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Author Topic: roguelike games  (Read 272747 times)

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pubby

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1125 on: May 21, 2019, 03:00:11 am »
+2

Posting a roguelike I made a few months ago: http://pubby.github.io/hejickle.html
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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1126 on: May 28, 2019, 02:04:12 am »
0

What is the process for playing this on an actual NES?  I'm guessing I have to mail someone an envelope with cash in it?
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1127 on: May 28, 2019, 04:52:06 am »
0

Posting a roguelike I made a few months ago: http://pubby.github.io/hejickle.html
I gave this a try (although not sure why since I rarely play classic roguelikes and rarely play NES games). Anyway it's nicely polished and looks like some serious work went into it. (The FOV system looked pretty sophisticated, so if you're writing machine code or something like that, nice.)

Some comments:

The online emulator was too slow on my computer. As mentioned above, I don't really play NES games, but I do have RetroArch installed so I gave it a try with some emulators in that. bnes did not work for me at all. FCEUmm mostly worked but with slightly glitchy audio. Is there an emulator that you recommend?

Suggestion (UI): When using select to inspect in the start menu and pressing B, it would be nice for the menu selection to return to what it was before I pressed select. Currently, it always returns to the first item of the list (Armory).

Bug (UI): The select info for Armory and Log is swapped. (I mean, the info for Log shows when you get help for Armory, and vice versa.)

The only spell I tried was Fire Breath, and it has a fun & satisfying animation.

Overall, the level of challenge felt a bit low. I died in the Dungeons on my first attempt but only because I couldn't figure out what the A button was in my emulator _and_ forgot to look at the start menu, and made it halfway through anyway. On second attempt (with A button located and start menu remembered) I beat Dungeons & Sewers, then saved because I was getting a bit bored. I think part of the issue is that the Dungeons enemies were not very differentiated: in every case I just bump them until they die. The Sewers enemies were better in that way: using my Fire Breath to take out the fire-vulnerable Tarantulas at range was interesting, and Slimes definitely feel like a different enemy because of the splitting.

Also, this is not very important, but it would be nice to have a select info explanation of how damage, armor, missing, etc. work. (I couldn't find one in-game if there is one already.) I tried to guess it from looking at the log but didn't have much idea. That makes it hard to value the +1 AC upgrades from the shop. Sound is something else that could have used a little explanation. It has a quite prominent place in the game, so it must be important, but it wasn't clear to me what it's doing. (I mean, I guess it wakes guys up, but things like range, % chance to wake up, etc., were unclear.) EDIT: I forgot to mention that what puzzled me most was speed. Like, clearly faster guys can sometimes move twice for one of my moves, and sometimes I can make two moves for a slower guy's one move, but I had no clue when to expect this.

Anyway, I feel a bit silly since I'm just commenting on the surface level as a game, and not on the impressive aspect of doing it as NES-compatible, but I don't know anything about NES development so I don't have much to say about that.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2019, 05:01:17 am by blueblimp »
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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1128 on: June 03, 2019, 12:49:41 am »
+1

Someone help me stop playing Binding of Isaac
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1129 on: June 11, 2019, 05:50:06 pm »
+1

Someone help me stop playing Binding of Isaac

++++++ 211 hours in 2 months it's killing me
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pacovf

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1130 on: June 20, 2019, 06:42:01 pm »
+1

Cadence of Hyrule hasn’t impressed me during my first play through. I died five times during my first hour, and then not one more time over the next 5 hours that it took me to « 100% » the run. It suffers from a bad case of one of the usual problems of roguelikes, which is that the beginning is a lot harder than the middle and end of a run. Once you have a few extra hearts and an advanced weapon, it’s very hard to die. Hearts are also about as plentiful as in your regular Zelda game, which is *a lot* more plentiful than in CoN, so being sloppy is not punished as hard. Add to it that health potions are cheap and activate automatically when you lose all your health, and you are basically on auto play after a while.

Granted, CoH is not technically a roguelike (permadeath is an option that is toggled off by default). But the gameplay is closer to CoN than Zelda, and I am not sure the Zelda elements make for better gameplay overall. And I say this despite loving Zelda games. I think they should have either leaned harder into the Zelda elements, and offer a more directed experience with item-gated areas and so forth (abandoning the randomness of puzzle-items as they stand now); or lean harder into the roguelike, and restrict how much equipment you can find before getting to the final boss (exploring all of Hyrule gathering loot is not that fun once there’s no challenge, but the final area is harder than what comes before, so you are incentivised to do it anyway). There *is* an in-game leaderboard of completion times, so it seems like the devs encourage you to speedrun the game, which would push the game further in the second direction I mentioned. I guess I will have more thoughts about that once I’ve replayed the game a few times.

