IVAN roguelike
sPlaTH
I don't consider myself a spokesperson of the IVAN community but, as
I've seen this past days. Activity sort of dropped and I'm now trying
to get people aware of the forum website and IVAN - Iter Vehemens ad
Necem ( A Violent Road to Death).
IVAN is a roguelike which uses SDL to show of it's neat tile graphics
and it has some other features which is rare to find in most
roguelike
games. For example; advanced material handling (you can even use
magic
to alter your bodyparts), detailed graphics which even show bloody
footsteps of hurt enemies (or yourself), a damage system which means
that you can loose any limb by force or deceases and more.
The original devs only made it to ver 0.50 but it's opensource so
other's has already made up their own mods with scripting and
programming and it's quite good looking as it is.
If anyone wants to try it or visit the forum (which is now a user
made
one) can try using these links:
the game website; http://ivan(dot)sourceforge(dot)net/
the new forum website; http://attnam(dot)jconserv(dot)net/
(in case of spambots all the dots have been replaced by "(dot)"s)
Krice
> Activity sort of dropped and I'm now trying
> to get people aware of the forum website and IVAN
That game has no learning curve and it's mainly aimed
for HC players. All two of them.
I didn't like the limb system, it's annoying.
Timofei Shatrov
everyone with this message:
>On Jun 16, 12:10 pm, sPlaTH <robin.horne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Activity sort of dropped and I'm now trying
>> to get people aware of the forum website and IVAN
>
>That game has no learning curve and it's mainly aimed
>for HC players. All two of them.
This is blatantly false. IVAN is one of the most noob-friendly RL around.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:43:25 -0700, Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> tried to confuse
>everyone with this message:
>
>>On Jun 16, 12:10 pm, sPlaTH <robin.horne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Activity sort of dropped and I'm now trying
>>> to get people aware of the forum website and IVAN
>>
>>That game has no learning curve and it's mainly aimed
>>for HC players. All two of them.
>
>This is blatantly false. IVAN is one of the most noob-friendly RL around.
...even my sister did play it. The only RL she ever touched.
Sorry for double-post, but I had to get this point across.
sPlaTH
roguelikes which shouldn't be confused with its difficulty setting in-
game. Not all people like limb-systems in roguelikes but in this case
I think it's made in a good way. And it adds to the atmosphere too. I
mean, in how many games can you loose a leg for instanse and use it as
a weapon to kill your enemies with?
Krice
> I agree with Timofei. IVAN is much easier to learn than most
> roguelikes which shouldn't be confused with its difficulty setting in-
> game.
It's difficult, that was what I meant with learning curve.
You Die Very Soon And Often in that game: it has no
learning curve (or it's very deep). This is of course
just one example of many among roguelike projects. It seems
that just releasing a game is good enough, you don't need
to know anything about game design.
David Damerell
>learning curve (or it's very deep). This is of course
>just one example of many among roguelike projects. It seems
>that just releasing a game is good enough, you don't need
>to know anything about game design.
That's a bit rich from someone who doesn't know anything about releasing a
game.
--
OPTIONS=name:Kirsty,menustyle:C,female,lit_corridor,standout,time,showexp,hilit
e_pet,catname:Akane,dogname:Ryoga,fruit:okonomiyaki,pickup_types:"!$?=/,scores:
5 top/2 around,color,boulder:0,autoquiver,autodig,disclose:yiyayvygyc,pickup_bu
rden:burdened,!cmdassist,msg_window:reversed,!sparkle,horsename:Rumiko,showrace
Martin Read
[IVAN]
>You Die Very Soon And Often in that game
And this differs from Rogue how?
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
\_\/_/ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mpread/dungeonbash/
\ / Web forums are crap.
\/
Krice
> And this differs from Rogue how?
Never played Rogue that much. The difference to Nethack is
that in Nethack you usually know why you died and you don't
die that easily in the beginning. When you begin to think
why Nethack is most famous of all roguelikes it's really
a matter of simple things Nethack does the right way.
I want you to read about game design. The basics at least.
Then I don't feel like I'm talking to a child.
sPlaTH
At first I also got the feeling that I died too easily at the
beginning. But, I don't know why. It never happens anymore. Maybe it's
because of me getting used to the game or it's just made that way.
Persistance pay.
Timofei Shatrov
everyone with this message:
>On 18 kes=E4, 12:22, sPlaTH <robin.horne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree with Timofei. IVAN is much easier to learn than most
>> roguelikes which shouldn't be confused with its difficulty setting in-
>> game.
>
>It's difficult, that was what I meant with learning curve.
>You Die Very Soon And Often in that game
That's because you suck ;) First two levels are usually easy. The third level is
tricky, but once you figure it out, it's also easy. The next dungeon is already
mid-game so you can't complain that it's hard.
Besides, in IVAN, dying IS fun. Dying from being decapitated by giant hedgehog
can hardly discourage someone from trying again.
Sorry, but my expectations of Kaduria are getting lower and lower. From what I
gather it would be easy, boring and with REALLY weird interface.
David Damerell
>On 18 kes=E4, 13:59, Martin Read <mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>And this differs from Rogue how?
>Then I don't feel like I'm talking to a child.
Martin has designed and released a roguelike that I, amongst others, have
spent many enjoyable hours playing.
Remind me, how are you doing with Vapuria?
David Damerell
>On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:34:46 -0700, Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> tried to confuse
>>You Die Very Soon And Often in that game
>That's because you suck ;)
Thank you, Captain Obvious! :-)
>
>Sorry, but my expectations of Kaduria are getting lower and lower. From what I
>gather it would be easy, boring and with REALLY weird interface.
You expect it will be playable? Optimist.
Krice
wrote:
> Martin has designed and released a roguelike
Does it have a name?
> Remind me, how are you doing with Vapuria?
You know, I can understand the lack of knowledge in game
design. I was like that myself when I was young and
ignorant of many things related to game programming.
For me Kaduria has been more than just a game project.
It has teached me many things I didn't know before.
Krice
> Sorry, but my expectations of Kaduria are getting lower
Don't expect anything. One of the reasons why I began
to make Kaduria was that I felt that Nethack was too
simple. I can do better! What I didn't know was how
difficult it is to make a roguelike:)
Ray Dillinger
> One of the reasons why I began to make Kaduria
> was that I felt that Nethack was too simple.
May I snag this for my quotefile?
Bear
David Damerell
>On Jun 18, 6:18 pm, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>Does it have a name?
Yes. Releases of it have been announced here. Unlike your non-existent
project.
>>Remind me, how are you doing with Vapuria?
>For me Kaduria has been more than just a game project.
>It has teached me many things I didn't know before.
What a shame that none of them was how to write a roguelike.
Slash
> On Jun 18, 6:18 pm, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > Martin has designed and released a roguelike
>
> Does it have a name?
Martin's Dungeon Bash if I recall correctly.
>
> > Remind me, how are you doing with Vapuria?
>
> You know, I can understand the lack of knowledge in game
> design.
That doesn't answer his question... How are you doing with Garudia?
> I was like that myself when I was young and
> ignorant of many things related to game programming.
You were like what? aware that releasing a game is more important than
talking about it? if so maybe it is time to be young and ignorant
again.
> For me Kaduria has been more than just a game project.
> It has teached me many things I didn't know before.
You know... Kaduria won't teach you anything: people will.
--
Slash
Antoine
> On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:34:46 -0700, Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> tried to confuse
> everyone with this message:
>
> >On 18 kes=E4, 12:22, sPlaTH <robin.horne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I agree with Timofei. IVAN is much easier to learn than most
> >> roguelikes which shouldn't be confused with its difficulty setting in-
> >> game.
>
> >It's difficult, that was what I meant with learning curve.
> >You Die Very Soon And Often in that game
>
> That's because you suck ;) First two levels are usually easy. The third level is
> tricky, but once you figure it out, it's also easy. The next dungeon is already
> mid-game so you can't complain that it's hard.
>
> Besides, in IVAN, dying IS fun. Dying from being decapitated by giant hedgehog
> can hardly discourage someone from trying again.
Personally, I agree with Krice. I hate dying in roguelikes and being
killed in the first few minutes of a new game is usually enough to put
me off entirely. I want to get some good gaming experience before my
first death, otherwise give up there.
A.
Corremn
Yeah, I also agree. It seems that a lot of RLs (mine included) make
it hard from the start. This is a great challenge but unfortunatly
makes a lot of people give up too quickly. I write my RLs this was as
to challenge myself, however if I ever wanted a fan base I would have
to make the start easier and make the mid game the more challenging.
Adom, nethack, angband and even crawl (if you play a easy class) have
relatively easy starts.
Antoine
>
> - Show quoted text -
If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the controls
then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in a new game
without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this is a problem
with the game.
A.
Brendan Guild
> If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the
> controls then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in
> a new game without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this
> is a problem with the game.
That seems to be contrary to the spirit of a roguelike game. While
playing a roguelike, your character is going to die. Dying is the
expected outcome of playing, just like in life. If you consider the
death of your character to be a bad thing then you will surely abandon
every roguelike before you have played it enough to get skilled.
On the other hand, I am sure that there are ways to make the early game
interesting for experienced players even without a serious threat of
death. While new players can do little more than survive, a skilled
player should be challenged to get bonuses and special items in the
early game.
Ideally, an extremely skilled player should be able to claim ultimate
victory in the first dozen moves. Even if there is no real chance of
death in the first 30 minutes of play, having a chance at glory should
be enough to keep expert players interested.
Antoine
> Antoine wrote:
> > If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the
> > controls then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in
> > a new game without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this
> > is a problem with the game.
>
> That seems to be contrary to the spirit of a roguelike game.
I think you'd find a lot of people disagreed with that and don't enjoy
early deaths.
> If you consider the
> death of your character to be a bad thing then you will surely abandon
> every roguelike before you have played it enough to get skilled.
I don't expect to win the game the first time, I just want to feel
like I've got somewhere before I cark.
A.
Slash
> On Jun 19, 2:27 pm, Brendan Guild <d...@spam.me> wrote:
>
> > Antoine wrote:
> > > If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the
> > > controls then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in
> > > a new game without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this
> > > is a problem with the game.
>
> > That seems to be contrary to the spirit of a roguelike game.
>
> I think you'd find a lot of people disagreed with that and don't enjoy
> early deaths.
There is one game design guideline about making the player feel
powerful for the first gameplay minutes... then squash him to the
death mercilessly (ok.. I made up the last part)
However, perhaps if "theme" allows it, and if the player is aimed to
hardcore players willing to bite the hard nut...
SNIP
>
> A.
--
Slash
Krice
Yes..
Krice
> Martin's Dungeon Bash if I recall correctly.
I remember that. It had only source code released, no
executable there. I didn't want to play with the source code.
