Author Topic: Roguelike Radio podcast  (Read 414710 times)

AdamStrange

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #480 on: May 13, 2018, 07:16:28 AM »
I was a little surprised that with the new podcast they didn't at least mention some of the more graphical entries. Admittedly I am biased as I wrote one of them. But I would have thought there would have been some minor discussion about the use of 3d.

jere

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #481 on: May 13, 2018, 03:55:36 PM »
I agree, it sucks to not have your game covered. I wish every game could be mentioned because we know every dev goes through a hell of a lot of effort. I've never heard of your game until now and it looks very interesting! I wish I had played it.

The reality is even with 4 guests, there's no way we could have judged or covered all of the games among us. There's 113 successful entries not to mention unsuccessful ones, so about 30 games per participant and that's assuming none of our judging overlapped, which of course it did.

Quote
more graphical entries

A weird phrasing, I think. Most of the games were "graphical", some of them exceedingly beautiful as I made sure to point out.

Quote
I would have thought there would have been some minor discussion about the use of 3d.
To be perfectly honest, 3D in and of itself is not especially noteworthy in this challenge. With engines like Unity freely available, we usually see 3D entries every single year. There were a couple 3D games that I had judged that I didn't mention on the podcast simply because they weren't especially good.

I looked up some reviews of your game and found this line:

"There is a firmly established tradition in 7DRL of every year having a game with beautiful 3D graphics which took the full 7 days and left absolutely no time for anything even remotely approaching gameplay."

I would wager this might be overly harsh feedback so take it with a grain of salt, but still sums up the issue. 3D is a lot of work! For this reason, the 3D games we see in the challenge tend to be the less mechanically interesting ones.

I should also mention some thoughts about the judging criteria (something I've thought about a lot) because Darren went out of his way to highlight the highest rated games even if he hadn't played them. Having superb graphics is only a drop in the bucket. There are 6 categories and having 3D graphics is only going to definitively affect Aesthetics. And even there you can get crushed by having a poor UI or bad controls. As opposed to other challenges, this is one where the rules are guiding people towards making roguelikes and mechanically deep ones at at that.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2018, 04:08:50 PM by jere »
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AdamStrange

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #482 on: May 14, 2018, 05:34:30 AM »
That's a very good answer. Nice and clear with examples of how and why thing work. Thank-you for that :)

You are correct in saying a lot of work went into the 3d engine itself - It is a custom build by myself and not using unity or any other 3rd party library. Maybe you'll see the style next year?

I definitely take criticism of poor gameplay and fully understand that. Hopefully I can improve next year? Maybe even with something ascii and deeper gameplay...
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 05:37:34 AM by AdamStrange »

Krice

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #483 on: May 14, 2018, 11:19:42 AM »
You are correct in saying a lot of work went into the 3d engine itself - It is a custom build by myself and not using unity or any other 3rd party library. Maybe you'll see the style next year?

Why would you limit it to 7DRL? Why not just make an actual roguelike game with that engine? If I had a 3D engine I would shit my pants and then make a roguelike game.

AdamStrange

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #484 on: May 15, 2018, 05:15:00 AM »
thanks Krice. my 7drl entry has been continuously updated (with the most recent addressing a lot of the issues and also having a linux build). the 7drl was really it's first public outing. I'll still be working with the engine :)

jere

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #485 on: May 15, 2018, 02:13:47 PM »
"I'm here to shit my pants and make a 3D roguelike and I'm all out of 3D."
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 02:51:44 PM by jere »
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Krice

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #486 on: May 15, 2018, 04:50:16 PM »
"I'm here to shit my pants and make a 3D roguelike and I'm all out of 3D."

Well you never know if I get interested about making one. I'm a professional 3D modeler so it wouldn't be that hard creating art for the game at least.

