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Angrymog posted:Any turn-based 3d Roguelikes? Thinking something that plays like the oldschool dungeon crawlers, but is a roguelike. And more indepth than Dungeon Hack, which was fun but really limited. If you have DosBox available, go find yourself a copy of Moraff's World. Not exactly 3D (it's from 1991 after all), but it might scratch the itch for you. 
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Dec 4, 2014 18:44
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EvilMike posted:I've noticed that there's a trend in newer roguelikes to do away with that, and make it take only 1 turn to equip/unequip stuff. It simplifies things a lot if you avoid having actions that take multiple turns. It means players need to be aware of what actions take a long time, and you need to design the game to handle weird cases of stuff happening in the middle of an action (what if a monster walks up to you the turn after you start to equip armour?). Especially bad if a miskey can lead to (effectively) being paralyzed for 5+ turns. The way I'd do it is to have doing things that seem like they should be long and complex actions could give you a debuff for a little while, but still let you actually move. Swapping armour might give you a debuff that represents you being naked in between taking off the old armour and putting on the new one, for instance, and getting hit during that time does...I dunno, you take more damage and the duration of the debuff is reset to represent that it's really hard to change armour while someone's trying to kill you.
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Dec 4, 2014 18:44
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I don't know if this is the place for it so doing a quick check. If i write up a big effort post on the theme, mechanics and plot of my RL project would you guys mind telling me what seems interesting, stale, or boring/cumbersome? The game dev threads are normally focused more on the software implementation side of things. E: K, I'll write something up after work. Cool. Harvey Mantaco fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 21:30
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i don't think anyone would be opposed to it, especially since the thread isn't exactly super lively in the first place.
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Dec 4, 2014 21:33
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do NOT talk about roguelikes and their design in this thread no seriously, sounds good
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Dec 4, 2014 21:55
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I don't know if this is the place for it so doing a quick check. If i write up a big effort post on the theme, mechanics and plot of my RL project would you guys mind telling me what seems interesting, stale, or boring/cumbersome? The game dev threads are normally focused more on the software implementation side of things. Please do this, you'll be drowning in great feedback from people excited to play even bad roguelikes here. There wouldn't be a Dungeonmans today without the 2010 roguelike thread.
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Dec 4, 2014 22:46
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OH, NOW YOU GUYS ARE HAPPY TO DEBATE THE MERITS OF DISCUSSING DESIGN IN THIS THREAD. I SEE HOW IT IS. no seriously that sounds good to me.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:09
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Atlus is making an Etrian Mystery Dungeon game, apparently: http://www.atlus.com/etrianmd/index.html
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Dec 4, 2014 23:10
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Shadow Ninja 64 posted:Atlus is making an Etrian Mystery Dungeon game, apparently: http://www.atlus.com/etrianmd/index.html I'm super excited for this game. Going to have to borrow my sons 3DS to play it.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:50
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So here are my ideas for the mobile roguelike I’m implementing. Most of the “engine” is done and it’s time to start doing the content side of things. Overall idea: High fantasy/Sci-fi cross over. Varied areas and area progression choice. Focus on fewer, harder enemies with different strategies. Mobile friendly GUI. Tons of different skill options. Combat heavy with procedurally tweaked characters to provide a unique gameplay experience every time.  Pictured here with summoned tiger pal. Plot and major character advancement: Not really important, but the plot kind of ties into some of the mechanics so I’ll quickly just mention it. The game world takes place in a high fantasy environment. The main character happens upon a crashed spaceship and recovers an artifact. The (sentient) artifact guides him/her throughout the world conquering the great heroes of that world (in each area there are a few minor "mini bosses" that drop minor runes and a couple "bosses" that drop major ones), and rewarding the player for those conquests. I’ll leave the explanation as to why that is out because it’s not super relevant but as these heroes are conquered the artifact rewards the player character with what I guess I’m going to call “runes” right now as a placeholder. Those runes represent the strength of that conquered hero and when “slotted in” to one of 4 rune slots on the character screen give various passive/active abilities and change stats. The world is procedurally generated but the player can choose the order of areas to explore to go for specific runes, thus going for a specific build. Each area (I have assets planned out for 4 in total) is in conflict and has two heroes at war that can be sought out by the character. Imagine 5 levels. The character is dropped into level 3, where the minions of the two heroes are battling it out at the center of the conflict