ADOM (and other roguelikes)

[WouldBeCreator]

So after years of failed attempts to get into a roguelike, I finally played and got hooked on ADOM. Somehow, Nethack and Angband had always turned me off from the getgo -- I think it was the Zork-style cheesy setting -- and the randomly generated dungeons did me in. ADOM is sufficiently serious (although thankfully not *too* serious) and its map system works much better for my tastes.

Anyway, it's a great diversion. The degree of interaction available to the player is astounding, although it feels very one-dimensional in that all the interaction revolves around crawling through the dungeons. Fair enough, and it doesn't make me like ADOM less. But I was curious whether there were any games out there that took the roguelike formula and moved it a little further from the dungeoncrawl mode (as ADOM seems to have done relative to 'hack and 'band). Is Gearhead like that?

Another random observation I'd throw in is how well the ascii graphics work once you get into the game. Despite being vastly more rudimentary than even really old graphics, somehow my mind seems to treat them as text (i.e., not judge them for not looking pretty) and the information they convey quickly is pretty impressive. One of the reasons I've been leery about running Gearhead is that the screenshots show really weird (and bad) graphics.

Advice?

 

[Temoid]

ADOM is terrible, Nethack is where it's at.

 

[LCJr.]

But I was curious whether there were any games out there that took the roguelike formula and moved it a little further from the dungeoncrawl mode (as ADOM seems to have done relative to 'hack and 'band). Is Gearhead like that?

Yes and no. You have a world map with towns and stereotypical rpg random encounters. Theres also scripted encounters linked to the plot(s) and arena fighting. However when a lot of the quests/plots require you to find item X it's in a dungeon. I generally don't care for roguelikes but I enjoy Gearhead in small doses.

Another one is the Unreal World. Finnish iron age wilderness survival game. Truly a unique game. Pity I suck at it. http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html

There's also Transendence which the author claims is based off Nethack. http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/index.html

 

[Naked_Lunch]

GEARHEAD GEARHEAD GEARHEAD!!!

It is quite simply, the greatest roguelike ever invented and possibly one of the best RPGs out there, too. Don't listen to the haters, Gearhead is pure bliss. Even if you don't "get" roguelikes, Gearhead is easy to get into and plays more like a "traditional" RPG than a roguelike. Plus, it comes with a graphical version if you can't stomach the ASCII.

 

[Atrokkus]

IF they could only make a real RPG based on such an engine (mius the random dungeons, at least not everywhere), ohh, then I would gladly play it. But just a roguelike... meh.

 

[MisterStone]

I've been playing a lot of Linley's Dungeon Crawl lately...

It is 100% dungeon crawl/monster hacking action; no playing with tools, little interacting with the environment, no chatting with creatures, etc.

What it has going for it though are incredibly well designed/balanced skill, magic and experience systems. Here are some things that make it stand out:

- There are no true character classes; even though you chose a character class at startup, this merely determines your starting skills, experience, and sometimes religion. You can learn any skill and change religion easily (though you'll have to earn merit and perhaps deal with a pissed-off diety).

- The skill system is more or less balanced... Magic can be very powerful, but you have to have good skills in at least two (often three) or more skills to be able to cast difficult spells reliably. I guess the only failing is that stealth killing with daggers is really hard to train and often can't be used realiably.

- The experience system is really interesting and well thought out. When you kill something (hey, this is a Roguelike after all, there are no real quests in this game) unspent exp points go into a pool. You can only improve skills when you have spare exp in your pool, so there is no using macros to train a skill to infinity, etc. You can also chose not to pay attention to certain skills, so that fewer of the exps in your pool get spent on them, this lets you chose what most of your exp points are spent on.

- The religious system is fun and interesting, because unlike most roguelikes where you generally gain merit by sacrificing things and not praying for a long time, here you have to actually do a wide variety of things to make gods happy. Often you have to do them while praying. When you pray, a temporary effect is turned on during which your actions are devoted to your god. For instance, if you worship the berserker god Trog, killing things while the prayer effect is turned on makes Trog happy, and he will eventually give you something nice (to help you kill more things). On the flip side, Trog gets really pissed if you use magic of any kind, regardless of whether you are praying. Other gods like for worshipers to kill or raise undead, kill or summon demons, cast as many spells as possible (which makes you get hungry- again no exploit here), cause mass destruction with magic, or sacrifice corpses (by cutting them up while praying) to name a few things. They also have differnt things that piss them off (for another example, if you worship the stereotypical lawful paladin type god he gets pissed if you use poison or necromancy). Since there generally are any "good" aligned NPCs, killing the wrong thing probably won't get you in trouble (unless it is a helper the god summoned).

