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1

Discussion / Re: Branching Out to Other Roguelikes

« on: February 07, 2013, 11:38 »

Should we be assuming that, as a fan, you want to play games that apply the similar feel of Chaosforge roguelikes, or are you really looking for just about anything in the genre? I say this only because I believe it makes a big difference when it comes to what sort of roguelike you'll be interested in.

Chaosforge roguelikes are somewhat unique in that they're pretty fast-paced when it comes to doing things, and there's almost never any time where you make a stash, retrace your steps, grind out some experience or items, et cetera. In essence, this is what tends to define the subset of "coffeebreak" roguelikes, although you'll hear plenty of differing opinions there so let's not get into that. By contrast, many of the major roguelikes are going to have you spend extra time doing things unrelated to combat (unless you're really good at them, but in such games this is technically handicapping yourself with an ironman challenge): some of them are better at handling this than others, but in general if you don't mind it then it's rarely a significant hassle.

With this is mind, if you're looking for stuff similar to what we have here at Chaosforge, I'd suggest the following:

• Infra Arcana takes place in a H.P. Lovecraft setting, complete with sanity as a major element of the game. It's challenging from the get-go, and you have plenty of melee and ranged combat mixed into your descent toward madness.
• MageGuild uses a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic magic to give the player an enormous variety of options while playing. It gets tough fast, but once you get the hang of it you'll be able to get out of just about any situation.
• Drakefire Chasm is a quickie, originally constructed as a 7DRL, but it's intense and keeps you on your toes. There's a leveling system based on corpse-eating, and boss-like areas every few floors. If anything, it's worth playing just to get to the ridiculously hectic final level.
• Delver, with a first-person perspective, and Spelunky, as a platformer, aren't turn-based in the slightest, but they certainly meet my own criteria of how the genre can take root in a variety of gaming mediums. They go by quickly, but you'll probably keep wanting more if you like what they've been mixed with.

That's a good number for now, I'd say. If you're really looking to get into a major roguelike but want to keep it simple, Brogue is the best place to start. Technically you can backtrack, but it's very rarely for anything other than trying to escape enemies (if that, since some can follow!). It's pretty faithful to the original, in fact: I like to think of it as the "HD remix" with loads of extra content.

2

Discussion / Re: Is Angel of marksmanship challenge really easy?

« on: January 21, 2013, 20:49 »

For the record, the current (that is, in-development) challenge ratings look like this:

EASY: Shotgunnery, Max Carnage, Pacifism
MEDIUM: Berserk, Marskmanship, Red Alert
HARD: Light Travel, Impatience, 100
VERY HARD: Confidence, Darkness, Overconfidence
BLADE: Purity, Masochism, Humanity

These are based on "casual" play. Stuff changes a lot depending on difficulty setting and badge collection, but we had to place the bar somewhere. Also please note that it assumes the average difficulty of expected runs in the challenge: this is why Confidence and Overconfidence are pretty high, even though start-scumming will eventually give you a very lucky edge. Pacifism is similar to that extent, but I've found that a lot of HNTR Pacifism games are winnable in spite of errors, and the simplicity of tactics makes it that much easier for a player to learn and achieve victory.

I wouldn't be surprised if these change a little over the course of 0997 (due to a number of gameplay changes). I wrote these in before we started beta testing, however, so you can assume these to be a more accurate listing of 0996.

3

Discussion / Re: Savecumming? (I promise I have an excuse)

« on: December 07, 2012, 17:27 »

If you want an easy "blow through without a second's thought" game, it shouldn't be hard to create like, a 300-floor episode where you start with an infinite-ammo insta-killing gun and can't die. No scumming required!

4

Discussion / Re: Savecumming? (I promise I have an excuse)

« on: December 06, 2012, 08:21 »

As far as I try to use save scumming, I find that we need backup not only "save" but "player.wad" and "score.wad" too. And restore all 3 files or we _can_ have some strange problems on next run.

If you want to completely scum all of your data for everything, all three of those are necessary: if you just want to restore that one spot from that one game, you only need to copy the "save" file. Assuming you never actually complete that run, it won't affect the data WADs, which are only modified when it comes time to print the mortem (i.e., on death or victory).

Just note that savescumming into other versions isn't guaranteed to work (in case you still want it when there's a new release).

5

Requests For Features / Re: Add a using direction for usable items (medpacks, phase devices)

« on: December 03, 2012, 08:05 »

Other than the fact that all of the items are designed to be used only on the user (and would therefore require somewhat significant exceptions for every single item), as a player I think I would find the need for an additional keypress quite frustrating, especially because you WOULD be using it on yourself 99% of the time. Part of DoomRL's appeal is that there are relatively few keypresses outside of movement and combat, allowing for a very streamlined setup in which you aren't getting hampered or dragged down by making sure you press what you want to. Besides, once you're allowed to use items in a direction, people will want the ability to drop in a direction, or maybe give items to monsters.

In my opinion, it just overcomplicates a simple game, so it's not worth the potential benefit.