and can choose to go one way or another to battle it out with the hero on level 1 or level 5. Showing up randomly through all of these areas are various space faring aliens or different types who want the artifact for themselves (which potentially could drop rare, but amazing sciFi weapons and armour – I love the idea of fighting knight and goblins with a laser rifle), which should be quite challenging. The pro is this gives the player a choice about where to go and how to progress. The cons however… The player might not know where to go or why they should go there, not sure of a good way to handle this. Choosing the order of areas to visit is interesting but will mean that the player would be overpowered in some areas by the end of the game or underpowered at the start – it’s not Megaman. To deal with that I would need to make the areas increase in difficulty depending on the order they are chosen, but not sure if that would make any sense or seem awkward. Maybe not let them choose the order of the areas to visit? Not sure. As far as upgrading is concerned here is the heavily placeholder graphicy screen to slot in those runes:  Basically when a rune is slotted in, it gives a passive ability depending on the rune. Entering a new area opens a new rune slot. All of these passive abilities should be pretty big and change the way the game is played (like turning on stealth, let the character ride a horse around… etc.) The runes also give the largest source of stats in the game to really define a character. Also, It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the rune combines with any rune adjacent to it and gives access to an activated skill that pops up between them. Any two runes that can be held at the same time in the game have their own activated skill. Yeah, I’ve done the math – with 12 runes in the game that’s a loving ton of skills, but I like that, I want to give a ton of options for experimentation. Movement: The stuff on the GUI in the photos is basically just for debugging, I want to keep it clear (or at least just for display, no many buttons). The movement I have implemented right now is tap on character to idle in spot a turn, or on a cardinal direction to move 1 square in that direction. It seems really fluid to me and I don’t have to hunt and peck with my fingersausages. Have bump attacking obviously for basic melee. Using skills, interacting:  Pressing a finger down over something and sliding it in any direction makes that cell highlight and a radial selector pop up. The above image is full of placeholder buttons but each one of those represents either “Interact”, “Examine”, “Fire” (equipped projectile) or any active skill. “Fire” will always be on the right so the player and examine to the left so the player can thoughtlessly just “swipe right” and lift their finger to fire or left to examine Consumables: There are a few buttons on the top right that that are the different categories of items. No pic for it but when one is pressed a scrollable menu pops up on the right showing all items organized in a column of rectangular description boxes showing a graphic , name and shorthand item description. When a description box is pressed the options for that item (drop, drink, throw, etc) pop up vertically just to the left of the column displaying all the items so the player can press the option they want. This means 3 presses to do something with an item, but the player needs to move their thumb very little. I kind of wish I could get it down to 2 touches without cluttering up the inventory but I’m not sure how I really could. Wearable items: gently caress I don’t know. I was going to have the character be shown visually dressed and based off of their equipped runes but feedback is making me scratch that. I want there to be a focus on tactical placement, strategy and consumable management in this game, not creating the perfect battering ram that you can bump into anyone. That’s actually a fun kind of game to play sometimes! Just not the one I want to make I don’t think. Throw your ideas at me if you want cause this is where I’m not to sure what to do. I was thinking of a system where when enemies are killed the character automatically pick up what we’ll call “scrap” that goes into it’s own item category – the character could then use the magic of the artefact at certain stages of the game to “forge” items from a list based off of what scrap items the player has. This has it’s own issues, but one nice thing about this is that consumables could potentially be crafted, lending to the choice between making say, a certain kind of armour you want or a couple potions. The other thing I was thinking is having head, lower body, upper body and footwear items drop but all be pretty amazing, but not raining loot or anything like in crawl. Stats: I’m struggling with this. I’m looking for stats that give benefits to characters that encourage decisions based on positioning and movement over just pure “my number is higher than your number.” So for example, instead of just a %change to flat avoid all damage from an attack, give the player the option to step aside to an adjacent tile to dodge an attack. I was thinking of three main player resources (besides the standard attacking ratings and various values/formulas that exist in most roguelikes that I’ll honestly probably just kinda steal for a more established game because why gently caress around – this can all get tweaked). HP: Not going to gently caress around with this. Just HP. Endurance: Resource that is used to use activated abilities primarily or basically things that player chooses to do that uses effort, slowly regenerates bar under health, but at a higher rate if no enemy AI are currently seeking the enemy. Finesse: Resource that is used for reactive abilities. Very small number of pips (between 1 at the start of the game to maybe 2-4 depending on build) and sits under endurance bar, rapidly regenerates. So for