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Apologies if this was linked earlier; I just found this thread. There's an active LP of Angband in the LP subforum, and other thread participants are contributing playthroughs of ToME2, ToME4, Sil, and Steamband.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:22
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 11:36 |
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What's the term? Roguelike-like? It has a few features commonly associated with roguelikes (chiefly, randomly-generated maps and very easy deaths), but it doesn't feel like a "real" roguelike, no. The random levels are a borderline-nonissue anyway, since they're generated simply by slapping down self-contained rooms in a random arrangement. If things could follow you from one room to the next then that'd be a different story. I don't really think of it as having permanent death, since your meta-character (the "legacy") sticks around across lives. I was really hoping that when I beat it I'd unlock a mode which was balanced around clearing all four sectors and the final boss on a single character that "started from scratch". Such a mode would be closer to a "true" roguelike, or at least would have proper permadeath.
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Dec 1, 2013 23:55
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Jeffrey posted:Yeah, I definitely have no problem with post-game progression, it is pretty cool in dungeonmans. I also very much like class unlocks in ToME4, even if some of them are quite obscure. I just don't think it is an acceptable substitute for your character getting stronger during a game, and I think that was well-highlighted in rogue legacy. Yeah, there's certainly a feeling of "Man, I keep dying the instant I set foot in this area, I guess I'll need to suicide another few dozen characters into the previous region to buff my stats until I can survive in the new region." Regardless of whether or not that's true, it's certainly how I felt at several points.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:00
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Harminoff posted:The idea of a roguelike platformer intrigues me so hopefully someone gets it right. Catacomb Kids is looking pretty good though You might want to keep your eye on Chasm, which had a successful Kickstarter earlier this year.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:58
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drink_bleach posted:The best part about this game to me is that you don't need a wiki to play it. All the information you need is in the game. Just by virtue of playing it a bunch of seeing what items do you can beat it. There is no arcane and hidden systems that will prevent you from enjoying the game. Bullllllllshit  There's a bunch of items out there whose purpose is hard to determine. What the hell does this tarot card do? This trinket? How do I get to Heaven? Etc. That said, all you really need is to keep the Items page open from the BoI wiki and you should be good to go.
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Dec 6, 2013 18:11
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While this is true, drink_bleach's description made it sound like BoI was a fully-transparent, self-documenting game, which it absolutely is not.
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Dec 6, 2013 18:36
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Pladdicus posted:I wasted a whole afternoon to this goddamn game. gently caress the true ending. I remember modifying the source code to give me the item that unlocks the true ending because it failed to spawn and gently caress if I was going to replay the entire game all over again. It's fun, but the map's just too damned huge.
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Dec 6, 2013 19:54
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Jeffrey posted:I certainly wouldn't want things to go in the dungeons of dredmor direction. What specifically do you find problematic about Dungeons of Dredmor? I mean, it's a drastically simplified roguelike, yes; is that all you object to? Simplification? I mean, my main problem with Dredmor, when I was still playing it (I think they'v released about 400 expansions since then) is that combat didn't really have all that much thinking to it. Most monsters were melee-only; if they had spells they cast them randomly and you couldn't really plan around them; you either successfully tanked attacks or avoided getting hit altogether (or some weird middle ground where you tanked for a bit, then used escape abilities to run away and heal). The actual user interface was fine, though. Maybe a bit too reliant on the mouse, but it worked without any issue, especially once they updated the crafting UI.
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Dec 12, 2013 20:06
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Ah, yeah, I always jacked up the animation speed to like 300% or something; makes the game far better.
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Dec 12, 2013 20:26
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I always wanted to see someone rig up one of the old classic roguelikes with a 3D first-person perspective where all of the monsters and so on would be represented by 3D models of ASCII characters. Mostly because I want there to be a roguelike with a Helm of Rear-View Mirror.
