Author Topic: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)  (Read 289969 times)

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.5 "Weiss"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #180 on: November 01, 2016, 12:07:38 PM »
If I drop anything in the grass in Isen Dun, it has the same effect as dropping it in water.
In fact, this seems to be the case for any grass tile whatsoever.

I like the mechanic with status ailments, but they don't seem to really come into play so often.
Keep in mind, I might just not be paying attention ;) But I'm wondering if there is a bug with natural regeneration. Every now and then, my hp seems to instantly bump up to almost max.

As always,
Minotauros

Hmm.  I can't reproduce the grass issue, at least in my Windows build.  I can drop rations, coins, etc on field tiles with no issues.  I've done this both in a set map (Isen Dun) as well as on grass tiles in randomly generated maps.  I'll get my Linux build up to date and try it there in the next day or two.  Can you post a screenshot of where on the map this happened?

Natural regen is wonky and needs to be rebalanced.  Certain race/class combos have very high regen rates.  Enjoy for now - I'll make myself a reminder to tone it down.

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.5 "Weiss"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #181 on: November 01, 2016, 01:40:48 PM »
Thanks. I'm doing pretty well again at this point. Now, I guess it's comments time: I quite enjoy the game, and must say it has grown nicely since last I tried it out. The atmospheric world carries a lot. Most of my comments are nitpicks, only because I find the game to have overall polish and appeal. I'm looking forward to see how the world and the system evolve, so "carry on" is the word of the day.
 
INTERFACE

* Regarding the compilation process, it was mostly a matter of following the readme, except for hand building the libraries after installing libgtest-dev.
* When I create a character and press "*" for a random option, I'd like to know which option I got to inform further choices (ie. an info line like: "Male giant./ Select your class").
* "w"alk works 8) But maybe a doorway/branching corridor should be a treated as a stopping point? Just a suggestion.
* After a few games, the log files start piling up. Most of them are empty. Maybe they could be autodeleted, or put in a separate directory?
* Backspace doesn't work in prompts. Annoying when I drop a lot of stuff, get "Drop how many?" and accidentaly put in "d".
* To the benefit of newbies: The manual marks several skills as unused. Would it be plausible to disable/"grey out" these skills in the levelup screen?
* I like the skill system, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing more skills implemented. For instance, I tested tanning at 100% and loved how thoughfully it was scaled.

BUGS

* I left Isen Dun and came to an island where there was a crypt. The crypt level contained a central chamber, but when I opened the door, I got Segmentation fault.
* I don't know if it's supposed to be so, but I'm able to skin corpses and make myself a cloak, even without the Tanning skill.
* Standing in a corridor and throwing clay pots so that they are smashed at the tile I'm standing, they don't drop any ivory pieces.
* Found a "staircase leading down" that looked like a sarchofagus "0".
* I am experiencing what must be a weird bug: If I drop anything in the grass in Isen Dun, it has the same effect as dropping it in water (discarding forever). This does not happen if I drop on special places (tiles where something was laying before, beneath trees, et al).

WRITING

* "You sense the presence of other creatures" is a bit void since, well, there's mostly always "other creatures" in a level. Is this for when a special monster spawns? I don't understand.
* "Kew says, «It's important to always have ways to escape bad situations." [missing end quote]
* Siriath described as an "elderly man in his twilight years", which may be a bit tautological.

CONTENT

* Villages: Good stuff. I would love more interaction, though. I wonder if you've considered something like random places of interest (more shrines and crypts, private property, gardens, pyramids/monuments, shops). (Take with a grain of salt.) On a related note, I don't know if various villages' disposition (are planned to) depend on the player's alignment, but I was half hoping that my Sceadugenga worshipper could enter the village of black servants and be greeted as a peer.

I did notice that I can attack people without their fellow villagers reacting, which felt kind of weird. Also, Hrimgar doesn't move if I shoot at him, letting me pepper him with arrows, but proceeds to attack if I move next to him. I didn't test if he drops the boathouse key when killed, but wondered about this.

* Combat: Some of the monsters can feel a bit samey, with much bumping + monitoring hp. That's typical of the genre, but I'd welcome some more variety in monster behavior down the road. It would seem appropriate for Siriath to cast spells, for instance.

