is still a game that should be fun and enjoyable, and you've got quite the large boulder to push up that hill.

Let's face it, a lot of roguelikes take a relaxed approach when it comes to providing what would be considered "fair challenge". There are going to be a lot of situations where the player is screwed, totally and utterly, and there are going to be just as many times where the player breezes through a ton of the game without so much as a long battle. To be fair, this is basically the norm of the genre, and most players who engage in roguelikes learn to accept it. But it could be better. (Perhaps a lot like saying national governments could be better, given the challenges awaiting a developer.)

With this in mind, I'd say Brogue really strives to give the player a challenge while preventing as many luck-influenced deaths as possible. Don't get me wrong, it's a freaking hard game: I believe that the developers designed their difficulty such that even the best players will find it hard to achieve success reliably. Still, it's probably closer to what you're looking for than most other roguelikes. Other people can surely provide more examples, if not better ones.

For example, with DoomRL, I'm usually dead within an hour.

I find this funny because players I would consider good at the game can pretty handily win a game in well under an hour. Or, at least on the easier difficulties. The harder difficulties are a lot more "play until you get something nice", although it's still quite possible to get yourself through without superb gear.

65

Other Announcements / Re: Let's Play... a Bunch of Roguelikes!

« on: April 02, 2012, 11:53:46 PM »

Started up IVAN today. I've been told it's a pretty hard game. Maybe I'll survive long enough to make the LP meaningful!

My 7DRL 2012 playlist is still updating (basically every day, sometimes not weekends). Keep checking for more games over the course of this month and probably the next as well! (Note that, if you made a game and would like me to play it ASAP, just let me know in some form.)

66

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / 7DRL 2012 game talk

« on: March 30, 2012, 07:44:21 PM »

Just some references that should go in the OP (lemme know if there should be others!):

RogueBasin entry for 7DRL Challenge 2012
Temple of the Roguelike 2012 7DRL Challenge Evaluation
Game Hunter's 7DRL 2012 Challenge YouTube Playlist

It would probably be too much to make a bunch of different topics for each game that comes to mind, so I will simply create a thread where we can talk about all of them! Here's what comes to mind for me:

Infiniverse: has anyone found naturally-occurring antimatter? It doesn't seem like you could win the game in a reasonable amount of time (especially given no saving at all) without collecting some Antimatter to either sell or help for the journey towards the mysterious X at the center of the galaxy. It's possible to buy some but, frankly, it seems more cost-effective to use radioactives as fuel, and everything common is pretty darn cheap to sell.

Sword in Hand: In case some people beat it without realizing this, it's possible to play four scenarios in a single game. Whether or not the fourth shows up WILL depend on your combination of war/peace choices. To be honest, however, I found the fourth dungeon to be easier than even the second.

Drakefire Chasm: Has anyone else passed the eight dungeon level? (It's the second "boss arena".) I managed to lava-scum it but those enemies are really, really hard: it would be really nice to have a damage indicator when you examine things (even as vague as their current state that you tend to see after melee attacks would be sufficient). The twelfth level totally destroyed me, though, and it only took the enemies three turns to do it. I also have no idea how stat-gains work: part of me wants to believe it depends on your actions on the previous floor, but it doesn't seem to track like that at all.

67

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Random Realms (general discussion)

« on: March 28, 2012, 08:51:12 PM »

Sounds can be a great way to design an aesthetic for the game, but I wouldn't prioritize it for the upcoming build. It can take a while to figure out what are good sounds (if they're heard often, they shouldn't get annoying; they should provide a rough understanding of what's going on; duplicate sound cases should not be confusing; and so on), not to mention building a sound system that is appealing to the player (how to deal with overlapping sounds, foreground vs. background qualities (or, more generally, distance metric), etc). I'd imagine it's a rather large undertaking, and trying to mix it into what is mostly a rounding-out patch with boss monsters would probably push back the release date by a lot. You may even ultimately decide that sounds don't improve the gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to see what you can do with sounds. I am, however, recommending that you delay its construction for a separate release altogether. If nothing else, decide what direction you want your game to go and take the steps necessary to get there.

68

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Random Realms (general discussion)

« on: March 26, 2012, 04:08:59 AM »

wand = Mana Crystal? is that a good name?

