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Highblood posted:Roguelikes should start connecting their games to a server to allow devs to directly gently caress with their players playing Stop leaking features from IVAN 2.
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Dec 9, 2015 00:29
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Highblood posted:Roguelikes should start connecting their games to a server to allow devs to directly gently caress with their players playing TOME?
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Dec 9, 2015 00:37
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Highblood posted:Roguelikes should start connecting their games to a server to allow devs to directly gently caress with their players playing I thought about doing something like this for the game I'm working on, but instead allowing players to connect to other people's games as a kind of 'dungeon master'. The DM could spawn in items or monsters and such, but would be limited in how much they could do by a setting the player set when the game started. Like spawning in a giant high level killer robot would take up a certain amount of a recharging resource, and there might not be enough of it to do that right when the game began, or there wouldn't be enough to spawn two of them at once until the player should be at a point where they would have a chance on the same setting. Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 9, 2015 |
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Dec 9, 2015 00:49
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Highblood posted:Roguelikes should start connecting their games to a server to allow devs to directly gently caress with their players playing ToME and more recently Legend of Dungeon have started doing that (Legend of Dungeon more being viewers being able to gently caress with people). Though in ToME it's more the creator turning people into pirates and stuff, still fun though.
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Dec 9, 2015 02:12
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So they updated Nethack. That's...that's something.
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Dec 9, 2015 03:01
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The defrosted caveman of roguelikes
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Dec 9, 2015 03:51
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I've been kinda interested in Approaching Infinity and the more I read about it the more sad I am. Apparently, after the Kickstarter he signed up with Shrapnel, of all the publishers, who priced the game at $40 and requested the game to have DRM (limited online activations). I don't get their business model, it's like their hate money so they make other people make less money, too. I know poo poo about business but even I would guess the the developer (whose game is apparently really good) would make much, much more money than he is getting now if he removed the DRM and adjusted the price. Seeing him defending the bullshit DRM and price hike on Reddit just left me completely annoyed because there's no way I'm ever paying $40 for a roguelike with limited activation DRM... I wish the dev the best of luck, though, and hopefully he gets some better business partner. And to quote someone else: I'm reluctant to play the demo because it might be really good and that would just piss me off more. e: I know he tried to get on Greenlight but it seems like he just deleted his entry because it wasn't getting enough support. Well, no poo poo. Either your game is eye-catching or you need to have fanbase big enough to push the game through. With the game looking a bit worse than some of the more fancy roguelikes like Dungeonmans and a high price it seems like his playerbase is pretty tiny with pretty much every place where the game is being discussed being quite empty. Shooting himself in the foot so badly I can't even. lordfrikk fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Dec 9, 2015 |
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Dec 9, 2015 12:08
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Nah I think it makes a lot of sense to release a 40$ game in a genre where fantastic and incredibly deep games are released for free. An odd move for sure.
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Dec 9, 2015 14:19
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Well I bought Cogmind for 30bux so...