example, if the player fails a dodge roll, but has a pip of finesse left, the enemy will pause mid swing and the character can tap X direction to step out of the way of the blow. Or potentially if the player character would be stunned or something similar the player could tap away from the attacker to duck away and fall back a square to avoid it at the cost of a point of finesse. The problem is, if the player doesn’t want to use the finesse point should they just tap the “wait” middle of the screen? Would this slow down combat too much and make it cumbersome? Maybe this whole idea is just wretched. It’s not like it needs to be in it or anything and if there’s not real way to tweak it to the point where it feels right I’ll probably toss it. Format Help: Most roguelikes aren’t 3d, so there lots of cool things that can be done here. So if the enemy is facing away, I’m going to allow backstabs, for example. Another idea is for certain attacks to happen over multiple turns. So for example if you’re fighting an ogre he might make throw a punch or do a quick swing with his club and that will hit in the traditional sense, but if your character speed is high enough and he goes for a heavy attack he will just lift it in the air one turn, and bring it down in the second. Also I have some spear men that jump back a step, wind up for a turn, then lunge forward 2 spaces and do heavy damage - the player can choose to back up out of range or the lunge or move in and try to get a couple of attacks in that stagger him out of it. Also dodgeable projectiles if they’re shot from far enough away and you’re fast enough ala Tomb. What are some other things to do with the media that you couldn’t do in traditional roguelikes that aren’t as visually represented in character and spell actions? Christ I feel like the autistic kid that makes the two hour long platform masters videos. Listen, don't read any of that if you don't want to and just tell me poo poo you want in a 3d roguelike.
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Dec 5, 2014 01:54
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That sounds pretty interesting, the only thing I can suggest is rather than having the difficulty always be easier no matter what area you choose to start in, some could just be more difficult than others and that would be OK as long as you could choose to back out and try a different area first. My only concern is that since your character's abilities are so highly based on what runes you find, it seems like it would be difficult to try to customize it the way you liked until way later when you had most of the runes already. As far as the user interface stuff goes, it's pretty hard to give constructive advice on any of that until a workable build is in place to actually test it firsthand. Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 02:18
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Mercury_Storm posted:That sounds pretty interesting, the only thing I can suggest is rather than having the difficulty always be easier no matter what area you choose to start in, some could just be more difficult than others and that would be OK as long as you could choose to back out and try a different area first. I was thinking about that. I think certain runes will need to be found in certain areas every time to give the player a degree of control, so the mini bosses/bosses may vary to a degree in individual areas, but the same runes should be found in those areas every time, so as the player keeps trying to get further and further in the game they can favor a certain progression route.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:26
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my critique: that that is an insane amount of complexity and handwaving, and I don't think it's useful (or even possible) to offer any meaningful critique on it.  you need to just build something playable and iterate on it, making design changes over time. It's super inefficient, but there is no other way to make a game (especially an inherently complex one like a roguelike).
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Dec 5, 2014 03:13
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I was thinking about that. I think certain runes will need to be found in certain areas every time to give the player a degree of control, so the mini bosses/bosses may vary to a degree in individual areas, but the same runes should be found in those areas every time, so as the player keeps trying to get further and further in the game they can favor a certain progression route. Perhaps your character themselves could be one of the heroes and start out with a couple of them? Might be interesting to have people trying to assassinate you because they want your runes too. If there's no hunger mechanic or anything like that, that could be one of the ways to move the game forward if you need one. Like, assassins are on your trail and if you hang around too long in an area they'll catch up to you.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:15
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_jink posted:you need to just build something playable and iterate on it, making design changes over time. It's super inefficient, but there is no other way to make a game (especially an inherently complex one like a roguelike). I really want to empty quote this. Basically I suggest picking out the very core things you want to do first and get that done. Polish it up, and then start adding extra until you get bored. So if the core is a 3d roguelike, get that going as simply as you can. Once that is done, you can add in runes and whatnot.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:20
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Haha yeah, it seemed like a good idea but after writing that I kind of just stood back and looked at it and thought "Whoa. Well, I sure did type all that. Christ." I think maybe what I'll do is get something barebones for the combat in place with some default skills then host the android file for anyone to play with.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:28
