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Sergeant_Crunch posted:It also uses the fantastic Oryx tileset which is the best roguelike tileset out there other than the one in Qud, and I think Qud was also based on the oryx tileset initially before they started doing custom tiles.
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Dec 26, 2015 00:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I didn't include Crawl, but I have played. I have six ascensions, three or four of which were 15-rune runs, between versions 0.4.5 and 0.6.something. At one point I wrote a fairly definitive guide to ascending, in terms of zone order, ascension kit, most dangerous enemies, etc. Wow you and me both. I have basically the same play history, but just got more and more annoyed by the development decisions (limited focus on new and interesting challenges, maximum focus on breaking working strategies as "too strong" or introducing annoying new gimicks like the octopus, or yet another god). Stuff like removing the power of legendary decks of wonder, or breaking the strategy where fulsome distillation could be used to get about 50 potions of mutation and leave the player with very good odds of a fun and helpful (but random) set of mutations just seemed entirely needless. Although arguably its only with constant churn of the core mechanics that you can keep the player-base from stagnating, so maybe that is the true development strategy and reasonable, even if it pushes out veteran players over time. Anyhow there was a period of time around .4.5 or .5 where crawl was my favorite roguelike. I'd still put it in top 10, even if I have essentially no interest in playing it again.
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Dec 26, 2015 00:45
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I've never played Crawl, and I keep getting confused between Crawl, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.Unormal posted:-During each stage of the fight teleport immediately into the triple missile launcher with your boarding team and disable it. This weapon is the primary threat. It will get off one shot against maxxed-mantis boarders, use your 1 point cloak you brought to dodge it. Once it's down the rest of the weapons just suck against a max dodge/shield system. Keep your boarding party moving to the other sealed off weapon modules to kill the dudes in everything but the energy weapon chamber (if you kill them the ship can go into crazy AI mode). Take them out in this order: missle, ion, beam It does bother me that the optimal strategy against the final boss is to kill almost all of the crew, because the AI mode is so much more dangerous. Every other fight in the game teaches you that killing the crew is a valid way to win, but pretty much everyone who hasn't had it spoiled is going to try it once against the flagship and get murdered. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 00:50
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ToxicFrog posted:It does bother me that the optimal strategy against the final boss is to kill almost all of the crew, because the AI mode is so much more dangerous. Every other fight in the game teaches you that killing the crew is a valid way to win, but pretty much everyone who hasn't had it spoiled is going to try it once against the flagship and get murdered. Killing all of the crew is better than leaving all of the crew alive IMO. Sure, the flagship can auto-repair its systems reasonably quickly when it has no crew, but that just turns it into a big droneship (more or less), and it's not like droneships are innately unfair. But if you leave the crew alive, the systems get repaired even faster and you have to deal with the crew rush in stage 3 of the fight. Killing all but one of the crew is IMO super-gamey and the flagship should probably have some kind of mechanic where it can autopilot more and more systems as the crew gets killed off. It doesn't "make sense" for the flagship's AI to be unable to be used just because the dude locked into the heavy burst laser room is still alive. If there's just one dude, he should be delegating as much to the AI as possible while he continues to run his one system (or repel boarders, whatever) to the best of his ability.
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Dec 26, 2015 01:03
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I don't love the end ship either, but at least it's trivial if you know the solutions. It's especially funny that it's used as the "OMG RNG" banner by most people, since it's (by far) the least rngy and most completely solvable aspect of the game.
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Dec 26, 2015 01:08
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ToxicFrog posted:I've never played Crawl, and I keep getting confused between Crawl, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Linley's Dungeon Crawl is the original game that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is built on. Plain "Crawl" with no modifiers is some Steam stocking filler game that's completely unrelated; I don't think I've ever heard anyone even express an opinion on it. When someone says Crawl they're usually talking about DCSS.
