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Author Topic: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er  (Read 35283 times)

Patashu

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #75 on: April 05, 2012, 17:44 »

My thoughts on the subject:

I've been playing a lot of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup lately because of how fun and straightforward it is to play, yet in spite of all the time it saves you wandering around the dungeon exploring safely and preventing you from doing stupid suicidal things like walking into zot traps and lava, you can still get into incredibly tough situations and really need to think about how you can best get out of this situation - and as a result, you have to think about what you take with you and what skills you train first. Streamlining the trivial and the mundane of DC:SS means getting to these kinds of situations more often as a proportion of time spent playing, and I like that.

In addition, DC:SS lets you customize its default behaviour, to do things like:
-Arbitrarily many messages/regexes can be configured to force a --More-- (meaning you have to press enter before any further actions will be considered by the game). For instance, I've forced it to wait when I try to cast a spell and no monsters are in range, preventing the 'attempt to cast and walk to where I wanted to cast' degenerate behaviour. Since every spell has a different circular range, you'll inevitably get it wrong.
-Arbitrarily many messages/regexes can be configured to not interrupt running/resting.
-You can make it so some items are automatically inscribed to not be used without a prompt, e.g. so you don't use a scroll of blinking by mistake.
-You can set a 'low hp warning' or 'low mana warning' to appear at whatever % of maximum you like, and whenever either drops below that to force --More--.

Such 'safety mechanisms' are ESPECIALLY important when you play Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup online (as I always do), since latency means it would take forever if you had to stop and rescan the screen after -every- move. Of course, you should build a good mental picture of what's going to happen next, but it's also good to know that you won't accidentally kill yourself by playing a few moves ahead. (By the way, is there a DoomRL online server?)

A DC:SS inspired safety features package for DoomRL would look something like the following:
-Messages in the command prompt whenever one or more monsters come into LOS for the first time, indicating what their names are as well.
-A key like o for autoexplore. In crawl, autoexplore repeatedly moves to the nearest accessible unexplored tile, stopping every time something 'interesting' comes into view (like a staircase, or an item category on your 'stops autoexplore' list). In addition, if a monster is in view, it stops and won't do anything if you press it again. (It also says due to what monster(s) it won't continue moving for.)
-Shift+dir for running. In crawl, running makes you move repeatedly in that direction until you come into an intersection or are standing on top of something interesting. Like autoexplore, it will stop and not do anything if a monster is in view, making this another way to move around safely. In other games like angband, running can be configured to automatically go around bends in corridors and skip corners.
-A key like X, which makes a detached cursor you can move over the map through walls. If you hit enter with it over any known tile, it will make your character beeline towards that tile, going around hazards and stopping if any monsters come into view. In addition, if you hit the character of a glyph while in X mode, it selects the nearest instance of that glyph (e.g. > for stairs) and, if there's more than one instance of it, hitting it more times will cycle through all instances from clostest to furthest away.
-The ability to match regexes on any line of output (and certain other conditions, e.g. taking X amount of damage / going below X hp / invincibility or berzerk wearing off...) and force the player to acknowledge the new condition by hitting 'enter' before new input will be recognized.
-When doing any long action that makes you vulnerable, halt the player if any monster comes into view, and ask for y/n confirmation if a monster is in view at the start of it.
-Force a --More-- prompt if you're hammering r and a monster comes into view.
-Ask the player for y/n confirmation if you are currently not in acid/lava and attempt to walk into acid/lava (and you will take some damage from it).
-And possibly some more things I haven't thought of! But if you don't think a game like this could ever work/be difficult, try DC:SS at http://tiles.crawl.develz.org ;)
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skarczew

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #76 on: April 05, 2012, 18:05 »

I mostly agree.  But barrel levels can be pretty frustrating, especially if one wants to stay and kill enemies.
Barrel levels are among the most annoying things in DoomRL, especially in the Hell mazes. They no longer have anything in common with "fast paced" game. Every damn step must be checked amd the following one must be calculated 10 times befpre you press the key.

Radar doesn't work at all, because every shot may cause instability in that crappy piece of russian reactor.
Playing Sokoban doesn't work too good either, as the remaining space is so small, that there is no use.
Of course monsters do not know about it at all.

I once lost AoMr run only because of the fact I could not distinguish Cacodemon from the damn barrel, and it blasted one of them (missed me), which led to chain reaction on the whole level.

Moreover, why are there so damn many napalm barrels in hell? Where is acid? Where are explosive ones?
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #77 on: April 05, 2012, 18:36 »

Kornel, it was not that hard, as there was bug within the game that was resetting the difficulty to the easiest after the first Load ;) .
Patched ;)

Try Terror From The Deep on Superhuman, now this is something hard to play even with savescumming.
I wanted to play it more, but the dumb looking for that last hiding Lobsterman finally took the better of me.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2012, 18:37 by Kornel Kisielewicz »
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Ashannar

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #78 on: April 05, 2012, 18:38 »

-When doing any long action that makes you vulnerable, halt the player if any monster comes into view, and ask for y/n confirmation if a monster is in view at the start of it.
-Force a --More-- prompt if you're hammering r and a monster comes into view.

