Messages

16

Programming / Re: Good Settings for Free-Roam RogueLikes

« on: August 28, 2012, 01:41:28 AM »

 Stone age survival? Jungle, desert, islands, swamps, etc...megafauna like Sabertooth Tigers and Mastadons. Beavers the size of horses. Flash floods.

    That's pretty good.  I also thought of another "all-alone" kind of setting, where, by unspecified (so far) means, you end up in the ruins of a centuries-, millennia-, or even eons-old civilization (maybe with awesome advanced technology) and must find out what happened (or maybe you're just there for the gold).  You have to fight rats, spiders, maybe ancient machines, etc in order to reach your goals. 

Introduce the blender.


You're a cro-magnon that can fight for survival against the dangers of his world and era on the surface, or explore an unexplainable semi-functional advanced ancient acropolis underground.

17

Incubator / Re: Roguelike Bundle preparations

« on: August 27, 2012, 11:45:43 PM »

1. Yes! There will be plenty of time to reach remaining goal and to cram something extra too.
2. I'd better leave this question to Psiweapon. Maybe he will pixel something for us.
3. No problem after ARRP I think. Note I need to sync with Psi for RR episode. Not going to do it with only half a team. Maybe with Jo too if he can spare the time.

  As always I am available at your leisure for whatever you may need. :-)

Icon description...

A ninja grey-type alien with a mop???

A sludge vat?

A gun and a mop making an X behind a computer screen?

Some sort of space marine fending off an alien with a laser sword?

A skull-marked canister?? :3

Really, how many pixels and what style are we talking about?


Radio show: I'm all for it but it'll need some weeks for planning and synching and to give me time for buying a microphone X_D

18

Incubator / Re: PRIME 2.0

« on: July 12, 2012, 08:20:20 PM »

No no, I meant what they *should* do, as in contrast to what they actually do.

19

Incubator / Re: PRIME 2.0

« on: July 12, 2012, 02:10:53 PM »

Melnorme claims to have a power to detect quality of floppy disks, but I don't see any results. Using this power on ray guns tells their number of charges, but it does not identify empty ray guns.

This should probably return whether it's cracked/regular/infected

20

Incubator / Re: PRIME 2.0

« on: June 27, 2012, 08:51:57 PM »

GO ANCIENT GO

21

Programming / Re: Roguelike graphics project

« on: June 27, 2012, 09:53:20 AM »

hahahah so funny.

Keep making them.

22

Incubator / Re: PRIME 2.0

« on: June 22, 2012, 08:24:41 PM »

I'm cool with you giving a thorough review to the lore files, but!

I'd like to reserve the right to rollback or edit further a minority
of my lore entries if I find your polishing conflicts too much with
whatever I was trying to accomplish. Might even drop you some
lines about how to solve such conflicts if they arise.

Does that sound good?

An example of lore entries that can accept little editing are the
ones formatted in the fashion of Dwarf Fortress descriptions, in
which I'm sticking to a predefined structure.

23

Incubator / Re: PRIME 2.0

« on: June 19, 2012, 09:34:46 PM »

If you mean ze pix0ls yup dats me.

24

Incubator / Re: LambdaRogue feedback thread

« on: June 19, 2012, 09:21:52 PM »

Hey! Thanks for going through my feedback

All my reports are from 1.6.1 on windows XP. Will get to install the 1.6.4 patch as soon as my current character is killed, I promise.

Also, I play on history mode and designing the character from scratch. History mode is one of the big appeals of the game, and I just like character sheets

Using photos is more or less a compromise. In the very long term, I want to replace all photos by pixel art in a similar style to the character portraits used in the status area, but that is both expensive and time consuming, and thus low priority.

Well, I don't like that approach in general but I do like the effect you manage to pull off in this particular case - goes well with the stately, serious tone of the game.

In German, I want to say something like "Trocknungstrank", i.e. a potion you can use when it's getting wet -- to keep you dry. When you drink this potion, you resist water attacks.

The effects of items are also shown when you press the info key in inventory.

In general, whenever you find me using English language in a strange or uncommon way (and you are native speaker or English expert by yourself), please tell me.

I did find out later what the potion does.

I'm not an english native speaker, nor an expert (at least in an academical sense, I do know a few things) and my knowledge of german is minimal, but I'm guessing the german name has some sort of active participle or something to that effect. -ung sounds pretty active, -trank stands for "beverage" (it's a past or passive participle of trinken?) and apparently "trocknen" means "to dry".

Back on track. Dry potion sounds oxymoronic in english, a potion is wet by definition.  I think drying potion would be the most exact translation, but it doesn't work because it's ambiguous and reads more naturally as a sentence: some potion that is in the process of drying out, evaporating.

