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Messages - Sereg

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16
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 14, 2020, 13:30 »
You can count complexes from level messages, rather than relying on killcounts, which as you say are not indicative of total Cyberdemon presence. And as far as I know, no mortem exists for the type of game we were discussing, for which killcount would be as informative as possible for a single run.

17
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 12, 2020, 13:08 »
One quick comment on Radagast's run - note that his final killcount of Cyberdemons is 17, and he only missed one kill the entire game, meaning, at most there were only 18 on that floor, and he only claims 8-9 of them were present there(the rest were probably randomly wandering other levels, as they do on Ao100). Even those few apparently gave him almost too much trouble to prevail - and as you say, that's only a UV game. On N!, not only does the HP go up, but so do the numbers, and numbers continue to increase the deeper you find the complex... and this was about the earliest it's possible to find one.

While it certainly goes to show that there are ways to take down multiple cyberdemons at once even without immunity, I still have very strong doubts about the possibility of clearing a much larger complex of Nightmare! class cyberdemons without fire immunity. You are right that very careful research, or game knowledge, would be a huge help to such a run, allowing a player to prepare optimally for any situation they encounter(at least to the extent allowed by the RNG).

Papilio's ranking is certainly an interesting thread - do note that he lists challenges of higher difficulty(Strongman and Everyman come to mind), albeit not necessarily Luck and Skill, which have since been completed. I also do think that there's something to be said for experience and instinct over repeated Speedrunner attempts, and that grinding it long enough will eventually allow a victory. I'll concede, however, that he is definitely one of the best verifiable players this game has ever seen(behind only Tormuse in Angelics, and his Diamond count is actually even higher!), and I grant a lot of weight to his assessments here as a result.

One thing I strongly agree with him on is the Pacifism Angelic - which he rates at 30 luck and grind, and the same difficulty as Speedrunner. I'm pretty sure that if any Angelic badge is statistically impossible, it's this one, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a way to upgrade it to Archangelic level - I contend it's already there =P

18
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 11, 2020, 17:55 »
If you don't have the inquisitor's set by then? Yeah, pretty much =P Maybe on an easier difficulty, where you're very deep, well equipped, and highly talented before they appear, it could be doable by other means, but on a Nightmare! run where they can show up relatively early, trying to stay and fight is very likely to end the run.

19
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 10, 2020, 22:48 »
All valid points.

I remember at one point someone had posted a screenshot of a cyberdemon complex they encountered during an Ao100 run... it was nuts. There were 10 or more all on the screen at once in a circle around the player, with more on the way - like ih8regin said, they track down the player and they're literally everywhere on the level. I went looking for the screenshot, but wasn't able to find the mortem I saw it in, unfortunately.

20
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 08, 2020, 19:58 »
Actually, my mistake, I was using the N! number there, the earliest a nightmare arachnotron cave should appear (assuming I have the difficulty numbers right) is 46 on UV.  On N! they can start at 43.  Assuming the wiki is accurate, this difference isn't that big.  The real problem is that you have to be able to murder your way through a pile of nightmare arachnotrons by dungeon level 43 or so, and it's not immediately clear to me what the best way to do that is.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. Yeah, without a lucky invulnerability globe on the previous floor, these would be incredibly dangerous, and I'm also not sure how I'd approach one.

Is there no way to avoid or limit the damage from them?  Shamblers and cyberdemons are huge HP sponges, but their burst damage potential is weaker than many normal enemies.  Is it the accumulation of damage or the burst that's the problem?  Why is fire immunity mandatory, as opposed to very high fire resistance being sufficient?
It's been a long time since I've played much, so maybe my memory is not quite perfectly accurate, but I recall shamblers as being very accurate and doing very high damage. Cyberdemons come in Complexes, not Caves, and they'll soon start to annihilate all the walls near you, exposing you to fire from more and more of them simultaneously and severely limiting your positioning options. It's not so much accumulation or burst as it is aggregation - once you have 5 or 6 of them firing at you every action, it's pretty easy to get one-shot, even if you could otherwise mitigate damage from a smaller number. And 5 or 6 is a low estimate of what you might be facing even on spawn, much less later on as they start to collapse on you. Fire Immunity is necessary for Cyberdemons because as I mentioned, they tear up the walls and you're soon under attack from absolutely stupid numbers of them every turn, while lava elementals, if memory serves, have a napalm effect, which will eventually leave you with nowhere on the level to stand that isn't fire.

A nanoshrapnel shotgun would be the best non-melee option, but any nanomanufacture high damage weapon would probably be sufficient with an appropriate build.  I don't think melee is required.