> That doesn't answer his question... How are you doing with Garudia?
Better than ever!
> You know... Kaduria won't teach you anything: people will.
You are confused!
Darshan Shaligram
[...]
> If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the controls
> then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in a new game
> without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this is a problem
> with the game.
A game that can't kill me off *quick* when I'm new to it is not a
roguelike I'd want to play. :-)
If the first 20-30 minutes are safe, then the real game starts after
that, and those first 20-30 minutes were just pointless filler[*],
IMO.
And yes, I like IVAN, which isn't as hard as it's been made out to be.
[*] aka backstory, town, world map, whatever.
--
Darshan Shaligram <scin...@gmail.com> Deus vult
Corremn
But umm, doesnt IVAN have a backstory, town and worldmap?
OT or on Topic
IVAN has some great concepts but can someone tell me why my limbs fall
off for no aparrent reason?? I was walking threw the wilderness
(overmap) and my leg just fell off! This sucked as I had to drop just
about every thing I carried (never to see again) to be able to move
again.
Apart from that it is an easy game, if you dont step on a lanmdmine
that is.
Krice
> A game that can't kill me off *quick* when I'm new to it is not a
> roguelike I'd want to play. :-)
So.. dying is your idea of fun?
> If the first 20-30 minutes are safe, then the real game starts after
> that, and those first 20-30 minutes were just pointless filler[*],
> IMO.
There are lots of things you can do to avoid dull start for
power players. For example let the player decide if he wants
to play beginner levels to get experience or proceed to deeper
dungeons (this requires a branching dungeon). This kind of
thing was introduced in Nethack in form of gnomish mines. If
you are tough and feel lucky you can go there, or first get
some experience and better gear before trying.
The sudden dying in roguelikes is something I don't
personally like. I want the player to have more chances
to survive from threatening situations and less random
deaths.
Darshan Shaligram
> On Jun 19, 3:26 pm, Darshan Shaligram <scinti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If the first 20-30 minutes are safe, then the real game starts after
>> that, and those first 20-30 minutes were just pointless filler[*],
>> IMO.
>> [*] aka backstory, town, world map, whatever.
> Heh, spoken like a true crawler.
Of course - Crawl helps you see clearly. :-) And yes, I understand
there are other opinions on what's bad filler. I'm just stating my
own.
> But umm, doesnt IVAN have a backstory, town and worldmap?
IVAN's backstory takes no in-game-time. You can read it if you like,
but generally once is enough, and you can bypass it afterwards - it's
not something you're forced to play through ad nauseam at the
beginning of the game.
Again, the world-map and town are not something I spend massive
amounts of time in (definitely not 20-30 minutes :-)). Most of my time
in IVAN (I haven't played too much IVAN and I can't speak
authoritatively about the mid or late game) is spent dying horribly in
dungeons, in the thick of action.
When I refer to pointless filler, I mean stuff that *keeps me out of
the real game*. My examples above (backstory, town, etc.) are just
common excuses for putting filler into games, not necessarily evil in
themselves.
NetHack has a Minetown that I don't consider pointless filler, for
instance, because I can fight and die just fine in Minetown - it's a
well-integrated part of the game, it has atmosphere, it's dangerous.
> IVAN has some great concepts but can someone tell me why my limbs
> fall off for no aparrent reason??
It does overdo the amputation. :-) I also don't enjoy the tiles, which
are darn hard to make out (especially when there's a homicidal
hedgehog advancing over squares splashed liberally with your blood).
Darshan Shaligram
> On 19 kesä, 09:26, Darshan Shaligram <scinti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> A game that can't kill me off *quick* when I'm new to it is not a
>> roguelike I'd want to play. :-)
> So.. dying is your idea of fun?
A challenge is my idea of fun. If I make bad tactical mistakes, I want
to see consequences. Otherwise where's my incentive to play better?
Dying early is un-fun when you have a boring early dungeon
(misfeature), or too much unchanging content the player must endure at
start-of-game (misfeature), or where death is unavoidable even with
good tactics (misfeature).
sPlaTH
unlucky. But within 20-30 minutes you do get somewhere if you're not
VERY unlucky. I would count at least 10% of the game sessions a mayor
breakthrough from the shorter ones before and that's not too bad for a
roguelike IMHO.
sPlaTH
got leprosy (from a zombie perhaps or bad food). You should go back to
the first town and talk to the priest to get it attached and get your
medicine. ^^
The diseases are also considered a feature (the more ways you can die
on the better?). It's not called a Violent Road to Death for nothing.
Antoine
LOL That is legendary!
Was there really no warning or explanation?
A.
R. Dan Henry
>Adom, nethack, angband and even crawl (if you play a easy class) have
>relatively easy starts.
Once you have experience with them. Novice players typically die early
the first few times in all the major roguelikes. Even veterans tend to
be most vulnerable at the very beginning, where a single stroke of bad
luck can be deadly.
It's a good thing really. Let a player meet the harsh realities of a
serious gaming experience right away so they'll understand they need to
be on their toes and can't expect the built-in do-overs of most
commercial games.
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
If you wish to put anything I post on your website,
please be polite enough to ask first.
Gamer_2k4
> Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> writes:
> > On 19 kesä, 09:26, Darshan Shaligram <scinti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> A game that can't kill me off *quick* when I'm new to it is not a
> >> roguelike I'd want to play. :-)
> > So.. dying is your idea of fun?
>
> A challenge is my idea of fun. If I make bad tactical mistakes, I want
> to see consequences. Otherwise where's my incentive to play better?
Arguments can be made for both sides. I personally enjoy the Gearhead
approach, where death is disadvantageous, but not game-ending.
There's sufficient deterrent that you try to stay alive, but no
decision is truly fatal. OTOH, you have the hardcore approach, which
is more in the nature of roguelikes. Skill and luck is required to
win, and you're forced to think about every action before you take it.
It's a tough call, really. No one likes the tedium of starting a new
game. But how can you fix it? Do you take the forgiving approach,
allowing the player to get to the content but having every character
repeat the early game? Do you take the hardcore approach, increasing
the probability of dying in the early game and therefore causing the
player to replay that section often?
I have yet to see a game that really offers great early game
replayability. It's always "get the quest, do the quest" or "kill the
emu, kill the orc" or "go to general store, buy lantern, kill
Morgoth." I guess that's why I'm more interested in developing
roguelikes than playing them.
--
Gamer_2k4
Jeff Lait
>
> It's a tough call, really. No one likes the tedium of starting a new
> game. But how can you fix it?
Perhaps starting a new game shouldn't be tedious?
> I have yet to see a game that really offers great early game
> replayability. It's always "get the quest, do the quest" or "kill the
> emu, kill the orc" or "go to general store, buy lantern, kill
> Morgoth." I guess that's why I'm more interested in developing
> roguelikes than playing them.
The majority of my time playing POWDER is spent in the early game.
Since I still play it, I'd claim it has early game replayability.
"get the quest, do the quest" - Why does the player have to get the
quest?
"go to general store, buy lantern, kill Morgoth." - If every game
starts with a trek to the general store, why not start the game with
the lantern?
This is, BTW, why I hate extensive character customization,
autorollers, skill choices, etc. Losing an low level character should
be fun, not tedious. I want to get right back into the action.
In this sense, if you have 20-30 minutes of "safe" play before the
"real" content, I'm just going to be more annoyed at having to trudge
through said safe play every time! Why can't the real play start at
the beginning?
Traditional videogames, built with the theory of save/reload, can't do
this. They need the first levels to be "tutorial" quality building
you up to the real content. In a permadeath system, however, all
players will spend most of their time near the start. So make sure
the start is fun and varied. The beginning should have the strongest
randomization, quick access to neat effects and tools, etc. Save
static content for the end of the game which players see rarely. As I
add static quests to POWDER, I'm putting them at the end for this very
reason.
We tend to forget, focusing on our own abnormal behaviour, that it is
more common for people to move on when they have finally "won" a
roguelike. You thus don't have to worry about them getting bored of
seeing the astral plane for the 500th time - you can safely tell such
a player that they can quit playing now. You do want to worry about
people getting bored of seeing your hand crafted starting town for the
500th time. Such players haven't "won" yet, and may never win if they
get annoyed at the same static content.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
sPlaTH
There is a warning message (I don't remember exactly what is says).
But it's not a message you automatically read as a sign of extreme
danger.
Jakub Debski
> other's has already made up their own mods with scripting and
> programming and it's quite good looking as it is.
The 0.50 probably means that the game is half complete. Is it winnable
with only half of features or full of features with only half of
levels?
regards,
Jakub
Ray Dillinger
> If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the controls
> then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in a new game
> without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this is a problem
> with the game.
I dunno. If it's a death you can learn something from, then as far
as I'm concerned, the quicker the better. You have to play a hundred
characters to discover the first hundred ways to die. I'd like to make
that process as short as possible and take out characters that the
player hasn't invested a huge amount of work in.
Two minutes after starting my first game of Nethack, I made a note
to myself that said, "Kobold corpses are poisonous" and started my
second game. Two minutes after that, I made a note to myself that
said, "floating eyes can paralyze you - do not meelee them!" and
started my third game. And so on. And this is how you begin to
master a complicated game; quick, painless lessons and a moral to
most of the stories.
What's really frustrating is the death that teaches you nothing
new, especially if it takes more than a half-hour to reach.
Bear
Antoine
> Antoine wrote:
> > If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the controls
> > then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in a new game
> > without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this is a problem
> > with the game.
>
> I dunno. If it's a death you can learn something from, then as far
> as I'm concerned, the quicker the better. You have to play a hundred
> characters to discover the first hundred ways to die. I'd like to make
> that process as short as possible and take out characters that the
> player hasn't invested a huge amount of work in.
>
> Two minutes after starting my first game of Nethack, I made a note
> to myself that said, "Kobold corpses are poisonous" and started my
> second game.
Fair enough. And I wouldn't ask for Nethack to be other than how it
is.
But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later found
out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial equipment,
I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete the game and
go back to surfing the web.
A.
Slash
You impatient man :) there was a time when NetHack was SomeonesAlphaRL
too
Not that I advocate quick deaths... they may be frustrating
>
> A.
--
Slash
Brendan Guild
> But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later
> found out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial
> equipment, I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete
> the game and go back to surfing the web.
I think the best roguelikes give you more options than mashing your
arrows into every monster that you see. Maybe if you can't take on
three giant rats at once you should have looked for a way to avoid
them.