- Magic is powerful and fun, but chalenging and balanced (like I noted above). It's hard to be good at different schools, since this takes a lot of exp spent on skills. Failing to cast a spell can seriously hurt. Spell effects are varied and interesting, you can transform yourself in various ways, summon elementals and demons, throw destructive magic, teleport, etc. Elemental magic schools have dynamic opposites, so it is hard to be good at both fire and ice magic or air/earth at the same time.

- Combat is fun too: you can either learn to wear heavy armor and carry a shield+ weapon, or become better at dodging. If you learn the unarmed combat skill you can either beat up on stuff barehanded, or enjoy extra attacks if wield a melee weapon in one hand and keep one free, or have natural weapons (from your race or mutations, etc.) There are thrown weapons and missle launchers (bows, crossbows, etc.) as well.


The only annoying things about the game that I can think of are the sparcity of staple items like healing potions, teleportation items, etc. You are largely at the mercy of the random # generator, so if you can't find useful stuff you will likely be screwed. Also, like I noted before, gameplay is pretty much just limited to killing things, there are no/few funny tools or object/environment actions to speak of.

Anway, didn't think I would write such a long post. The main point it, Crawl has a lot of very innovated features in it. I'd love to see them in other roguelikes, or even full RPGs... it's too bad that these days the closest thing you get to character design is Diablo-style class specific skill trees with the occaisional trait, etc.

BTW, are there any good RPGs with some of the features I blathered on about?

 

[Deathy]

God damnit, how could Nethack turn you off? It's pure gold.

 

[Azarkon]

Nethack turned me off too, but my roguelike phase corresponded to my Tolkien phase in the sense that anything that did not take itself at least a little seriously felt hackish - which was exactly what Nethack tried to be.

A close analogy would be how people felt about Fallout 2 - too many real world/joke references ruined the immersive atmosphere for me. There are people who enjoy Nethack/Fallout 2 precisely for the tongue-in-cheek humor. I didn't, because I was looking for something more serious. ADOM - I agree with WBC - had all that and more.

Looking back, though, I stand by my decision: if you ever did a side by side comparison of the two game's features, you'll see that ADOM is a deeper game. Nethack had the benefits of seniority and geeky humor, but ADOM had better mechanics and its own mythos.

 

[Zomg]

I believe that some of the *band derivatives have taken a more ADOMish direction, although I'm only going by reputation as ADOM is still the game I play when I feel like a roguelike. Angband itself has a much more serious tone in general, although it's really a much more sloppy and dull game than Nethack or ADOM are.

What I like best about ADOM, gameplay-wise, is that the early game plays *much* differently depending on what class/race you pick, and in a roguelike you're going to be seeing the early game a lot. Nethack is more about getting food and not running into floating eyes or rothes for almost all classes, and Angband's early game is always identical.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Nethack turned me off too, but my roguelike phase corresponded to my Tolkien phase in the sense that anything that did not take itself at least a little seriously felt hackish - which was exactly what Nethack tried to be.

Well, nethack is a little more like D&D than Tolkien. In otherwords, it has everything and the kitchen sink tossed in for good measure. It's not exactly a pure setting because sometimes dinosaurs are really just cool.

A close analogy would be how people felt about Fallout 2 - too many real world/joke references ruined the immersive atmosphere for me. There are people who enjoy Nethack/Fallout 2 precisely for the tongue-in-cheek humor. I didn't, because I was looking for something more serious. ADOM - I agree with WBC - had all that and more.

Well, the only humor in nethack is really where you find it. About the only thing funny about nethack is how many ways there are to cascade yourself in to a grave.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

A couple further thoughts.

First, I agree with Zomg that the difference in gameplay with starting classes is really quite striking. I played as a Troll Beastfighter and a Gray Elf Magician (running both up to level 16; both are still alive, but I'm mostly just trying to get a sense for the game right now) and the game has been totally different. The troll never backed down from anything and had huge food preservation, so basically he went through killing and eating anything in his path. Since he didn't use weapons and couldn't read, most of the items he got were useless (but he could mule them back for gold). The elf, surprisingly, takes significantly less damage (since he's often in a defense position and can wield a shield), but early on was wildly short on magic. The most striking contrast was the way the two dealt with the ant hive on the second floor of the puppy cave. For the troll, it was a cash cow (or XP cow, anyway) to be milked; for the wizard, it was a nightmare of retreating and occasionally praying for divine intervention.