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Dec 9, 2015 14:59
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lordfrikk posted:I've been kinda interested in Approaching Infinity and the more I read about it the more sad I am. Apparently, after the Kickstarter he signed up with Shrapnel, of all the publishers, who priced the game at $40 and requested the game to have DRM (limited online activations). I don't get their business model, it's like their hate money so they make other people make less money, too. I know poo poo about business but even I would guess the the developer (whose game is apparently really good) would make much, much more money than he is getting now if he removed the DRM and adjusted the price. Seeing him defending the bullshit DRM and price hike on Reddit just left me completely annoyed because there's no way I'm ever paying $40 for a roguelike with limited activation DRM... I wish the dev the best of luck, though, and hopefully he gets some better business partner. The whole situation is certainly...a situation, and I will always wonder what might've been with Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa, which prior to Approaching Infinity was the only other Roguelike Shrapnel's ever gotten involved with, had they somehow had another/better outlet back then. You'd think it shouldn't be the case really, but there's not at all a wealth of Roguelikes that let you pursue drunken and/or shroom-addled lycanthropy as a legit core strategy... If nothing else, I'd say it is worthwhile to play his prior free Roguelike projects to have a good general time---each usually has something of a crazy theme dialed to 11, which is handy for posterity given they still hold up to varying degrees: https://ibol17.wordpress.com/other-projects/ Beyond whatever the future still hopefully holds for IA, he's currently staring down a likely death march on KS for an RTS project that certainly has some interesting concepts afoot, but launched to gain sizzle as opposed with it to leverage in a pyrotechnic flourish as per the general snowball's chance in hell for relative unknowns on KS nowadays so...yeah. His might as well be a quintessential "shoestring budget dev" allegory made manifest complete with the tunnel vision and floundering that begets---he's got ample skills to execute AND good ideas across the core, but the lack of a resource pool, especially in an ongoing sense, has a pronounced effect. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/181428952/not-your-space-customizable-sci-fi-real-time-strat
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Dec 9, 2015 15:16
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General Emergency posted:Well I bought Cogmind for 30bux so... It's just my opinion, but the modernized ASCII look with animations looks way better than AI's graphics, what's more it has no DRM and the price is $30 now with plans to go lower on release. I stopped playing games in Early Access-like models of development until they're finished but if it Cogmind by some accident doesn't happen to completely change into a bad game in the meantime I'll definitely buy it. In the end, I think Kyzrati has more business sense than Shrapnel because they don't turn off some people immediately by slapping a meaningless DRM on the game. I guess pricing is always complicated and it must be disheartening for the developer because no matter how much gameplay and love you put into your game, it's just not possible to keep increasing the price until you think these two things are corresponding. So even though I played Dark Souls II for over 300 hours I'm not going to pay more than $60 or whatever the release price was. That's why I think it's important to know your target audience and set the price accordingly. It's true that roguelikes might a pretty ungrateful genre to try to sell because there are lot of quality games available for free but I also think people are willing to pay a fair price for a good game.
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Dec 9, 2015 15:56
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General Emergency posted:Well I bought Cogmind for 30bux so... And there are people who will buy AI for $40. You, and they, are the exception though, and a business model built around selling only to you is probably not going to do great. My upper limit on a roguelike is $20, which is also my upper limit on AAA games. There are too many sales to want to spend more.
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Dec 9, 2015 17:30
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lordfrikk posted:In the end, I think Kyzrati has more business sense than Shrapnel because they don't turn off some people immediately by slapping a meaningless DRM on the game. Regarding AI, the dev did make a pretty big mistake by signing with them, and is reportedly looking forward to the end of the two-year contract, after which I believe things will change. He's pretty strapped for cash and wasn't getting enough support for AI at the time, and they did offer him money up front to finish the game, so there's that... (but when I saw him posting about the DRM request--total facepalm).
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Dec 10, 2015 04:24
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Jordan7hm posted:And there are people who will buy AI for $40. You, and they, are the exception though, and a business model built around selling only to you is probably not going to do great. Yeah that's an upper limit for me too usually but Cogmind just tickled my fancy that special way so I wanted to support it. The devs seemed cool too on roguelike radio.
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Dec 10, 2015 08:48
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Kyzrati posted:A rather significant difference between myself and them is I hate DRM, and Shrapnel hates customers. Is that the one where the publisher makes actual physical game boxes? I think someone in this thread said that the guy specifically chose them because he was really into the idea of having a physical copy of his game.
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Dec 10, 2015 08:56
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:Is that the one where the publisher makes actual physical game boxes? I think someone in this thread said that the guy specifically chose them because he was really into the idea of having a physical copy of his game.
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Dec 10, 2015 09:16
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I would never spend $40 on a roguelike. Even the ones that are $10-15 rarely have the staying power of the free alternatives.
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Dec 10, 2015 10:30
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Kyzrati posted:That was one of the ways he justified the decision, yes--they do boxed copies, and paper manuals--but I believe the underlying reason was still about needing money (after getting nowhere on Greenlight for a long while). Publishers willing to front money aren't as common these days, and will naturally lock the dev more tightly into a contract. Unfortunately, Shrapnel actually do hate money, and would burn me at the stake for being an economist.
