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doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Anticheese posted:

It's still more adorable than any game involving stabbing things to death with a pitchfork has the right to be! :neckbeard:

Edit for content: You can't really go wrong with DoomRL for something that's pretty easy to pick up and put down. It even has pretty decent tiles now, if staring at the Matrix isn't your thing. I wish more roguelikes made use of sound, though.

IIRC, Crawl has the ability to map just about any event to a sound, but last I checked no one bothered to.

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doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Spelunky, Transcendence? There's that music-based roguelike coming out, maybe that one can be played more thoughtlessly?

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.


MOBAs.

e:f,b

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

That reminds me, Fuel was a 7DRL that was pretty quick, simple, and intriguing. It won't last you more than a week, if that, but it's a good, tight game.

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Fuel

It doesn't really belong in the OP, but it was kinda fun.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Brogue: my monkey examined a bat and is now a flying monkey.

What advantages does flight convey? Is he harder to hit, or does this just mean he's gonna go flitting off across a bunch of lava after an enemy, where I can't rescue his hairy screechy rear end?

Also, I'd consider Zafehouse: Diaries to be a roguelike as well. It has a randomly generated map, it's hard as gently caress, and though you manage a party, when someone dies, they stay that way. For my tastes, it's too complex and punishing for me to get more than ten minutes in, but my short experience with it sure makes it seem rogueish.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Install Windows posted:

He can't fall down pits, he can't be affected by the poison fungus, he can pass over lava and water no issue, and he won't set off traps on the floor. As you mentioned, yeah sometimes they'll fly off over some lava to attack something too.

Yep, I thought of that as I discovered a vault absolutely surrounded by fire traps.

He later flew off over a lake to fight three vampire bats and a group of goblins worshiping a totem. He did not survive.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

The Sword of Fargoal website really does its damndest to pretend that their original, free remake doesn't exist, but it's out there. Can't blame them for trying to make a buck off of their IP, but there isn't even a viable PC port of the commercial version yet.

(that is, I think that the remakes.org competition version was made by the same guys?)

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

All this Sil talk. I think it's my next traditional roguelike, after I'm done with Brogue.

Which will be awhile. Because I am a very slow roguelike player.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Charles Dickens posted:

"Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, "I should like just to run over with you on my fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see; there's London, one; Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three; Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six." He had checked off each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm of his hand. "There's as many as six, you see, to choose from."

"I don't understand you," said I.

"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned Wemmick, "and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Back a Kickstarter with it, and you may know the end of it too - but it's a less pleasant and profitable end."

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Due to the prevalence of traps, I'm finding that a ring of awareness is pretty useful in the midgame, but it's also not a bad idea to just sniff around a new room for traps for a few turns. The way I think it works is this: you have a chance to find each trap or vent separately, so the more vents or traps you have around you, the greater the chance you'll find at least one of them. So if you find one of them, hammer the 'S' key a couple times to uncover anything else.

It also follows, of course, that if you have allies with you, there is also a greater chance that they'll trigger a trap before you can find it.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I suck at Brogue and routinely lose between levels 10-14, but my better games tend to be ones where I either gently caress up or have crap equipment early on, but just press on anyway.

Of course, there are those runs where I get a full backpack, not a Magic Detect in sight, and I put on cursed poo poo, drink potions, fall through a hole in the floor, and get my face smashed in by an ogre.

A good roguelike isn't one that hates you, it's one that just doesn't give a poo poo about you.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Agreed. I bought into TowerClimb several months ago, but haven't played it yet (since the alpha from some time ago), because Spelunky is just scratching that itch so well. But when I'm ready to set it down, hey, maybe TC will have finally hit 1.0. I'm actually really glad to see it's beatable, I had the impression it was just "go up until things get so hard that you die," like an old Atari 2600 game or something.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Sep 19, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

I hadn't bought spelunky yet, because, when they announced the game coming to pc, they said:


I wanted to buy the Humble version because it comes with steam keys and DRM-free files (so you can actually play offline).

Obviously, though, either it's not actually going to be on the humble store, or they're taking their sweet time getting it up there.

Yeah, I remember this too. I simply couldn't wait. Yu is involved somewhat with the Humble store (he does the icons for all the games at least, and Aquaria was in the first HB), so not only will it most certainly hit the Humble store, it'll probably also make it into a bundle in time.

I won't be surprised if he/Mossmouth waits on it, though, the game is freaking fantastic and should have a fairly consistent sales no matter how long it takes to go Humble.

