A Discussion on Roguelikes

[Yegolev]

The roguelike is slow to develop graphically, and the tiles are generally substandard.  ASCII works because of easy differentiation, and tiles can achieve this if they are larger and more distinct.  You can quickly tell what a D is, no reason you can't simply replace it with a dragon tile but you really need to make sure that it looks very much like a dragon and not very much like a lizardman or gecko.  I'll play dumb here and say all you need to do is make larger tiles with better pixel art.  The next step after that is to implement a real GUI, but I can't see many roguelike devs being onboard with that due to the neckbeardlessness of a GUI.  Baby steps.

[WindupAtheist]

Here's a screenshot I won't past directly into the thread.

It's good to be the king.

I always go out of my way to charm any Crypt Creep (the black robed guys) that I find. Usually something kills them off pretty quickly, but every once in a while they manage to summon some undead, and they summon even more Crypt Creeps and it all snowballs until you're sitting in the middle of hundreds of minions. (I'm the blue-cloaked skeleton in the middle.) Rampaging around the level and wiping everything out with an army is fun every now and then.

As you can see it's got health bars, a mini-map, icons, and reasonable graphics. Technically you can do almost everything without ever touching the keyboard, if you don't mind using drop-down menus. Realistically there's a handful of keyboard commands you use and the rest you do with the mouse. Items listed in the inventory will perform their most obvious function if double clicked. (Food is eaten, gear is equipped, scrolls are read, and so forth.) If you right click instead, you get a little pop-up menu listing all possible actions that can be performed on that item, including drop, destroy, inscribe and such.

It's not perfect, but to any sane person it's CLEARLY where the genre should be heading. Which naturally means that this version hasn't been updated in years while they keep spewing out ascii versions.

[schild]

It's not perfect, but to any sane person it's CLEARLY where the genre should be heading. Which naturally means that this version hasn't been updated in years while they keep spewing out ascii versions.

Just for the record, Japan already basically got it right with Torneko 3, Shiren the Wanderer, and Nightmare of Druaga. In that order in terms of difficulty. Druaga being fucking obtuse, and Torneko being a totally straight roguelike.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21knrrNsegM

[Ingmar]

To me that just looks like a mess (EDIT: WUA's link that is). The graphics would need to be significantly better than that to pull me away from letters and numbers and keypad movement (I hate using the keypad to move on an isometric display).

[WindupAtheist]

Just for the record, Japan already basically got it right with Torneko 3, Shiren the Wanderer, and Nightmare of Druaga. In that order in terms of difficulty. Druaga being fucking obtuse, and Torneko being a totally straight roguelike.

That looks like... an actual game. Is the Japanese roguelike scene all handheld/console stuff? Because I can see how the need to reach out to customers, rather than invite the public to accept the quirks of freeware or fuck off, would apply some... uh... evolutionary pressure to the design.

To me that just looks like a mess (EDIT: WUA's link that is). The graphics would need to be significantly better than that to pull me away from letters and numbers and keypad movement (I hate using the keypad to move on an isometric display).

It takes about five seconds when you first open the game to swap between tilesets.



God help you if you really think the red lowercase letter looks more like a wizard than the robed guy with glowy hands, but it's there if you want it. I'm pretty sure you can also throw your mouse out the window and use only keyboard commands if you really want. Maybe smash one of your hands with a hammer, while you're at it.

[schild]

Just for the record, Japan already basically got it right with Torneko 3, Shiren the Wanderer, and Nightmare of Druaga. In that order in terms of difficulty. Druaga being fucking obtuse, and Torneko being a totally straight roguelike.

That looks like... an actual game. Is the Japanese roguelike scene all handheld/console stuff? Because I can see how the need to reach out to customers, rather than invite the public to accept the quirks of freeware or fuck off, would apply some... uh... evolutionary pressure to the design.

Should you have a DS, pick up Shiren Mystery Dungeon.
Should you have a PS2 or PS1, track down a copy of Torneko: The Last Hope.
Should you want to pirate something, get a copy of Fushigi no Shiren for the SNES and go to AGTP for a translation hack.