6

Century Lounge / Re: [N!|Ao100|85%|YAVP] Centurial diamond & experience cross

« on: November 30, 2012, 08:27 »

Second fact is that I noticed many times that mancubi shoot at me from sight+1 distance, I don't know if their ai should behave like that.

Mancubi don't have a greater sight range than the player, but they will continuously attack the same spot if the player happens to leave their sight. It's meant to emulate the Mancubi from Doom II, where they always shoot three times.

7

Discussion / Re: This game's difficulty is a bit off in places IMO

« on: November 29, 2012, 13:34 »

For example, Angel of Pacifism. I've gotten to level 12 or 13 on that. I understand that they're supposed to be a challenge mode or whatever, but some of them aren't even possible. Like there is no way you can beat AoPc or AoH on anything higher than HMP without save scumming or breaking the game in some fashion. I like a good challenge but I don't like trying to turn a concrete building into gravel with my forehead.

A lot of this depends on what you're looking for in a challenge. Sometimes the challenge is to wait for the right game to give you a break (more often, wait for a game to not give you a literally-unwinnable situation) and, until then, play as best as you can as a matter of practice. Maybe you think the difficulty stepladder is too steep? I actually went directly from HNTR to UV without once touching HMP, and didn't play ITYTD until beating HNTR anyway (which only took a few weeks' worth of slightly-less-than-casual time). I do understand your point, especially for challenges like Angel of Pacifism, where a large part of the game depends on you doing basic actions and the game restricting those very actions. That's why I removed the Pacifism Platinum and Diamond badges (and reduced the difficulty for Bronze-Gold): trying to make a reward for something as unbalanced as that mode was ridiculous, so I went in the direction of "easy with tight conditions". In general, I'd like to make it so that all of the badges are in the vicinity of feasible, given decent rolls in generation and tactical and strategic know-how. We're probably not there quite yet, but I imagine that most of the hardcore players have noticed that the Diamond series is easier.

Regarding the balance of specific challenges on specific difficulties, it's actually a developer decision to affect the game as little as possible when introducing new challenges. For instance, other than Hell's Area, there are almost no instances where a specific challenge affects monster or item placement in special levels. It's not like we remove all ranged weapons in Angel of Berserk or all powerups in Angel of Purity, simply because the player has no use for them: the challenges are explicitly intended to restrict the player, sometimes to the point of being unfair. So it's probably not even a matter of subjectivity, this game is just downright mean to you with certain settings. As long as we're not asking the player to do these things most of the time, I think that's okay, especially here in the roguelike community.

In short, if you're playing with a challenge and difficulty combination that you find too unenjoyable, I would recommend not to play it. There are tons of ways to play this game (which will increase dramatically next version) but it's up to you to find what ways you enjoy.

You can make another ultimate secret or x of them. And DS won't be alone anymore.

For all you guys know, there ARE some new ultimate secrets, and nobody's found them yet. I'm not spoiling anything though...

8

Bug Reports / Re: [0.9.9.6G Win] The best gun ever ! (Plus, strange bullet problem)

« on: November 28, 2012, 11:30 »

This has already been fixed for the next version: creating a storm bolter pistol automatically caps the weapon's current ammo to its clip size. In any case, thanks for the report!

9

Requests For Features / Re: Any chance for an endurance game ?

« on: November 05, 2012, 12:34 »

Found at this link:

If you're just here to figure out how to play modules, it is a very simple process:

• Download either a folder with the .module extension (this is a "raw" module) or a file with the .WAD extension.
• Place the folder or file into your "modules" directory, located in your DoomRL folder.
• Start DoomRL, then select the "Custom Game" option.
• Select from any of the modules in the menu, at which point the normal game startup procedure will begin.

I'm fairly positive that I updated the game to work with 0.9.9.6, but lemme know if there are any errors by posting in the appropriate thread.

10

Requests For Features / Re: Any chance for an endurance game ?

« on: November 05, 2012, 11:20 »

You know, the usual survival. Random opponents appear along with random weapon, ammo and item drops....pretty much like the Hell's Arena.

I think you're looking for this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54818507/inf_arena.module.zip

11

Discussion / Re: Reasons for text-mode interface

« on: October 16, 2012, 15:02 »

To clear up what appears to be a common misconception, I'm almost positive that Kornel is removing console compatibility from Chaosforge games entirely. The objective of this discussion, then, is to figure out what parts of the console are important or critical enough to be implemented into the pseudo-console mode. So, going off of this:

Raw text mode is like running a roguelike from the bare code?

I understand that running it "pseudo-console" means it'll still look the same as playing it with only ASCII characters (ie classic style), and that graphical tilesets are "console mode" but what is the real difference?

Rather than why it is an issue for us on the player side, what is the advantage for you to make all future releases console-only? I'm curious now!

By "raw console mode", Kornel means that part of the output is designed to work specifically with a console or console emulator (modern Windows, for instance, has Command Prompt). However, now that the graphical interface of Chaosforge games is becoming more and more complete, it's obvious that there are a number of things consoles can't do that would be very useful. By removing console compatibility, there's no need to worry about those constraints, and the pseudo-console would run essentially as an ASCII tileset (with special modification functionality such as font size and RGB values). AliensRL's standard mode of execution is done in this way, if you want an example.

