Food in RLs
perdu...@googlemail.com
not? I'm pondering whither to include food in the new Kharne, but it
seems that in every game of TOME or Crawl I play, food is *the* major
issue affecting gameplay (Vanilla Angband seems to be much more
forgiving).
Sometimes I feel that whilst the whole food thing is obviously
intended to bestow another strategic element onto the gameplay (in
terms of resource management and to force dungeon progression, which
are important in themselves), it can turn into merely tiresome
housekeeping.
Thoughts anyone?
Best,
Perdura
Jakub Debski
> Here's a question: Food mechanisms in RLs - are they a good idea or
> not? I'm pondering whither to include food in the new Kharne, but it
> seems that in every game of TOME or Crawl I play, food is *the* major
> issue affecting gameplay (Vanilla Angband seems to be much more
> forgiving).
It depends on game. In Xenocide lack of food works very well.
> Sometimes I feel that whilst the whole food thing is obviously
> intended to bestow another strategic element onto the gameplay (in
> terms of resource management and to force dungeon progression, which
> are important in themselves), it can turn into merely tiresome
> housekeeping.
>
> Thoughts anyone?
try without food. Add it if needed.
regards,
Jakub
Derek Ray
> Sometimes I feel that whilst the whole food thing is obviously
> intended to bestow another strategic element onto the gameplay (in
> terms of resource management and to force dungeon progression, which
> are important in themselves), it can turn into merely tiresome
> housekeeping.
Food often tends to be a realism-for-its-own-sake way to add another
resource which the player must manage effectively, and in some cases an
effective time limit so the player doesn't piddle around forever.
Rogue's was this way; food was food, you had to eat, and food wasn't
anything but food. It could've been "recharge balls from Xenu" that
you had to stick up your bum regularly, and the gameplay wouldn't have
been any different (though slightly more horrific).
NetHack evolved food to corpses, which you could eat to gain actual
gameplay effects (fire resistance, etc), thus making food slightly less
realistic and more of an actual strategic value -- since you can't eat
beyond a certain point, you need to be careful what you eat and when.
There are still elements of realism involved, but now the realism simply
serves as a way to make things intuitive to the player, rather than as a
"We gotta add something else, hey, let's stick food in there, people
gotta eat right?" feature.
If you're going to add food, my opinion would be: please, go down
Nethack's road or a similar one. Food that serves no purpose but as
something you have to do every N turns or you starve is just annoying.
--
Derek
Changelog: http://sporkhack.nineball.org
Beta Server: telnet://sporkhack.nineball.org
IRC: irc.freenode.net, #sporkhack
Gerry Quinn
de...@moot.its.only.a.spamtrap.org says...
> Rogue's was this way; food was food, you had to eat, and food wasn't
> anything but food. It could've been "recharge balls from Xenu" that
> you had to stick up your bum regularly, and the gameplay wouldn't have
> been any different (though slightly more horrific).
>
> NetHack evolved food to corpses, which you could eat to gain actual
> gameplay effects (fire resistance, etc), thus making food slightly less
> realistic and more of an actual strategic value -- since you can't eat
> beyond a certain point, you need to be careful what you eat and when.
> There are still elements of realism involved, but now the realism simply
> serves as a way to make things intuitive to the player, rather than as a
> "We gotta add something else, hey, let's stick food in there, people
> gotta eat right?" feature.
>
> If you're going to add food, my opinion would be: please, go down
> Nethack's road or a similar one. Food that serves no purpose but as
> something you have to do every N turns or you starve is just annoying.
I'm not convinced of that; it's perfectly valid IMO to use it as a
means of forcing progression, and for that ordinary food will do.
Indeed, making it more complicated by adding poison or other effects
may be a bad thing.
Ordinary food can be interesting strategically if certain activities
use more of it (like spell-casting in Crawl).
- Gerry Quinn
--
Lair of the Demon Ape
http://indigo.ie/~gerryq/lair/lair.htm
perdu...@googlemail.com
idea as it turns food into something *positive*, and removes the
"eating for the sake of it" that Crawl especially has. Of course, if
food is turning into something positive, then there needs to be a
balancing drawback, and that's what I'm slightly stuck on at the
moment.
(having said that, its not that important or urgent at this moment in
the development cycle - I've just spent the last couple of days
rewriting the Item Stacking functionality...urgh....).
Best,
Perdura
Derek Ray
> In article <slrnfh9k25...@still.just.a.spamtrap.org>,
>> Nethack's road or a similar one. Food that serves no purpose but as
>> something you have to do every N turns or you starve is just annoying.
