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16
Requests For Features / Re: About Arch-Viles
« on: July 12, 2008, 21:33 »
Death by slipping on a banana peel is something I have only experienced in IVAN, despite many games of the Stone Soup branch of Crawl. Crawl is a really wonderful game, you're right, and I think it's the first example of what I hope will be a "next generation" of roguelikes--any roguelike with large levels populated only sparsely with monsters, like Nethack or Incursion (but not DoomRL) now seems to me to be missing something if it lacks the auto-explore command that Crawl has. I hope that auto-explore and the excellent map system from Crawl will become a standard feature in all "large" roguelikes.
17
Discussion / Re: The Big DoomRL Poll!
« on: July 11, 2008, 09:50 »1:F,2:A,3:B,4:E,5:A,6:D,7:A,8:C,9:C,10:B,11:H,12:B,13:I,14:L,15:B,16:I,17:F,18:I,19:E,20:A,21:B,22:C,23:M,24:G,25:C,26:E,27:K,28:L,29:
You forgot to fill in your score at the end ;)
It's there, he wrote a 9--try clicking on the 29 in his post and then dragging your mouse pointer over to the right.
18
Requests For Features / Re: About Arch-Viles
« on: July 09, 2008, 18:43 »
Their ability to rapidly, repeatedly resurrect monsters at a distance is also the basis for the trick where you kill a former captain near an Archvile which is out of your LOS, let the Archvile resurrect the former captain and then kill the former captain again, and repeat the process several times, until the Archvile gets close enough to start attacking you directly (and then you kill it). This is sometimes a very risky trick but it nets you a huge amount of 10mm ammo which sometimes is a lifesaver when in Hell and 10mm ammo is scarce. Toning down the Archviles' resurrection ability might make this trick more difficult or impossible to do, which would be a shame, as it's a neat trick--very few Roguelikes have interesting enough behavior to produce these kinds of off-the-wall tricks, Nethack and ADOM being the only others I can think of right now.
19
Requests For Features / Re: About Arch-Viles
« on: July 09, 2008, 18:37 »
Archviles are very dangerous, definitely the most dangerous enemy that you see in the game before the Phobos Arena, but I think they work very well in the game as it is--beating Ao100 on M difficulty, for instance, would actually be much easier if Archviles were toned down, because for the last 40 or so levels, on each level your main threat is the Archviles and your highest priority is to locate and kill the Archviles. This makes the game way more strategic than it would otherwise be, and actually much more strategic than almost any other situation in any Roguelike game at all--you have to carefully adapt to your surroundings, the walls and doors and layout of the particular level you are on, in order to stay behind cover and avoid taking fire from monsters which you effectively can't kill because of a nearby Archvile; halfway through Ao100 you have enough equipment, weapons, and traits that you're basically a killing machine, but you can't afford to take sustained fire from a bunch of monsters while you race past them to get to an Archvile behind them. So you have to be careful and sometimes very clever, finding ways to locate and kill the Archviles first, and then cleaning up the remaining monsters (which is usually pretty easy, once the Archviles are gone). I think this is a big part of why Ao100 is such a great challenge.
20
Pre-0.9.9 / Re: [M|AoMr|71%|YAVP] My first win on AoMr
« on: July 08, 2008, 11:51 »
You probably could have taken down the Cyberdemon in that state, without the nuke--you had enough ammo and large med-packs. If you go for closer to 100% kills, to get more experience and hence more levels and traits, you can take EE, SoG*3, Dualgunner, Finesse*2, WK, and at least one level of SoB, then fill up your pistols with damage and speed mods, and then you're basically a killing machine, and beating the Cyberdemon is pretty easy.
21
Discussion / Re: Any suggestions for a general, zero-specializing build?
« on: July 07, 2008, 10:23 »
I do not understand why you say "I can use every weapon I find" and not "I can't use any weapon I find." Taking a trait like Reloader doesn't make non-shotgun weapons less usable, it makes shotguns more usable. Without any traits like EE or Reloader I think you will have a difficult time using any weapon at all--except the BFG.
In any case it sounds like you already have your eye on the defensive traits. Obviously Ironman and TaN are most in line with what you're talking about, but I think you will have an easier time surviving if you take EE*2 and then take three levels of Intuition as your defense trait--but then you will be most suited to long-range sniping using the chaingun or pistol, and that might be contrary to your plan of not specializing in any weapon.
In any case it sounds like you already have your eye on the defensive traits. Obviously Ironman and TaN are most in line with what you're talking about, but I think you will have an easier time surviving if you take EE*2 and then take three levels of Intuition as your defense trait--but then you will be most suited to long-range sniping using the chaingun or pistol, and that might be contrary to your plan of not specializing in any weapon.