And, when it does, I'll not only get it, but the Steam version should be included as well. So even though I jumped on the GOG version and lack the Steam extras, I'll eventually get all the features I want.

Spelunky freeware versus HD:
I played quite a bit of the freeware version and raved about it constantly. It's amazing and a fantastic demo for the for-pay version. When it came out, it was a wonderful proof of concept that was very well packaged.

The HD version is worth every penny of the full price, though, right now. Everything that should have been left alone was, everything that should have been improved, has been. There's a sufficient amount of extra content, a fantastic graphical improvement, and a great level of polish over everything. It's an absolutely stellar upgrade.

Let me put it this way: I remember opening Ducktales for Game Boy, slapping the cartridge in, and playing it, dying a lot, cursing, exploring, getting better, and beating it. There's a sense of newness and discovery, a game that's masterfully made, and knowing that I was experiencing something designed for me, my abilities, my likes and dislikes, etc. A perfect match.

If I do that with Ducktales now, or many other old titles, it's mostly nostalgia, even though the games are still quite good. With Spelunky, it's that perfect match again. It's made for someone who grew up playing "those games" without being a nostalgia rehash ride through those games. It's made for both the kid in me and the adult in me (and that includes how quickly I die, because I got other things to do usually).

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

madjackmcmad posted:

Yeah, it's great to finally hear about the game he's been hinting towards but I'm not sure that teaser is... I don't know the word. But, if he's aiming to build a community pre-Kickstarter, this is one way to start doing it.

It's a bad teaser because it doesn't say anything about the game he's making. It combines a majestic swing of Jupiter and a moon or something, then transitions to a generic space marine model shuffling arthritically toward the camera. It looks bad and communicates no information. It's a bad teaser.

He's got my attention, but only because he already had my attention from DoomRL.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Im_Special posted:

Quick question, has anyone been able to get this awesome Oryx Tiles to work with the latest Brogue v1.7.3 release? I'm feeling an itch of Brogue lately but don't think I can go back to none tiles.

I tried the tiles, went back to ASCII. They're lovely tiles, but ASCII is easier for me to scan, and Brogue's ASCII is the best I've seen.

More to your desires: You might appeal to Oryx to update his work.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I'm playing Bionic Dues almost to the point of compulsion on my lunch and coffee breaks. It's a little hard for me to think of it as a roguelike, but it does share quite a few properties of the genre. Beating a level feels a bit more to me like the freeware version of Desktop Dungeons.

I know Arcen's been hopping around from title to title, I hope they see reason enough to stick to this one and give it some further fleshing out, it's a pretty decent start so far.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Jordan7hm posted:

The tipping point for me with roguelikes was understanding that any action that risked death was not worth attempting. Even if the risk is only 1%, repeated enough that will lead to games ending early.

This here is the reason why I am not and will never be good at roguelikes. Most of the time, I just can't help myself and press "J" one more time to roll the dice and see if I can't kill the guy just under my @.

If it's ok to still roll out the "i'm bad at roguelikes" dong, I'm simply terrible at all of them, but always have fun. I think I'm a casual player of a pretty hardcore series of games.

  • only beat Spelunky freeware twice out of about 800 deaths
  • 400 bodies deep in the current Spelunky and am still trying to get the key to the tunnel man
  • curated two Crawl threads in this very forum while not being able to regularly get past the Temple, partly because I just like playing random characters to see what they can do
  • semi-regularly got to Sokoban in Nethack, but refused to spoil myself or play anything other than a chaotic monk, and never got further
  • haven't broke 10000 gold on Brogue
I love roguelikes, I have fun with them, I'm just no darn good at them. I think I just have no discipline.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

andrew smash posted:

I get the urge to screw around but this barely makes sense to me, what's the point of trying to 'see what they can do' if you're dying before the temple? You don't even really get a character rolling until you have a god.

Because I'm playing the game wrong. I was doing stuff like trying to imagine little backstories for my characters and whatnot. Then the game kept changing every month for a while, and it seemed like what worked yesterday wasn't working now, and it was becoming actual work trying to figure out what changed and what narrow character I was supposed to pick that would be successful, so I just started exploring what random combinations of characters would be like, because that was more interesting than following the latest forum-approved newbie build. This was on my way out of the game, admittedly, I didn't start out playing like that.

