Messages

31

Programming / Re: Visual Studio so close to awesome

« on: July 06, 2015, 06:29:50 AM »

Can we see an example that shows how these weird constructs allow you to write better code? I have seen things like that before, but I connect them to a rather bad style of programming. Of course I might be wrong on that as I use different languages and different paradigms. Honestly I don't see anything particularly useful in these bits of code, but an example could be enlightening. That way the topic would not transform into a pointless flame war.

By the way, I've been using Visual Studio for about 10 years and learned one thing; you can experiment with syntax, but if the IDE crashes, it means that you've gone too far .

32

Programming / Re: GUI library experiences

« on: June 10, 2015, 08:13:00 AM »

You give up so easily that I doubt you'll ever accomplish any programming task. Come on, this is a trivial problem and it exists in any modern graphics library. A million of people has already solved it. Stop complaining and use Google. "Next library" won't help you if you expect it to solve every problem you can possibly encounter.

33

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

« on: June 08, 2015, 09:39:10 AM »

What is happening when I read a scroll and it says I feel a strange sense of loss?

That sounds like a scroll of scare monster, a very powerful item that's used in an unconventional way. See here a spoily page that describes how to use it, among other things (scroll down a bit to get to the relevant bits).

No it doesn't. Is sounds like you have missed an opportunity to get something very powerful or valuable. I haven't played too much Rogue so I don't really know what type of scroll it was, but in general, classic roguelike game messages are meaningful and can serve as hints.

34

Programming / Re: GUI library experiences

« on: June 08, 2015, 06:32:04 AM »

The library I'm talking about does have menus and file dialogs and I actually use it in some tools like map editor.

35

Programming / Re: GUI library experiences

« on: June 08, 2015, 06:02:19 AM »

The other library I took a brief look was wxWidgets, but it's just too large and complex library and programming it seems to be similar C++ experience with macros and all that crap. Why they had to use C++ (wrap in classes) if it's badly written C?

I just need a GUI library with basic dialogs, especially a file dialog and menus etc.

wxWidgets was born in the 1990s, when everyone was thinking that macros were OK, nobody had ever heard of design patterns and OOP was considered just that -- C with classes. I agree that it is overloaded with features you will probably never use and carries a lot of legacy crap. Not a good choice for games or small RAD tools.

I had the same problem about 10 years ago when I was looking for a GUI library for my game. Eventually I chose something that wasn't quite a GUI library (Irrlicht) and modified it to suit my needs. It's not really great as GUI, but it has one major kick-ass advantage: it's simple. Whenever I need to extend it, I can do it. Whenever something breaks, I'm able to debug it and I actually understand the code behind the GUI, because it is simple. This simplicity, of course, contributes to tiny size of the source code. And there are no macros -- well, almost .

36

Off-topic (Locked) / Re: To get or not to get Windows 10

« on: June 03, 2015, 12:14:07 PM »

Programmer's wisdom says: if it ain't broken, don't fix. That's why I refuse all upgrades unless I know they actually improve something (usually they don't).

37

Design / Re: Quack Potions

« on: June 02, 2015, 10:52:33 AM »

If item ID systems are removed, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor with negative effects must be removed because they become pointless. Only positive scrolls, potions, etc. will remain in the game.

Not true. You can have items that combine positive and negative effects. Even if you know these effects from the beginning, you still need a choice to be made, which is fun. What is more, in many games you can use some of 'negative' potions to your advance, for example by throwing them on enemies (or maybe by forcing an enemy to drink those potions -- interesting idea, by the way, or using them to build a trap, or leaving them on ground in a hope that a monster will pick it up and drink). Isn't it pure 'roguelikeness'? You usually don't experience such things in mainstream games.

38

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

« on: May 25, 2015, 07:11:00 AM »

Guys, I have the impression the forum is dead since it lost its theme. Nobody posts anymore as before.

The interesting thing is that none of the 4 responses to your post mentions the theme. Whatever the real reason is, I'm afraid that little can be done to prevent it. The genre has ultimately transformed into a writhing mass of primal chaos (hello ADOM fans ). 10 years ago every deviation from traditional roguelikes could be called an innovation, but today it's just one big mess. No wonder that people are turning away from it. They are probably also bored with more traditional games as well.

Having said that, I'm getting back to development!

39

Programming / Re: Any C/C++ library for roguelike without SDL dependency?

« on: May 20, 2015, 10:45:03 AM »

It depends what you call a 'dependency', why you want to avoid it, and what you need the library for. "C/C++ roguelike" is not a very precise term (the very 'roguelike' word is pretty vague these days). At least say if this is going to be ASCII or tiles, and which platform are you targeting.

40

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Warlock Of Firetop Mountain roguelike

« on: April 28, 2015, 10:55:57 AM »

Hey Mr Minotaur, I am guessing this is because I am using "windows.h" for all keyboard input as opposed to a decent input library.

I'm guessing that you just haven't added support for alternative keyboard layouts. It is not a trivial stuff, so no one is going to be angry at you, just don't blame Microsoft for everything .

41

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 31, 2015, 12:39:39 PM »

Well, they can, from some time ago. It requires some additional configuring to enable so it's not quite there yet, but situation is improving.

Sure I know this stuff (what other choice do I really have if I need to debug my game on Linux?) , but it is still *very* far from the comfort VS has been offering since forever. STL has became a part of the standard back in 1994 (please correct me if I'm wrong), now we have 2015 and "situation is improving" does not make me a happy GCC user at all .

42

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 31, 2015, 08:42:36 AM »

I don't hunt down bugs, I know where they are. Kaduria has 49K lines of code and 5 open bugs and I know where they are. The thing is that you can easily take out 90% of memory corruption bugs with strict constructor-destructor and ownership rules (and not using raw arrays). You simply don't produce those bugs anymore, so you don't have to hunt them down with debugger. There are bugs after that, but mostly you know exactly where they are even without debugger.

It's very easy to keep bug count that low when your game is not released to the public. Make it available and you'll have bugs.

43

Programming / Re: How do I actually use libtcod?

« on: March 30, 2015, 06:03:03 AM »

Use Visual Studio. It has the best debugging facilities ever created by man, while GNU tools can't even display contents of a string properly. Remember that debugging is 90% of a programmer's work. Slight compiler differences, even if they speak in favor of the GNU stuff, will never compensate an inferior debugging system.

44

Other Announcements / Re: Granted, the last couple of years were a bit rough ;)

« on: March 11, 2015, 07:57:46 AM »

That sucks. I was hoping my mushroom-kin sex simulation roguelike would win this year.

No, it would not. You've forgotten to write a voting bot.

45

Other Announcements / Re: Roguelike Radio podcast

« on: March 05, 2015, 09:54:18 AM »

I'm not sure why you think good roguelikes are in any way easy to find. Games like HyperRogue are little known even to veterans of the community. If you're young and not exposed to many games how do you have any hope of finding it?

If you are looking for roguelikes, you type "roguelike" in Google and get the Roguebasin page, where you can find any RL that has been ever heard of. There's even a recent update on HyperRogue. And you can learn ridiculous things, such as that Diablo is also a roguelike. How Steam is better than that? Okay, it does not have the 7DRL junk flood .