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It might have just been more useful to leave it at this part:Harvey Mantaco posted:Listen, don't read any of that if you don't want to and just tell me poo poo you want in a 3d roguelike. as opposed to a standard 2d.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:31
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Haha yeah, it seemed like a good idea but after writing that I kind of just stood back and looked at it and thought "Whoa. Well, I sure did type all that. Christ." It's ok to have a grand vision, but it's hard to get those sorts of things done in any reasonable time. Take Dwarf Fortress, the only reason it is here is because ToadyOne is just building it up over time.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:35
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Harvey Mantaco posted:"Whoa. Well, I sure did type all that. Christ." This is probably the most important thing for you to get out of that post. Just getting it all down and out of your head for you to look at is one of the most difficult but most important things for you to do. I dig the concept, and like everyone else I look forward to seeing it in action someday. Speaking of Sci-Fi rougelikes, we need more. Like, the world bombed itself into the dark ages, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves etc are genetic human offshoots that breed true, technology is rare, valuable, and has the potential to tip the balance of power. There, go, make the game i've always wanted.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:43
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RickVoid posted:There, go, make the game i've always wanted. Ok. BRB.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:56
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What is to you guys that make a roguelike? I was re-reading the OP and it got me thinking. (I'm guessing this has been done to death, but I wasn't there so lets rehash it.) The three big points, Random/Procedural generated levels, Complex emergent gameplay and Permadeath from the OP basically make the entire genre to me. I was reading the Berlin Interpretation and I realized it wasn't really hitting the point. You could have a game that is you getting elected to a position in congress/parliament and trying to become Prime Minister be a roguelike if it hit on all three of those points. (eg, Random characters every new game, you die if you lose an election and has heaps of options for what to do). Do you guys need it to be a hack & slash for it to be a roguelike, or would a game from any genre be a roguelike if it hit those points? Traditional Roguelikes don't do it for me at all, but I consider myself a Roguelike fan because of Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World, Cataclysm (although that one might be more traditional than the others).
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Dec 5, 2014 04:02
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I promised I would report back on this, which took a bit longer than I thought it would, but here it is: Unormal, you are my favourite person. Sproggiwood is amazing and I love it, thank you for giving it to me. I want it to be available on Android now so I can buy it for my tablet. That's how much I like it. I recommmend it to everybody.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:08
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Lord Windy posted:What is to you guys that make a roguelike? I was re-reading the OP and it got me thinking. (I'm guessing this has been done to death, but I wasn't there so lets rehash it.) I'm actually working on a thesis post about this. After many, many years of studying, building and playing roguelikes, I've formed a variant philosophy on the core nature of the beast. I might as well just float it here in early form. This is pretty incomplete so far, but it outlines my thinking. This is obviously pretty contentious, semantic stuff, but I think I can lay out a convincing argument for at least one minor "school" of thinking on what rogue-likes are. Even though there are plenty of other equally valid schools. Roguelike; What is I'm going to argue that the three axioms that create a game-like-rogue are: 1. An arms race where you advance your avatar irreversibly through zones, wherein each zone grows progressively more challenging. 2. The ability to make risk/reward decisions in each zone that have the chance to cause your avatar to grow stronger or weaker. e: It is possible to make negative choices that create an avatar so weak that they cannot complete the next zone without failure. 3. A timer that puts pressure on the amount of decisions your avatar can take in each zone before making the choice to move to the next zone. That's it. When you really look at what defines roguelikes, in my opinion, that's all it takes to define the game-play kernel of the genre. Not permadeath. Not procedural dungeons. Not ASCII. Not fantasy skinning. Not bump-attack. Design choices like permadeath and procedural content serve the core design, and I'll tackle each in turn, but they are not the only possible options. These design choices emerge from first selecting the core gameplay kernel axioms and deciding what results from them. Some of them are more or less difficult to replace while retaining a compelling game, but removing one of these does not a priori make a game less rogue-like. However, removing one of the three core axioms creates a different type of game-play altogether. Let's test these axioms against some games that fall into the very broad roguelike bucket today: Rogue 1. Literal dungeon levels, each one gets more difficult. 2. Fighting monsters and identifying and using items provide choice-points. 