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Deathstate is really smooth and fun. I just need to get better at it. Can't beat the soundtrack. Everybody knows Qud is baller, but I got to see the bigass siltspire for the first time. I tried to starve to death on the polished floor of the temple but I kept teleporting myself out.
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Jul 15, 2016 23:47
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I've been playing Deathstate on and off, it's really good More random observations: The blade that throws skulls causes so much visual clutter I stopped using it completely - if it didn't leave the circles on the ground, it'd be a lot better. They just cause me to mix up where is safe when I'm trying to dodge the enemy circles. I don't need to know where my skulls are going to land, I do need to know where the enemy ones are landing. I still don't like the Grave of Time. Particularly on higher desecration, the amount of standing around waiting for ooze to dissipate just isn't fun. It's usually not dangerous, but it is always annoying. You can't dodge safely through a pile of ooze blocking a 1 wide hall. Carcassus on desecration 3 is no joke  Charm is some bullshit  Got charmed, basically went from full health to zero in <3 seconds. It's not just getting controls reversed suddenly, it's also having them suddenly un-reverse that caused me to die super loving fast. Felt pretty cheap both ways. Other than 'don't get hit' (which, going forward, I'll just play that area like a total coward so I never get near a big mess of bullets), it'd be nice if it had a much clearer visual full-screen indication of both it activating and deactivating, so you at least have some prayer of not instagibbing. The one case where I wished I'd kept the invuln relic over the healing one 
victrix fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Jul 16, 2016 |
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Jul 16, 2016 12:00
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I'm like ten pages late to the discussion about Dredmor but my complaint about it is really weird. In most roguelikes your character is just an abstract blip with no real animations, so it doesn't bother me if my character's equipment doesn't change how it looks on screen. Dredmor, though, specifically tried to make an animated, pretty roguelike, but with the increased fidelity it was no longer acceptable to me that my character's appearance never changed no matter what they were wearing, because it was no longer abstract.
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Jul 17, 2016 12:39
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Imagined posted:I'm like ten pages late to the discussion about Dredmor but my complaint about it is really weird. In most roguelikes your character is just an abstract blip with no real animations, so it doesn't bother me if my character's equipment doesn't change how it looks on screen. Dredmor, though, specifically tried to make an animated, pretty roguelike, but with the increased fidelity it was no longer acceptable to me that my character's appearance never changed no matter what they were wearing, because it was no longer abstract. You are right, that complaint is really weird.
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Jul 17, 2016 13:09
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I did finally see the third and fourth bosses in Deathstate last night. Once you've got a decent set of equipment, you can stop scouring the floors for new poo poo and just bullrush the exits. The bosses are generally much easier than the floors. Except for the forth boss. He shoots a LOT of bullets. Imagined posted:I'm like ten pages late to the discussion about Dredmor but my complaint about it is really weird. In most roguelikes your character is just an abstract blip with no real animations, so it doesn't bother me if my character's equipment doesn't change how it looks on screen. Dredmor, though, specifically tried to make an animated, pretty roguelike, but with the increased fidelity it was no longer acceptable to me that my character's appearance never changed no matter what they were wearing, because it was no longer abstract. This bothers me in every game, but Dredmor has plenty of problems before that one.
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Jul 17, 2016 13:18
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Imagined posted:I'm like ten pages late to the discussion about Dredmor but my complaint about it is really weird. In most roguelikes your character is just an abstract blip with no real animations, so it doesn't bother me if my character's equipment doesn't change how it looks on screen. Dredmor, though, specifically tried to make an animated, pretty roguelike, but with the increased fidelity it was no longer acceptable to me that my character's appearance never changed no matter what they were wearing, because it was no longer abstract. Enough people complained about this during Dredmor development that it became an in-joke with the devs for awhile, but it is not remotely surprising that they didn't do this. Dredmor has millions of equippable items, and hand-animated player characters. Combining those two with visible equipment would mean spending like half of their budget on art animation alone for absolutely no improvement in gameplay. Want to see what your character has equipped? Look at their paper doll. 
