Roguelikes

[chemical_art]

Bringing up a different side to the same coin.


As anyone have made up their own rules for a game? Like you have a game you love and have beaten a dozen times, but want to play it again with a twist?  I admit doing this a lot.

For example, in Metal Gear, you are supposed to sneak around and inflitrate bases. I've gotten that down to an art, so now I go in guns blazing because that is harder. Or for a final fantasy game, I try to make to avoid the "2 damage dealers one healer" combo which works for everything and instead gnash my teeth creatively trying to play with three damage dealers.

These "self created rules" of mine are quite fluid and can change dynamically. So for the above it would be like in final fantasy rules if I get my but kicked I may then change the rules so that my primary team is all damage dealers, but the weaker backup team may have a medic. Or for Metal Gear I'm not allowed to hide but am allowed "tactical retreats" .


Am I the only one to have ever done this?

[Nalgas]

Am I the only one to have ever done this?

No.

[zebramatt]

This has piqued my interest somewhat, anyway.

(The Binding of Isaac by Team Meat)

[zespri]

Lol, interesting description, I wonder do you have to invent something... erm... untraditional in terms of the backstory, if you want to make a successful game?

Also: has anyone seen a co-op roguelike? Or roguelikes and co-op are incompatible in principle?

[Nalgas]

Lol, interesting description, I wonder do you have to invent something... erm... untraditional in terms of the backstory, if you want to make a successful game?

It certainly helps get people's attention, at least, although if it's too weird it might push some people away.  That's about what I expect from something associated with Team Meat, though.  Heh.

Also: has anyone seen a co-op roguelike? Or roguelikes and co-op are incompatible in principle?

I don't follow them well enough to have an exhaustive knowledge of them, so I'm sure someone else is much more of an authority on them than I am and could give specific examples.  For some of the roguelike subgenres or genres heavily influenced by roguelikes, like ARPGs, co-op play is almost a defining element of them.  In the most pure/traditional roguelikes, though, it seems somewhat incompatible, not so much in principle but in implementation.  The way they tend to work, where the entire world updates one cycle at a time in response to each action you take, does not fit well with more than one person playing simultaneously (i.e. the entire simulation basically has to lock and wait for the slowest player each "turn", in the simplest/most naive implementation).  With some way to work around that, or if people are willing to sacrifice it entirely and play in real time, there's not really any reason it can't work quite well otherwise.

[getter77]

Wow....I really should remember to check this Off Topic section more often.   

Aside from the nifty potential that is Dredmor, given it is getting better at a good clip despite the many folk out there that somehow miss the point and want it to be Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: Again: With Eyebrows:  Another pair of Roguelikes, out of MANY I could get on about but will not at this time, should prove nifty to some here by most logic given the wrangling over taxonomical concerns.

Cardinal Quest  http://www.cardinalquest.com/   New, also fairly inexpensive, multi-plat, made by one guy at the core.  Probably rather good/approachable for newcomers and those not after extreme mathematical gymnasitcs.

Tales of Maj'Eyal(ToME 4):   http://te4.org/  A bevy of modes and polish, increasing all the time, with one granting a "lives" mechanic for those exploring about getting to grips with everything.  Rather spiffied out with large tiles, special effectsi, ASCII, music/sound----one of the brightest up and comers with strong module/modding support in tow.

[zespri]

Desktop Dungeon is an awesome 10 minutes roguelike. I played a couple of levels with the free version and I was sold. I bought a copy of their new beta and have not regretted it. If you have not seen it, take a look, you might like it.

[Dizzard]

I'm a little unsure about rougelikes.

It isn't necessarily the challenge that I shy away from, it's just I get really attached to characters that I've spent time developing. So if I die I suddenly feel like I wasted my time because there's nothing to show for it.

That said I don't hate them or anything, in fact I'm following the development of Project Zomboid. (game about zombie apocalypse and when you're dead you're dead)

[zespri]

Just came across this on steam: http://www.hackslashloot.com/

The screenshots do not make me want this game. Anyone tried it? It can't possibly be more fun that Dungeons of Dreadmor?

[Misery]

Hey, there's a topic on Roguelikes here!

I'm a big fan of the genre.... I play alot of these.... but I honestly cant stand the "big four", aka, Hack, Crawl, Angband, and whatever the 4th is, and their many, MANY variations.

Why?

Because of the EVERY DAMN ITEM IS A MYSTERY bit.  Easily one of the stupidest gameplay ideas I've ever seen, and unfortunately it sort of infects half of what is one of my favorite genres.   I'm sorry, but it's a bloody stupid mechanic.  There are about a million SENSIBLE ways that these games can create incredible levels of difficulty and challenge;  THIS though, is what TVTropes calles "fake difficulty".  I know that the purists disagree, but..... heck with them.  I have decided otherwise, and I am correct because I say so! 