3. Hunger; a static amount of food on each level prevents you from simply farming each level indefinitely. Decision: This is a (fantasy dungeon) roguelike! FTL 1. 9 sectors of increasing difficulty. 2. Each node in a sector is an explicit choice junction, sometimes involving combat and sometimes not. 3. The fleet advances on your position, preventing you from fully exploring a sector. Decision: This is a (sci-fi spaceship) roguelike! Sproggiwood 1. Dungeon levels 2. Like rogue, interacting with monsters, environmental objects and items provide your decision points. 3. Health is a non-regenerating finite resource, and it ticks down faster or slower depending on how well you're playing. Decision: This is a (fantasy dungeon) roguelike! Caves of Qud 1. There are zones, but there's no real time limit, and there's no guarantee of increasing difficulty. 2. There's lots of choices, items, monsters, mutations, crafting. 3. There's no real time limit or finite resource. Water is a local timer, but is available in unlimited quantities. Decision: This is not a roguelike! It's just a turn-based RPG. TODO: Discuss procedurality, permadeath, emergent gameplay, make the writing not suck, actually argue that changing those three core axioms creates an entirely different kind of game. Quick outline: Procedurality is drawn from the core axioms because making the identical set of decisions each game doesn't (necessarily) give the most compelling experience. Randomly varying the challenges makes each game unique. However, a pre-set roguelike, for instance a roguelike played with an identical seed each game, retains the core rogue-like gameplay, it's just less replay-able. Once you've introduced a procedural nature to the choices, the question of what happens when you lose/die becomes easily solved by "just start over at the beginning". This axiom derives from core axiom A: "programmers are lazy", but also because once you've been exposed to a set of choices, being able to make them again trivializes the choices and promotes dying simply to reset your core state to be able to make selections over again. e: Just thinking about testing other games against my thesis: Adom 1. Adom plays a roguelike on two levels: A: overworld corruption B:hunger in individual dives, I would argue that it's actually a rogue-like on two levels, with an overworld progression and individual roguelike mini-games. However it fails the "irreversability" test 2. Tons of choices 3. Hunger and corruption play short (individual dungeon) and long-term (whole-game) resource games, however reaching the food vendor in the main dungeon eliminates hunger as a timer, turning it from roguelike to turn-based-RPG at that precise moment. (this matches my experience of the feeling/nature of the game changing if you can make it to the stadium vendor) Unormal fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 04:35
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Unormal posted:Roguelike; What is It's interesting that your core values are so widely different to mine, but it seems to me that criteria could be applied to games not considered roguelikes. For example: Mario: 1. X number of worlds, each world is more difficult than the last. 2. Each level has a set number of powerups and you cannot use two at once. If you get hit by a goomba, than you lose that powerup. These powerups persist in the next level 3. A literal timer on the level, you can only take x number of seconds in a level before you must move onto the next. By definition, a platforming roguelike But if you asked people, Mario wouldn't be considered a roguelike at all. Starcraft 2 1. Has x number of levels, each level is progressively more difficult than the last. 2. Each level has the choice between two permanent powerups. 3. Each level has a finite supply of minerals and gas, requiring you to win the level before the resources run out. By definition, a sci-fi RTS roguelike This is just a bog standard RTS, but the definitions are so loose that basically any game could be considered one.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:51
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Lord Windy posted:It's interesting that your core values are so widely different to mine, but it seems to me that criteria could be applied to games not considered roguelikes. For example: I probably need to tighten up the definition of 2 given that, because I agree as-stated that they mostly conform. However the choices can't actually make your avatar weaker, so they don't strictly conform to my thesis as stated. In both cases they simply present a choice of either temporary or permanent improvement that always matches the difficulty of the level, so you can't fall behind. I should probably add a 'ability to lose enough power via your choices that you cannot complete the next zone' Having thought about this quite a bit, the actual genre I find really interesting that meets these criteria almost in a lot of cases is 4x city/space builders. I'm actually fiddling with a design for one that meets my core roguelike critera. Mostly they fail in having truly pressure-limited choices per zone (turn), and no pressure to choose between making choices and ending the turn. You typically take all the moves you can and then progress. Unormal fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 04:54
