Rogue Rage

[Darren Grey]

Well, sounds like I need a difficulty bump 

I might change the F to teleport swap places with the player instead, whilst causing damage from a distance.  It would suit the chaos reward of the forest better, whilst also being a bit more interesting (the paralysis is only one turn and barely noticeable).

The Rage attack in Rogue stance is fairly hard to control and unpredictable, but then it is rather powerful too.  You can temper the risk of it by using the Temple attack first to get a few turns of invincibility, or the Shadow attack to get a burst of speed.  Also Rage mode is the one point in the game where you can quickly heal up (by not attacking in Temple stance).

I'll look into the treant behaviour - sounds like a problem with attack range in hex mode.

The perceived lack of control in Rage mode is only with the Rogue stance bump attack.  Everything else is much more predictable.  I should perhaps look at making the Rogue rage attack more predictable... but then I also find it so very fun as it stands 

[Z]

Some interface feedback:

The bottom HUD is drawn incorrectly in resolution 800x600. It is also not updated when I change the resolution.

When I am moving in the lowest line on the map, I am obscured by the HUD (also sometimes I can see only the top part of @).

Disabling the mouse cursor does not work.
The mouse cursor obscures tooltips shown when mousing over monsters. I cannot see the first word.
I can see master lurkers when mousing over them.

Sometimes the game seems to hang after changing options.

You should be able to wait by pressing ".".

All classic ASCII roguelikes use black backgrounds for cells (other backgrounds are used only in special circumstances). For example, grass would be a green dot on black background. I think the classic way looks better. On the other hand, it would be cool to have hexagonal cell backgrounds, instead of square ones.

There is a clash between Rogue Rage's simple ASCII graphics and T-Engine's graphical decorations in menus.

The forest boss sometimes moves after I hit it in the Rogue stance. I don't know what it depends on. (If it does not move, then it becomes paralyzed, and easy to kill.)

[Darren Grey]

Can you give me a screenshot of how it looks in 800x600?

Thanks for the bug reports - I'll look into getting them fixed.

There are many things different in classic ASCII roguelikes - I do not mind being different    But I presume you like the look of the western dungeon more?  I deliberately design it with reference to the classic look.  I like the coloured backgrounds myself, especially with the blood effects.  But I intend to look into having hex colour blocks so it looks a bit nicer.

Hmm, will have to see about getting a custom menu interface, but that's obviously a bit of work  :/  Still, polish counts for a lot.

The paralysis in the game seems to work buggily.  Not sure what to do about it - it is a bit too powerful against bosses when it works.  I don't want immunities in the game though (everyone, including player, is equally affected by all statuses).  I'll have a think about replacing paralysis with something else.  A place-swap comes to mind, but is a bit weak compared to the other stances.

[Ancient]

Tome showers me with lua errors when I try to resize the window but then it works anyway so thats not something dangerous.
I have completed dusk, forest and night realm. Was impatient in heavens and tried to sneak past them. Unfortunately teleporting W's foiled that plan three times in a row so for now I gave up.

Temple stance:
 - Rage targeted attack is very very useful in tight situations where one needs time to run away. Precede with shadow stance targeted attack for maximum effect. Then while invulnerable use death stance to heal yourself up.
 - Provokes leaning your finger on wait key to heal up. One wants health up to 70 so that rage recovery is not wasted and one can hit those W's for 20 points on approach.
 - Basic targeted attack is best against fast enemies to forbid them from getting hits on you. The cyan M for example.
 
Rogue stance:
 - Best all rounder.
 - Passive attack can kill most cannon fodder in two turns. Sometimes it is beneficial to allow a group of weak monsters to hit you if you have the health to spare so you can kill them all in next turn gaining modest amount of rage.
 - Rage targeted attack is not well explained. What a string of enemies means? In practice I found it to teleport me semi-randomly which makes it very undesirable except in boss levels when you don't see the & anywhere around and rage is ticking out.

Shadow stance:
 - Invaluable against T's. Way blocked? Disappear and appear in right moments to have your passage unbarred.
 - Slowing hit very useful against fast enemies. This move is better than temple stance knockback because allows to finish off a quick monster here and now.
 - Description is not clear whether passive attack triggers every second round or only the slowing effect kicks every second round.

Death stance:
 - Neatly balanced. Allows to heal but does not give much rage. Very useful.
 - Has inferior passive attack. Rogue and temple stances passive mode obsolete this one. The only worthy use case is when a creature has health equal to yours.

Chaos stance:
 - I find it too unreliable. However, rage targeted attack can dish out a lot of hurt to bosses.