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Jul 17, 2016 14:57
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It's a pretty big deal for a lot of people apparently, I see that question come up a ton for other games with pixel art. 'Why can't I see my weapons/armor'? Sorry bud, WoW -> 2 man devteam roguelike with 1.5 artists, not the same thing  It's interesting seeing what 'high level' immediate impact aspects of roguelikes trip people up. Graphics is one. UI is another. Permadeath of course. Coming from a traditional rpg (or mmo!) to any form of traditional roguelike is going to be a system shock to a lot of people. I wish there was more info on what games or aspects of games got people hooked on them though, because I wonder what makes people push through the extra friction to get to the tasty It might be as simple as making the presentation friendlier (maybe it is - Dredmor and The Pit sold well, 500k/200k+), maybe it's marketing (The Pit maybe, Dredmor I'm not sure?, does Dungeon of the Endless count?), maybe it's blind luck and timing. Or persistence (TOME is at 140k+, that game has been in active dev for an eon). I wonder if you could draw any useful, non-obvious markers for success by doing a survey of roguelikes on steam (successful and not).
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Jul 17, 2016 16:07
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victrix posted:I wish there was more info on what games or aspects of games got people hooked on them though, because I wonder what makes people push through the extra friction to get to the tasty For me it was just a matter of graphical impression. I never tried any rogue-likes until I played Eagles Eye Nethack. I was looking for a game that was similar to Diablo or Baldurs Gate. I kept at it, and after a while I realized that I was playing the game with the map mode open 100% of the time. This is when I basically saw the Matrix and got hooked on all other rogue-likes. Before Eagles Eye Nethack I would just look at the ASCII graphics in rogue games and go "nope" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxkBsjYCXlk
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Jul 17, 2016 17:14
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Rutibex posted:You are right, that complaint is really weird.
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Jul 17, 2016 19:00
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buy dungeonmans
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Jul 17, 2016 19:24
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baram. posted:buy dungeonmans Now that I have dungeonmans, I have no idea what character to play as. The last one I made got creamed in a room of guys who apparently can hook and reel you in then blow up bombs in your face and there were like 10 or more of them.
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Jul 17, 2016 20:09
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Punks are a pain in the rear end. I think the main thing is that they can't hook you EVERY turn, and not without Line of Sight.
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Jul 17, 2016 20:16
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baram. posted:buy dungeonmans
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Jul 17, 2016 20:19
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HeartNotes3 posted:Now that I have dungeonmans, I have no idea what character to play as. Start as a Dungeonmans. 1 point in Real Armor, 2 points in Applied Wizardry, 1 point in Foominology, and 1 point in Liberally Forbidden Arts. When you get your first level get the first skill of Deadcrafting. Now you're heavily armored, have an offensive spell, and - most importantly - an explosive decoy that is both surprisingly durable and very deadly against early enemies when it dies and explodes. Level 3 probably should go to a second point in the Liberally Forbidden Arts so that you can continuously Raise Mostlies against champions, ancient kings, etc. After that it's basically up to you. The fire spell in Southern Gentlemans is extremely powerful and good for crowds like the one you died to, the other Deadcrafting spells are very good, and Bannermans banners are very useful in conjunction with the undead. The first spell in Necronomics is very powerful too.
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Jul 17, 2016 20:35
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Has anyone here bought into the early access of 20XX yet? I'm curious how much variety you can squeeze out of procedurally generated mega man levels before it gets stale, or if the gameplay is actually any good.