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By your rules Angband would not be a roguelike, as there's no real "clock" forcing the player onwards (there's food, but it's plentiful; dungeon levels can be infinitely regenerated). Not saying that's a bad thing, but Angband, and Moria (its antecedent), which has the same "flaws", are both generally considered to be roguelikes. NetHack has infinite food sources, as I recall, and no real onus on the player to keep moving forwards, but on the other hand after a certain point you'll just run out of things to do that aren't progressing the game, and actually achieving infinite food is not totally trivial. Since it seems we've circled back to the "what is a roguelike" discussion (and can we keep it civil this time?  ), here's what I'm looking to experience out of a roguelike:1) Not knowing what's around the next corner. Roguelikes are, to at least some extent, unpredictable. You never know when you'll have to deal with some challenge you don't really feel prepared for, or conversely when the game will hand you an advantage that you've been desperately needing / that breaks the game wide open. 2) ...there is no #2. There are easy roguelikes and hard roguelikes, there's a roguelike for basically every other genre of game out there, and there are games that are functionally disjoint in every respect and they're both roguelikes. That experience of exploration, even on repeat plays, is what defines roguelikes for me.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:56
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:By your rules Angband would not be a roguelike, as there's no real "clock" forcing the player onwards (there's food, but it's plentiful; dungeon levels can be infinitely regenerated). Not saying that's a bad thing, but Angband, and Moria (its antecedent), which has the same "flaws", are both generally considered to be roguelikes. Yeah, and I mean honestly I think "procedural stuff + maybe permadeath rpg" is going to be the colloquial definition of roguelike forever. I'm mostly trying to form a thesis that allows me to think/talk more clearly about the game design itself. Like "this game does/doesn't meet Unormal's wacky roguelike thesis #2", because the axioms I describe really DO describe the gameplay of rogue and many of it's variants, and they work really well together. It's also easy to lose those really core little nuggets of design in the vast sea of procedural cruft that gloms around them. However, colloquially 'roguelike' means a very different thing than 'a game actually like Rouge' e: It'd probably also be perfectly reasonable to add #4: It has some element of procedural content, but one thing I'm trying to determine with the thought experiment is if this is really core, or just emergent. What is a roguelike, the roguelike. Unormal fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 04:59
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Castle of the Winds remains my favorite roguelike of all time despite a total lack of clock, the fact that you can infitiely regenerate levels by simply holding shift while going up or down stairs, and that's it's completely friendly to savescumming through using a standard multiple save file system and loading.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:11
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Unormal posted:I'm mostly trying to form a thesis that allows me to think/talk more clearly about the game design itself. I'm doubtful a crazy dive into schematics is going to help in this pursuit seems it'd be much more useful to focus on the effects of these design choices, rather then what genre they cumulatively form.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:13
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Unormal posted:Yeah, and I mean honestly I think "procedural stuff + maybe permadeath rpg" is going to be the colloquial definition of roguelike forever. Would you agree that Dwarf Fortress and Unreal World are Roguelikes? Because I think procedural stuff and maybe permadeath don't cover the whole roguelike despite being part of it. While your roguelike definition is part of it, but not all of it.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:15
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_jink posted:I'm doubtful a crazy dive into schematics is going to help in this pursuit I actually think building a big semantic vocabulary is really useful for design. Though rather than trying to 'correctly' define rogue-like, I'm just trying to crystallize the core choices rogue made. I think those are basically my core axioms + 1. procedural tile-based zone generation 2. turn-based 3. permadeath 4. D&D theme Those four core design elements are obviously the most talked-about 'roguelike' properties, but it always seemed to me that the actual real kernel of game-play (my core 3 axioms) that drive the player forward in rogue, and really define the way you make choices as a player were ignored/set aside. Rightfully so, probably, since procedural (turn based?) (permadeath?) games are fun even without a timer, and personally I tend to enjoy games without a timer more. I'd rather play CoQ than Rouge, even though Rogue follows my axioms, but it's still informative to have a big, clear list of design decisions so you can mindfully decide which ones to follow, and which ones to ignore, and have a thought out idea of what impact flipping each of the flags will have on the resulting game. FTL in particular always felt very much like a roguelike to me, even though it's very unlike Rogue in presentation, and trying to figure out why led me to those core axioms as what really defined a "feeling of rogueyness" to me. e: Further, these things are fuzzy definitions. A game isn't 1 or 0 roguelike or not, it's obviously a spectrum, and games fall somewhere on it, which is part of why it's so contentious. Some games are a lot roguelike, some are a little, some not at all, and they can all be great. Unormal fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 05:19
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How many roguelikes do in fact have the "never go back" thing? I don't think most of the old descendants of Rogue actually have the "always down until it's time to escape with the quest item". In Nethack, you can always retrace your steps back to the entrance (barring monsters in the way or obstacles you can't pass that appeared somehow after you traversed the area the first time) and just walk out or whatever. ADOM has a couple of timers ticking, but barring the same issues you can still go back to the entrance to the Draklor Chain any time you want (if you have enough food). That criteria eliminates an enormous amount of roguelikes, really.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:32