That ought to work nicely.

about spells becoming obsolete: they actually do scale up with your level and abilities. granted, kill will always be more powerful than hurt, but higher level spells have an added 'hunger cost' also. i will work on scaling/balancing

I definitely noticed scaling, at least with some spells (Ice Shield and Heal were the most noticeable). Mostly the obsolescence comes with, for example, Beam and Mind Sling having an inferior damage base when compared to Ice Shard or Chill (not sure about the latter, as it's supposed to be low damage), which become inferior in the face of the Piercing spells, which aren't quite as good as Inferno. Many of those single-shot spells, in turn, are inferior to the bow and a good Body stat (to ensure good to-hit), which deals craploads of damage that usually doesn't have to worry about the element of the enemy. Just something to think about.

- rage, etc. making rage decrease the other stats is a great idea (also scholarship/divinity) . that way you can't just super-power-up everything.

I mention this specially at the end of the LP, but restoring your mind/soul through scrolls or leveling can put you above your supposed max reserves: this is a result of having a higher-than-usual mind/soul stat (seen most significantly with Scholarship/Divinity). Based on this, either there's a bug that the player's max reserves aren't updating properly with artificially-pumped stats, or that restoration surpasses the max at times. If I found that the mind/soul stats were more significant for things other than their reserves, I probably wouldn't mind the reduced max, but it's your call.

i've always toyed with the idea of "demons" that aren't A-Z but higher, weirder characters. maybe that's a use for them. and they can drop equipment.

The mighty schwa!

- reduced range of revelation spell

I don't know if stair-revealing happens with Revelation, but I'd make sure to also remove that feature if it's the case. At least, in my time playing I used Revelation for that reason half the time (may have simply ended up getting lucky with it).

- increased the king's maximum life

I'd be careful with this one. In the 15-floor game I played, I found the king a whole lot harder than in the 20-floor game, and I believe it's because the king is pretty constant when it comes to stats. It would be more balanced to scale his HP with the dungeon length, such that the fight is always a difficult (but doable) one. You may even want to consider adding abilities for particularly deep cases: stuff like teleporting and crazy area-of-effect spells change things up nicely when you're fully decked out and can handle it.

- kept "ice shield" as is, but changed "fortification" to actually reduce incoming damage. still degrades over time.
- fortification slows you down.

Sounds like a good change to me, as there's now reason to get both. (Or, in some cases, choose which one you believe to be more valuable.)

I was also thinking about the possibility to give the player benefits for particular "titles". That might be kind of difficult to do, especially because the titles are (at the moment) more of an afterthought: maybe just grant some extra boosts for players that focus on particular stats, like extra regeneration in the appropriate stat, or speed for high Body and better scaling for mind/soul spells. You should focus on the other balancing issues first, though.

69

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Random Realms (general discussion)

« on: March 23, 2012, 06:07:27 PM »

I finished play-recording this game a little while ago (you can find the YT playlist here) and I thought it was pretty fun. Lots of different things to get and do, enemies change enough during a single game and between games to keep you on your toes, and the boss fight is definitely something to prepare for. Combined with the varying length and monster difficulty, it's lot a good amount of replayability and variety for newcomers and veterans alike. (Might I even suggest a 5 and 10-floor choice? In those cases the game would have to be rescaled to accomodate, but I think it'd attract a good number of people looking for a quick game.)

There are, however, a number of overlooked details that could be improved, in some cases quite easily. Here are but a few:

• A very obvious feature that stuck out like a sore thumb was the usage of wands. Their ability to deplete charges rather than your mind/soul reserves has great potential, don't get me wrong: the execution (that is, automatically whenever you use a spell of that element) makes it nearly impossible to use them appropriately.
  