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Dec 10, 2015 10:34
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Grognardia must be on par with Moria for the depths of its riches, because I dunno how the gently caress they stay in business otherwise. I feel bad for the AI dev, but yeah, that price is beyond the pale - not just for roguelikes, but for a lot of games in general. There are only a tiny, tiny handful of games that I'll pay anything close to full retail any more, and really super niche indie games are nowhere on that list. The Cogmind price seems similarly bonkers to me, but if it's working for the dev, good on him, I'll check it out when it gets cheaper and more people report on it being rad and/or not rad.
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Dec 10, 2015 10:37
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Highblood posted:Roguelikes should start connecting their games to a server to allow devs to directly gently caress with their players playing The original SSH ADOM server had this setting where anyone who connected to a session could send commands and I think it defaulted to on and you had to turn it off in the config or something (this was ages ago and I've forgotten the specifics), so a lot of newbies unintetionally left it on So if you were a really nefarious fucker you could spec someone for a while and if you noticed a pause in their play when they went to get a coffee or something, you could do stuff while they weren't looking like quickly open the inventory and swap out their +7 mithril broadsword for a loaf of bread
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Dec 10, 2015 13:08
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victrix posted:The Cogmind price seems similarly bonkers to me, but if it's working for the dev, good on him, I'll check it out when it gets cheaper and more people report on it being rad and/or not rad. Its rad.
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Dec 10, 2015 17:55
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Shrapnel is worse than Matrix and that's saying a lot.
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Dec 10, 2015 18:09
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Jordan7hm posted:And there are people who will buy AI for $40. You, and they, are the exception though, and a business model built around selling only to you is probably not going to do great.
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Dec 10, 2015 18:12
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victrix posted:The Cogmind price seems similarly bonkers to me, but if it's working for the dev, good on him, I'll check it out when it gets cheaper and more people report on it being rad and/or not rad. Yeah it's rad and I think the price will be 20bux on launch. Also you can get it for that price now if you buy a double pack with someone else.
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Dec 10, 2015 19:03
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Anyone interested in buying cogmind then? We could get the improved tier and split the cost so we all get it cheaper. If anyone's interested I'll do it otherwise I'm just gonna buy the prime tier
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Dec 10, 2015 23:29
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Highblood posted:Anyone interested in buying cogmind then? We could get the improved tier and split the cost so we all get it cheaper. If anyone's interested I'll do it otherwise I'm just gonna buy the prime tier I'm in, but I don't use PayPal. I could Venmo if someone else wants to buy, though.
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Dec 11, 2015 01:02
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uPen posted:Shrapnel is worse than Matrix and that's saying a lot. Isn't Shrapnel the publisher that the Dominions 3 devs were using until their contract expired and they could move to steam?
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Dec 11, 2015 05:59
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"At 50+ hours, I have not even scratched the surface of this game." --Beta Tester Welp, I'm sold. quote:The Gamers Front Extended Download Service allows registered users to increase their download period from 10 days to 2 years. Why would any game developer in this day and age who expects to sell more than a handful of copies of their game opt to use a company like this to publish. I can't imagine they're paying all that much up front...
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Dec 11, 2015 06:06
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Pumpkinreaper posted:Isn't Shrapnel the publisher that the Dominions 3 devs were using until their contract expired and they could move to steam? Jordan7hm posted:Why would any game developer in this day and age who expects to sell more than a handful of copies of their game opt to use a company like this to publish. I can't imagine they're paying all that much up front...
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Dec 11, 2015 06:49
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Yeah the limited downloads is definitely something. It's so ridiculous I'm honestly astonished it's actually a thing that still exists in 2015. Why, yes, I want to pay you more so I can actually download a game I bought beyond the standard 10 days.
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Dec 11, 2015 10:26
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lordfrikk posted:Yeah the limited downloads is definitely something. It's so ridiculous I'm honestly astonished it's actually a thing that still exists in 2015. Why, yes, I want to pay you more so I can actually download a game I bought beyond the standard 10 days. Hey, the publisher needs to make some money you know, I mean S3 storage is ridiculously expensive, like 3c per GB per month crazy.
