Golden Krone Hotel

[guest509]

The incomplete shit on Steam is irksome. Even games they say are done are just not in any way complete.

I've not played this game since the 7DRL but I'd say it's a good candidate for Steam. The $2.99 price point for me is the sweet spot, having spend the year engaged in Indie book publishing that's the magic spot where people start complaining. Could be different with games, but there will be a sweet spot.

[jere]

Thanks guys. There are some strong opinions on this forum and I fully expect a good portion of people not to like the idea.

But if I'm going to get it pushed through greenlight, I'd like to at least have some sort of "fanbase" here. The  comments help. And like I said, if there are specific features that are dealbreakers, that is something that I am definitely going to tackle.

[Darren Grey]

I would suggest giving the game to someone that doesn't play roguelikes and see how they got on with it. Ask them to play whilst you watch without giving any instructions. You might learn some surprising things.

[Vanguard]

But when you use the words "shallow" and "depth", I have a feeling you mean there are no skills, no races, no mutations/religion, etc.

Not at all.  Complexity and depth are different things.  Go, for example, is a profoundly simple game that can be taught to a child in an hour, but it's got enough depth that one could study it their entire life and still have room for improvement.  It's good that you can distinguish between the two.

Anyway, as far as improving GKH goes, one of the easiest ways to make bump combat interesting and tactical is to ask the player to deal with squads of enemies that stay together.  It makes location more important (open spaces mean you get swarmed, but hallways can lead to becoming trapped on both sides), it brings in the concept of target prioritization, and makes hit and run tactics more viable.

The two biggest problems that stand out to me in GKH are its food clock and the way it handles player speed.

A proper time limit gives meaning to even the most basic decisions.  Like in Brogue, the enemies are dangerous, so I wanna stop and heal between every fight, but the food clock is really strict and if I do that I will starve to death.  The simple choice of how much time to spend resting between fights can really differentiate between strong and weak players.

Golden Krone Hotel has a really minor time limit that doesn't need to be taken into account very often.  iirc vampires never starve so you're free to wait around as long as you like until an ideal situation presents itself.  A real food clock of some kind could make a big difference.  It doesn't even have to be about food.  If powerful but unrewarding enemies begin to generate the longer you spend in one stage then you should do your best to move on quickly.

The speed system, especially the fact that dexterity increases your movement speed leads to a bunch of problems.  Any enemy who is slower than you and who cannot harm you from range can be beaten 100% of the time in absolute safety as long as you're willing to put up with the tedium.  On the other hand, if an enemy is faster than you, running away is suddenly not much of an option.  You won't escape and you'll take damage without giving any in return.  Do enemies in GKH follow you through stairs?  I don't remember.  If they do then it's not as bad.  Anyway, it's one case where the game could be improved through becoming even more simple.  Give human form a set speed and vampire form a set speed, and don't include any easy ways to alter them.

[jere]

Sure, I get the difference (I'm an "amateur" Go player myself, though I haven't played in a while). The rules of Go are simple, but one could describe the strategy as complex, so I really had to guess at what you meant here. Thank you for elaborating.

You've got some good ideas, though I think several of your concerns have been addressed in recent patches:

• There is no squad AI and in general the AI is very weak. There is lots of room for improvement here. However, the humans/vampires now flock to light/dark areas. Which means they tend to group naturally.
• It used to be possible to kite slower enemies like golems with complete impunity, but I added a big variance to all moves. So even if you are very fast, the golem can occasionally get a hit in and it's going to hurt.
• Enemies used to not follow you up stairs, but they do now.
• The marginal utility of dexterity has been decreased, so you don't get such huge speed increases by putting a couple points into it.

Re: the clock, the actual hunger system doesn't work so much as a clock. The real clock is actually your health as a vampire. Since your base form is vampire and eventually you're going to run out of Soul Elixirs, you end up in a situation where your health constantly runs out (just by waiting around) until you're down to 0 HP. This health drop does need to be kicked up a bit and made into a percentage instead of a flat amount.

I will have to consider the monster generation (with no XP) idea. Currently cleared floors pose no problem.

Anyway, it's one case where the game could be improved through becoming even more simple.  Give human form a set speed and vampire form a set speed, and don't include any easy ways to alter them.

It sounds like what you're saying is this gives me the precision to design enemies who can just barely be outrun or ones that can just barely not be outrun. That might be worthwhile.