My suggestion is that you go with either potion of drying or potion of dryness. Dryness potion could work too, if you don't want to use an "X of Y" formula

The gist of this is getting across the nuance that the property is not attributed to the item but rather an effect of its consumption.

It didn't take long for me to adapt to the non-regenerating points, after all, it's a feature of the game system, and items to restore hit points have so far been plentiful.

Oh, I also liked the fact that there are character portraits!

25

Incubator / Re: Intro to the Incubator

« on: June 18, 2012, 12:43:25 AM »

Maybe we could use whatever knowledge we garner out of this initiative (if it succeeds) for developing some new roguelikes to release as a commercial  bundle.

26

Incubator / Re: LambdaRogue feedback thread

« on: June 16, 2012, 01:27:10 PM »

Second playthrough.

This time I tried to make a more straightforward character, and created a soldier. Apparently the RNG blessed me with suck because I cannot sing chants due to some sort of curse.

Now I found how to allocate skillpoints, and that's by going back to a trader at the temple. Feels weird, but makes some sense.

And going back there to allocate them, I found another something:

The character forgets the layout of the temple each time s/he gets out of there. It's a town where the protagonist has spent quite a lot of time - it just doesn't make sense that the map is blacked out every time you go down into the dungeon.

Ok I see this is because floors are re-generated every time. But the temple stays the same right? Why black it out?


Also, the "there's a trader here" would be a LOT more helpful if it used some word less generic than "trader" - "There's a bartender here", "there's an armorsmith here", etc.

27

Incubator / LambdaRogue feedback thread

« on: June 16, 2012, 02:24:29 AM »

Ok, so I finally downloaded it and I'm trying it. It's new for me.

I don't know where the feedback was supposed to go so feel free to move this.


So far, the intro is really dramatic and with very polished aesthetics. The music really adds to the immersion (reminds me of the Arcanum OST).

I've created Aelita, an archer, daughter of a thief, and following... Hermes, I just can't resist. I'm not sure if the bonuses will come in handy or not.

In fact, the stately music rocks (so to speak). I'm not very keen on the idea of using photos for illustrative slideshows, but it's well done and I do like the photos themselves. It goes well with the UI style too.

The fact that Sister Shara is esp. interested in something called the Sanguine Cuirass of Ares bothers me - shorthands like that one break suspension of disbelief (It makes the text feel less like someone talking to you)


Ok, I got killed trying to tear the monster hive down.

Other complaints so far:
-What are skill points for? Are they allocated in some screen? Do skills train automatically? Does this appear anywhere in the (?) menu?

-What the hell is a dry potion? What does that even mean?

-Having the game tell me: "Cannot unequip fairy dagger. Remove two-handed bow first" is frustrating. It'd be much easier if instead it prompted me: Remove two-handed bow? (y/n)

The detail of sitting down to regain PP is pretty nice, that HP doesn't regen on it's own, not so much - at least you start with a nice number of aspirins.

28

Programming / Re: Breaking Items

« on: June 13, 2012, 01:10:28 PM »

A discussion on related topic was held on rgrd eight years ago. Have a look.

Interesting.

You nasty, nasty necromancer! 

29

Programming / Re: Identify? (y/n)

« on: June 13, 2012, 01:03:44 PM »

Unsurprisingly, I agree with Ancient wholeheartedly (except on the Zen part... I'm not that hardcore!)

I usually like the ID mechanic, myself. I think it's best when "formal identification" (identify scroll/spell/long use of an item) is coupled with "informal identification": throwing rings down a sink, dipping (such as POWDER's "you dip your hiking boots into the yellow potion. You gain insight on the item's nature: boots of water walking", that's brilliant, you just identified TWO items).

About being called a mioni-game, so far I'd only bestow that title upon DCSS: identification by amount (There's only one stack of potions that amounts to 6, that's potions of healing) and the "tried on a chicken leg" "tried by monster" notes really make it feel like a guessing game.

Still, it's not essential: IVAN is pretty damn nasty fun by itself, no need for ID'ing KTHXBYE. Mague Guild doesn't have regular identify mechanics - you always know what is what, you just don't know what some stuff does (charged bituminous wyrm scale? guess what it does? SPREAD TAR EVERYWHERE)

So far, for PRIME, I think ALL noxious canisters (=potions) have uses, except maybe one. Most of them can be used to recharge rayguns (=wands), and some of them have other uses.

30

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: PRIME 1.9 (9 May 2012)

« on: May 12, 2012, 10:45:18 AM »

Congrats on this key milestone!   

We're already gearing up for the next one, which will be pretty juicy