Messages

46

7DRLs / the Hunt - 7DRL 2014 - Update Thread: Finished

« on: March 04, 2014, 05:26:16 AM »

Stolen from Quendus.  Every ten years the Quendian department of natural resources holds a lottery for one weeklong permit to kill one Jabberwock.  Your uncle through his political connections obtained the permit for you.  As part of this ancient test of manhood you have embarked with nothing but your bare hands and a brand new top of the line Vorpal Kill-o-Zap 3000 and will not return until the week runs out or with its head you come galumphing back

Download
http://www.speedyshare.com/cGvQs/the-hunt.zip

to defeat the first creature, lay a trap and then attack the creature to lure it into the trap. (or just shoot it)

How it might look: (made with advASCIIdraw)




Design Goals:
-Attractive and evocative scenery
-Interesting and challenging creatures to hunt

Gameplay: Gather items. Pay fines for killing threatened wildlife that threatens you. Kill jabberwock. Return.

Contols: arrows to move.

47

7DRLs / Re: 7DRL 2014 Hype it UP!

« on: March 04, 2014, 04:10:09 AM »

I think I shall steal it.

48

Design / Re: Are required resistances fun?

« on: January 16, 2014, 04:09:27 AM »

Runics are something brogue has
They are not really things like fire resistance.  They are things like 'when you are attacked, share the damage with all adjacent enemies." or "sometimes friendly temporary clones of you enemy appear when you get hit.".  Each runic is new toy that you have to adjust your tactics to fit.  Even the runic that makes you immune to gasses has more effect than just meaning you can ignore traps, it means it is beneficial to seek traps and trigger them so that the monsters will be gasses while you attack them.

49

Design / Re: Are required resistances fun?

« on: January 09, 2014, 07:14:01 AM »

What game are you talking about? Each game does it so differently.

mostly as implemented in Crawl and Angband

Resistances can make the game more interesting, as Quendus lucidly explained.
But what I mean by less tactically interesting  is that that when you get an item with cold resistance cold based attacks do less damage and your classification of fightable or not changes (good).  But if you get armor of mutuality not only does your classification of fightable or not change (groups become more fightable, individuals are unchanged), but the player changes from fighting monsters in corridors to preferring to fight in doorways. So I wonder if we can keep all the interesting consequences of resistances while also having them effect playstyle in that kind of way.

50

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: What "not-major-roguelike" do you think it should be considered "major"?

« on: January 09, 2014, 04:00:17 AM »

yes, brogue's forum has few enough people that it shouldn't count as major yet.

51

Design / Are required resistances fun?

« on: January 09, 2014, 03:40:42 AM »

Player resistances are good because they make items and monster danger multi dimensional (how dangerous a monster is depends on what resistances you have).  But a runic item can achieve the same thing while also changing the tactics you use.
In some cases, like corrosion resistance, they can even make the game less interesting because they remove the tactical meaning of corrosive monsters.
In games where the right set of resistances is practically required for ascending characters, resistances are no longer interesting because it is not having a resistance that makes one interesting..

But all of this is irrelevant if they make the game more fun, so I'd like to hear from people with more experience.  Are they fun?

52

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Standing Desk - Do you use one?

« on: March 10, 2013, 03:18:31 PM »

I stuck my computer in from of my bed, so I'm generally reclining instead of sitting.

53

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Epilogue MacOS Port

« on: December 07, 2012, 10:19:22 PM »

I would love to get to the situational tactics in epilogue. You spoke with pride of how you'd thrown out the difficult interfaces of the past so I though that you might be interested impressions from the "what the hell is going on" phase of learning a new game.