But mostly because I'm bad at this video game. In the end, I decided that Crawl was somehow a college course about itself that you could get lost in with the right personality, and I just didn't have that personality.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Nov 7, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Uncle Jam posted:

Recommended character choices are literally highlighted on the selection screen. Sorry it didn't work out though.
Though, all the things that work to getting to the temple in Crawl are pretty much universal strategy in all roguelikes.

They weren't back when I was playing, but again, I was playing the game the way I wanted it to be rather than the way it was intended. It's my fault :). And you're definitely right about Crawl strategies applying to other roguelikes, so I took something away from the experience.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

After I feel on parity with Spelunky, I'm going back to trying to topple Brogue. After that, I'm going after DoomRL, which I have really no excuse not to be playing right now except that I already play too many video games. Then, I'm doing Sil. By that time, maybe it will be even better. I never played any of the *bands because they seemed like boring slogs, but this looks like a very special slog indeed.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I don't know if you guys consider FTL to be a roguelike, but apparently there is a free upgrade in the works for all PC versions, and a debut of an iPad version soon. http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/news/ftl-advanced-edition-ipad-version-announced/

Giving the update for free to existing owners is pure class, but I'll only play it for a few hours again if you still have to build a highly specific "ascension kit" for the space boss. That, and the dice-roll systems instead of something that seeds a bit more intelligently balanced toward my delicate video gamer needs. It's a fantastic game, but I can't help it, those two things sour the heck out of me about it.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

S.T.C.A. posted:

I agree that the unlocks in FTL are bullshit in terms of RNG reliance; I've gotten the stasis pod and opened it multiple times just to have no Rock homeworld afterwards. I can't even remember if I finally unlocked the crystal ship or not.

Really though, there's no "I *need* XYZ" to beat the game condition. I used to think that, but over time, you find that there's a lot of really easy ways to deal with most of the scenarios you encounter, and to be prepared for the final boss. If I manage to overcome my chronic lazyassitis, I'll set up an FTL stream (and hopefully not totally contradict myself).

Even if that's true, it means that instead of the game meeting me halfway and being balanced about stuff distribution and the endgame fight, I have to do all this research, either through in-game experimentation or through online discussions, about how to deal with each specific scenario. It's been a long time since I've had to play a roguelike that makes me do that kind of work, so I'm pretty spoiled.

I think there's also the theme of the game to sort of blame here. I've watched Star Trek since I was a kid, and if there's one thing the franchise is famous for, is Federation types being able to figure out the right way to deal with any given situation no matter how threadbare their ship or kit. That's part of the fantasy, and yeah it's ridiculous, but FTL deliberately taps into that, and doesn't quite give me that feeling of figuring out a solution. It feels more like a slot machine pull.

Early on, I even would trip around the map in a purposeful way, thinking maybe beacons that were out of the main path I wanted would have different levels of treasure/threat. Like there would be a reward for the risk of extra exploring. The only reward is a dice roll. Sure, in a regular roguelike, you usually want to fully explore a level, the risk you're taking is usually hunger or more powerful monsters spawning, and that's replicated in FTL well enough, but these days, you can also rely on a somewhat balanced RNG to spawn things that make it worth your while for that extra risk, while also giving you enough rope to hang yourself with. A completely random RNG isn't going to do this, and IMO, we're past the days of Rogue where that sort of thing was acceptable. And FTL just does everything else so perfectly .

And in spite of my current whining and knowing for sure that I'm going to play it for a couple days before ragequitting, I'm reinstalling the damned thing again. If it were a car, it'd be a thoroughly perfect one, but completely missing a windshield.

TL;DR: Sometimes it's not enough for an RNG to randomly love or hate you. And I'm an enormous baby.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

icantfindaname posted:

Is there any way to compile or get a version of brogue without the eels? I'm tired of level two being infested with eels. I have to cross 6 squares of water, hey look 80% of my health is gone. Nearly every other thing in the game can be gotten around with clever thinking but eels are just a straight up unavoidable gently caress you to the player.

I haven't played the latest version very much, but I used to use this simple strategy:
  • If an eel is next to you, hit it.
  • If it flees, throw a dart at it and move on. If there are two, throw one at each. If you think you can kill it with another dart throw, throw another dart.
  • If it doesn't flee, and you're less than 75%, move away. Otherwise, hit it again.
  • If you're low health, don't hit X near water.
  • Keep an eye on your stupid monkey near water.

Eels flee a bunch, use that.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Chinook posted:

I know this isn't exactly a roguelike, but it claims to have rougelike-ish elements, and it's like $1 today (and has been green lit on Steam):
https://indiegamestand.com/

It's called Tower of Guns, and I think it's been mentioned either here or in the early FPS thread before.

