The Roguelikes Thread

[SCO]

Thing is, of the little i've played, there doesn't seem to be much of that in TOME (except the bosses). No cursed items without a certain "talent" tree (and they are not non-removable anyway), no petrification, no hunger, no scrolls id bullshit, no "victory dancing" bullshit, no gods getting prissy, no player ghosts, no persistent diseases, autopickup, autoexplore, not anything of the crap nethack throws at you. It's been "streamlined", into talent trees of 3 kinds: passive, activable and "sustained" (removing resources from various pools with occasionally different mechanics). There is even a prominent experience progress bar on the graphic version ffs.

Granted, it maybe because the game rewrite is less of a mishmash and newer than nethack or crawl, so it's maybe just not added yet (tm).
Ultra annoying summoners are in at least.

BTW, the tome engine seems very nicely laid out, with the main engine parts abstracted away from the modules themselves, all in lua. Looks very open to creating many games with it.

 

[Zed]

I played some TOME. Arcane Blade seems pretty overpowered. Or maybe I'm just awesome at the game. Or maybe an hour isn't long enough to encounter any real threats :D
Closest I got to dying was accidentally walking over poison ivy or some shit.

 

[Palikka]

If anyone fancied Dungeons of Dredmor, there's another one kinda like it in the making. http://www.daryslegend.com/
First early wip screenshots were just released http://www.differentpixel.com/2012/03/first-darys-legend-screenshots/
Looks a bit too.. eh, 'iPaddy' to me.

 

[Stabwound]

Haha, oh wow. That is a complete Dredmor clone if I ever saw one. Looks like shit, too; I hate the rectangle grid this and Dredmor use, and that automap looks like a complete labyrinthine pain in the ass to navigate.

I'm not a big fan of the shallow commercial roguelike trend. As much as I wanted to like Dredmor, I really didn't at all. Nor did I like the other 2 commercial roguelikes which were so bad that I can't even remember their names. It's funny how the open source and free games are much more in depth and fun than games people are charging money for.

And apologies for not updating the OP. I'm a lazy fuck.

 

[Gord]

Nor did I like the other 2 commercial roguelikes which were so bad that I can't even remember their names.

Diablo I and II?

 

[Albers]

Has anyone here played Frozen Depths? I came across this game a few months ago but haven't got the time to play it. Is it any good?

A great one and somewhat unique. No magic classes; no spellcasting. It's also done, I believe. The author said "finished" and that's that, which is sort of nice. Get a little sick of the endless alphas and betas.

 

[Renegen]

In only 2 weeks, I've racked up 1 day, 17 hours and 46 minutes of playtime in Doom RL (according to the game itself). This is one addicting game. It may not offer 20 races and classes, but it is very addicting and offers plenty to do. It gets my stamp of approval, and also sits in very rare company to be one of the few roguelikes with pleasant graphics.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Hey guys.

I have been playing some roguelikes myself as well. I would definitely recommend DoomRL especially now that it has a nice tileset and some of the classic DOOM sounds. I think it's one of the better RLs out there especially since you don't have to deal with the hunger mechanism, just run and gun.

I am currently somewhat addicted to DCSS except that some of the design decisions bug the hell out of me.

Player ghosts:

This might sound great in theory for some people but for me it's an annoying mechanic especially if you die as a Stalker and meet your ghost and all it does is spam Evaporate on you. You can't run away from it, it has an endless supply of potions to Evaporate against you and it's undead so hard to hit AND it can see invisible. In my opinion, the dungeon is challenging enough without adding this annoying mechanic to it. It would be nice to have an option to disable Player Ghosts. I understand the need for a challenge but one can go a bit too far with it at times.

Spellcaster starting equipment:

If you're going to start out as a spellcaster class of any kind you need to be prepared to die a lot just in the first level of the dungeon alone. Depending on your race/class combo you will start out with a robe, a bread ration, a spell book, and one offensive spell and maybe 1-3 MP. You don't get a simple dagger to start out with in order to stab something once your MP runs out unless the room you start out in has something laying around. At least give a brother a quarterstaff, SOMETHING to beat the first monster down once your 1-3 MP runs out. Like I said, I like a challenge but not frustration.

What is your opinion on the hunger mechanism in roguelikes? Is it necessary? Or do you like the challenge? Me, personally, I could do without it simply because it feels like a crutch. Make the monsters more challenging or something but don't add something like hunger just to add an artificial challenge to a game that already features permadeath amongst other things.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I just remembered I used to play Vulture a lot back in the day. It's a graphical isometric interface for SlashEM, NetHack, and UnNetHack.

Check it out here:

http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture

 

[Albers]

Spellcaster starting equipment:

It's not that bad. You can beat on stuff unarmed. Usually the first kobold or goblin you meet at least has a club. Hit him with a couple spells and if need be punch him to finish the job. Grab a stack of darts as soon as you find some and use those too. And never forget the gospel of roguelikes: you don't need to fight/kill everything you see.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just everything faster than you... which is nearly everything.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Spellcaster starting equipment:

It's not that bad. You can beat on stuff unarmed. Usually the first kobold or goblin you meet at least has a club. Hit him with a couple spells and if need be punch him to finish the job. Grab a stack of darts as soon as you find some and use those too. And never forget the gospel of roguelikes: you don't need to fight/kill everything you see.