[Ingmar]

I don't care if it looks like a wizard. I don't care if the floor looks like floor. All I care about is, can I look at the screen and know what I'm dealing with. There is a particular range of graphics quality, somewhere in between text graphics and Fallout 3, where the graphics actually detract from the gameplay for me. Your tilesets are in that range, with the *possible* exception of the bottom right one, except in that one it appears they screwed up the color on the wizard guy so identification at a glance is out the window if I've already learned the system. I can deal a lot better with abstraction than I can with ugly.

Also, one of the most important features of a roguelike, perhaps it should even go in the definition, is you can have it sitting up on your PC screen at work and it doesn't look like much a game to someone who doesn't know what it is.

[sidereal]

God help you if you really think the red lowercase letter looks more like a wizard than the robed guy with glowy hands

You're confusing 'looks more like' with 'easily identifiable'.  If there are tilesets where no tile is going to be confused for another one, great.  But I haven't seen one yet.  Most pixel art is mush.  Either do it up right (Diablo 2 style) by spending a lot of money and time, or go for clarity over attempted fidelity.

[WindupAtheist]

You're bitching because you've been conditioned by previous iterations that basically said "Welp, we have no graphics whatsoever. This letter P doesn't look like anything at all. It's just a fucking P. But you'll learn that it's a wizard or fuck off, because that's what we have."

Anyone whose brain hasn't already been warped will learn that "little guy in a robe = wizard, little guy with cloak = rogue" a lot faster than they'll start differentiating various hues of ascii characters.

EDIT:  Again, kid brother and "Not the stupid one where you're an at-symbol." There isn't a human being on earth who'll come into the genre cold and go "Man I want everything to be letters, because after I painstakingly learn what completely arbitrary thing each one represents, telling a red P from a purple P will be much easier than telling the guy in a white robe from the dude with a sword! Hey have I mentioned that I didn't play any console games before like 1990 because I couldn't tell anything apart? Am I the Pac-Man or the ghost?! Herf blerf!"

[Ingmar]

You're bitching because you've been conditioned by previous iterations that basically said "Welp, we have no graphics whatsoever. This letter P doesn't look like anything at all. It's just a fucking P. But you'll learn that it's a wizard or fuck off, because that's what we have."

Anyone whose brain hasn't already been warped will learn that "little guy in a robe = wizard, little guy with cloak = rogue" a lot faster than they'll start differentiating various hues of ascii characters.

EDIT:  Again, kid brother and "Not the stupid one where you're an at-symbol." There isn't a human being on earth who'll come into the genre cold and go "Man I want everything to be letters, because after I painstakingly learn what completely arbitrary thing each one represents, telling a red P from a purple P will be much easier than telling the guy in a white robe from the dude with a sword! Hey have I mentioned that I didn't play any console games before like 1990 because I couldn't tell anything apart? Am I the Pac-Man or the ghost?! Herf blerf!"

Pac Man has exactly 2 things you need to tell apart. Nethack has several hundred. I'm not saying there isn't a learning curve involved, or that everyone has to like it.

And forget pre-1990, I still can't tell red shells from green shells in *any* iteration of Mario Kart. Nethack's 1982 color palette is much easier on my color blindness.

[LK]

I need more interactivity in my games. I just spent several hours playing and beating the Maw. Being able to control a character on a 3d plane with an analog stick is kinda a big deal for me.

But a web version roguelike would work for me.

[sidereal]

Actually a P is a giant.

I'll just never figure out why you guys get so worked up about this stuff.  You're obviously viscerally angry about using some obscure symbol to represent something.  I'm reminded of the dude in the DF thread who thought Toady was a complete asshole for using letters and key commands.  Not just an obscure grognard, but actually a bad human being.  I haven't been 'conditioned' by anything.  I rode the learning curve and now benefit from it.  Just like touch typing is a huge pain the ass while you're learning it and turns out to be pretty fucking useful once you get it.  Since I know the roguelike monster letters I can: a) play over a network, b) take advantage of the increased productivity from developers who aren't spending 8 hours a day fucking with pixels, and c) immediately case a just-opened undead vault because the symbols are clear.  It's great.  You should try it.