Second, playing it suddenly reminded me of Fallout and how rich Fallout's environment was. It's interesting how RPGs now really don't have many "hidden" gameplay elements -- the player is meant to experience all the elements, even if there are certain high level spells or ultra-powerful enemies he'll miss. But FO was chock-full of stuff the player often never experienced, from drug addiction to, hell, companions. (My first time through, I thought it was a singleton game.) I'm honestly not sure that's because the player was *meant* to replay the game, either. Rather, I think there was just an idea that you model a world, then -- within the confines of your design vision -- you give the player tools to interact with it.

For all modern RPGs are adding in stuff like crafting or training pets or changing your companions' alignment, none of that is actually environmental interaction and none of it produces anything even remotely like a new gaming experience. Compare that to ADOM (and presumably other roguelikes) where there are *major* ways the game can change depending on what you do. I just learned that you could tame animals by feeding them. I discovered dipping cursed items in holy water. Tomorrow, I plan to try dipping raw meat in poison and then feeding it to an animal to see what happens. Or take things like tunneling or freezing water. I mean, that stuff is just totally beyond what you'd experience in an RPG now.

It's the way it all *coheres* that really makes it work, I think. Again, the notion that I might be able to kill an enemy, cook its flesh, poison it, and feed it to another enemy is just incredible. The fact that when I step on an altar I can get sacrificed by an enemy is awesome. That tunneling yields ore, that ore can be smelted to ingots that can be forged into items . . . . The whole thing fits together very nicely into a living, breathing world devoted to me going on a dungeon crawl. The world doesn't work in any logical way, but it's not supposed to (and it shouldn't). ADOM, probably better than any other game I've played, captures a living world and the egoism of a prescripted game.

My last thought is that I wonder whether we're kvetching too much over real-time vs. turn-based when the real thing, it seems to me, is tile-based levels / movement vs. "painted" (in one way or another) levels and free movement.

 

[Elwro]

Another random observation I'd throw in is how well the ascii graphics work once you get into the game. Despite being vastly more rudimentary than even really old graphics, somehow my mind seems to treat them as text (i.e., not judge them for not looking pretty) and the information they convey quickly is pretty impressive.

Did you read the monster descriptions? Try it, I think they are written very well.

Advice?

The latest version of ADOM has some problems with experience - if you play a Trollish Barbarian you'll level up so slowly that you won't hit even level 30 until the end (I know from experience). I think 1.0 or 1.1 is where it's at, not sure now cause I haven't played it in a month or so (after playing it for about 7 years ).

 

[Azarkon]

Well, nethack is a little more like D&D than Tolkien. In otherwords, it has everything and the kitchen sink tossed in for good measure. It's not exactly a pure setting because sometimes dinosaurs are really just cool.

Yeah. Not that ADOM didn't have its silly monsters (battle bunnies come to mind) or items, but I felt that the world of ADOM was better realized. Nethack was like... Well what you said: everything and the kitchen sink tossed in for good measure. That has its own sort of charm, but it's different than what you'd get from ADOM or Angband. Though I think I might appreciate it more now that I'm more familiar with all its different sources (Discworld, D&D, etc.)

On that note, I wonder if anyone here tried an old roguelike called Ragnarok. It was one of the few graphical roguelikes at the time, and I personally found it a very interesting game. I recall that you could permanently polymorph yourself in that game and that one of the monsters you could end up as was a gas ball, which has one attack: explode.

Best way to go in a game ever.

 

[Falcore19]

I've tried dozens of roguelike games, I've never really liked them. They always have major flaws that ruins it for me.

Anyway Misterstone, maybe you should try the different mods of Angband. Maybe there's something for you there.

 

[MrBrown]

On that note, I wonder if anyone here tried an old roguelike called Ragnarok. It was one of the few graphical roguelikes at the time, and I personally found it a very interesting game. I recall that you could permanently polymorph yourself in that game and that one of the monsters you could end up as was a gas ball, which has one attack: explode.

I played that alot years back. IIRC, the monsters towards the ends of it were so tough that you practically could only get by them with luck, which made it kinda dull. It had it's share of funny stuff though. Like a demon that chops your arms and legs off. Or dying by getting lycanthropy and then running over the edge of the world in your crazed werewolf-form.

 

[Goliath]

Try TOME (www.t-o-m-e.net). IMO it is the most ADOM-like Angband variant i.e. more complex character system, quests, towns, wilderness etc.