>
> I'm not convinced of that; it's perfectly valid IMO to use it as a
> means of forcing progression, and for that ordinary food will do.
There are other means of forcing progression that don't require the player
to constantly interact with the program in a boring way.
A simple one if you use randomly generated monsters is to factor in the
turncount to the "difficulty level" of the generated monster; as it
increases, the minimum monster generated steadily becomes harder and harder,
forcing the player to go ahead and continue deeper into the dungeon to obtain
the items and/or features necessary to deal with the harder monsters.
Same effect; no nuisance factor on the player's part and the question
"My character has to eat because he has to eat?" never comes up.
> Ordinary food can be interesting strategically if certain activities
> use more of it (like spell-casting in Crawl).
That would be what I mean by "a similar road to Nethack". Food that you
eat because people eat is silly. Food that you eat because casting
spells makes the character hungry is an entirely different animal, as it
now adds an actual element to gameplay.
dpeg
<perdurab...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Cheers for reminding me of the Nethack intrinsic - I think its a good
> idea as it turns food into something *positive*, and removes the
> "eating for the sake of it" that Crawl especially has.
Without trying to degrade Nethack too much (and with apologies), I
think you got it all wrong: both how the Crawl food system works, and
the pecularities of Nethack's permanent intrinsics gained via eating.
First, in Crawl, the different types of hunger greatly differentiate
between races. Next, food is not a nuisance, but a strategic factor.
There is no unlimited source, and you will have to sensibly
incorporate it. (There are several items and mutations that affect
hunger/eating, and Mummies do not need to eat at all.) Finally, food
is much more than a counter that ticks (at different speeds for
different races): actions like spellcasting or going berserk use a lot
of food, and there are food-rich branches as well as food-pauper
ones.
On intrinsics via eating: while going completely binary has drawbacks
and disadvantages, the way Nethack does it bothered me quite soon: a
monster like a Yeti or Blue Dragon is (somewhat) interesting until you
eat it - from then on popcorn until the end. So I would not advocate
turning corpses into permanent intrinsics. The whole intrinsic
ascension kit problem is fueled by this.
David
Ray Dillinger
> Here's a question: Food mechanisms in RLs - are they a good idea or
> not?
Yes. They are a good idea, and they are not. Depends on the
game and the particular food mechanism.
I would say, it's a good idea to use a food mechanism to solve
a problem, but it's a bad idea to invent a problem just for it
to solve.
In terms of your game mechanics, what is the purpose for food?
If your problem is: Your solution is:
The Borg Style of Play actually Characters can run out
pays off and you don't want to of food on a level and
encourage players to bore have to move on.
themselves.
If your problem is: Your solution is:
You have dungeons that a (relatively The troll requires
weak and small) gnome can handle at a lot more food than
a liesurely pace, but your game also the gnome and is
has big strong characters like trolls therefore forced to
and the player of a troll, taking his progress at a more
time, has a very (boring) easy game. rapid rate.
If your problem is: Your solution is:
The spellcaster game becomes Powerful spells cause powerful
boring after the halfway point hunger. This doesn't mess up
because the caster can use the spellcaster early game, but
spells to overcome any challenge. adds a challenge late.
If your problem is: Your solution is:
Certain magic items (eg, speed Wearing and benefiting from
boots, regeneration rings, etc) these items causes hunger,
are seen to have an unduly forcing the player to make
unbalancing effect on play. (and decide when to change) a
choice about equipping.
If your game doesn't suffer from one or more of these problems,
and you can't think of a food mechanism that solves a problem
it does suffer from, then don't implement food and eating.
Bear
Derek Ray
><perdurab...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Cheers for reminding me of the Nethack intrinsic - I think its a good
>> idea as it turns food into something *positive*, and removes the
>> "eating for the sake of it" that Crawl especially has.
>
> and disadvantages, the way Nethack does it bothered me quite soon: a
> monster like a Yeti or Blue Dragon is (somewhat) interesting until you
> eat it - from then on popcorn until the end. So I would not advocate
> turning corpses into permanent intrinsics. The whole intrinsic
> ascension kit problem is fueled by this.
Oh, it's fueled by a lot more than just that, but rest assured that the
"binary model" is being targeted heavily by Spork where possible and
appropriate. Intrinsics will eventually come back onto the list.
(Permanent intrinsics would be better if, say, every blue dragon eaten
gives only +10% to the intrinsic, and that intrinsic is "amount of damage of
that type reduced"... etc. etc. Even then you have to be careful not to
generate 20 blue dragons by midgame and shoot yourself in the foot, but
at that point the BIG problem is covered.)