You are correct, nanoshrapnel is excellent for agony/pain elementals and lost souls, while other nanomachic weapons would certainly help. Of course, this does mean that, in addition to everywhere else on the run where luck is going to be key, you'll need to find a nano pack before your first agony cave. Not impossible, certainly, but by no means a given.

FWIW I encountered two late-game Nightmare Demon caves this game and cleared both of them without any significant trouble.  Having the Jackhammer helped, but I suspect any build with sufficient shotgun firepower could manage.
Jackhammer was actually probably a lot more clutch there than you think - most other shotguns don't have the same potential for AoE knockback even in a single firing, and nothing else offers multiple bursts prior to a reload. A nanoshrapnel shotgun would be helpful here, but offers far less damage per shot(meaning both less killing potential and less knockback), putting you in severe danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed. However, you make a valid point - with proper positioning and a reasonably powerful shotgun build, they might not be run-ending.

Gambler's ruin is definitely the problem I would absolutely be worried about, though I think horrible normal levels should also be on the list.  (Elite formers feature prominently in my nightmares.)
Yeah, I have a feeling this would be the true death of any attempt at such a mortem. Even with excellent luck for hundreds of levels, most attempts will eventually encounter a situation that can't be survived while maintaining the 100% killcount. I can't imagine many people would have the persistence to keep at this one long enough to complete it, especially considering the very high difficulty of even getting such a run started, and the overwhelming tedium and time investment required by the full N! clears.

I wouldn't go quite that far, I think the Speedrun Angelic is outright impossible ;).  This one is merely almost impossible.

Actually, I suspect Speedrun is quite doable. I've never been much of a speedrunner at any game, and I managed an 8:07 N! win on graphical mode after a relatively small number of attempts. Granted, that's still less than half the speed demanded by the badge, but I think that if someone were to dedicate enough time and practice to speedruns, they'd eventually get a set of floors that was winnable in that time. A big part of that is building up the instinct needed to react almost instantly to various situations, and then have that instinct be correct during the winnable run. In any case, while the number of attempts to achieve this would certainly be higher than for Centurial Archangelic, the time cost per failed attempt is, by definition, almost insignificant.

Now, if we want to create a Speedrun Challenge worthy of an Archangelic Badge, might I suggest Compet-n Silver Cross on N! Ao100? ;)

Of course, if we insist on Archangelic Badges requiring Archangel challenge games, then Compet-n Silver is probably out of the running - maybe N! AAo666 in under three hours?

Either one is about 3-4 floors a minute(18 seconds per floor for Ao100, or 16 seconds per floor for AAo666), which is slightly more lenient than the current Speedrunner Angelic - the extra challenge comes from the lack of exploitable special floors, and the marathon grind(note that the slowest actual award, Compet-n Silver, would require a pace of 22.2 floors per minute, or about 2.7 seconds per floor[!], which I suspect is well and truly outside of the realm of possibility - probably even for an optimal AI, at least in a number of attempts that could be made in anything approaching a human lifespan).

21
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 08, 2020, 15:15 »
I encountered the nightmare arachnotron cave on 47, which is close to as early as it's possible to get one.  (43, if I'm reading the wiki correctly and its information is up to date, I haven't looked at the code for this section myself.)  I killed about one half arc of arachnotrons before I had to flee, and I assumed that part of this was because of my newness and relative incompetence.  (I ran out of plasma cells because of bad ammo management, my weapons and traits weren't particularly optimized, I didn't have back up armor for when the energy shield fell apart, and so on.)  The rest of it was that I wasn't actually committed to fighting it out: rather than standing and fighting where I'd landed, I wasted some actions moving to the up stairs, which were in an open area in the center of the cavern.  If I'd wanted to maximize my odds of clearing it, I would have tried to find reduce the damage I was taking at the cost of maybe not making it out.  Because of this, I'd assumed that nightmare arachnotron caves would be more tractable for a stronger character played by someone with more experience expecting to fight it out.

Even if I hadn't made these choices and mistakes, for a much stronger character, nightmare arachnotron caves are still likely death?

Not necessarily - but on N!, they spawn earlier and with larger numbers of enemies than on U. And as I mentioned, there are worse types of caves that can also spawn - I mentioned Shamblers and Cyberdemons, which are both worse than even Nightmare Arachnotrons. Lava and Agony Elemental Caves are also possible, and without fire immunity, Cyberdemons and Lava Elementals are all but certain death. Agony Elementals aren't quite so deadly, but clearing them with ammo is almost impossible, and clearing them with melee can be extremely painful - I don't think I'd want to try it without Vampire, which imposes some rather problematic restrictions on your build path. There are also Nightmare Demon caves, which are an absolute atrocity to survive, much less clear. Also bear in mind that such levels can spawn back to back, or at least near enough together to preclude fully recovering supplies expended on a previous level.

