Messages

91

Programming / Re: Ideas for generally better procedural algorithms and procedural content

« on: October 07, 2013, 07:00:29 AM »

Add explicit variations. This is a generalization of the other two. It adds the most flexibility but also involves the most work for the developer and possibly the player since they may need to know what variations are in play. For this technique, create a list of explicit changes to the core game and add a few at random. These changes can be small or large (undead get 1 extra hp vs undead get 50 extra hp), specific or general (followers of Cthulhu gain 5 attack when underground vs all creatures regenerate 1 additional hp per turn). Simply pick a few, or a lot, and add them. Some of the combinations may be wildly unfair but as long as there are ways of mitigating most misfortunes, it should always be fair enough. Perhaps.

A neat side effect of this is that it's sort of like having to identify items in that the player will have to identify what the rules are since they may be different from one game to another.

I like this idea. Sounds like it's inspired by Arkham Horror (various monsters (usually cultists) gets a different bonus depending on which which god you will fight, and also depending on certain conditions such as weather effects).

I wonder how you would make the player understand that an effect like this is in play though. If you just give Cultists 8 hp instead of 6 on a certain level, most would never notice this (especially if your attack damage is randomized). And displaying a message about this would be very metagamey. "There is an altar to Hastur on this level, the Cultists here are tougher." ... seems a little weird. How would the player character know this?

92

Temple of the Roguelike / Re: I miss the old RogueTemple theme

« on: October 03, 2013, 06:43:18 AM »

I actually did enjoy the slightly idiosyncratic feel of ye olde white-on-black theme, so I'll throw in a +1.

My thoughts exactly. The current theme... well it works, but it's so... common

The old theme really felt "Roguelike".

93

Design / Re: Hidden Uses of Items

« on: September 23, 2013, 06:23:16 PM »

If you can ID potions without wasting the potion or putting yourself at risk, the identification system is pointless.

Not necessarily. You could have a correspondingly reduced chance of identification for taking a smaller swig. Having said that, I don't necessarily see that it would be something worth adding. Again, realism versus good gameplay.

Pretty much my thought when I wrote my comment. It wasn't meant seriously at all, just a funny thing to consider

94

Design / Re: Hidden Uses of Items

« on: September 22, 2013, 03:28:57 PM »

I like this kind of stuff too. Sometimes it gets a bit wonky but generally it's fun to discover and experiment. Throwing of potions to apply the effect on a bad guy is neat. It seems weird though, I mean the player needs to drink the potion, right? But monsters just need to get doused?  :-)

I think the general idea is that they breath in the fumes + get doused. Yeah it's not completely consistent, but makes for fun gameplay

Isn't it also a little weird that you can't just taste a potion by drinking a few drops or half the potion? It could be used for identifying it without wasting the whole thing. Or if you need just a little healing, you take just a small sip from a potion of healing.

95

Programming / Re: What's the best simple graphics library for C++?

« on: August 18, 2013, 04:43:09 PM »

I recently dumped SDL, because it was so complicated to build an executable that would run on different versions of windows. You need lots of extra libraryies to do simple things like loading a jpeg or png file. With all those libraries come the linking nightmares.

Huh, funny. I just went back to SDL because it supports many different operating systems so well, and tends to work really smooth and problem free. And adding another library for extended functionality is no more trouble than setting up the main SDL.

96

Player's Plaza / Re: Features you love and features you hate to have in Roguelike games.

« on: August 14, 2013, 11:30:45 AM »

Features I love in Roguelikes:
* High difficulty - winning the game should be a lifetime event
* Procedural map/content generation
* Turn based gameplay - player reaction time should be totally irrelevant.
* Many possible ways to handle bad situations or be generally inventive while playing
* Permadeath
* Needing to die, learn a lesson, try again and do better
* Interesting monster behavior that makes them feel alive (you get the sense that they are struggling to make the correct decisions just as you are)
* Consistent atmospheric setting. I also like an "archetypal" setting: Tolkien, sci-fi, norse, post-apocalyptic, wild west, Lovecraftian horror (*cough*), etc are all fine.

Features that will keep me away from some roguelikes:
* Wacky/artistic setting like playing a naked crying child in the basement (The Binding of Isaac)
* Cute graphics
* Too simple

97

Programming / Re: Game balance and leveling.

« on: August 12, 2013, 03:09:32 PM »

Avoiding encounters should sometimes be a smart thing to do. Therefore I'm currently trying out the following changes:

I think that avoiding combats is something that comes naturally with difficulty. Players do tend to avoid combats which they think that are too dangerous.

Yep, and I want to emphasize this further, since it's one of the most funny moments of my game. It's a good thing to understand your game's strength, and exploit it as much as possible.

* Removed experience and levels. You pick all your traits and skills when creating the character (this also provides more opportunity for the player to experiment with different character types)

Although this feature presents itself quite flexible, it is prone to bring problems later on during gaming, when you realize that the skills and traits you've chosen were not the best combination or that those some skills and traits were not what you were expecting them to be. It happened to me when I used to Play Fallout 2 in which In some occasions I was forced start it all over with a new character. I still prefer creating a fresh character and letting the player train it at will throughout the whole gaming without restrictions whatsoever, while making sure that the character won't ascent in every field.