Krice

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #487 on: August 25, 2018, 01:21:13 PM »
Episode 147: Difficulty. I didn't listen all of it, because it was quite hard to follow with all that pseudo-intellectual mumbling. Doull seems to be somewhat douche and I could almost see the faces (facepalms) of other guys when they heard him explaining. I think roguelikes have "1980's" difficulty and gameplay, where you learn small details and repeat them until you don't die. In fact many other types of games in 80's had "permadeath", because you couldn't save the game, the technology was not yet there. That's why even small games had things that you probably couldn't prepare for the first time, but knew later how to deal with that particular problem. So, when you watch playthroughs of experienced players it's actually quite easy for them. They know what to do in what order and good players have also a memory skill of an elephant, they remember what items are, how they are better than other items etc.

ps. I'm sure we have covered this before and I wrote something exactly like this.

Troubler

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #488 on: October 04, 2018, 03:36:53 AM »
I've been listening to this sometimes while playing roguelikes. I often end up disagreeing, but hearing other perspectives has opened my eyes to some things.

I distinctly remember beating Angband. It was such a stressful experience that I really didn't want to go through with it a second time.
One part of me thinks it's amazing that a game can inspire those kind of feelings. That's something really special, though often not intentional.
On the other hand, when there is an implicit promise that each new game I intend to seriously attempt will pull some dirty tricks, it makes me think twice.

Even the "easy" roguelikes make it a point to be extraordinarily difficult, so much so that their own developers often don't bother to beat them. A sin in any other genre.
I have one theory as to why this is. So many roguelikes, in an attempt to extend their longevity, end up catering heavily to their expert cult-following.
I'll rattle off a few examples of the kind of thing I mean:
The developer of Moria had made it a point to "fix" the various strategies that people used to beat the game. A common practice today.
DCSS is continuing it's content cleansing to remain fun for its more exploitative experts, who are intent to keep playing like a machine would.
Nethack goes on with it's myriad of seemingly requisite spoilers and insider knowledge, as does Angband to a frustrating degree.
There is an old running joke in the IVAN community that beating the game is a bug that just hasn't been fixed yet.
Even in rogue, I remember hearing the developers altering the game so as to make it difficult for the rogomatic to beat.
What's next? Some kind of impossibly sadistic roguelike designed around TAS? If it exists, some neckbeard out there will master it and hog the developers.

You can beat plenty of smaller games relatively inexperienced, but even then "relatively" means the developers expectation of at least a month of solid play before cracking it.
At some point it becomes an issue of if a game even deserves to be as difficult as it is. That is, the difficulty detracts from a game already dealing poorly with repetition.
It can become a kind of a "buyers remorse" trap. Sure, you can always give up on the game, but you won't feel good having invested all those hours into nothing...
So you are stuck with a boring game. At times it might feel safer to just avoid the crowd because of this, and not invest much time in anything too poorly documented. Just in case.
This is one, more unfortunate, reason why I think roguelikes are such an addictive genre of games. A lot of the games are simply bad, but we carry on to justify a time investment.

I sometimes wish I could find more roguelikes that just drop all pretenses and act like any other RPG but within a procedural, permadeath, roguelike world.
It doesn't seem like too much to ask for, but barring 7 day roguelikes (which I have other problems with), it's like a vast wasteland of difficulty, with few gems.
Old games were fine being this hard when you would only have a small library, but when there is all of roguebasin to explore, it gets exhausting churning out the victories.
Yeah, it's very satisfying to long ponder a games philosophy, and even better to finally beat it and hear the lamentations of the developers. But there is such a thing as wearing out your welcome.
Some people can beat a certain game with every race, every class, every conduct, and all while only wielding a sock. But things shouldn't be designed around that crowd so often.