For example, I really love the way MetroidRL allows you to avoid
ranged attacks by moving perpendicular to the line of fire. It means
that even though you can shoot in any direction there is can still be
a strategy to avoid getting hit. See: http://www.santiagoz.com/mrl/
I suppose ChessRogue is not a good example of a roguelike, but it is
an example of a game where you have to think and try to avoid being
hit, rather than walking straight into every battle. I don't like the
way ChessRogue makes its monsters take turns, but I do like how it
makes you fight cleverly. See: http://chessrogue.sourceforge.net/
While I'm talking about it, I guess I could point out how
unfortunately ZeldaRL seems to fail to be interesting in this way. In
the action Zelda games, you have to understand how your enemies move,
learn to predict what they are going to do, then get your timing
right to kill them without being hit yourself. ZeldaRL would have
been such a perfect place for clever fighting in a manner similar to
ChessRogue (but less so, of course). Instead, at the start of the
game you have almost no strategic options. You can avoid being shot
like in MetroidRL, but that's not enough. MetroidRL gives you
jumping, charging your weapon, avoiding being shot, and complex
terrain, which gives you enough options to make a fight interesting.
See: http://www.santiagoz.com/web/page.php?22
One of the modest ambitions I have for my own game is to have enemies
that are deadly to a player character at all levels of advancement. I
want the player to be frequently exposed to enemies that cannot be
fought successfully. This means that the player will have to
carefully avoid those monsters, and when the player advances to the
point where those monsters are no longer deadly, it will seem like a
real reward. As in Pacman, the game is about avoiding the enemies
until you can turn the tables on them.
Monsters are supposed to be deadly; that is what makes fighting them
interesting. So when I hear that a game is bad because three giant
rats can kill you, I can't help but wonder if the fault is in the
game for having giant rats, or in the player.
Antoine
> Antoine wrote:
> > But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later
> > found out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial
> > equipment, I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete
> > the game and go back to surfing the web.
>
> I think the best roguelikes give you more options than mashing your
> arrows into every monster that you see.
I do agree on this. Although it can be taken to extremes. I feel a bit
dubious of the Unangband case where, to kill a quest guardian, you
seem to have to do all kinds of weird things like throwing mushrooms
and dipping your arrows into potions. It doesn't seem heroic somehow.
> Maybe if you can't take on
> three giant rats at once you should have looked for a way to avoid
> them.
But I wanted to kill the (figurative) rats and I felt like I had a
legitimate expectation that I would be able to do so.
> Monsters are supposed to be deadly; that is what makes fighting them
> interesting.
Giant rats are supposed to be easy to kill; that is what makes them
early game sword fodder.
> So when I hear that a game is bad because three giant
> rats can kill you, I can't help but wonder if the fault is in the
> game for having giant rats, or in the player.
It could be either way. But you, the developer, can't change the
players; you can only change the game.
A.
Antoine
> On Jun 19, 2:50 am, Darshan Shaligram <scinti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> writes:
> > > On 19 kesä, 09:26, Darshan Shaligram <scinti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> A game that can't kill me off *quick* when I'm new to it is not a
> > >> roguelike I'd want to play. :-)
> > > So.. dying is your idea of fun?
>
> > A challenge is my idea of fun. If I make bad tactical mistakes, I want
> > to see consequences. Otherwise where's my incentive to play better?
>
> Arguments can be made for both sides. I personally enjoy the Gearhead
> approach, where death is disadvantageous, but not game-ending.
> There's sufficient deterrent that you try to stay alive, but no
> decision is truly fatal. OTOH, you have the hardcore approach, which
> is more in the nature of roguelikes. Skill and luck is required to
> win, and you're forced to think about every action before you take it.
>
> It's a tough call, really. No one likes the tedium of starting a new
> game. But how can you fix it? Do you take the forgiving approach,
> allowing the player to get to the content but having every character
> repeat the early game? Do you take the hardcore approach, increasing
> the probability of dying in the early game and therefore causing the
> player to replay that section often?
It should be possible to do both in a single game, depending on how
the player acts. For example, make the first level of the first
dungeon easy but unrewarding, with the path to quick advancement being
to skip it and instead go down the first three flights of stairs you
see. Newbies can tool around in the easy area and get the sense of
achieving something, experienced characters can head down to the tough
area and _actually_ achieve something fast (or die).
You can get the same effect by distinguishing between character
classes/races that are easy in the early game and those that are more
powerful later on and encouraging new players to start with the
former. (e.g. Crawl, MDFi vs DEWz - I think?)
Or by making some parts of the game optional once you've completed
them the first time round. (See Jeff's comment "In this sense, if you
have 20-30 minutes of "safe" play before the "real" content, I'm just
going to be more annoyed at having to trudge through said safe play
every time! Why can't the real play start at the beginning?" Fair
enough, make it so that you don't have to complete the safe bit more
than once.)
A.
Slash
> Antoine wrote:
> > But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later
> > found out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial
> > equipment, I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete
> > the game and go back to surfing the web.
I thought on replying to you via email, but no luck finding your
adress...
> I think the best roguelikes give you more options than mashing your
> arrows into every monster that you see. Maybe if you can't take on
> three giant rats at once you should have looked for a way to avoid
> them.
>
> For example, I really love the way MetroidRL allows you to avoid
> ranged attacks by moving perpendicular to the line of fire. It means
> that even though you can shoot in any direction there is can still be
> a strategy to avoid getting hit. See:http://www.santiagoz.com/mrl/
Yeah...
I really have to pull off that new version of MetroidRL... I wish I
had more time :(
SNIP
> While I'm talking about it, I guess I could point out how
> unfortunately ZeldaRL seems to fail to be interesting in this way. In
> the action Zelda games, you have to understand how your enemies move,
> learn to predict what they are going to do, then get your timing
> right to kill them without being hit yourself. ZeldaRL would have
> been such a perfect place for clever fighting in a manner similar to
> ChessRogue (but less so, of course). Instead, at the start of the
> game you have almost no strategic options. You can avoid being shot
> like in MetroidRL, but that's not enough. MetroidRL gives you
> jumping, charging your weapon, avoiding being shot, and complex
> terrain, which gives you enough options to make a fight interesting.
You've got a point there... one of the things that must be done in
ZeldaRL is making each enemy unique... right now they are a bunch of
uninteresting fellas with different stats, but thats about it... you
can blame it for being a 7DRL :)
That includes bosses... I am thinking on some puzzly boss fights...
hard to make random, but at any rate much more interesting than
mindless bashing. (For example, one of the bosses will be invulnerable
against physical attacks and you have to make him hit himself... stuff
like this :)
Thanks for your comments
SNIP
>
> Monsters are supposed to be deadly; that is what makes fighting them
> interesting. So when I hear that a game is bad because three giant
> rats can kill you, I can't help but wonder if the fault is in the
> game for having giant rats, or in the player.
Whining babies.... they must play Rogue from time to time and learn
about unfairness :D
--
Slash
Gamer_2k4
> classes/races that are easy in the early game and those that are more
> powerful later on and encouraging new players to start with the
> former. (e.g. Crawl, MDFi vs DEWz - I think?)
Excellent idea. Too bad I have a classless games. =/
--
Gamer_2k4
Antoine
It's OK, this is an egalitarian newsgroup.
A.
Timofei Shatrov
to confuse everyone with this message:
>> Monsters are supposed to be deadly; that is what makes fighting them
>> interesting.
>
>Giant rats are supposed to be easy to kill; that is what makes them
>early game sword fodder.
No, the simple rats are the sword fodder. The giant rats are supposed to be big
and scary for newb character. Also, fighting ANY 3 monsters at once is dumb.
Don't be surprised that the game kills you for it.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
sPlaTH
It's winnable but need some more features (monsters and such), maybe
needs some debugging too but the 0.5 doesn't mean that only half of
the features' are in there.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Antoine wrote:
> But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later found
> out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial equipment,
> I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete the game and
> go back to surfing the web.
Would it be any different if the rats were instead called 'Greater Hell
Beasts'?
--
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Christophe
Greater Hell Beasts in Zang are completly harmless by themselves. The
most dangerous things they can do is dig through walls (thus opening the
way for new monsters), block your escape route or teleport you away in
the middle of some danger.
Although I must say I've had my life saved by one of those once thanks
to that teleport away thing ;)
In that case though, Antoine was not talking about an harmless creature.
Impossible to kill here means that YOU will be the one killed.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Christophe wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski a écrit :
>> At Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:56:03 -0700,
>> Antoine wrote:
>>
>>> But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later found
>>> out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial equipment,
>>> I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete the game and
>>> go back to surfing the web.
>> Would it be any different if the rats were instead called 'Greater Hell
>> Beasts'?
> Greater Hell Beasts in Zang are completly harmless by themselves. The
> most dangerous things they can do is dig through walls (thus opening the
> way for new monsters), block your escape route or teleport you away in
> the middle of some danger.
Thank you for the lenghty explanation, but I think it has nothing to do to
the issue at hand?
> Although I must say I've had my life saved by one of those once thanks
> to that teleport away thing ;)
You never know what emergent features will appear, especially when your
game doesn't punish inventive players.
> In that case though, Antoine was not talking about an harmless creature.
> Impossible to kill here means that YOU will be the one killed.
I wasn't talking about a harmless creature either -- I was talking about
its name, that somehow made certain players expect an esy kill. The name
"Greater Hell Beast" is designed to induce fear and awe, thus I picked it
as an example name that wouldn't introduce such expectations.
Sorry for not making it clear.
Gerry Quinn
antoine....@gmail.com says...
This proble, is sometimes caused by players having fixed views about a
game. For example, there are many players who would insist on killing
the rats - but maybe if they had run away they would have easily
survived the encounter.
I agree though that players should (unless thematic issues prevent it)
be given gear enough to get through a few bad random encounters on the
first level.
- Gerry Quinn
--
Lair of the Demon Ape
http://indigo.ie/~gerryq/lair/lair.htm
konijn_
>
> This is, BTW, why I hate extensive character customization,
> autorollers, skill choices, etc. Losing an low level character should
> be fun, not tedious. I want to get right back into the action.
Odd. I cannot see the connection unless the game is in beta. You
should be able to
(*) Create a random character
(R) Restart the same character from the old savefile.
Cheers,
T.
Christophe
> its name, that somehow made certain players expect an esy kill. The name
> "Greater Hell Beast" is designed to induce fear and awe, thus I picked it
> as an example name that wouldn't introduce such expectations.
>
> Sorry for not making it clear.
Drats, I did it again, yeah I see what you mean. In my opinion, "giant
rat" isn't such a threatening monster either although it probably gets
borderline. There is no doubt that finding a "Greater Hell Beast" at
level 1 requires some specific attention from the player either.
A good monster desctiption might help alleviate such misunderstanding
but it isn't perfect in itself: I doubt most players will take the time
to look at all monster descriptions unless there is a good reason to do it.
