Messages

241

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

« on: March 29, 2010, 07:50:28 AM »

I think by now two perspectives have emerged:

• Krice said, if its a good game, people will become aware of it
• getter77 and Darren said that belonging to a community of other developers (which gather around 1 hype project) will support people's awareness of the game

The conclusion would be: You need both. It's not enough to have a good game, you also need some people who spread the word about it, to initiate a hype. If you only have a good game, but not these people, or other means to promote your game actively, ... well, then you have a good game, but only a hand full of players.

An article at IndieGames is a good example for Krice's view of being a good game itself is sufficient, combined with Darren's view that 7DRL participation might help. They write about the 7DRL "Madness".

On the other hand: A new series in the (great) @play column at GameSetWatch is a good example for the second view. In January they started a series about Crawl, which is nothing bad, but they wrote:

This is the beginning of a sequence of articles on the popular roguelike game Dungeon Crawl. We've covered it once before, but considering the game's importance and continued development we have not discussed it nearly as much as it deserves. Hopefully this and the next few articles will go some way towards remedying this tragic situation!

Here one can clearly see a goal of the column: Covering games people already know about, because they're considered to be important -- and as a Crawl fan I would surely appreciate this view.


I think part of my LR problem is that I never really got any in-depth feedback on the game. I got helpful comments by some players, but these cover only single aspects of the game. Nobody (perhaps except Krice) ever told me "your game is or is not worth playing, BECAUSE ..." So from single positive player messages ("great game", even "best roguelike I ever played") I get the impression that somebody actually might like what I've done, but it does not help me to improve, or to fix, etc.

This reminds me of a paper by Microsoft-research guy R. Harper. At an HCI conference (I think in 2009) he told about the view of the teams in which he worked ... they develop things, but have no clear view of people who might actually use these things. This is a core problem, and it is also a problem of my PhD thesis -- who is the user, how does your views and the user's views differ from each other?

242

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 28, 2010, 08:12:42 PM »

Any given quest should only require speaking to one person to initiate it, and maybe one other person to finish it, and that's it. ... Maybe something like that would work for you?

I admit that, if you're given a quest to, say, kill 20 antbees, you need to go back to the person who gave you that quest, because it would make no sense to simply gain the reward without reporting the success, or _always_ go to another NPCs down the road.

Concerning the need of reading text: I expect players to read every text at least _once_, during the first play. Every quest text also has a short, one-line description. So I expect players to know which NPCs offer quests during the 2nd, 3rd, nth... playthrough. Then they can simply skip the texts and accept it or leave it. It should be as fast as your system ...

243

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

« on: March 28, 2010, 06:39:06 PM »

It's easier to hype the already successful than to try to get people to play a game nobody has head of.

Ah. I see.

244

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

« on: March 28, 2010, 05:57:32 PM »

Visibility and word of mouth go a long ways... ... not as "big" as they SHOULD be due to ... the little communal lightbulb just not dinging "on" for some damn reason.

This is an interesting perspective indeed. And I'd really like to know what this "damn" reason might be. I think the suggestions of the other postings in this thread are all part of the truth.

The other path though, one I never see talked about here, is for a developer to be a bit more strategic in what their game springs from aside from "just" language choice and whatnot.  In the not incredibly distant future, for example, seemingly, the likes of Chaosforge/Neko(especially), Dwarf Fortress to an extent in this regard, and the whole Doryen thing(unless things just implode somehow) will be essentially "on fire" in terms of awareness/hype and all else.  As such, and in keeping with the laws of nature, it is far easier and usually more dramatic to serve as an accelerant to an ongoing fire than to necessarily luck out on the means and knowhow to start up a blaze oneself.

I don't really understand your language here ... it reads all very beautiful, but could you explain this again for a stupid non-native speaker?

245

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

« on: March 28, 2010, 11:35:13 AM »

Shortly after releasing patch 1.5.1, I stumbled upon a critical error regarding the killing of "big", "strong" and "mighty" variants of monsters. If you have activiated "Growing Monsters" in the options, the game will crash with a range-check error as soon as you kill a "big" variant of a standard monsters.

Here is a hotfix for this problem, changing version number to 1.5.1a (.zip-archive, 470 KB)

The archive contains an updated lambdarogue.exe. Use it to replace your current one.

If you don't have downloaded the 1.5.1 patch already and still use 1.5, it is sufficient to get the hotfix to update to the latest version. The 1.5.1 patch archive only contains some updated text files (changelog and credits), not necessary for actual playing.

