@ Roguelike games

You can still use nettiles but the new monsters don't have their own tile and the swamp gets a little messed up now that the wave tiles have been added. Getting used to ascii isn't that hard, after a few games it's like the matrix...businessman, girl in red dress....Sigmund

ASCII is the only way to go when it comes to Roguelikes, IMO. The tilesets usually suck anyway, so you aren't missing out on much. Plus it makes online play easier.

EriktheRed wrote:

ASCII is the only way to go when it comes to Roguelikes, IMO. The tilesets usually suck anyway, so you aren't missing out on much. Plus it makes online play easier.

I can't do it. And the Stone Soup tileset is rather pleasing on the eyes.

Bah, kids these days. When I was young, we didn't even have 80 columns. My TI had 43, and I was thankful for those 43 characters. Thankful!

(more seriously: just spend some more time with ASCII. It's very functional, very fast, and works anywhere on anything. Imagination beats tiles 10 falls in 10. )

My 'get off my lawn!' comment did actually have some substance to it; I realize it's kind of amusing, but it really DOES strike me as weird that people would dislike text enough to not play a game at all. Even in the era of 3D graphics with hundreds of thousands of rendered polygons per frame, I still prefer text in some instances. Roguelikes are probably the primary example.

I don't like the tilesets for, say, Dwarf Fortress, because to me, they obscure what's going on, instead of enhancing it. When I look at a square in DF, I instantly know exactly what it is, but if it's all graphic and 'pretty', I may not. I remember trying the Falcon tileset for Nethack, and promptly going back to good old curses. Graphics are just too cluttered.

It's not like this cultural shift is NEWS or anything, we've been talking about it for years. But it's maybe a bit eye-opening to see the desire for graphics invading even the very center of the text genre, roguelikes. Makes me wonder if, after we all get old and die, if anyone born after 2000 or so will have any interest in making or playing this game type.

Will people only want things in Settlers-style graphics?

Malor wrote:

It's not like this cultural shift is NEWS or anything, we've been talking about it for years. But it's maybe a bit eye-opening to see the desire for graphics invading even the very center of the text genre, roguelikes. Makes me wonder if, after we all get old and die, if anyone born after 2000 or so will have any interest in making or playing this game type.

I've been gaming pretty much forever, and have dabbled in Roguelikes on and off for a decade. I have neither the desire nor the time to invest in learning to see through the matrix that is Roguelike ASCII interfaces.

I have a history with text games too.... I did development work on a MUD back in the 90's, and ran a BBS even earlier than that. I'm no stranger to text.

But now, at this point in my life I just don't want to learn a useless skill simply to be more true to a genre..... that said, I enjoy the challenge of Roguelikes, and appreciate that people are willing to put together tilesets to cut down the learning curve just a little bit.

And check out Brogue for some beautiful character-based rogueing.

IMAGE(http://macgames.jp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/brogue.jpg)

Added a screenshot to show what I'm talking about... Notice the reasonably restrained character choices. The dynamic lighting. The display on the left hand side of the status and varieties of the nearest creatures you can see. So nice.

Huh, I didn't really even think of it as a skill, and interpreting tilesets strikes me as equally complex as interpreting ASCII. But I guess not.

It's not about 'being true to a genre'. I'm not a traditionalist about this stuff (and hardly anything, in fact). It's just that, for me, ASCII works better. I can read it better, and can pick out the interesting things on the screen much, much more quickly.

edit: I wonder if that's what it is, considering the language I used -- with ASCII, I can READ the screen, instead of LOOKING at it.

All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead...

Malor wrote:

Huh, I didn't really even think of it as a skill, and interpreting tilesets strikes me as equally complex as interpreting ASCII. But I guess not.

It's not about 'being true to a genre'. I'm not a traditionalist about this stuff (and hardly anything, in fact). It's just that, for me, ASCII works better. I can read it better, and can pick out the interesting things on the screen much, much more quickly.

Tilesets probably convey less immediate information to the player, however they are (usually) complimented by tooltips or clicks that can give someone a tonne of information while still looking at dumbed-down images. When playing an ASCII-only roguelike (which rarely happens) I feel like I'm gazing at line noise.

If what you're saying is true, then you can probably react quicker to what you're seeing than I can. Although given the turn-based nature of these games, it's questionable how valuable that is.

Malor wrote:

edit: I wonder if that's what it is, considering the language I used -- with ASCII, I can READ the screen, instead of LOOKING at it.

Yes.... this seems to be the case. And reading is a skill.;) It's much easier to look at a picture book and get the gist of a story than it is to read the words... but the words given you much more depth if you possess the ability to read them.

I'm comfortable playing roguelikes in ASCII, but I also find a good, clean, simple tileset to hold a lot of appeal to me. Moreso in Dwarf Fortress than in a roguelike, actually. There's a lot of "dead space" in a Dwarf Fortress screen that a good clean tileset sets off as "whitespace" for me more easily than ASCII characters do.

