Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Nobody has mentioned brogue in a while, but is there some kind of established plan you're supposed to follow w/r/t equipment? Should I get a plate armor and endgame weapon right away and keep them around until I have enough strength to use them, or not worry about that until the endgame? Should scrolls of enchanting be used primarily for armor, or should I use them on staves and rings and such?

# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 01:08

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

DalaranJ posted:

The changes to the stealth system are so game shifting in 1.7.3 that I no longer know the correct answer to this question. I haven't been playing as much either, so I haven't had time to generate a proper opinion.

What are these changes to the stealth system everyone is mentioning? I just started playing the game recently. Was stealth heavily buffed or something?

# ¿ Nov 8, 2013 03:18

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

broguetalk: Jesus christ, having lots of allies and stepping on a confusion trap is a clusterfuck.

Also I died on level 23 with a huge band of fuckyou allies because I thought I could solo a tentacle horror. It had about 5hp left and was on fire when it killed me. Of course I had plenty of escape items too plus a health charm I didn't use because of course not. These games are great at showcasing human stupidity.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Nov 10, 2013

# ¿ Nov 10, 2013 10:37

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

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.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Nov 15, 2013

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 08:51

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

madjackmcmad posted:

There was a time (2009ish) when I had considered taking Dungeonmans down the more serious simulation route, but I turned away. It didn't feel like the type of game I really wanted to make, I sort of felt like I was just checking off Roguelike Checkboxes. Complex inventory, weight, special pickup commands, stuff like oh you got wet some point within the last 50 rounds so this cold attack hurts 2% more and if your stremf is too low you might catch a cold which will cause you to sneeze and ruin your stealth but also gives you a +5 defense against nasal maladies such as disease mold and...

The other two things were UI considerations, and that I had gone with sprites instead of tiles so I'd need a lot more work to convey the massive bestiary a real Nethack evolution would have.

What are the core things you'd carry forward if you were bringing Nethack into the glistening neon future?

The complex interactions. First of all I think people exaggerate how much of a problem the need for spoilers is. It's definitely not the game's biggest problem, probably not even in the top three or so. The problem really lies in the necessity for the player to use the really boring and tedious interactions to survive. I certainly never had the patience to survive as tourist or even as wizard, because it involved writing elbereth every 100 loving turns which takes hours of real world time, and using darts and whatever lovely daggers you find lying around to attack with for a significant part of the game, etc, etc. They would be fun and interesting mechanics if you didn't have to heavily abuse them to actually beat the game. Most of the interactions in the game aren't this, though, they're just fun and interesting to varying degrees, although some not as much as others.

Beyond that the fact that the game has a sort of story and unique levels that don't consist of boring maze and don't fit some pattern of 'here's the undead branch, here's the sewers branch, here's the spiders branch, here's the hell branch, etc'. The castle, medusa's lair, the elemental planes, the dwarven mines, sokoban, the quest; The fact that I can list so many off the top of my head without having played it in a long time says something. But then again there's gehennom which is terrible.

Nethack is really incredible because it has, at the same time, some of the best game design I've ever seen, and some really really bad game design along with it, possibly in equal parts. I've always been of the opinion that a game consistently as good as nethack's good half would be basically a Michelangelo level masterpiece. I don't want to praise the game too much, but it does seem to be cool to hate in a hipster-y fashion, and lots of the critics of the game seem to think its interactions are dwarf fortress adventure style "you hurt your left tendon and now have a -3% accuracy penalty with crossbows only", when it's actually not like that at all. The variety is variety in environment and story, and how the player interacts with it, not in random number stats.

Basically games like ToME and Dredmor feel sort of dead inside, even though they deliver that experience at a consistent level of quality, and the reason for this is that they don't have the same meaningful interactions between the player and the story and game world. I don't think it's an invalid approach to making a game, but I don't think they do it very well. I think Dungeon Crawl does the 'homogenous dungeon crawler' approach better, with a better balance between variety and consistency. I'm not impressed by Dredmor's sense of humor, and ToME feels like really boring lord of the rings fanfiction.

Brogue goes another direction entirely and throws out the lore, environmental variety and character building dress-up game and goes just for tactical depth, and it does it very very well IMO. You can focus on allies, stealth, environment manipulation, magic, or melee, and all of these work equally well and you aren't forced to choose any one beyond what you get as item drops.