[akeley]

You can opt out of DRM on Steam (many indie games I play do just that), and you can still just have a link on your desktop. Some people like to demonise Steam, but from a developer perspective it's only as evil as you want it to be.

Please note I was just answering your question which was "would you buy GKH if it was on Steam". It was not my aim to start another pro/contra argument - these are pointless in 2015. Neither it was an attempt at dissuading you from putting your game on this platform - merely asking to keep other options open as well (especially seeing as you already have it on itch.io, and Desura has much broader audience and I think your game would fit there pretty well).   

As for the larger picture - I don`t think it is even possible to make a case against releasing roguelikes DRM-Free and can not imagine why would anybody try to make one. And surely it can not be such a great hassle to send a few emails to assorted other storefronts and make an upload or two.

Indie developers are cranking out tons of shovelware roguelikes and pseudo-roguelikes these days because it's easy money.

I don`t know about Steam but regarding other platforms this would be much exaggerated and unfair. It`s true, I can only think of two high-level RLs started as $ projects (Dungeonmans & Approaching Infinity) that are on par with the depth and complexity of old classics and newer offerings often mentioned on this forum. But it doesn`t mean that all the others are junk - most definitely worth a few bucks I spent and some with a potential to become even more advanced (e.g Claustrophobia, 1Quest, Farland)

I also don`t think that RLs necessarily need to be super polished, full of content and "finished" (what?) when presented for sale - this genre is rather notorious for long dev cycles and late blossoms. There`s risk that some will go Pixel Piracy`s way but some, like Claustropobia, will turn a pleasant surprise (2 years of updates and massive progress)

Anyway, my main concern re: "should I keep on buying" is not with shovelware and such but with the New and Old way of releasing roguelikes. There`s no avoiding the fact that monetization is how it`s gonna be from now on - more and more people will abandon the old way of donation/share/postcard (ahhh :) or simply free-ware and switch straight to sales. While I of course do not deny anybody the right to profit from releasing these games (again, prolific buyer here),  I can not help but wonder if in the long run it  won`t affect the quality and originality of roguelikes themselves. Because like I said in the beginning of this paragraph, not many of the RLs that started as commercial projects can compare to the old style ones. And that might (or might not - I keep an open mind) have to do with pressures and pitfalls of designing a commercial project for general public.

[jere]

Woops, didn't meant to start an argument or anything. Sorry. 

Quick post here. I've been playing around with showing previously explored tiles instead of leaving them black. The first thing I noticed is it makes the game a lot easier to play without focusing on the minimap (which most people apparently don't do). I feel like an idiot for not doing this sooner.

But like I said, there is an aesthetic issue here. Most games can make unexplored tiles black and previously explored tiles greyed out. But I can't do that with the dynamic lighting system. I need to be able to represent several different things here: unexplored tiles, explored tiles out of sight, dimly lit tiles, and completely dark tiles. That's why I was using black for two of those cases.

I can make the previously explored tiles bluish and that seems to work fine. But then if I want to keep the dark tiles black, I have to use a different color for unexplored, which I find kind of ugly:

Option 1

Or I can make the dark tiles a darker blue and keep unexplored black, but then it seems kind of weird to me when enemies suddenly pop out of the dark blue tiles:

Option 2

[reaver]

I need to be able to represent several different things here: unexplored tiles, explored tiles out of sight, dimly lit tiles, and completely dark tiles. That's why I was using black for two of those cases.

Can't you assign lightness for unexplored: 0%, out-of-sight 12% and use the range from 35% to 100% for dynamic lighting? Obviously playing around for better effect. The idea is that you can distinguish between the 3 different groups: completely unexplored, out-of-sight and somehow-lit, while allowing enough range for the lit. For the case of unexplored looking the same as completely dark, I'd use a seamless texture for unexplored tiles which looks mostly black of course.

[Darren Grey]

A dark grey cloudy texture would look better than flat black for unexplored, I think.

Also for enemies emerging from dark areas one thing I've seen work nicely in some games is having enemies vaguely visible when they're in the edge of a dark area. Have a shadowy sprite to show there's something there, but not reveal what. So you have the gradation of knowing something's lurking in the darkness to see it come fully into vision.

[jere]

[jere]

Just wanted to leave this note about Greenlight in this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=428549630

[Darren Grey]

You should probably start a new thread under 'Other Roguelikes' or 'Early Dev'. GKK is no longer a 7DRL!