 

[obediah]

My maing gaming machine has been a laptop for the last few years, and while it's consistently been a good laptop, I'm still always worried about it being fast enough of having graphics issues, etc. Ironically, rougelikes have given me the most problems, because of the lack of number pad, and generally cramped keyboard.

 

[kingcomrade]

The only roguelike that I've ever played is the Doom one. Very difficult, I've never gotten past the fourth level. I just didn't really get the game mechanics, I guess.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

The only roguelike that I've ever played is the Doom one. Very difficult, I've never gotten past the fourth level. I just didn't really get the game mechanics, I guess.

I found it quite tough, too, although the time investment in a given run-through was not that high so getting killed wasn't infuriating the way it can be in other RLs. If you're still playing the game at all, the main advice I'd give is to take Cat Eye for your first two bonuses and to make sure you're using the barrels. They have a ridiculous blast radius and pretty much kill any opponent until near the end. You can also push them up against walls you want to get through and use them to blast through (and kill anything on the other side). FWIW, I found the shotgun totally worthless. The combat shotgun and double-barreled shotgun are alright, but for the most part I went pistol -> chaingun -> plasma. I guess I may've used the combat shotgun for short-range fighting for a bit, too. (You have to reload it after every shot, to kick the spent cartridge, I guess, but the time is very short, so you can reload and still get a shot off.)

Other advice would be to hold onto damaged armor so long as it's not totally shot (but always switch to your strongest armor). I would usually keep at least one backup suit of armor, usually two. Always keep medkits. Don't go down the red staircases (although I assume that's where you get the best guns and chainsaw and whatnot).

 

[Nicolai]

Yeah, ADOM is a pretty fun roguelike with plenty of depth. My human barbarian archers/swordmen rarely survive much longer than to level 20 or so, doh. Should probably try another race and character class combination one day. A troll barbarian, perhaps? Anyway, which races and classes do you chaps play with?


Oh, and while we're on the subject of roguelikes; give IVAN a shot.

 

[Elwro]

. A troll barbarian, perhaps? Anyway, which races and classes do you chaps play with?

As I've written above, a trollish barbarian is a nice class to play in versions older then the current one. Believe me.

I've finished the game with a high-elven wizard and high-elven beastfighter. I think that spellcasting classes are easier to learn the game with and generally easier in the second half of the game. Melee classes rock early on, but it's harder to keep them alive later.

 

[MisterStone]

Oh, and while we're on the subject of roguelikes; give IVAN a shot.

Ivan is pretty cool, and has some neat features, but it looks like the devs have more or less abandoned it in a half-complete state. Oh well...

 

[Zomg]

Compare that to ADOM (and presumably other roguelikes) where there are *major* ways the game can change depending on what you do. I just learned that you could tame animals by feeding them. I discovered dipping cursed items in holy water. Tomorrow, I plan to try dipping raw meat in poison and then feeding it to an animal to see what happens. Or take things like tunneling or freezing water. I mean, that stuff is just totally beyond what you'd experience in an RPG now.

Wait until you run into herbs.

Just for your knowledge, ADOM is pretty near the top of the list on the interactive world front, barring any recent vintage exotics I don't know about. It's a very distant second to Nethack, though, of which ADOM is pretty derivative. Nethack is routinely astonishing. It's significantly easier than ADOM, though. I've beaten Nethack while forgoing wishes and genocide; I haven't finished ADOM in maybe five or six years of trying with two or three serious attempts per annum.

 

[Elwro]

It's significantly easier than ADOM, though. I've beaten Nethack while forgoing wishes and genocide; I haven't finished ADOM in maybe five or six years of trying with two or three serious attempts per annum.

Well, I have an almost exactly opposite track record with the two games, and therefore consider Nethack harder then ADOM. And, to the opposite, I consider Nethack a very distant second to ADOM Must be different playing styles... But I'm sure I'll get into Nethack some time.

BTW, on one of my wins I saved Khelavaster and killed the Emperor Moloch

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Wait until you run into herbs.

I have. My only beef with them is that, unless I'm missing something, alchemy is way too disconnected from herbs to make it satisfying. All of my recipes require things I've never (in 50% of the cases) come across or things that are very precious. And then they make things like cure poison. I guess the recipes are randomized, but mine have wound up being kind of blah. I think it would've been more fun if the raw herbs were less effective and they played more of a role in potionmaking (right now I feel like I wasted all my investment in Alchemy).