This prompts a "Random idea": when you get killed by a monster, and if
your game includes somewhat detailed monster desctiption for all your
monsters, instead of showing a simple tombstone written "Killed by a
giant rat", add in the monster description itself to help new players
understand what killed them and how dangerous it really was :)
Kill by a Giant rat.
The Giant rat is very similar to it's smaller breathen, the common sewer
rat. Of course, the fact that it is horse sized instead of rat sized
with matching claws and fangs make it a *much* deadlier opponent.
David Damerell
>see. Newbies can tool around in the easy area and get the sense of
>achieving something, experienced characters can head down to the tough
>area and _actually_ achieve something fast (or die).
Except if there's stuff to be had in the easy area, you present the
experienced player with the option to do something rewarding but boring,
which is grinding by any other name.
>You can get the same effect by distinguishing between character
>classes/races that are easy in the early game and those that are more
>powerful later on and encouraging new players to start with the
>former. (e.g. Crawl, MDFi vs DEWz - I think?)
"Easy early, hard late" and "hard early, easy late" are silly and I don't
know why roguelikes try and do that - Angband is the worst offender. To
win with either you have to be good enough to manage the hard part and
that makes the easy part very dull. An easy startup option should stay
easy inasmuch as is possible and a hard one stay hard.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Teleute, Presuary.
Slash
> In article <1182300963.845165.207...@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
> antoine.from.r...@gmail.com says...
>
>
>
> > On Jun 20, 12:02 pm, Ray Dillinger <b...@sonic.net> wrote:
> > > Antoine wrote:
> > > > If you have played roguelikes before and can understand the controls
> > > > then IMO you should be able to go the first 20-30 mins in a new game
> > > > without dying once (preferably longer) If not then this is a problem
> > > > with the game.
>
> > > I dunno. If it's a death you can learn something from, then as far
> > > as I'm concerned, the quicker the better. You have to play a hundred
> > > characters to discover the first hundred ways to die. I'd like to make
> > > that process as short as possible and take out characters that the
> > > player hasn't invested a huge amount of work in.
>
> > > Two minutes after starting my first game of Nethack, I made a note
> > > to myself that said, "Kobold corpses are poisonous" and started my
> > > second game.
>
> > Fair enough. And I wouldn't ask for Nethack to be other than how it
> > is.
>
> > But if I started a game of SomeonesAlphaRL and two minutes later found
> > out that you can't beat three giant rats with the initial equipment,
> > I'd make a note to myself saying "This is crap", delete the game and
> > go back to surfing the web.
>
> This proble, is sometimes caused by players having fixed views about a
> game. For example, there are many players who would insist on killing
> the rats - but maybe if they had run away they would have easily
> survived the encounter.
I propose we all remove giant rats from our roguelikes, to prevent
this issue from ever hapenning again.
--
Slash (Castlevania, Drash, Metroid and Zelda Roguelikes)
The Villa of Darkness: [http://www.santiagoz.com/web]
Temple of The Roguelike: [http://www.roguetemple.com]
Ray Dillinger
> This proble, is sometimes caused by players having fixed views about a
> game. For example, there are many players who would insist on killing
> the rats - but maybe if they had run away they would have easily
> survived the encounter.
And this brings up another question: Giant rats are unlikely
to have treasure you can't get at without killing them. Whatever
they've got, they leave scattered around the level with the gnawed
bones of the adventurers they got it from. They won't sound the
alarm to the intelligent monsters on the level (or the next level).
Their corpses are not intrinsically valuable. And they're unlikely
to communicate clues or useful information. Unless they were
attacking you, why would you feel a need to kill them?
The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
smart enough to do the same?
Bear
Christophe Cavalaria
That's easy. XP given for going to the next dungeon level and not for kills.
Stealthy chars can once again gain legitimate XP ;)
Some people don't like that system too much though.
Martin Read
>The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
>rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
>here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
>does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
>Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
>smart enough to do the same?
Scrap general XP-for-kills in favour of advancement as a reward for
achieving goals. Give the player advancement when they break into the
treasure vault, or enter a previously unvisited dungeon level, or slay a
Plot Elemental.
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
\_\/_/ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mpread/dungeonbash/
\ / Web forums are crap.
\/
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Christophe wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski a écrit :
It's "napisa³" ;)
> This prompts a "Random idea": when you get killed by a monster, and if
> your game includes somewhat detailed monster desctiption for all your
> monsters, instead of showing a simple tombstone written "Killed by a
> giant rat", add in the monster description itself to help new players
> understand what killed them and how dangerous it really was :)
> Kill by a Giant rat.
> The Giant rat is very similar to it's smaller breathen, the common sewer
> rat. Of course, the fact that it is horse sized instead of rat sized
> with matching claws and fangs make it a *much* deadlier opponent.
Great idea! Or even go further, and prepare custom death messages:
As you fall down to your knees, the horse-sized giant rat starts to
devour your itestines with it's huge claws and fangs. The pain is
lesser now that you drift into uncounsciousness of death. Pick a name
for your new character: _
konijn_
wrote:
> Quoting Antoine <antoine.from.r...@gmail.com>:
>
> >see. Newbies can tool around in the easy area and get the sense of
> >achieving something, experienced characters can head down to the tough
> >area and _actually_ achieve something fast (or die).
>
> Except if there's stuff to be had in the easy area, you present the
> experienced player with the option to do something rewarding but boring,
> which is grinding by any other name.
>
> >You can get the same effect by distinguishing between character
> >classes/races that are easy in the early game and those that are more
> >powerful later on and encouraging new players to start with the
> >former. (e.g. Crawl, MDFi vs DEWz - I think?)
>
Why ? It can grant satisfaction to players, maybe not to you.
> and I don't
> know why roguelikes try and do that - Angband is the worst offender. To
> win with either you have to be good enough to manage the hard part and
> that makes the easy part very dull.
Making it a breeze != making it very dull.
> An easy startup option should stay
> easy inasmuch as is possible and a hard one stay hard.
I like Lost Labyrinth for having easy that stays easy, hard that stays
hard, initial advantages and initial drawbacks. Every player can have
his way ;)
> --
> David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
> Today is Teleute, Presuary.
Gamer_2k4
*gasp* You're abandoning permadeath? I suppose you support graphics
too? ;)
--
Gamer_2k4
Billy Bissette
news:pOp*ol...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:
Angband at least puts some of the control in the player's hand. If
you want things easier, then keep tooling around the same levels
instead of going deeper (since food nor fuel are really concerns).
If you want harder, dive down until things get hard. Diving became
fairly popular a few years ago when people started realizing just how
much a good player could survive without being "guaranteed" safety,
and how much less boredom was involved.
Mind, Angband still has its spots, but at least some of what was
once thought "Stop here until you get 'x'" aren't necessities.
And diving faster works in Angband in part because it is composed of
too many nearly identical dungeon levels. You don't miss anything
except boredom if you dive to DL5 before you even make your first
kill, rather than tooling around at DL1. You aren't going to miss
any real shot at a super weapon, or really useful objects, or easily
obtained (but necessary) food, or whatever else.
Brendan Guild
> The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
> rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
> here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
> does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
> Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
> smart enough to do the same?
I like XP-for-kills. What is XP supposed to be but experience points?
Every battle should supply them, unless it is a tedious or easy
battle, because your character is getting battle experience. It's
part of the training of your character and it's a serious decision
with serious consequences: when you train against real foes who
really want to kill you, you gain more experience than any other way
but you could also end up dead.
If XP is not based upon the actual experience of the character, then
it should probably be renamed. I don't mean to argue from realism,
but the names of things should probably correspond roughly to the
real-life meaning of those words.
I have in mind for my game a type of character advancement that is
based upon dungeon depth, but I don't call it experience because it's
based upon depth.
If you don't like XP-for-kills, then the easiest solution would be to
drop XP entirely. Though I plan for XP in my game, I've always
thought it was rather silly from a realism point of view: It seems
that rogues learn how to fight at a rate a thousand times faster than
any mere mortal. In more realistic game I imagine character
advancement would be almost entirely based upon getting better
equipment.
Antoine
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > This proble, is sometimes caused by players having fixed views about a
> > game. For example, there are many players who would insist on killing
> > the rats - but maybe if they had run away they would have easily
> > survived the encounter.
>
> And this brings up another question: Giant rats are unlikely
> to have treasure you can't get at without killing them. Whatever
> they've got, they leave scattered around the level with the gnawed
> bones of the adventurers they got it from. They won't sound the
> alarm to the intelligent monsters on the level (or the next level).
> Their corpses are not intrinsically valuable. And they're unlikely
> to communicate clues or useful information. Unless they were
> attacking you, why would you feel a need to kill them?
Because that's what adventurers do when they see a giant rat, They get
their swords out and kill it
A.
Brendan Guild
> I thought on replying to you via email, but no luck finding your
> adress...
If you look back far enough you'll find it. I used to put out my
address completely openly because it was expected. Then I learned my
lesson when it got swamped with spam and now I use a fake address.
Here's my real address, with some mild encoding:
othvyq-ng-funj-qbg-pn
> I really have to pull off that new version of MetroidRL... I wish
> I had more time :(
I will keep looking forward to it, even so. Perhaps you will consider
releasing the source so that others might work on it.
> One of the things that must be done in ZeldaRL is making each enemy
> unique... right now they are a bunch of uninteresting fellas with
> different stats, but thats about it... you can blame it for being a
> 7DRL :)
I recommend that you focus on making them move in interesting
patterns. Some of them could circle the PC. Some of them could ignore
the PC entirely, but attack if the PC comes within immediate range,
such as those Zelda monsters that bounce from wall to wall. Another
interesting monster are those mechanical traps that charge at the PC
whenever he is lined up horizontally or vertically, they slowly
retract to charge again.
Ray Dillinger
>>Odd. I cannot see the connection unless the game is in beta. You
>>should be able to
>>(*) Create a random character
>>(R) Restart the same character from the old savefile.
> *gasp* You're abandoning permadeath? I suppose you support graphics
> too? ;)
I think the "spirit" of permadeath is preserved if you start the
character from zero again. ie, no items, no skill advancement,
etc, preserved from the previous game. Just make sure that starting
characters are fairly equal-powered, and the "start-over, same
character" just becomes shorthand for race/class/stats selection.
Bear
Antoine
> Ray Dillinger wrote:
> > The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
> > rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
> > here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
> > does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
> > Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
> > smart enough to do the same?
>
> I like XP-for-kills.
I like XP-for-gold
Jeff Lait
If I die early, I must presume I made some error. One possible error
is that in the character customization screen I picked the "wrong" set
of skills. Perhaps I picked the intentionally hard class just because
I liked the name?
Creating a random character seems as silly as mashing random keys when
I start the game. Character customization is there for a reason, so I
should learn how to customize it. Restarting the exact same character
works on the assumption that I did the right things in character
customization.