22
Discussion / Re: Any suggestions for a general, zero-specializing build?
« on: July 07, 2008, 09:54 »
Without any of those traits, including Eagle Eye, you will not be very effective with shotguns, melee weapons, pistols, chainguns, or plasma guns. What are you going to use for a weapon? Only rocket launcher and BFG? I think you will have to settle for at least taking enough traits to make either shotguns or chainguns effective, even if you don't completely specialize in one or the other.
23
Off Topic / Free Pascal
« on: July 06, 2008, 10:53 »
As far as I know, all of Kornel's roguelike projects are written in Free Pascal. I have always heard serious programmers talk about Pascal as being sort of a "toy" language, like BASIC, but I assumed Kornel was just most familiar with Pascal so it was most comfortable and effective for him to use it. So it surprised me to see that Free Pascal does very well in the programming language benchmarks shootout. Here is its comparison to gcc, the GNU C compiler, one of the tightest compilers for any language, ever, and Free Pascal does only marginally worse on CPU time for most benchmarks, and noticeably better on memory use. Weighing CPU time, memory use, and program size with equal weights, Free Pascal does better than all other compilers in all other languages.
These benchmarks are highly artificial and definitely don't take into account many (perhaps most) of the factors that are important in programming, but it still was a surprise to me, to see Free Pascal perform so well. Kornel, what do you use to write graphics to the screen in your roguelike projects? Is there something like curses available for Free Pascal?
These benchmarks are highly artificial and definitely don't take into account many (perhaps most) of the factors that are important in programming, but it still was a surprise to me, to see Free Pascal perform so well. Kornel, what do you use to write graphics to the screen in your roguelike projects? Is there something like curses available for Free Pascal?
24
Discussion / Re: The Big DoomRL Poll!
« on: July 05, 2008, 13:10 »
1:G,2:D,3:F,4:E,5:A,6:D,7:A,8:C,9:A,10:B,11:I,12:H,13:F,14:G,15:O,16:T,17:I,18:C,19:A,20:D,21:I,22:H,23:O,24:P,25:C,26:A,27:K,28:C,29:8
1 G (chaingun is my default main weapon for at least half of nearly any game I play)
2 D (basic shotgun is a useful weapon for such a short stretch of time, end of level 1 to until the combat shotgun or chaingun is found, and useless otherwise; and even when useful it is still only marginally more useful than the pistol)
3 F
4 E (envirosuit is just not as useful as the others, although definitely a good addition to the game; I very rarely use an envirosuit outside of the Lava Pits)
5 A
6 D (magazine mod is only ever useful on the BFG, in games I play; if only you could use it on a rocket launcher...)
7 A
8 C
9 A
10 B
11 I
12 H (computer map just not as useful as the others, and frequently multiples show up on a single level)
13 F (former captains are fun to fight in both early and later stages of the game, well-balanced, a life-saver for its ammo drop when you are in Hell)
14 G (cacodemon is a frustrating enemy, I have died way too many times to them, in Hell's Arena (where they make sense, after all, you should die often in Hell's Arena) and later in the game, where they too often get the jump on me in Hell and hit me with a fireball, doing still surprisingly much damage, before I can kill them)
15 O (Necroarmor is almost always used once found, and the regenerating mechanic is fun and unique)
16 T (Phaseshift Boots are common but very rarely useful to me)
17 I
18 C (Chained Court is easy enough to be boring on difficulties less than U)
19 A
20 D
21 I
22 H (teleporters seem rarely used and rarely an important part of the game, outside of the Spiders' Lair; I wish they were a bigger part of the game)
23 O (Whizkid is probably the most fun trait, although Eagle Eye is the one that is most essential for me, in surviving)
24 P (Badass is the only trait that has never been useful to me, even in beating Angel of Masochism)
25 C
26 A
27 K (Ao100 is by far my favorite challenge)
28 C (AoDarkness is by far the boringest and most uselessly frustrating challenge, to me)
29 8
1 G (chaingun is my default main weapon for at least half of nearly any game I play)
2 D (basic shotgun is a useful weapon for such a short stretch of time, end of level 1 to until the combat shotgun or chaingun is found, and useless otherwise; and even when useful it is still only marginally more useful than the pistol)
3 F
4 E (envirosuit is just not as useful as the others, although definitely a good addition to the game; I very rarely use an envirosuit outside of the Lava Pits)