My complaints:
'?' key does nothing. Fortunately there was readme.
'.' could rest.
./. is senseless duplicate. Get rid of it.
The names of locations float away blending with background. Fortunately one can walk on triggering spot with impunity and read them. Maybe instead of floating away names pop up semi-transparent window? A non-moving one.
I am missing the log somewhat. What do the D really do when they surround themselves with a circle?
Examination windows that pop up on mouseover position themselves right under cursor obscuring name of creature and part of description. This is why I am right now referring to creatures as D's, W's and M's instead of their names. The first person descriptions are quite neat though.



Make paralysis always work against everything for three turns but disallow stacking of paralysis counter. This way anything paralyzed gets to have a swing at you after third turn no matter what you do.

[Darren Grey]

Thanks for the detailed feedback!  Obviously a lot of tweaks I need to throw in. I'm on a phone so I can't respond too properly, but have you any comments on the dungeons and monsters themselves? Any areas too hard or too easy? Too long or short?

Do the Wardens in Heaven use their pull ability when you're invisible? If so then possibly a bug... Also I should warn that the game might crash if you go past level 4 of the heavens (which is where the final boss will come in).

[Ancient]

Caverns of Dusk are way too easy. I suggest having Dreamstalkers haste themselves and also everyone adjacent.

Forest of Daydreams is slightly too long but also the most fun location. Treants require me to maneuver carefully. This sometimes leads to monsters swarming me because some escape ways are quickly plugged by T's. Fortunately raging in rogue stance makes mincemeat of them. If only Faes would do something noticeable that would be good. The paralysis seems not to work right now.

Halls of the Nightking are a bit hard which is how it should be. W's that slow you and back away are quite mean when other creatures are around. Alone they are not a threat but even two W's together may result in sacrificing resources to beat them. M's also require you to focus on them because they are fast and can summon creatures around you if adjacent.

Wardens are simply too powerful. They do not teleport me while I am in shadow stance but otherwise they can do so from long distance. Getting teleported two screens away is not uncommon. If one is not raging or close to getting into rage mode resulting onslaught from all directions quite likely means death. I have never completed a heavens level. Its always some Warden that gets me.

Every area has its 10 hp monster (shadow, primord, ascended) that is great to be killed in death stance for quick health replenish. Also two passive attacks in rogue stance wipe them so if one can make several of them approach you at once it might be good to allow this and take a round of beating by waiting twice. More rage in short time.

Also, you could start on the game on the world map. There is no need for the temple as I see it.

Readme says there are debug keys for rage and healing. Please make one for getting all five stances so we can give you more feedback about heavens. Getting them takes time and you need them in final area.

[Darren Grey]

'u' is the debug key for stance unlock 

[Ancient]

Ha, true. Forgot. Out of curiosity I tried 'w' for win the game for me but it does not work. Oh.

[guest509]

  Shit Darren it hung on me. Windows. Vista.

  I unzipped to a folder on my desktop and double clicked the .exe.

  It started up ROGUE RAGE with a big fist, but the load bar never got past 0%. Had to shut it down with task manager.

  I tried to right click on the task bar icon and 'close' it from there, it didn't close it just became invisible. Then music started...classical music!

  Surely the violins are a bug.  

EDIT: Several attempts. Re downloaded. Same results.
EDIT2: Let us blame Adobe.

[Darren Grey]

Hmm, bugger. Try updating your graphics card drivers, and tell me the output in te4_log.txt. Does ToME4 work for you.

Also, get a better OS

Classical music is fully intended

[guest509]

  Shit! ToME hangs as well. I clicked on the 'alert microsoft' button during the foul up so surely they are going to get back to me soon with a fix.

  Yep. That's how it works.

  Seriously though it's my new graphics card. Still working through the bugs. My old driver is still trying to kick in. So maybe that's a Vista issue...Vista has been good to me but only after several years of patching. In law school, around 2008, I lost my major law school paper to vista. I learned quite a bit about data back up after that.

[Z]

screenshot 800x600

Actually my first game started in 800x600 for some reason, and I could not understand what 50/1 meant and why does it shows a window about stances when pointing at the level name. There are also some strange cursor problems on my laptop (that square on the screenshot), but in most cases the cursor simply disappears, not that bad.

I have learned how to solve the three easier levels. I think the difficulty is alright, you should be able to do it if you understand the game and have a good plan, and not if you are doing it wrong. I have tried Heavens once so far, they look difficult.

I think it would be nice if shadow stance showed whether the next passive attack will hit (death stance likewise, maybe).

I think it would be good to follow your own advice about stair bumping It is also possible to scum stairs by going up and down until you feel safe, does not look like a nice strategy.

[guest509]

  Okay. Got it going on my laptop. Note I have not read the above feedback, so this may be redundant.

  I don't really 'get it' yet.

-So what are the buttons? I've pressed all of them. 'L' i think is a look command, but it seemed like an arrow/ranged firing command. '/' changes my color and the name of the area from Caves of Dusk to Caves of Duske (the 'e' is white). I think this means I am changing stances.