Sherman Pendley
> seems that in every game of TOME or Crawl I play, food is *the* major
> issue affecting gameplay
How could food possibly be an issue in ToME? There is a store in every
town that has nothing else and never runs out. Also, if you're a hobbit,
you can make your own.
> Sometimes I feel that whilst the whole food thing is obviously
> intended to bestow another strategic element onto the gameplay (in
> terms of resource management and to force dungeon progression, which
> are important in themselves), it can turn into merely tiresome
> housekeeping.
It's tiresome housekeeping in ToME, in my opinion. Because it's essentially
limitless, the strategic element is minimal.
sherm--
--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
jot...@hotmail.com
now:
Instead of having an explicit "eat" action, the player can control it
by setting (for example) one of three levels of eating: sparingly,
enough, and fully. They will consume food at different rates and there
are associated bonuses and penalties with them (although indirectly --
suddenly "eating sparingly" doesn't automatically give you a negative
buff, only after some time). There's an indicator for how many days
your food will last with these settings, and that's it! So essentially
it's a mechanic of "spend more food, last less in the dungeon but have
a bonus to killing stuff" or "spend less food and linger around the
dungeon for a lot more time, but in a weaker state". The player can
decide to have a good meal for a last push through that final boss, or
eat less for a cowardly escape :)
Jotaf
Jeff Lait
wrote:
> If you're going to add food, my opinion would be: please, go down
> Nethack's road or a similar one. Food that serves no purpose but as
> something you have to do every N turns or you starve is just annoying.
I agree with your point but I still think there is nothing wrong with
food being used as a clock. What is broken is if you require the
player to keep explicitly 'e'ating food every N turns when food is
nothing but a clock.
If you just want food to be a counter, have the player auto-eat the
food whenever they get hungry with no time penalty. This will keep
all of your ambiance without sacrificing any gameplay.
This is a subject of some interest to me, I wrote an article a while
back you can find at:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=The_Role_of_Hunger
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
nerdpride
I personally have difficulty discerning when an average person would
starve enough to render them incapable of fighting. Plus, when you're
looking at balance, I think that almost exclusively players will want
to eat more and dive deeper before they otherwise could. It might
look fair, probably the statistics would say it is fair, but why
bother including these mechanics if only one side of it is really
worthwhile?
To generalize things even more, when the game includes a "town" (often
times you seem to visit the town twice in a day for the *bands, to
sell all that loot and try to get more good stuf), why not just give
the player a flat fee for the upkeep of equipment and provisions?
Magical potions and necessary equipment like new weapons and armor
won't be done automatically of course, but it would be convenient to
pay a simple 2 gold for every 1000 turns you use your lantern, plus 5
gold per day for food and drink, plus 20 gold every week to have
metallic objects repaired, mended clothes, and enough bandages to stop
whatever amount of blood you might lose next week. Or maybe an amount
based on the selling price of your gear would be better? I dunno,
those artifacts should stay nice and shiny on their own.
If you wanted a mechanic to discourage scumming the shops, make it so
they have to pay this fee, or just a part of it (like for a drink at
the tavern), every time they enter town. Then again, usually scumming
occurs after you get plenty of money. It's a leaky fix at best.
Billy Bissette
@i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> To generalize things even more, when the game includes a "town" (often
> times you seem to visit the town twice in a day for the *bands, to
> sell all that loot and try to get more good stuf), why not just give
> the player a flat fee for the upkeep of equipment and provisions?
You could still have food as a restriction even with an infinite town
supply, if you restricted what could be carried or kept on a journey.
Good food might go bad over time, while preserved food might be less
nutricious. And work on your inventory system so that someone couldn't
just carry 99 iron rations or 99 satisfy hunger scrolls or whatever.
I'm not saying you *should* do the above, just that it is possible.
Actually, I'm a bit against "eat or starve" food systems. It is
something that I think is maintained primarily because it is
entrenched in the idea of a Roguelike, a journey timer justified
through a body function. Why don't we also have required sleep, lest
penalties, hallicinations, and the like accrue? Instead, sleep if an
option at all is almost entirely only an option, often in the form of
an accelerated healing feature.
If you want a timer, then why not make real world timers? Take too
long, and the bad guys overrun the area. If you have a long game, or
want to somewhat avoid the negative connotations to a fixed time
limit game, then let player achievements push back the enemy's time
table. (It is harder to take over a country when a guy waltzes in
and slaughters hundreds of your orcish army.)
Or character age. Or perhaps culmulative debilitation. Or whatever.
Or make something entirely magical and arbitrary. (Like some
Japanese console Roguelikes that simply forceably place the character
into the next dungeon level if they spend too long in the current one,
with excuses like being carried by the divine wind.)