Some of the best tilesets I've actually seen do a mixture of ASCII and graphic tiles. Or are even really just a nicer, clean font with shading than the default system font.

With DCSS tiles I know exactly what item (especially if already identified) and monster shows up immediately. In ascii it's just a class of monster, right? It has a race symbol then a color if I understand it correctly. Also, in tiles, they have a lot of nice aesthetically pleasing additions, like seeing what your character looks like instead of a bland and uninspiring @ and different area tiles. ASCII is a saving dev time/lack or artistic skills thing, which is cool if it's really because it can't be fit in, but DCSS already has some great tile art put into it (seriosuly, it's the best I've seen of all the rogues I've played and has only gotten better since I started playing back in 0.4). If you got it, use it! It looks so much better and has practical gameplay and visual improvements.

chillblain wrote:

a bland and uninspiring @

*gasp!* You take that back!

Hypatian wrote:
chillblain wrote:

a bland and uninspiring @

*gasp!* You take that back!

Haha, I realize it's a nostalgic thing for most, so I totally get where people are coming from that like ascii. Newer players are going to find that a very hard barrier of entry though, tiles helps to ease into what is already a pretty hard game (since they've been improving the interface quite a bit too, point & click in a rogue- whaaa?). I personally just really dig avatar customization and the visual information that tiles helps to convey more quickly.

I don't mean to hate on ascii so much, just don't take away my tiles. We can have both!

Look, what if I let you make your "@" have pretty colors? That's customization, right?

I know in nethack you could adjust your @ to be represented by your race instead, so if you polyorphed into a vampire you'd show up as a V instead.

Capital L for the win, baby.

I,I "Pimp my @"

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

Who knew the Spider's Nest was home to a crazy perma-hasted, perma-semi-invisible, mana-draining, stat-draining, hard-hitting, and of course, poisonous spider? Even our creepy spider thread did not warn of the existence of such creatures. I don't even know what the thing was, I had no see invisible and died to something else trying frantically to get away from the thing.

Last time I go in there without sInv I was playing a Vehumet Conjurer, if I coulda drawn a bead on it before it got in mana chomping range I probably would have been fine.

I was just catching up on my DQ RSS feed and there was a link to Dredmor, a indie, graphic "roguelike".

Lee's Rapid Deconstruction is an awesome spell. Just uh... be careful with it. Unlike... me.

148677 Charliss the Destroyer (level 18, -14/94 HPs)
Began as a Human Conjurer on May 7, 2011.
Was the Champion of Vehumet.
Killed themselves with bad targeting (51 damage)
... on Level 4 of the Elven Halls.
The game lasted 05:28:56 (52648 turns).

So I've done another of my semi-annual reinstalls of Angband. I've been playing Moria / Angband / Zangband for years but have never actually finished it. My dudes usually die of a bad case of impatience or drunkenness.

This time I'm doing it right. Vanilla Angband - none of the crazy overworld snizz (which I have to say I quite liked), and I've rolled a Dunedan Warrior to keep things simple.
First time out and I'm level 27 / 1400' and doing pretty well. Colour me surprised.

Ferret wrote:

Lee's Rapid Deconstruction is an awesome spell. Just uh... be careful with it. Unlike... me.

148677 Charliss the Destroyer (level 18, -14/94 HPs)
Began as a Human Conjurer on May 7, 2011.
Was the Champion of Vehumet.
Killed themselves with bad targeting (51 damage)
... on Level 4 of the Elven Halls.
The game lasted 05:28:56 (52648 turns).

I can't tell you how many times I've killed myself with reading a non-ID'd scroll or testing a non-ID'd wand...

So, any suggestions for a clan name this time? I guess we could use "GWJ Lair or Bust" again too, but something different might be better. Maybe "Killed By Bad Targeting" since it sounds like Farscry and me both are pretty good at that?

Yet Another Stupid Clan

For fans of Roguelikes, try Desktop Dungeons. I believe it's still in beta, but worth checking out. They won the IGF design award earlier this year.

http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20

http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthre...

I will have to ponder this clan idea, though "Fuzzy Fuzzy Cute Cute" could be amusing...

"Self-Immolaters"

Luckily the "identify by trying" method only took me to half HP this time, and the goblin nearby barely had time to snicker before it went toasty.

Here are some ideas for clan names, though most are probably too long or wordy:

Quaffing Quandaries Quantified
ID till you drop
I went all the way to Zot and all I got was this lousy Orb
New Temple: Where's your deity now?
My potion brings all the orcs to the yard
I drink your potion
Woke up on the wrong side of the ogre's club
Scrolling through Dungeon
Amiss in the Abyss
My other ride is a cTele
Fear the Ghost Moth

Of course, there's also the obvious suggestion: "Crawlers With Jobs"