Or, you know, you could keep getting ridiculously defensive and lashing out whenever someone points out the advantages.  Whichever works for you.

[WindupAtheist]

If learning to differentiate shapes and colors that aren't also letters of the alphabet is too hard for you, that's your damage. Some of us don't want to consult a chart to figure out whether P stands for person, pterodactyl, giant person, or pachyderm.

[Soulflame]

I don't think it's worth getting worked up over what sort of presentation people prefer for a roguelike.  ASCII, graphical, tiles, whatever works for a person is what they should use.

[Tebonas]

Yeah, getting worked up over this is ridiculous. The tile graphics in the screenshot look like crap to me, but I actually prefer the Nethack tiled version to the Ascii one (which might be because they remind me of the Epyx Rogue, my first roguelike). Also, Stone Soup is an improvement over Dungeon Crawl.

Since everybody can choose which one to play, why exacly give in to the nerd rage?

[WindupAtheist]

I'm tired of threads about Trammel and Jesus and I'm looking for a new raison d'être.

 

[grebo]

"You fell down a shaft" = terrifying!  But I survived it!  I've achieved the lofty status of player level 12, been down to D15, explored a bunch of The Lair and Swamp, and iced a minotaur in a labyrinth(very easy actually).  I've got an AC of 20 and an evade of 22!  Go deep elf wizard go!

Although I fear that once Mephitic Cloud stops working so well I will soon be dead...

[Quinton]

I don't think it's worth getting worked up over what sort of presentation people prefer for a roguelike.  ASCII, graphical, tiles, whatever works for a person is what they should use.

For the record, I have no objection to people playing with tilesets.  I do think it's silly to *require* tilesets for a roguelike (hey I like my asciitext), and I think it's *absurd* to require win32 and/or a GPU to display *only* text.

I grew up on Hack back before we *had* graphics (well, not quite, but damn close).  I'm grateful that we had both upper *and* lowercase monsters. ^^

[CharlieMopps]

what? Has everyone forgotten the #1 reason anyone ever played Rogue? You can have it up on your screen while talking to your boss and he will just assume you are programming or something. Seriously, it's like the most stealth game ever created.

[Yegolev]

Zork?

[sidereal]

I think once you start typing 'patch raft with toothpaste' he or she will figure out what's up. 

[Yegolev]

I submit a roguelike would not survive such close scrutiny, however I work in IT so YMMV.

[Slayerik]

I'm tired of threads about Trammel and Jesus and I'm looking for a new raison d'être.

 

Hey guyz, whats goin on in here?!?!?

Thanks for some stuff to try, good thread. Always loved good ole Rogue.

[grebo]

My Crawl deep elf conjurer is still going strong!  I'm level 13 now and have cleaned out the mines and most of the lair.  I wanna go rape elves but I have not found a single way to see invisible and the damn tricksy elves keep going invisible.

Fireball is fun.  Highly recommended.

Does anyone know at what point Mephitic Cloud will start poisoning things?  Or maybe if they nerfed that out recently?  I have it up to I think 7/10 power and it has yet to poison anything.

[Raging Turtle]

Having some trouble getting this to work - do I download the DOS version first, then install the other stuff later?  Or can I make it work with the multiple-platform version?  the install icon doesn't automatically come as a .exe, but even when I add that it doesn't work. 

Me no understand roguelikes...

Edit:  Using Windows XP. 

[Moaner]

Having some trouble getting this to work - do I download the DOS version first, then install the other stuff later?  Or can I make it work with the multiple-platform version?  the install icon doesn't automatically come as a .exe, but even when I add that it doesn't work. 

Me no understand roguelikes...

Edit:  Using Windows XP. 

I probably missed it, but which game are you referring to?  ZangbandTk?  If so I may be able to help.