The character creation stage can be seen as the first level of the
game. It is a level, however, in which I am expected to make very
large decisions about my game before having any experience with it.
It is also a level usually entirely different from the rest of the
game. We justifiably complain if the final boss fight is entirely
different in play style to the rest of the game, I think it is equally
correct to complain when the first battle (the one with the skill
selection/auto-roll/star-choice screen) is entirely different than the
rest of the game.
What I'm trying to say is that if the intended behaviour of new
players is to always create random characters or to always restart the
same character until they learn the quirks of said character, that
should be the default. Don't present them with a character creation
screen they are not supposed to use. POWDER, for example, likely
falls in the "create a random character" camp. I approach this
through the assignment of random inventory, however, which is used in-
game at the start of the game. There is no decision about which spell-
book you want to learn from - you are given a random spell book, take
it or leave it.
ShockFrost, IMHO, had a very good idea here with his medallions
approach. In that system when you first play the roguelike you only
have a single "class/race" to play, you only can unlock other ones by
progressing so far in the dungeon. (I would strongly recommend you
version-proof this part of your save file, however, so experienced
users can keep their unlock list between computers/versions/operating
systems)
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Gerry Quinn
mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> Ray Dillinger <be...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
> >rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
> >here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
> >does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
> >Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
> >smart enough to do the same?
>
> Scrap general XP-for-kills in favour of advancement as a reward for
> achieving goals. Give the player advancement when they break into the
> treasure vault, or enter a previously unvisited dungeon level, or slay a
> Plot Elemental.
That's what I did with Lair of The Demon Ape (you gain a cLev when you
go down a dLev). It's not an unprecedented concept, though, and
people do understand it well enough if that's what the game does.
Whether they like it or not is another matter...
konijn_
Nooo ! The initial choices at birth creation come from the save file.
And RNG gets reset ;)
>
> --
> Gamer_2k4
konijn_
> konijn_ wrote:
> > <SNIP>
>
> > > This is, BTW, why I hate extensive character customization,
> > > autorollers, skill choices, etc. Losing an low level character should
> > > be fun, not tedious. I want to get right back into the action.
>
> > Odd. I cannot see the connection unless the game is in beta. You
> > should be able to
>
> > (*) Create a random character
> > (R) Restart the same character from the old savefile.
>
> If I die early, I must presume I made some error. One possible error
> is that in the character customization screen I picked the "wrong" set
> of skills. Perhaps I picked the intentionally hard class just because
> I liked the name?
Perhaps. Most likely you were not careful enough.
> Creating a random character seems as silly as mashing random keys when
> I start the game.
Why is it silly ? Hellband has 26 races and 15 classes and 11 magic
schools and 4 birth signs, which gives a _large_ amount of
possibilities, do you expect people to go down the list 1 by 1 to find
out what is fun ?
> Character customization is there for a reason, so I
> should learn how to customize it.
Right, but again, you will never know what is possible without trying,
and you cant systematically try everything. ( Okay you can, but most
people find that boring )
>Restarting the exact same character
> works on the assumption that I did the right things in character
> customization.
Yes, any advanced player usually has it right, so unless you have a
newbies-only game, restart is a great idea.
>
> The character creation stage can be seen as the first level of the
> game. It is a level, however, in which I am expected to make very
> large decisions about my game before having any experience with it.
> It is also a level usually entirely different from the rest of the
> game. We justifiably complain if the final boss fight is entirely
> different in play style to the rest of the game, I think it is equally
> correct to complain when the first battle (the one with the skill
> selection/auto-roll/star-choice screen) is entirely different than the
> rest of the game.
As someone once said, I fart in the general direction of this
paragraph ;)
'Character creation can be seen as the first level of the game ?' I
want to smoke some of that stuff you have.
> What I'm trying to say is that if the intended behaviour of new
> players is to always create random characters or to always restart the
> same character until they learn the quirks of said character, that
> should be the default.
It is the intended ( at least for me intended ) behaviour for new
players to select their character the way they want, for advanced
players ( which could be after a few hours ) I want them to be able to
restart or go random. Also what you're trying to say is very far from
what you actually say ;)
<SNIP powder and shockfrost>
Brendan Guild
> One of the things that must be done in ZeldaRL is making each enemy
> unique... right now they are a bunch of uninteresting fellas with
> different stats, but thats about it.
Another interesting idea would be to use those bizarre floating floor
tiles that rise up off the dungeon floor and spin, then smash
themselves to bits against the PC.
Effectively, they are an enemy that appears randomly, orients on your
current positions, and then charges in that direction. The speed of the
charge is about one square per turn, and if you move, it will miss and
be destroyed when it hits a wall. If you touch it with any weapons, it
is instantly destroyed. If it hits you, it does a very small amount of
damage and is destroyed. Each one of them is completely trivial to
fight, but things should get interesting when dozens of them are
appearing all around you.
Risto Saarelma
> ShockFrost, IMHO, had a very good idea here with his medallions
> approach. In that system when you first play the roguelike you only
> have a single "class/race" to play, you only can unlock other ones by
> progressing so far in the dungeon. (I would strongly recommend you
> version-proof this part of your save file, however, so experienced
> users can keep their unlock list between computers/versions/operating
> systems)
I'd probably store unlock information like this in the plaintext ini
file of the game. Advanced players carry their ini file around anyway,
and it's much more version independent than binary save files by design.
Players who want to go straight to advanced character creation could
just modify the ini file themselves with a text editor. People who like
user interfaces to be complex from the get-go are often also people who
are willing to edit scary text files in their game directory.
The basic question here is whether the unlock system is a part of the
game itself, and therefore should be made resistant to tampering, or
just a part of the customizable user interface. The scenario where
security matters for roguelikes is competitive play on a dedicated
telnet server. Here, the game binary and save files are hidden from the
players, but the players should be able to provide their own ini files.
Making the unlock system part of the secure environment doesn't make
much sense here, since players would then need to grind all the unlocks
they want separately on each secure machine on which they play. Unlock
information seems to belong to the player-provided ini file. Since
altering this file is now trivial even if it's a binary file, might as
well be power-user friendly and make it plain text and part of the ini.
--
Risto Saarelma
Billy Bissette
64.59.144.76:
> Ray Dillinger wrote:
>> The only reason players kill them is the XP-for-kills
>> rule of most roguelikes. But I think it may be misapplied
>> here; a human GM awards zero experience for a kill that
>> does nothing to advance the character's goals or survival.
>> Anybody have good ideas about how to make a "machine" GM
>> smart enough to do the same?
>
> I like XP-for-kills. What is XP supposed to be but experience points?
> Every battle should supply them, unless it is a tedious or easy
> battle, because your character is getting battle experience. It's
> part of the training of your character and it's a serious decision
> with serious consequences: when you train against real foes who
> really want to kill you, you gain more experience than any other way
> but you could also end up dead.
In many cases, XP is already an abstraction. It is often a general
purpose catch-all for character improvement. Poking a goblin with a
dagger makes you able to remember more spells or improves your ability
to detect traps? And fighting something for 20 minutes is exactly as
educational as zapping an unknown wand at it and lucking out for an
instant kill? Fighting something for 20 minutes but leaving before
delivering one final fatal blow is no experience at all? Skillfully
avoiding the need to kill any of a floor full of nasty creatures does
nothing to advance your stealthy skills, but loudly bashing something
in the head with a warhammer does?
Skill training systems can remove some of that abstraction, but some
revert back to XP-for-kills as a means of preventing training abuse.
So if XP is itself an abstraction, then how you obtain it can be an
abstraction.
> If you don't like XP-for-kills, then the easiest solution would be to
> drop XP entirely. Though I plan for XP in my game, I've always
> thought it was rather silly from a realism point of view: It seems
> that rogues learn how to fight at a rate a thousand times faster than
> any mere mortal. In more realistic game I imagine character
> advancement would be almost entirely based upon getting better
> equipment.
You might want the benefits of an XP system without going the route
of a full skill training system.
sPlaTH
> be given gear enough to get through a few bad random encounters on the
> first level.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
It's not that common that you die that easily in the beginning of
IVAN. That's not the image I've got from playing the game about 1000
times. Yes, it's easy to be killed but that's often because you take
bad decisions during your sessions and/or bad luck. (your deaths are
supposed to be spectacular in this game, like one time my wand of
lightning blew me up in pieces because I prayed to a god with a bad
temper)
Krice
> In more realistic game I imagine character
> advancement would be almost entirely based upon getting better
> equipment.
It became clear from early design that Kaduria doesn't
have XP and the reason is more realistic engine (non-D&D).
Kaduria has skills, but they don't allow you to become
a demigod like you usually do in rpgs.
Jeff Lait
> On Jun 20, 8:05 pm, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > konijn_ wrote:
> > > <SNIP>
>
> > > > This is, BTW, why I hate extensive character customization,
> > > > autorollers, skill choices, etc. Losing an low level character should
> > > > be fun, not tedious. I want to get right back into the action.
>
> > > Odd. I cannot see the connection unless the game is in beta. You
> > > should be able to
>
> > > (*) Create a random character
> > > (R) Restart the same character from the old savefile.
>
> > If I die early, I must presume I made some error. One possible error
> > is that in the character customization screen I picked the "wrong" set
> > of skills. Perhaps I picked the intentionally hard class just because
> > I liked the name?
>
> Perhaps. Most likely you were not careful enough.
Yes, that is also likely. The problem is that I do not know!
When a newbie starts the game, you are giving him two things to
master. The character selection and the first dungeon level. This is
why I say that the character selection menu is another level of the
game.
> > Creating a random character seems as silly as mashing random keys when
> > I start the game.
>
> Why is it silly ? Hellband has 26 races and 15 classes and 11 magic
> schools and 4 birth signs, which gives a _large_ amount of
> possibilities, do you expect people to go down the list 1 by 1 to find
> out what is fun ?
I wonder why there is such a huge list if only a few are fun?
We could start the character off in a room with four doors. Three
doors kill the character instantly, the fourth progresses to the
normal dungeon. This is what it feels like when I'm faced with
26x15x11x4 choices like this. I know nothing about the meaning of
these choices. What is worse, is I *know* that due to the conceit of
roguelikes, some are *intentionally* more difficult than others.
Thus, a meta-part of the game is to optimize my path through these
choices to:
1) Select an appropriate difficulty level for myself
2) Select an appropriate playstyle for myself (magic, range, melee?)
3) Select an interesting enough character for myself.
The reason why this is a *level* of the game rather than just
*options* on the game is that it is never presented in such a
fashion. It is presented instead as list of 26 variants of dark/
sludge/deep elf along with arcane stats explaining their advantages
that are usually out of date with the actual code or refer to numbers
that can't mean anything until I have already played the game long
enough.
