Golden Krone Hotel

[jere]

Continuing the "Things I hate..." series with Part 2 about Identification: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wordpress/2017/06/25/things-i-hate-about-roguelikes-part-2-identification/

[jere]

Two things on the same day oddly:

Roguelike Radio Episode 138: Golden Krone Hotel

Also released an update featuring the Underworld branch. Full details here.

[jere]

If anyone is interested in testing mac and/or linux builds, let me know.

[Avagart]

Count me in For Linux, at least.

[jere]

OK, you're on the list. 

[jere]

Nearing the end of EA and tackling some big remaining items:

• Mac & linux support: testing seems to be going fine except I've given up hope on getting the steam overlay working
• Optional diagonal movement: so this can be a proper roguelike
• ASCII Mode: for the grognards in the audience

entire spritesheet converted


the underworld and a baron (constructed out of several characters)


thinking about keeping an absurd tiles+ASCII mode


in a happy coincidence, the character for vampire eyes (") matches up pixel perfectly with the big vampire character (V) and that's with no tweaking of the font I'm using (code page 437)


I think ASCII mode is looking OK, but I keep wondering if I shouldn't ensure every single monster has a distinct character representation and then redo the whole thing in only black/white/red.

[jere]

HOLY CATS, WE'RE LEAVING EARLY ACCESS NEXT MONTH.

This month it's all about playing the way you want to play. That means Mac and Linux support, tools to prevent stupid deaths, keyboard examine, ASCII mode, and optional 8-way movement.



The final class has been added as well: Berserker. With the highest starting strength of all the disguises and an ENRAGE spell, you'll surely wreak havoc on the hotel. That brings us to 12 classes and 19 achievements to collect!

Diagonal movement

Four way movement has always been helpful for players without numpad. But sometimes it just doesn't feel like a roguelike without diagonals.

Adding optional 8-way movement to Golden Krone Hotel affects A LOT. Expect the game to feel different, but hopefully still balanced. It's now easier to dance around lone enemies and it's possible to dodge light beams. But remember it's also easier to get surrounded and magic becomes 8-directional too.

ASCII Mode
ASCII can look cool as hell. It's often easier to understand what's going on too. So here it is.



There's a Muted Palette option that almost turns the game greyscale (the main exception being hints of red). This an excellent option if you want to crank up the horror aesthetic.

Grognard Mode

If you really want to go old school, there's GROGNARD Mode. This flips a bunch of options simultaneously to make the game look and feel more like a classic roguelike. You'll get ASCII, diagonal movement, and a bunch of display effects turned off (like animation, damage numbers, bounciness, etc.).

But feel free to play with those on if you prefer! It's quite fun playing a little bouncy @.



Changelog:

• Mac and Linux now supported. Please let me know if you have any problems.
• Optional diagonal movement added
• ASCII mode added
• Bump animation added
• You can now Examine with keyboard (press V) and hovering over tiles also displays their name
• Added a "Confirm dangerous moves" option. If you die to sunlight a lot, this might help
• Berserker class added
• Shapeshifter now turns into a wolf whenever in moonlight
• Spiridus and Moroi toned down a bit. Moroi range reduced
• Options menu reorganized and several new options added
• Sound play when selecting options
• Added highlighted text to tutorial to make it easier to understand
• Fixed a very weird bug with ice/stairs that created ghost enemies that could be killed infinitely
• Fixed a crash when playing the game outside of the Steam client
• Fixed an issue with the revolver cancellation not clearing selected tiles
• Fixed an issue with certain attack types being displayed
• Fixed an issue with rebinding ESCAPE/ENTER
• Fixed the display of 1HP in morgue files
• Fixed an issue with ring display in morgue files
• Fixed an issue with resting while poisoned/burning

Since the game is wrapping up, please let me know of any last minute ideas on balance/polish. Big changes are probably not making it in, but there's still a month to fine tune things.

And I'm super serious about the price increase this time (I wanted one last opportunity for Mac/Linux players to buy at $5).

[jere]

OST

Golden Krone Hotel now has an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza! You might know Christopher from the KeeperRL soundtrack, but he also made our delightful chiptune title track and trailer music. We've been working on redoing all the game's music for a few months and it's finally done.

If, however, you want to switch things up or just get nostalgic for the old music (which has a more ambient horror focus), you can toggle back and forth between both soundtracks in the Options menu.

Despair mode
Even if you're not quite ready for the game to get harder, I know you will be eventually. Despair is a new unlockable, unfair, and unforgiving difficulty mode. It comes with its own redone title screen featuring a gnarly remix, blood moon, and custom font. I have to be honest: this is easily the most badass thing in the game.



Visual tweaks

Stained glass has been toned down and looks less like "unicorn puke." Menus have been visually reworked and made Fancy!

There's also a good number of bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who reported them!