Heck, make it sleep or something. Like sleeping in the magical
dungeon is risky, even deadly, so you have a flexible limit on how
long you can spend on a single trip. (Flexible because you can
choose to stay longer and accrue penalties, until you eventually
stay too long and either succumb to the penalties or just fall
asleep and get mauled or whatever happens.)
Or just flat out claim there is a time restriction placed on trips
into the dungeon, or trips into certain sub-areas.
Unless a food system is extremely restrictive, experienced players
will learn how to worth within it and possibly even circumventing or
exploiting it. It becomes another killer of low level characters
and inexperienced players, but less an issue to experienced players
or characters that have well established themselves.
dpeg
wrote:
> On 2007-10-16, dpeg <pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> > On intrinsics via eating: while going completely binary has drawbacks
> > and disadvantages, the way Nethack does it bothered me quite soon: a
> > monster like a Yeti or Blue Dragon is (somewhat) interesting until you
> > eat it - from then on popcorn until the end. So I would not advocate
> > turning corpses into permanent intrinsics. The whole intrinsic
> > ascension kit problem is fueled by this.
>
> Oh, it's fueled by a lot more than just that, but rest assured that the
> "binary model" is being targeted heavily by Spork where possible and
> appropriate. Intrinsics will eventually come back onto the list.
I know there's more to it :) And rest assured, I have full confidence
that Spork is taking the correct measures. Your statement about the
intrinsics just give me more hope.
> (Permanent intrinsics would be better if, say, every blue dragon eaten
> gives only +10% to the intrinsic, and that intrinsic is "amount of damage of
> that type reduced"... etc. etc. Even then you have to be careful not to
> generate 20 blue dragons by midgame and shoot yourself in the foot, but
> at that point the BIG problem is covered.)
Like that!
I will have to try a Spork ascension some day, although the
underdeveloped interface (this is absolutely not meant as an insult:
you are only one developer, and I am severly spoiled by Crawl :) may
hinder me somewhat.
Keep up the good work, Derek!
David
erisdiscordia
> nerdpride <depo...@gmail.com> wrote in news:1192579208.799283.8210
> @i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> Or make something entirely magical and arbitrary. (Like some
> Japanese console Roguelikes that simply forceably place the character
> into the next dungeon level if they spend too long in the current one,
> with excuses like being carried by the divine wind.)
What you mention seems to correspond to Shiren the Wanderer. However,
Shiren's windy Deus ex Machina is more severe than this: actually,
when time's up, the wind god instantly blows you back to the start,
removes your possessions, and gives you amnesia. That is, it
effectively instakills you. I expect you're warned first, but I don't
know -- I've never tempted fate there.
Perhaps a later Chunsoft game -- the console roguelikes are generally
Chunsoft games -- used a milder form with blowing you to the next
level. The Chunsoft games have tended to "soften" over time.
(Shiren also does not eschew food. Neither do I, for that matter -- I
don't find a requirement of a couple extra keystrokes once every great
number of turns to be boring at all, nor do I find all realism bad --
only realism that steamrollers gameplay is, and I think food clocks
don't qualify as that. At least, not unless done badly. Done well,
they can on the contrary add to gameplay, though even doing them well
might displease some and please others, as the resistances-from-flesh
debates show.)
e. the blowhard
perdu...@googlemail.com
<snip>
> This is a subject of some interest to me, I wrote an article a while
> back you can find at:http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=The_Role_o...
> --
Excellent article that, thanks. Lots of, err, food for though.
Best,
Perdura
Krice
<perdurab...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Here's a question: Food mechanisms in RLs - are they a good idea or
> not? I'm pondering whither to include food in the new Kharne
Good if well designed, bad if poorly designed. I see you have
difficulties in game design issues. Don't try to make it more
complex than it is. What I see is a lot of threads where people
start to wonder some things, but they don't have good alternative
solutions or they just don't know what the heck they are talking
about. What I now realize that being a good game designer like
me is not obvious for everyone. It requires a talented person
just like other creative areas of game making.
Gerry Quinn
de...@moot.its.only.a.spamtrap.org says...
> On 2007-10-16, Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
> > In article <slrnfh9k25...@still.just.a.spamtrap.org>,
> >> If you're going to add food, my opinion would be: please, go down
> >> Nethack's road or a similar one. Food that serves no purpose but as
> >> something you have to do every N turns or you starve is just annoying.
> >
> > I'm not convinced of that; it's perfectly valid IMO to use it as a
> > means of forcing progression, and for that ordinary food will do.
>
> There are other means of forcing progression that don't require the player
> to constantly interact with the program in a boring way.