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Dec 12, 2013 20:44
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Morholt posted:Doom: the Roguelike: the Doomlike Yessss...it's just as beautiful and impossible to play as I imagined 
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Dec 12, 2013 23:37
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Anyone playing Bionic Dues? I'm most of the way through my first playthrough on the default difficulty and default party. It's a sort of party-based lite roguelike; you have 50 days to buff up your party before having to face a final battle, and getting a TPK just means you lose a day (and the enemies get a bit stronger). I like the fluff and the aesthetic (and the fact that every bot enemy has some hilarious gaping hole in their "build" that makes them unpredictable threats), but I'm really hoping that higher difficulty levels will make for a significant challenge, because once I got some decent AOE and ranged attacks the difficulty curve just took a nosedive. There's not much the enemies can do when you have a weapon with twice their attack range that hits a radius-4 circle and one-hit-kills just about everything. Who cares if you only get 10 shots? The overall flow of gameplay suggests to me that there's a serious snowball effect: once you get stronger than the bots, you'll stay stronger than the bots (they don't have any real catchup mechanisms, in other words). The loot's very Diablo-like, and works decently well except there's so damned many slots to fill on your party members. Each weapon has three slots, every character has at least two weapons, and then they have a variable number of reactor, shield, propulsion, and computer slots as well (depending on class). I think they really could have just done with a single slot per weapon, at least.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:12
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I turned the music off pretty quickly. There might be an option to turn off the voice clips too; I didn't check because they haven't yet bothered me that much. My favorite is the EMPbots, though. If you let them walk up to you, then they'll say "I'm not touching you!" and "Does this bother you?" as they follow you everywhere 
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Dec 13, 2013 21:32
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victrix posted:I kind of think 'secrets' as a gameplay tool are dead, or at least undead. The internet has killed them. I'm also not convinced they're worth the design time compared to the time that a new player spends enjoying (or hating) them. It depends, really. I mean, take a game like Knytt Underground. There's tons of secrets in that game, because it's an exploration-based game with a colossal map. And sure, you could follow a guide to find everything, but that's kind of missing the point of playing the game. In other words, secrets can still be in games as a reward for the player who is detail-minded and does some experimentation. I do think that secrets-that-give-gameplay-advantages are a pretty dead concept though, since anyone who wants to optimize their gameplay is going to feel some degree of impetus to spoil themselves just so they can figure out how to play the game "properly". At least for games where coordination is not required (i.e. non-real-time games). Metroid bomb-jumping and other skilled techniques are going to be around for ages, and developers should feel free to build challenges and hidden areas around making use of them.
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Dec 18, 2013 05:15
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Levitate posted:Ok, giving Sil a shot, any general guidelines or things I should be aware of? You might want to read uPen's not-quite-complete LP of it, which covers what is apparently one of the easier ways to play the game (and thus presumably a good way to learn the ropes). That is, a stealthy archer.
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Dec 18, 2013 19:22
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Floodkiller posted:I don't know if if is exclusive or not to the Android port I have right now, but Sil is currently starting with a Christmas present in my inventory that contains a random artifact, though a bad feeling happens for opening it before Christmas. They sure are helping with the early game though!(I'm terrible at Sil) Yep, this is a thing, and not exclusive to Android. Have fun with your present!
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Dec 20, 2013 19:16
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:What is the bad feeling you get? Is it the same roll penalty from having sils on the ascent? Um, not certain  But it's definitely a bad thing; opening your present early is one of those risk/reward tradeoff things.
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Dec 21, 2013 18:34
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madjackmcmad posted:Like, straight up your level is too high, you can't go in here? Seems kind of lovely when there are guaranteed drops to be had. I'm trying something similar in Dungeonmans, if you waste time in dungeons that are too far under your level you get no XP or drops. There's a warning too on the way in, you actually have to choose "I don't care, I'm going in!" People do it anyway, they'd rather clear three whole floors with zero reward to get to a 4th floor which is just under their level instead of taking 15 or so steps southeast and finding a dungeon that's on level. I guess that means I need to generate more dungeons so it feels like there's more options available. You could lock out an entire dungeon as soon as at least half of it is in the "no-reward" zone.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:51
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Angband's a long game, no doubt about that. It also lets you set your own pace (there's no food clock or light clock or anything like that), which tends to mean inexperienced players will set a very slow pace. I recommend diving as recklessly as possible instead. This has two advantages: 1) the dungeon feels much more dangerous, making exploration more interesting, and 2) when you die, you won't have as much time invested in your character. It is possible, with skilled play, to survive deep in the dungeon with very little in the way of gear and levels, so there's no real requirement to e.g. clear every level in the dungeon. You can just dive down to 98 (one level before endgame starts) and scurry around looting whatever you can while hoping that the monsters don't look at you too hard.
