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Decline Why so little love for Nethack?

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
No roguelike deserves a spot in the top 20 compared to real hand-made RPGs with actual level design and hand-placed encounters.
You do realize your "muh handmade levels and encounters!" shtick does get rather tiresome?
I realize you won't stop, but I'm just wondering if it is your goal to appear, even within the Codex, as the grumpy old man who yells at the passing teens from behind the fence.

I'm just a grumpy old man who wants games with real, actual content. Proc gen can't deliver that :M
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
No roguelike deserves a spot in the top 20 compared to real hand-made RPGs with actual level design and hand-placed encounters.
You do realize your "muh handmade levels and encounters!" shtick does get rather tiresome?
I realize you won't stop, but I'm just wondering if it is your goal to appear, even within the Codex, as the grumpy old man who yells at the passing teens from behind the fence.

I'm just a grumpy old man who wants games with real, actual content. Proc gen can't deliver that :M
Nethack, ADOM & other roguelikes have real, actual content, its placement and some surrounding pieces merely get shuffled a bit.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
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Is there any way to use top down tileset with Vulture?

The map in Vulture is top-down, but it's kinda ASCIIish. Otherwise no, as far as I know.

So what reasons there are to get into Nethack instead of say ADOM? I've thinked about moving on from ToME and ADOM seems like the most interesting option.

I haven't really played ADOM much, but from what I understand, lots of people complete ADOM within a year or two. Nethack, if you avoid hints and guides online, can be played for decades. It's a much tougher, more unpredictable game, in my opinion, while ADOM has you more in control.

I enjoy roguelikes a lot but I remember watching a Nethack let's play and it seemed especially esoteric. ...

Are these things you could ever figure out for yourself or is it taken for granted that you've been told by somebody or are following a guide.

Yes, you can absolutely learn everything yourself, but it's difficult and takes years of real time, and tons of playthroughs. Some things you learn by dying, some you learn by experimenting, some you learn from various in-game hints/knowledge. But that's really one of the most fun aspects of Nethack, the years-long learning experience of its world.
 

undecaf

Arcane
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Jun 4, 2010
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
I loved Nethack back in the day. Still remember fondly controlling my @ in confusing maze of ###...\__- and getting constantly killed by a k.

I’ll have to check this out, didn’t know it was being sold still.
 

Trojan_generic

Magister
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Jul 21, 2007
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
You're too late, I finished Nethack already during the last decade after 20 years of trying. Now 6 years into T.O.M.E. 2.4.
 

Max Damage

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Mar 1, 2017
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To be honest, DCSS isn't that hard, especially if you're going for 3 rune win.
 

Fishy

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To this day, my YAFAP is still one of my fondest crpg achievements ever. I'm still chuffed about it and can relive the near-misses where things could very very easily have gone very very wrong. I killed a lot of characters getting there, and many many rogues in particular until this one finally made it. Even had the helm to change alignment and could have ascended at the first altar I found but feck it, I made it that far, I pushed on to ascend on the proper one.

To think kids these days feel big because they beat Dark Souls with infinite lives... :decline:
 

hackncrazy

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Jun 9, 2015
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It doesn't receive love on the codex because the average codexer is about "muh story and NPCs and questing" who don't give a single fuck about good gameplay. Nethack and some other roguelikes are the apex of RPGs. You really are you're character, every decision you make can be your final one and you really have to plan your steps.

What the codex loves is books (and bad books, by the way) disguised as games. Planescape Torment is hailed over here as the greatest story ever made on a game but even a C-movie has a better story.
 

Casual Hero

Augur
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Mar 24, 2015
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USA
And the great thing that many people don't even know is that NetHack is still in active development. Version 3.6.3 came out just 6 days ago! It was mainly for bug fixes, but they are preparing the game for a bigger content update soon. This game is basically immortal.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,110
I am actually playing it right now. My favorite move is to disable Vulture music, and put on some good songs on youtube, and rock out while dungeoning out. Nothing like finding that scroll of enchant weapon AND a magic marker on the 2nd level, eh? :)
 

Will Zurmacht

Educated
Joined
Nov 5, 2019
Messages
59
It doesn't receive love on the codex because the average codexer is about "muh story and NPCs and questing" who don't give a single fuck about good gameplay.

