Messages

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

« on: March 01, 2012, 04:49:05 PM »

Welcome and enjoy!     May you always manage to find the Red Warriors, Blue Wizards, and such that you pair well with. 

Don't get me started on Red Warrior...that guy is always shooting the food. :/

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

« on: March 01, 2012, 08:44:16 AM »

Would you like your new members identified? Y/N

I got my very own Commodore 64 when I was 6 or 7 years old.  Almost immediately I started teaching myself to program too pouring over books and old programming magazines.  I was a very avid reader early on.  In the third grade I was reading Shakespeare on my own, not the Cliff Notes.

Back then, my "wizard" skills in C64 basic, GWBasic, QuickBasic and Pascal were viewed by many with awe and wonderment.  Now with the prevalence of the internet and an infinite wealth of information on almost any subject you can imagine what was once labeled prodigious seems more common place.

Now, I feel like I'm behind.

I like to bill myself as a hobbyist game programmer, graphic artist and music producer though.

In that silly place called "real life" I'm a professional TV/Radio reporter and edit/produce my own video as well.

I'm currently working on an old school Sierra-type adventure game with another chap over this here interwebs thing but have some Rogue-ish ideas I'd like to work on this year as well.

I'm comfortable but not masterful with a number of programming languages and as long as there is reasonable documentation and examples I can pick up the basics of new languages fairly quickly as I have a fair understanding of basic programming concepts.  If there's a great example or tutorial for one language I'm not averse to giving it a whirl to take advantage of it or attempting to port the concepts to a language I'm more familiar with.  But just so I don't overstate my abilities you probably wouldn't want me as a team lead on some brand new Roguelike game you're totally making.  I'm no Slash or Kornel.

I am a pretty fair spriter and animator as well (I think).  There is some graphic work for a game that I've been working on recently here.

As far as games go, I love games!  I have an incredible soft spot in my heart for the classic arcade games, anything from the C64/Amiga era, Nintendo and so forth.  

I also used to do a fair bit of dungeon crawling back in my C64 days as well so the genre is nothing to me.

I've actually been lurking here for quite a while but just recently decided to register on the forums.

My favorites at the moment are: Nethack, CastlevaniaRL, ToME4, Powder and DoomRL.

I aim to ascend one day in Nethack but up to now I've been incredibly stubborn when it comes to giving in to reading so-called "Spoilers".  

I would actually one day like to scrub through the official Nethack spoilers and sort out the actual spoilers from what should actually be called INSTRUCTIONS.

So to sum up, classic gaming fanatic, hobbyist programmer, roguelike enthusiast, person of various skills and amateur freerunner. (Okay, that last one was a lie)

Oh...and definitely a RogueTemple fan.

I also have a fairly decent Roguelike news blog here.  It's not meant to be THEE Roguelike news source or the new TotR but mostly for my own personal and twisted satisfaction.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Played weird Roguelike in my dreams last night...

« on: March 01, 2012, 08:17:56 AM »

Yeah I have dreamed about roguelikes on a few occasions.  Cant really remember the specifics of them now though.  Next time it happens I will try to remember... Although I am certain they never had a plot like NeedsFoodBadly dream.  Please turn that into a reality.  Surely the dream was a sign from the roguelike gods.

Plus A Modest Proposal could make a cool 7drl.

This actually happens to me on a pretty regular basis.  Whatever thing, subject or game I'm currently obsessed with has a tendency to creep into my dreams.  I'm also a pretty lucid dreamer and have a knack for remembering my dreams a lot of the time in astonishing detail.

I used to regularly post to a dream journal I kept here and that was stuff was just insane, not only were the dreams insane but the level of details, faces, places and words I would remember was also crazy.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Good Roguelikes for beginners?

« on: February 29, 2012, 06:06:57 PM »

My 9 year old son is playing both Dungeons of Dredmor and ToME4. 

My work on making my own roguelike in my spare time is also sparking some interest in programming for him as well.

  Yes! Indoctrinate early. And often. I was hacking at that age.

I tried to start him on Vulture/Nethack but that was a little too much for him.  Hell, even I need to play that game with a reference sheet for commands.

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

« on: February 29, 2012, 06:01:53 PM »

Nethack: Never past the Gnomish Mines.

Don't go there until you have good equipment (something like AC below zero). When gnomish stairs appears just continue elsewhere for couple of levels.

By the way, I'm also a bad player. I think it's because I'm not very tactical person. I can't read the situation for turns ahead so I get in trouble very easily.

I start throwing stuff...boots...maces...whatever I can spare.  Sometimes it works.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Played weird Roguelike in my dreams last night...

« on: February 28, 2012, 11:20:08 PM »

Might as well---we almost had a Roguelike based on A Modest Proposal.

Lol, I wonder how that would play out.

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

« on: February 28, 2012, 09:20:38 PM »

I hate reading so-called "spoilers".  I think a game, like Nethack for instance should come with a basic manual that tells you the main things you need to know and lets the game supply the rest like a nintendo game manual for Final Fantasy for example.

Stuff like engraving Elbereth that you would have no way of knowing without reading spoilers is kind of lame in my opinion because what do spoilers do?  They "spoil" the game, supposedly. 

But to me it seems like a lot of so-called Nethack spoilers should actually be called "instructions".

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Good Roguelikes for beginners?

« on: February 28, 2012, 09:00:32 PM »

My 9 year old son is playing both Dungeons of Dredmor and ToME4. 

My work on making my own roguelike in my spare time is also sparking some interest in programming for him as well.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Played weird Roguelike in my dreams last night...

« on: February 28, 2012, 08:22:12 PM »

Last night I had this weird dream were I was playing a Roguelike called Aynrand (Angband).  It was this dungeon crawler based pretty much on Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged".  It was set in the 1950s eras, where you could pick from various classes of suit-wearing, cigar-puffing, (Penguin-like) business tycoons wandering through randomly generated city streets and industrial settings beating down poor factory workers and picking up stacks of dollar bills instead of gold.

I swear I'm not making this up.  Don't ask me how this crept into my subconscious, I don't know.  I've never even read Atlas Shrugged but the basic premise is a 1950s society where the government is waging war on the poor business elite of the world by taxing and regulating them.  To fight back, a group of CEOs go on strike and refuse to share their "genius" with the world.

Atlas Shrugged has been brought up in modern parallels and there was a movie made recently as well.  But IMHO, the fallacy of Atlas Shrugged when comparing it to modern day is in Atlas Shrugged the government sought to control industry.  Today, you have only to look inside the pockets of any politician to see that industry controls our government.

Anyway...my dreams aren't normally political commentary...maybe tomorrow night I can dream about just playing Spelunky or something.

P.S. Whaddya think?  Would it be worth making?

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Other Announcements / Re: Elderlore: technical difficulties?

« on: February 28, 2012, 06:08:04 PM »

Getting an "Invited Readers Only" message on that blog link.

Oops, there was a screwy setting on the blog.  Thanks for pointing that out.  It's fixed now.

Still...anyone heard any news about Elderlore?

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Other Announcements / Re: Elderlore: technical difficulties?

« on: February 28, 2012, 08:37:49 AM »

I'm probably a little behind the times but I also have a blog with an attempt at recreating the awesome Planet Roguelike feed, as well as some useful links and resources for Roguelike fans.

You can access my feed at my blog: http://amuletofyendor.blogspot.com/

Or directly via: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=4f30873ccc8d76556eb954d12f72c014&_render=rss

Blitzl made a great feed as well and of course this site is an awesome resource.

I really hope the Elderlore website comes back up though.  Has anyone heard from Altefcat? :/