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Dec 25, 2013 03:10
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Social Animal posted:Do the same rules apply in the newer versions as to having a certain resistance before hitting a depth? Like I remember confusion and I think poison resistance being some of the earlier ones needed. That was always just groupthink, really. It's not that you'll die instantly if you go beneath X depth without Y resist, just that some monsters start showing up that can hit that resistance hole -- so you either get the resist or you avoid those monsters. Specifically for poison you want to avoid drolems and ancient multihued dragons. The only resists I really consider non-negotiable are Free Action (tons of monsters hit to paralyze) and resistance to fire/cold/electricity/acid/poison. You can put off poison for longer (like to 2500'-3000' depending on how cocky you feel) but you'll want it eventually. The other four are just super-common and have absurdly high damage caps, so eventually flying without them means risking instadeath no matter how many hitpoints you have or how careful you are about what you fight. Ideally I'd say you ant resistance to the basic four by, oh, 1500'ish? Depends on how many hitpoints you have, too. As for confusion/blindness: carry potions of Cure Serious or Cure Critical Wounds, and a Staff of Teleportation. The former clear status ailments, the latter can be used even when confused as a last-ditch escape (albeit with a failure rate).
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Dec 25, 2013 07:36
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Space Bat posted:Bought Bionic Dues over the steam sale and man is it frustrating. Is there anyway to deal with half your squad being wiped out by explosives five minutes into a mission? Don't get hit by explosives. Seriously, the game seems to be heavily built around ensuring that you get the first, and only, shot against bots. That means letting them come into range and then one-shotting them, or out-ranging them so you can plink them down before they get to shoot you, or hitting them with AOE when they can't see you, or stealthing up to them and shooting them with a Ninja (or hacking them), or using turrets to shoot around corners, etc. It can be very punishing of mistakes, though. Once you lose one exo, you're liable to lose your others. A word of advice: postpone hacking unknown terminals until the mission is already won; one of the possible options is "terminal explodes, taking your exo with it", and there are other nasty ones like "all bots in sensor range get double turns" and "all bots in sensor range get +5 attack range". Also, stealth is there to save your hide when you screw up. If a bot with a rocket launcher has a red aiming laser on you, stealth and duck around a corner. Better than hoping they'll miss. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 20:00
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Space Bat posted:So should I just stack as many damage boosters as I can onto my assault mech's laser rifle? Because that seems to be the most damaging weapon I have besides a siege mech's rockets, and it has enough range that I only get killed by splash damage half the time. The game seems like it could be fun but I don't really like how it seems that it would be better to just stack three assault mechs and one science mech so I can exploit corners using a grenade launcher. That will work for awhile, but bots get extra range as the game progresses (the game helpfully tells you how the difficulty affects various stats from the start-game screen). If I recall correctly, my first game still leaned fairly heavily on the (assault) grenade launcher, (siege) rocket launcher, and (ninja) welding laser, but I mostly stacked +range, +AOE, and +ammo on the weapons while stacking +all weapon damage on other slots. A single +damage upgrade on a weapon was usually enough to keep it competitive with the bots' HP values. The assault mech starts out strong, then hits a bit of a lull in the midgame in my experience, when the grenade launcher stops one-shotting things. The siege mech is really your "I win" button; if you wanted to roll-face through the game then 3 siege and 1 science might be a plausible party. Just don't run out of ammo on your rocket launchers... Also don't underestimate stacking stealth and hacking points on the Scientist, or +trap skill and turrets. High-level turrets (they get bonus stats from your trap skill) can slaughter large numbers of bots without any danger to your exos.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:15
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doctorfrog posted:I've noticed that speedrunners usually don't do this, but I guess that's partly because they're concentrating so hard, and partly because they don't run into many things they don't expect. I expect this is also because they'll play the same game, and even the same portion of the same game, for hours on end. The greatest comedian in the world would run out of content and just stop trying after awhile. And honestly, not trying is preferable to trying too hard.