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Dec 26, 2015 01:33
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Crawl is a generally fun game, but I absolutely, utterly, completely hate the early game. I've beaten it several times with 3 rune characters, and did a 15 rune a few years back, and had a few that kicked the bucket on the path to a 15 rune win (Ziggurats are dangerous, etc). It's by far at its best in the midgame, when you have a range of tools at your disposal (unless you're a melee schlub, in which case gently caress you), but you aren't completely loaded for bear so you don't have an answer for everything and certain enemies can be very scary depending on your particular class/race/god/gear setup. The dreadful early game is a real problem, because with so many race/class/god combos, and so many spells, experimenting with them is most of the fun of the game, and unfortunately, doing so and getting to the meat of whatever mix you're trying requires slogging through it over and over again - and that's assuming you're good enough to consistently get to the midgame. If you aren't, it's an exercise in frustration, and with so many possible combinations, there are a lot of duds. I actually like the extended endgame stuff too, the endgame areas are unique and neat, but I found most of them (barring a few haha gently caress you moments) to be pretty straightforward because of your power level by the time you attempt them - a similar, though not identical feeling to having a full Ascension Kit (tm) in Nethack and going through the motions past the Castle there. I'm sure I'll try it again at some point, check out whatever new tweaks they made, try out spellcasters, die repeatedly, get annoyed, quit for another year or two. So yeah, Crawl is/was a good game, but there are a lot more options out there, and I don't feel as constrained to bang my head against some of the aspects of Crawl (and other roguelikes) that I really dislike. A lot of roguelites scratch the same itch that older roguelikes do, but do so without as much of the baggage, and often with a nice coat of paint too. It's no longer a given that in order to play something with a rogueish character and a handsome hat, I have to deal with ascii graphics or a garbage ui. There are plenty of options out there that are pleasing to the eye, ear, and fingers. (I kinda miss our small brigade of ascii-only roguelike-only purists  I guess they all died or converted at some point)
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Dec 26, 2015 02:21
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SnowblindFatal posted:To anyone who has compiled a top 10 list: How many of you who didn't have Crawl on your list also haven't played it? From my point of view, it seems like such a benchmark roguelike at this point that the only reason one wouldn't include it in a top 10 is that the person hasn't actually played it. Or in other words, I'd like to hear why some of you didn't include it despite having played it. Never been able to really get into Crawl. I don't think it's bad or anything, but it's never made enough of an impression on me to make me want to keep playing.
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Dec 26, 2015 02:54
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Crawl was my first roguelike, and it sucked me in hard.Jordan7hm posted:I like that steam marines is on your wishlist.  ToxicFrog posted:Thoughts on Cogmind after playing for five minutes: 24pt font (on a 15" 3K screen) is not nearly large enough and the options screen won't let me set it any larger. This may be a desktop-only game. I may attempt to correct for this next year, but the redesign could be extremely costly.
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Dec 26, 2015 03:02
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Awesome! posted:there are multiple strategies for defeating the flagship. the rng in ftl is all in the shops and sector layouts and poo poo. the skill comes from adapting your run to what the rng gives you. I am not drawing any comparisons here, but this post reminded me of something I didn't include in my previous Nethack-fan-post: Adapting to what's thrown at you. My favourite Nethack game these days is rolling a Tourist. They're a role that's more or less a tabula rasa: They can do most everything, but they suck at everything right out of the gate, too. So you have to not only survive the first five, ten levels of the dungeon (granted they're given a usually generous starting inventory vis a vis perishables), you have to figure out a long-term plan based on what you find there. Eventually it's possible for most characters to shape themselves into whatever you'd like, at least if you don't mind scumming behaviour, but a realistic game plan for the first half of the game rather depends on what loot you meet in the beginning for the Tourist. Certain weapon types open an instant path for a later-game strategy, a lucky spellbook or scroll might make your game, and there's always the small chance of an early game wish. A wish which still isn't trivial since you're not guaranteed either offence or defence by that point! Basically, it's randomness at its best and at its worst. It's great to find something cool early on, but it's also a fun challenge to work around a really crummy start. (Again, not meant as a direct comparison to FTL as the games are structured very differently arc-wise.)
