Messages

46

Other Announcements / Re: Let's Play... a Bunch of Roguelikes!

« on: July 22, 2012, 10:18:07 AM »

Cheers dude. Some pretty useful feedback I can implement in the videos. Will get saved games working as soon as I can, it's a big task but I think it's well over due now.

47

Programming / Re: Hexagonal UI (numpad-less)

« on: July 21, 2012, 06:27:57 PM »

All games should come with key-config because of disabled/foreign players. That's just not being a dick in general.

You should tailor to one HID only. Even gamepads have taken over in FPS over mouse + keys.

I honestly think that hex should be controlled with mouse for a casual entry point to the game and graduate to keys for pro-players.

Hex does have the advantage in purity of mechanics over squares. This should be celebrated, but inviting people to the party needs to be done without scaring too many people off. Hexes remind people of bees. It's only natural for them to be afraid of them.

48

Early Dev / Re: MicRogue - Update Jun 19th

« on: July 14, 2012, 11:34:48 AM »

I am afraid that the game wont be as random. because the player will always know that after getting to the 3 dungeon, they will meet eyes, and all that. granted thats kind of the way it is for most games.

Lets say all of your monsters are cards. We put easy monsters in one pile, then medium monsters into another and so on.

Shuffle the piles separately.

Now start dealing from the easy deck - stop randomly halfway through. Now start dealing from the medium deck - stop randomly halfway through. And so on.

People will have a sense of what they will fight first but won't be able to guess what comes next. They won't even know when it's going to get harder. They won't even know what's been left in reserve. You can even deal from the reserve randomly to throw them off even more - or deal to a blacklist pile for content that the player will never see.

I've been trying this out in an arena platformer at work and it's great for easing the player into total chaos.

49

Programming / Re: Experience Points

« on: July 14, 2012, 11:13:26 AM »

This gives me a cool idea.  When you are inexperienced with a weapon and attack there should be the possibility of "you score a direct hit on the goblin, but unfortunately had your sword backwards and somehow cut yourself!"

You should play Orcs and Elves. It's a turn based 1st person dungeon crawler. It has a high emphasis on potion use with dwarven ale being often forced upon you by the ghost of a dwarf. He will only open the way if you drink some potent ale.

The way is opened and I'm surrounded by monsters. And I'm pissed - the screen is even wobbling to inform me that I have extra damage and a penalty to hit.

"Quick", says the ghost, "use the medusa scroll to freeze the enemies."

I open the medusa scroll, freeze one monster, turn to face another, open it again - but I'm pissed, the medusa scroll is the wrong way round. I'm frozen whilst monsters bash me from all sides.

Fucking dwarf.

50

Early Dev / Re: MicRogue - Update Jun 19th

« on: July 11, 2012, 06:04:25 PM »

Where did the moves bar go? It's way too easy now.

I think BoI does the random content in batches, also locking some content out. It's a very good system which more roguelikes should emulate (in the same breath I will say that I found the basic movement and shooting painfully unsatisfying - but I'm used to old school shoot-em-ups which are much more generous with bullets and effects, I respect the fact that other people can see past that in BoI).

51

Programming / Re: Experience Points

« on: July 10, 2012, 06:41:33 PM »

xp farming in my game is completely illusory.

You can farm for xp, but you can't get ahead because of the requirement. Similarly, when I used the debug menu to give myself strong armour and went in search of a bug at lower levels I would rocket up in levels fighting stuff -

then stop at the required level for that dungeon.

That is the magic of the doubling curve. It really is quite weird that by racing ahead I get bigger yield kills, but I'm not in that comfort zone above the curve where the going is a bit easier. But I do catch up with the curve - and very quickly as well. So much so that it makes the earlier levels seem meaningless in their reward.

It's not something I planned for - it just seems to be a side effect of the doubling requirement table and doling out enough at each milestone to get to the next level.

52

Programming / Re: Experience Points

« on: July 08, 2012, 08:02:46 PM »

I definitely like the idea of level-thru-use, but I've just never seen it done where I wasn't compelled to grind, or felt that I needed to spam certain abilities in combat to improve them, which is less fun than the alternatives in my opinion.

I'm reminded of throwing all your equipment and clothes in Dungeon Master to gain Ninja levels.

I think grind-usage can be okay so long as you only allow them to level a skill through meaningful use. But then you'd have to make sure that complementary skills level up in tandem. You can't have a wizard get all-mighty with magic and then expect them to assume a fighter role if they're going to ever increase their health. RPGs favour specialists. Which is why bards are often shit to play.