246

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

« on: March 27, 2010, 09:31:10 PM »

I have released a patch for LambdaRogue 1.5, so we are now at version 1.5.1. The patch fixes some minor, but annoying bugs and introduces the "skip the boring temple level"-feature  You can now directly start in the dungeon, instead of wasting your time with talking and trading.

At the moment, this patch is only available for Windows users. Get the patch here (.zip-archive, 500 KB). You need to extract the files in the archive into your existing LambdaRogue folder. Replace all existing files with the ones contained in the archive.

The patch is compatible with existing save games (from 1.5, not earlier).

Changelog:

New Features:

• player may decide to skip the entire temple level at beginning and start directly in the catacombs (quickstart mode games will automatically skip the temple level)
• some more items can be sacrificed at altars

Bug Fixes:

• after buying an Insurance Card, the card showed up as "Unknown Rune" in inventory (reported by dorwinrin and siglegion in the LambdaRogue forum)
• when returning from the wilderness to the catacombs, the player was placed at the stairs to the sewers (reported by Krice in a blog comment)
• tile description was not shown if player had a equipped lantern in dark areas (reported by Grimwerk in a blog comment)
• sometimes, the random item a player got at start was from the same type as one of the items he got because of profession. this created 2 stacks of the same type in inventory. then, when picking up an additional item of the same type, the number in both stacks increased. (reported by Grimwerk in a blog comment)
• AP of shoes and hats showed up as "defense bonus" in item info screen, which should be reserved for other item types (such as rings)
• it was possible to sacrifice items at altars, even if the altars were not empty
• sometimes players were placed in spider webs immediatly after entering a dungeon level
• even if player had equipped a lantern, player was shown grayed out in dark areas

Interface:

• simply pressing ENTER cancels item dropping; also added a hint about this

Balancing:

• a lifetime health insurance card now simply costs 1000 * DIFFICULTY Credits
• preparation courses at academies now simply cost 300 * DIFFICULTY Credits

Misc:

• after loading a saved game, a "tip of the day" is shown
• added a message about unsuccessfully attempting to open a locked door without key
• added a message that Searching (e.g. for hidden doors) worked, even if nothing was found
• removed an obsolete message related to (long-ago removed) mouse input

Have fun.

247

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

« on: March 27, 2010, 03:25:47 PM »

What's great is that the game seems to always allow possibility of figuring out new tricks.  ...  It didn't but it did remove its cursed status.  Apparently the wand of cancellation removes blessed/cursed statuses!

Hm ... this is surely rewarding. It all breaks down to a comparison of obstacles and means to overcome the obstacles. When I again think of LambdaRogue (sorry, folks ...), I can name just a few obstacles:

• monsters
• food issues
• bad status changes, caused by monsters, gods or items
• dead ends or otherwise bad structures in dungeons
• need for certain potions or items in certain situations

To overcome these obstacles, the player can use

• weapons, magic and divine assistance to kill monsters
• food, magic and praying to fight hunger
• potions and praying to remove bad status changes
• digging through rock, searching for hidden doors or teleporting to leave bad dungeon areas
• placing of rocks to build barriers against enemies
• sacrificing items or dipping them into wells to gain other items or status changes as reward
• digging through rock or searching crypts to find rare items
• ... and finding and selling lots of stuff to earn enough money to buy spell upgrades, better weapons, food etc.

These are all the major game elements. Nothing similar to Nethacks "The dev team thought of everything" approach, 'cause the existing possibilities are enough to survive in LambdaRogue. When I die, it's because I am unpatient and rush through a corridor, or forget to regenerate HP and PP (= mana).

Hm ... But this might as well perceived as boring by many players ... 

248

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Transcendence reaches 1.0

« on: March 27, 2010, 12:35:50 PM »

Thanks for the hint, Transcendence is a great game. However, getter77 already mentioned it here: http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=740.0

249

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 27, 2010, 12:32:39 PM »

but doesn't the player need to talk to a handful of NPCs before the game proper gets going?  It's usually best to throw them into things as quickly as possible if you can, since roguelikes involve restarting dozens if not hundreds of times.

Your answers to the other thread in the development forum made me came to this guess, too. So you might be right. That's why I already thought of a pure crawling mode where you don't need to care about accepting quests first.

Difficulty levels have been introduced, because Sacred had them. In current versions of LR, the difficulty levels only influence the number of enemies and their respawn rate, as well as the number of randomly scattered items. All actual content is there in all difficulty levels.

