Messages

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Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Off topic room removed and my thoughts on the Krice ban

« on: February 19, 2021, 10:15:17 AM »

I have just checked Krice's post list and, after a quick perusal, I have found nothing really bad. Should I assume the worst posts have been removed?

Also, kudos for not letting wokeness be a factor. The web is already flooded by cancel culture authoritarians as it is.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: December 27, 2020, 06:15:26 PM »

I have been trying to get Rogue Clone III compiled on OpenBSD and so far I have been successful.

As far as I know, Rogue Clone is a rewrite based on Rogue v5.4. The developer created it because he was tired of bugs and dark rooms.

The Clone is still Rogue as its heart but it has a couple of differences. The main one is that dark rooms are missing. For one, I welcome the change... I like what dark rooms try to do, but since they are so ubiquitous, they end up removing a lot of player agency from the game. When entering a dark room, you either have to wait at the entrance and deal with whatever shows up, or run into it and deal with whatever is in there. In practical terms, it means that if a debilitating enemy shows up (Aquator, Rattlesnake, Wraith), it can damage your resources well before you can do anything about it.

The second one is that monster and item spawn rate has been cranked up quite a bit. This is another change I welcome. In vanilla Rogue I always feel I am lacking options because it is rare for me to amass items until well into the dungeon. In Rogue Clone, you get options - items - but you are also forced to use them more aggressively because there are so many more monsters.

Is there anybody here with experience with both Rogue and Rogue Clone who can comment on the differences in general strategy between the two of them?

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: June 16, 2020, 01:55:40 PM »

What is going on when you have enemies on either side of you?  Because it seems like something really, really bad is happening above and beyond just each of them getting a hit on you.

If you want me to be more descriptive, I'm not sure I can.  But I've noticed taking severe damage in these situations and even when sandwiched by two enemies who shouldn't be a threat I often take a beating.

That is weird.

I had a look into the code and found nothing that suggested such thing would happen. Which version is showing such behavior to you?

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 26, 2020, 02:17:05 PM »

Consensus is that if you don't get at least some ring of slow digestion in your run, you are going to fail hard

If you can get 2, you can grind. If you can grind, you can win. I wonder if you could even win with a mace, so long as you have 2 rings of slow digestion...

Do you mean to hang on a floor, waiting for monsters to spawn and then kill them, level up to 888888, then rush down and up? Not that the idea lacks merit, but it sounds boring.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 24, 2020, 02:58:35 PM »

Consensus is that if you don't get at least some ring of slow digestion in your run, you are going to fail hard

Thanks.  I hope it is possible to find stuff on the way back up, because it seems you would run out of food otherwise.  Closest I've come is going back to level 19, despite falling back through trapdoors 4 times.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: April 22, 2020, 05:24:40 PM »

1.  When you start going back up the stairs, are the levels randomly generated again?
2.  Will you ever find any food or items on the way back up?
3.  Are the monsters still level-dependent?  I mean once I get to level 17 I don't have to worry about Griffins anymore?

I would have to read the code again since I no longer remember, but:

Most likely you don't have the ISRUN bug (one single identify scroll suggests your version predates Rogue v4 for Unix, which is the one that introduced the bug).

I think monsters are still level dependent.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Let's get rich and watch the world burn

« on: April 07, 2020, 02:24:09 PM »

The problem is covid-19 is simply a spark, a catalyst, a scapegoat to endorse the administration of a higher dose of the same drugs which are already determining the grounds for a major recession.

I agree that many governments are riding the wave in order to be more governing and govern harder. Which is a bad thing. Laws being passed so governments cannot be criticized for their management of the crisis, massive socialization of industries...  some ministers have given the order to shoot at people who is troublesome during confinement period.

But I still sustain that the virus is its own crisis. Will it aggravate a different, impending crisis? Maybe, maybe not. But the virus is a very destructive agent and deserves to be considered as such.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Let's get rich and watch the world burn

« on: April 04, 2020, 06:26:33 PM »

Stocks are there just for rich people to make money from nothing. Maybe we should think about not having stocks at all. Just real life economy based on actual reality. Some people are already in panic about economy, but why? Most people still have jobs, or if they lose their jobs they can get new ones. Jobs don't just disappear, they will be there. Some people will also have more money, not less, because they don't spend it to vacations and other stuff like that. And, even this is terrible thing to say, in theory there will be more open jobs, because people will die.