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Zereth posted:How many roguelikes do in fact have the "never go back" thing? I don't think most of the old descendants of Rogue actually have the "always down until it's time to escape with the quest item". In Nethack, you can always retrace your steps back to the entrance (barring monsters in the way or obstacles you can't pass that appeared somehow after you traversed the area the first time) and just walk out or whatever. ADOM has a couple of timers ticking, but barring the same issues you can still go back to the entrance to the Draklor Chain any time you want (if you have enough food). Well, really, they just meet the criteria less. You can't really say "they aren't roguelikes", it's very fuzzy. My little diatribe is really about Capital-R-ougelike. On this design point, I think that most games that do allow infinite retrace either: 1. Have a soft "barrier" that effectively prevent you from retracing, because you use up your time resource (hunger/etc). Though it's possible, you're paying for the option to retrace your steps. It's an effective alternate to a hard ireversibility if the resource is limited enough. 2. Are pretty deeply marred by the ability to scum, and once you choose to allow zone reversal, design acrobatics have to take place to prevent scumming, like artifically lowering rewards when you try to scum (lower XP from outleveled monsters in CoQ), or preventing it altogether once you've out-leveled content (smashing dungeons in dungeonmans), or else you just allow scumming and players can decide to do it if they want. This is an upside for some players (those that are fine limiting themselves to what they enjoy) and mars it for others (those that feel that anything that is allowed in a game should be used, and refuse to self-limit play) e: Maybe (probably) it'd be a better diatribe if I made it more obvious what I was doing, which is evaluating Rogue's core gameplay kernel, and also add the additional, more popular, roguelike aspects, and then talk about the effects that adhering/dissenting from each one has on the resulting game. You could really use any roguelike as the origin of the coordinate system for that discussion, but since Rogue is the name of the genre, and, in my opinion, is a really tightly designed little gem even as the original progenitor, it seems like as good a touchstone as any. e2: ...and make no mistake, I think designers *should* dissent from any core pillar. It's the individual choices of dissent/adherance that make new and interesting game-play. We've already played Rogue, it makes no sense to simply clone it; but the more mindful we can be of where and why we vary from the games whose shoulders we are standing on, the better. e3: quote:Would you agree that Dwarf Fortress and Unreal World are Roguelikes? Because I think procedural stuff and maybe permadeath don't cover the whole roguelike despite being part of it. While your roguelike definition is part of it, but not all of it. These games are pretty clearly not capital-Roguelike at all, in terms of how their gameplay compares to the design decisions that Rogue is built on. They have dissented on almost every point except being procedural and tile-based (Dwarf Fotress more so than Unreal World). Though they are both awesome and, since procedural and tile-based are two attributes that have the highest weight in the colloquial, fuzzy, definition of roguelike, they fall pretty squarely on the colloquial lowercase-roguelike spectrum. Unormal fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 05:43
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Playing Castle of the Winds again reminded me that I actually love the whole having levels that extend well beyond the viewing window thing, even if the quick view the whole dungeon feature can work a little wonky like this: 
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Dec 5, 2014 06:21
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Unormal posted:Roguelike; What is 
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Dec 5, 2014 07:09
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Dec 5, 2014 07:16
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To be fair, at least you're taking the effort to write a thesis on it and I find that pretty commendable. I had thought about writing a couple of articles for Roguebasin on how I do overworld and dungeon generation, since I get those questions often on the dev stream-- but those are practical problems, I'm not trying to solve the Riddle of Steel like you are.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:23
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Ok. BRB. Caves of Qud challenger appears.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:24
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lordfrikk posted:Caves of Qud challenger appears. Yeah, I was about to say that CoQ has him covered except for the pointless fantasy racism.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:26
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| # ? May 26, 2024 22:33 |
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For the record, I don't agree with Unormal's axioms. I think he described a subset of roguelike properties that are particularly harmonious and could form the basis for a subgenre. I think several more of those subsets exist. The definition is also pretty far away from what I'm colloquially looking for when I browse Steam for "roguelikes". The semantics are fun and useful, though.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:52
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