So that fills my quota for writing walls of text about roguelikes for a long time. If I keep going please stop me.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Dec 17, 2013

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 17:52

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

edit :never mind

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jan 24, 2014

# ¿ Jan 24, 2014 01:17

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Not that I've played SotS, but my guess is that the goal of randomization is not to change the optimal strategy, but rather to push players outside their comfort zones. Sure, different approaches may be viable, but odds are most people are just going to find one thing that works and then do it over and over again, because people gravitate towards what they perceive to be optimal play even if it bores them.

Like he said though there's a difference between 'comfort zone' and 'the only viable way to play'. If most of the game is poorly designed and doesn't work well then players will gravitate towards the parts that aren't broken and now you're forcing them to play half-baked, half implemented poo poo. Full disclosure I have not played sword of the stars so this is just a general point.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 23:16

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

So how do you suggest encouraging players to keep trying to find other viable strategies after the first one? This is not a minor problem; if your game has multiple paths to victory, odds are that many players will just play the same path over and over again unless you take active steps to get them to try the other ones, even if they're all equally viable.

I'm not saying that randomizing the tech tree is necessarily the right thing to do, but it's far from obvious that it's the wrong thing to do.

I would like to think I could trust the players of my game to figure out what viable strategies are, and if they don't want to pursue them, or they want to pursue one at the expense of others then fine. For a while now I've been playing exclusively MiBe in Dungeon Crawl even though I'm well aware there are shitloads of other viable builds. I intend to try those at some point but for now I want to win with that. It seems like you think your players need to be forced to play your game the 'right' way and I don't really understand that. I don't think it's actually a problem. Dungeon Crawl, for example, doesn't suffer as a game because it doesn't force you to play multiple builds in my opinion.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jan 27, 2014

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 23:23

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

victrix posted:

Shooters now refers to fps games instead of the horrible 'shmup' for the original japanese shooters

Granted, 'roguelike' is just as horrible as shmup, so I guess thats ok

(seriously roguelike is a terrible terrible word for a genre)

The games were clones and/or modifications of a game called rogue? How is that a terrible name? It's not a super great name no but it's not like it doesn't make sense.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 02:25

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Jeffrey posted:

Procedural SRPGs is kinda close but that's still a worse name than roguelike.

SRPGS are like Fire Emblem though? The 'traditional' roguelikes like Nethack, Crawl, ADOM, etc are more similar to something like Diablo than a game like Fire Emblem.

I think the best descriptor to replace roguelike would be just 'dungeon crawler', to be honest. They're not even procedural to the extent people usually talk about. Nethack, Crawl, ADOM, etc, all have defined branch structures that are the same every time.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 3, 2014

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 04:58

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Bouchacha posted:

My favored strategy is to recruit liberal lawyers and go the disguise/stealth approach because they're already so charismatic. Bonus is that they're also amazingly good at defending themselves in court, especially when you have 3-4 sleeper liberal judges. If they do get life sentences, you just recruit another team of liberal lawyers and sneak into prison wearing guard uniforms that your liberal fashion designer put together.

Could someone explain this game to me? I downloaded it and am playing it and the bewilderment has yet to wear off. Is Tarn Adams a political conservative, by chance?

I guess it's ten years old but still, hahahahahhaha what the gently caress

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Aug 13, 2014

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 04:46

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Zoq-Fot-Pik posted:

Yea. Also very often the "roguelike elements" in these FPS games are just cheap substitutes for actual game design, level design and difficulty, a combination that results in a bad game every single time.

Yeah trying to make a Doom-esque roguelike FPS is the most baffling thing, because literally the thing that makes Doom a great game is the level design. Having an computer poo poo out levels at random completely destroys its appeal.

And BTW I think the statement above works almost as well if you remove the "FPS". Basically the game that defined what roguelike is was Nethack, but in my opinion the defining characteristics of that game had very little to do with the randomization and more to do with the meticulousness and clever thinking required during play. It's almost an adventure game in certain ways. Unfortunately it's borderline unplayable because of difficulty and the 'clever thinking' is just way, way, way too obtuse, but I don't think I've seen a single one of this wave of roguelike games that tries to take that and fix it or make it work as opposed to just acting like procedural level generation were the second coming of Christ. Brogue comes pretty close. Maybe that's the tabletop/D&D aspects of Nethack and the original roguelikes? In any case I just don't really feel like procedural generation is all that useful in game design.