It seems logical to cater to your most dedicated fans, especially when they might be your last, but at the same time it has probably hurt the genre as a whole.
I still don't want to change what has already happened. Every roguelike in existence is special in its own way, and has its own riddles and lessons, and that's a big part of why I love this genre.
Maybe it would just be nice if I could catch a break more often. There is some point where you must admit the game has run its course and the player (and maybe even developer) should move on.

akeley

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #489 on: October 04, 2018, 09:54:22 AM »
It seems you fall for the allure of the "must win" mentality. For me, somebody who came to RLs from 3 decades in c/jRPG land, where you play games to "finish" them, it was so refreshing to discover a completely different approach. Now I enjoy RLs for the ever changing situations, emergence, stories and other genre-specific peculiarities. I've played Linley's Crawl nearly every day for the last several years, never won and still look forward very much to starting again, even if I die 3 times within 10 minutes. Same goes for the likes of Sil, ADOM, Qud, Nethack and other trad classics. Sure, it's good to have something to aim for - I'm not really a fan of infinite dungeons - but it's so much more about the journey than the destination. For me at least.

Therefore the last thing I'd like to happen is for roguelikes to "act like any RPG would". Sadly, such opinions are heard quite often nowadays with constant harping about how the old design is just a 30 year old mistake, ID game/food/clocks/permadeath/etc sucks and so on. People seem not to like such devices to get in the way of them winning and being generally victorious. And games which borrow from this kind of ideology frankly bore me (thinking of Dungeonmans or TOME here).  That is not to say they shouldn't exist - as long as we remember this approach is just different, not the right one.

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #490 on: October 05, 2018, 12:13:17 PM »
I sometimes wish I could find more roguelikes that just drop all pretenses and act like any other RPG but within a procedural, permadeath, roguelike world.

Game suggestions for you:
 * Tales of Maj'Eyal - Has an Adventure Mode and difficulty settings that let you play at a more relaxed pace
 * Dungeonmans - A proper roguelike, but relatively light-hearted, and has some progression across games that takes the sting out of permadeath
 * DoomRL - Many many difficulty levels, so you can play at the level of challenge you enjoy

But as you say, a big problem with more established games is that they grow increasingly catered around their most hardcore audience. Developers are motivated by the feedback they receive, and it is almost exclusively the hardcore fans that give serious feedback,

Krice

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #491 on: October 06, 2018, 08:48:32 PM »
Developers are motivated by the feedback they receive, and it is almost exclusively the hardcore fans that give serious feedback

While this may be true for some developers it's not for all. Some developers like myself are motivated mostly by the genre itself. In my opinion roguelikes are still today a platform for gameplay ideas possibly never seen before.

Troubler

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #492 on: October 14, 2018, 09:33:24 PM »
If not motivated, many may still be disproportionately influenced by the most knowledgeable level of feedback.
And if not that, it still can come in through witnessing that feedback to other projects. Fair enough though, I don't want to accuse you of anything Krice.
This is just me recounting my experience over the years. I hope nobody will take it too personally. It is more of a vague systemic problem in my eyes.
It may not actually be solvable for that reason, but I think it gives the roguelike genre its characteristic difficulty, and the consequences of that difficulty.

Anyway, I do not want to dumb-down roguelikes, and I do not think even most novice players really do either. Usually it's the developers who want these things if anyone.
Either in a (possibly misguided) attempt to spread the popularity of the game, or make it less tedious, or scratch some developer-specific "itch" regarding optimial design.

I understand your point of view akeley. Sorry if I sound conceited, but I used to see it that way when I started out. First I found rogue, loved the concept, then was distracted by Nethack.
Finding a game like that blew me away. The gameplay was beyond my wildest imagination at the time. And I never thought twice about beating Nethack for many years. It was just beyond me.
Or any roguelike, but I kept playing. Though Nethack was my Crawl, the game I played every day. But several years later I had somehow stumbled upon my first victory.
At this point I've beaten all of the games mentioned since my post, more or less depending on my level of dedication to and enjoyment of the specific game, except Dungeonmans.
I might consider playing that one later, but I don't use steam. I do remember the difficulty of DoomRL hitting pretty close to "just right" though, but I haven't played it in a while.