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Dec 26, 2015 03:05
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Unormal posted:I don't love the end ship either, but at least it's trivial if you know the solutions. It's especially funny that it's used as the "OMG RNG" banner by most people, since it's (by far) the least rngy and most completely solvable aspect of the game. FTL feels like Candy Land in that you're in for a ride and the outcome is predetermined by the way the deck is sorted in the beginning. Yes, you can die early if you play poorly, but you'll die when you don't get enough resources to do anything because the game didn't give any to you. Kyzrati posted:Someone gifted it to madjackmcmad just the other day
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Dec 26, 2015 03:06
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megane posted:This is the pixel art equivalent of being told that you're a better guitarist than Slash. Cheers! Seriously fantastic work you did on Qud. You have any other pixel art out there?
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Dec 26, 2015 03:39
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Decided I wanted to try out Dungeonmans again, can't get it to work in Wine anymore. Looks like it's a wine/steam/dotnet40 issue and not a dungeonmans issue per se, but ugh. I cannot be arsed to deal with this.Kyzrati posted:Yup, it's best on desktop monitors, and its design originates from a time before ridiculously tiny screens were so ubiquitous. I'd do things differently if starting now. I'm not sure I'd call 15" "ridiculously tiny", it's large for a laptop. How long has Cogmind been in development?
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Dec 26, 2015 03:59
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I can very easily see not including DCSS in your top ten list. It's overall a very well made roguelike, but it is fairly bland, has stupidly swingy combat, a less-than-great early game, and a lategame (extended) that invalidates a ton of character options. I honestly didn't want to include it in my list because of those design decisions, but, in the end, I still go back to it more than anything other than ToME. Of course, I then wonder why I didn't spend that time playing Brogue instead. Speaking of bad game design, I picked up "Cavern" for my iPhone yesterday. It was kinda fun, but I won on my first run. Stupidly cheap instant speed town portal scrolls + nearly unlimited supply of full heal potions makes the game very trivial when no monsters can one shot you. I might consider playing again as a wizard or adventurer and limiting myself to only returning to town when I find a scroll of town portal or something to see how the game holds up with limited resources and less straightforward classes. There were a couple of minor interface quibbles (no zooming, locked to vertical display) but those didn't amount to too much frustration.
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Dec 26, 2015 04:03
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ToxicFrog posted:Decided I wanted to try out Dungeonmans again, can't get it to work in Wine anymore. Looks like it's a wine/steam/dotnet40 issue and not a dungeonmans issue per se, but ugh. I cannot be arsed to deal with this. I think Cogmind started as a 7drl in 2012.
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Dec 26, 2015 05:12
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not sure ive ever laughed as hard at roguelite deaths as i have at my first towerclimb flubs
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Dec 26, 2015 05:36
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I think the thing that really makes people bitch about FTL and the RNG isn't that you can't play around it completely, but that you have to. In a lot of other games with heavy RNG elements, you can often go in with a game plan and if the RNG shits on your choices you either have stuff you can do otherwise or are able to adapt or have enough of a buffer that THAT game is a rare outcome. The guy talking about playing tourist in nethack is essentially what you're always forced to do in FTL, which is really annoying if you don't want to do that. For example, if I want to play a fire caster in crawl, I've got an option that lets me do that. There is no end game guarantee that I'll find more fire spells, but there is a large enough lee-way and god options that the game where I get nothing forever and end up hosed because of it is rare.
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Dec 26, 2015 05:41
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Awesome! posted:not sure ive ever laughed as hard at roguelite deaths as i have at my first towerclimb flubs Nothing can ever beat the Spelunky yetis playing eternal tennis with your corpse.
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Dec 26, 2015 05:50
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ZypherIM posted:I think the thing that really makes people bitch about FTL and the RNG isn't that you can't play around it completely, but that you have to. In a lot of other games with heavy RNG elements, you can often go in with a game plan and if the RNG shits on your choices you either have stuff you can do otherwise or are able to adapt or have enough of a buffer that THAT game is a rare outcome. The guy talking about playing tourist in nethack is essentially what you're always forced to do in FTL, which is really annoying if you don't want to do that. Yeah, and amusingly I *only* play tourists in nethack, random crew in endless dungeon, all unstable genomes in Qud etc, so it's not too shocking that I have unhealthy love for FTL.