I like the mechanic with status ailments, but they don't seem to really come into play so often. Some are poignant, like blinded, mute, exposed. Others, like slow, poisoned, sick, disfigured, I mostly carry on as usual. Is the severity scaled with the attackers level, ie. would a basilisk have more potent poison than an adder? My gut impression is that the ailments need balancing, should perhaps occur more often, or be more severe (but shorter?), or something …

Anyway, I only played this version a handful of times, and haven't gotten very far before, either. Just to test, I took an ogre more or less straight to the dungeon in the extreme north west, maxing out combat and bashing skills on the way. I managed to kill the first wave of monsters, levelling up from the early teens to level 32 before I was overcome by something in the second room. I don't know if this is an actual exploit/strategy/bug to speed start a game at an absurdly high level.

Quote
And Mervyn Peake!  That's a name I haven't heard in ages.  I read "Titus Groan" many, many years ago.  Actually, decades, at this point.
I read Titus Groan and Gormenghast about fifteen years ago, and really liked them at the time. Titus Alone is an interesting conclusion, I think, a bit removed from the other books, and almost venturing into some kind of early gothic/fantasy steampunk :P :)

As always,
Minotauros

Interface:
- I'll look into providing more feedback for the individual race/class/etc randomizations
- It's been a while since I've updated autowalking, so I'll do that as well.  Stopping on terrain features (such as doors) and branching corridors makes sense.
- Logs need a bit of an update.  I'll add a setting to control how long to keep them (maybe a week or two), and then have the game auto-delete logs older than that.
- Backspace works for me in prompts, but this is on my Windows build.  I don't think there's anything OS-specific there, but there might be some refreshing or something that isn't happening.  I'll update my Linux build and take a look.
- Tanning's been very hard to get right.  Before, it allowed for some stupidly powerful stuff!

Bugs:
- I think you can still create skins without tanning, but they're not nearly as good (no/fewer resistances)
- Ugh, that crypt bug.  Sucks that it's still happening - I've never been able to reproduce it.  Do you happen to remember your race/class combo?  Not that it should matter.  I'll set aside some time to try to reproduce it!
- I'll look into the clay pots thing.  They should have a small chance to produce ivory - it's not guaranteed.  You may have been unlucky.
- Looks like there was a sarcophagus on the same tile as your down staircase.  I don't want to consider this a bug - just a well-hidden staircase.
- I mentioned the grass bug in a previous reply, but do you get the same issue if you use Wine and the Windows release?  Is there a particular item that you're dropping?  Race/class?  I want to narrow this down, as this is an odd one, and I've never heard it reported before.

Writing:

- Yeah, that's the old Detection skill.  It needs to be updated to be more useful.  It was one of the first things I implemented, many years ago.  Thanks for the reminder!
- I'll fix the Kew text, and Siriath's too.

Content:

- Villages are severely under-developed.  Severely.  Right now they're basically placeholders.  They're on my long-term to do list, and I have them there purely as a reminder for me to make them useful at some point.  Still an alpha.  I want to do so much more with them.
- Immobile creatures need to be reworked.  In the early days, I added this to have creatures that would stay in one spot and not move.  I've been meaning to update this so that only a very small number of creatures are truly immobile, and the rest move when attack.  I'll add that to my list.
- I've also been meaning to add some sort of assisting flag/logic, so that some creatures will assist friendly creatures that are attacked.  Sounds like I should do this soon, too!
- I don't think he drops the boathouse key - I think it's loaded as part of the quest code.
- Combat: agree, lots of sameyness, though, that's roguelikes for you.  I do have a reminder in my backlog to make more interesting/unique creatures like thieves, gas clouds, etc.  I like the idea of adding spells to Siriath.  I'll find a couple of appropriate ones and add them.
- They don't scale.  That said, I like the idea of poison scaling.  I'll add that to my list.
- As for strategies, I welcome any abusive strategies people have!  I'm not going to try to nerf everything, and if people can find a way to jump levels quickly, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.  I'm not a super-balancer; this isn't DCSS.

Thanks so much for your feedback!  It's fantastic, very much appreciated, and I'll definitely look into fixing as many of the issues as possible before the next release.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 08:38:17 PM by jcd748 »

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #182 on: November 02, 2016, 02:42:16 AM »
Okay, so: I can confirm the grass drop bug.  It happens on some other tile types as well, but not all.  I only see this in my Linux build.  I'll investigate and fix in the next build.  In the meantime, find a regular floor tile and keep stashes there!