Another thing that I think would improve the game is dropping the returning weapons from CoN. Limit it to, say, the starting dagger/short sword, and one special weapon for each character. The items in Cadence of Hyrule are fun, but you never use them, because either they consume resources quickly, or it’s just faster to just use a titanium longsword. If you were restricted to your starting dagger though, you would use these items a lot more often. Then again, non-glass weapons are actually fairly rare outside the death shop, so this complaint might not be applicable to permadeath runs.

The music is absolutely awesome though!

EDIT: I feel like I should add that I haven’t played A Link to the Past, which might colour your opinion of the game. Closest I have played is Oracle of Seasons, which didn’t feel at all like this one.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2019, 07:41:44 pm by pacovf »
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blueblimp

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1131 on: June 20, 2019, 09:25:37 pm »
+1

My impression during first playthrough was similar to yours. Reasonably challenging early, then becoming trivial as I accumulate upgrades. It's tricky to evaluate the game as someone who has played a lot of Necrodancer, since I think the main target audience is those that bounce off Necrodancer because of the difficulty.

Something important the game doesn't tell you is that permadeath mode also increases difficulty in ways other than just making death permanent, such as by spawning more and stronger enemies. Whether this really feels different, I don't know.

The most Necrodancer-y experience I've had in CoH so far is learning to flawless Gleeokenspiel with base dagger only. It feels unmanageably chaotic at first, then becomes comfortably predictable after some practice. (Tip: If you beat a boss but save&quit before picking up the instrument, you can play that boss again on that save file. This allows repeat practice.)

From my limited knowledge of Zelda games, the closest cousin for CoH is Zelda 1, because of the open-ended exploration of a screen-based overworld.

I agree that the way CoH does item-gating is weird. The main progression path has practically no item gating at all. But there are a number of speedrun skips (many clearly intended) that are item-gated. I question whether speedrun skips actually make the game more fun though. They skip playing through dungeons, but when a speedrun consists of overworld movement, dungeon clearing, and fighting bosses, reducing time spent dungeon clearing means you're spending more time on overworld movement, which is boring. The bosses are mostly pretty fun though, so maybe it's a wash.

I like your alternative vision where you just get base dagger and have to use resources to make stronger attacks. As is, it feels like you're being swamped with items yet have not much use for them.

Overall, I find whether this game is good to be confusing. I'd certainly recommend it to fans of Necrodancer or Zelda. It just feels, after you've played through once, that you still haven't fully experienced it. But, unlike Necrodancer, there's considerably less post-game content. (Here, the 3 main characters play similarly, and there's only 1 other character to unlock.)
« Last Edit: June 20, 2019, 09:29:00 pm by blueblimp »
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1132 on: June 22, 2019, 02:25:30 am »
+2

I bought Necrodancer since it went on sale the week Cadence of Hyrule was coming out. So far I like it. I just beat Zone 3 for the first time today - I felt I was hitting a brick wall with dying on level 1 almost all the time, then I got a really good run and just steamrolled to the end of the zone.

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pacovf

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1133 on: June 22, 2019, 03:40:08 pm »
+1

Something important the game doesn't tell you is that permadeath mode also increases difficulty in ways other than just making death permanent, such as by spawning more and stronger enemies. Whether this really feels different, I don't know.

I wish permadeath and hard mode were two different toggles in the options, I don't know why that isn't the case already. I would like to practice against tougher enemies without having to start from scratch every time I mess up. Hard mode also seems to increase the diamond prices of fairy fountains (and Beedle shops?).

Quote
I agree that the way CoH does item-gating is weird. The main progression path has practically no item gating at all. But there are a number of speedrun skips (many clearly intended) that are item-gated. I question whether speedrun skips actually make the game more fun though. They skip playing through dungeons, but when a speedrun consists of overworld movement, dungeon clearing, and fighting bosses, reducing time spent dungeon clearing means you're spending more time on overworld movement, which is boring. The bosses are mostly pretty fun though, so maybe it's a wash.

I like your alternative vision where you just get base dagger and have to use resources to make stronger attacks. As is, it feels like you're being swamped with items yet have not much use for them.

I find another problem with the strong weapons and lack of item-gating is that it discourages any form of exploration. Having the right item at the right time rewards you with either other items, heart pieces, or rupees. Heart pieces are nice, but you will get enough health without chasing them down, especially if you go after bottles, which you can buy with rupees (plentiful) or a few diamonds. Items usefulness in combat are dwarfed by the advanced weapons, so you don't need them for that either, and you will get your choice of items from dungeons anyway, and a few fixed ones elsewhere.

Similarly, the reward for clearing an overworld screen are diamonds, being able to explore the screen in peace, and sometimes unlocking a chest. You only really want enough diamonds to infuse a weapon and/or buy a bottle. Red chests are rarely worth going out of your way; hover boots and glass weapons are nice, everything else is kinda just ok. Heart pieces are worth it if you aren't a Necrodancer god (I am not).