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Dec 26, 2015 05:52
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SnowblindFatal posted:To anyone who has compiled a top 10 list: How many of you who didn't have Crawl on your list also haven't played it? From my point of view, it seems like such a benchmark roguelike at this point that the only reason one wouldn't include it in a top 10 is that the person hasn't actually played it. Or in other words, I'd like to hear why some of you didn't include it despite having played it. I played a shitload of crawl a few years ago (0.8 era) with a decent number of wins (10 or so), i just haven't bothered with it since then. It's a good game and everything i just was thinking of newer things.
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Dec 26, 2015 05:55
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I picked up ToME on the steam sale, and while I am enjoying it I can't seem to play any of the more interesting classes? I played a few lives on rogue like then I played explorer mode and I got kind of bored because it was like a room of poo poo I just threw myself at until they died, which kind of goes against the spirit of the game, but I did unlock a couple classes, however when I try to play like the sun paladin I walk out and boom ambushed by a level 35 orc party. Any tips for a new player?
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Dec 26, 2015 05:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Nothing can ever beat the Spelunky yetis playing eternal tennis with your corpse. spelunky yetis are the bane of my existence
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Dec 26, 2015 05:58
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Deargodalion posted:I picked up ToME on the steam sale, and while I am enjoying it I can't seem to play any of the more interesting classes? if you check the tome thread ( http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3604865 ) it should have a bit in the OP about how to just go ahead and unlock all the classes. i recommend cheating them in mainly because they're a big part of why the game's fun and having most locked behind requirements can be frustrating.
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Dec 26, 2015 06:00
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:if you check the tome thread ( http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3604865 ) it should have a bit in the OP about how to just go ahead and unlock all the classes. i recommend cheating them in mainly because they're a big part of why the game's fun and having most locked behind requirements can be frustrating. I don't know how I overlooked that thread, thanks!
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Dec 26, 2015 06:06
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Crawl is an old standby to me (hell, I found SA lurking the .6 thread) that I keep coming back to after playing other roguelikes. It's kind of a palate cleanser: competent, generic game with no real unique gimmicks to take into account besides picking a god (even that's debatable). It's got a food clock, it's permadeath, it's got elves and magic and AC and a macguffin to grab and bring back, etc.. I put it on my top 10 but I could have easily have left it off despite all the time I put in it. It's just that kind of game.Unormal posted:Yeah, and amusingly I *only* play tourists in nethack, random crew in endless dungeon, all unstable genomes in Qud etc, so it's not too shocking that I have unhealthy love for FTL. After playing Brogue, this is me in most games. The worst case scenario for a random start, that you get something garbage and unwinnable, is really not as awful as it sounds when dying to something dumb 10 minutes in is a theoretically common event for everyone, regardless of start. You just reroll again, slightly bemused by trying to fisticuffs a +10 ogre or something, and you're back in the action.
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Dec 26, 2015 06:42
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Deargodalion posted:I picked up ToME on the steam sale, and while I am enjoying it I can't seem to play any of the more interesting classes? The Sun Paladin is an amazingly potent class, but the start is a bit strange. If you leave town by the West exit, you walk directly into the latter half of the game and die a swift death. Head East and you'll find a level appropriate dungeon with Nagas.
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Dec 26, 2015 06:54
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demonspawn chaos knight is always genuine fun in crawl
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Dec 26, 2015 06:54
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Unormal posted:Yeah, and amusingly I *only* play tourists in nethack, random crew in endless dungeon, all unstable genomes in Qud etc, so it's not too shocking that I have unhealthy love for FTL. I want a Qud option that removes the ability to select/level up mutations. Instead there's a slight chance per turn to gain/lose mutations at random, and either for them to go up/down in level, or be an appropriate level for the character. Basically I want Xom/Jivya.
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Dec 26, 2015 07:09
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Kyzrati posted:Just a little ASCII overkill before bed... This is loving beautiful
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Dec 26, 2015 07:49
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Awesome! posted:not sure ive ever laughed as hard at roguelite deaths as i have at my first towerclimb flubs i can never get mad at rats strategically dropping from ten stories above to land square on my head
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Dec 26, 2015 07:50
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Jesus Christ I finally survived Red Rock and the Rust Wells, I feel like a god among mutants.