I can also confirm the backspace issue, but I think it may something to do with terminal keybindings.  If I hit backspace, nothing; but if I do ^H (control-h), I get the backspace as expected.  I'll get this fixed up as well.  You can tell I develop on Windows; sorry!

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.5 "Weiss"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #183 on: November 05, 2016, 01:23:26 PM »
* I left Isen Dun and came to an island where there was a crypt. The crypt level contained a central chamber, but when I opened the door, I got Segmentation fault.

!!!

I am very pleased to say that this is now fixed.

I had always thought the issue would be carelessness in my creature decision strategy code - basically, the AI - where there might be an issue with an empty view map or something (view maps represent what the creature itself can see).

I was wrong - the issue was that somehow, in the item generation part of the vault, null item pointers were being added to the inventory, and the code that translates an inventory to an ASCII symbol for the UI wasn't checking for null.  I've ensured that null item pointers can't be added to inventories, and added an extra sanity check to the UI translation code.

This could definitely be the cause of many/most of the other rare crashes that have been reported, as it will happen any time that a null item's been generated, a creature isn't on the tile, and the game tries to render the tile.

As there are now a number important bug fixes, I'll work to get a new version released within the next day or so.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2016, 01:30:48 PM by jcd748 »

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #184 on: November 05, 2016, 03:50:30 PM »
Okay, new version!  This should fix a number of long standing bugs, and hopefully provide a more stable experience.  I'm hoping the crash bug has been put to rest once and for all!  Binaries can be found at http://www.shadowofthewyrm.org/downloads.html.

Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"
- Version declared November 1, 2016.  Version finalized November 5, 2016.

- Log filenames now have the format "sotw-YYYYMMDD-i.log".

- Logs older than a week are now deleted on startup (AgingMinotaur).
  The age period can be configured in swyrm.ini.

- More stanzas for the epic poem.

- Siriath is now a proper spellcaster.  He casts Wreath of Fire and
  Flame Dart (AgingMinotaur).

- Bug fixes:

  - Fixed a few bestiary typos and wording issues (AgingMinotaur).

  - Some tiles in the non-Windows builds had null inventories due to an
    issue with one of the tile member variables not being properly
    initialized in all cases.  This caused items to disappear on drop
    (AgingMinotaur).

  - Backspace wasn't working properly in free-form text prompts in Linux
    builds (AgingMinotaur).

  - Fixed the vault-type crypt crash bug.  This was being caused when
    the item generation code didn't generate anything; the null item
    pointer was being added to the tile's inventory, and when trying
    to render a tile with a null item and no creature on it, the game
    crashed.  This was most evident in crypts, but definitely could
    happen elsewhere, too (AgingMinotaur, barrabus, others).
« Last Edit: November 05, 2016, 04:10:44 PM by jcd748 »

mrrstark

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 66
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #185 on: November 14, 2016, 03:11:16 AM »
Hi, I've been playing a bit over the last day and have some feedback.

Overall I'm having a good time with the game. It's fun. I'm looking forward to the December release.

Do you have a blog, roadmap, anything with what's planned in the releases or things you're looking for feedback on?

I really like the character on display in the first village. Very cool. Loved that the grave robber quest builds the little mythology of the village. The first island as a whole was really cool.

I also really like the islands in a sea setup. Loved the exploration aspect and having to find a boat.

Liked the wide variety of classes, though I've only tried a couple so far. And haven't really gotten very far in the game, just got off the first island and got killed a few times after exploring the sea a bit and poking my head into other islands. Haven't really found a main questline. Also confused as to whether all the > dungeons scattered around are endless dungeons, seems like the descriptions suggest that?

I'd really like to have more display options. Bigger font mode, stretch font mode, fullscreen mode. Basically, more options for making the display bigger. It's too small in my screen's native resolution. If there is a way to increase this via text files, it'd be good to move it into an in-game options UI.

Another display issue is that the colors you've chosen, especially the dark-blue, I believe they're standard console colors, but I've always found the dark-blue on black background incredibly hard to read. Definitely came up when I was surrounded by shades at some point and thought I'd killed the last one...  It'd be good if you had some other color scheme options like "high contrast" "lighter darks!" or something, at minimum a way to lighten up the dark blue via ini files, though that's a pain for most users.