> > Character customization is there for a reason, so I
> > should learn how to customize it.
>
> Right, but again, you will never know what is possible without trying,
> and you cant systematically try everything. ( Okay you can, but most
> people find that boring )
Perhaps this sheds some light into why I call character customization
a game?
I'd rather spend my energy figuring out how to play the dungeon
exploration half of your game than the character selection half.
> >Restarting the exact same character
> > works on the assumption that I did the right things in character
> > customization.
>
> Yes, any advanced player usually has it right, so unless you have a
> newbies-only game, restart is a great idea.
This means, however, that there aren't interesting choices in
character creation. If the expert player has "learned" the correct
answers, what we have is really just a rote learning exercise. I have
nothing against such things, except when they have nothing to do with
the game-itself. The game part of roguelikes isn't futzing about in
cascading menus. It is exploring a dungeon seeking cool weapons under
some pretext of a quest.
> > The character creation stage can be seen as the first level of the
> > game. It is a level, however, in which I am expected to make very
> > large decisions about my game before having any experience with it.
> > It is also a level usually entirely different from the rest of the
> > game. We justifiably complain if the final boss fight is entirely
> > different in play style to the rest of the game, I think it is equally
> > correct to complain when the first battle (the one with the skill
> > selection/auto-roll/star-choice screen) is entirely different than the
> > rest of the game.
>
> 'Character creation can be seen as the first level of the game ?' I
> want to smoke some of that stuff you have.
If I find by the start of the dungeon an unidentified wand, I can
choose whether to zap it or not. This is part of the game. It has
far reaching impact on the rest of the game - possibly wasting a
useful charge, possibly revealing a useful wand so I can use it
later. How is this decision different than when I was deciding if I
wanted to play an orc or kobold?
The main difference, IMHO, is that the choice to zap a wand occurs in
the dungeon. It is a decision that keeps showing up again later in my
adventures. The orc vs kobold is a special decision, which has right
and wrong answers, that only shows up once and at the start.
And do not say that one can "pick anything, it doesn't matter". That
would mean you have no differences between all the choices and you are
just confusing people. People assume choices matter when they are
given them and try and reason out the optimal choice. The only
exception maybe things like name, gender, eye colour, which have built
a tradition of being "free" choices.
> > What I'm trying to say is that if the intended behaviour of new
> > players is to always create random characters or to always restart the
> > same character until they learn the quirks of said character, that
> > should be the default.
>
> It is the intended ( at least for me intended ) behaviour for new
> players to select their character the way they want, for advanced
> players ( which could be after a few hours ) I want them to be able to
> restart or go random.
This sounds as if new players, after mastering the first level of the
dungeon, ("The realm of cascading menus"), are allowed to place a save
point of their most successful conquest of that level. And, of
course, the first level is entirely unlike the rest of the game.
Gerry Quinn
torespon...@hotmail.com says...
> On Jun 20, 9:49 pm, konijn_ <kon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 20, 8:05 pm, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > konijn_ wrote:
> > > > <SNIP>
> >
> > > > > This is, BTW, why I hate extensive character customization,
> > > > > autorollers, skill choices, etc. Losing an low level character should
> > > > > be fun, not tedious. I want to get right back into the action.
> >
> > > > Odd. I cannot see the connection unless the game is in beta. You
> > > > should be able to
> >
> > > > (*) Create a random character
> > > > (R) Restart the same character from the old savefile.
> >
> > > If I die early, I must presume I made some error. One possible error
> > > is that in the character customization screen I picked the "wrong" set
> > > of skills. Perhaps I picked the intentionally hard class just because
> > > I liked the name?
> >
> > Perhaps. Most likely you were not careful enough.
>
> Yes, that is also likely. The problem is that I do not know!
>
> When a newbie starts the game, you are giving him two things to
> master. The character selection and the first dungeon level. This is
> why I say that the character selection menu is another level of the
> game.
I think I side with Konjin on this.
What new players need in games with complicated initial class and skill
selection processes is some tips on good starting combos, and maybe a
few standard builds that are viable and have comprehensible strategies.
If he then decides to throw caution to the wind and choose an exotic
combination, the developer is not to blame if it doesn't work well.
In short, the existence of pre-made standard options allows the
inexperienced player to pass on what you call the "character creation
level". As he gets more experienced, he can modify the standard
combinations (give his warrior a sideline in conjuration at the cost of
his skills in thrown weapons, perhaps), or design a new combination
from scratch. And here the ability to save templates, perhaps in the
form of restarting a lost game, is a good idea.
It's also good to give everyone a few basic tools of their profession
such as weapons, spellbooks, a few potions etc. (And auto-equip them!)
Even if the option of spending some gold at the start - as in Zangband,
where you will normally snag a few phase door scrolls or healing
potions etc. - is there, it shouldn't really be necessary.
Gerry Quinn
> > Why is it silly ? Hellband has 26 races and 15 classes and 11 magic
> > schools and 4 birth signs, which gives a _large_ amount of
> > possibilities, do you expect people to go down the list 1 by 1 to find
> > out what is fun ?
>
> I wonder why there is such a huge list if only a few are fun?
Fun for one player isn't necessary fun for another. Maybe you prefer
warriors, I prefer mages, someone else preferes thieves.
> > Yes, any advanced player usually has it right, so unless you have a
> > newbies-only game, restart is a great idea.
>
> This means, however, that there aren't interesting choices in
> character creation. If the expert player has "learned" the correct
> answers, what we have is really just a rote learning exercise. I have
> nothing against such things, except when they have nothing to do with
> the game-itself. The game part of roguelikes isn't futzing about in
> cascading menus. It is exploring a dungeon seeking cool weapons under
> some pretext of a quest.
I think by "having it right" Konjin means "have picked the combination
you want to play".
David Damerell
>On Jun 20, 8:05 pm, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Creating a random character seems as silly as mashing random keys when
>>I start the game.
>Why is it silly ? Hellband has 26 races and 15 classes and 11 magic
>schools and 4 birth signs, which gives a _large_ amount of
>possibilities, do you expect people to go down the list 1 by 1 to find
>out what is fun ?
Any RL has 8 choices for my first move times 8 for my second move
times... but you don't expect people to make random choices there.
>'Character creation can be seen as the first level of the game ?' I
>want to smoke some of that stuff you have.
I think you're conflating two things here. Character creation obviously
isn't the first level of the game in terms of having monsters and traps
and whatnot; but it _is_ a point at which you make decisions which inform
the survival potential and equipment of your character, and that's just
like the first level of the game.
So, it's a fair question. Why make random choices for those decisions when
you wouldn't for any subsequent ones?
>It is the intended ( at least for me intended ) behaviour for new
>players to select their character the way they want,
But new players can't, because generally the array of options is utterly
baffling and they end up random or semi-random. Then they die and they
don't know if they accidentally picked a challenge class.
See, what I'd suggest is this;
A ruthless stripping of all meaningless choices. Deep elves have an
extra hitpoint and sludge elves 5% greater aptitude with cheese
graters? Out with them! The sole exception would be ones desirable
to character concept, like gender.
Provide some information on the choices. That, I think, is the real
gripe here - it's an uninformed decision or randomness. If a chrome
choice like gender has stayed in, mention that it is one (I think
some *bands do this); otherwise, document. I don't mean the usual
paragraph of guff on each class and race; I mean, right there in the
character selector, difficulty and playstyle. "Valkyrie: strong melee
combatant". If we pick class first, indicate which races are good with
that class, and vice versa (some *bands do that).
The thing is, if I pick up NewRL and get 84000 character combinations, I'm
bound to be baffled. If I pick random and get a Flyfolk Sludge Transmuter
(specialising in Automancy) and die straight off, who knows? But if I get
to the class selection screen and pick the marked newbie-friendly options,
I might actually have a good game of it.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Oneiros, Presuary.
Jeff Lait
> In article <1182436728.069702.199...@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
> torespondisfut...@hotmail.com says...
>
> > On Jun 20, 9:49 pm, konijn_ <kon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Why is it silly ? Hellband has 26 races and 15 classes and 11 magic
> > > schools and 4 birth signs, which gives a _large_ amount of
> > > possibilities, do you expect people to go down the list 1 by 1 to find
> > > out what is fun ?
>
> > I wonder why there is such a huge list if only a few are fun?
>
> Fun for one player isn't necessary fun for another. Maybe you prefer
> warriors, I prefer mages, someone else preferes thieves.
I am not at all opposed to multiple playstyles. However, I highly
doubt Hellband has 17,160 distinct playstyles it caters to.
Jeff Lait
> In article <1182436728.069702.199...@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
Note how each attempt to fix the 17,000 character problem is aimed at
hiding the 17,000 characters from the user. We have random/reuse
options so that experienced players never look at the screen again,
and we have pre-built templates to try and ensure newbies never have
to go into said screen. Why are we putting the coding effort into
making 17,000 possibilities?
> If he then decides to throw caution to the wind and choose an exotic
> combination, the developer is not to blame if it doesn't work well.
>
> In short, the existence of pre-made standard options allows the
> inexperienced player to pass on what you call the "character creation
> level". As he gets more experienced, he can modify the standard
> combinations (give his warrior a sideline in conjuration at the cost of
> his skills in thrown weapons, perhaps), or design a new combination
> from scratch. And here the ability to save templates, perhaps in the
> form of restarting a lost game, is a good idea.
This, however, results in the worse abuses of min/maxing. I'm a
reformed achiever, and as such, know precisely how I approach such
things. I reject instantly the pre-built characters. Experience has
taught me that these are always inferior to what you can build
yourself. Then, it is a question of abusing the system by maximizing
"useful" attributes and minimizing "useless" attributes. We see the
old "Charisma is useless" problem all over again as the players dial
down their charisma to gain "real" benefits elsewhere.
The thing is that you don't have to worry about making each stat equal
if you never give the user a chance to trade stats off each other.
Creating customizable templates for characters is a balance nightmare
- we end up in a GURPS like system of trying to determine how much
"not able to drink potions" can grant in terms of "cold resistance".
GURPS, it should be noted, works only because a human at the other end
can sidestep the rules to balance things.
Complicated character creation is often the game designer abdicating
their duty. The designer's job is to determine what combination of
bonuses/maluses makes a fun game. If they want to support several
different playstyles, then, sure, have a Diablo style "Pick your
charcacter" that gives me *one* choice of *five* (or other low number)
possibilities, each of which is a fleshed out individual playstyle.
Don't give me 17,000 possibilities and tell me: "A good combination is
somewhere in there!" The designer should *find* the good
possibilities and give them to me. I am also opposed to being given
an "Advanced" mode where I get to search for new options - the
designer should have the confidence to stand by their selection.