Actually, food interaction can be made very minimal; there is no reason
for it to be boring. For example, you could have just one type of food
ration, stored separately from the normal inventory, and auto-eaten.
Somewhere on screen will be a little icon showing the number of rations
stored and the consumption state of the current one. If it reaches
zero, insta-death seems harsh, but stats could be reduced or some other
form of starvation implemented.
The *only* interaction needed, then, is to run over a food ration often
enough. For balance between low and high levels, eating rate could
increase slightly in proportion to the amount currently carried.
This system would work for Crawl-like food systems too, though not
NetHack ones where nornal foods have special intrinsic powers.
> A simple one if you use randomly generated monsters is to factor in the
> turncount to the "difficulty level" of the generated monster; as it
> increases, the minimum monster generated steadily becomes harder and harder,
> forcing the player to go ahead and continue deeper into the dungeon to obtain
> the items and/or features necessary to deal with the harder monsters.
>
> Same effect; no nuisance factor on the player's part and the question
> "My character has to eat because he has to eat?" never comes up.
It's not such a strange question; why *shouldn't* characters have to
eat? The trope is common enough. Sure, monster growth can work, as
can other things (I have no food in my game, because progression is
forced by other means). I'm just saying food can be a good way to do
it.
> > Ordinary food can be interesting strategically if certain activities
> > use more of it (like spell-casting in Crawl).
>
> That would be what I mean by "a similar road to Nethack". Food that you
> eat because people eat is silly. Food that you eat because casting
> spells makes the character hungry is an entirely different animal, as it
> now adds an actual element to gameplay.
Come on! How does "food that you eat because people eat" differ from
"food that you eat because spending time walking around a dungeon makes
you hungry"? We already agreed that there *is* a point to it, that of
forcing progression; i.e. it is not mindless realism.
The difference between Crawl and NetHack is that in Crawl, food is for
the most part just food. I've suggested above that it might well be a
good idea to abstract this, and expunge mangos, meat rations and slime
molds from the menu. Of course Crawl does include food-related
punishments such as poison or vegetarianism. But you can have food
used strategically without going down that road.
David Damerell
>Somewhere on screen will be a little icon showing the number of rations
>stored and the consumption state of the current one. If it reaches
>zero, insta-death seems harsh, but stats could be reduced or some other
>form of starvation implemented.
MPRDB halts hitpoint recovery when hungry. That's about right, I think.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Gaiman, October - a public holiday.
David Damerell
>about. What I now realize that being a good game designer like
>me is not obvious for everyone.
It's certainly not obvious to me that you're a good game designer. I've
designed a game as good as anything you've ever done; it took me five
seconds.
perdu...@googlemail.com
wrote:
> Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie>:
>
> >Somewhere on screen will be a little icon showing the number of rations
> >stored and the consumption state of the current one. If it reaches
> >zero, insta-death seems harsh, but stats could be reduced or some other
> >form of starvation implemented.
>
> MPRDB halts hitpoint recovery when hungry. That's about right, I think.
> --
> Today is Gaiman, October - a public holiday.
Ironically, that's the mechanism I was going to implement for food:
Let's say Starting Hunger = 100
Every 10 turns, Decrease Hunger by Race_Metabolism_Modifier (see
below)
Physical Regeneration Rate becomes:
(Endurance Stat / 20) * (Hunger div 100) * Default Regeneration Rate
Magical Regeneration Rate becomes:
(Resolve Stat / 20) * (Hunger div 100) * Default Regeneration Rate
// 20 is the maximum value of a stat in Kharne
// Default Regeneration Rate is a seperate stat that can be modified
by Corruptions etc
Food restores varying amounts of Hunger up to a maximum of 125.
// Race Metabolism Modifiers are:
// Elf 0.25
// Dwarf 0.40
// Human 1
// Halfling 1.5
// Half-Orc 0.80
Apart from that, hunger has no other effects.
Best,
Perdura
Billy Bissette
@t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
> On Oct 17, 8:27 am, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>> nerdpride <depo...@gmail.com> wrote in news:1192579208.799283.8210
>> @i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>
>> Or make something entirely magical and arbitrary. (Like some
>> Japanese console Roguelikes that simply forceably place the character
>> into the next dungeon level if they spend too long in the current
one,
>> with excuses like being carried by the divine wind.)
>
> What you mention seems to correspond to Shiren the Wanderer. However,
> Shiren's windy Deus ex Machina is more severe than this: actually,
> when time's up, the wind god instantly blows you back to the start,
> removes your possessions, and gives you amnesia. That is, it
> effectively instakills you. I expect you're warned first, but I don't
> know -- I've never tempted fate there.
