Messages

16

Player's Plaza / Re: Ever felt weird playing a roguelike?

« on: September 26, 2019, 05:19:49 PM »

As Krice points out, I think it has a lot to do with the tradition of the genre as focusing on tactical gameplay over immersion and story. Since the game worlds are typically very dynamic and malleable, I think even the RLs that focus on story (Caves of Qud etc.) end up having a lot of silly content. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, though, I find a lot of the fun in RLs stems from the outlandish situation your character will often end up in.

As always,
Minotauros

17

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Grey hair

« on: May 30, 2019, 09:15:20 PM »

The problem is when your pubic hair starts to get white tho.

Ah, the good old wand of webbing.

As always,
Minotauros

18

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Maintenance tasks

« on: May 28, 2019, 09:15:14 PM »

SSL certificate renewed and installed.

Okay. My Firefox now shows a green padlock in the address bar. But a "connection is not secure" icon when editing this post, however. And the Epiphany browser still refuses to connect. At this point, I'm wondering if that one is actually a bug on my end, Epiphany has been acting up lately I'm pasting some details below, in case that can help you.

As always,
Minotauros

The identity of this website has not been verified.
The signing certificate authority is not known

forums.roguetemple.com
Identity: forums.roguetemple.com
Verified by: AlphaSSL CA - SHA256 - G2
Expires: 05/25/2020

Subject Name
OU (Organizational Unit):   Domain Control Validated
CN (Common Name):   forums.roguetemple.com
Issuer Name
C (Country):   BE
O (Organization):   GlobalSign nv-sa
CN (Common Name):   AlphaSSL CA - SHA256 - G2
Issued Certificate
Version:   3
Serial Number:   24 A1 D3 9F FE 7F 15 DC 7A 51 BD F7
Not Valid Before:   2019-05-28
Not Valid After:   2020-05-25
Certificate Fingerprints
SHA1:   D4 DC D0 54 96 62 60 02 53 65 E6 4F 04 88 B5 27 27 49 00 7A
MD5:   35 0A D6 28 FE 16 AF 6F 9C EF 26 56 55 8A 56 6B
Public Key Info
Key Algorithm:   RSA
Key Parameters:   05 00
Key Size:   2048
Key SHA1 Fingerprint:   AA 38 19 D6 C0 46 98 B2 E5 D8 14 1F 32 97 7E 48 19 04 84 C7
Public Key:   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
Key Usage
Usages:   Digital signature
Key encipherment
Critical:   Yes
Extension
Identifier:   1.3.6.1.5.5.7.1.1
Value:   30 7B 30 42 06 08 2B 06 01 05 05 07 30 02 86 36 68 74 74 70 3A 2F 2F 73 65 63 75 72 65 32 2E 61 6C 70 68 61 73 73 6C 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 63 61 63 65 72 74 2F 67 73 61 6C 70 68 61 73 68 61 32 67 32 72 31 2E 63 72 74 30 35 06 08 2B 06 01 05 05 07 30 01 86 29 68 74 74 70 3A 2F 2F 6F 63 73 70 32 2E 67 6C 6F 62 61 6C 73 69 67 6E 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 67 73 61 6C 70 68 61 73 68 61 32 67 32
Critical:   No
Extension
Identifier:   2.5.29.32
Value:   30 4E 30 42 06 0A 2B 06 01 04 01 A0 32 01 0A 0A 30 34 30 32 06 08 2B 06 01 05 05 07 02 01 16 26 68 74 74 70 73 3A 2F 2F 77 77 77 2E 67 6C 6F 62 61 6C 73 69 67 6E 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 72 65 70 6F 73 69 74 6F 72 79 2F 30 08 06 06 67 81 0C 01 02 01
Critical:   No
Basic Constraints
Certificate Authority:   No
Max Path Length:   Unlimited
Critical:   No
Extension
Identifier:   2.5.29.31
Value:   30 35 30 33 A0 31 A0 2F 86 2D 68 74 74 70 3A 2F 2F 63 72 6C 32 2E 61 6C 70 68 61 73 73 6C 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 67 73 2F 67 73 61 6C 70 68 61 73 68 61 32 67 32 2E 63 72 6C
Critical:   No
Subject Alternative Names
DNS:   forums.roguetemple.com
Critical:   No
Extended Key Usage
Allowed Purposes:   Server Authentication
Client Authentication
Critical:   No
Extension
Identifier:   2.5.29.35
Value:   30 16 80 14 F5 CD D5 3C 08 50 F9 6A 4F 3A B7 97 DA 56 83 E6 69 D2 68 F7
Critical:   No
Subject Key Identifier
Key Identifier:   6C 80 AA 3C F0 03 14 73 40 C0 56 4C F9 93 02 6F 48 4F A5 08
Critical:   No
Extension
Identifier:   1.3.6.1.4.1.11129.2.4.2
Value:   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
Critical:   No
Signature
Signature Algorithm:   1.2.840.113549.1.1.11
Signature Parameters:   05 00
Signature:   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