• The game now features an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza. The old soundtrack can be switched in as well.
• New difficulty: DESPAIR MODE
• The credits menu has been totally reworked into a "crawl" and now displays after a win (also available from Options)
• Reworked menus
• Stained glass no longer looks like "unicorn puke"
• Difficulty can now be selected with keyboard (left/right)
• Drawing ASCII windows differently depending on their orientation
• Debug menu has been made more difficult to accidentally access (now requires '~' + 'debug').
• Accessing the debug menu (or running console commands) prevents a run from having a morgue file saved. This should prevent at least one category of "cheat" morgue files from popping up on the leaderboards.
• Fixed an issue with sliding on ice diagonally
• Fixed a morgue display issue when dying of starvation
• Fixed a major bug where reading a book the same turn one dies turns you immortal.
• Any unbound commands (which had their keys stolen from another remap) are randomly assigned keys, which should prevent a bug where the game wouldn't start with unbound keys.
• Fixed an issue with potion deduction. You should be able to deduce identities more often.
• Fixed a game locking bug with Examine mode in the tutorial. Also now easier to escape from menus in the tutorial.
• Fixed an issue with MIASMA that wasn't hurting enemies unless they were directly hit.
• Fixed an ugly display issue with spell icons on Grimoire menu

[jere]

I posted my third entry in the recent series: Things I Hate About Roguelikes Part 3: Terrible Controls

[AgingMinotaur]

Cool stuff. I continue to enjoy the series.

As you mention in closing, it's not exactly controversial these days to aim for streamlined interfaces. Still, it's an interesting topic of debate, maybe especially in the context of RLs, which traditionally have such esoteric controls. My own game is aimed to be a "one handed roguelike", partly by way of context-sensitive commands and menus. That can work, but has the danger of becoming obscure in itself (rather than having to remember which key to "disarm" a trap, you have to know what the "default action" is in any given position). Then I need something like a zoomed out map view which skews the whole interface, and the delicate balance feels disrupted again. Well, I hope to have a snappy game when it's feature complete. I'm currently working on mouse controls, actually, and both gamepad and terminal have been on the long todo-list since day one. I think that alone has helped me work with a certain sense of direction, at least As another aside: six-directional movement actually works surprisingly well with the four arrow keys.

One strategy I'm pondering, is to shape the game mechanics and the lore/story/action to fit each other as much as possible. For instance, you can collect bounties on criminals by chopping off their heads and giving them to a judge. This uses just the basic interface for picking up and dropping items, but provides a bare bones quest system. Likewise, there is no chat command (the player is assumed to be the silent type, I guess), but NPCs will sometimes deliver lines of dialogue. Something recently had me thinking of the C64 action game Usagi Yojimbo, where the two most important commands were "greet politely" and "draw sword". With these, you interacted with farmers, wandering monks, warriors challenging you to a duel, disguised ninja, etc. I think it's really another way to see the point 1) in your post, which is to say: implement a few actions, and imbue them with a lot of meaning.

By the way, Dumuzid is one of the few 7DRLs I've come back to replay several times. The interface was certainly one of the features that struck me, but also the quite fun strategies that emerge from the basic rules. Very nifty

As always,
Minotauros

[jere]

Ah thanks! Dumuzid definitely seems to be a crowd favorite.

Something recently had me thinking of the C64 action game Usagi Yojimbo, where the two most important commands were "greet politely" and "draw sword".

Wow, that is pretty badass. Your idea about collecting bounties and returning them to a judge also sounds interesting. That's my next discussion topic: theme and how it's usually super boring/tired.

As another aside: six-directional movement actually works surprisingly well with the four arrow keys.

Really? What, with two pressed at once?

[AgingMinotaur]

Something recently had me thinking of the C64 action game Usagi Yojimbo, where the two most important commands were "greet politely" and "draw sword".

Wow, that is pretty badass. Your idea about collecting bounties and returning them to a judge also sounds interesting. That's my next discussion topic: theme and how it's usually super boring/tired.

Yeah, I'm hoping I won't have that problem, seeing as how my original core idea was "gay cowboys on drug induced spirit quests dual wielding sawed off shotguns"

As another aside: six-directional movement actually works surprisingly well with the four arrow keys.

Really? What, with two pressed at once?

Exactly. That sounds horrible, but since pressing Up or Down doesn't do anything in itself, they actually work quite well as modifier keys. (WEADZX is also a possibility, but people I've seen try my game prefer the arrow keys.)

As always,
Minotauros

[jere]

Oh I could see that. I hate having to use multiple keys (even on a d-pad) because if you don't time it right you end up hitting the wrong one. But if up/down are not used, it seems sensible.

seeing as how my original core idea was "gay cowboys on drug induced spirit quests dual wielding sawed off shotguns"

you're doing god's work.

[jere]

Crunch time. I'm wrapping up the final update to the game this weekend. We release out of EA on October 26.

I planned a little "release party" that night:



http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/releaseparty/

[jere]

Running a 3 day competition for Valentine's day.

Details: http://steamcommunity.com/games/497800/announcements/detail/1658883402140670961

Leaderboards: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php

In other news, the game hit the "Very Positive" threshold!