Unless you play a Spriggan or Centaur in DCSS everything catches up to you unless you're lucky enough to spot the monster far away.

 

[desocupado]

There's a folder in the game you can delete and you can get rid of all player ghosts.

Also, the start is not that bad for spellcasters, the hardest part is when your initial book ain't cutting it anymore and you haven't found anything better yet.

Also, a club is an awful weapon, pick a dagger/short sword/whatever else. Early on, there are lot of runed/glowing daggers, and some of those turn out to be electricity or poison, very good brands early on.

 

[JudasIscariot]

There's a folder in the game you can delete and you can get rid of all player ghosts.

Also, the start is not that bad for spellcasters, the hardest part is when your initial book ain't cutting it anymore and you haven't found anything better yet.

Also, a club is an awful weapon, pick a dagger/short sword/whatever else. Early on, there are lot of runed/glowing daggers, and some of those turn out to be electricity or poison, very good brands early on.

The book thing isn't that bad if you worship a god that hands them out as godgifts like Kiku (sorry the full name escapes me) or Sif Muna or Vehumet.

One of my favorite combos is to play a Spriggan Stalker who worships Kiku. You get the fastest movement speed, the slowest metabolism, you start out with the Poison and Confusion potions identified, you can use your enemies' corpses to provide you with further potion ammunition (Kobolds, Goblins, Ogres, basically anything with a yellow or green skull on its corpse). When you find a Kiku altar and start killing things you gain Piety fast and he just starts showering you with Necromancy spellbooks, the first one gives you the Animate Dead spell that allows you to raise meat shields after a successful Evaporate.

One has to be careful when playing a Spriggan since they are fragile as hell and they can't really make use of most armors in the game such as boots (because they have bird's feet) and most armors because of their small size and low STR but if you play them well you won't need armor since you'll kill or run away from anything that tries to get in melee range in the first place.

Also with Kiku you can either go with getting the last Necromancy book, the Necronomicon, or get him to brand a weapon with the Pain brand which is a good brand if you have a high Necro skill :D.

 

[Stabwound]

Not to be "that guy" but it would be cool if the Stone Soup discussion was moved to the "official" thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/dungeon-crawl-stone-soup-questions-thread.43634/

I meant this as more of a general roguelike discussion thread. It seems like most roguelike communities become "Dungeon Crawl" communities, such as the roguelike newsgroup and subreddit.

Not being a dick, just, you know, there are other games out there.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Not to be "that guy" but it would be cool if the Stone Soup discussion was moved to the "official" thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/dungeon-crawl-stone-soup-questions-thread.43634/

I meant this as more of a general roguelike discussion thread. It seems like most roguelike communities become "Dungeon Crawl" communities, such as the roguelike newsgroup and subreddit.

Not being a dick, just, you know, there are other games out there.

My apologies. I just really like the game and wanted to share some of my experiences with it. I wasn't trying to dwell on it too much :D.

 

[BLOBERT]

ANY PTHER BROS HERE LIKE IVAN!!!!

 

[Damned Registrations]

I love IVAN until it screws me over cheaply. Last time I tried it I got murdered by a landmine. Great character, had friggin iron legs or something, died instantly.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO I THINK THAT GAME WAS MADE TO SCREW YOU OVER CHEAPLY

I HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR IT BECAUSE IT WAS MY FIRST ROUGELIKE

AND REALLY I HAVE THE BROS OF THE CODEX TO THANK ME FOR INTRODUCING ME TO IT AND ALL OTHER ROGUELIKES THOUGH I HAVE ONLY REALLY PUT SERIOUS TIME INTO IVAN AND DCSS

I LIKED IVAN CAUSE YOU COULD SEVER SOMEONES ARM OFF THEN BEAT THEM TO DEATH WITH IT THAT MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS A BADASS

 

[JudasIscariot]

Back in the golden 90's I got a hold of Dungeon Hack by SSI thinking it was something like Eye of the Beholder.

I think it's one of the better roguelikes around. You get to create and roll a character like in any D&D game, the dungeons have 4 billion different combinations, you have permadeath, automapping. I think it has just about everything you need for a roguelike but wrapped up in a nice package.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Stabwound: Are you going to edit the first post in this topic to provide a list of the games that came up here?

Yeah, then we could put it up as a sticky.

The Codex of Roguelikes

And apologies for not updating the OP. I'm a lazy fuck.

 

[Stabwound]

Looks good to me. I probably would have never got around to updating/maintaining a list anyway.

 

[octavius]

So how about Castle of the Winds? I thought it was jolly fun 20 years ago, and replaying it it's still fun.
I got halfway through Nethack once, but I don't have the patience for the try and fail gameplay of most Roguelikes, and I can't stomach the ASCII "graphics" of the most hardcore ones.

 

[Destroid]

The ASCII looks better than most of the graphical ones.

 

[octavius]

Replaying Castle of the Winds I was stuck by how much it resembles Diablo. For example the the belt for quick access to items, items with more than two enchantments , a shop that gradually changes its sortiment over time (Diablo 2 was a decline in this regard), a sage to identify items, finding books that teach spells etc.

Anyone know if Castle of the Winds was the main inspiration for Diablo?

Incidentally, the storyline of the first part of CotW reminds me of Star Wars, except that Hrungnir does not say "I am your father".