19

Design / Re: Against the concept of balance

« on: April 22, 2019, 10:28:28 PM »

To be sure, unpredictability is the name of the game. And single player games need to take balance less into account than competitive games. Of course, there are games like Brogue, designed around being very balanced from the outset. That has a distinct coolness, and allows for clever use of bottlenecks and other map features. But to discuss the other end of the scale, RLs do seem to lend themselves well to unbalanced design. Random generation itself tends to lead down this road, perhaps, since the outcomes are less predictable to the designer, as well But if you have enough moving parts, the odd unbalanced situations may even each other out in the long run

It's a tried and tested recipe in RLs, and Rogue itself had this: Randomness decides that some positions are unwinnable (like starting in the middle of a monster zoo), whilst others give rare advantages. It becomes very much like a game of chance: You keep rolling the dice, hoping for what you need to show up. It can work if the turnaround of characters is quick/interesting enough, or other factors make the game well rounded. Typical of many classics is that leveling up (aka grinding) can give a more stable mid-to-end game. Or features like nonpersistent levels and random loot provide various ways out of most tight spots. Some RLs are just open ended enough that even locally unwinnable positions are possible to overcome: by backtracking, taking a detour, running for your life, or somehow mac gyvering your way out Some very expansive games like Caves of Qud excel in this department.

Done well, random unbalance provide some very exquisite pleasures, on both ends of the power scale – from beating a very difficult position by spending your resources wisely, to reaching the godlike level where you're slicing through previously feared foes as were they butter. The funny thing is that even with lucky characters, odds are you will make a wrong move at the exact worst moment and still end up bulldozed by some random mob.

As always,
Minotauros

20

Early Dev / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum (0.8 back in development!)

« on: April 21, 2019, 12:32:23 AM »

Mark! Glad to see you are back in the saddle All the best.

As always,
Minotauros

21

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Security warning when entering temple forums

« on: March 30, 2019, 01:50:59 AM »

Here: https://i.imgur.com/yWieu9L.png

As always,
Minotauros

22

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Security warning when entering temple forums

« on: March 29, 2019, 09:35:10 PM »

https. I just tried to enter http in the address bar, but the url is automatically corrected to https, and I get the same prompt.

As always,
Minotauros

23

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Security warning when entering temple forums

« on: March 29, 2019, 08:07:18 PM »

Yep, still happening.

As always,
Minotauros

24

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: The Temple is crumbling down...

« on: March 26, 2019, 06:58:12 AM »

To be clear, I don't think many users have ran away scared because you're so edgy, krice. It's rather that people come here to discuss Roguelikes, not listen to some random dude's whining and mostly off topic rants (flame wars about genre definitions and languages get old fast).

Lacking moderation may well have something to do with the declining activity the last years, as well as a general tendency towards newer forums. Not sure what, if anything, can be done to turn the trend around. I'm also becoming more and more of a sporadic forum user. When I do, I usually turn to reddit's rldev board, which is okay, but maybe I'm just old fashioned for missing the temple's glory days.

As always,
Minotauros

25

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Which operative system do you use?

« on: March 07, 2019, 12:03:33 PM »

Oh, right Talking to bots again… Didn't see that little link in the signature.

As always,
Minotauros

26

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Which operative system do you use?