-Okay I think I was wrong. I have several colors...white, brown, blue, grey and purple. White stance puts me in Duske, the others are 'Dusk' only.

-I'm pretty sure this game is all about stances, so I think these colors are stances. No idea what they do yet. Looking above I may have hit 'u' trying to figure out the controls. I may have erred in doing this.

-I was thinking I'd have qweasd hex control. I don't. Going with mouse.

-Okay looks like I'm raging. Raging: 44. Yes I am switching stances with the '/' key. But I only figured out that key because I was looking for the help key. Lol. I can hover over it and see what stance I'm in. But the only letter that will show is the white 'e' for Temple Stance.

-I figure Temple is my holy or healing stance. I'll stick with it. I'm one shotting everyone anyway.

-Note to self. Do not double click on your character when on the stairs. You'll not descend. You'll just cycle through  2 turns and the baddies will wail on you.

-Auto descend when over stairs? Please?

-Switched to Rogue stance...built up rage to 10/10 but then it shifted to 15/1? I think I need 100/1

-Okay. I'm starting to get it. The game is about figuring out what stance to be in at what time. Each stance does different moves.

-Oh shit I"m enraged. My guy is bleeding up. Wait those are flames. Flames of rage. I'm so pissed...So what?

-Oh shit tool tips say I get to a rage passive and a rage targetted. I'm thinking that 'L' was not a 'look' command but maybe a targetting deal. Lemme see...Rogue stance, target on that huge 'D'...huh...nothing....

-Okay I clicked on the 'D' when it was adjacent and I like warped or something. And things died. And I'm happy about that. But I dont' know wtf just happened.

-Seems like it's pretty easy to set up baddies so I get the first hit. Good feature. I like having the first hit when I can one shot everything.

-Oh man I'm at the Tilde level! Water? It's called the Stygian Vale(le) now. White 'le'. Now the name changes depeding on my stance.
  Temple = Valele (white 'le')
  Rogue = Valee (brown 'e')
  Shadow = Valeow (blue 'ow')
  Death = Valeh (grey 'h')
  Chaos = Vales (purple 's')

-I'm sticking with Valele. Temple stance.

-Shit I beat it! The last guy, a purple '&' morphed into the stairs or something when I beat his ass.

-Okay so I'm back in the PurganonTemple. The 'Temple' part is white so I think that's probably my stance. Tested it, yep. It's the stance. Not the location. I get full stance words now, chaos, shadow, rogue, etc...Each word in the correct color. There's no space in between the words for stance and location.

-Day Dream Forest Time!

-Not doing well. Down to 10 life. Can't really figure out what stance I'm in. I guess I can go by color of my '@'. I think Daydream Forest is covering my stance text.

-Running from Treants because they self report as 'invincible'. I believe them. I run. :-)

-Are these Fey ('F') shooting me! CHARGE!

-I just windshielded a 'birther'. Note that in the US a birther is someone that does not believe our president was born within the borders of the US. So this invalidates his presidency (you have to be born within our borders to serve as president, you can hold any other position no problem, but presidential birth must be within our borders).  People bring this up because our president's name is African in origin. Mine is English in origin, and no one questions me. I think you can see the underlying racist/ignorant bullshit going on there.

-I'm having the grandest of times blowing the shit out of birthers. Fuck them.

-Critique - It seems I can always move a to a space one space away from enemies. This allows me to nearly always get a shot off first and gain health from it. If there is more than one enemy I can back up until only one ends up being adjacent. Is that a quirk of hex? So far I like the hex grid. Just seems like I'm easily able to line up a kill shot.

-I'm losing health in this forest only due to misclicks.

-When I hover over a baddie to click him to death the tool tips always pop up. This is distracting and annoying. This is a feature of the T-Engine. I don't like it. It gets in my way. Can you lower the tool tip 20 or 30 pixels? So it doesn't obscure the target?

-Well. I'm stuck. There are 'T' (ents) blocking my path that won't move. Couple of thousand clicks and they dont' move. I tried 'chaos' stance to teleport, but it doesn't work with ends I guess since you can't get near them. I was hoping for a OH SHIT SHADOW STANCE!!!! That got them moving. Turn invisible, they move, then you can go back to a visible stance and they move again. So here I go, onward!

-Soulbirth Glade...feel my wrath.

-Lol, I just died. A couple of moves into Soulbirth Glade.

-I hope this little log helped you Darren.

[Darren Grey]

Eminently useful! Seems I have serious issues with low resolutions. Also you might want to check the Readme file in the directory (though it's cool to hear how you got on without it).

[guest509]

  Well I was playing with an eye toward giving 'new to the genre' feedback. So I played just a little bit dumb (okay A LOT dumb!).

  Also I'm not sure the average person would really bother with Readme files. Sadly.