Messages

751

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Good Books

« on: October 17, 2009, 03:53:32 PM »

Lovecraft

Lovecraft's work is wacky, cheesy and hateful of everything. Definitely worth reading I think I read his collected short stories in my teens. A personal favourite would be "The Dunwich Horror". It's a great effort of the imagination, where Lovecraft goes straight to the core of his misanthropic mythology.

As always,
Minotauros

752

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Good Books

« on: October 17, 2009, 02:11:26 PM »

I hardly read fantasy/sf at all, but I'll chime in with a reminder that Ursula K. LeGuin ("Earthsea", "Left Hand of Darkness", etc) is a great author, regardless of genre. And don't forget the "classics". I spent some time this summer rereading scattered stories in One Thousand and One Nights. It's really a multifaceted collection, containing some great stuff. Also, if you haven't read it yet Fenrir, you'll surely love Voluspá, seeing as how you're one of the main characters in it.

As always,
Minotauros

753

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: October 15, 2009, 05:07:25 PM »

I write in python, and I sometimes curse myself for not having chosen a lower-level language. For various reasons. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

That being said, I just got around to implementing saving and restoring, which I was really loath to do, thinking it would cause all kinds of problems. But it was done in a few minutes: I scimmed some documentation, added a few lines of code and cleaned up a class property, that was obsolete anyway. Hacking together the interface to save/load turned out to be more work than the actual serialization. So today I feel that the grass is pretty green right here where I'm at.

As always,
Minotauros

Edit: Using Python's pickle module, of course.

754

Other Announcements / Re: 1st Person Roguelikes?

« on: October 13, 2009, 01:21:55 PM »

There's a pretty old game that seems to qualify, called Umbra. It markets itself as a lovecraftian crpg, "heavily inspired" by the RL genre. I haven't actually played it, though I just downloaded the source to see how it looked, and had to edit/replace "whrandom"->"random" in all the *.py files. (The whrandom module is deprecated, but the game seems to run fine with the more up to date random module.)

As always,
Minotauros

755

Programming / Re: NLarn - a Larn remake

« on: October 10, 2009, 10:01:05 PM »

@Slash: Many times I cursed my decision to use C and wished I had used something that offers handy high level functionality and does not waste so much time. Too late, as well.

I write in python, and I sometimes curse myself for not having chosen a lower-level language. For various reasons. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

As always,
Minotauros

756

Programming / Re: The Simugraph Library

« on: October 08, 2009, 04:34:35 PM »

Thanks for posting this Hajo.

As always,
Minotauros

757

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Legerdemain 1.0.2 now released

« on: October 02, 2009, 09:16:29 PM »

Nice to see that Legerdemain is still under development.

All the best njerpe,
Minotauros

758

Programming / Re: RougeLike Step by Step Tutorial?

« on: October 02, 2009, 01:26:24 PM »

There's this, of course. For more in-depth articles, take a look at this list. But when push comes to shove, you just have to rely on your own intuition.

As always,
Minotauros

759

Programming / Re: Kharne Alpha 1 Available

« on: October 02, 2009, 09:38:35 AM »

Congratulations

As always,
Minotauros

760

Other Announcements / Re: Shockfrost

« on: September 27, 2009, 10:30:18 PM »

Interesting idea, but not exactly ground breaking. Maybe back in 2004 it was. We were just discussing this sort of thing in the thread "Difficulty".

True. I mean, Shockfrost had some genuinely nice ideas, but what makes the thread really entertaining, to my mind, is how it turns completely crazy. Steampowered vapourware! After a few hundred posts, Shockfrost sounds like the protagonist of some Werner Herzog-movie He just goes on making more and more insane claims about how infinitely complex his RL will be, seemingly adamant that implementation is not going to be a problem.

As always,
Minotauros

761

Other Announcements / Shockfrost

« on: September 25, 2009, 12:53:34 PM »

It struck me after having written a message in the Difficulty thread that it contained an unconcious reference to an idea of Shockfrost, that legendary spewer of ideas. This had me reviewing the old Shockfrost-thread on rgrd. Even though Shockfrost is a classic of RL paraphernalia, he's not referenced so often, so here's a reminder, to the benefit of new and old readers alike. Read the Roguebasin article on Shockfrost here. And here you'll find the extraordinary discussion thread.

With that, I'll shut my ugly face and leave the talking to Shockfrost. If any discussion comes out of this, I might chime in later.

As always,
Minotauros

762

Other Announcements / Re: Difficulty

« on: September 24, 2009, 11:44:53 AM »

You notice a dandelion.
[...]
You die...

This is an awesome idea, first.

Yes, I loved this as well. "Gloves of Gardening"

Also, I've been considering a type of roguelike in which death doesn't affect the contents of a special "bank account".

How do you mean, exactly? That you could "deposit" equipment and gold for later characters, or something like that? Shiren has a system with storage rooms, that lets you prepare starting gear for upcoming games, which I thought worked quite well.