« on: March 06, 2019, 03:39:36 PM »

i would want to try something different for a change.

Maybe try and see if you like one of the "user friendly" Linux distros, like Ubuntu or Mint.

As always,
Minotauros

27

Programming / Re: PYTHON: pros and cons for rougelike development

« on: February 02, 2019, 01:38:45 AM »

@Minotsur, great reply thank you; what are the reason for the bottleneck effect you are referring to? do you know any roguelikes which would be not working good enough if they were written in python for this reason you mention?

It can for instance arise with nested loops (loops of loops). I mentioned AI, because if you have a lot of actors moving at the same time, you risk doing a lot of calculations between each turn. For instance, my game sometimes has forests of semi-intelligent plants, which would mimic critter AI to do stuff like seed spitting at passers-by. But just adding all the plants to the game's list of actors caused the application to start to lag, so I had to build in some shortcuts to let the plants not be actors as such, but still able to do their thing.

Map generation can also be a CPU sink, especially if your code is a bit clunky, like searching through a lot of empty space multiple times, failing and retrying from scratch a lot, etc. At least, that occurs as loading before levels. In my game, it takes a few seconds now and then to generate a new chunk of the world map. I've looked into process threading as a way to avoid visible lag, by letting the game dynamically generate surrounding areas in the background, simultaneously as the player is playing.

Regarding other games this applies to, I can't with authority name any in particular. But I would imagine stuff like Dwarf Fortress, with a lot of moving parts and dwarfs minding their business. In any case, a fairly complex AI is still a lot less CPU-heavy than real time 3D rendering and such. If Python won't allow you to brute force your way through any grotesque mass of data, you can at least strive for good design in the first place. Ie. make the game's rules in a way that makes sense to you as the game master; instead of having a zillion things testing for a zillion conditions, focus on the interesting things/conditions that will actually occur

As always,
Minotauros

28

Programming / Re: PYTHON: pros and cons for rougelike development

« on: January 30, 2019, 11:30:20 PM »

I mistype too often to be cool with a language where you don't explicitly declare your variables.

That's actually a very good point!

As always,
Minotauros

29

Programming / Re: PYTHON: pros and cons for rougelike development

« on: January 30, 2019, 11:27:29 PM »

I didn't know any programming when I started with Python. But I found it easy to get into, and so far it's been able to do what I want, so I haven't regretted my choice. The official documentation is clear and thorough, and there are tools available for many specialized tasks, often in the form of modules. For example pygame, libtcodpy or ncurses can provide you with a framework for quickly getting an @ moving on screen. I don't know how the documentation on libtcodpy is, but there's at least one tutorial that's supposed to be good.

In the context of (underground) Roguelike development, Python is adequate for many kind of projects. It can be quick'n'dirty enough that you can cough up a prototype for an idea in a day or two. But it can also be used for much larger projects. On computers, Python is quite portable, and it's easy to make binaries for at least the three major OSes. However, Python is not the thing if you want to develop for Android or iOS.

One objective weakness of the language is in terms of pure computational speed, but that probably won't matter much for many Roguelikes. But bottlenecks might come instead with stuff like AI if you have a lot of actors walking around and observing each other.

To mention it, Python is the closest thing to a "real" programming language I know at all. And while I don't know if Python encourages sloppy programming, I know I "get along" with my own, so you may have to take my advice with a grain of salt I've thought about trying a game engine, but maybe for a different kind of project than my current clunky masterpiece. I imagine you get some more freedom with Python. Of course, you get even more if you drop down to deeper-level languages like C/C++. It would depend on your needs, tastes and way of thinking what fits best. I do sometimes feel the urge to learn at least a bit of C, if only to get a clearer grasp of the fundamentals. But I also wouldn't mind the possibility of merging C code with the Python scripts to speed up calculations here and there (those AI bottlenecks).

As always,
Minotauros

30

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars back on track (and with new home)

« on: November 30, 2018, 10:01:35 AM »

Wow, it's really cool to see LambdaRogue resurface. We've kept you in our hearts all this time. Congrats, and good luck ahead!

As always,
Minotauros