> It's also good to give everyone a few basic tools of their profession
> such as weapons, spellbooks, a few potions etc. (And auto-equip them!)
Yes, I vote for auto-equipping. New users of POWDER all too often
start their adventures naked because they are too impatient to find
the inventory key. My only defense is that my auto-generation of
cursed starting equipment means you don't always want to auto-equip.
I also like how a lack of auto-equip forces you to look at your
starting inventory. But, I would admit, this is a problem with my
item generation, not with the idea of auto-equipping. (Reading
initial spellbooks is more questionable as there is an interesting
choice there)
> Even if the option of spending some gold at the start - as in Zangband,
> where you will normally snag a few phase door scrolls or healing
> potions etc. - is there, it shouldn't really be necessary.
I disagree with spending gold at the start. That falls right into the
"Buy a lantern then enter dungeon" problem. Starting every adventure
with a shopping list is tedious. (When playing Ultima III, I
realized that characters initial cloth/dagger inventory could be
sold. So, I constantly created characters, joined them to my party,
pooled the gold, and then deleted the naked and weaponless fodder)
Ray Dillinger
Goodness. It sounds like you find a lack of absolute
knowledge of the game very stressful. Yes, you have
to do things whose consequences you don't know in
advance the first few games. Character starting options
is one such thing. There's nothing strange or unfair
about that; everybody does it. Also, there's no
requirement to make the absolute easiest choice or die
instantly; I think that you can and should assume that
there are few or no choices that are really completely
nonsensical or crippling, unless there's a help file that
specifically points out some choices as "challenges."
Hmmm. If the game supports a "wizard mode" you can
change your race or class at will. You won't be able
to get a character in the high scores file using wizard
mode, but that seems unlikely if you're a beginner anyway
and switching every ten minuts might be a nice way to
learn the benefits of different races/classes.
Of course, a game could go a long way to help by ranking
a bunch of example choices and combos in terms of
difficulty, or even just by hiding the really hard
combos in a special screen behind a choice that says
"challenge characters (not for newbies)."
Slash
> On Jun 21, 11:19 am, Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In article <1182436728.069702.199...@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
> > torespondisfut...@hotmail.com says...
> > > On Jun 20, 9:49 pm, konijn_ <kon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Jun 20, 8:05 pm, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > konijn_ wrote:
> > > > > > <SNIP>
>
> Complicated character creation is often the game designer abdicating
> their duty. The designer's job is to determine what combination of
> bonuses/maluses makes a fun game. If they want to support several
> different playstyles, then, sure, have a Diablo style "Pick your
> charcacter" that gives me *one* choice of *five* (or other low number)
> possibilities, each of which is a fleshed out individual playstyle.
> Don't give me 17,000 possibilities and tell me: "A good combination is
> somewhere in there!" The designer should *find* the good
> possibilities and give them to me. I am also opposed to being given
> an "Advanced" mode where I get to search for new options - the
> designer should have the confidence to stand by their selection.
I second and third this... in CastlevaniaRL there are six classes, and
I have a hard time making each one of these different and fun on his
own way... this is work of the designer... not the player!
It is impossible to generate 17000 fun ways to play a game... to allow
such combinatory explotion is just waiting for some to be good by
chance or choice, and the rest be unexpected results (unless you have
the power to assess each one of the combinations (which you are not))
SNIP
> > Even if the option of spending some gold at the start - as in Zangband,
> > where you will normally snag a few phase door scrolls or healing
> > potions etc. - is there, it shouldn't really be necessary.
>
> I disagree with spending gold at the start. That falls right into the
> "Buy a lantern then enter dungeon" problem. Starting every adventure
> with a shopping list is tedious. (When playing Ultima III, I
> realized that characters initial cloth/dagger inventory could be
> sold. So, I constantly created characters, joined them to my party,
> pooled the gold, and then deleted the naked and weaponless fodder)
You cheater! this is worse than savescumming :D
Ok, I did that too
> --
> Jeff Lait
> (POWDER:http://www.zincland.com/powder)
--
Slash (Castlevania, Drash, Metroid and Zelda Roguelikes)
The Villa of Darkness: [http://www.santiagoz.com/web]
Temple of The Roguelike: [http://www.roguetemple.com]
Gerry Quinn
torespon...@hotmail.com says...
> On Jun 21, 11:19 am, Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
> > What new players need in games with complicated initial class and skill
> > selection processes is some tips on good starting combos, and maybe a
> > few standard builds that are viable and have comprehensible strategies.
>
> Note how each attempt to fix the 17,000 character problem is aimed at
> hiding the 17,000 characters from the user. We have random/reuse
> options so that experienced players never look at the screen again,
> and we have pre-built templates to try and ensure newbies never have
> to go into said screen. Why are we putting the coding effort into
> making 17,000 possibilities?
We're not - we have designed x races, y classes, z traits etc. Maybe
that was a lot of effort, maybe not - but the "coding 17000
possibilities" amounts to just writing down what each class or trait
means. Making 6 carefully designed classes could easily be harder.
> > If he then decides to throw caution to the wind and choose an exotic
> > combination, the developer is not to blame if it doesn't work well.
> >
> > In short, the existence of pre-made standard options allows the
> > inexperienced player to pass on what you call the "character creation
> > level". As he gets more experienced, he can modify the standard
> > combinations (give his warrior a sideline in conjuration at the cost of
> > his skills in thrown weapons, perhaps), or design a new combination
> > from scratch. And here the ability to save templates, perhaps in the
> > form of restarting a lost game, is a good idea.
>
> This, however, results in the worse abuses of min/maxing. I'm a
> reformed achiever, and as such, know precisely how I approach such
> things. I reject instantly the pre-built characters. Experience has
> taught me that these are always inferior to what you can build
> yourself. Then, it is a question of abusing the system by maximizing
> "useful" attributes and minimizing "useless" attributes. We see the
> old "Charisma is useless" problem all over again as the players dial
> down their charisma to gain "real" benefits elsewhere.
This is often true, but not necessarily. Your 17000 classes could come
from only four variables such as class, race, secondary profession
etc., in which case there are better and worse choices, but no real
min-maxing.
And if charisma is useless, it probably should not be there. If it is
useless for warriors, the warrior template should have it dialed down.
> The thing is that you don't have to worry about making each stat equal
> if you never give the user a chance to trade stats off each other.
> Creating customizable templates for characters is a balance nightmare
> - we end up in a GURPS like system of trying to determine how much
> "not able to drink potions" can grant in terms of "cold resistance".
> GURPS, it should be noted, works only because a human at the other end
> can sidestep the rules to balance things.
I agree that rules like this are likely to be a bad idea unless really
well thought out. And a system in which there are such things puts me
off slightly because they tend to be opaque.
But the rules for character creation don't *have* to be like that, even
if they still allow variety.
Here's an idea:
Your character spent the last seven years working as:
A gladiator [ _ years ]
A wizard's apprentice [ _ years ]
A paramedic [ _ years ]
An accountant [ _ years ]
An animal trainer [ _ years ]
An athlete [ _ years ]
A test pilot [ _ years ]
A janitor in a dungeon { _ years ]
Insert the numbers for a total of seven.
These would make certain skills and attributes available to you. The
nice thing is that they could be somewhat random, and come in as the
game goes on. You'd know what sort of thing they'd give you, but not
exactly what you'd get. Very little would be guaranteed. And making
the same choice again could give different results in a new game.
> Complicated character creation is often the game designer abdicating
> their duty. The designer's job is to determine what combination of
> bonuses/maluses makes a fun game. If they want to support several
> different playstyles, then, sure, have a Diablo style "Pick your
> charcacter" that gives me *one* choice of *five* (or other low number)
> possibilities, each of which is a fleshed out individual playstyle.
> Don't give me 17,000 possibilities and tell me: "A good combination is
> somewhere in there!" The designer should *find* the good
> possibilities and give them to me.
That's where the template concept comes in. It could actually work
well with my proposed system above - for example a fighter template
might have 4 years as a gladiator, 2 as a paramedic, and 1 as an animal
trainer. He'd be a great fighter from the get go, with significant
healing ability, and over time he'd probably gain a few utility spells
for summoning or intimidating monsters.
> > It's also good to give everyone a few basic tools of their profession
> > such as weapons, spellbooks, a few potions etc. (And auto-equip them!)
>
> Yes, I vote for auto-equipping. New users of POWDER all too often
> start their adventures naked because they are too impatient to find
> the inventory key. My only defense is that my auto-generation of
> cursed starting equipment means you don't always want to auto-equip.
Your *starting equipment* can be cursed? You are evil!
I always assume that the starting gear is what the impoverished
adventure brought with him, the best he could afford. Or else it's the
necessary stuff that those forcing you into the dungeon are constrained
by basic humanity to give you. Either way, it should be of average
quality but usable.
> I also like how a lack of auto-equip forces you to look at your
> starting inventory. But, I would admit, this is a problem with my
> item generation, not with the idea of auto-equipping. (Reading
> initial spellbooks is more questionable as there is an interesting
> choice there)
You could have a pop-up message if the character gets to a certain
point and still has nothing equipped.
> > Even if the option of spending some gold at the start - as in Zangband,
> > where you will normally snag a few phase door scrolls or healing
> > potions etc. - is there, it shouldn't really be necessary.
>
> I disagree with spending gold at the start. That falls right into the
> "Buy a lantern then enter dungeon" problem. Starting every adventure
> with a shopping list is tedious. (When playing Ultima III, I
> realized that characters initial cloth/dagger inventory could be
> sold. So, I constantly created characters, joined them to my party,
> pooled the gold, and then deleted the naked and weaponless fodder)
Bloodwych had that too, but there were only 16 characters so there was
a limit. Anyway I always reckoned it was cheating, though, so I never
did it.
Martin Read
>Fun for one player isn't necessary fun for another. Maybe you prefer
>warriors, I prefer mages, someone else preferes thieves.
That's not much of a justification for seventeen thousand options, many
of them probably distinguished from nearby options largely by the
precise length of your character's nasal hair.
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
\_\/_/ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mpread/dungeonbash/
\ / Web forums are crap.
\/
Gamer_2k4
> > > is that in the character customization screen I picked the "wrong" set
> > > of skills. Perhaps I picked the intentionally hard class just because
> > > I liked the name?
>
> > Perhaps. Most likely you were not careful enough.
>
> Yes, that is also likely. The problem is that I do not know!
>
> When a newbie starts the game, you are giving him two things to
> master. The character selection and the first dungeon level. This is
> why I say that the character selection menu is another level of the
> game.