The stock market is an artifact that is used in order to gather funds for big, big projects and operations, without having to ask for big loans to a bank. Thus, you can capitalize the firm by offering participations/shares of it to investors rather than having to sell your soul to some banking cartel. It is done all the time in "real life" when Joe needs to open a shoe workshop and does not have the money, so he joins up with Jack and they set workshop together.

Also, people are in panic because in many places, lockdown orders are preventing people from working. That is, they are prevented from producing necessary goods. Most important, they are prevented from making a living. As I said on other thread: try to live 5 months without a job in some places.

You answered that a socialist State will take care of you if you have it. Fine. But your socialist State can only last for so long if activity is frozen. If factories are closed and necessary goods are no distributed, you starve, no matter the color of your government.

Jobs will be there after the crisis, yes. But you first have to survive the onslaught.

Good luck with that.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Let's get rich and watch the world burn

« on: April 04, 2020, 06:16:58 PM »

Just to clarify, I don't think the virus will be the reason, but only the trigger for this incoming recession.

If you close the corn fields because you are afraid your citizens will get infected, people will starve and die. Massive shortages are not a trigger for a crisis, they are the crisis.

Stocks and economicists' numbers are just a representation of that grim reality.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Corona virus

« on: March 25, 2020, 03:28:55 PM »

There is much world out of the Western civ.

Welfare for all at Western levels is not sustainable in most of the world. Socializing it would not work because there are no resources to beign with, much less resources to spare during a crisis. A lot of Westerns forget that just because they have resources to spare, it does not mean everybody else has.

If you shut down the flour factory in order to avoid infection, people starves necause there is no flour production going on. I suppose some government will think they can print money in order to trick the market and purchase flour from somewhere else, but that only works so far. Specially if your new providers are in distress themselves.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Corona virus

« on: March 23, 2020, 04:03:21 PM »

In many countries jobs will be there waiting for people to return, so in that sense I think the economy panic is hot air.

Try losing your job for 5 months in certain places. Even if you are guaranteed a job at month six, making it through those 5 months is a problem. Specially if you have kids or pets or other big responsibilities.

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Off-topic (Locked) / Re: Corona virus

« on: March 22, 2020, 03:21:03 PM »

I think the panic is going to be worse than the virus itself. A lot of people in affected areas is rejecting to access some basic services because they don't want to risk it and get exposed to the virus. Also, lots of people losing their jobs in places where mandatory lockdowns are being enforced. It is going to be worse than the Great Depression.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: March 22, 2020, 03:18:24 PM »

I started restarting unless I find at least a long sword on first two floors, which is why I'm playing the Epyx version now. People probably check the 'Recent Games' board online, and if I played like this online I'd have it filled up with myself and 'quit on lvl1' and 'quit on lvl2'. But I'll be dropping in from time to time to play without restarting.

That is a bit extreme :-)

I usually find that my problem is more related to lacking potions, wands and items than cool weapons. Oftentimes you can get hosed because you didn't have a "free-from-jail" card even if you are walking around in enchanted plate armor and carry a 2h sword.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: March 20, 2020, 03:55:20 PM »

Made it to lvl20 in the Epyx 1.48!  Medusa killed me. We met in the hallway, and I started backing away, but strangely, she did not confuse me. Or maybe she did but I still landed hits? I don't know for sure, that's the first time in my life that I've seen her. Anyway, I had lots of tricks to deal with the situation, but I grossly underestimated her, thinking that I can kill her just by hitting. It's because I read somewhere that she's weak. Such a stupid death. I had a wand of polymorph, a wand of teleport away, a ring of stealth, a 2H sword (which I didn't use because I enchanted my mace), and plate armor. Great stash. And all because I thought she was weak, I didn't use the wands! I will never underestimate you again, Medusa.

It looks like I'm alone posting here, this is a little bit embarrassing. 

There are conditions that make you immune to Medusa's gaze, maybe that explains it.

Also, when you are confused, you can still land hits afaik. If you are in a corridor, you only have two ways to go, so you have a 50% chance of moving to the proper direction and performing an attack on the intended target.

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Classic Roguelikes / Re: Rogue - let's beat it

« on: March 18, 2020, 11:55:05 AM »

So is v5 really supposed to be that difficult?

The maintainer of rlgallery thinks it is. His rationale is that the developers tested the game with the bug (ISRUN bug from now on) and found it suitable for release, therefor implying that they were satisfied with the game balance.

After looking at the code myself, I think the game is not supposed to be that difficult. Long story short: there is code which is designed to grant any creature in the game a +4 bonus to hit anything that is paralyzed. The problem is that the checks that verify if a creature or the player is vulnerable to this bonus are botched. Monsters always get the bonus; the player never does.