5 A
6 D (magazine mod is only ever useful on the BFG, in games I play; if only you could use it on a rocket launcher...)
7 A
8 C
9 A
10 B
11 I
12 H (computer map just not as useful as the others, and frequently multiples show up on a single level)
13 F (former captains are fun to fight in both early and later stages of the game, well-balanced, a life-saver for its ammo drop when you are in Hell)
14 G (cacodemon is a frustrating enemy, I have died way too many times to them, in Hell's Arena (where they make sense, after all, you should die often in Hell's Arena) and later in the game, where they too often get the jump on me in Hell and hit me with a fireball, doing still surprisingly much damage, before I can kill them)
15 O (Necroarmor is almost always used once found, and the regenerating mechanic is fun and unique)
16 T (Phaseshift Boots are common but very rarely useful to me)
17 I
18 C (Chained Court is easy enough to be boring on difficulties less than U)
19 A
20 D
21 I
22 H (teleporters seem rarely used and rarely an important part of the game, outside of the Spiders' Lair; I wish they were a bigger part of the game)
23 O (Whizkid is probably the most fun trait, although Eagle Eye is the one that is most essential for me, in surviving)
24 P (Badass is the only trait that has never been useful to me, even in beating Angel of Masochism)
25 C
26 A
27 K (Ao100 is by far my favorite challenge)
28 C (AoDarkness is by far the boringest and most uselessly frustrating challenge, to me)
29 8
25
Discussion / Re: An Idea of mine.... the BPD....
« on: July 05, 2008, 08:34 »2. not plasma-based. neutron-based.... and yes, it DOES require that kind of temperature. which is EASILY found on a neutron star!! and yes, a neutron star is made up of neutrons only, as in no atoms. so the whole thing about life based on elements is pointless ; there are no elements on a neutron star, except those ultra-exotic ones that are nothing but scientific mumbo-jumbo for "we don't have a clue as to what we are talking about but we have to look good so we will make up some fancy names and hope we can impress you enough so that you don't ask us any hard questions"
I think you are confusing things you have read in science fiction for actual science. The Wikipedia page on this may be helpful, although Wikipedia is far from perfect. There are no complete atoms inside the "crust" of a neutron star but there is certainly much more than only neutrons. In the outer layers of a neutron star, the gravitational forces are so strong (due to the star being very very massive but very very compact) that they overcome the electromagnetic force binding electrons to nuclei, so electrons are not attached to nuclei; in the inner layers of a neutron star, the gravitational forces are even stronger, and they overcome the strong nuclear force, so that the protons and neutrons are no longer bound into atomic nuclei. Gravity of that magnitude also overcomes the weak nuclear force, and that prevents (sometimes?) the neutrons from undergoing beta decay, like a neutron "in the wild" ordinarily would. So in the outer layers you could speak of "elements" as each free nucleus has a certain number of protons, so it has an atomic number and hence an element that it would be (an isotope of) if it were able to escape the star and attract electrons, but in the core of a neutron star, protons and neutrons do not bind into nuclei so there are no elements (exotic or otherwise) to speak of.
Also I think you have some misconceptions about how science works, given your "we don't have a clue" bit! I have a feeling this also may have come from reading too much science fiction while being exposed to too little actual science.
26
Requests For Features / Re: Rewards and unlockable things : introduce unlockable levels ?
« on: July 05, 2008, 08:06 »and no, his fighting ability would be pretty good for him to be the Supreme General,
This is a hilarious idea. I mean obviously people do not become the commanders or "supreme generals" of any army by being some kind of incredible soldier, but the consequences of believing that they do, for the purposes of making a game, are pretty funny. For instance, the commander-in-chief, the highest commander, of the United States military is the US president. It would be HILARIOUS to play some game where you are some kind of Hell's minion and you fight your way through the forces of the US army until you face your final enemy...SUPER-SOLDIER GEORGE W. BUSH IN A MECH
27
Requests For Features / Re: Unique monsters and bosses
« on: July 01, 2008, 19:18 »
I thought that read "Orgoth the invisible" for a moment, and it gave me the idea of a "boss" which is simply an ordinary medium-powered monster from the game, perhaps a revenant or a hell knight, which is completely invisible.
29
Requests For Features / Re: The Heaven Harness!
« on: June 30, 2008, 09:30 »
I guess whether you like the "Temple of Light" idea will have a lot to do with how well you like Nethack's Sokoban.
30
Discussion / Re: Funny events?
« on: June 29, 2008, 10:04 »lost souls can't get mad at each other, they melee. melee can't miss and hit someone else.
Lost Souls, being projectiles themselves, can damage other monsters found on their attacking path, causing them to retaliate.
In any case I think involving monster infighting in DoomRL is a case of fidelity to the original Doom games vs. playability; including monster infighting would make the game play much differently and require re-balancing many things.