53

Early Dev / Re: MicRogue - Update Jun 19th

« on: July 04, 2012, 07:28:37 PM »

Consider the game Queens:

http://phuce.com/games/queens/

(It is brutal hard)

The introduction of a different character each time seems perfectly normal so long as the intro is quick.

54

Programming / Experience Points

« on: July 04, 2012, 06:49:55 PM »

So what is the standard formula for doling these out? I ask because I was reading this:

http://userpages.monmouth.com/~colonel/rvm.html#exp

I based my own system on the V4 table. The formula for the table looks to me like (I might be wrong, late in the day):

10 * 2 ^ level

But the experience points table for the monsters with the hit dice thing is bizarrely arbitrary looking. Yet it's supposed to work.

I simply gave up, split 1.5 * XP needed to level up once across the monsters in the level.

But somehow it seems to have worked. You level up steadily with each dungeon level, seeming to think you're ahead of the curve - but you never get past it because the requirement doubles. I added bonus experience based on the total XP, still no effect to progression. I levelled up with the grind stone to level 6. Went into the dungeon and hit trouble at level 7.

So how are other people doing it?

55

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: July 02, 2012, 01:44:29 PM »

I've started doing Google Analytics event tracking to see where players are dying and what parts of the game they've explored.

It's free, very simple to set up, and you can send events for pretty much any old data as three strings that group them into categories, actions and labels.

Code: [Select]

/* Sends information to the Google Analytics tracking widget on the home page of redrogue.net */
public function trackEvent(action:String, label:String = "", value:int = 0):void{
var params:Array = ["_trackEvent", "game_events", action, label, value];
if(allowScriptAccess){
ExternalInterface.call("_gaq.push", params);
}
trace(params);
}
I'm trying to find out how to fetch that data from their API. I think it would be really interesting for the game to become moulded by the player hive mind.

56

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: July 01, 2012, 07:40:15 PM »

This is the drop-kick-smite in action:



Yet again, the character AI is way better at this than humans.

57

Programming / Google Analytics

« on: July 01, 2012, 11:10:18 AM »

I've just set this up on Red Rogue and have now added tracking events to see how people are behaving in the game (I have to wait a day to see if the new event pings work though).

Does anyone know if there's an API to fetch the event and tracking data with Google Analytics?

I ask because I think it would be very interesting to be able to steer some of the procedural generation based on the data I'm getting.

Messages or content that is based on the player hive mind strikes me as a novel direction to take generator in.

58

Other Announcements / Re: So I am Buying Diablo III

« on: June 29, 2012, 08:10:46 AM »

The story is utter shite, lag is unforgivable in single player and whilst I could replay Diablo 2 (I really enjoyed making a death-ball-army with the Necromancer) I can't replay Diablo 3. I've unlocked the optimal way to play the character I've got and the rest of the characters I find boring. The other difficulty modes are a chore because you've already seen all your character's skills before you get to it, unlike Diablo 2.

However, I had a blast in multiplayer on launch week and enjoyed killing Diablo. I'm more disappointed with it because of my expectations really.

I'd recommend it as a fun game, but not life changing, and not replayable.

59

Early Dev / Re: MicRogue - Update Jun 19th

« on: June 23, 2012, 10:58:24 AM »

Just tried the latest version. Pretty much nailed the right length for the game. I had barely enough turns to get back to the stairs on level 3 so that was fairly exciting.

Looking forward to replaying for different dungeons.

60

Early Dev / Re: Red Rogue (platformer roguelike)

« on: June 18, 2012, 06:41:54 PM »

If you want to play on desktop, here's what to do:

Download this page:

http://redrogue.net/game.swf

Download the desktop projector:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.exe
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.app.zip
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/11/flashplayer_11_sa.i386.tar.gz

(links are all from this page: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html)

Drag the swf to the projector application and it will run on your desktop. Want to create a standalone executable of Red Rogue? Go to the menu on the projector, look under file, "create projector". Click on it.

Stupid easy right? So why aren't I providing standalone executables? Bug tracking. Recently I had a catastrophic bug that locked a player in the second level of the game. He provided me the random seed to recreate the dungeon and I was able to track down a tiny typo that was breaking the game on and off for many people - except me. When I'm satisfied the game is stable I will provide exes for as many OS' as Flash supports.

Oh, and if you play on desktop you get full keyboard support when you enter fullscreen mode from the in game menu under options.

I also added basic multiplayer (a la sonic and tails - on the same keyboard) recently because I'm insane. Seems to work well with gamepads:

OSX: http://abstractable.net/enjoy/
Win & Linux: there are links to JoyToKey at the bottom of the link above.