Some errors in console relating to researches

[southisland.nz]

Unknown group 'science' in tech Project: Peer Review Agents.
tech: discovery_media is unknown bonus and can't be applied

i think those are two separate errors, but im not sure.
im using the windows version.

other than that though, this is the best open source game ever (except
maybe nethack)

[Charlie Nolan]

Those have both been fixed in the current version. From what Phil
said when he fixed the first one, I think they're actually two
instances of the same kind of error, and the first was just a lousy
error message.

Thanks for the bug report anyway! We appreciate them, even when they
don't tell us anything new. :)

(And yeah, we like it too!)

-FM

[Jack Edge]

Nethack is not the greatest open source game ever, it is one of the
greatest game of all time.

And I still haven't won yet.

[Charlie Nolan]

Warning: Long rant ahead.

I've never been able to get into nethack. It's one of those things
that always sounds great in theory, but whenever I actually try it,
it's like someone pulled a bait-and-switch on me. The game doesn't
play fair. You go into it expecting a world with incredible freedom
of action, but instead you get a game that requires you to read its
mind. Good luck figuring out which key lets you use a potion, let
alone whether a given potion is safe to drink. Tired of the game
screwing you over? Guess what, even if you drop into Wizard mode, the
game will *still* find ways to stop you dead in your tracks.

My biggest problem is that nethack doesn't seem to obey logic except
when it feels like it. It's a world built on arbitrary decisions.
Will a peach-colored potion save my life or kill me? Is this sword
blessed or cursed? Will rounding that corner reveal treasure or a
monster that will kill me? And if you make a single mis-step, odds
are good that it's going to kill you, and say goodbye to that
play-through. It's like Dragon's Lair in ASCII, only worse; you can't
learn the arbitrary pattern because it changes every single time you
play!

What I've gleaned off of people playing it is that it basically
amounts to carefully edging your way around, trying to figure out the
current set of rules before you screw up. Taste the potion, pour it
on something, wave a unicorn's horn at it. Of course, to know how to
do *that*, you have to go research it. You have to go outside of the
game and learn the whole set of arbitrary things that are constant
just so that you can start learning about the arbitrary aspects that
change. And once you have everything figured out, you're still stuck
exploring a random area, hoping that the precautions you took are
enough to let you survive the next random encounter. It's a
combination of memorization, OCD-level meticulousness, and pure luck.

When I'm playing a game, I want to do just that: play a game. I want
to be able to take chances and make mistakes without the game snapping
my head off if I hold a key for a little too long or do something else
that's the slightest bit wrong. I don't want to be forced into tasks
that aren't of my choosing, told to learn stuff that I could care less
about, and then be pissed on by fate even when I'm doing everything
right. I get enough of that from real life.

Nethack is not "one of the greatest game[sic] of all time." It's a
niche product, something that has tailored itself to one sliver of
humanity to the point where nobody else can play it. If you are part
of that group, either naturally or by long effort, it will seem
awesome to you, because it is in a sense the perfect game for you.
Either it was built around people like you, or you molded yourself to
it. There's a positive feedback loop between you and the game, making
the bond stronger the more you play. In a strange way, you could say
that you've fallen in love with the game.

There's nothing wrong with niche products, but you have to realize
that they can't--not won't, but can't--become mainstream without
losing the very aspects that appeal the most to their core audience.
For one very simple reason: the core audience has become so enamored
with how they are *now* that "fixing" it for a wider audience will
inevitably change things that, to them, are sacrosanct. There's just
too much that has to change. Playing the game has become like a
ritual for you, and major changes would disrupt that ritual. Since
you've been enjoying that ritual, breaking it "must" be a Bad Thing.
The game would be ruined, dumbed down for a wider audience. The magic
would be lost.

Anyway, sorry about the massive rant from out of a clear blue sky.
You guys got me started thinking about nethack, and it frustrates me,
because there's a substantial part of it that calls out to me, but I
don't have the disposition or the time to become a nethack fan. I
guess you could say I'm still looking for my nethack, for the game
that I could play over and over and only enjoy more each time. Since
I can't seem to find it, I'm probably going to end up writing it
myself. And that may well be a life-long project.

-FM

[Max McCracken]

Try Angband, it's much more combat-oriented, streamlined and
predictable. Figuring out the keyboard shortcuts though is a matter of
looking into help file and learning in both cases.

For example, one of the great things about Angband vs Nethack is that
it has town which you can teleport to any time you like to replenish
supplies provided you have the portal scroll/spell and money for
shopping.

About the niche rant, you're right in that even the obvious
UI/usability solutions won't be implemented for the mentioned reasons
- the thousand people that play it are already comfortable with it and
tend to sneer at any suggestions from outside (the ones that aren't
make their variants which Angband has around 50 in various states).
Every time I start playing Angband or one of its variants I tend to
download sources in 10 minutes and make the usual set of hald-dozen
changes for myself like removing multiplying monsters, auto-identify
all items on level generation etc :)

[Robin Lee Powell]

This seemed as good a time as any to spread an essay I wrote about
roguelikes:
http://digitalkingdom.org/gaming/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage

Let's just say that not everyone finds the same things fun. :)

Angband is pretty cool as roguelikes go, though.

-Robin

--
They say: "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm thinking: "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other than the default outcome?" See http://shrunklink.com/cdiz
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/

[Robin Lee Powell]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 09:25:28AM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>
> This seemed as good a time as any to spread an essay I wrote about
> roguelikes:
> http://digitalkingdom.org/gaming/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage

Oh, good job with the wrong link. -_-

http://digitalkingdom.org/gaming/tiki-index.php?page=I+Hate+Permadeath%21&bl=y

-Robin

[Charlie Nolan]

I see you mentioned Dwarf Fortress; have you played it? Adventurer
Mode is kinda roguelike, but advancement takes an order of magnitude
less time, so the permadeath doesn't sting nearly so much. And
Fortress Mode almost takes effort to lose if you turn off sieges.

-FM

[Robin Lee Powell]

I have a bunch of stuff written about it, actually:

http://digitalkingdom.org/gaming/tiki-index.php?page=Dwarf+Fortress&bl=y

http://digitalkingdom.org/gaming/tiki-index.php?page=The+City+Building+Game+I+Want&bl=y

So, yes. :)

-Robin

--

[Max McCracken]

Your rant is opinionated and misses the point :)

Your mentioning of "Diablo is the way to go" sort of gives you away -
Diablo is a dumbed down more casual experience that you imply would be
good in roguelikes. Yet it wouldn't exactly because Diablo crowd
doesn't mesh well with roguelikes crowd. All these "fun detriments"
you mention like permadeath, food consumption or for example
identifying stuff before use because it might hurt you alot are not
detriments to roguelikes crowd, they love it. Those that don't go and
play Diablo instead. That's all there is to it. All that hard crap
stays because the genre is too niche to move forward to gain larger
audience.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm slightly more from the casual crowd, too.
I don't like many of these hard things myself. And the solution I've
found a long time ago is that you simply download the source and cut
out everything you don't like. Then play happily for everafter. And
you don't even need to set the wizard mode on ;)

[Jack Edge]

Man, I should just get in the habit of adding "In my opinion" to every
statement.

In my opinion, I should just get in the habit of adding "In my opinion"
to every statement.

Actually, on a serious note, that reminds me of E-Prime, a hypothetical
language which eliminates all forms of "to be".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

Mind you, try having a discussion about E-Prime, in E-Prime.

[Max McCracken]

That's what they made IMO for :P

And I've remembered about the DiabloRL :
http://diablo.chaosforge.org/