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Jul 17, 2016 22:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I don't know about "tightly-constructed." Qud has a lot of system stapled together and some of them (at least last I played) were a mess. Like there's a reason everyone who praises it talks about the cool stuff you can do / that can happen and not in-depth mechanical analysis. Late post but I've sunk over a hundred hours into it now (it was the first roguelike to ever click with me) and the bizarre situations hooked me initially but the character building has kept me coming back. There are so many possible strong mutation builds (I'm still coming up with new ones) and you get to have all your cool abilities out of the gate. Probably a big factor in me getting into Qud is that the combat has a lot more going on than bumping and kiting right from the beginning. This minimizes early rng death a lot too. Even though muts are mostly static your character still grows through skills. You can also stick very different skill builds on the same mutation build. Freezing hands and the aoe slow that stacks every turn on a dagger character let's you hit 2.5 times a turn with freezing melee to ensure a boss is controlled or dead when the slow ends, the same abilities on an axe character guarantee you'll spend every turn of berserk (greatly increased dismember chance) hitting something. Ego characters don't get skills but get a new mutation every four levels that's at the same level as all their other muts. With the clone ability for example, a really powerful mental mut, Ego based characters use it really well obviously and dagger characters can dump strength for ego and the clones benefit a lot from the agility ranged hit chance. I didn't think strength characters could use it well because they still need agility for DV and hit chance so you end up spreading your stats thin. Recently however the game was changed so NPCs and clones can use injectors, including the Hulk injector which damages you every turn in exchange for massively buffing your strength. So you leave one of those in your inventory, pick up skills like shield bash which scales off strength with no damage cap and cudgel stun chance and your clones should theoretically charge everything for a million damage and stunlock anything that lives. I guess my point is not that it's tight (sil this ain't) but that the systems are very robust and fun to play with. I like that Qud lets enough things be broken to make most stuff viable instead of trying to tightly balance everything. Most games would hamstring a clone ability in some way, Qud makes them full strength copies with all of your abilities and duplicates of your inventory. You get one at level one (so double your normal power) up to seven at level ten and ego can scale it past ten. That's absolutely the highest damage, best scaling ability in the game by a wide margin but there are enough other strong options that I don't feel pressed to take it on most characters.
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Jul 17, 2016 22:25
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Floodkiller posted:Has anyone here bought into the early access of 20XX yet? I'm curious how much variety you can squeeze out of procedurally generated mega man levels before it gets stale, or if the gameplay is actually any good. Well, now there's another game on my wishlist so I can keep track of it and see how it pans out. This kind of game will live and die by the quality of its level gen and the amount of variety it has in bosses and powerups, so it could be great, or it could be awful. Thanks for letting us know about it, anyway.
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Jul 17, 2016 22:30
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All this gamedev talk inspired me to finally dust off Roggle and chip away at the last 10% that turns a pile of code into an actual game. Here are a few gifs showing where it's at:   Programming menus gets pretty tedious after a while. Only a few more to go!
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Jul 17, 2016 22:32
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That looks like something I'd play!
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Jul 17, 2016 22:54
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Floodkiller posted:Has anyone here bought into the early access of 20XX yet? I'm curious how much variety you can squeeze out of procedurally generated mega man levels before it gets stale, or if the gameplay is actually any good. Rogue-Legacy did a pretty good job of it, and Spelunky. I don't think they should have too much trouble making a procedural platformer that stays interesting. Are there any procedural Mario games? Seems like something someone would have done by now.
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Jul 17, 2016 22:57
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close your eyes and pick random mario maker levels?
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Jul 17, 2016 23:07
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Rutibex posted:Rogue-Legacy did a pretty good job of it, and Spelunky. I don't think they should have too much trouble making a procedural platformer that stays interesting. Spelunky spawned a crapton of awful procedurally-generated platformers that nobody remembers. It's harder to do well than you'd think. Rogue Legacy is not really "doing it well" IMO, since there's a sharply limited number of rooms and you start seeing obvious repeats very quickly.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:00