Sooo... if you are just aiming to finish the game, the optimal gameplay is to skip most overworld screens (do a few easy ones for diamonds or if there's a locked blue chest), and go straight for the dungeons. I guess at that point, it's just a reskinned Crypt of the Necrodancer, only with weaker items and more health. Which is a shame, because it could be more than that.

I am currently trying some dagger-only runs. I keep forgetting that I have items, so it's a work in progress :p
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1134 on: June 23, 2019, 10:32:09 pm »
+2

I'm really astounded at how quickly I went from "Zone 4 has too much going on" to "Zone 4 is totally doable if I don't make dumb mistakes". Once I got basic patterns figured out I was taking way less damage early on. I suppose that's every roguelike though.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1135 on: June 24, 2019, 12:45:06 am »
0

I'm really astounded at how quickly I went from "Zone 4 has too much going on" to "Zone 4 is totally doable if I don't make dumb mistakes". Once I got basic patterns figured out I was taking way less damage early on. I suppose that's every roguelike though.

I haven't played CotN in a while, but I remember zone 3 feeling harder than zone 4. Zone 4 has some tough mobs, but the "room" layout allows the player more control over what to deal with than zone 3, which is very open. You should also have somewhat better equipment by the time you get there.
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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1136 on: June 25, 2019, 11:45:18 pm »
+1

I always figured the tempo of zone 3 is what was making me have a harder time.  I noticed the navigational differences but the less mental tax i give to the core mechanic, then miles more attention I can give to navigating anything.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1137 on: June 25, 2019, 11:52:01 pm »
+1

I've kind of always felt that Crypt of the Necrodancer was an ill-advised crossover for this reason.  It's a great game, really, don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong.   But it seems like the worst genre to cross with roguelike because your control of the beats is such a steep, meaningful, dramatic curve, and the random items you get isn't quite as important and there's no way for them to have designed around that.  The bullethell crossover works better, my core mechanic skills seem to drift between less dramatic values, getting hit once every 3 minutes vs. getting hit once every 2 minutes, where in crypt I drift between clearing 6 minutes of content scot free and taking damage every measure of music when I'm not nailing the beat or the beat is costing me too much mental overhead.

If there's a way they should have shifted the LoZ crossover I think it's item gating, and maybe even puzzles and tossing the roguelike element out.  I feel like the only roguelike element that carries into Crypt really well is the idea that the game will be kind of brutal and push you back to a very deep checkpoint, and that's not purely a roguelike thing.
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blueblimp

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1138 on: June 26, 2019, 12:33:11 am »
+1

Well it may be true that people experience the basic mechanics as more challenging than bullet hell, but I think that's just because they're unique to Necrodancer. Bullet hell isn't easy (and I'm bad at it... I bounced off Undertale early, and that's easy bullet hell!), but there are a lot of bullet hell games so gamers are going to have some proficiency at them. Necrodancer mechanics are in my opinion fundamentally easier (just press an arrow twice each second, within a very tolerant window... how hard can it be? ;) ), but until now there was no other game that controlled that way.

I believe this may also be why you think items are low-relevance in ND. If you haven't got a hang of the basic mechanics, then, yes, you have no mental room left over to make efficient use of items. This was true for me also when I started the game. Items are challenging to use effectively and therefore increase the skill ceiling a lot, so if you haven't approached the skill ceiling of base equipment, you may find additional items don't feel useful. In my view, the purpose of items is to add additional depth to the game after you have mastered base equipment. Most people never get to the point of having mastered base equipment, so this could be fairly called a flaw in ND w.r.t. accessibility.

I think there are lots of other games that could be made with the ND combat mechanics, and CoH gives a glimpse at how that might be done. A tricky issue with ND movement is that it takes a long time to cover distance when there's nothing going on, and CoH solves that by putting you in fixed beat mode outside of combat. I don't see any particular reason that ND combat mechanics need to be within a procedurally-generated permadeath context... that just happens to be how they were invented. (The required elements for ND combat mechanics are less-often-mentioned properties of roguelikes, specifically being grid-based and turn-based.)
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1139 on: June 26, 2019, 05:01:10 pm »
+2

I see what you're saying.  If items were more focused on passive effects early on and more focused on actives later on that'd help with being able to access the loot box joy of a roguelike even with poor rhythm skills.

This is kinda something DCSS does right, when you experience early floors with poor skill at the game, there's lots of focus on finding an easy to use but powerful dagger of electrocution, and it's not until endgame/later playthroughs that you're looking at complex spell decisions, usually.

I didn't think about general genre exposure a lot.  It's an interesting point.  When my gf tried to play co-op with me after her lifetime of sandbox and tycoon games she had a remarkably hard time not getting hit.


