Author Topic: Roguelike Radio podcast  (Read 414372 times)

ido

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #60 on: December 23, 2011, 03:38:25 PM »
As well as graphics I think sound shouldn't be underrated either. Cardinal Quest is good for this too. Not just music but appropriate sound effects that make one less reliant on reading a combat log.

Did you know? Most of the sounds effects in Cardinal Quest were made with bfxr and took no longer than ~1 minute per effect to produce.

st33d

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #61 on: December 23, 2011, 06:18:12 PM »
4 directional movement got on my tits in 100 rogues, especially with a hunger mechanic on top of that. But I have to admit that on the iPad the gameplay was very accessible and I only lament the sometimes clunkiness of the graphics programming (juddery panel movements and gaps between tiles as the level scrolls). All in all it's not perfect, but it's still a good game. (Though I wish they'd had a demo version instead of making me gamble - I've bought a number of shit games for the iPad now and demos really help stop that happening.)

The other roguelikes I've tried on the iPad have been pretty ropey to be fair. I dread to think what it would be like to play them on the iPhone. Though iNetHack had a rather good approach to interface with an inspectable menu for the myriad of controls and illuminated ascii letters as opposed to a dodgy tile set where you'd have to guess what the artist was trying to draw. It's free, go get it.

getter77

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #62 on: December 23, 2011, 08:21:15 PM »
Cavern for iDevices had a pretty good looking UI and whatnot from what I recall from videos, shame the main site is gone and all.  No idea if it is even still available proper for the platform.
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XLambda

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #63 on: December 25, 2011, 11:36:49 PM »
Now let's look at the two options that are left. What I've been trying to figure out is: Suppose we had two commercial roguelike games, one with stunning graphics, but crappy UI and one with crappy graphics, but wonderfully intuitive UI. Which one do you think would be more popular?

They will both be unsuccessful, like the vast majority of indie games.

You need both a good UI and decent aesthetics (which could also be done with very low-fi graphics, e.g. Cardinal Quest or Legends of Yore, or even Brogue).

Yeah, I guess so...  Again, my initial discomfort might have been a fair bit exaggerated. :-[

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #64 on: January 10, 2012, 11:22:17 AM »
We're back after teh Christmas break.  For those that missed it here's the Roguelike of the Year episode:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/12/episode-17-roguelike-of-year-2011.html

And here's the latest episode, discussing the winner of the Roguelike of the Year, ToME4:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/01/episode-18-tome4.html

For those on iTunes, I'd be very grateful if you can leave reviews/ratings, as currently we don't have enough to be given an average score.

XLambda

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #65 on: January 10, 2012, 12:21:01 PM »
We're back after teh Christmas break.  For those that missed it here's the Roguelike of the Year episode:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/12/episode-17-roguelike-of-year-2011.html

And here's the latest episode, discussing the winner of the Roguelike of the Year, ToME4:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/01/episode-18-tome4.html

Great to see you discussing tome4 - I had some huge fun with that recently. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say!

For those on iTunes, I'd be very grateful if you can leave reviews/ratings, as currently we don't have enough to be given an average score.
I'll see what I can do!  :)

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #66 on: January 24, 2012, 10:53:09 PM »
Two new eps!  Interview with DarkGod, and interview with Whales / discussion of Cataclysm:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/01/episode-19-interview-with-darkgod.html

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/01/episode-20-cataclysm.html

Next week is Procedural Content.

guest509

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #67 on: January 27, 2012, 03:35:45 AM »
  Both interviews were great. Looks like Cataclysm is the go to sandbox as well as the go to Post Apoc RL.

Z

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #68 on: January 27, 2012, 09:59:53 PM »
I have not played ToME yet, but I share DarkGod's feelings about the consumables. There are lots of games where consumables are mostly junk (not powerful enough to care about, or available in a huge supply so they no longer work like consumables), like Angband variants and ADOM.

In general there are two kinds of consumables: temporary (offensive wands, potions of healing, speed) and permanent ones (potion of strength, scroll of identify). It's the temporary ones which cause problems. I don't remember using wands in ADOM, other than the wand of wishing (permanent), wand of cold (used for a special permanent purpose), and maybe wand of trap creation (permanent purpose). I tend to never or almost never use temporary consumables, in ADOM and other games. Especially in the games where the inventory is bounded, weak temporary consumables are often simply not worth it to carry.

That's why most wands and other magical items in my Vapors of Insanity are designed as items which charge themselves from a mana source (such as PC), except some of the more powerful ones (that would be permanents). To prevent abuse (carrying a huge backpack filled with charged powerful wands) the power is lost when not connected to a mana source. I still have temporary potions, but I don't like them, and I am thinking about replacing them with something better (I especially hate how illogical it is that you can magically create a potion of speed or whatever, but you cannot store it in a bottle). I have read somewhere an idea that potions should have an expiry date, this could work. It would be logical with herbs, which could have magical effects only shortly after picking.

But I think it is possible to do consumables correctly, too. Crawl has powerful potions of healing, but a limited number of them. A Crawl player finds potions of healing at some find rate, and uses them at use rate. The find rate is constant, but use rate depends on the player's skill. As a newbie, my use rate was higher than the find rate, so my supply of potions of healing was depleted, and, well, game over. As I got more and more skilled, my use rate finally became lower than the find rate, allowing me to win the game. Crawl also has some very powerful wands, which really help in hard fights, and similarly work as a tool whose find/use rate is used to decide when to allow the player to win.