  • A simple fix to this is to allow the player to "use" wands in order to turn them on or off: in this way they can be saved for the right occasion (i.e., tons of enemies all at once or the rare-but-powerful types).
  • You may also want to consider changing their name, as a "wand" usually implies that the item itself contains spells rather than reserves. Not really sure of a good name, but something along the lines of "battery" or "focus" is more intuitive.
  • Finally, allowing players to move the charge from one wand to another would be convenient: I'd probably still only allow this to be done for wands of the same element (so that it can be automatic), but it would save on inventory space, of which there is surprisingly little once you get going.
• The spells are a lot of fun, especially because there's so much to do with them. At the same time, however, I find there to be a few general problems with them:
  
  • Some spells are very nearly redundant. Take, for instance, Ice Shield and Fortification: both provide defense to the player and, if you calculate the armor gained per mind power used, they are worth exactly the same (save time cost). Usually in these cases, you'll try to differentiate them more, such as giving Ice Shield more defense per mind power (so that there's a trade-off between instant but costly defense and delayed but efficient defense), or making Ice Shield weak to fire enemies and Fortification (which is Earth element) weak to ice enemies. Ideally they will be very different spells, so you still have a use for both of them as you play the game. The same is true of Soul Search (which detects stairs) and Revelation (which detects stairs in addition to a bunch of other information), and likely a couple other pairs that don't immediately come to mind.
    
    • The Slay and Piercing spells are special offenders here, because I doubt they can be changed all that much in relation to each other. In these cases, you should probably just offer the spells as, literally, "Slay" and "Piercing", then give an additional choice of what kind of spell you want it to be. This gives you more room for other spells while maintaining the same original possibilities.
  • A lot of "lesser" offensive spells are often made obsolete by "superior" ones. Most of this is redundancy (i.e., you're always ultimately "attacking an enemy" or "attacking an area"), and so they can be fixed in the same ways as mentioned above. You could, however, give the player a few offensive spell slots, so to speak, which they can then customize by investing additional spell levels into them. For instance, at the very first level you could let "Beam" be specialized into Light, Gray, or Dark, and "Mind Sling" into Fire, Ice, or Earth. By leveling one of them again, it would add additional effects (fire = extra damage over time, ice = slow, earth = knockback, light = blind, gray = confusion, dark = fear), etc. If you inevitably have the reduce the number of choosable spells on the initial menu, I think that's perfectly fine.
  • The game becomes fairly trivial after collecting certain spells. Mana Feast makes it so that you almost never require food (you can, in fact, gain a very tiny amount of mind power by continually resting and Mana Feasting), Revelation makes exploration nearly meaningless, Rage/Fortification makes physical combat extremely easy...there's other cases but you get the idea. For such spells, it's a good idea to make them come with weaknesses: as a simple example, stat-boosters could drain your other stats, or cause extra hunger, or disable certain actions (raging could make it impossible to cast spells and read, fortification could slow you down or make you unable to move for a time). Balance is a beautiful thing once it's accomplished.
• I think the enemies are done right, although ranged attackers should be more common: that way you have a lot more fighting you at the same time later on. One thing I would like to see, however, are some champison/boss types that drop particularly good gear. It should be an enemy that keeps to its area, so it's entirely up to you in fighting one, but having that "extra challenge" can reduce monotony.
• Potions are usually not very good for the player: the only ones worth keeping around are healing, and a whole lot of the others are plain negative. This led me to prioritize every other item type over potions. Perhaps this is intended (that is, they're really meant to quaff in hopes that you survive a particularly dangerous combat) but I find it fairly boring to constantly come across potions only to find that I rarer ever kept one, especially because there's an early-game heal spell that greatly reduces the need for even the healing potions. Consider removing some of the negative potions and/or adding potions that do what some of the scrolls do (accompanied by removing those scrolls, of course). Throwing potions can be pretty fun, too.
• This is just a bug: since you can't buy anything with a full inventory, you also can't buy food, even though it takes up no inventory space. The same is probably true of arrows, although I never had a need to buy them.

So yeah, there's a lot of room for improvements in the nooks and crannies. The game's plenty fun already, but I think you can make it a TON more enjoyable by tweaking things here and there. I don't believe there needs to be any fundamental mechanic redesigns, save some spell stuff, so it shouldn't be hard to at least try some balancing and pop out a new version for testing. (Also I apologize is this is too wall-of-texty: I'm hoping the list format makes it easier to keep track of ideas.)

EDIT: man, lists are so hard to get right

70

Other Announcements / Re: I Have To Be The Worst Roguelike Player

« on: March 21, 2012, 08:14:59 PM »

Sometimes there are good reasons to save-scum things (e.g., practicing a particularly difficult part, just so you can get it right when playing through without trying), but it arguably devolves the gameplay experience such that you're playing a very different type of game. Over the years I've leaned away from save-scumming (even in games where it's totally accepted and expected), but it's more a result of my desire to be hardcore than anything else.