Yes, you get warned before the wind blows you in the Mysterious
Dungeon games. You get much more time than you'd actually need to
strip a level. (Monsters respawn, but slowly and generally at a
distance, so continued hunting isn't practical anyway without a
farsight bracelet.)
You also get warned before a floor collapses in Azure Dreams (for
the Playstation 1). That game doesn't have a food system.
The console Roguelikes also tend to have the "reset to level 1
when you leave" feature, so part of the trick to the games are
learning how to level yourself up. The other trick being how to
carry over improvements in items and the like between plays, but
the Mysterious Dungeon games could theoretically be beaten on the
first play and without powered up equipment.
> Perhaps a later Chunsoft game -- the console roguelikes are generally
> Chunsoft games -- used a milder form with blowing you to the next
> level. The Chunsoft games have tended to "soften" over time.
>
> (Shiren also does not eschew food. Neither do I, for that matter -- I
> don't find a requirement of a couple extra keystrokes once every great
> number of turns to be boring at all, nor do I find all realism bad --
> only realism that steamrollers gameplay is, and I think food clocks
> don't qualify as that. At least, not unless done badly. Done well,
> they can on the contrary add to gameplay, though even doing them well
> might displease some and please others, as the resistances-from-flesh
> debates show.)
Food is often done poorly enough in my eyes. I think it has
somewhat lost its way. (Mysterious Dungeon games do an okay use of
food, though its effectiveness varies between games.)
R. Dan Henry
<bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>Why don't we also have required sleep
Alphaman required sleep.
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
If you wish to put anything I post on your website,
please be polite enough to ask first.
erisdiscordia
> erisdiscordia <e...@sky.cz> wrote in news:1192610204.356814.222450
> @t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
> The console Roguelikes also tend to have [a permadeath equivalent
> or near-equivalent], so part of the trick to the games are
> learning how to level yourself up.
Congratulations, you have just described a roguelike. :-P
(No offense intended.)
> The other trick being how to
> carry over improvements in items and the like between plays, but
> the Mysterious Dungeon games could theoretically be beaten on the
> first play and without powered up equipment.
According to the Gamefaqs FAQ for the Mysterious Dungeon game Shiren
the Wanderer, it actually contains an Easter Egg that can only be
unlocked by doing a playthrough of precisely that sort. Well, actually
Shiren's main option for metagame improvement is item carryover (at a
cost), with item improvement, while possible, being too costly -- too
time-intensive and too easy to lose -- to count for much. But yeah.
Shiren's inventory limit is so tight that if the player is even a
halfway-fanatical packrat, they'll soon end up painfully choosing what
to ditch even *without* picking up stuff from the warehouses, so a
warehouseless playthrough wouldn't be entirely disadvantageous.
> > [e.'s opinions on food]
> Food is often done poorly enough in my eyes. I think it has
> somewhat lost its way. (Mysterious Dungeon games do an okay use of
> food, though its effectiveness varies between games.)
Unfortunately I'm only familiar with Shiren; I've read a bit about
some of the others, but none of the discussions of them really go into
their food systems.
e.
Krice
wrote:
> It's certainly not obvious to me that you're a good game designer.
Of course I am.
> I've designed a game as good as anything you've ever done;
> it took me five seconds.
I love your off-topic bullshit messages.
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
Would you two stop flirting and just go off and do it already???
-r.
Krice
wrote:
> Would you two stop flirting and just go off and do it already???
How about threesome?
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
Sure!
Oh, wait, you mean with you? Sorry, I'm allergic to nuts.
<3,
-r.
David Damerell
>Would you two stop flirting and just go off and do it already???
Krice isn't my type.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Second Potmos, October.
Martin Read
>On 17 loka, 16:17, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>wrote:
>> It's certainly not obvious to me that you're a good game designer.
>
>Of course I am.
It is interesting to see that your supposed spiritual virtues include no
trace of humility.
--
\_\/_/ you take a mortal man and put him in control
\ / and watch him become a god watch people's heads roll
\/ --- Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
jice
On another hand, r.g.r.d would be such a boring place if Krice was not
here to launch some skuds from time to time... ;)
--
jice
Billy Bissette
@i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> On Oct 17, 6:39 pm, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>> erisdiscordia <e...@sky.cz> wrote in news:1192610204.356814.222450
>> @t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
>> The other trick being how to
>> carry over improvements in items and the like between plays, but
>> the Mysterious Dungeon games could theoretically be beaten on the
>> first play and without powered up equipment.