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Spelunky spawned a crapton of awful procedurally-generated platformers that nobody remembers. It's harder to do well than you'd think. Rogue Legacy is not really "doing it well" IMO, since there's a sharply limited number of rooms and you start seeing obvious repeats very quickly. Well Rogue-Legacy is more of a Metroid type game than a pure platformer. It's not such a sin that the rooms repeat, because they are always in a different configuration. It's like playing Nethack and saying "Ho hum a square room with a red potion on the floor, I've seen that before  "Terraria is another example of a well done procedural platformer. Though it is able to get away with less than perfect level design just by the nature of destructible terrain, that wouldn't be helpful in a Megaman game.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:13
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The problem of making a procedurally generated platformer level that's guaranteed to be navigable is actually non-trivial as hell. In a top-down roguelike, the constraints on your movement tend to be very simple; you can't move through blocking objects, but otherwise every direction is valid. But in a platformer, gravity alone throws a huge wrench in the works. Can you jump onto this floating ledge that got generated? How about if there isn't enough room for a running start? How about if there's another floating ledge nearby that you'd bonk your head on? If I can't reach the ledge, what does the algorithm need to do to fix it? What about when the player starts getting powers that affect how they move? What's the algorithm to make a ledge that you CAN'T get to by jumping, but you CAN get to by double jumping? Just from glancing at it, it looks like 20XX is probably going the route of piecing together handcrafted elements, like Rogue Legacy. It will probably make functional levels, but will never really make an interesting level.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:16
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Level design is always going to be a major pain, but they could make the game procedurally interesting in other ways. For example, some kind of randomly generated enemy behavior and bosses. Most of these games focus on the levels and just populate them with static type monsters. It would be much more dynamic if you had to figure out a new pattern of each enemy you encounter. Kind of like FF6 Beyond Chaos, or the monster groups in Siralim. It randomizes the stats and attacks of the monsters. Often it makes duds, but more often it creates unique challenges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_AGlla7s4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzlcpGqHKqk
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Jul 18, 2016 00:27
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The only procedurally generated platformers I've played that generate levels that are playable, interesting, and not obviously repeating, are Spelunky and Catacomb Kids. The latter's still in early access and I only have 7 hours logged on it so far, but I'm very impressed by the level generation. I haven't had a level yet where I couldn't proceed, nor am I seeing complaints of such on their Steam forums, so that's clearly a solvable problem. I strongly suspect that it's following Spelunky's lead in that it has a bunch of prefabs that it then mutates in various ways -- I have seen repeating elements, but they've usually been different enough to be not a big deal, or else obviously a set-piece. The problem I have with Rogue Legacy is that every room is handcrafted and the only random elements within a room are minor specifics of enemy placement. Most enemies are hardcoded into the room, and rooms don't interact with each other at all (attacks and enemies don't "spill over" from one room to the next, for example). That leads to the game feeling pretty samey after awhile. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine game, but I wouldn't hold it up as a standard of procedural content generation done right; its strengths are far more in the tightness of its controls and the interesting character generation and levelup system.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:41
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Rogue Legacy only works because it absolutely nailed the controls - it's very responsive and it's very easy to do some real precision jumps, so it can freely bullet hell you knowing that it's given you the tools to do that. On its own the level design is really simple to the point where it's easy to memorize how to get through a given screen, and what enemies are where. e: I can't really praise the Rogue Legacy class / perk system, though, because it doesn't make every perk equal. Last time I played Rogue Legacy I specifically avoided extended the castle past Rogue/Assassin for as long as possible.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:41
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DeathBySpoon posted:All this gamedev talk inspired me to finally dust off Roggle and chip away at the last 10% that turns a pile of code into an actual game. Here are a few gifs showing where it's at:  Keep going!Imagined posted:I'm like ten pages late to the discussion about Dredmor but Coming from a guy who bothered to play dress-up-my-mans in Dragon Age 3, I fully get where you are coming from. victrix and others totally valid and logical arguments not withstanding. Also baram. posted:buy dungeonmans
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Jul 18, 2016 04:12
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The only procedurally generated platformers I've played that generate levels that are playable, interesting Play towerclimb
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Jul 18, 2016 04:18
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andrew smash posted:Play towerclimb It's on my to-do list! But I'm not allowing myself to boot into Windows until I finish the Avernum LP I'm doing.