250

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

« on: March 27, 2010, 12:27:26 PM »

Thanks for this bunch of thoughts.

Nethack and Adom are chock full of surprises, easter eggs, unique situations, and all of that sort of thing.  I don't believe any other roguelike can compete with them in that area

I wonder how many Nethack players really make use of / find all these surprises and easter eggs. When I still played Nethack in the past, I always felt overwhelmed about all these possibilities and different commands. I was aware that I could do lots of things, but it was too much of work for me to try and figure it out. So I simply tried to get a nice weapon and enough food and to survive, not using any of the more complicated stuff. Thus, I died and died and died.

My point is a new player can get their bearings easily, and once they're interested in the game they can worry about picking up the more esoteric stuff.

So in these games, players seem to immediately know what they are expected to do and can start doing so?

This is of course a question I also thought in regard of LambdaRogue. (As I'm trying to figure out how to make LR better, I will always come back to this example.)

• Perhaps one problem with LR is that players think they can simply run down the dungeon, explore it quickly -- and then wonder when they die too soon or not really know where to go.
• I wonder how many of them actually talk to the priestess (NPC) in the first dungeon level who tells them what to do and what to look out for. I also wonder how many of them care about equipment and magic.
• Perhaps it would be better to just put them into the first random level and tell them "go down to level 20 and get the book of the stars, then return", without plot twists and the need to carry out quests and go back and forth between dungeon levels. However, the need for travels is a core part of the game, as well as the story.

I look at Angband as being sort of the opposite of NH and Adom's complexity.  It's predictable.  Each level is very similar to the last, there aren't really any item functions that will surprise the player.  Most of the game comes down to knowing what you need your speed/hp/resistances at to clear any given area.  Honestly I don't really like Angband, but it's easy to jump into.

Angband is a game I like very very much (along with its predecessor Moria). It's a rather straightforward and has a very consistent theme. I also like its big levels, although many people seem to find them (and the constant need of re-exploring) boring. Angband was the game I always had in mind when beginning to code LambdaRogue in 2006 (that's why LR's levels are regenerated every time and items are more important than dungeon interaction, and why the first level is a town level).

Again, thank you. Any other voices?

251

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

« on: March 27, 2010, 09:12:26 AM »

I'm still on my quest finding answers how to develop a roguelike that does not only appeal to some hundreds anonymous downloaders, but also to the core of roguelike players.

I know that we have already a thread about "How do you like your roguelike", but this one has a slightly different focus.

What is it, that makes Nethack, Angband, Dungeon Crawl SS, Adom, Powder to belong to the major ones?

252

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 26, 2010, 07:45:26 PM »

At least since version 1.5 (August 2009) no major bugs should occur anymore. All releases before 1.4 (December 2008) were still very buggy, though.

Balancing has also been worked on in 1.4 and 1.5 release, the game should be much easier than in earlier releases. Less and weaker monsters, better balancing of stats of monsters and items, much smaller dungeon levels.

I won't, however, ever implement an auto run key, because I never use such an option in other roguelikes. It is too much of "let the game be played automatically, because I'm too lazy".

253

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 26, 2010, 12:48:25 PM »

Do enemies level with the player or get stronger as time passes or anything?

There is an option "growing enemies". If it is activated, enemies become "big", "strong" and finally "mighty", depending on the number of kills of this type. It is activated by default, but you can deactivate anytime.

I've played a few times, but it seems no matter how conservative I am, forces outside of my control conspire to destroy me.  Something feels unfair, as opposed to the good fair-but-merciless feeling roguelikes typically go for.

Can you give me an example? In general, surviving in LR means a lot of micromanagement, item buying/selling etc. Also, keep away from monster hives if you're not strong enough. Finally, read all the help pages.

Doesn't one of the choices at character creation mean that you aren't supposed to kill a certain type of enemy?

Yeah, Ares believers aren't allowed to kill caveworms, due to some strange religious codex. They don't get EXP for this.

The player doesn't have any way of knowing this as they make their dude.

They know it when trying to kill a caveworm as Ares-character for the first time Two or three accidently kills won't have any negative effect.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 23, 2010, 09:50:49 AM »

Well. This night I was thinking about restarting LR development, leading to a 1.6 release, which then could be released under another name and version 1.0. Any suggestions for a proper name?

255

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

« on: March 22, 2010, 06:31:14 PM »

I don't have a Windows machine at home

If you have Linux at home, you might try the Linux version The source should also easily compile under BSD. (Somebody even made it run under MacOS).