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Dec 11, 2015 10:53
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I was putting together a list of my favorite roguelikes for the thread, and in doing so I started writing reviews of them, and before I knew it I had a whole mess of them. So let's make a party out of it, and call it The Twelve Days of Roguemas wherein I talk a whole bunch about the whats and whys of the roguelikes I like. I'm not going to be breaking a lot of new ground with this, focusing on major ones on Steam (so yes I'm going to waste a day talking about BoI). But this is a good opportunity to revisit some classics or take another look at some you might have missed the first time around. Everybody ready? 'cause HERE WE GO On the first day of Roguemas, the RNG gave to me... A tiny boat on a scary sea    If you're looking at this and thinking oh my God it's H.P. Lovecraft's Pirates!, don't. Turn right around and go play Pirates! or Sea Dogs or something free-form and piratey. If instead you want a mysterious, story-rich world to explore and never fully master, keep reading. Much like the people and creatures you'll meet in this game, Sunless Sea is not at all what it seems. The game sets you up as a zee captain in the unique and storied Fallen London setting, a Victorian-era underground sea full of cosmic horrors. In creating your character you choose a background and a goal, and then prepare for your first journey. Every port is presented as a series of journal pages, with you choosing actions based on the resources and stats available to you. Everything is abstracted as cards, from cargo to terror to snippets of news, which makes it clear to see what you need to access or complete a story, but hard to tell what is actually valuable before you find a use for it. It's a strange system held up by the quality of the writing, which never becomes tiresome in its quirky melancholy and ominous reveals. Between ports you sail the sunless seas in real time from a bird-eye view. Your ship has three major resources to manage during voyages. Fuel powers your engines and your deck lights, supplies feed your crew, and terror measures how stable your crew actually is. There's a lot of interplay between these resources that will affect how you sail, which livens up the trips. Running your deck lights burns almost three times more fuel, but sailing in the dark ramps up your terror faster. You can sail past natural lights and coastlines instead, but your crew will be consuming supplies at a constant rate, making long trips costly. Odds are that mismanaging one of these resources is going to be what kills you, because you burn through fuel at an alarming rate, and terror mounts quickly and is hard to reduce unless you know the game well. It'll be that or one of the sea's monstrous inhabitants, which are almost all more than a match for your sad little starter ship. And when you die, you lose pretty much all of your progress. There's an heir system where you can pass on one item or a bit of money, and once you start an estate you can create a will to pass on more resources. As far as stories and quests go, however, it's back to the beginning, and this is where the game starts to really come apart. At some point playing Sunless Sea, you're going to realize you're not really making any progress. You're learning the systems and uncovering stories and accumulating... things, but every time you die, and you WILL die, most of that gets wiped out. You can do things faster on the next captain, but the goals in the game are so long-term and require so much work that they come to appear almost impossible. It might be that you need seven of something from the opposite side of the world that you can only get once per trip, or you need one of something that you had and then lost and have no idea how to get again. And the sailing is so slow and the resources so strained, that soon the oppressive and mysterious atmosphere will turn to tedium. You're not going to beat Sunless Sea, I'd wager, and frustration or boredom will claim you far before that's even a possibility. So why do I recommend it? Because despite all that, I keep coming back to it. Part of me still wants to puzzle out the stories, find new ports, and maybe someday mark down a victory, even if it takes liberal use of the wiki to do it. The stories don't get old, and a dozen hours in there are still more to discover. As long as you understand that you're getting a nigh-endless choose your own adventure book where you sail (and very possibly die) instead of turning pages, there's a good chance you'll get your money's worth. (Big thanks to goon GaistHeidegger for gifting me this one, too!) Too Shy Guy fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 17:32
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Thanks for that review. I've been sitting on the fence on Sunless Sea since greenlight. Looks like next time its on a great sale, I'll be picking it up.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:43
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Zombie Samurai posted:You're not going to beat Sunless Sea, I'd wager, and frustration or boredom will claim you far before that's even a possibility. i didnt feel like the atmosphere was worth the trouble and frustration personally. well, zee you later!
