Messages

196

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Brogue with music and sound effects

« on: February 11, 2014, 09:46:45 PM »

Cheers. So yeah, you can disable or replace any sound just like that. Those sounds are really meant to be a template, they have low sampling rate to decrease the size, meant to be replaced eventually, but they are good enough for me. Can you hear any noise or have you noticed anything like that regarding sound quality? Have you tried it with headphones?

197

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Brogue with music and sound effects

« on: February 10, 2014, 11:50:26 PM »

To disable background music go to "audio" folder and delete or rename bkg_level1.wav and bkg_level2.wav. To disable battle music as well delete or rename bkg_battle.wav. By the way, here is the latest version:

Brogue-1.7.3_audio-v8 (10. February, 2014)
https://www.mediafire.com/?um4o8pdx79sfadx


...with some more visual improvements and lighting animation in real time, like this:





...plus few gameplay changes and additions...


Strange seed
- don't eat it, throw it

Darkness potion
- supernatural darkness is not transparent

Staff of tunnelling
- it doesn't go harmlessly through monsters

Scroll of shattering
- monsters can get embedded in the green crystal

Stone pedestals
- give two, get one...

Wands recharging and enchanting
- just like stuffs, only wands don't recharge by themselves

198

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Brogue-AUDIO (1.7.4)

« on: February 01, 2014, 09:55:44 PM »

174MOD:
Brogue-AUDIO_174Afinal (23. May, 2015)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/brogueaudio/files/Brogue-AUDIO_174Afinal.zip

- music and sound effects support
- improved light and shadows visibility
- no gameplay changes, compatible with vanilla Brogue
- new sounds, more polish and volume balancing
- Linux build bundled

Linux users:
copy/move "audio" and "fonts" folders to "bin" folder where brogue-AUDIO binary is located.

173MOD:
Brogue-AUDIO_v9x (18. March, 2014)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/brogueaudio/files/Brogue-AUDIO_v9x.zip
(Also contains classic Brogue 1.7.3 + audio only, no gameplay changes.)

- modified stealth system, added sneaking ability
- order allies to wait by swapping places twice in a row
- reflect magic bolts onto yourself from "mirror statues"
- darkness potion is not transparent, use as "smoke screen"
- staff of tunnelling pushes monsters away and knocks them down
- stone pedestals, give two - get one...
- improved lit and dark areas visibility
- music and sound effects support

199

Player's Plaza / Re: Combat minigames? (Super Adventure Puzzle Fighter Alpha 2 Gold)

« on: August 13, 2013, 09:21:39 AM »

No.  I should but I take a million years to accomplish anything.

Practice makes it perfect.

Do you know of some other place with more people interested to talk about this?

200

Player's Plaza / Re: Combat minigames? (Super Adventure Puzzle Fighter Alpha 2 Gold)

« on: August 13, 2013, 04:23:47 AM »

Dang, that's some nice ASCII art.

The game itself is pretty tedious though.  Even quick attacks missed all the time, the enemies have too much hp, and they get multiple consecutive turns for some reason.

Movement and interaction with the dungeon is indeed awkward, it would be much better if it was done as classic roguelike. But it seemed the game has some interesting story after I spoke to prisoners and was intrigued by lever puzzles, finding clues how to solve them, so I kept playing and eventually got used to tedious menu controls.

The combat is actually easy at early stages (on 'easy' settings), try experimenting a little with mixing in strong attacks instead of just using quick ones, but the real trick is to parry monsters attack on their turn, and if you do it on time you execute "combo breaker", which ends their streak and you get two free counter attacks. That will defeat low class monsters in one round and then you get "perfect". There is also "fatality" strike (ala Mortal Combat, with ASCII art animations), but you have to play on 'hard' settings and activate the feature by pressing some key code combo at the start menu, see README file for details.

Later on, as your skills improve, you get to execute more attacks and counter strikes, but tougher monsters have more moves per turn too, so it gets harder to make "combo breaker" right and on time. I got to the top of the tower where the final battle is supposed to take place I guess, but I didn't find some item I was supposed to bring and it was game over. I wish I had nerves to play it again, but unfortunately it's not random so I'm not too excited to go through all that from the beginning.

That's an interesting concept and a worthwhile goal.  I'm not sure what you'd need to do to accomplish that.  Obviously a test of technical skill works, but I'm more interested in something traditionally rogue-ish.

Definitely roguelike, basically I just want to expand on melee combat. Everything else stays classic rogue-like, only instead of simply bumping into an enemy take some additional input from the player to determine the outcome, that's all. Originally I thought of some improvisation on mechanics used for combo moves in "Fragile Wrath" mixed with special moves as done in "Sword in Hand" 7DRLs. In any case there is definitively room for more gameplay value in replacing simple 'bump to attack' with something a bit more user involved.
 