Not sure how that ends up with tons of awesome items though.....is it like hacking the source? I've done that before with Spelunky to make it easier.

The reason that save-scumming can lead to better circumstances and/or results has to do with the way that things are randomly generated. Here's a simple example: let us suppose that, when an enemy dies, a roll is made to determine what it drops. You can manipulate this by saving just before the killing blow, kill the enemy, and reload if it's not an item you want. This can be done repeatedly until you get a good item. There are plenty of other ways to deal with the various randomizations, but that's the general idea.

71

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Dark Valhalla: Prelude (7drl Succsess?)

« on: March 20, 2012, 06:52:14 PM »

Since this IS technically playable on a computer, I'm going to be showcasing it during the 7DRL 2012 series. However, as it requires certain elements not normally found on a computer, I figure I may as well link what I plan on using:

Random dice (as many six-siders as you want)
Random deck of cards (jokers too)

The rest should be doable with word and bitmap processors as necessary (probably Notepad++ and Microsoft Paint), in addition to whatever game sheets come out over time. I would try to record an in-real-life play of it but I have no webcam to speak of, and I feel that the quality would be somewhat lower anyway.

72

Other Announcements / Re: Let's Play... a Bunch of Roguelikes!

« on: March 19, 2012, 02:22:55 PM »

All right then! I've begun my blind-running of 7DRLs, starting with Infiniverse. I am going to attempt to play every single one insofar as they can be played on a Win7 computer in some form. You can find an introduction to this series here.

As mentioned, if you know some games that would be currently impossible to get running on Win OS, even with proper emulation, I'd be more than grateful if there are people out there that can scrounge up a copy that would work properly. Off the top of my hand, I know there's a Mac game called DuneRL, a few open-sourced games constructed in Unix that don't have Win-compatible makefiles, and at least one game (whose name eludes me at the moment) that was designed for Android phones.

(I will be playing Tales of Maj'eyal concurrently for the time being, I just didn't have time to record it last night. First one's up, though!)

73

Programming / Re: Procedural generation of quests and narratives

« on: March 07, 2012, 03:36:21 PM »

The first (and probably biggest) obstacle to get out of the way is this guy:

Bluntly speaking, most of the quest content I've seen in games is pretty primitive, at least compared to other common narrative forms (books, movies, etc.).  Even without procedural generation, designers are commonly guilty of subjecting players to endless FedEx quests, bounties, etc.  The lame predictability of these simple tropes inhibits immersion and enjoyment.  In the procedural space, it's understandable if ambitions have not tended to reach past this.  After all, if it's hard to do by hand, it's harder still to automate, right?  Perhaps that's fair; on the other hand, procedural generation has other attributes than being automated, and these may be of benefit.

The hardest problem in designing a narrative on the fly is that many players aren't going to anticipate what is expected of them, no matter how many clues are given. The stereotypical MMORPG quests have become the norm precisely because they are almost impossible to fail outright: this has to do with their simplicity and avoidance of any real decision-making. If you want to design a good narrative, you'll need to design a whole slew of open-ended quests. This, all by itself, has some challenging considerations:

• To what extent do we allow the player to fail a given quest? The only "true failure" could be death, or it can relate to time, context, or a simple lack of power to prevent something from happening.
• Should a quest's failability depend on its gravity relative to the overarching goal? Making "important" quests harder to fail can be an abrupt change in the narrative: however, not pushing a player toward the goal may make them forever clueless as to its existance or solvability.
• How many different kinds of failure should be allowed? There are many shades of gray between "completing a quest" and "failing to complete anything related to the quest". Adding these shades, however, can complicate the narrative by a lot, and each case must be considered (especially as to whether or not it will ultimately aid or deter the player from the goal).

And I'm sure there's plenty more than that. Trying to account for all of these things is probably a monster's worth of work: I would probably start by trying to develop (just by hand) an overarching goal that has at least 10 or so quest combinations that still allow the player to succeed, with 30 combinations in total. Obviously the game wouldn't make all of these from the get-go, but there will certainly be a large branching that ultimately has to come back to the goal, and developing a general method in your head as to how this works out while still being interesting is the first step toward procedurally generating it.