Ultimately, the point I was making is that there are a hell of a lot of ways to end an AAo666 run, especially on Nightmare!, and a lot of those ways are out of your control as a player - if you get a bad level/spawn, you need to flee or die, and a prospective YAAM run prevents fleeing, leaving only death as an option.

While I certainly still believe it's within the realm of possibility, I think it's easily more challenging than almost any Angelic badge in existence - certainly it's a big step farther than the associated Angelic badge, Centurial Angelic. If it were an actual challenge, I'd call it Archangelic Centurial - but of course, we don't need such a category when only a handful of players can even touch the ordinary Angelics =P

22
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 07, 2020, 16:25 »
Nightmare! has a lot of ways to generate really nasty situations way earlier than you are prepared to handle them. Yeah, the beginning would definitely be rough, but even getting through that, you could easily spawn into a floor that might barely offer the opportunity for survival, much less safe clearing - and some don't even offer that. The Inquisitor set would almost be a must have, since I don't know another way to handle Cyberdemon caves, and Nightmare Arachnotron caves or shambler caves could still ruin the run.

Keep in mind most N! Centurial runs, whether 666 or merely the base 100, rely on finding an exit ASAP and getting the hell on to the next floor... *not* setting up for a clear.

On top of that, it's 666 floors of no saving. Imagine making it down to floor 500, calling it a night, and forgetting your computer had an automatic restart planned =P

Centurial Angelic is doable, if only with great luck, skill, and persistence. The requirements for Centurial Angelic with Prejudice are far steeper - but possibly still achievable, if only by an extremely skilled player with absurdly good luck - which is why I put forth the name I did, since he seems to fulfil those conditions.

23
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 06, 2020, 23:43 »
Some players do idle with the game running - it's not strictly necessary below N!, but that doesn't mean there aren't valid reasons for it to occur, especially if you're multitasking, running DoomRL between other tasks when the focus required isn't quite enough to justify completely logging out.

But your comment on time got me curious, and I went browsing the Century Lounge archives... my own Medium ArchAo666 YAAM took nine hours, and ZicherCZ managed it on Ultraviolence in three and a half days.

And now I'm tempted to try for a 100% Centurial Angelic run, just for "fun", but unfortunately my profile is on a computer that isn't easily accessible to me in the near future... nor have I ever really even come close to a N! 666 run. My Dervis' Medallion was a melee stairdive(Edit: and I apparently did it in under an hour, with a Minor Icarus Cross to boot) - to replicate even those first 100 levels going for 100% would be much more difficult, to say nothing of extremely tedious =P

Who knows, maybe Tormuse will eventually post such a mortem, though. He has a habit of doing insane things like that...

24
Century Lounge / Re: [U|Ao100|99%|YAVP] Centurial Platinum
« on: April 06, 2020, 18:46 »
Here's one of my old ones where I was able to roll through pretty easily.

I've always been a fan of Ammochain builds - ammo management becomes a lot easier when you're only expending one round per burst, and that solves one of the biggest challenges of Ao100.

Another thing I've been a long time fan of is Ao100, so congratulations on the Platinum(and all lower) Badges. UV can be rough getting started, especially without good luck on assemblies/artifacts.

And you're right about the Jackhammer - it's great for both area knockback, and shredding groups of high level enemies, as you've demonstrated. Easily one of my favorite artifacts, especially with a build that synergizes well with it.


25
Discussion / Re: Quick questions thread!
« on: April 06, 2020, 12:30 »
Yeah, you can't pull them all off in a single run, I believe there's a second "cursed" assembly out there as well, and of course some of the artifacts are too.

I actually prefer AAo666 for this, since you have much more chance to find everything.

26
Post Mortem / Re: [U|AoMC+AoI|96%|YAVP] Impatience is a sin
« on: April 05, 2020, 10:54 »
Max Carnage is sort of a double edged sword when you're considering the Untouchable challenges - it makes it easier to kill quickly, which often can save you a lot of damage, but it also punishes mistakes pretty severely: an attack that should have missed, or done only a few points of damage, is almost a guaranteed hit at maximum damage.

I also seem to recall a situation where the Untouchable achievements weren't awarded in the mortem, but still counted for challenges, where Max Carnage was concerned - but it was a dual angel game that I'm thinking of, and it might have been the other challenge that caused the problem(most likely Overconfidence, although I can't recall precisely the challenge or game in question). Evidently, yours was awarded, nor was it relevant to any of your particular challenges for this run(other than the Badge itself), but your comment on it got me thinking about old mortems.