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Dec 26, 2015 07:58
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ToxicFrog posted:I'm not sure I'd call 15" "ridiculously tiny", it's large for a laptop. How long has Cogmind been in development? That said, I personally prefer playing in a tiny 720p window and can't stand the game at large sizes because it's more difficult to take everything in at once. Of course I'm not making the game for myself and want to make it as good an experience as possible (hence the many typefaces, which is the first thing I did after release and was a much quicker solution that helped at least some players who are using laptops). I plan to write a lot more about the history of Cogmind's UI development, it's current state, and where it's going in the next blog post (planning on January 5th).
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Dec 26, 2015 08:28
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While we're talking about screen sizes, I wanted to buy both Sproggiwood and Qud on steam but noticed that Sproggi's got an android version and I'm tempted to buy that one instead. Are there any differences between the two? And most importantly, will it be readable enough on a puny s4mini 4.3" display?
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Dec 26, 2015 10:52
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madjackmcmad posted:I want video games. Someone send me tiny gems of video games. http://steamcommunity.com/id/madjackmcmad/ Ok, request sent.
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Dec 26, 2015 11:56
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Geokinesis posted:Ok, request sent.
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Dec 26, 2015 12:00
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madjackmcmad posted:I want video games. Someone send me tiny gems of video games. http://steamcommunity.com/id/madjackmcmad/ Request sent
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Dec 26, 2015 12:35
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Rappaport posted:I am not drawing any comparisons here, but this post reminded me of something I didn't include in my previous Nethack-fan-post: Adapting to what's thrown at you. Back when I played Nethack a bit, I either: dipped a long sword into a fountain until I got the excalibur or, if I was a wizard, just relied on spells. How do top players resist the temptation of the excalibur, or do they see it as a risky move and therefore avoid it? Since it's so early game, I don't mind if I die, but I guess there could be some kind of honour system involved. What are the other weapons that players go for?
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Dec 26, 2015 13:58
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Valkyries (and Knights) spawn with a longsword in their inventory so it's a quick way to boost their damage for the early game. And along with Samurai, they can get up to Expert with the weapon, whereas Barbarian and Rogue only reach Skilled and Tourist can hit Basic. Everyone else is restricted. It can be an undesired move because forcing Excalibur means the next artifact will be harder to spawn (since there's more artifacts already existing). As well, obtaining this long sword artifact in this manner does not unrestrict the weapon skill if you cannot be trained in it like it would be normally if your god gifts you a weapon. Typical weapons used in the early game are daggers since they can be chucked, are relatively plentiful, and are more durable than arrows. Every class except for Priest and Monk can be trained in it. Or, in many cases, using the weapon that the character spawns with!
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Dec 26, 2015 14:51
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Ooh, I didn't know about that thing about god gifts' odds and how receiving a gift unrestricts a skill! That is a very good argument indeed. I figured that it's just a way to get a kickass weapon basically right at the start.
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Dec 26, 2015 15:10
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Re nethackchat: I don't really play it these days, the UI is just too dated, but one of the things I did like about it is that it's one of the few games where unidentified items, and item ID sources as a limited resource, is actually meaningful. It could use a bunch of work (price-IDing is awful and tedious but at the same time too useful not to do), but in most other games that have item ID, it's an entirely meaningless click/gold tax on magic items with no real gameplay effect (Diablo 1&2, Dungeonmans, earlier versions of ToME4).SnowblindFatal posted:Back when I played Nethack a bit, I either: dipped a long sword into a fountain until I got the excalibur or, if I was a wizard, just relied on spells. How do top players resist the temptation of the excalibur, or do they see it as a risky move and therefore avoid it? Since it's so early game, I don't mind if I die, but I guess there could be some kind of honour system involved. What are the other weapons that players go for? Excalibur is nice, but you have to be lawful and at least XL05 for dipping for it to work. So it's irrelevant for neutral/chaotic characters, and at XL05 if the dip summons a water demon you are probably going to have a bad time. Furthermore, even if you are lawful, odds are good you've gotten a sacrifice gift already or are in a good position to get one, something much safer than fountain dipping.
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Dec 26, 2015 16:20
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