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Dec 28, 2013 20:08
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I still think it's absolutely criminal that Spelunky doesn't have online multiplayer. Man, imagine the screams about lag-induced deaths. The game's hard enough as it is!
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Dec 29, 2013 16:04
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Bouchacha posted:I started tonight translating Crawl's tiles over to ToMe but....holy gently caress there's a lot of them. There's 41 tiles for orcs alone in ToMe. It's mostly all doable without any new art, since we have the player dolls to work with, but some of the boss characters are going to need a lot of creativity. This kind of thing is one big reason why I'm an ASCII purist. The amount of effort required to add new monsters to a game goes up exponentially if you have to draw new tiles for them too. I totally get that some people don't want to play ASCII and that having access to tiles greatly improves the total potential audience size for a game, but it's also a big limitation on the developers.
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Dec 31, 2013 04:40
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nplus1 elephants posted:I like the vi keys for movement and I'm still dying enough that having to keep on going into the options is annoying. I'll probably do the same for some of the colors as well; I don't know how anyone can see that light blue that indicates selection. If it's anything like other Angband-derived games, you can just open your dead character's savefile to make a new character that inherits the options (and, by default, the race/class/whatever, though you can choose a different one). I'm pretty sure colors can be modified somewhere, but bugger if I can remember where. Used to be by hitting % or ^ or something like that but I think they moved it recently. Check the options screen for stuff about "visuals"?
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Dec 31, 2013 07:04
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Zombie Samurai posted:Actually, this made me think. Are there any sci-fi roguelikes that play in the traditional way? I mean, there's FTL, Teleglitch, and Risk of Rain to an extent, but I'm talking about something like Nethack with laser guns and nanites and poo poo. Is DoomRL as close as it gets? Waaaay back in the day there was BOSS, which was, if I recall correctly, a Moria variant. It was a mishmash of science-fiction and the occasional pop-culture reference (e.g. Dirty Harry was a townsperson). I remember wandering around with a Daisyian Umbrella for a weapon and firing rayguns instead of wands. I mean, it's pretty easy to reskin a fantasy setting as a soft sci-fi setting. It's mostly just a matter of renaming things and making all of the monsters be the result of genetic engineering and mutation instead of magical tinkering.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:25
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victrix posted:Random general roguelike thought: I really don't like 'stairs' and static level changes in general. Always leads to cheesiness one way or another. Would you rather one continuous open 2D world? How do you indicate "harder content in this direction" without forcing the generated map to be rather linear? I know there's problems with stairs making it too easy to run away from your problems (and generally chopping the world up into a bunch of discrete elements, which feels artificial), but they do serve a useful design purpose.
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Jan 4, 2014 01:39
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Chinook posted:Does anyone have a good recommendation for a roguelike that is pretty easy to beat? Maybe a bit uncomplicated as well. Dungeons of Dredmor should fit the bill here, especially as it has selectable difficulty levels and optional permadeath. Even on Going Rogue (the hardest difficulty) it's still pretty straightforward for a roguelike.
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Jan 5, 2014 02:14
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Scalding Coffee posted:It was for certain. I just hope they will further update it for Steam outside of useless achievements. What else do you need to do to "update it for Steam"?
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Jan 8, 2014 23:01
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What do you mean by online? There's Mangband, which is multiplayer, real-time Angband. I've never played it myself. I'm not aware of any version of Angband that's playable in a browser.
