Messages

226

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: LambdaRogue 1.5.1 (patch) released

« on: April 02, 2010, 04:53:05 PM »

In 2010, LR: The Book of Stars becomes 4 years old. Thus, I created a visual history of the game's different development phases, as part of the Screenshots section of the website.

Go to the gallery and share my memories 

227

Other Announcements / Re: Book Watch '10: The Roguelike Evolution

« on: April 02, 2010, 08:50:40 AM »

How funny. I just saw the "Twisty Little Passages" book that describes the history of Interactive Fiction and thought it would be cool to have something similar for roguelikes.

Good luck!

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Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: April 01, 2010, 09:23:45 PM »

Advertising in roguelike genre means nothing, really. If someone makes a good roguelike it will be found first by roguelike nuts and then other people.

Perhaps Krice wanted to say: "You don't necessarily need to advertise the game yourself. If it's really good, the 'roguelike nuts' will do the advertising for you / spread the word even to non-roguelike sites"

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Programming / Re: Annual Roguelike Release Party

« on: March 31, 2010, 02:38:04 PM »

It's an interesting idea and both the pros and cons named so far seem reasonable.

Indeed I also believe that this event could gather some media interest -- 7DRL events certainly did in the past. While media don't cover single project releases ('cause probably they don't even notice them), they would notice the releases in this event.

This is good and this is bad.

It is good, because roguelikes not known widely will profit from being part of the whole bunch of releases -- they would at least be recognized. Personally, I like this idea

It is bad, because roguelikes which do not participate in this event -- perhaps due to time restrictions or other obligations in personal or professional life; lots of conferences in September ... -- will fall by the wayside.

As do 7DRL events today, the release party event will strengthen the impression (to "normal" people) that the games and devs participating there are the core and the, well, state of the art of roguelike development, although this is only partly true.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Are mind maps a part of your planning methodology?

« on: March 31, 2010, 11:35:04 AM »

Yes, here I agree, of course. (I tend to think of one-man-projects, when thinking of roguelikes)

231

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Are mind maps a part of your planning methodology?

« on: March 31, 2010, 11:00:14 AM »

but couldn't find a proper tool. I started to write my own, but that took too much time, so I gave up on it.

Putting a technical tool between "mind" and "mind map" somewhat distracts the advantages of mind maps.

Why not simply use pencil, paper and eraser? This really helps putting all these chaotic thoughts and ideas into a structure.

Of course, once you have it on paper, you might think about converting it into an electronic format, but the process really should start undisturbed of any technical tool.

From these thoughts, however, you'll see that I don't use mind maps for planning something -- I use mind maps to actually find the core elements of a complex topic (such as finding the actual topic of my PhD thesis). When this is done, I use gantt diagrams to plan the way to the topic I found with the mind map.

A roguelike example some days ago was the question: What makes my roguelike unique?


Edit: Actually, I think we use computers way too often for things which could be done without them.

232

Programming / Re: Reviving Iso-Angband

« on: March 31, 2010, 08:47:17 AM »

I really like the visual feeling -- it's surreal, but feels good and still like Angband, which is one of my favorite roguelikes.

I also like the fact that the src directory contains files named after SimuTrans

233

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: LambdaRogue 1.5.1 (patch) released

« on: March 30, 2010, 03:59:48 PM »

Thanks

Ah, you are speaking of the different use of tenses here, I think. "Now you're standing here" is present progressive and "Finally you get some rest" is present.

You are right, at school (long ago...) they told us not to mix tenses, and in my native language I don't do this. It's harder in a foreign language to pay enough attention to such things.

What should I write instead?

234

Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: March 30, 2010, 07:10:52 AM »

With both ...

Sounds like you definitely need to advertise your game as a quest and story based roguelike with graphics and sound.  Few RLs go down this route, so it's a unique enough feature.

and

I must say that your game title also doesn't give much away about the game.  Most roguelikes have something to infer about their content in their name.  LambdaRogue?  Sounds cool, but it doesn't really mean anything

has been taken care of this night, in advert terms, in a website update/enhancement  lambdarogue.net (probably need to refresh browser cache). I think now the uniquenesses are presented clearer, and also what the game's about.

Concerning the game's name, I discusses here and in the blog and at RPGCodex with some people, and got really nice suggestions, such as Star-Led, Rogue: Ascension, Book of Stars: Ascension or Per Libris, Ad Astra.

I decided, though, to keep the original, long title "LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars" and use "Per Libris, Ad Astra" as an in-game slogan, but also present at the website.

Your thoughts about "not everyone wants out of a game" are true, of course

235

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: LambdaRogue 1.5.1 (patch) released

« on: March 30, 2010, 02:34:25 AM »

Another addition: I've enhanced the LambdaRogue website with some background information about interesting places in the game, plus a buzzwordish feature list and some of the positive player voices directly at the home page.

Hajo, thanks again for your input, here and in the other thread.