I am also happy with how things work in my Hydra Slayer. Consumables are found in a limited quantity (a must for meaningful consumables), and there are some permanent, and some temporary ones. However, since health does not regenerate for free in Hydra Slayer, it becomes a permanent. A typical situation is that you can win a battle losing lots of health, or use a temporary consumable. In other words, you can trade your temporary consumable for a permanent health bonus (and your job is to find the right moment, when the health bonus will be the biggest). This makes them somewhat permanent themselves, and work as a real resource.

Regarding Cataclysm and Curses... I used to be a follower of Curses (and similar ways of using the system console), but nowadays, libtcod becomes a new standard, and I am even myself helping to make it overcome its disadvantages (by adding the NotEye/streaming support, so we will be able to play libtcod games over network, not only for the Curses ones)... probably we should switch to it.

Bear

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #69 on: January 30, 2012, 06:25:56 PM »
I have a thought about consumables that I haven't seen used in roguelike games yet.  It may be a good idea, or it may not.

The idea is that consumables are generated in limited quantities and not respawned, but last long enough that their effects are (usually) overlapping.  That is, you quaff your potion of speed and it lasts a few thousand turns - during which time, if you're making progress, you're likely to find another potion that confers an equally large advantage and quaff that one too.

The effect is that they act as "power-ups."  If you speed-run, you can remain buffed under several different simultaneous potion effects all the time, and some combinations can be awesome.  But if you explore slowly, you'll usually have only one in effect at a time, and frequently none, which will make you weak compared to the speed-runners. 

The result would be a game balanced for speed running; where you have to strive to go fast and uncover new territory (and new consumables) as quickly as you can in order to have a chance of beating what you meet there, and "grinding" behavior wouldn't keep you powered-up enough to deal with the later levels.

Bear



Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #70 on: January 31, 2012, 12:26:34 PM »
Awesome idea actually.  It would replace a food clock with a power push, which is much more fun for the player.  It would have to be carefully balanced of course, so that there's no way to get too many of the things, and that grinding won't reward you with extra of them.  Perhaps only bosses would drop them?  Or maybe you only get a boost on level transfer, so you've got x turns with extra power.

You should come on the show some time by the way, Bear.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2012, 12:32:47 PM by Darren Grey »

guest509

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #71 on: February 01, 2012, 12:12:35 AM »
@Bear - Sounds like a good 7DRL idea Bear. And yeah you should go on RR-Radio man.

Lord Blade

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #72 on: February 02, 2012, 01:14:04 PM »
Generally I don't use too many consumables in Roguelikes, because I figure that if you have to rely on healing potions and buffs, then you're doing it wrong. :p

Naturally, a wizard who keeps casting things to buff himself makes sense, as they're physically weak.
But when I have a fighter type, I try to play in a way that will get me quick kills, without getting into battles of attrition, where I end up chugging potion after potion.
That way I do have a decent supply, just in case. But I can go through mostly on my own merits.

In ADoM, I never found consumables to be overly common. I mean, there is a decent supply of most things... usually. You could also have runs where you wouldn't find anything for ages. But I never found it get to the point where I just had so many potions and wands around that they were all in excess.

And depending on my character, I would make good use of wands in ADoM. Non-casters use them a lot, as they lack that magical punch that's sometimes needed, especially with monster rooms. Having that wand of fire or cold to zap across a half dozen monsters definitely helps.

Of course, mages could use wands and such as well to save their own PP and spell charges for more dire situations. With many casters, wands became almost my main attack form. Anything bigger than fodder met the end of a wand, as it was dangerous to try and go toe to toe with them.

Rather than an expiry date on items, I think an algorithm that affects drop rates would work well. Basically, you'd have your normal drop rate for items, and as the character collects more and more of them, the drop rate starts to lower, based on how many are currently kept.

So if say a potion has a 5% drop rate (just random example), say for every potion (of that type) that the character has, the drop rate falls by perhaps 0.1%. So once you're holding on to 10 healing potions, you've now only got a 4% chance of finding another.
Maybe make it a larger drop, but I think you get the idea.

Naturally it would have to be well balanced, so that the player can get a decent amount of them to keep themselves going if things are rough. But also a large enough reduction so that once they're at a certain point, they're just not going to find more (outside of things like shops and guaranteed events).

This means that they can use potions as needed, and still have a decent chance of getting more, but if they're doing well enough, then they don't really need more.

I don't mind the idea of wands using the player's mana to cast and such. The problem is, that means fighter types will generally get very little use of them. Though I suppose a fighter with wand focus type character could be designed for that purpose.

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #73 on: February 17, 2012, 12:42:47 AM »
Hmm, a few updates due in this thread:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-21-procedural-generation.html
http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-22-infra-arcana.html
http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-23-interview-with-david-ploog.html
http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-24-themes-and-settings.html

Planning an interview with Kornel Kisielewicz next week, another game after that, an episode on Permadeath and then a month dedicated to 7DRLs - how to make them, previous highlights, and looking at some of the releases this year.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2012, 11:32:47 AM by Darren Grey »

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #74 on: March 04, 2012, 12:35:41 AM »
Rather delayed, but here's our latest episode on Permadeath:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/03/episode-25-permadeath.html

Next ep on "How to Make a 7DRL" has already been recorded, and will be edited and posted up in the next few days.