The game wears its ADOM roots on its sleeve though. Which actually leads to one of my points: If I wasn't familiar with ADOM UI, I wouldn't have a clue how to play this game. The UI for example, I think you need to annotate the UI keys as to what they do in each menu. I believe ADOM does this as well in its ASCII version. There's a string of symbols at the bottom of say the inventory screen and I can't remember what they do in ADOM so I just leave them alone. Also, inherited the weird Equipped->Inventory 2-step inventory display system from ADOM.

There's also a lot of opaque information, despite having read through the in-game help, and the pdf guide.

It's not clear what skills do, mechanically, and which ones are smart decisions. For example, it's not clear to me whether a witchling (an example of a reduced complexity via reduced choices magic user) should invest in, "magic" or "primordial". It's not clear what "magic" does but it sounds important. It's not clear what "primordial" does, but since its the witch's only magic school, probably important. My current guess is maybe magic influences AP gain and school-specific helps with damage sides? I have no idea. This is after having read the pdf guide, the info in the guide doesn't cover anything more than you could guess by the title of the skill.

A similar point for the spells themselves. It's not clear what a spell actually does until you cast it, then you can reverse-engineer what the #, R, 2B etc mean. (Though I still don't know what B means in 2B, blast? beam maybe?) That works for damage spells, but for cloak of shadows.... does it help me dodge? Does it provide mage armor of some sort? Is it a resistance booster? No idea.

Other mechanics like # of casts aren't clear unless you've coming from Adom as well.

5 as the keybinding to rest isn't clear when using a laptop with hjkl movement. I guessed . or w,. would cause a rest, eventually hit the 5 on the 1-9 row. I also guessed shift-R from other games.

Not sure how caster classes work with stats, for example, in some other games you have a casting main stat like willpower or int or cha. Wasn't clear to me if that was the case here, specifically for the Witchling which I was mainly playing, or if it was just Int for everyone, and willpower for... mana? Can't remember.

Because the skills aren't clear as to what they really do, I didn't end up playing around much at all with skills other than magic related skills. Not sure if they open up any more interesting playstyles, or are primarily for other classes.


Avagart

  • 7DRL Reviewer
  • Rogueliker
  • *
  • Posts: 567
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #186 on: November 15, 2016, 01:46:17 PM »
Quote
I'd really like to have more display options. Bigger font mode, stretch font mode, fullscreen mode. Basically, more options for making the display bigger. It's too small in my screen's native resolution. If there is a way to increase this via text files, it'd be good to move it into an in-game options UI.

It's console application, it runs in terminal. It means that game display relies on options in your very own cmd :) So, when are you playing SotW you could right-click on the top bar then go to properties, and you could edit font types, size, etc.


@jcd748 - just encountered small-big problem. Just now I (unintentionally) changed SotW window size and I can't run game no more. I tried to change default settings of cmd but unfortunately, SotW keeps own settings. So, I had to *reinstall* game to fix this issue. Could you maybe implement checking for terminal size (and resizing window if necessarily) at start?
« Last Edit: November 15, 2016, 01:57:35 PM by Avagart »

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #187 on: November 19, 2016, 03:55:57 AM »
@jcd748 - just encountered small-big problem. Just now I (unintentionally) changed SotW window size and I can't run game no more. I tried to change default settings of cmd but unfortunately, SotW keeps own settings. So, I had to *reinstall* game to fix this issue. Could you maybe implement checking for terminal size (and resizing window if necessarily) at start?

Hmm, not sure how that happened.  SotW keeping its own settings must be OS specific, because I don't store that anywhere.

How are you running it?  Are you creating a shortcut directly to the executable, or running it via a command prompt?

I'll add resizing-to-a-min-size to my list of suggestions.

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #188 on: November 19, 2016, 04:08:24 AM »
Hi, I've been playing a bit over the last day and have some feedback.

Overall I'm having a good time with the game. It's fun. I'm looking forward to the December release.

Do you have a blog, roadmap, anything with what's planned in the releases or things you're looking for feedback on?

I really like the character on display in the first village. Very cool. Loved that the grave robber quest builds the little mythology of the village. The first island as a whole was really cool.

I also really like the islands in a sea setup. Loved the exploration aspect and having to find a boat.