236

Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: March 29, 2010, 06:00:42 PM »

Fenrir, I like your thoughts on procedural plot generation. This is something I have in mind since a while, but I am not yet sure in which way this should go. It must certainly be more than just random quests.

My thoughts went in the direction to take the pre-made questlines, single quests and story elements (there exist several and not all are accessable under every condition) and create, with a start of a new game, a random questline.

So the builtin quests/story is considered to be the "big events", while subplots would have references to the big events (both player-visible and internally), but follow their own path.

Currently, if you're playing an Enchanter, you aren't able to get the quest offered by Centurio Clavius in the Catacombs. On the other hand, if you're playing a Soldier, you will be able to access Clavius' quest, but not the quest offered by Ian, the temple servant, 'cause this one is reserved to Enchanters.

I integrated such profession- and religion-bound subquests to motivate players to try out the different profession/religion-combinations.

I could, however, create a context model, containing all game events that occured to the player, and then use this model as a basis for creating follow-up events which are coherent to the premade contents.

If I managed to implement this idea as a working system, I would throw out most single pre-made quests (of course except the big questlines) and replace them with randomly generated questlines.

This could be a nice addition for 1.6.

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Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: March 29, 2010, 11:55:28 AM »

No, you didn't. In fact it was good to get a first impression by a person who never cared about the game before. This made me think both about the game's presentation (should the blog entries really be directly at the home page, or should there be a positive, interesting presentation of the game?) and the game's possible uniqueness.

So, thanks again

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: LambdaRogue 1.5.1 (patch) released

« on: March 29, 2010, 10:41:09 AM »

I never thought of potential _new_ players reading these announcements ... so many features are changed in roguelikes so often, it must be hard to describe everytime to possible new players why the changes are good.

Anyway ... the temple level is the only static level. it's like the town level in Angband, but there are some NPCs in there which offer quests, esp. the priestess, who offers the main quest.

Before the patch, some players did not know what do to in this level -- they wanted to go down the dungeon and crawl. Some others liked the temple for the first few times, but would like to skip it in subsequent plays. Now they can -- it's a way to ignore the story.

Edit:

If I start the game, I know nothing about the temple level (not even that there is one

You know, because when the game asks you if you want to skip it, it also summarizes the goal of the game, in which the temple is mentioned. Some lines below, it explains as a hint what the temple is (that there are traders and NPCs).

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Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: March 29, 2010, 10:32:46 AM »

I had to google your website.

Mm... It's also linked at RogueBasin ... hm ...

The first thing I got to see was a list of patches

If you directly went to lambdarogue.net, you got to see the development blog. ...perhaps not the best decision for the home page of the website, is it? 

I got a list of features that reads much like all the other RPGs that I see on the web ... 3 difficulty levels, 5 gods, 10 skills, 4 characters, 25 levels ... ... so it is just another dungeon crawl with nothing new?

Hm, you are right. It sounds very generic. But actually, it IS generic, if one looks at the game mechanics. There are some little tweaks here and there that make it differ from other games, but in general

What does it have, let's say, Angband does not have? What does it have that Crawl does not have or NetHack?

Hard to answer, because I never went far enough in these games -- or tried enough creative action -- to know what they actually have. Often, I just fight my way with my weapon.

I think it's mainly the atmosphere, which is hard to describe in a list of facts. It's conveyed by the texts of the story, the documents one can find and read ingame, by the choice of enemies, by item descriptions and names, by the background music ... The gods have their own stories, there exists even a time line of important events in the history of the game's world.

Side note: In humanities, there exist two approaches in discussing games: the narrativist approach, which focuses on what a game narrates, i.e. its story. and the ludologists, which focus on the game mechanics and tend to perceive narration as totally irrelevant. I think I'm more on the narrativist's path...

However, it's the combination of roguelike and RPG that makes the game unique.

I think Zangband has quests too, like "kill x of y on level z" or so. Are your quests better?

I don't know. Mechanically, it's the same, it's always kill or deliver or collect something. However, many of the quests are woven into a story (either the main plot, or the second long sideplot, or smaller side plots). Ah, you can win the game in 2 different ways / i.e. it has 2 different endings. I think this might be another distinct feature (?)

*sigh*

Thanks for your questions, Hajo. Made me think very much.

240

Programming / Re: What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

« on: March 29, 2010, 08:49:22 AM »

Since 2006. In summer, it's LR's 4th birthday  ...

Explain why it is better than other, related games. Explain what is new, unique, exciting in this one project.

I know this marketing approach from the jobs I'm working in, but I wanted to avoid it in my personal life ...

It helps me to have lists of features, to decide if I try a new game

Well ... LR has a list of features on its website. But this list starts with a text that admits the following:

LambdaRogue's feature set, esp. the number of different monsters and items, is rather small compared to many other roguelike games. However, all features are chosen in a "less is more" manner by me with clear concepts in mind.

It _might_ be that this is not very clever ...?