I beat Delirium for the first time yesterday.  I randomm'ed Lilith, found the trinket that gives you a familiar (Isaac's head), and somehow got 3 Pretty Fly pills.  Those are really good against floor 4.5 so I decided to make it a floor 4.5 run.  I got the familiar that copies another familiar late in the run, and also late in the run I triggered the thing where when you get at low health you summon a familiar (I didn't know Lilith starts with that, oops) and that summoned a Brimstone Familiar.
Then after that the devil room sold me a brimstone, so I had triple brimstone, or maybe double if the copy-a-familiar familiar copied my Monstro familiar instead.  It was lots of familiars, yes yes.

Brimstone is just real strong.  I feel like they need to tone it down.
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1140 on: June 27, 2019, 02:07:28 am »
0

For Binding of Isaac in particular, I've always felt like the intention is to have a few super-strong items that can carry your entire run, because it gives the feeling that you can always salvage a run if you get lucky, which gets people to keep playing even if they don't have a lot of skill in the game.

Brimstone is definitely very very strong, but I think it's one of the funner strong items.
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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1141 on: June 27, 2019, 02:30:10 am »
0

I think it's up there.  It's more fun than say epic fetus.  But maybe not as fun as mom's knife, I wish that appeared in devil room at the same frequency.
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LaLight

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1142 on: June 27, 2019, 11:17:36 am »
0

Today I spent 3 hours on Suicide King challenge then I got Lucky Stone and Magic Fingers. I destroyed everything on my path.

It feels good to find a combo like that but it feels even better when you don't and beat the challenge anyway which happened with me on Cat's one. And this is the reason to keep playing.

One thing I hate, though is Greed mode. God it's awful. Maybe I am playing it wrong, get the idea wrong, but I don't get it. I got all the completion marks on 3 characters now, all but one which is Greed mode. Sometimes I try it, but eh.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1143 on: June 27, 2019, 02:02:16 pm »
+1

I find shopping really fun!

The thing I don't like about greed mode is that the last floor is such a difficulty spike, though.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1144 on: June 27, 2019, 07:11:52 pm »
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I find shopping really fun!

The thing I don't like about greed mode is that the last floor is such a difficulty spike, though.

Exactly! I mean the point of the mode is that you keep money and then feed them t the Greed Machine, but in the end you don't have anything to feed even though you tried to spend less and it's just not fun.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1145 on: June 29, 2019, 07:56:55 am »
0

If items were more focused on passive effects early on and more focused on actives later on that'd help with being able to access the loot box joy of a roguelike even with poor rhythm skills.
This is a bit of a digression but: in ND, passive items are often less forgiving than active items. The reason is that if you forget you have an item and it's passive, that can get you killed (because of mispredicting the result of an input). If you forget you have an active item, the worst thing that can happen is you lose the opportunity to use it to bail yourself out of a tough situation.

I suspect that might be why CoH shifted emphasis a bit to abilities and active items. ND has 7 passive slots: Shovel, Weapon, Armor, Headwear, Footwear, Torch, Ring. (8 if you count Pack.) Plus it has lots of slotless passives with combat-relevant effects. CoH cuts this down to 5 slots: Shovel, Weapon, Footwear, Torch, Ring. The only(?) slotless passive that has a combat-relevant effect is Goron Locket, and that only matters when you would have taken damage otherwise.

On the active side, ND has 2 spells slots and 1-2 slots for other active items. CoH has 2 ability slots (comparable to spells) and 4 slots for other active items. Altogether, it's sort of like CoH shifted 2-3 slots from passives to actives, and almost entirely eliminated slotless passive combat effects.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1146 on: June 30, 2019, 08:59:10 pm »
+2

I unlocked Aria.

I think I'm not going to play Aria until much, much later.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1147 on: September 22, 2019, 07:51:12 pm »
0

I bought Enter the Gungeon on sale.

The game is fun, but I'm not sure how much of a "roguelike" it is.  Most guns can shoot across the whole room and they all have similar dps, so it feels like no run is lucky or unlucky.  In binding of Isaac the range/damage/shooting method on weapons varies more.  BoI also has meaningful defensive items that can make a run a "good" run, those are few and far between in Gungeon so far (although the jetpack is very useful, especially if you mess with your key bindings so its easy to instantly press "take off jetpack then dodgeroll")
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1148 on: September 25, 2019, 06:33:08 pm »
+1

Has anyone tried Noita yet? It sounds interesting, I can't justify buying it yet but it's on my radar.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1149 on: September 25, 2019, 07:39:29 pm »
0

I am a bit wary of games where you build your own spells or so on, because they are impossible to balance. Eventually you figure out one broken combo and use that forever, which hurts replayability.

It does look interesting though.
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