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Aug 18, 2014

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 05:27

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Nintendo Kid posted:

Nope. OBLIGE owns.

It looks like that actually tries to produce contained levels as opposed to endless procedural dungeons, though? I don't think that's really what FPS roguelikes go for usually

Turtlicious posted:

Wait what are you guys talking about? What is Oblige, DoomRL, and the "Arsenal pack" I'm confused. Wasn't doom some lovely xbox game?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3420790

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 05:38

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Turtlicious posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9tzDGOdTA

I just got it from the title.

System Shock 2 is kind of lame as well

I get it re-defined the genre, but as a game on it's own it's kind of terrible, I didn't know I had to give a thesis statement to spout an opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBDmwYXJ_dA

Here's an example of a good Doom level, narrated by a spergy dude who knows the game inside and out.

Seriously though, this is relevant because it pretty much defined the genre of game that these FPS roguelikes are trying and failing miserably to be. It's widely regarded as A Good Game, despite your snap judgement after 5 minutes of googling. Why would you not study it to see why it works if you're making a game like it?

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 07:22

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Turtlicious posted:

"Yeah I definitely can do better."

Turtlicious posted:

... Call of Duty ...

hmmmmmmmmm

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 07:57

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Angry Diplomat posted:

Gladiator is better than Fighter, generally speaking; it's a much smoother and easier start since you don't have heavy armour and a big shield hampering your attacks and evasion. Aside from that, yeah, Minotaur and Gargoyle are the easiest possible choices if you want to play a dedicated melee scrapper. Minotaur gains combat skills absurdly fast and is quite tough in general, whereas Gargoyle is just functionally immune to drat near everything.

An axe wielding HoBe is the best IMO, Gargoyle is too easy and lets you ignore lots of stuff every other loadout has to worry about (well, maybe that's a plus). Minotaur is a class for when you want to go melee but don't know what kind of weapon you'll get, as a Berserker you're guaranteed a weapon from Trog (and axes are the best) and Ho is better with axes and more flexible in general outside of other weapon skills

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Sep 5, 2014

# ¿ Sep 5, 2014 03:26

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

ToxicFrog posted:

In Nethack, at least, the historical justification is explore mode. You're expected to play on explore mode at first, where death is not permanent; once you think you have a good handle on the game -- i.e. once you are confident you can "solve the puzzle" without making any fatal mistakes -- you turn off explore mode and try to get on the high score list.

Not really, I don't think. To the extent that Nethack was designed at all you're definitely supposed to figure it out yourself. Nethack isn't really a puzzle game, it's an adventure game with a ridiculously, almost unplayably difficult RPG bolted onto it. It's a very interesting concept that could probably work in the hands of someone competent enough but Nethack was designed by committee by programmers over like a decade, sooooo....

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 05:32

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

I'm going to revive definition chat because I hate this thread and its posters

'Roguelike' isn't actually a coherent genre of video game. You can't make a 'pure' roguelike, all roguelikes are crossovers with other genres, dungeon crawl, adventure, platformer, etc. It's a category of games that have some common secondary design elements, it's not actually a genre on its own

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 21:41

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Well nethack is an unholy amalgamation of adventure game and dungeon crawl parts, and that's the game that started the buzzword to begin with

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 21:45

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

I always thought Crawl was easier than Nethack. The sheer tedium of writing Elbereth on the ground 1000 times made it unplayable for me. Dungeon Crawl is slow, but Nethack is absolutely intolerable.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 23:55

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Speaking of Brogue, I don't think it's actually possible to win more than like 50% of its games. You're not guaranteed to get a workable set of equipment, and even if a good set gets spawned you have to correctly predict what you're going to get in the future because with the hunger clock being what it is you can't go back to pick another item from vaults. And even if you do get a good set of items, for the last few floors you can't really do anything but dive blindly and hope to get lucky

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Dec 9, 2014

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 04:47

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Jordan7hm posted:

I'm not sure I care about RL TASes (the games just aren't that interesting to watch, as far as I'm concerned), but going back to what I talked about yesterday, I'll watch the hell out of a Doom TAS. Different strokes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBDmwYXJ_dA

here you go, a real person speedrunning the best and also hardest Doom level set

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 06:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

i've been playing persona lately. no more bear puns. please

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Dec 17, 2014

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 02:01

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I admit to not having played ToME4, but I get the impression that its main issue is that most monsters are chaff and it's not readily apparent which ones aren't unless you take the time to carefully read each monster's stat sheet -- when, again, 95+% of them are chaff. What's really needed is some kind of this monster could gently caress you up alert or something.