Not to mention.... if I'm playing, say, a wizard in one of those, shouldnt a wizard, well..... you know, actually KNOW some stuff about magic scrolls and potions?  I can understand if my wizard looks at a sword, and basically thinks "Yep, that's a sword allright" and cant identify it's specific properties..... but no, apparantly my wizard is BEYOND STUPID and cant even identify items that any wizard with half a braincell should be knowledgeable about.   This kind of thing is NEVER thought about properly when developing any roguelike that plays anything like those 4.


And finally..... I just get tired of so many games copying those.  I prefer that developers come up with their OWN ideas.  I like games like Dredmor, DoomRL, creative and interesting games like those that are NOT just direct clones of others.   I picked up one called "Epilogue" recently, which I'm enjoying (and mostly just dying alot in) that has some very interesting mechanics pertaining to combat and items.... it's a good example of one of these done right.



....there, I said what I had to say on this topic, hah.

[doctorfrog]

Funny you should say that, because "Wizard" mode is usually the cheat/god mode in which you can instantly identify anything.

I don't think DoomRL uses item identification, and it's pretty casual to start with, maybe you can check that out. I've been mostly playing Brogue for a long time partly because it has such a small, mentally manageable pool of items to ID, and early curses are usually manageable.

Just curious, if you play AI War, how do you feel about having to scout planets to 'know' what's on them? I mean, as the last vestiges of the human race, you used to own those places, and should already have intel on all of them, right? Isn't scouting kind of just busy work? (Yes I know it's not the same thing, I'm just being a smartass.)

[Oralordos]

Funny you should say that, because "Wizard" mode is usually the cheat/god mode in which you can instantly identify anything.

I thought that exact same thing while reading that post.

Just curious, if you play AI War, how do you feel about having to scout planets to 'know' what's on them? I mean, as the last vestiges of the human race, you used to own those places, and should already have intel on all of them, right? Isn't scouting kind of just busy work? (Yes I know it's not the same thing, I'm just being a smartass.)

You probably already know things like the lay of the land and such. That is why you know things like how many resource spots are there without having to scout. The things constructed since then by the AI would be unknown.
By contrast, a mage of some sort in a roguelike should be expected to at least recognize things like runes carved into a magical item, or the consistency and color of various potions. Those don't really change over time. Perhaps make the descriptions of what it is exactly sort of vague? You may be able to recognize the rune of fire on a sword but not recognize exactly how the fire is used unless you find some more runes hidden in the part of the blade wrapped in the hilt area.

[zespri]

Because of the EVERY DAMN ITEM IS A MYSTERY bit.  Easily one of the stupidest gameplay ideas I've ever seen, and unfortunately it sort of infects half of what is one of my favorite genres.   I'm sorry, but it's a bloody stupid mechanic.  There are about a million SENSIBLE ways that these games can create incredible levels of difficulty and challenge;  THIS though, is what TVTropes calles "fake difficulty".  I know that the purists disagree, but..... heck with them.  I have decided otherwise, and I am correct because I say so! 

You know what? I've been reading some reviews of Diablo 3 (which is a great game. Been playing it with a friend yesterday in it came up in conversation that it is done right in so many ways), and some reviewers actually complain that you do not need an identify scroll to identify an item. I laughed my ass off when I read that. Another complain was that all items now take either 1(rings, belt helmet, amulet) or 2 slots. The review said that Diablo 3 stripped whole dimension out of the game by making inventory management trivial. I can't  stop wondering what some people are thinking....

And you are right, the identify mechanics always seemed pointless and not fun.

[BobTheJanitor]

Just came across this on steam: http://www.hackslashloot.com/

The screenshots do not make me want this game. Anyone tried it? It can't possibly be more fun that Dungeons of Dreadmor?

I know this is from months ago, so any information probably doesn't help now. But regardless, I got this and really didn't get much fun out of it. I only played it a few times before just giving up out of boredom. It doesn't do much interesting and seems to be pretty badly balanced. I'm all for a challenge, but most of my experience was walking into a room full of monsters that it was mathematically impossible for me to beat given the skills I had and the health totals of the monsters. Kind of just not fun. I guess I might try it again one day if I ever see an update, but I don't think I've ever seen it patch itself since I downloaded it.

[Mánagarmr]

I personally think that inventory management is a complete shazbot unless you do it properly; IE realistic. You can't carry 16 guns around because you have 16 slots. You can't carry 16 guns because they weigh a ton together and so on. But most of that is just covering up a bigger problem: Why are you carrying those guns around in the first place and why does the game actively try to prevent you from carrying them?

I think the solution to inventory management is not having inventory management and only present the player with something worth picking up. Sure, you'll have 3000 swords lying around the dungeon after you are done, but they are just that, basic swords not worth the metal they're made of because there's so many.