I jumped on this last night, and plan to fire it up today. I don't expect a whole heck of a lot. The style is certainly nice, with that Borderlands tin shack look, but it just looks like Random FPS: The Game. I'm not expecting a whole lotta layers here beyond maybe upgradable guns (yawn).

edit: quick impressions:600MB UDK game. Early access means having to hunt around for the executable.

This is only 10 minutes of playing and may not give the game full credit for what it is or hopes to be.

You unlock guns as you go along. You also unlock "perks." The majority of these are hidden away. We'll see how that works.

The hand-drawn style looks unique, and has an inborn humor to it.

Gameplay so far is similar to Serious Sam: lots of things coming at you, a lot of moving backwards while strafing and shooting.

In spite of the hand-drawn look to the game, it doesn't appear to have much personality beyond the hugbots. I saw

The quick level I played looked pretty basic, but that might be a combination of it being in alpha, and being an early tutorial-ish level. It's also possible that the level layout might be a static range of interconnected rooms, but each room has a number of random elements in it, such as layout (in 3 dimensions) and enemy placement. If that's the case, then it'll boil down again to Serious Sam, in which you just move from arena to arena and deal with dudes trying to kill you. If it's that, it's not bad as an FPS random arena shooter, but not terribly deep.

Part of what drew me to the game were the dozens of cannons firing projectiles, reminded me of a Little Nemo comic strip.

edit2: This from the developer on the randomized level design:

quote:

I'd be happy to share a bit of the process, although it's not very impressive. Of note: I'm an environment-artist-turned-scripter, and although gameplay scripting is simple enough to do, true procedural room generation is still a bit beyond me (hence me calling it "random compositing" and not "procedural generation"). However, I can CRANK out levels like crazy, since that's relies on skills I've been using for years and years. So... the rooms in ToG are all handbuilt, and then a slot-machine style of randomization determines what the player gets for each room. Sometimes I break up rooms into sub elements that I stream in, which further randomizes the room, and then on top of the level generation there are many different mob population sets per room, with varying degrees of hand crafted and randomized variations so the rooms feel fresh. Likewise, any level pickups are randomized too, such as those found in secrets. All in all, the process is primitive and a bit 'brute force', but really allows me to focus on the things I know I can pull off. It's actually led to a nice result where the player naturally improves as they learn room layouts (which aligns with a core experience I was targetingr: player improvement through system knowledge in addition to just raw skill improvement). Anyway, although the system has limits it should get people their money's worth.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Nov 16, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Yeah, I can't disagree with that assessment. It's a fine mod of the Unreal Engine, and there is something unique and baroque about coming up against nine cannons each also have nine cannons firing at you, but it's just basically random Serious Sam with claustrophobia with no co-op and a nice graphical look. It's worth a buck fifty and a few hours of your time, and vaguely roguelike in that it offers some new combination of terrain each play, but that's it for now.

To be fair, it looks like it isn't promising much more than that, and development is limited to one dude with a dream. I don't mind funding that.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Here's a thing: http://oryxdesignlab.com/news/2013/11/25/trials-of-oryx-begins

quote:

Introducing the first of the many Trials of Oryx. Game creators are challenged to create a game of any kind using the Ultimate Roguelike Tileset. The contest lasts one month and winners will receive wonderful prizes including free Oryx Design Lab sprites for life and up to $500.00 in cash. More information on the trial including rules can be found here.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to play some games using some of my artwork! I want to give back to the community, and have a bit of fun.

I still haven't really seen a roguelike use these excellent tiles that's held my attention for more than a few minutes, not counting Brogue Tiles (http://oryxdesignlab.com/brogue-tiles/), which is a rev behind.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Yahtzee is making a Cthulhuesque "Survival Horror Roguelike."

http://fullyramblomatic-yahtzee.blogspot.com/2013/11/thy-shadow-consumed.html

I stopped watching his videos some time ago because I realized that witty videos weren't super big things in my life, but I'm interested in seeing how this goes.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

madjackmcmad posted:

You're wrong! :cheers:

I hate the discussion because it drags on for pages and never ends well. No one is happier, nobody changes their opinion, and less people are talking about cool niche games that they found because they saw this blog from this guy who has a friend who's cousin is a big Python nerd and he spent all of last semester at GT writing a game about exploring the ruins of a Mesopotamian bakery-temple, with procedurally generated leavening techniques and grain based religions.