The problem being that it's hard for the game to evaluate what "gently caress you up" means. The easiest to evaluate is "this monster has at least one move that could kill you on its next move", but that doesn't include things like "it could paralyze you and then spend the following three turns summoning so many enemies that there's nowhere to escape to".

In Dungeon Crawl at least this isn't completely accurate. I would describe Dungeon Crawl as having a low level of combat intensity going on at all times with an emphasis on positioning, IE if you just wander through an area and don't pay attention you'll get surrounded and be in danger of dying, even if the area would be safe to complete with careful positioning and a slow pace. At the same time lots of monsters require changing rings to get different temporary resistances, and are safe to fight if you do this but if you forget you'll be in deep trouble.

Basically the whole game is an exercise in attention to detail and meticulousness. It's also a long game, taking a normal player probably 5 or more hours of ingame time (with permadeath) at the least to do a basic win, with no postgame content, and . I couldn't imagine trying to play it without autoexplore, it just takes too long. It's not empty spaces or anything, just lots of chaff monsters that may or may not have some special gimmick you have to recognize and work around.

To be perfectly honest 99% of games I've played aren't interesting enough to justify forcing the player to play through poo poo they don't want to. If you're making a short game you can omit it, but if your game takes any longer than like an hour or two to win, I don't really have time to slog through repetitive poo poo over and over again without it

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 21:31

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

lurker1981 posted:

A game where the levels and monsters were exactly the same every single time you started a new game. The ability to savescum is a part of the game and is encouraged. Monsters move in "real time" without the player taking his/her turns. Multiple lives, or you can't die in a "dungeon", ever. Cheat codes (I'm giving nethack a pass with this one, though, because even in wizard mode I still can't beat the game without wishing myself a genuine amulet of yendor; it's so hard that even in "god mode" it is still possible to die horribly). You can play the game once and never feel like playing it again because you saw everything there was to see and do.

A JRPG?

Unormal posted:

Myst is the least roguelike game.

Or an adventure game/visual novel/whatever

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 16:03

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

victrix posted:

nerd rogue manifesto

this is actually a thing a live adult human being wrote in complete seriousness. think about that

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 19:17

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

I finally beat Brogue. I had to cheat and use an item list though, though the seed itself was random

# ¿ Jan 24, 2016 02:21

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

An item list? What do you mean? Like a list of items that show up in the seed?

Yeah. There's a seedscummer program I found on the wiki which gives a list of the exact items generated on each floor for a seed. The link in the wiki is broken now but it's probably somewhere on the internet

http://brogue.wikia.com/wiki/Seedscummer

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jan 25, 2016

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 02:31

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Just beat Nethack for the first time, *checks alt.org logs* 14 years after playing an online game first. Well, I didn�t play at all for 10 of those years, but dang

https://pastebin.com/aS9xG6gG

code:

Unix NetHack Version 3.6.6-0 post-release - last build Wed Mar  2 21:18:52 2022 (68a0ebdf17ebd0808775aac4cd10437b340f7f63,branch:master).
 
Game began 2022-06-30 06:34:11, ended 2022-07-07 07:43:31.
 
icantfindaname, neutral male human Tourist
 
           ------
     A    2 ....|
     ---------.@--   ---
     |.......|.@.-- --...
     |.......|.A..---.....
     |..@@...A..@a.-.......
     |....B..|A...---.......
     |.......|A..-- --....%.
     ---------..--   ----)--
           A ...|  -----...-----
            ----- |............).
                  |..............
                  |..............
                  |....[).......
                  |.............
                  -------------
Icantfinda the Voyager      St:25 Dx:18 Co:18 In:23 Wi:23 Ch:18  Neutral
Astral Plane $:0  HP:201(201) Pw:10(126) AC:-38 Exp:25 T:112078 
 