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Dec 11, 2015 23:52
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Awesome! posted:when i was reading the sunless sea thread during early access people were just modding the resource use rates to make the game not so tedious and lovely If you play sunless sea, just loving cheat. Enjoy exploring the world and seeing all the weird events. Playing the game by its awful rules isn't particularly fun.
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Dec 12, 2015 00:04
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Dungeons of Everchange, the newest entry in the "Even Vaguely Broguelike" strain alongside The Ground Gives Way and Forays into Norrendrin, has hit a big v0.7 Alpha release---quite possibly the final Alpha release before it gets kicked into Beta. http://www.darkgnosis.com/ Win and Mac only The rough gist(not full quoting something that gigantic) with some choice gains include: quote:Version 0.7 Alpha brings a bag full of candies. It can be said, that it's almost different game if you compare it to previous version. It is more polished, stable and responsive. Game start to get its final look, and this will be last big alpha update. Next milestone will be Beta release.
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Dec 12, 2015 15:17
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The Twelve Days of Roguemas On the second day of Roguemas, the RNG gave to me... Two armored deathbots And a tiny boat on a scary sea    Creepy, intense, and challenging, Teleglitch is a worthy entry in both the roguelike and survival horror genres. Posed like a top-down Doom (or perhaps Quake), Teleglitch sends you through branching, randomized levels, forever dreading what's around the next corner. The top-down perspective is based on lines of sight, so anything not directly in view of you is blotted out by thick, sharp shadows. You start with naught but a pistol and knife, but over the course of the game you collect weapons, ammo, and other junk that can be combined into a huge assortment of gear to help you survive. And you'll need it, because NOTHING in Teleglitch holds back. You'll be facing waves of mutants, zombies, cyborgs, robots, and far more exotic things. While the first few levels pit you mostly against melee enemies, you'll soon start running afoul of gun-wielding foes that can drop you almost as fast as you can drop them. The limited sight lines become a real terror as you creep down the derelict corridors, tensed for the next shootout. It's one of those games that really, really makes you work to beat it, and it's SO satisfying when you finally pull it off. This is one of those rare pixel art games that's ugly as sin, but once you start counting bullets in your clip and learning how to construct quad-barreled nailguns, you won't even notice. The minimal graphic design does do it some favors, leaving effective elements of horror to your imagination. The sound design is incredibly on point, with ominous cues and snaps of static in just the right places. And if you like the combat, they even added a series of arenas to blast your way through. There's a lot of secrets to discover, a lot of monsters to fear, and a lot of ways to mow them down. Highly recommended.
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Dec 12, 2015 18:58
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Good posting Zombie Samurai. Teleglitch never really clicked for me, for whatever reason. I keep meaning to go back and take a closer look at it.
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Dec 12, 2015 19:00
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Jordan7hm posted:Good posting Zombie Samurai. It has a really steep difficulty curve, and in a super-unfortunate way: you're going to die several times to the "guard"-type enemies before you even learn to recognize them, and every time you die you have to play through the first two levels all over again because of the dumb checkpoint system (there's a checkpoint on level 3, the first level with guards, but to unlock it you have to reach level 5). That's why I recommended watching a video of someone else play. They don't have to be perfect, they just have to be good enough to show you what the different enemies are like, what their sound cues (if any) are, and how to deal with them. Once you have that knowledge you can jump into the game and have a fun time where you know that your death actually was (mostly) your fault -- you tried to rush down that enemy instead of hold your distance, or you tried to hold the machinegun in reserve even though you were facing a dozen enemies, or you put your explosives down wrong, etc.
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Dec 12, 2015 19:12
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Agreed, I got stuck in the same place for a long time. The third screenshot I posted has a little pink guy that looks just like you a little below and right of your character. THAT'S what you need to watch out for, because they have the same guns you do. Once you learn to hate and fear those fuckers, things go a lot smoother.
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Dec 12, 2015 19:15
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