 

What about this: you have a mostly normal turn-based roguelike, except instead of alternating between the player's turn and the AI's turn, you alternate between which is attacking and which is defending on any given move (so like SAPFA2G).  On your offensive turn, you use an ability like using an attack or casting a spell.  Every attack hits a certain range of tiles (so a sword attack might hit one tile in front of you and the two tiles adjacent to it, a fireball spell might hit a 3x3 area of tiles, and so forth).  On the defensive turn, you can take a step or cast teleport or barrier spells, and other protective things like that.

The player and the AI input their defensive/offensive commands at the same time, but the defensive ability is resolved first.  If the defender chose to step away, your sword attack would fail.  But at the same time, they would be putting themselves too far away to effectively use their sword against you.  You could go with the fireball instead, but that's less damaging, costs more energy, and if your opponent moves right next to you, you'll get caught by your own splash damage.

I think that could be pretty cool.  What do you think?

Something among those lines, for sure. Perhaps simpler and quicker, say based on rock, paper, scissors. You bump into monster, or monster bumps into you, and you get to input three choices of three moves. Monster gets to do the same in the same time, so the attack/defence is resolved as soon as you press three keys. You either loose all three bets, win one, win two, or win all three. If lost all three your attack gets, say 30% less power or chance than it would normally be without this minigame. If you win one attack result doesn't get modified. If you win two attack gets 30% more power/chance to hit, and if you win all three you get to execute some additional special move. Or something.

Specific monsters could also have some typical way they play this minigame, so it wouldn't be totally random and based on luck, therefore after fighting several of the same kind you could figure them out and thus have a better chance of winning this minigame against same type of monster. The way particular monsters play the minigame would of course be randomized for each new game and perhaps change depending on their level or some other factors. I really should make a little testing ground demo so all the ideas can be tried out, it would make it easier to see what's fun, what's not, and then improve or come up with new ideas based on that.

I think inspiration could be taken from some RPG games, I just don't play them, so I don't really know what kind of stuff did they came up with in all these years. Perhaps on old 8-bit systems, SNES or Gameboy games, some console or handheld with limited input where developers were forced to come up with something simple yet interesting. I think Digimon for Playstation has some system mixing luck, stats and strategy which resulted in what seemed to be tactical yet quick to play combat.

In any case keep the ideas rolling.


By the way, have you participated in any 7DRL?

201

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: August 12, 2013, 11:56:37 AM »

Tileset complete...

202

Player's Plaza / Combat minigames? (Super Adventure Puzzle Fighter Alpha 2 Gold)

« on: August 12, 2013, 10:24:38 AM »

https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=559










Not quite roguelike, but almost. There are some pretty cool things about it, like animated ASCII art:

On the intro screen hit 'd' and then after the skeleton appears press enter to start the music video.


And also timed input combat minigame. Is there any roguelike that implements similar combat style mechanics or anything among those lines, not necessarily based on timed input but still having combat as a separate minigame of some sort?

I guess something like what golf games use, where aim moves left-right or up-down and you have to press a key to stop it at certain place, combined with usual stats, could be used as well to determine combat outcome. But what I really am trying to figure out is what kind of turn-based minigame could be used instead. Some simplified Mastermind improvisation or something even simpler? Any ideas?

Basically the ultimate goal of these musings would be a roguelike with less monsters but where each single fight is strategic, tactical, different and difficult enough to base the whole game around it while sacrificing some standard roguelike elements, or perhaps even better combining it all together, to produce unique and interesting new roguelike concepts and gameplay mechanics.

203

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: August 02, 2013, 08:45:39 AM »

Updates (02. August) MGSmod rev.83b-tiles



Homepage & download:
http://catmgs.freesmfhosting.com/

204

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: July 16, 2013, 05:38:02 PM »

MGSmod rev.78-tiles


DOWNLOAD (17. July):
http://www.mediafire.com/?xf606bbhrxdu0f3

205

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: July 01, 2013, 06:04:16 AM »

DOWNLOAD (01. July): MGSmod rev.71b
http://www.mediafire.com/?xj0x8t6flgqcf2a

- enable save char. template
- no "slow move" when jumping
- balanced monsters grouping AI

206

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: June 30, 2013, 01:28:17 AM »

It's "Old Snake", in the future. You can edit the profile and create your own character, then just save it as template for the next time.

The game is letting me modify Old Snake to be however I want, but when I press "!" to save the new profile, it doesn't do anything.  I have to set up my traits every time if I don't to use the defaults.

Oops. Sorry about that, I see now that I commented it out few builds ago by mistake. Thanks for letting me know. I'll fix this and that other jumping thing you reported and upload new build by tomorrow.

I also don't seem to be able to toggle safe travel mode, which iirc is also activated by pressing the "!" key.  I don't know if it's connected, but I thought I'd mention it.

"!" key doesn't have any function in this build. Safe mode switches off and on automatically. I don't think there is need to freeze the whole game like it used to be because there is that alert sound effect to make you aware of the trouble instead. So when you get into alert mode the game freezes for only two turns and you can press any key (twice) to continue.