54

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Epilogue MacOS Port

« on: December 07, 2012, 04:10:46 PM »

I just tried this game, you might want to know that the interface is not easy to use enough.  I got that clicking tiles makes me go towards them and clicking critters makes me attack them.  Mouse-over is also nice although because the critters are more important then the terrain, the mouse-over text for a tile should mention them first.  But it fails the beginner's test.  Why do you show numbers when all I want to know about a creature is whether I should attack or run away (brogue shows how many hits you can kill it in and how many it can kill you in).  I can't tell how well I"m doing against a creature at a glance (little health bars over each critter's head is the traditional fix for this).   And I got a vague impression that that strangely colored splat mark when a critter dies might contain items.  Before I actually start playing a the game I have to choose between lots of options that I don't care about. Give each set of options a clear, preselected default that would be good for a beginner.

I haven't tried any alchemy yet but from your description it sounds interesting.

55

Programming / Re: Artifical Lifeforms Making the Dungeon Architecture

« on: December 01, 2012, 05:41:55 PM »

here's what happens when I let a dwarf loose on the dungeon


next are some ant tunnels


and I edited my program so the ecology doesn't get as unbalanced. http://pastebin.com/GiARibZb

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Programming / Re: Artifical Lifeforms Making the Dungeon Architecture

« on: November 30, 2012, 06:22:12 AM »

yeah, the reason I like it is because it means the dungeon didn't just pop out of nowhere, it is a rational process that you can interact with.

I also programmed up some fun ecologies.

grass spreads over bare ground and eventually grows into tall grass which is flammable.
Fireweed burns very well and can only sprout soon after a fire and doesn't tolerate being next to other fireweeds.
trees crowd out grass and have trouble catching fire on their own.

This means that trees will take over a grass land unless fireweed is present; then the frequent fires slowly kill all the trees.
There are also grazers that will suppress both fire and forest by eating tall grass and saplings.  They don't eat the mature trees which means grazers cause a kind of savanna instead of grassland or forest.

There are 4 kinds of lichen that grow in walls, that by their slightly differing growth habits, come to dominate in different dungeon structures.

if there are lots of disconnected pillars lichen1 will come to predominate because it is able to spread it's spores across empty space.

If there are many tunnels with lots of surface area lichen 2 will dominate because it grows over the top of other lichens and spreads to all adjacent walls that are touching air.

if there are rooms with thick layers of rock between them lichen3 will be common because it wanders from within the solid rock until it finds air, then it divides into more copies back in the solid rock.

lichen4 grows only in the deepest depths of stone, it ceases to grow when exposed.  So you only discover it when mining new tunnels.

57

Programming / Re: Artifical Lifeforms Making the Dungeon Architecture

« on: November 30, 2012, 03:50:29 AM »

Monsters creating the dungeon as they live, is my passion.   Here is a crapply programmed test I have of various interactions between monsters.

It runs using curses in the terminal.

Right now it randomly introduces creatures but I'm particularly proud of how different subsets lead to distinct dungeon architectures.

To answer your question, dwarf1s tunnel in straight lines until they dig out some gold, then they turn left or right, pick up the gold and spawn a dwaf2. Dwarf2s excavate exposed corners that are not next to doors and build doors at the entrances to open spaces.
This leads to a room and corridor dungeon.

Larva move in an orthogonal random walk, only excavating walls that do not change the connectivity of the dungeon (they can figure this out from local knowledge).
They lead to a maze shaped dungeon.

Ants move in a all-direction random walk, avoid digging walls too thin and dig out larger chambers when next to another ant. this leads to a really cool tunnel effect.

there are many other things that I think are cool that would take awhile to explain.

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Other Announcements / Re: Women & Roguelikes

« on: September 26, 2012, 12:46:30 AM »

Is there an "Ignore this user's posts"button?

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Programming / Re: Lighting Issues

« on: September 24, 2012, 04:47:15 PM »

Make everything double thickness (every tile is really 4 tiles). And then do FoV after lighting so it selects which appearance the tile has by what angle you are looking at it.

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Mushroomvania (now at v0.0.1 ARRP)

« on: September 20, 2012, 04:15:50 AM »

It looks interesting. Unfortunately I do not want to fart around with wine.