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Jan 9, 2014 05:02
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Unormal posted:Thinking two-color tiles. Try to retain some of the simplicity of 2-color ASCII, while making it graphical enough for people who just can't do ASCII. Looks nice! Though, if you're ever planning to have things on the floor (like items or traps or whatever), you're gonna have to figure out what to do with floors that are hidden by walls. Half-height sprites don't work well with this kind of wall. EDIT: ^^^^^ Scythe guy only has two colors that I can see, unless you're counting "transparent" as a color...which I guess you ought to, but maaaaaan.
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Jan 10, 2014 05:52
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Pladdicus posted:Tome 235, I always have weird display errors where it won't update where my character is properly. I read a fix somewhere a bit ago but can't find it. Anyone know how to fix? You might consider asking in the Angband LP thread if you don't get an answer here. CirclMastr has been doing a ToME2 LP in that thread and might know more.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:46
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MrBims posted:Unfortunately the style doesn't translate into tiles very well because no one wants to make graphics for the more than one million viable character combinations. Man, I don't even want to imagine what a Sexy Quylthulg would look like 
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Jan 25, 2014 20:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:If your game isn't balanced enough that different approaches are viable, throwing a layer of randomization over that only disguises the problem. Not that I've played SotS, but my guess is that the goal of randomization is not to change the optimal strategy, but rather to push players outside their comfort zones. Sure, different approaches may be viable, but odds are most people are just going to find one thing that works and then do it over and over again, because people gravitate towards what they perceive to be optimal play even if it bores them.
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Jan 27, 2014 23:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Ditto for "entertaining" vs. "balanced." So how do you suggest encouraging players to keep trying to find other viable strategies after the first one? This is not a minor problem; if your game has multiple paths to victory, odds are that many players will just play the same path over and over again unless you take active steps to get them to try the other ones, even if they're all equally viable. I'm not saying that randomizing the tech tree is necessarily the right thing to do, but it's far from obvious that it's the wrong thing to do. EDIT: ^ well yeah, if playing your game involves navigating around all the broken bits, then you have bigger problems, because you're playing SotS2 My statements were based on the assumption that the game was not fundamentally broken in any way, though.
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Jan 27, 2014 23:19
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Philthy posted:Have any of the games taken then mechanic of when you die, some of your items are passed on to the next character? I think I'd love an Angband that does this, Family Tree Angband or something or other. NetHack's bones files sort of do this, in that you can find the graves of prior characters and loot their old gear, though much of it ends up cursed. I seem to remember a PS1 roguelike where your stash carried over between "lives", but everything you were carrying got lost. Maybe make the number of items you get to keep depend on the level of the character that died? The higher-level you are, the more you keep, making the next character easier...but if they die anyway despite all those hand-me-downs, then you lose most of the stuff.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:58
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There's a lot of poo poo terminals, agreed. However, there's also "All bots in sensor range go loving berserk and start attacking all of their allies". In the lategame you can have a sensor range of 30+ so basically the entire map blows itself up without you having to do anything. It's great. Just activate the terminals while you're doing your final sweep of the level, so any bad effects don't stick around for long.
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Feb 9, 2014 16:50
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The way I look at Dredmor is that it's a goofy game with a lot of room to try out stupid builds, and considering it's only $5 (or however much I paid for it when it was on sale) it's pretty easy to get my money's worth out of it. It's not a classic roguelike that I'll still be playing five years down the road (or, hell, six months after buying it), but I don't think every roguelike should strive to have that level of replayability.
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Feb 10, 2014 20:54
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 11:36 |
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If I recall correctly, SAngband (a.k.a. "Skills Angband") has a skill system that is vaguely similar to Dredmor's. That is, there's a bunch of different skills, but the cost to improve a given skill depends in part on how many skills you have invested in. So you can either go broad and shallow or narrow and deep. It being an Angband game, of course most of your options for advancement will require you to invest in some means of killing things and some way of surviving being attacked, but I believe there's a reasonably wide range of exploration in terms of what kinds of builds you can go for. It's also balls-hard though.
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Feb 12, 2014 18:04
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