Messages

106

Classic Roguelikes / Re: ADOM Play #1

« on: January 13, 2013, 08:50:28 PM »

Well, there are other changes. For example spell casting while wielding two shields is impossible. ADOM was the only roguelike where you could have a two-shield tank firing lightning bolts. The change does not affect the gameplay because players would replace second shield with a spear which gives comparable DV bonuses at middle skill levels. However, the unique flavor just took a great hit. Seems ADOM is becoming less like ADOM after the campaign. Pressure to satisfy backers? If so, game quality may take a hit.

107

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Does anyone play Moria anymore?

« on: January 09, 2013, 11:29:44 PM »

Quendus, the flashlight cannot use batteries but the lantern does. Use 'F' key to fuel it. Unfortunately the no-description thing is not going to change. It has bitten me several times too.

Getter, I am more to blame. Being the hosting space provider for this one I knew of it for quite a time. It was hard to add it to the list (and thus ASCII Dreams poll) because:
 - It is forked off earlier version of Moria than was last released by RAK so is not a direct continuation.
 - It is also named Moria, not e.g. Daniel's Moria.
 - There was no official maintainership change, so old name "Moria" should belong to the version not updated for a long time.

108

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Does anyone play Moria anymore?

« on: January 07, 2013, 05:35:15 PM »

Ulfen, there are still people playing Moria. Even more, there is a person who has been continuing development for some time. Have a look here: http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/Moria/

Myself, I prefer the sci-fi themed Moria variant BOSS. But then I have a liking for anything science fiction, RLs especially.

109

Classic Roguelikes / Re: Last console version of Angband?

« on: January 07, 2013, 05:32:19 PM »

I am back. At the moment most of my stamina is being put forwards for PRIME which is going to have a release in third week of January. Then I'll gladly look into console bands. This time with a proper web page to have everything arranged nicely.

110

Classic Roguelikes / Re: ADOM Play #1

« on: January 05, 2013, 10:19:14 PM »

Too bad according to changelog the bug is fixed in prerelease #7. Those Jackals can theoretically still get über in #5.

111

Other Announcements / Re: The Year's Most Popular - By Category

« on: January 05, 2013, 09:57:53 PM »

In my opinion the most important trope to hacklikes is breadth of game element interactions. (...)

For me, this is the feature that differentiates it the most from all other roguelikes. Are there other roguelikes that have this as well?

<shameless self plug> PRIME! </shameless self plug> It has wearable guns (predator plasmacaster), and melee weapons you can fire (combi-stick extends) among other fun things. Many things can be applied. This is the direction the game goes forward the most. Well, maybe except fast evolving GUI which is a new thing.

The key difference is PRIME is explicit about that. When you identify a canister of napalm (explodes when thrown) it is automatically added to throwing menu suggestions. You still can throw any item if you suspect unknown canister might be napalm. Bionic brain implants (approximate ring equivalent) that do something when applied are listed in apply menu once identified. Items get lore which not only contains fluff text but also explanations on part of mechanics relevant to the inspected object. You can examine weapons to get precise damage ranges. Or not so precise if enhancement ("plus") is unknown.

We also went where NetHack has not. Unidentified items can be listed in different category altogether. The most insidious example I am proud of is lightsabers masking as innocuous flashlights. When you try to apply it and there is 50% chance you held it the wrong way and get burnt. Who bothers to identify candles in NetHack? Well, who bothers to identify flashlights in PRIME? You bet that might change a bit with new release.

In future there are plans to conquer hearts of NetHackers. Especially those thinking SLASH'EM is immensely cool.

Your posting is another proof that for different people very different parts of NetHack are considered good or bad. The roguelike radio team is reluctant to do a NetHack episode because "What can we say that hasn't been said about it already?". But I think that we finally will get an episode where each other will disagree with each other and some serious ass-kicking will occur. I'm betting on the Australian to win the fight ...  

Quite likely. I could propose a drinking game as a rematch. Then Poles would win.