Liked the wide variety of classes, though I've only tried a couple so far. And haven't really gotten very far in the game, just got off the first island and got killed a few times after exploring the sea a bit and poking my head into other islands. Haven't really found a main questline. Also confused as to whether all the > dungeons scattered around are endless dungeons, seems like the descriptions suggest that?

I'd really like to have more display options. Bigger font mode, stretch font mode, fullscreen mode. Basically, more options for making the display bigger. It's too small in my screen's native resolution. If there is a way to increase this via text files, it'd be good to move it into an in-game options UI.

Another display issue is that the colors you've chosen, especially the dark-blue, I believe they're standard console colors, but I've always found the dark-blue on black background incredibly hard to read. Definitely came up when I was surrounded by shades at some point and thought I'd killed the last one...  It'd be good if you had some other color scheme options like "high contrast" "lighter darks!" or something, at minimum a way to lighten up the dark blue via ini files, though that's a pain for most users.

The game wears its ADOM roots on its sleeve though. Which actually leads to one of my points: If I wasn't familiar with ADOM UI, I wouldn't have a clue how to play this game. The UI for example, I think you need to annotate the UI keys as to what they do in each menu. I believe ADOM does this as well in its ASCII version. There's a string of symbols at the bottom of say the inventory screen and I can't remember what they do in ADOM so I just leave them alone. Also, inherited the weird Equipped->Inventory 2-step inventory display system from ADOM.

There's also a lot of opaque information, despite having read through the in-game help, and the pdf guide.

It's not clear what skills do, mechanically, and which ones are smart decisions. For example, it's not clear to me whether a witchling (an example of a reduced complexity via reduced choices magic user) should invest in, "magic" or "primordial". It's not clear what "magic" does but it sounds important. It's not clear what "primordial" does, but since its the witch's only magic school, probably important. My current guess is maybe magic influences AP gain and school-specific helps with damage sides? I have no idea. This is after having read the pdf guide, the info in the guide doesn't cover anything more than you could guess by the title of the skill.

A similar point for the spells themselves. It's not clear what a spell actually does until you cast it, then you can reverse-engineer what the #, R, 2B etc mean. (Though I still don't know what B means in 2B, blast? beam maybe?) That works for damage spells, but for cloak of shadows.... does it help me dodge? Does it provide mage armor of some sort? Is it a resistance booster? No idea.

Other mechanics like # of casts aren't clear unless you've coming from Adom as well.

5 as the keybinding to rest isn't clear when using a laptop with hjkl movement. I guessed . or w,. would cause a rest, eventually hit the 5 on the 1-9 row. I also guessed shift-R from other games.

Not sure how caster classes work with stats, for example, in some other games you have a casting main stat like willpower or int or cha. Wasn't clear to me if that was the case here, specifically for the Witchling which I was mainly playing, or if it was just Int for everyone, and willpower for... mana? Can't remember.

Because the skills aren't clear as to what they really do, I didn't end up playing around much at all with skills other than magic related skills. Not sure if they open up any more interesting playstyles, or are primarily for other classes.

Thanks for the feedback!

- Blog/roadmap: no.  I try to work on a combination of useful and useless things with each release, and fix the worst outstanding bugs.  This is just my side project, so I really just implement whatever I feel like at the moment.

- The dungeons tend to go deep, but they're not endless.  Only one is.  There's also an endless sewer.

- UI: it's a curses-based, terminal UI.  You can set different font sizes in your terminal.  If you play on Linux, you can use virtual consoles to play fullscreen.  This is how I play roguelikes.  At some point in the far-distant future, I want a pretty, graphical UI with the features you mention.  This day is likely far off.

- Usability/opacity: yeah, it's kind of an issue.  In the future, I should do something about this, but I'm not convinced the Guidebook is the best place for it.  It's supposed to give an overview, rather than doing a deep dive into mechanics.  I'll need to improve this.

- Classes: underdeveloped, but there's some diversity now.  Thieves can steal.  Pugilists are your ADOM beastfighters, but also get random slays as they hit certain levels.  These will very slowly improve as the years go by.  There's so much to do with roguelikes that it's staggering.  I clearly took on way too much when I started, but it's more fun having ridiculous scope as you've got so many ways to grow.

