Poll Concerning LambdaRogue

[mariodonick]

At least since version 1.5 (August 2009) no major bugs should occur anymore. All releases before 1.4 (December 2008) were still very buggy, though.

Balancing has also been worked on in 1.4 and 1.5 release, the game should be much easier than in earlier releases. Less and weaker monsters, better balancing of stats of monsters and items, much smaller dungeon levels.

I won't, however, ever implement an auto run key, because I never use such an option in other roguelikes. It is too much of "let the game be played automatically, because I'm too lazy".

[Vanguard]

It's been a while, but doesn't the player need to talk to a handful of NPCs before the game proper gets going?  It's usually best to throw them into things as quickly as possible if you can, since roguelikes involve restarting dozens if not hundreds of times.

Doesn't your game have difficulty levels where higher difficulties unlock more content?  What is your reasoning behind those?

I'm not saying difficulty levels are bad and wrong, but I can't think of another RL that uses them, and I'm wondering what made you decide to do things differently.

[mariodonick]

but doesn't the player need to talk to a handful of NPCs before the game proper gets going?  It's usually best to throw them into things as quickly as possible if you can, since roguelikes involve restarting dozens if not hundreds of times.

Your answers to the other thread in the development forum made me came to this guess, too. So you might be right. That's why I already thought of a pure crawling mode where you don't need to care about accepting quests first.

Difficulty levels have been introduced, because Sacred had them. In current versions of LR, the difficulty levels only influence the number of enemies and their respawn rate, as well as the number of randomly scattered items. All actual content is there in all difficulty levels.

[Vanguard]

Your answers to the other thread in the development forum made me came to this guess, too. So you might be right. That's why I already thought of a pure crawling mode where you don't need to care about accepting quests first.

My game (that's currently on the backburner) is more story based than the average roguelike, but I'm still keeping multiple playthroughs in mind, because it's still a roguelike.  I'm handling this by keeping story sections brief (no fetch quests, missions/quests are short with a high amount of action in them).  I'm going to keep the number of NPCs the player needs to talk to low.  Any given quest should only require speaking to one person to initiate it, and maybe one other person to finish it, and that's it.

Any story related NPC the player needs to talk to will always have one dialog option to skip everything else they have to say.  The only exception is when the player has a decision to make, in which case that option will take them immediately to the decision.

Like say they there's an NPC asking for the player's help against bandits.  They might say "We're being attacked by (insert name of bandits)!  Help us!"

The player will then be presented with options like this:

> Yes
   No
   Tell me more about the situation

I assume that the player has played through this before, and saying yes will immediately drop them into the thick of things.  If it is their first time, they can choose the third option, which will give more information on what's going on and what they can expect in the mission.

Maybe something like that would work for you?

[mariodonick]

Any given quest should only require speaking to one person to initiate it, and maybe one other person to finish it, and that's it. ... Maybe something like that would work for you?

I admit that, if you're given a quest to, say, kill 20 antbees, you need to go back to the person who gave you that quest, because it would make no sense to simply gain the reward without reporting the success, or _always_ go to another NPCs down the road.

Concerning the need of reading text: I expect players to read every text at least _once_, during the first play. Every quest text also has a short, one-line description. So I expect players to know which NPCs offer quests during the 2nd, 3rd, nth... playthrough. Then they can simply skip the texts and accept it or leave it. It should be as fast as your system ...

[guest509]

  Many good names have not taken yet.
  Something with Labyrinth maybe. Maze Slayer. Labyrinth Lord, etc...

EDIT: On second thought, go with 'Labyrinth Lord' if it hasn't been taken, as it will slide in smoothly with your already 'L' named game. If you think a name is holding you back...

[mariodonick]

Thanks for the ideas, Jo.

The name thing, however, has been solved -- I'll stick with LambdaRogue, because the players who know and play the game, know it under that name.

I emphasize it's subtitle stronger than before, thus I'll often speak of "LR: The Book of Stars". Additionally, I now use a slogan suggested by somebody in the development blog: Per Libris, ad Astra (To the stars, through Books).

[guest509]

  Sweet dude. It's next on my list for a play. As soon as I master Crawl...just kidding...:-)

[mariodonick]

Well, wait for patch 1.5.3 -- it brings lots of additional eye candy (including character portraits, player tiles that match the player portrait in the status area and animated earthquakes, wohoo!)  and further gameplay enhancements (offensive and defensive mode, more item combination & throwing effects ...)