112

Other Announcements / Re: The Year's Most Popular - By Category

« on: January 05, 2013, 11:47:29 AM »

The recent changes move it away from NetHack I think - more emphasis on balance, discussion of interface streamlining, removing spoiler-based gameplay, etc.  A lot of the tropes I associate with NetHack anyway 

I find that funny. NetHack is much easier game than ADOM and if it is unbalanced then it must be in player's favor. Spoiler-based gameplay fits NetHack well but it applies somewhat less to hacklikes as a whole.

In my opinion the most important trope to hacklikes is breadth of game element interactions. Multiple-use items are a staple. Reading food, eating weapons, jewelry and armor, throwing gems, drinking corpses ... Very unusual applications of objects, quirky interactions between game elements are the core thing here. Spoiler-based gameplay is a minor item. Kludgey interface is entirely optional!

113

Other Announcements / Re: ROTY advertisement fairness

« on: January 05, 2013, 11:35:02 AM »

How many votes did the poll get in total (meaning how many people actually voted)?

It is there in the preamble to full results:

Thanks to all 5,123 of you who voted on the 283 games below.

(emphasis mine)

Most certainly there are much more people who play roguelikes. Some could not be bothered to vote, some did not know about the poll.

114

Other Announcements / Re: 2013 in Roguelikeyness

« on: January 03, 2013, 09:42:17 PM »

In the meantime I've decided to put together my own response to the ROTY poll, which basically involves me playing - and reviewing - all the roguelikes that did about as well as mine did (which wasn't very well, but I was incredibly delighted with how many votes the game received).

I'm having a lot of fun* with Rogue's Tale at the minute (played and written up / scheduled this, PRIME and Steam Marines so far). I'd love to carry on through all 283, but I think that might be pushing things for one year.

Oh, hey! Developers just love such initiatives. Then I'll let you know that PRIME has new release planned mid January. You may wish to delay on it a bit since on Windows current version crashes on exit. You need to re-run the game every death, too. :-( Fixing this is on the way.

115

Other Announcements / Re: ROTY advertisement fairness

« on: January 02, 2013, 11:15:13 PM »

I like one thing very much about Ascii Dreams poll. The fact that it shows how large community it has. By community I am active folks who go out of their way to participate in the life of the game one way or another. Be it by joining a forum, giving praise by email, submitting YANIs, bug reports and whatnot or participating in development somehow. The blog post "The power of you" is still one of my favorites. It explains why it is viable to refer to 'community' as such subset.

For the largest games there is this mobilization of player which is neither bad nor unfair. Far from it! But this has an unfortunate side casualty. Other developers might get the idea they should also make a release close to beginning of the poll to carry a message to players effectively. I actually considered that carefully for a moment. However, PRIME is undergoing some bold changes at the moment and releasing it now would subject players to unusually high concentration of bugs. Hardly fun. Also, getting ten votes (placed one myself, so not eleven) without explicitly asking for it means a lot to me.

Andrew, kudos to you for taking a stab at preserving above cool quality of the poll. I suggest you go with the option c) and let ADOM and ToME compete as fiercely next year. That was fun to watch. Thomas Biskup has just started fulfilling his pledges and development promises so he can reasonably expect more voters in future. When ADOM finally fuses with NotEye, be afraid DarkGod! It has done wonders for PRIME. Imagine what it may give to ADOM. Most developers like me will probably not make special releases for December. It's not ARRP. So the effect you fear might not happen at all. I sincerely hope so!

116

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: [Sil] Goodbye Leron the Noldor...

« on: January 02, 2013, 11:12:03 PM »

A victorious Naugrim hero! All my most haughty and most brave Noldor have perished so far. Congratulations, Jim. I will echo Scatha and say this is indeed impressive.

117

Other Announcements / Re: This is bugging me pretty bad...

« on: December 16, 2012, 03:33:16 PM »

I'm now in a point where I'm not sure if the game I'm currently finishing is really a Roguelike, an ASCII-RPG or a Roguelike-like.

Like others said don't worry about it too much. If you want my opinion (a conservative one) here it goes.