Latest messages:
 The Angel of Offler zaps you with a magic missile!
 The magic missile whizzes by you!
 The magic missile bounces!
 The magic missile bounces!
 The magic missile bounces!
 The priest of Blind Io swings his mace at the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The priest of Blind Io hits the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The priest of Blind Io misses the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 Unknown command ' '.
 Unknown command ' '.
 The high priest intones:
 "Pilgrim, you enter a sacred place!"
 The vampire bat turns to flee.
 The high priest zaps himself with a wand of speed monster!
 The high priest is suddenly moving faster.
 You hit the vampire bat!
 "Mercy!  Dost thou wish me to die of laughter?"
 The Angel of Blind Io swings his long sword at the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The Angel of Blind Io misses the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The Angel of Blind Io swings his long sword at the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The Angel of Blind Io hits the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 The Angel of Blind Io misses the renegade Angel of The Lady.
 Unknown command ' '.
 The Angel of Offler zaps you with a magic missile!
 The magic missile misses the Angel of Offler.
 The magic missile whizzes by you!
 You hear some noises.
 You hear some noises in the distance.
 The high priest wields a mace!
 Unknown command ' '.
 Unknown command ' '.
 The priest of Blind Io swings his mace at the fire ant.
 The priest of Blind Io hits the fire ant.
 The priest of Blind Io hits the fire ant.
 You sense a faint wave of psychic energy.
 Unknown command ' '.
 Unknown command ' '.
 There is a high altar to The Lady (neutral) here.
 What do you want to sacrifice? [J or ?*] ?
 You offer the Amulet of Yendor to The Lady...
 An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...
 The voice of The Lady rings out: "Mortal, thou hast done well!"
 "In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!"
 You ascend to the status of Demigod...
 Do you want your possessions identified? [ynq] (y) y
 Do you want to see your attributes? [ynq] (y) y
 Do you want an account of creatures vanquished? [ynaq] (y) y
 Do you want a list of species genocided and extinct? [ynq] (y) y
 Do you want to see your conduct? [ynq] (y) y
 Do you want to see the dungeon overview? [ynq] (y) y
 
Inventory:
 Amulets
  m - an uncursed amulet of life saving (being worn)
  s - an uncursed amulet of magical breathing
 Weapons
  E - the blessed rustproof +6 Vorpal Blade (weapon in hand)
 Armor
  v - a blessed thoroughly rusty corroded +5 helm of brilliance (being worn)
  a - an uncursed rustproof +0 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn)
  t - an uncursed fireproof +3 pair of jumping boots (being worn)
  d - a blessed fireproof +5 pair of speed boots
  B - a blessed +3 shield of reflection (being worn)
  l - a blessed fireproof +3 cloak of protection (being worn)
  g - a blessed +4 Hawaiian shirt (being worn)
  H - an uncursed +5 gray dragon scale mail (being worn)
 Spellbooks
  G - the uncursed Book of the Dead
 Rings
  D - an uncursed ring of conflict (on right hand)
  z - an uncursed ring of free action (on left hand)
  f - an uncursed ring of levitation
 Wands
  X - a wand of death (0:4)
  R - a wand of digging (0:5)
  C - a wand of digging (0:0)
  V - a wand of teleportation (0:3)
  Y - a wand of teleportation (0:3)
  I - a wand of teleportation (0:2)
 Tools
  Z - a blessed greased bag of holding containing 64 items
  h - an uncursed sack named explodeables containing 2 items
  P - the cursed Bell of Opening (0:1)
  A - a cursed brass lantern named mepty (lit)
  e - a can of grease (0:6)
  w - the cursed Candelabrum of Invocation (7 candles attached)
  n - the blessed Orb of Fate (0:4)
  Q - the blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card
  y - an uncursed skeleton key
  W - a cursed stethoscope
  r - a +0 unicorn horn
 
Contents of the sack named explodeables:
  a wand of cancellation (0:4)
  a wand of cancellation (0:3)
 