>
> According to the Gamefaqs FAQ for the Mysterious Dungeon game Shiren
> the Wanderer, it actually contains an Easter Egg that can only be
> unlocked by doing a playthrough of precisely that sort. Well, actually
> Shiren's main option for metagame improvement is item carryover (at a
> cost), with item improvement, while possible, being too costly -- too
> time-intensive and too easy to lose -- to count for much. But yeah.
I would argue Shiren has a more powerful metagame improvement than
the franchise's ability to store items for future attempts.
Shiren takes things further with objects that will not appear until
"unlocked" via a prior attempt. The Fusion Pot is one such item.
Also, charged Bufu Staves don't appear until after you complete a
side-quest from what I recall. Some quests require multiple play
attempts to complete in and of themselves.
> Shiren's inventory limit is so tight that if the player is even a
> halfway-fanatical packrat, they'll soon end up painfully choosing what
> to ditch even *without* picking up stuff from the warehouses, so a
> warehouseless playthrough wouldn't be entirely disadvantageous.
Shiren's inventory limit isn't that bad. It generally isn't that
difficult to decide what to ditch, and part of the point is to
actually use the items you find.
Relying on warehouses is probably a weakness, since Shiren makes
it much more difficult to return items to a previous warehouse. In
Torneko, Outside scrolls are random objects and are even guaranteed
on a relatively early dungeon floor. This is not true for Shiren.
>> > [e.'s opinions on food]
>
>> Food is often done poorly enough in my eyes. I think it has
>> somewhat lost its way. (Mysterious Dungeon games do an okay use of
>> food, though its effectiveness varies between games.)
>
> Unfortunately I'm only familiar with Shiren; I've read a bit about
> some of the others, but none of the discussions of them really go into
> their food systems.
My biggest fault with the Mysterious Dungeon series is simply that
since item generation is random, there is no guarantee that the game
will generate enough food to survive. On average it generates more
than enough, and it has other systems in place to give a further
boost (like the crisis scroll, the NPC that helps, polymorph pots,
shops, healing objects...). But it is possible to have a run where
the game simply generates non-edible (or very low food value) objects
until you starve.
In the Mysterious Dungeon games, this isn't necessarily a crippling
flaw though, as the games expect the player to die and likely die
repeatedly. This would be more an issue in many PC roguelikes, where
significant time may be invested and death is treated as a complete
failure. Which to me leads to the problem in how PC roguelikes
address food, which is often made more than abundant for any
moderately skilled player, to the point that I begin to wonder why
the system is even there.
Brog
> about. What I now realize that being a good game designer like
> me is not obvious for everyone. It requires a talented person
> just like other creative areas of game making.
Why not just show us all these amazing games you've designed and then
we can stop arguing?
Krice
> It is interesting to see that your supposed spiritual virtues
> include no trace of humility.
No one is humble. You can only pretend to be (in hope
to gain something from that..)
True spirituality is different than anything that now
exist. All religions and spiritual beliefs are wrong.
It's easy to tell, because of what those beliefs are
causing: suffering.
Gerry Quinn
pau...@mbnet.fi says...
How can you tell they all cause net suffering, or that whatever
suffering they may cause is not counteracted by benefits of some other
kind? Or (anyway) that the correctness of a belief is inversely
related to the amount of suffering it causes?
[Imagine a physicist contemplasting different possible theories:
"Ouch, that one hurts my head. Therefore it must be wrong..."]
- Gerry Quinn
Brog
solutions to drive forward progress other than food? Food just
doesn't fit in my setting.
Thoughts:
- food by another name (energite crystals, sanity level)
- absolute time limit (hard or soft. e.g. adom, star control.)
- no experience. levels gained by forward progress or removed
entirely. (have to avoid item farming too)
- player is being hunted / enemies are coming from behind.
- difficulty increases the longer you stay in the same place.
- dungeon levels don't repopulate. (boring! actually this is what
most non-rl games do)
- rewards for faster progress.
- mystic wind carries you forward after a time limit. (already
mentioned here)
- rapidly diminishing returns.
In some versions of Rogue you can eliminate hunger entirely by wearing
two rings of Slow Digestion. Goodbye forced progress! Then you can
avoid damage with Scare Monster and farm for xp indefinitely. I
suspect if I ever actually complete the game, it will be by doing this.
perdu...@googlemail.com
Krice providing a salutatory lesson here on why you shouldn't start
drinking before lunchtime...
Best,
Perdura
perdu...@googlemail.com
For the time being, I've decided that in Kharne, as food will only
affect regeneration rate, I'm going to go with non-persistant dungeons
as a means of driving the player forwards. Its not perfect, and may
change, but I'll go with it for the time being.