I think the reason why I play roguelikes to win now is the same reason you may come into that mentality playing crpgs. Because you are allowed to fall into that mentality.
Most people will not "play to win" roguelikes because, once the novelty wears off, they lose interest before they are able to obtain this level of proficiency that is common in most other genres.
For me, I've noticed going from one game to the next often involves a lot of dealing with insider-focused decisions the developers have perhaps unwittingly designed into a cryptic meta-game.
So what I tend to see is either surface-level players who never progress past a point, or those who master one game primarily, as it seems more enjoyable than to deal with this hurdle again and again.

These issues usually take the form of developers fighting their games mortality by turning up the heat in a way that could not be easily circumvented by those same master players. It's an isolating cycle.
It is not from adding any concept in particular: identification, food, clocks, or even permadeath. It is from how existing concepts are altered in order to keep the game from being further mastered.
If someone plays a game seriously for years and years, the logical conclusion is they will understand it deeply at some point. Once fully understood, it needs to be amended to remain interesting.
Yet they still want to keep going. Complaints may crop up that a game is not updated despite being complete, and there is a bias that creeps into developers when (actually) infinite replayability is expected.
New players brush it all off as hazing and old players are content having already known the ropes to their favorite game. Developers find the programming more interesting than the gameplay and become callous.

Admittedly these road-blocks can make it more satisfying. Being forced to allow certain ideas to "ferment" in my mind while playing might make them more savory in the end.
But it is important to remain vigilant of difficulty actually becoming a cynical means of extending the replayability of the game beyond its practical scope.
There is some point when a game is complete, and can not be taken further without also losing something else. A point for the developers and the players.
I know that is heresy for some people, but there are limits. The completionists consensus that judges every roguelike by proxy is misguided and harmful to the genre.

aimeusdietger

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #493 on: October 28, 2018, 11:02:10 AM »
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I really think they hit the nail on the head with their critiques about doomrl. I feel the same way about most of the points they brought up.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIR1dfB2p20 Especially how the game almost seems to have changed too much since it's initial inception. The achievements/unlockables can be somewhat frustrating. They mostly seem to be geared towards veteran players. It took me some years to finally get enough silver badges to unlock the second tier of challenges which I would have rather been able to play from the get go. Some of the badges rely a bit too much on chance in my opinion.

The non-random levels can be frustrating as well. Especially since some of them are practically mandatory to get certain items that only appear in them. Like the backpack in the Wall level which is one of the most valuable items in the game I think, but it's kind of a pain to go through the wall in almost every play through because it's the only way to get it. Same with the spear weapon in the unholy cathedral when playing the melee challenge games.   

I also agree with how the game seems too long. 25 levels, not counting the special levels, tends to get tiresome once you have gotten that far. Would be nice to see it knocked down a little bit.

The developer says that he plans on making doomrl 2, but with all the things added already since the early versions of the game, it almost seems like there is not much of a point in making a sequel that could really distinguish itself from the original. 

At this point, they have added so much, it almost detracts from it's original charm.

Don't get me wrong. I still think it's a great game, but they made very valid points.

The only thing about the review is that they were not all up to date on the current version of the game. Some had only played earlier versions. Would have been better if they all had played both earlier versions and the latest.

This is a very great an detailed observation..I have been playing the game for quite some time now and am liking it a lot..I would love to emphasize on the number of levels..a cut down to a maximum of 20 levels would do..they get harder each time an am even dreading to play past level 15. :D
« Last Edit: April 21, 2020, 04:18:57 PM by aimeusdietger »

Darren Grey

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Re: Roguelike Radio podcast
« Reply #494 on: November 19, 2018, 11:32:47 AM »
Some new eps I haven't posted here yet:

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/06/episode-146-cinco-paus.html - A deep look at Michael Brough's interesting and innovative mobile for iOS and PC

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/08/episode-147-difficulty.html - Talking about the nature of Difficulty, how to find the right balance in design

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/10/episode-148-morgue-experience.html - How to treat players after death, with useful sharing features and ways to keep people hooked and learning