Choices should have consequences But seriously, you can't compare it to a huge story-driven static RPG. We are talking about a small game with procedural content generation. You'll generally die quickly, then you can restart and try something different. Besides, the abilities you pick will be like choosing a class, just with some opportunity to mix a little.

* Introducing "Wounds" which require a resource to heal - causing combat to have a long-term cost. More incentive to avoid it.

If you have a deadly and realistic combat system implemented, I'm pretty sure damage will be applied over body parts and compromise those parts, which in the end will be the same as the "wounds" you refer. What can really make you think twice about engaging combats is how difficulty healing can be. This can be done trough having few healing resources yes or needing long periods of time to fully recover.

I don't intend to have explicit body part wounds. Just an abstracted count of how many wounds you have. This gives combat a little more gritty and realistic feeling, without complicating things too much. Healing wounds will require both a lot of time and a limited resource.

98

Programming / Re: Game balance and leveling.

« on: August 12, 2013, 02:35:11 PM »

That makes sense and I fully support your point of view.

Alright, cool

99

Programming / Re: Game balance and leveling.

« on: August 12, 2013, 02:32:23 PM »

I asked that because you also mentioned features about avoiding combat. So if you can avoid combat and if combat does not give anything back, I thought it would not make any sense having combats at all.

You obviously can't avoid combat completely. Sometimes you'll have to make noise for example, and then they will come for you. If you bash down a stuck door or fire a gun, you will draw attention. There's also hidden monsters who will likely spot you first. Monsters can call for help, there's alarm traps, monster summoning traps, wandering monsters can find you by accident while you're busy with first aid, suddenly a wall can crumble and reveal zombies behind it, etc etc...

100

Programming / Re: Game balance and leveling.

« on: August 12, 2013, 02:07:23 PM »

Well, this got slightly off-topic, but I wanted to bring up an argument against experience for defeating monsters, and some ideas for enhancing the gameplay and atmosphere if you remove this feature.

I think I didn't got it right. If you remove the experience reward from killing foes, is there any reason left to slay creatures at all, apart from loot?

Not much at all, except that they are trying to kill you. That's the point. The player's goal is to descend the dungeon, and I want to make avoiding encounters a valid strategy to accomplish this.

To put it another way - when the player finds a big horrible monster, I don't want them to think "Ah sweet! I will get a lot of XP from this!". The monsters shouldn't be a part of the treasures of the dungeon.

But that's because you do not play such a heroic role in this game. Of course in heroic fantasy settings it's different, where the brave warrior defeats the evil monsters.

Though what I've written about in this thread is so far only experimentation. I may find that this didn't help the game at all and go back to a levels/XP-system. But it's worth a try.

101

Programming / Re: Game balance and leveling.

« on: August 12, 2013, 01:25:08 PM »

I generally like levels and experience system a lot. But for some games you may not want to reward the player for combat so much.

My game Infra Arcana is supposed to be Lovecraftian Roguelike, and it would benefit from not making the player feel like a janitor who has to clean every level from monsters.

Avoiding encounters should sometimes be a smart thing to do. Therefore I'm currently trying out the following changes:
* Removed experience and levels. You pick all your traits and skills when creating the character (this also provides more opportunity for the player to experiment with different character types)
* Some monsters will be much tougher - more incentive to avoid combat.
* Generally fewer monsters spawned. More free space = more opportunity to find alternative routes and avoid encounters.
* Sneaking is affected by range - a monster at the edge of your field of view will often fail to spot you, even if you don't pick the sneaking skill. More opportunity to avoid encounters.
* Introducing "Wounds" which require a resource to heal - causing combat to have a long-term cost. More incentive to avoid it.

Well, this got slightly off-topic, but I wanted to bring up an argument against experience for defeating monsters, and some ideas for enhancing the gameplay and atmosphere if you remove this feature.

102

Programming / Re: 16-Bit Fantasy sprite set

« on: July 28, 2013, 06:02:09 PM »

Superb!

103

Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: July 27, 2013, 10:04:21 AM »

Well then, go play a few AAA games

Nooo don't play friggin Mass Effect and Skyrim! Play good RPGs!

Try Fallout 2.

104

Other Announcements / Re: Losing interest in roguelikes

« on: July 25, 2013, 10:07:03 AM »

they just turn me off. Those features are permadeath and procedural content generation.

There are games that are like roguelikes but don't have those two features. Technical term for such game is a "role-playing game" (RPG).

Yeah.

Sounds to me like you'd enjoy something like Baldur's Gate (play through the whole series: BG + Tales of the Sword Coast + BG2 + Throne of Bhaal... you will be occupied for months/a year )

Another great RPG is Planescape Torment. It's heavily focused on dialog though, feels more like a book than a game. The combat is terrible but the story and dialog is amazing.

105

Early Dev / Re: Forbidden Depths - A 3D first person roguelike

« on: July 23, 2013, 11:27:26 AM »

Generally, I'd avoid words like "forbidden", game titles with such words sound so boring. Every second RPG has "forbidden" in its title, or similar crap. Inventing original names is not easy, but you don't need to hurry.

It's also not very google-friendly.

This search phrase Forbidden depths (no quotation marks) gives 20 000 000 hits. Apparently it's also a movie, and a level from a popular(?) James Bond video game.

Compare that with my game Infra arcana - 106 000 hits. A good number of those are relevant to the game. Almost all hits for the first five or so pages are relevant.