Best,
Perdura
Derek Ray
> ..getting back on topic, what ideas do people have for alternative
> solutions to drive forward progress other than food? Food just
> doesn't fit in my setting.
>
> Thoughts:
> - food by another name (energite crystals, sanity level)
Isn't actually an alternative solution. (crystite?)
> - absolute time limit (hard or soft. e.g. adom, star control.)
Time limits can work, but only if they're sufficiently far forward that
people have to _aggressively_ dawdle to hit the limit; you don't want to
punish people who are just deliberate players. After all, it's a
turn-based game; it shouldn't be twitch-game speed.
> - no experience. levels gained by forward progress or removed
> entirely. (have to avoid item farming too)
Slightly off the beaten path and would depend totally on the
implementation; I can see good and bad ways to do this.
> - player is being hunted / enemies are coming from behind.
Variant on the time limit, really, unless you only 'trickle' in monsters
from the upstairs one at a time.
Only workable for "go forward only" dungeon-crawls, unless the thing
you're retrieving at the bottom is enough to allow you to hold off an
army... which isn't such a bad idea, really. ("Rush down in the dungeon
with the army following you, obtain the Holy Hand Grenade, and cut
swathes of blood through the army on the way back, which has
incidentally filled up the dungeon.")
> - difficulty increases the longer you stay in the same place.
This is the one I'm looking at as a possible "nudge forward" for
SporkHack.
> - dungeon levels don't repopulate. (boring! actually this is what
> most non-rl games do)
Boring, indeed.
> - rewards for faster progress.
Relies too much on the designer's subjective concept of "faster", and
will probably annoy players. Also goes against a 'spirit' of roguelikes
to some degree.
> - mystic wind carries you forward after a time limit. (already
> mentioned here)
And matches "time limit".
> - rapidly diminishing returns.
Quite workable.
--
Derek
Changelog: http://sporkhack.nineball.org
Beta Server: telnet://sporkhack.nineball.org
IRC: irc.freenode.net, #sporkhack
R. Dan Henry
>..getting back on topic, what ideas do people have for alternative
>solutions to drive forward progress other than food? Food just
>doesn't fit in my setting.
Why? What is the setting?
Gerry Quinn
crys...@gmail.com says...
> In some versions of Rogue you can eliminate hunger entirely by wearing
> two rings of Slow Digestion. Goodbye forced progress! Then you can
> avoid damage with Scare Monster and farm for xp indefinitely. I
> suspect if I ever actually complete the game, it will be by doing this.
I don't think I ever got two rings of Slow Digestion in the MSDOS
version! I beat it twice; I think I had Slow Digestion in one and in
the other I just got lucky and found tons of food. I was still
fainting my way through the last few levels in at least one of them.
Incidentally I never figured out how to use Scare Monster. I assumed
the maniacal laughing when the scroll was read frightened distant
monsters away or something!
- Gerry Quinn
Brog
> In article <1192795253.605178.292...@q3g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
> cryskn...@gmail.com says...
>
> > In some versions of Rogue you can eliminate hunger entirely by wearing
> > two rings of Slow Digestion. Goodbye forced progress! Then you can
> > avoid damage with Scare Monster and farm for xp indefinitely. I
> > suspect if I ever actually complete the game, it will be by doing this.
>
> I don't think I ever got two rings of Slow Digestion in the MSDOS
> version! I beat it twice; I think I had Slow Digestion in one and in
> the other I just got lucky and found tons of food. I was still
> fainting my way through the last few levels in at least one of them.
>
I got them once. Hung around on the same level for an aeon levelling
up, then went down a few levels and decided to hang around some more,
just to be absolutely sure I was strong enough to go for the amulet.
Stood on a scroll of scare monster, put a weight on the '.' key to
hold it down and went to get lunch (expecting to come back and kill
all the monsters that had spawned over that time). Returned to
discover that a flimsy scroll is not protection from dragon flame.. =[
Totally served me right.
That was the first time I'd been far enough in to see a D (or even a
G). I actually got the amulet once, but didn't make it out again.
On Oct 21, 2:33 pm, R. Dan Henry <danhe...@inreach.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:00:53 -0000, Brog <cryskn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >..getting back on topic, what ideas do people have for alternative
> >solutions to drive forward progress other than food? Food just
> >doesn't fit in my setting.
>
> Why? What is the setting?
>
Crystallised knots of space-time inhabited by the dreams of dormant
alien gods.
I've decided what I'm going to use: difficulty increasing if you stay
in one place. Development has only just started, so nothing's set in
stone yet. I expect half the people here will refuse to call it a
roguelike (it has 3d graphics, the grid is far from regular) but I'm
not too fussed about how it classifies.