Contents of the bag of holding:
  a cursed amulet of life saving
  a blessed amulet of reflection
  the blessed rustproof +0 Magicbane
  an uncursed +0 pair of water walking boots
  an uncursed +0 oilskin cloak
  15 uncursed K-rations
  an uncursed lembas wafer
  an uncursed pancake
  an uncursed pancake
  5 blessed tins of nurse meat
  3 uncursed lizard corpses
  10 blessed scrolls of blank paper
  a blessed scroll of remove curse
  2 uncursed scrolls of remove curse
  an uncursed scroll of scare monster
  2 uncursed scrolls of scare monster
  3 blessed scrolls of teleportation
  an uncursed scroll of teleportation
  an uncursed scroll of teleportation
  3 cursed scrolls of teleportation
  an uncursed potion of booze
  5 uncursed potions of full healing
  3 uncursed potions of monster detection
  5 uncursed potions of paralysis
  9 potions of holy water
  an uncursed ring of sustain ability
  an uncursed ring of teleport control
  an uncursed ring of warning
  a wand of cold (0:5)
  a wand of death (0:5)
  a wand of death (1:4)
  a wand of death (0:0)
  a wand of digging (0:0)
  a wand of digging (0:6)
  a wand of digging (0:5)
  a wand of digging (0:4)
  a wand of digging (0:4)
  a wand of digging (0:4)
  a wand of digging (0:4)
  a wand of digging (0:0)
  a wand of fire (0:8)
  a wand of fire (0:3)
  a wand of fire (0:2)
  a wand of fire (0:2)
  a wand of lightning (0:6)
  a blessed wand of secret door detection (0:13)
  a wand of teleportation (0:6)
  a wand of teleportation (0:4)
  a wand of teleportation (0:4)
  a wand of teleportation (0:3)
  a wand of teleportation (0:0)
  a wand of wishing (0:0)
  an uncursed tooled horn
  an expensive camera (0:55)
  a magic marker (0:55)
  an uncursed stethoscope
  an uncursed towel
  a +0 unicorn horn
  7 uncursed wax candles
  4 uncursed aquamarine stones
  4 uncursed obsidian stones
  an uncursed ruby
  a blessed luckstone
  an uncursed luckstone
 
Icantfindaname the Tourist's attributes:
 
Background:
 You were a Voyager, a level 25 male human Tourist.
 You were neutral, on a mission for The Lady
 who was opposed by Blind Io (lawful) and Offler (chaotic).
 You were in the endgame, on the Astral Plane.
 You entered the dungeon 112078 turns ago.
 You had 50026969 experience points, 9973031 more were needed for level 26.
 
Basics:
 You had all 201 hit points.
 You had 10 out of 126 energy points (spell power).
 Your armor class was -38.
 Your wallet was empty.
 Autopickup was off.
 
Final Characteristics:
 Your strength was 25 (base:18/94, innate limit:18/100).
 Your dexterity was 18 (limit:18).
 Your constitution was 18 (limit:18).
 Your intelligence was 23 (base:18, innate limit:18).
 Your wisdom was 23 (base:18, innate limit:18).
 Your charisma was 18 (limit:18).
 
Final Status:
 You were unencumbered.
 You were wielding a long sword.
 You had basic skill with long sword.
 
Final Attributes:
 You were the Envoy of Balance.
 You were piously aligned.
 You were magic-protected.
 You were fire resistant.
 You were cold resistant.
 You were sleep resistant.
 You were shock resistant.
 You were poison resistant.
 You saw invisible.
 You were telepathic.
 You were warned.
 You had automatic searching.
 You were invisible to others.
 You caused conflict.
 You could jump.
 You had a moderate defense bonus (+9).
 You were protected.
 You took half physical damage.
 You took half spell damage.
 You were very fast.
 You had reflection.
 You had free action.
 Your life would have been saved.
 You were extremely lucky.
 You had extra luck.
 Good luck did not time out for you.
 You survived after being killed once.
 