• Supports at a minimum display resolution of 800x600 pels (80x25 tiles) without any information loss.
• Have comparable running speeds on machines which do not have high end graphics cards.
• Have a means of altering the gamma/brightness of the game.

To be fair, the last two considerations should be in the graphical mode anyway. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some inefficiencies in the current engine (that cause one of my CPU cores to churn away at maximum capacity 100% of the time). The first one SHOULD be doable as long as the tilesets can be non-square (graphical version is completely square ATM with the current tileset).

5- Fear that this is the first step in what will ultimately remove the console view in favour of the tileset (which I absolutely hate, btw. Not that it's not a great tileset, simply that unanimated grid-based sprites are no more convincing than letters, but have the potential to look far more tacky, and always do to me. )

The main reason Kornel brought this up was to ensure that there WOULD be a console view (albeit an emulated one) that meets the demands of hardcore console players. Unfortunately there some casualties regardless of the enhancements brought by the pseudo-console (like standardized remote access and use of console recorders) but we'll have to make do.

...but I for one find Console mode to be a more responsive than Graphical mode. No lag while I'm waiting for all the sprites to slide around.

Yeah, at the moment the time it takes to do just about anything on the game screen can throw off console users quite a lot (myself includes). It shouldn't be much of a problem to have options to remove movement and/or firing animations, which I think is the only real issue in this case.

Using the current posts, this seems to be what is desired for pseudo-console operation to be on par with a real console (that is also feasible with regards to its implementation):

• ASCII tilesets of variable, non-square sizes
• Ability to control color of ASCII tilesets (i.e., defining RGB values of color presets in addition to continued use of color.lua customization)
• Minimize processing intensity

The rest of the suggestions tend to depend on Kornel's own design choices IMO. 'Course I could be totally wrong! Kornel is, however, a graphical engine designer, so this direction seems awfully natural for his projects.

12

AliensRL / Re: Which Tower To Go In First

« on: October 12, 2012, 12:38 »

Admittedly there should be an easier way to handle breaking down doors, especially because of how impossible navigating through the military tower is without expert Technical skill. Of course, doing so shouldn't be without consequence: maybe it could attract the attention of aliens who were otherwise minding their own business.

Alternatively, the security and military towers don't have to be nearly as inaccessible once a certain element is added to those towers. You'll still end up not going there unless you're mega-prepared or desperate.

Unfortunately, I used up all my security keys, so unless there's a way to fix elevators...

There's a way to fix elevators. Unfortunately in your case, that also requires at least an advanced Technical skill, not to mention at most five whole multi-tools.

I ended up scouring all of the towers and actually found two more security keys!  :)  Then I went back upstairs, went through a couple of doors...  and found myself in the Security tower, blocked by another security door!  Argh!  :P

Well that's just your own fault. Military tower has exits to the Security and Storage towers, the latter of which won't need any keys. The Wiki has a small diagram showing the whole layout.

13

AliensRL / Re: AlienRL Wiki: How do we start one?

« on: October 10, 2012, 18:19 »

Looks like I read a minus when it was a plus. My bad!

I was actually starting to like the idea that shooting too close throws off your aim (maybe not as severe as three tiles away, but melee distance messing with aim could be something).

14

AliensRL / Re: AlienRL Wiki: How do we start one?

« on: October 10, 2012, 09:40 »

I just wonder whether it is needed to put hard data (like the exact formulas for the damage), e.g: [[example about distance calculation for skill rating]]
Most of such stuff I won't remember.

Remembering the exact formulas isn't entirely necessary, but I can remember the results of such formulas and keep them in mind during combat. Using your example and the explanation of stray chance with distance, we can figure this out:

Distance	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Skill Rating	+3	+2	+1	-0	-0	-0	-0	-1	-1	-1	-2
Stray Distance	+0	+0	+0	+0	+1	+1	+1	+1	+2	+2	+2

Using this information, we can conclude that the ideal shooting distance is 4 tiles away, although most cases will handle okay in the 4-7 tile range (since bullet stray only happens if if roll rating beats skill rating entirely). In short, you never want enemies getting too close: far distances are more reasonable than near ones, with the best accuracy occurring at a happy medium. This is very different from DoomRL, which is the very simple "closer is better" formula.

Now, I could have simply put the table down, and astute learners could come up with formulae that imitate the results. For the time being, however, I think it's good to see everything for what it is. There's plenty of time to parse it into more meaningful tidbits.

EDIT: table fixed, thanks skarczew

15

AliensRL / Re: AlienRL Wiki: How do we start one?

« on: October 09, 2012, 09:37 »

If there's any game mechanics info in particular anyone wants to know, reply so I can prioritize. Going through the game code can take a while, so it'll be some time before everything is added to the Wiki. Perhaps more importantly, I don't care about the order of stuff going up, so I'm more than happy to work on whatever people want to see first