If those two are ever implemented, I hope they are optional. The first one seems against the spirit of the game (actions that take a long time are supposed to be dangerous) and the second one just seems annoying. Imagine playing city of skulls with that option enabled.

I like most of your ideas, though.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2012, 18:40 by Ashannar »
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skarczew

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #79 on: April 06, 2012, 07:53 »

I wanted to play it more, but the dumb looking for that last hiding Lobsterman finally took the better of me.
I finished the game, but I remember some of the missions till now. For example, colonies with their Tentaculats and 4 layers of infrastructure were the pure incarnation of sadism.
In the end I simply did not want to spend another few hours playing the mission.
I think they thought that UFO1 was really too easy - and did not know about its bugs that caused it to be easier than intended.

Therefore Terror received the difficulty it had :) .
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Creepy

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #80 on: April 06, 2012, 08:54 »

All this talk about XCOM is making me hope the X@COM guy keeps on chugging. It looks awesome.

And, yannow, the Firaxis remake of the original. That looks pretty ball'n too, helluva lot better than that nonsense 2K is peddling.
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Klear

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #81 on: April 06, 2012, 09:13 »

I'm working on a remake myself in Starcraft 2, though I progress very slowly.
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skarczew

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #82 on: April 06, 2012, 13:50 »

All this talk about XCOM is making me hope the X@COM guy keeps on chugging. It looks awesome.
Nice one, I haven't known about it.
And, yannow, the Firaxis remake of the original. That looks pretty ball'n too, helluva lot better than that nonsense 2K is peddling.
Haven't heard about those ones as well, what do you mean by "nonsense"?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2012, 14:18 by skarczew »
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Uranium

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #83 on: April 06, 2012, 13:53 »

what do you mean by "nonsense"?
The ultimate heresy in videogames: an X-COM FPS.
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skarczew

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #84 on: April 06, 2012, 14:23 »

Ow, !@#$ =( .
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Creepy

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #85 on: April 06, 2012, 15:15 »

Yeah, 2K wants to "remake" XCOM as a FPS that takes place in the 1950's and doesn't involve anything that came from the original XCOM. 2K has all but admitted they had the story and setting for the FPS decided on and in place before they decided to put the XCOM license over it. At least Enforcer pretended to care.

The Firaxis remake is supposed to be an actual remake and uses a 3D tactical battleground, and remains a TBS. The changes they're thinking of making are smaller and grounded in the idea of "remake and enhance the original for the new generation" instead of "Buy the license and slap it on an alien-related shooter we were already going to make." It looks sharp and fucking awesome, and if anyone knows how to make a goddamn turn-based strategy game, it's Firaxis.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2012, 15:17 by Creepy »
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Klear

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #86 on: April 06, 2012, 15:42 »

Who cares? There have been so many attempts at remakes/sequels, both professional and amateur, and nobody managed to capture the fun of the original.

If Firaxis manage to make a nice game that's great, but the original UFO will likely remain the best one and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Napsterbater

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #87 on: April 06, 2012, 16:26 »

Glad to see some constructive discussion going on!

Barrel levels are only annoying to me when there's also "something really valuable here." If not I feel no qualms about blowing up every barrel from afar.

One minor thing I'd like to see happen is to have unique armors guaranteed to drop on dry land when the enemy holding them is killed. It sucks when I clear such a level and find no unique. But I suppose I could just make sure to always kill formers with weapons rather than push them into fluids whenever there's a unique on the level.

But whatevs. Uniques can make things interesting, but they're rarely useful when they spawn, especially the weapons. Onyx armor is probably the most-hoped for spawn in the games I play, but even then it's only useful after I get a power mod on it, and even then I usually favor bulk-modded red armor for the fire resist. But P-modded cerberus onyx armor is the only real kit I go gaga for for on my MMB Ao100 runs. But I don't really need it, bulk-modded red is plenty. Well, aside from cerberus boots, but those are easy.

Heh, I once found a nano mod and an onyx mod one level after the other. I had MMB and was itching to get that second level of WhizKid so I could assemble Cybernano Red armor. Last enemy on that level with the onyx mod was a former sergeant, which tagged me next to a lava barrel while I was overconfident and running around with only 25% health or so. Bye bye Cybernano. :-|
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Uranium

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #88 on: April 06, 2012, 16:29 »

Barrel levels are only annoying to me when there's also "something really valuable here." If not I feel no qualms about blowing up every barrel from afar.

One minor thing I'd like to see happen is to have unique armors guaranteed to drop on dry land when the enemy holding them is killed. It sucks when I clear such a level and find no unique. But I suppose I could just make sure to always kill formers with weapons rather than push them into fluids whenever there's a unique on the level.

You know uniques can't be destroyed by any means, even nukes? So if a unique spawns on a barrel level you may as well just blow them all up to get your shinies?
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Napsterbater

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Re: Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
« Reply #89 on: April 06, 2012, 16:32 »

Really? Pretty sure I've lost a few to barrels in the past. But that would mean that there was no unique in that level, which would indicate a bug in the program. Or that it was an armor and the possibility that a former would drop it into lava on death was overlooked.
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