Also, it's mentioned the Berlin Interpretation, that is somehow accepted by the @'s community as a standard for knowing if XXXXX game is a RL or not.

A standard, yes. Not as a final say though.

1.- Random environment generation
......Maps are PREMADE in human-readable format, i.e. not random generated
......Items absolutely random generated. (using basic patterns a.l.a diablo)
......Monsters absolutely random generated. (using basic patterns a.l.a. diablo)
......Also there is a lot of randomness in the game in many other aspects that don't event the most pure Roguelikes have.

Maps being premade also harms point nine (exploration) significantly because player can memorize most efficient scouting patterns. This invalidates the requirement of careful exploration. It also makes exploration boring. So actually you miss on two major points by this.

Dieing

Sorry for this nitpick but it bugs me. Dying, not dieing.

5.- Non-modal
......Yes and no. Yes because everything is worked out in the 'game' screen, EXCEPT combat, that is final fantasy-ish, more or less.

Combat, the core activity of a roguelike has a different mode? Sorry, but this results in no points for you in this category. Third major point missing.

6.- Complexity
......A lot. Actually, this point is what I am proud of it. The game is absolutely complex, with many factions, currencies for different kingdoms, a lot of quests and sidequests, a lot of places to explore and a lot of player freedom, each player class has his own completely different background story and aims, quests can be dynamically modified by other events or quests... Basically there is a lot of complexity.

Great! I want to play your game.

8.- Hack'n'slash
......Yes and no. Combat is one important part of the game, but not the most important and not the goal of the game.

Roguelikes are about combat in one form or another. If resolving conflict by defeating enemies somehow is not central you also fail this point. So "no", rather than "yes and no". Take Sword in Hand. There you have this kingdoms warring feature. It is a side thing which is what I would still call "yes".

......There are many fights, but not every 10 seconds, and not one every 30 minutes. I think it's quite balanced.

Good for your game!

9.- Exploration and discovery

I addressed this above.

So, by major points alone your game is not a roguelike, although you possess more than 50% of them. I like to reserve this term to games that are very close to the core. As others say worry not about this. Care about your game being great!

118

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: Welcome to Temple of the Roguelike Forums! (a.k.a. Introduce Yourself Thread)

« on: December 07, 2012, 08:14:42 PM »

I made an account here a year ago but never posted, so I guess it got purged.

You nailed it. We had an onslaught of spambots. Regular forum users were outnumbered one to ten. Most of those had posted only once or not at all which prompted a purge of old accounts with post count under two. Yours got deleted as a war casualty. Apologies for unintended damage. Otherwise all accounts are kept.

And, of course, welcome to the temple.

119

Other Announcements / Re: Roguelike of the Year - getting the list sorted

« on: December 07, 2012, 08:09:10 PM »

"Hyperbolic Rogue" should not be there, as it was written in Nov 2011 and newer versions appear on the list with other names. Including both HR2 and HR3 means that we are including both the 7DRL version and the current version, I am not sure whether this makes sense.

The list has it filed under "Hyperbolic Rogue" but the entry points to HyperRogue III. I guess Andrew took it as independent game and just added it. On my side this is fixed for next update. Thanks!

120

Programming / Re: Torso & Head direction

« on: December 07, 2012, 07:57:23 PM »

GearHead implements this for mecha.

DoomRL remembers the direction of last move you took. This influences dodging. It is easier to dodge missiles moving perpendicular to your path.

7DRL Mujahid explores view only in front of character in nice detail.

As for simulating facing of the head - usually this is absolutely horrible idea. In every traditional roguelike this failed miserably. The problem is called the lighthouse syndrome. Players tend to

IMO you don't want control scheme to differ from your usual movement keys. Assume the torso is going the direction of last movement or attack. Unless you are going to do tank roguelike.

Sil does flanking nicely. There torso orientation is not tracked. Instead when attacker has another ally behind the defender flanking bonuses are added. Example:

.....
.o...
..@o.
.o...

Each orc has two other orcs available to help when meleeing the hero. In Sil you may notice attacking goblinoids tend to assume such pattern around you.