[SNIP]
> We could start the character off in a room with four doors. Three
> doors kill the character instantly, the fourth progresses to the
> normal dungeon. This is what it feels like when I'm faced with
> 26x15x11x4 choices like this. I know nothing about the meaning of
> these choices. What is worse, is I *know* that due to the conceit of
> roguelikes, some are *intentionally* more difficult than others.
> Thus, a meta-part of the game is to optimize my path through these
> choices to:
>
> 1) Select an appropriate difficulty level for myself
> 2) Select an appropriate playstyle for myself (magic, range, melee?)
> 3) Select an interesting enough character for myself.
And that, among other reasons, is why I choose to use a classless
skill system to develop the characters in my game. I know from
experience that I'd rather choose how to play the game in-game,
instead of before it even starts. If I want to change my playing
style mid-game (hmm, maybe I should learn some magic), I'd rather not
be hindered by a race/class combination. Let's say I pick Troll
Warrior. Sure, I can use anything (and anyone) as a beat-stick
relatively effectively, but it precludes literacy, magic, and really
anything but button-mashing.
A r/c combination like that is also an easy-early, difficult-late
playing style. And what's the point? If I'm going to get owned in the
late game, what does it matter how well I do in the early game? And
the same applies to difficult-early, easy-late r/c combos. Sure, the
late game me be a cinch, but if I can't get there, why does it matter?
"But Gamer! It really seems that you're advocating an easy-early, easy-
late style! What's the matter? Not hardcore enough?" Well, maybe I'm
not. But I think that a game should proceed at a fairly constant
rate. Yes, the monsters get stronger, but so does the player. If
anything, the only change should be the impact of mistakes. (Hmm,
that sounds like it has some potential. Maybe I should start a thread
about it.) But the game itself should have no discernible increase in
difficulty.
I'm running out of things to say, so I guess I'll conclude. I bet my
only point was made two paragraphs ago anyway.
--
Gamer_2k4
Martin Read
>Bloodwych had that too, but there were only 16 characters so there was
>a limit. Anyway I always reckoned it was cheating, though, so I never
>did it.
I reckoned the part of Ultima III up to where you had enough keys and
gold to get yourself through to the treasure rooms in Death Gulch was
mostly hard enough that I didn't care whether I was cheating or not.
Jeff Lait
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
> >Bloodwych had that too, but there were only 16 characters so there was
> >a limit. Anyway I always reckoned it was cheating, though, so I never
> >did it.
>
> I reckoned the part of Ultima III up to where you had enough keys and
> gold to get yourself through to the treasure rooms in Death Gulch was
> mostly hard enough that I didn't care whether I was cheating or not.
Ah, pleasant memories of repeatedly emptying the rooms, followed by a
quick dunk in the water to buy up my stats in Ambrosia.
I believe it was the town of Grey that I found you could #bribe all
the guards and make up for it in the loot from emptying the town
afterwards.
Jeff Lait
> Goodness. It sounds like you find a lack of absolute
> knowledge of the game very stressful.
I don't mind not having full knowledge of the game. I do mind not
having full knowledge of the meta-game.
> Yes, you have
> to do things whose consequences you don't know in
> advance the first few games.
Yes, one must try wearing an unided amulet a few times before one
learns it might be a bad idea. I don't mind this as I am learning
*in* the game.
> Character starting options
> is one such thing. There's nothing strange or unfair
> about that; everybody does it.
Everybody does it and the majority do it wrong. We keep being suckers
for "more is better". We are awed at the prospect of "100 different
races". We keep applying D&D tropes, that were designed with a party
of humans in mind, to games where there is only a single player.
> Also, there's no
> requirement to make the absolute easiest choice or die
> instantly; I think that you can and should assume that
> there are few or no choices that are really completely
> nonsensical or crippling, unless there's a help file that
> specifically points out some choices as "challenges."
That is another peeve I have. In a practical sense, you are lucky if
I read the keyboard mappings, much less any help file. If I get
hooked by the game, THEN I will invest the time in reading the
documentation. But when I start I want to play the game-itself.
> Of course, a game could go a long way to help by ranking
> a bunch of example choices and combos in terms of
> difficulty, or even just by hiding the really hard
> combos in a special screen behind a choice that says
> "challenge characters (not for newbies)."
Which, if the game goes far enough in, I have no problem with.
Present me the five best combinations and remove the rest from the
game. From an implementation point of view, there is no reason not to
have an internal 26x15x11x4 set of choices. It is like monster
definitions - if you multiply out the probabilities of flags, you
could easily generate millions of distinct monster types for POWDER.
However, the vast majority of them don't exist - only a small set has
been selected as interesting enough and different enough from similar
monsters for inclusion.
Billy Bissette
@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
>> I agree though that players should (unless thematic issues prevent
it)
>> be given gear enough to get through a few bad random encounters on
the
>> first level.
>
> It's not that common that you die that easily in the beginning of
> IVAN. That's not the image I've got from playing the game about 1000
> times. Yes, it's easy to be killed but that's often because you take
> bad decisions during your sessions and/or bad luck. (your deaths are
> supposed to be spectacular in this game, like one time my wand of
> lightning blew me up in pieces because I prayed to a god with a bad
> temper)
IVAN can get a little ugly with how it tries to scale monster
difficulty to player power. You can find some valuable items that
don't actually improve your early survivability that much, but might
be enough to cause more dangerous enemies to spawn. My best character
only made it to the second town because he'd found a wand of teleport,
and thus could teleport away the Mistress that appeared halfway through
the level. (He'd earlier managed to run away from the Goblin King or
whatever it was that jumped him near the entrance.)
Food also seems highly random. You might find more than enough, or
you might find barely enough to make it to the second town hungry.
Buying food doesn't seem to help so much due to the cost and bananas
not seeming to be particularly filling. And many of the early monsters
either don't leave corpses (skeletons), leave inedible corpses
(carnivorous plants), or leave corpses that hurt you (by doing things
like making you sick or polymorph you.)
Location-based damage means multiple hits to the same location can
kill you even when you still have most of your HP. Whether or not this
happens to you is pretty random. This can get worse with unavoidable
spider webs (blocking tunnels that you need to pass) but can get you
at other times as well.
Martin Read
>Ah, pleasant memories of repeatedly emptying the rooms, followed by a
>quick dunk in the water to buy up my stats in Ambrosia.
Yup.
>I believe it was the town of Grey that I found you could #bribe all
>the guards and make up for it in the loot from emptying the town
>afterwards.
Definitely Death Gulch, on an island off the east coast of the Sosarian
mainland. You had to either bribe a guard and use a key, or find your
way through mazelike tunnels and bribe a guard (for 100gp), to get in,
but there were about 50 chests you could easily get, and another 30 you
could get if you had the Mark of Force.
Billy Bissette
news:SFf*Z6...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
>>Fun for one player isn't necessary fun for another. Maybe you prefer
>>warriors, I prefer mages, someone else preferes thieves.
>
> That's not much of a justification for seventeen thousand options,
many
> of them probably distinguished from nearby options largely by the
> precise length of your character's nasal hair.
From a player's perspective, there aren't really 17,000 combinations
though. There is generally a list of races and a list of classes, with
maybe some kind of sub-class, religion, or other specialization as a
third option. Combination #8769 might vary only a little from
Combination #13,546, but the player isn't thinking in those terms. He
is thinking of what race he wants and what class he wants.
If the races or classes are too similar themselves, then that is a
different issue. If two main options are nearly identical, then it
really should be questioned whether or not you need two options instead
of one.
If differences are balanced by (and thus composed of) XP penalties
(or score penalties,) then you may really have a problem.
A beginning player probably isn't and arguably shouldn't be concerned
by XP penalties. They are concerned with learning and surviving the
game. Even an average player might not be concerned, unless something
has penalties so obscene that they destroy the speed of the game. So
automatically what might be the biggest difference between two options
is something that isn't even a concern for many players.
Mind, there are still the psychological aspects of names. You don't
often see much difference between the Male/Female choice (and may
draw complaints if you have more than a graphical/surface difference,)
but some people want the choice. And some people will avoid certain
races on principle.
Ray Dillinger
> Mind, there are still the psychological aspects of names. You don't
> often see much difference between the Male/Female choice (and may
> draw complaints if you have more than a graphical/surface difference,)
> but some people want the choice. And some people will avoid certain
> races on principle.
Honestly, I don't get this. In a medieval society, male and female
children are treated differently and trained differently from birth.
To make it "no difference" means you expect the efforts of the
parents in training their kids for different roles to be completely
ineffectual.
Bear
Ray Dillinger
> On Jun 21, 1:43 pm, Ray Dillinger <b...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>>Goodness. It sounds like you find a lack of absolute
>>knowledge of the game very stressful.
>
>
> I don't mind not having full knowledge of the game. I do mind not
> having full knowledge of the meta-game.
Okay, I'm really not getting it. Your point up to now
has been that race/class/etc selection is the first
level of the game, and that your choices are in-game.
Now you're drawing a game/metagame distinction?
Seriously, if it's "the first level of the game" then
why not treat it with the same experiment-and-experience
trope that makes the rest of the game fun?
>>Also, there's no
>>requirement to make the absolute easiest choice or die
>>instantly; I think that you can and should assume that
>>there are few or no choices that are really completely
>>nonsensical or crippling, unless there's a help file that
>>specifically points out some choices as "challenges."
>
>
> That is another peeve I have. In a practical sense, you are lucky if
> I read the keyboard mappings, much less any help file. If I get
> hooked by the game, THEN I will invest the time in reading the
> documentation. But when I start I want to play the game-itself.
Wait, again. The same person who is horribly
stressed by not having absolute knowledge of the
"meta-game" of class/race/etc selection, can't be
bothered to read the document that contains that
very knowledge?
I am less inclined to take your complaint seriously
now.
Bear
Billy Bissette
$742e...@news.sonic.net:
People who want to pick a gender may not want a gameplay difference.
They may just want something that matches their own preference. For a
graphical game, maybe they are a look. Or maybe they want their game
character to match some pre-existing character. It is an identification
preference, like being able to pick a name.
Often these games are fantasy, as well. Yes, the real world had
(and still has) differences between genders. But the real world also
doesn't have dragons or orcs. It doesn't have situations where a glass
vial takes as much storage space as a suit of plate mail. It doesn't
have people that lob magical fireballs through the air. And games
generally don't deal with bowel movements or menstruation. Aging is
often just some minor stat and skill shifts, if present at all. Etc.
It is something that isn't really necessary, or of much benefit. I
recall an RPG that had a minor stat difference between male and female
characters, where women lost a point of strength but gained a point of
constitution. What is even the point at that point? Of course, going
full force might have meant women had no education, no training outside
some wifely matters, being treated like property, and a near complete
inability to function as an adventurer. It might be more realistic, but
who would actually want to play a woman under those rules?