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Jul 18, 2016 04:41
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The only procedurally generated platformers I've played that generate levels that are playable, interesting, and not obviously repeating, are Spelunky and Catacomb Kids. The latter's still in early access and I only have 7 hours logged on it so far, but I'm very impressed by the level generation. I haven't had a level yet where I couldn't proceed, nor am I seeing complaints of such on their Steam forums, so that's clearly a solvable problem. I strongly suspect that it's following Spelunky's lead in that it has a bunch of prefabs that it then mutates in various ways -- I have seen repeating elements, but they've usually been different enough to be not a big deal, or else obviously a set-piece. I hate that rogue legacy doesn't give you a character that you can improve as you find stuff. I feel like randomized loot is a key part of what makes games with procedural levels fun and rogue legacy doesn't do it at all. It feels like a pure platformer that the devs didn't feel like designing levels for so they slapped in some random generation and called it a day. But uhh, it has rogue in the title so that's cool I guess.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:11
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I hate that rogue legacy doesn't give you a character that you can improve as you find stuff. I feel like randomized loot is a key part of what makes games with procedural levels fun and rogue legacy doesn't do it at all. It feels like a pure platformer that the devs didn't feel like designing levels for so they slapped in some random generation and called it a day. But uhh, it has rogue in the title so that's cool I guess. well, i mean, it's already a platformer in for a penny, in for a pound
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Jul 18, 2016 05:13
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I hate that rogue legacy doesn't give you a character that you can improve as you find stuff. I feel like randomized loot is a key part of what makes games with procedural levels fun and rogue legacy doesn't do it at all. Yes it does. Your "character" isn't whoever you happen to be playing at the time, its your entire family lineage. All of the loot in Rogue-Legacy is randomized, you don't find the equipment blueprints in any particular set order. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 05:27
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Rutibex posted:Yes it does. Your "character" isn't whoever you happen to be playing at the time, its your entire family linage. All of the loot in Rogue-Legacy is randomized, you don't find the equipment blueprints in any particular set order.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:33
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DeathBySpoon posted:All this gamedev talk inspired me to finally dust off Roggle and chip away at the last 10% that turns a pile of code into an actual game. Here are a few gifs showing where it's at: Look funs! (Except for the acid bit). I like the title screen too.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:44
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I don't know, the part that feels like playing a game is sitting down and playing a character until it dies. It sucks that once you start a guy, there's no way to improve him without losing. I think it'd be strictly more fun if you found equipment for your current character and I find it pretty bizarre how there is none of that at all. Spelunky, towerclimb, and every other platformer roguelike would be a lot worse if the loot you found went towards your next character instead of this one, it doesn't make any more sense in rogue legacy. I donno, I thought it was a really cool idea. Instead of playing as Simon Belmont, you get to play as the entire Belmont family! Generation after generation throwing themselves into Draculas ever changing castle, as is the duty of all Belmonts  It might have been better if they dropped the pretense and gave the heroes whips instead of swords. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 05:46
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You can totally have it both ways by doing what Diablo (HC) does and giving you a character loot storage and a loot storage shared between all your characters. Then you get to decide if you want to bet your nice random gear on this run or save it for a later character. The Rogue Legacy way seems dumb to me but hey, I haven't played it I won't knock it.
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Jul 18, 2016 06:17
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Rutibex posted:I donno, I thought it was a really cool idea. Instead of playing as Simon Belmont, you get to play as the entire Belmont family! Generation after generation throwing themselves into Draculas ever changing castle, as is the duty of all Belmonts
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Jul 18, 2016 06:37
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Imagined posted:(Dredmor) with the increased fidelity it was no longer acceptable to me that my character's appearance never changed no matter what they were wearing, because it was no longer abstract. victrix posted:It might be as simple as making the presentation friendlier (maybe it is - Dredmor and The Pit sold well, 500k/200k+), maybe it's marketing (The Pit maybe, Dredmor I'm not sure?, does Dungeon of the Endless count?), maybe it's blind luck and timing. Or persistence (TOME is at 140k+, that game has been in active dev for an eon). https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sword-of-the-stars-the-pit#/ The chutzpah required to say "We did it! We're an indie gogo success story!" when you wiped during the first phase of the boss fight is immense, but hey look who's laughing now, their game is in 900% more homes than Dungeonmans. I mean, I stand by the presentation in Dungeonmans and I think the sprite work is beautiful, especially compared to some others in the genre:   But I guess  because none of the sprites are animated. Oh well!baram. posted:buy dungeonmans
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Jul 18, 2016 09:39
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 I had no idea the Pit was that financially successful, and so much of that success could possibly be trased to it's animation and art presentation.I like the Pit, though I have been critical about it. Dmans is mechanically a better game but I had no idea the financial difference was that vast. I do have to assume that a great deal of the Pit's success has to do with being a spin off of a good franchise starting game (Sword of the Stars), though. The buisness side of roguelikes is always interesting. Thank you.
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Jul 18, 2016 10:07
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