6rZ8g8R.jpeg
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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Mar 22, 2013
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This game barely gets mentioned here, never makes it on the top RPG lists.

And yet it is without a doubt one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and with the Vulture 2D graphical interface (the whole package available on Steam for like $3), there is no "I don't play ASCII" excuse.

This game, if you don't look up online hints/guides, can take many, many years to play through, as you uncover its secrets, and understand how everything works. I've been playing it on and off for years (close to a decade), and the furthest I've gotten is level 29 out of the 50 floors in the main dungeon.

The combination of intelligent gameplay and the thrill of discovering awesome loot, leveling up your character, and learning new shit makes this game the thinking man's Diablo (which I believe was sorta based on it in the beginning).

So, Codex, what's your excuse?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/341390/Vulture_for_NetHack/

I like and respect roguelikes a lot, but after a few runs I run out of enthusiasm for most of them and go back to, what Jarl would call, handcrafted dungeons. Not saying those are superior, but it's the stuff I prefer over roguelikes. And usually I favor party-based RPGs, which is usually not the forte of roguelikes
 
Last edited:

Jasede

Arcane
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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
DCSS is fucking garbage and I will tear anyone apart who thinks that mutilated, streamlined shit is a proper roguelike. It's Oblivion: the Roguelike.
Identifying wands? Too hard.
Food? Too hard.
Spells? Let's get rid of 'useless' (fun) spells for a more 'streamlined' experience.
How about we add an autoexplore button?
And an autofight button?

Jesus, I can't even, I hate it so much.

Linley's Dungeon Crawl was a beautiful game and these fucking cuntbags raped my beautiful baby boy.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,982
DCSS is pretty much roguelite at this point, yeah. The devs have been tilting at windmills for way too long there. They removed action based xp to make tedious play less optimal.... then they got rid of respawns so clearing levels and stair dancing everything is optimal. Because that's nots tedious apparently. The gods keep getting more and more generic, they pretty much all grant faith for killing whatever now. And their idea of making things more interesting is adding stupid RNG shit that has a chance to just outright kill you no matter how you prepare. It's resource management aspect is boring as fuck too because you get too much shit. You're pretty much guaranteed to have curing, healing, flight, remove curse, teleport and blink pretty early on. So it's not a matter of 'how do I use what I've got in a clever way to make it out alive?' but a matter of 'how do I conserve all the shit I have through tedious bullshit so I can burn through it to escape situations without any room for being clever?"

Nethack's best quality is how powerful seemingly mundane things can be with the right knowledge. Use a towel to kill a floating eye, lead your pet dog over a polymorph trap to get a pet dragon, use stone to flesh on a boulder to make food when you're starving, hurl yourself past traps with a ball and chain and gauntlets of giant strength. Or fuck up in some equally novel (but logical) way and die for it.
 

Max Damage

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Mar 1, 2017
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658
DCSS itself has been in a steep decline for the last few years, but I enjoy its forks. Anyway, this thread inspired me to give Nethack another try, I'll report my progress sometime later :D
 

thesheeep

Arcane
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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
How about we add an autoexplore button?
Why would that be a bad thing?
Moving from A to B is never fun in those games, it's not like you have a nice scenery to look at, usually, anyway - autoexplore skips the "nothing happens" part and stops only when something fun/interesting/important happens, like seeing a trap/enemy/etc.
Not that I wouldn't play roguelikes without it, but I'm definitely thankful for that feature in CoQ, ToME, etc.
 

buffalo bill

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
1,004
No roguelike deserves a spot in the top 20 compared to real hand-made RPGs with actual level design and hand-placed encounters.
You do realize your "muh handmade levels and encounters!" shtick does get rather tiresome?
I realize you won't stop, but I'm just wondering if it is your goal to appear, even within the Codex, as the grumpy old man who yells at the passing teens from behind the fence.

I'm just a grumpy old man who wants games with real, actual content. Proc gen can't deliver that :M
Try Infra Arcana. The algorithm for proc gen dungeon generation is great. And the game is great.
 

Max Damage

Savant
Joined
Mar 1, 2017
Messages
658
Okay, so I've played some NetHack again, and it's ok. I wish I could write something more, but I don't feel compelled to play it instead of some more intense or loose roguelikes. It feels very "vanilla", which isn't to say it's bad - just not something that catches my attention for long.
 

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