If it happens, it happens. People like to discuss things I don't like sometimes as well.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I'm not gonna argue over whether a thing is a roguelike or not, but to branch off of the earlier "random hallways are boring" discussion, FPS or overhead bullet hell arenas are sorta not my thing either.

I was just playing Spelunky, kind of trying to be mindful of the whole "random maps are boring" thing, and sure, some pieces of Spelunky's generated maps are not that interesting to me anymore. But on the whole, they still are interesting, challenging, and fun to navigate. Some of why that is, has been the fact that they're at least partly hand-made instead of robotically random, as previously discussed. But the other part (and here is what is missing from those shooters perhaps) is the item/environment/trap interactions.

Visually, Spelunky is also gorgeous and varying, which helps with the novelty. And there are some decent mysteries to go after, which so far I've remained mostly spoiler free on. (Just discovered Worm today!)

FPS's, overhead bullet hell arenas, or even Spelunky-likes that go for the roguelike approach seem, at least to me, to go with the random hallways, random enemies, random fanfare powerups, a splash of Internet Humor 2.0, and more or less stop there. So far, for me that hasn't been enough, because darn it, they're just not that much fun. I love Vlambeer's playful art and approach to making games, but Nuclear Throne looks incredibly tedious.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

In Brogue 1.7.3, do allies gain levels on their own, ever? Or do they only do so when zapped with one of those single-use wands?

vvv That's a big if! On the other hand, if I happen to find a wand of multiplicity... Even still though, if I find an empowerment wand in a vault, even a moderately powerful weapon or weak charm is more attractive, because those never break if you're careful, whereas allies get slaughtered all the time.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Dec 4, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

DalaranJ posted:

I should add that a wand charge adds what used to be "four levels" worth of experience allowing your ally to eat/study an upgrade trait every time you do it.

Ok, that's a pretty important detail that was missing from the readme.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Would Sir, You Are Being Hunted, count as a roguelike? Perhaps not, it's only somewhat more roguelike than DayZ. Anyway, here's the breakdown of roguelike features it does have:
  • Random level layout and monster distribution
  • Five islands to explore
  • Limited saving to certain points (sorta semi-perma death to keep tension ratcheted)
  • Harsher-than-casual difficulty
  • You start with little-to-nothing and must scavenge
  • Hunger, health, and light medical mechanics
  • Ability to set traps and make plans

And, the argument for it not being a roguelike:
  • Can't be said to have a dungeon with walls and suchlike
  • Not turn-based, though it is somewhat self-paced
  • No permadeath yet (saves don't erase themselves)
  • It's really an open-world survival FPS
  • Unlikely to have the depth of a traditional roguelike
  • Easy to master relative to traditional roguelikes

Either way, I guess I could do a quick write-up and the worst that could happen is that it just doesn't show up in the OP.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted

Cost: $20, $10 when occasionally on sale
Genre: Open-world Survival FPS with a Faint Smattering of Roguelike Features
Platforms: Win/Linux/Mac, DRM-free and/or Steam
Mods/Forks: None of note yet (it's a bit early yet)

If it's important to you to be enveloped in a pencil-thin plot and the dreary damp countryside of northern England, while also being stalked by heartless tweed-wearing robot hunters with British accents, that's... a really specific need on your part. Sir (or Madam), You Are Being Hunted takes place on a randomly-generated set of five islands, dominated by four biomes, whereupon are scattered 20-some fragments of an exploded experimental British Machine of Some Sort that has teleported you here. Your goal is to sneak, survive, and gather machine parts to the central island, and you "ascend" by leaving successfully. Presumably in time for tea and biscuits or something.

Although the plot is less than serious, the gameplay is moderately difficult. It's not a power fantasy. You'll start with very little equipment, though there are alternative roles that give you an early leg up. If you want a gun, you'll typically have to earn it by risking your hide, and ammo is scarce. All five islands are ruins, infested with droll pipe-smoking, rifle slinging robots. You'll have to balance hunger and stealth mechanics in a day/night cyle, while looting buildings and the odd robot you'll destroy. Islands are procedurally generated with random heightmaps and flora, with clusters of villages to loot. In a sense, the game is a playground for experimenting with the AI, using cover, traps, distractions, direct violence, and lots of nervous sneaking about. Gameplay roughly boils down to a combination of DayZ and the Thief series, making it fairly unique among both FPS games and Roguelikes.