Yeah but my problem isn't that it's too easy or hard, my problem is that it's less fun than the original.  In the original Cataclysm, things started out bad, and you'd die, but then you'd learn the rules and last a bit longer.  After a while things start to seem like they're not so bad after all, and right when you think that, the game spawns some terrible new thing and the cycle repeats itself.  It's the perfect example of a world descending into hell in the most spectacular way, and DDA threw it all out because they wanted a "realistic" zombie apocalypse.

Static spawns doesn't seem to function quite like the original did.  It did give me a quiet period in the beginning so I could stock up on food and equipment, but it still started spawning shockers and brutes on day 1.

It's a matter of taste I guess, I don't mind either. Set in options whichever you prefer, but you also might need to create "New World" from the start menu, or delete save folder, for the change to take effect.

Do you consider this more or less complete, or do you intend to add more to it in the future?

It's complete enough for me. There are surely more things to be balanced and polished out, some things that I know of but don't bother me and other things I missed and are not aware of, but considering three months I spent rigorously testing it I don't think there are many of those or that there is anything major.

I'm not sure I'll be adding more stuff to it, I'm quite sick of play-testing it at the moment. I'm still keen to fix bugs other people find though. If I do anything more it would be additional NPC missions and above ground z-levels for all the other buildings beside church tower and shelter rooftop, but there is already so much stuff in the game and things to do that I think any further additions would bring less value than polishing and balancing of what is already in.

207

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: June 27, 2013, 01:46:57 AM »

Alright, so I gave this a try.

Real time targeting is an interesting idea.  I like it.

The MGS music surprisingly makes the game better.

I'm glad you like it. Thank you for the feedback.

I'm still getting messages about how "moving past this thing is slow" when using the jump command.

Yeah, it's on my list.

Snake seems pretty weak.  Low stats, weak traits, I'd have expected him to be a tougher dude than this.

It's "Old Snake", in the future. You can edit the profile and create your own character, then just save it as template for the next time.

How do I take items off of shelves and such?  If I remember correctly, in the original Cataclysm you could just push the "get" button and then select the shelf.

Examine with 'e' key. It's also how you activate card readers, consoles, gas pumps, jump over chain fences, get items from a trunk, repair vehicles...

My biggest problem with this is that it handles zombie spawns - they appear in high numbers and with specialized types on day one instead of things gradually getting worse.  I assume that this is how DDA does it, but it's really just a worse system than the original Cataclysm's in every way.

It's "static spawn", relatively recent change from DDA, few months ago. Lots of people hated it at first, but most came around to like it afterwards. Once you figure it out and adjust your strategies it actually makes the game easier as once you clear some area it stays clear. Anyway, in options menu you can change it to "dynamic spawn", that is set "static spawn" to FALSE , and that should work then how it used to be.

Speaking of the original, is there a bugfixed version of that floating around anywhere?  I think most of DDA's changes are for the worse, and I'd really like to see someone implement its technical improvements in an otherwise unmodified version of the original.

That was my opinion too and the goal of this mod is to create something that looks like finished, polished game. It's my priority to get rid of all the bugs, rather than add new items and such, so as far as I know this mod is by far most bug-free Cataclysm game around.

I like the new actions and features you've implemented.  I'd rather play this than DDA.

Kicks are insanely powerful.

Cool. Kick/push power depends on melee skill level, current strength and monster size. You can push away wolves easier than a bear. It shouldn't be too powerful or with much chance for success until at least melee skill level 4. With high enough skill pushing monsters away can also stun them.


For annoying Y/N pop ups you can use short-cuts: ENTER or '.' for yes, and SPACE for no.

208

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid

« on: June 26, 2013, 11:10:38 PM »

Cataclysm: Metal Gear Solid
- tactical survival espionage action


DOWNLOAD (01. July): MGSmod rev.71b
http://www.mediafire.com/?xj0x8t6flgqcf2a



It's like "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead", only better.


Highlights/differences:


real-time targeting
- makes ranged combat a bit harder, but more tactical, much more interesting

new push/kick action
- when surrounded push some monsters away instead of fighting them all at once
- slam monsters against the wall, or push them out of the way if they are blocking a door
- push them over fences, bushes, into a fire, or through the windows to slow them down
- you can also push while aiming, if they come close kick them back right in your aim
- you can even kick them back by pushing furniture over them:


Kicked bench, which kicked zombie, who then flew through the window.

new jump/charge actions
- jump through windows, over fences, fire, charge on monsters or through the doors

above ground z-levels (demo)
- church bell tower and shelter rooftop, with secret rooms
- jumping puzzles, see if you can find hidden pathways

driving auto-shift view
- this and driving smoothness makes vehicles much more enjoyable to drive

have a bear for a pet
- tame even wild animals, pets can ride in vehicles on seats and trunks
- pets increase theirs skill with their kills, feed them to recover their HP

performance and stability:
- no bugs, crashes or glitches, faster, smoother, tested, balanced & polished
- support for background music and sound effects with over hundred files library

and more
- sniper scope view, fire arrows, NPC hints, slot machines, chain combo kills...