I've also lately toyed with the idea of having an overworld that is persistent between games, where you can build up resources on a longer term. It could be interesting if you let your characters do "community work", like opening a trade route to the neighboring village, or having a shrine built in the town square. There might be a system for retiring characters, turning them into helpful NPCs. You'd sometimes get the strategic choice of retiring a character or not. Retirement would surely give an advantage to upcoming characters, but if you could survive just one more dive, the gain would be even greater. Your long-term goal would be to clear the main quest of a certain world, not necessarily here and now, but rather within a certain amount of games (after maybe a dozen games, that world is abandoned, and a new one created).

It's a system that it's easy to dream about, but it would be quite hard to implement well. I'm not going near it, myself, at least not for the time being.

As always,
Minotauros

EDIT: The idea with a persistant overworld is nicked from Shockfrost, of course.

763

Classic Roguelikes / Re: ADOM - tips & strategies

« on: September 24, 2009, 11:27:06 AM »

Are herbs a good source of favor when you sacrifice them or something?

Gods love (preferrably blessed) stomafillia herbs. And as corrmemn pointed out, you want herbalism to farm herbs in the best way. In addition to giving you a better cursed/uncursed-ratio, you can apply the skill whilst standing on a patch of herbs to identify it. This will let you know before the bush withers and dies, making herb farming much more efficient.

It's definitely better to use uncursed/blessed herbs than cursed ones. Some herbs have adverse effects when cursed, and others have a much weaker effect.

As always,
Minotauros

764

Other Announcements / Re: Difficulty

« on: September 23, 2009, 11:51:27 PM »

I think it is acceptable, nay mandatory, for RLs to kill you quite quickly the first time. But ideally, even the most inept player should see something interesting before he dies. Getting some sense of beginning (talking to some people, getting a quest, travelling in an overworld, whatever), and then being killed by a frog after two minutes, is better than just seeing a little @ move around when you press the keys, and suddenly getting a message that "a stone block fell and crushed your head."

When it comes to mid- and end-game difficulty/low winnability I think RLs are generally very hard, and I wouldn't mind some more lenient ones. Imagine a RL where an intermediate player could get a lucky win. Getting killed by random stuff is IMHO part of what makes the genre great, so I think a 100% winnable RL is an absurd notion. My taste says there should be situations where you just die to bad luck, but also ones where you slap your head afterwards, or better yet -- heave a proud sight of relief after a narrow escape, where you had to rely on your wits and your luck, and prevailed!

Then there's this argument that random content ensures replayability. But that should also mean that the game is just as fun after you won it. It demands that you implement an endgame that is random and fluid just like the midgame, instead of one that revolves around (getting certain powers to face) certain, fixed levels/bosses/obstacles. But if you have 5 locations, 5 overlords, and 5 fatal weaknesses to kill the overlord, you can get 5^3 variations on the final showdown

Computer games in general are often about clearing levels to unlock content. In some RLs, it can feel a bit cheap and needy, like the game is trying to get me hooked with promises of cool content deeper down in the dungeon, but allowing me very slow progress. Compare to board games, for example, where you get an overview of the entire game after a few sessions, but it stays enjoyable because the pieces of rules/content continue to come together in new, astonishing patterns.

I think I would find very sympathetic, a roguelike that let me win after a hundred games, but that I might still pick up to play, because losing is almost just as enjoyable as winning.

As always,
Minotauros

765

Classic Roguelikes / Re: ADOM - tips & strategies

« on: September 23, 2009, 10:35:24 PM »

I utterly agree with you Curseman. Having said that, ADOM is still one of my favourite RLs, and I think it's ironic that some of the game's strong points are also its weaknesses. Like the cat stuff -- I think it's a fun idea, and it gives a sense of an actual setting, as well as possible references to great writers like Poe and Lovecraft[1]. BUT it means that most unspoiled players will lose their first really good character to a pointless death, and probably abort a couple of promising characters, that get trapped between two cats or something like that. I can think of a few midgame encounters that are nearly guaranteed deadly unless you perform ritual X. You'll soon get into the habit of spoiling yourself or save scumming. The latter alternative may even result in the most enjoyable game.

I also like/dislike how herbs are done. If I find a level with good herbs, I think on the one hand: "Yay! Limitless food and healing, and I'll soon be crowned as the champion of my god", but on the other hand, it means I'll have to hang around to grind for herbs as long as my patience permits me.

And as you mention, trekking around the wilderness for a tolerable first kill, that you write down in an external editor ... not my idea of a good time.

I could go on and on. Come to think of it, there are so many things I dislike about ADOM, God knows why I even bother playing it. It has some ideas with real flair, executed in a really grindy way.

As always,
Minotauros

[1] Well, Lovecraft is maybe not that "great", in the classical sense, but still bloody fun and quite visionary. Anyway, I digress