Author Topic: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta  (Read 18170 times)

getter77

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Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« on: December 17, 2010, 05:41:37 PM »
It is on my list of personal shame regarding my failure of helpful doings, but at the very least----should be chock full of potential and goodness for folk around here.

http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/content.php

Quote
It's a post-apocalyptic roguelike inspired by worlds like those of Dune, Gamma World, and Gene Wolfe's works. It is an open-world roguelike, heavily inspired by ADOM and Omega, providing a world map that combines static and procedurally generated locations with hand-written quests-lines. The world is deeply simulated; each monster is as "real" as the player -- they wield equipment, suffer all the same effects, and interact with the world in the same way as the player. Everything in the world -- creatures, items, walls, etc -- has a physical presence and can be destroyed, frozen, set on fire, etc. The whole world is contiguous, so if you want (and have the patience) you can go down a few levels and dig your way across the entire world. Though this physical simulation means that the game is fairly resource intensive for a roguelike.

We've tried to update the roguelike interface to be as modern as possible, providing user interfaces for conversation, trade, quests, and skills that should feel pretty modern, even though they are provided via a terminal interface. We provide the plethora of commands a roguelike player expects, but also provide a single "smart use" command (bound to 'Space' by default), that chooses the most "reasonable" thing to do in the square. So, for common interactions you can simply walk up to a door and hit 'Space' to open it, walk up to an NPC and hit 'Space' to talk to them, or walk up to a chest and hit 'Space' to loot it. Though if you want to run over to a pool of acid, fill up your canteen with it, and hurl it at a nearby enemy, all of the manual commands are available as well, and may be freely remapped.

We set out with a pretty ambitious feature set in mind, and while all of the content is not yet nearly complete, all of the core features are in place:

An expansive world map
Conversations
Detailed descriptions for everything in the world
Lots of items
A modern quest system
Lots of skills
Build your own items
Trade with any NPC

The game is built in .NET 2.0, so you'll need to install the .NET framework in order to run it; and it'll be Windows-only (sorry Mac/Linux guys, but it'd have taken me many times longer to do a project of this scope in c++).  The first main plot line beginning with Argyve is not yet complete to the end, but it goes quite far (as far as I know there's only been a single 'win' of the game in it's current form, and not for lack of trying), and it will be clear when you've reached the end. There's much left to add to the game, and all the feedback we get from this Beta will go into finish and polishing the final release.

Finally, when you run the game you'll notice you can purchase a registration key, though the unregistered version of the game is fully functional. Register if you'd like to help support us with this project and others like it.

We've spent a lot of time just making a game we ourselves would like to play, and we really hope you guys have fun with it!

Go nuts ASCII folk---they intend to work in the option of Tiles, at the least, likely as time rolls on.
Brian Emre Jeffears
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jim

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2010, 09:17:13 PM »
Sniff... they had me at Gene Wolfe.

AgingMinotaur

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2010, 10:18:08 PM »
Sounds interesting, but I take some offense at this:
(sorry Mac/Linux guys, but it'd have taken me many times longer to do a project of this scope in c++)
Whatever that means :P

As always,
Minotauros
This matir, as laborintus, Dedalus hous, hath many halkes and hurnes ... wyndynges and wrynkelynges.

stu

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2010, 10:35:20 PM »
.net2.0.... Guess this is not the game Brian was working on in 1998 :)
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Fenrir

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2010, 03:20:09 AM »
.net2.0.... Guess this is not the game Brian was working on in 1998 :)
In what regard? Beta testing? or was this a project of his about which I have been oblivious?

kipar

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2010, 11:39:19 AM »
It ate 1.25 GB of memory and shown nothing but empty window on my laptop.
How high are system requirements of this game?

stu

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2010, 02:20:49 PM »
.net2.0.... Guess this is not the game Brian was working on in 1998 :)
In what regard? Beta testing? or was this a project of his about which I have been oblivious?

dont know what happened to brians old projects but .net20 was not around in 1998 so its not the same game is all I implied ;)
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Fenrir

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2010, 05:06:45 PM »
dont know what happened to brians old projects but .net20 was not around in 1998 so its not the same game is all I implied ;)
I understood what you meant completely, but I was unaware that Brian had old projects at all.

jim

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #8 on: December 19, 2010, 05:26:27 PM »
It ate 1.25 GB of memory and shown nothing but empty window on my laptop.
How high are system requirements of this game?

System requirements are pretty high. When you run the game, be patient. It may take a full minute or so for the game to kick on for OpenGL graphics. You can try console if you prefer - it loads the game faster in my experience. After the game gets going, any reasonably modern system will be able to run it.

It's very fun!

getter77

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #9 on: December 20, 2010, 01:31:54 AM »
Heh, I THINK stu's referencing that a main dev on this wasn't on this in 1998---said gentleman's name also happens to be Brian.   :P   IIRC, he's been doing professional programming for a good many years but attempted an early Roguelike many a year back prior to skilling up in his trade.

Otherwise that is one incredibly eerie coincidence!
Brian Emre Jeffears
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stu

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2010, 02:18:56 PM »
The main dev is bbucklew right? which is brian bucklew... and brian was doing a RL in 1998.. that or someone with the exact same name as brian bucklew... see the bottom text of his article

http://pungentpickles.com/rlnews/dev00001.html

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getter77

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #11 on: December 24, 2010, 03:59:05 PM »
Yep yep, all cleared and correct as it is the same fellow now emerging fairly triumphant with CoQ.   :P

Quite a sum of rapid fire updated builds since this topic was created as well---lots of fixes and optimizations and then onward to yet more fleshed out content.
Brian Emre Jeffears
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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #12 on: January 04, 2011, 12:52:13 PM »
This is pretty cool.

Hananakajima

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #13 on: January 04, 2011, 10:03:11 PM »

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Re: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta
« Reply #14 on: January 04, 2011, 11:50:46 PM »
Thanks.


For some reason when I make mutants with superpowers, they tend to get killed fairly quickly, but ordinary sword guys are ultra strong and almost invincible.  Is that the same as how things are going for the rest of you?