I just installed and am trying to figure out Angband.  The command interface is so much different than Nethack and Crawl, I'm having a rough time getting started.  It looks pretty fucking epic though.  Anyone know if Vanilla Angband is worth learning or should I jump straight to TOME or Zangband or maybe even some other variant?

EDIT:  I have a PS3, DS, PSP, and a nice gaming PC and I've been playing ASCII/tile-based games for almost a month now.  WTF?

[Raging Turtle]

Trying to make Stone Soup work. 

[Moaner]

Trying to make Stone Soup work. 

Go here and download 'stone_soup-0.4.5-tiles-win32.zip'.  Unzip the file and just run crawl.exe from that directory.  Also, prepare to die, A LOT.

[Raging Turtle]

Perfect, thanks!

Sweet jesus I love this game.

[Sheepherder]

Actually a P is a giant.

I'll just never figure out why you guys get so worked up about this stuff.  You're obviously viscerally angry about using some obscure symbol to represent something.  I'm reminded of the dude in the DF thread who thought Toady was a complete asshole for using letters and key commands.  Not just an obscure grognard, but actually a bad human being.  I haven't been 'conditioned' by anything.  I rode the learning curve and now benefit from it.  Just like touch typing is a huge pain the ass while you're learning it and turns out to be pretty fucking useful once you get it.  Since I know the roguelike monster letters I can: a) play over a network, b) take advantage of the increased productivity from developers who aren't spending 8 hours a day fucking with pixels, and c) immediately case a just-opened undead vault because the symbols are clear.  It's great.  You should try it.

Or, you know, you could keep getting ridiculously defensive and lashing out whenever someone points out the advantages.  Whichever works for you.

Yes, but it's hard and convoluted purely for sake of being so.

Every software I've worked in since 1989 has used "escape" to back out. This one? Space.
Page Up/ Down would be natural for moving between either levels or menu pages, instead it's ctrl 5, alt 5 and +, - *

Silly shit like that

This was enough to make me delete the zips off my desktop.

It's like, he found a neck and just had to put a beard on it.

Beyond nerdy and niche to change shit like that. In fact, it transcends to something entirely different.

Seriously, it's fucking pixel art.  It takes all of a few minutes to create a function that will make a passable stick figure with Draw() functions that will accept colour variations as a argument.  Or a few hours to palette shift a handful of figures a few hundred times.  Or a few minutes to code a system to put a colour-coded base/ring under/around the feet of the NPC.  Or you can just make a non-shitty UI which supplies detailed data on the monster your mouse is hovering over and have people applaud you for shaving the fucking beard off and doing that particular portion of the most critical component of the game right.

[WindupAtheist]

But then you couldn't, like, fucking port it to Amiga or something! 

[schild]

Seriously, it's fucking pixel art.  It takes all of a few minutes to create a function that will make a passable stick figure with Draw() functions that will accept colour variations as a argument.  Or a few hours to palette shift a handful of figures a few hundred times.  Or a few minutes to code a system to put a colour-coded base/ring under/around the feet of the NPC.  Or you can just make a non-shitty UI which supplies detailed data on the monster your mouse is hovering over and have people applaud you for shaving the fucking beard off and doing that particular portion of the most critical component of the game right.

While I'm on your side on this, I'm gonna go ahead and point out - damning pixel art should be a crime. That shit is work if you want something passable.

[Sheepherder]

While I'm on your side on this, I'm gonna go ahead and point out - damning pixel art should be a crime. That shit is work if you want something passable.

I think you and I define "passable" pixel art differently.  Which is probably good, because I'm not currently trying to do anything with it.  But really anything that wouldn't be shameful to release on a NES is fine by my book.  What pisses me right off is people who refuse to use the mouse for anything, it's fucking inexcusable.

[Moaner]

What pisses me right off is people who refuse to use the mouse for anything, it's fucking inexcusable.

But, why would I wan to take my hands off home row? 

[WindupAtheist]

Besides which, the pixel art only needs to be done once and then everyone can reuse it. It's not like this is commercial software, or like the nine million *bands don't are all original work.