I think one of the more interesting ways to apply a character narration without necessarily involving literal "go do this" is to have the game subtly change itself depending on the character's interactions with it. Wipe out a bunch of orcs? They'll probably put a bounty on your head. Save a princess from some bandits? I wouldn't be surprised if royal messengers start searching for you and asking for help. Ally yourself with a black market syndicate? Shopkeepers will get wind of it sometime and either forbid you entirely or give you access to their secret stashes. The design would be to revolve narration around the player's "fame" and let the game account for the various things that the player can do all by themselves, without the need of any context as to the game's political or cultural nuances. It also means that the game will be different only if you decide it to be: taking the same actions would, more or less, produce the same kinds of results (randomness of map generation and world placement aside), which is a win-win for players all of sorts.

But hey, I'd love to see PCG expansion in just about any direction. Certainly developing the narrative (either by "fame" or by intelligently-designed questing) is a great start.

EDIT: whoops, left some of the OP in here unquoted

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Other Announcements / Re: Let's Play... a Bunch of Roguelikes!

« on: March 04, 2012, 08:22:21 PM »

What would be cool is if someone could do a lets play on every 7drl released this year.

That's actually part of the plan, once the 7DRL period ends. I'll probably spend one, maybe two videos' worth per successful entry. They'll be, with any luck, in addition to my normal LP schedule, so you'll have lots to watch during that time.

Speaking of which, planning on recording a little Random Realms today, we'll see how that goes with the new patch.

75

Programming / Re: Designing Difficulty

« on: March 02, 2012, 10:51:22 PM »

The terms might be a bit awkward but, given what they intend to represent, they're pretty good IMO. This is how I'm interpretting requerent's concepts of solvability and complexity:

• Solvability, by a quantitative standard, is simply the number of independent ways to solve a problem. For example, if there is an enemy in my path and I need only to get past it, then I can solve the problem by removing the enemy or finding a way around the enemy that doesn't require it to be moved. These, in turn, can be split more depending on the means provided in the game:
  
  • removing the enemy could be a matter of killing it (e.g., with a weapon) or displacing it (e.g., teleportation)
  • maneuvering around the enemy could involve a separate path to your destination, or include a method of disabling the enemy (e.g., trapping) in such a way that allows you to pass over it
  • These separate possibilities can, in turn, create more ways to go about it: the key is that, so long as the critical piece of the solution is separate from the rest, it is independent. (I'm sure this much, however, is open to interpretation.)
• Complexity, by a quantitative standard, is the number of pieces (or steps depending on the kind of problem) required to solve a problem. For example, the problem of "getting past an enemy" is typically straightforward in a roguelike (attack it until it dies), but can become more complex later on (find an advantageous position and use ranged attacks, backtrack until there's a way to maneuver around the enemy entirely, set up a trap and lure the enemy into it).
• For the purpose of optimizing difficulty in terms of solvability and complexity, if multiple solutions to the same problem have varying complexities, only the least complex solution determines the overall complexity of the problem. Things like "not knowing all the possible solutions" can obscure the overall complexity.
• Solvability and complexity often follow an inverse relationship: that is, if there are many ways to solve a problem, the overall complexity of the problem is very small; and if the problem is very complex to solve, there are only a few ways to solve it. This is by no means the extent of their relationship, but it is probably the simplest to design, thus it can be considered a general case.

I'd like to contribute to the discussion itself of making procedurally generated content that can get you both high solvability and high complexity (thus establishing a "truly difficult" puzzle), but that sounds like a really hard thing to create even by hand. Or maybe you're just looking into ways of creating PCG that can be tweaked according to these parameters in order to change the difficulty curve?

A lot of roguelikes, particularly older ones, like to use vast worlds and subtle gameplay structures in order to increase complexity for players who don't understand the game mechanics. This, in itself, does change the difficulty of the game to a point, but from the point of view of a player who can see everything in front of them, it's probably a lot simpler of a game. Honestly I'd say Krice nailed it, at least in terms of what we think of as a traditional roguelike. That said, designing something that really expects player creativity rather than prediction would make for an awesome game, roguelike or otherwise.