How does rocket jump work on AoMC? I would think that the self-damage would get pretty brutal, unless that isn't similarly amplified for some reason. I can't recall having ever tried it myself.

In any case, nice run, and an impressive collection of awards. AoI is definitely a challenging playstyle(although, in my opinion, not quite as unforgiving as the similar-seeming Angel of Purity), so congratulations on pairing that with an Ultraviolence win.

27
Off Topic / Re: New Roguelike - alpha testers wanted
« on: April 05, 2020, 09:03 »
Odd - if it turns up again, let me know.

Targeting is already updated in the development version, so the next release will have it - it only took a single line, much easier than even I expected.

What do you mean by queuing commands? The game technically permits that, since pending actions are stored in a queue(to facilitate potential future AI upgrades which might make more detailed plans - right now they only ever think one step at a time, and the player uses the same system to load actions derived from keyboard commands), but there's a built in delay on the input handler to prevent flooding the queue. This delay is very small (15ms), but the engine should easily resolve the last input before it can accept a new one - which means it should be ready and waiting for it.

If it's running so slowly that you're actually able to build up a queue of commands, that's quite concerning, and I don't have any immediate ideas about what would be causing that, or how I could fix it. At this point, I'd prefer to wait and see how widespread that issue is before I try any significant changes.

Edit: For now, I think we ought to conduct any additional feedback via private message - it's just been you and me so far on this topic, and I don't want to monopolize the forums, especially when we've got a lot of new DRL mortems going, and Jupiter Hell is posting frequent updates. I really appreciate everything you've pointed out so far.

28
Off Topic / Re: New Roguelike - alpha testers wanted
« on: April 04, 2020, 13:13 »
I've added issues to track both the targeting problem and the re-displayed message.

The targeting can definitely be updated - however, I've explored a couple of possibilities on the lore re-display and cannot manage to replicate it. If you can discover a series of more definite steps which reliably causes it to occur, that would be incredibly helpful. If not, I'll keep digging, but I'm at a loss for now.

29
Off Topic / Re: New Roguelike - alpha testers wanted
« on: April 04, 2020, 12:42 »
Unfortunately savefiles are not compatible between versions - due to the way they're written and read, any change to any of the in-game assets which are saved will cause existing save files to become unreadable, since they cannot be correctly interpreted into the updated asset.

The reason deflect does damage to enemies is because your enemies are using parts of their own bodies as weapons and armor - so instead of damaging those items, like it does for the player, it actually deals a (very small) amount of damage to their health instead. This has the potential to be important later, when those damage numbers can be magnified intentionally if desired, but for now it's not going to help you much on anything bigger then the smallest spiders.

Wait in place is indeed a fast action - it actually generates energy, rather than consuming it like most other actions. So yes, it is meant to enable tactical play, rather than simply passing a turn as it serves to do in similar games. This may very well need to be balanced, as I've not explored the consequences of using it that way yet.


You raise a good point on message verbosity settings - I've made the following changes:

4 APR 2020 - Version [a.2.1]:
 [Change]
  -Message verbosity settings persist between play sessions.
  -Combat message priorities adjusted as follows:
   >Initial attack and defend messages reduced to LOW from MAX.
   >Successful evasion and deflection messages increased to HIGH from LOW.
   >Hits resulting in damage increased to MAX from HIGH.
   >Non-boss kill messages increased to MAX from HIGH(boss kill messages remain at MAX).

Do note that, while your attack and defense tactics are chosen randomly and automatically at present, future updates will give you control over them, and let you select a tactic from those available in your current melee combat form to exploit enemy defenses if desired. You'll also be able to let it remain random. For now, the messages are meant to convey the interactions and let you get a sense of how attack tactics interact with defense tactics(although there's a more detailed explanation in the manual) so you can better make those decisions once you're able to do so.

As far as targeting, it sorts by distance to the player, so if you are adjacent to multiple enemies, it will sort by orthogonal adjacency and then diagonal adjacency, but otherwise will not discern beyond this - although it will if you use the 'l'ook command to re-target a new enemy. However, this probably shouldn't be necessary. I'll look into automating target updates based on most recent combat opponent for the next release - this shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

As far as the repetitive lore message, I've received one other report about that happening, but I've never been able to reproduce it. Are you able to get that to happen consistently? If so, what are the steps to do so?


30
Off Topic / Re: New Roguelike - alpha testers wanted
« on: April 03, 2020, 20:16 »
I've uploaded the next release. Not quite as many feature additions as I wanted to get done for it, but I felt the updates based on feedback were a priority for this version.

On top of that, I'll now be running dev and release branches separately in the project, so I can make small changes to existing release versions even during development of the next release.

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