Vanquished creatures:
    Demogorgon
    Orcus
    Juiblex
the Wizard of Yendor (twice)
    Famine
    Vlad the Impaler
  a high priest
  3 mastodons
    Medusa
    Croesus
 16 krakens
the Master of Thieves
 an Archon

Got pretty lucky, found GDSM and a shield of reflection early and without wishing. Had like 5 wishes unused. I got Grayswandir from a wish and vaporized it by accident, so had to use Vorpal instead. Almost died at Orcus, I did not read up and got swarmed by him, Demogorgon and an arch lich, which is where the death and life saving happened. I had to escape further down gehenna and get lucky with uncontrolled Orb level-port to bring me above Jubilex�s swamp, because I had cursed gloves and couldn�t change rings

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Jul 7, 2022

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 08:59

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Actually playing through Nethack I conclude it is a very good game, lives up to the reputation, better than many/most(?) rougelikes, especially the other more orthodox ascii roguelikes, I like it way better than DCSS now. Very, very hard though, an order of magnitude harder than even vanilla DCSS which has been getting harder for years. Some subsystems (pets) are a lot worse designed and less fun than others (items), which is bad because pets are necessary for a lot of starts to survive. Spellcasting is of limited use to most classes except wizard. Item and tool using builds break the endgame, so tourist is actually one of the strongest roles overall

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Jul 7, 2022

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 09:22

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Is caves of qud made by a goon?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2022 20:30

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

What game is ICOV? Google doesn't return anything for that

# ¿ Sep 19, 2022 04:00

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Ashurbanipal posted:

after reading about caves of qud in the morrowind thread on here (of all places) I have been extremely enjoying it, like extremely. was hoping to explore the roguelike genre in a little bit more detail, and kept seeing "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" (CDDA) pop up in relation to caves of qud. I would really like to jump into "the" roguelike, like the preeminent game of the genre (though maybe I'm misguided in thinking any games would represent what I'm talking about).

a lot of "tier lists" and what not with the word "roguelike" in them don't really seem to include the type of game I'm looking for... would you all say that CDDA is "the" big roguelike game I should be looking into next, or is there another title that has the kind of universal recognition I'm looking for?

I should include the bizarro world, extradimensional, "cosmic horror," aspects of caves of qud being mirrored in CDDA really drew me to look more into CDDA; not sure if any other recommendations would have the same kind of themes.

I'm going to do the obnoxious thing and say I think Nethack is a legitimately very good game and my vote for "the" traditional roguelike. At one point this would have been the standard answer, but it has a bad reputation now apparently. I think it's a straight up better game than the alternatives, DCSS, ADOM, Angband, etc though. It's probably harder than them, but it's not THAT hard. You basically have to memorize the wiki and know how all of the systems and mechanics work (and just reroll until you get a magic lamp) but that's not cheating, that's the point of the game, like secrets in the NES legend of zelda. The other traditional ascii roguelikes are much easier but also much simpler and have fewer complex systems interacting, and are just kind of boring IMO. You may as well just play Diablo instead of Angband. DCSS is the better of the remaining three, ADOM and Angband are just kind of bad IMO

Brogue is good too though, along with many other more modern games, although I�m not sure there is any one that is much more influential than others. My point is only regarding the old, trad, ascii games

I guess Brogue, Necrodancer and DoomRL (DRL now?) are my votes for modern roguelikes. And Dwarf Fortress

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:53 on May 21, 2023

# ¿ May 21, 2023 05:24

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

I think the reputation is unfair; It�s not THAT complicated, and it�s not like the mechanics in the other ascii roguelikes are spelled out to the player in simple format, even in modern games like Qud. A number of the systems in nethack are basically irrelevant, like identifying rings with sinks is never worth it because it destroys the ring and you can just use id scrolls. The pet AI sucks but you can simply play without them. Stealing from shops is basically never worth it, there�s more than enough money to buy everything you see in shops. Polypiling is another complex system that is almost never worth the effort. The game is much less complicated than Dwarf Fortress IMO, even including the systems you're better off ignoring

Then you have wishing and genocide that are very powerful, complex but not TOO complex systems that aren�t really matched in any other game IMO. It�s not a kitchen sink thing, some of the features in nethack are legitimately really cool and well designed. I disagree with the theory that you should never have to consult a manual or reference to play a game or it's too complex, you can go too far with it but I don't think nethack actually does

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:09 on May 21, 2023

# ¿ May 21, 2023 06:04

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

To bring up nethack again, this is a great web app helper for it, it includes the price ID table, notes, the solutions to all the sokoban levels, and a checkboard for intrinsics

https://nethackathon.org/annotate/

# ¿ May 23, 2023 18:54

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Are there servers to play angband online like nethack and dcss?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2024 00:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like