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #189 on: November 20, 2016, 03:36:13 PM »
@jcd748 - just encountered small-big problem. Just now I (unintentionally) changed SotW window size and I can't run game no more. I tried to change default settings of cmd but unfortunately, SotW keeps own settings. So, I had to *reinstall* game to fix this issue. Could you maybe implement checking for terminal size (and resizing window if necessarily) at start?

I'm not going to have the game auto-resize; instead, it'll pause, allow you to resize your terminal to the desired size, and will try to load the game again after you've done so.  I've just made the fix, and this will be in the next release.

Avagart

  • 7DRL Reviewer
  • Rogueliker
  • *
  • Posts: 567
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #190 on: November 21, 2016, 02:26:33 AM »
I was in game when I resized window. During this one session, while game was running, it seems worked. But when I was trying to run SotW, game immediately closes without error messages or traceback. I was trying to run it directly from exe, by the bath file, and via cmd; interesting thing - I'm unable to run SotW by direct exe call (I mean, like in 'drag and drop', so by C:\Users\Ved>D:\rl\sotw\sotw.exe); there is only showing
Code: [Select]
C:\Users\Ved>D:\rl\sotw0.5.6.1\sotw.exe
Shadow of the Wyrm 0.5.6.1

C:\Users\Elvis>

If manually navigated to specific folder, ie D:, cd rl, cd sotw0.5.6.1, sotw.exe application starts.

Yeah, it's nearly non-existed problem, but... uhm, even small bug reports are feedback, thought.

Quote
I'm not going to have the game auto-resize; instead, it'll pause, allow you to resize your terminal to the desired size, and will try to load the game again after you've done so.  I've just made the fix, and this will be in the next release.

Thank you :)
« Last Edit: November 23, 2016, 01:01:08 PM by Avagart »

Samildanach

  • 7DRL Reviewer
  • Rogueliker
  • *
  • Posts: 453
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • The Indie Ocean
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #191 on: November 23, 2016, 11:45:15 AM »
Because the skills aren't clear as to what they really do, I didn't end up playing around much at all with skills other than magic related skills. Not sure if they open up any more interesting playstyles, or are primarily for other classes.

The opacity of skills is my only major complaint about SotW so far. It's hard to make decisions about building a character when you don't know what anything does. Otherwise, fun game. The island-based geography is a nice touch.

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #192 on: November 26, 2016, 04:21:57 PM »
Out of curiosity - how would you improve this?  Of the roguelikes I've played the most, ADOM has the most developed skill system, and it's opaque, in a sense.  What does Woodcraft do?  How does a marginally higher Fletchery work?  But it seems to work.  My concern is that I don't want SotW to be a deeply numbers-based game, telling you how many HP you take off a creature, giving them HP bars, that kind of thing.  I want there to be a sense of the unknown about things.  With that said, I'm happy to look at concerns and make changes, within that context.

And I realize this is a bit of a cop-out response, but the source is available, so unlike ADOM, so the impact of skills in-game can always be discovered.

Samildanach

  • 7DRL Reviewer
  • Rogueliker
  • *
  • Posts: 453
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • The Indie Ocean
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #193 on: November 28, 2016, 04:29:11 PM »
Of the roguelikes I've played the most, ADOM has the most developed skill system, and it's opaque, in a sense. 

I don't like ADOM, so that doesn't hold much water with me. :P

I'm not sure offhand what would make a good solution. Maybe a solution isn't necessary. ADOM is highly thought of, so evidently skill opacity isn't a problem for everyone. It's your game; if that's the way you want it to be, go ahead. I'm just one voice, you don't have to cater to me.  :)
« Last Edit: November 28, 2016, 04:32:53 PM by Samildanach »

jcd748

  • Rogueliker
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« Reply #194 on: November 29, 2016, 01:04:54 AM »
I don't like ADOM, so that doesn't hold much water with me. :P

I'm not sure offhand what would make a good solution. Maybe a solution isn't necessary. ADOM is highly thought of, so evidently skill opacity isn't a problem for everyone. It's your game; if that's the way you want it to be, go ahead. I'm just one voice, you don't have to cater to me.  :)

Every suggestion is valuable.  I've had some that are absolutely bizarro and out of left field - this definitely isn't one of them.  I'll make a note in my suggestions file to take a look at how to make effect of skills more understandable.