Sir, is currently in alpha, with no specific release date, and many of the features described above may be expanded upon or added to as it nears completion. (For example, hunting and cooking were recently introduced.) In reality, it's sort of a middle step for developer Big Robot in developing a much larger game that generates whole worlds instead of merely islands. And, as a FPS, the focus on 3D and multimedia also translates to a decreased complexity of play. It'd be a stretch to expect "true" roguelike depth out of Sir, but it'd be a mistake to turn up your nose at this fine game. Jolly good show!

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Dec 8, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Over the past 36 hours of owning Sir You Are Being Hunted, I've played around 4 hours and visited their forums enough to realize that the game is two things: hard, and not completely refined. And folks are complaining about it (not that people here are).

However, I don't think it's quite that hard, and I'm the furthest thing from a pro gamer. I'm over six hundred deaths into Spelunky without a win yet. Still, I've managed to get an axe, beat the poo poo out of a few dudes, and have a gun and two rounds. I have a hell of a hill to climb with about 23 devices parts left to deliver, and from what I understand, each time you deliver a part, the difficulty increases.

I think there's a certain perception with FPS games that things are supposed to be somewhat easy. You're supposed to find that first gun, and then it's just an upward rise from there. But I think SYABH is meant to be a desperate stealthy crawl from start to finish, and I for one am hoping it retains a good level of desperation as it nears its completion date. What it does need, though, is a rising challenge as you get better, and it's starting to get that with the newer bots, like the bastard one that lays traps and then its dog finds you and goes, "WOOF WOOF. BOW, WOW," and holds you like a bear trap.

Really looking forward to this thing's end vision, because I have a feeling me and the developer have played a lot of the same PC games of the late nineties/early aughts.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

Yeah, the game's difficult, but it's manageable.

The one thing I wish Sir had at the moment (and one thing the developers have explicitly said it will never get) are interiors. Just place everything in lootable containers so the RNG could still be in charge of distribution. I think it'd do a lot for the game's atmosphere if you could enter buildings and genuinely scavenge for supplies. Right now it's a little lame to click on a door and instantly access the inventory like you're opening a box.

Sadly, they can't make that happen: http://www.big-robot.com/2013/07/20/why-cant-i-enter-the-buildings-in-sir/

Short answer: they're three dudes, and would rather focus on other things that have a bigger impact.

Now, I'm on their side because this is the sort of project that I really want to succeed, but I tend to view villages, buildings, etc. as "interiors," in that they are sets of obstacles and cover, and so forth, to foil the AI with. Sure, I'd much rather have enterable buildings, but at least for now, I'm willing to overlook it.

edit: and yes, you do say that the game will never get that feature, woops

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 9, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

ChibiSoma posted:

Oh my, oh my, I may be lost in TOME for some time. What an absurd amount of things to read! There's no reason a 7HP slime should get a massive panel of text for you to intricately go over, but it's there!

Yep, this'd be reason number one why I stopped playing ToME.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I've played about half a game so far in Bionic Dues, and it's a great coffee break game (which is why I'm taking so long), and a great start on a game, but it still needs that long-term love from Arcen to really fill its britches. It's definitely solid as-is, but I feel it lacks a layer or two of gameplay or complication.

Arcen's currently working on their new game The Last Federation, so according to their calendar, they're aiming for a new expansion for BD in Feb/Mar 2014. (Bug fixes and base-game adjustments will probably be backported.)

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Jordan7hm posted:

There are six prizes being given away:
SotS: The Pit
FTL
Teleglitch
Risk of Rain x2 x1
Dungeonmans (thanks again madjackmcmad)

There was a contest? I was just trying to be cool like everyone else and do a writeup.

Since I'm last in line, here are my preferences in order:
  • Risk of Rain
  • Dungeonmans
  • SotS: The Pit
  • Teleglitch
  • FTL

Steam name: _doctorfrog_ (http://steamcommunity.com/id/doctorfrog/). I actually have FTL on my Steam account, and you can feel free to re-gift it if it's what's left, otherwise, I'll be happy to pass it on.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Dec 17, 2013

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Is it that ToME is "the best," the most popular, or are they just better at driving traffic to the poll? (Me: Spelunky, every year since 2008.)

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doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Jordan7hm posted:

The guy in that video is quite annoying.

It's the same guy on every Twitch stream or YouTube game video I've ever seen. Why does everyone have to be a wacky white guy simply bubbling over with personality? It's either that or they emit an adolescent scream of displeasure every time something happens to them?

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