The Codex of Roguelikes

[Fenix]

He made a very important observation that the old-new dualism it should not be seen here (and anywhere else) as undisputed progress.
Usually this is a common point of view, conventional wisdom, and like most of conventional wisdom is wrong, this one is wrong too.
Usually devs start to think about game mechanics, setting, lore, etc, they think tacticaly not strategically.
But from time to time it's necessary to think about where ganre moving now.
At least someone should at least sometimes to remind about it.

He also seems to have a problem in that he fears that people may think that the old roguelikes are just inferior to the new

You know, it is not a constructive approach if you take it personal, like "he fears, he scared, he don't want to kiss asses of sodomites, thus he is latent sodomite too", this is actually cheap demagoguery using pseudoscientific psychological basis. Take logical approach instead.

People will play what they find entertaining for them

Whoa, yeah, they play Matzo Affect, One Bethesda Game At All Times With Different Graphics, Dragon Gay Inquisition and who knows what else crap they will play.

It seems like he tries to convince people that the old roguelikes are also worthy or something

It seems that the art of reading between the lines leading you to a wrong conclusion. Just reat what he wrote.

 

[getter77]

A good notion for a game is absolute in some senses---by and large, the gaming world proper has yet to "solve" many of the Old Problems from the 80's and such for various lamentable reasons, especially in the RPG sphere be they Roguelikes, cRPGs, jRPGS, and so forth. The classics definitely have value, but it seems a bit collectively foolhardy to so quickly reckon them as relics of antiquity frozen in time after such an absolutely miniscule bit of sand has fallen in the hourglass---beyond praising or shunning or laddering them, seizing upon them to continue realizing their "ancient" aims with the aid of hindsight and tremendous advances in technology and tools has got to be a better way forward. There's room for all sorts in the grand scheme of things, which there damn well better be considering the myriad of incomplete works and interrupted experiments, often by external forces as opposed to simply being wholly unsound folly, out there----aesthetic and functional display means are just another area of many that has seen unbalanced progress.

He's doing good, deliberative work on his project---the genre was founded upon wild, unbridled ambition of a particular sort so it is all the better to see a contemporary project continue to find traction and gain momentum while trying to examine the current and prospective state of things.

 

[Zdzisiu]

He made a very important observation that the old-new dualism it should not be seen here (and anywhere else) as undisputed progress.
Usually this is a common point of view, conventional wisdom, and like most of conventional wisdom is wrong, this one is wrong too.
Usually devs start to think about game mechanics, setting, lore, etc, they think tacticaly not strategically.
But from time to time it's necessary to think about where ganre moving now.
At least someone should at least sometimes to remind about it.

He also seems to have a problem in that he fears that people may think that the old roguelikes are just inferior to the new

You know, it is not a constructive approach if you take it personal, like "he fears, he scared, he don't want to kiss asses of sodomites, thus he is latent sodomite too", this is actually cheap demagoguery using pseudoscientific psychological basis. Take logical approach instead.

People will play what they find entertaining for them

Whoa, yeah, they play Matzo Affect, One Bethesda Game At All Times With Different Graphics, Dragon Gay Inquisition and who knows what else crap they will play.

It seems like he tries to convince people that the old roguelikes are also worthy or something

It seems that the art of reading between the lines leading you to a wrong conclusion. Just reat what he wrote.

The thing is, I like the guy, I like his work on URR and I follow his progress with anticipation. I don't want to sound like I believe he is not right, or scared. But this fragment just struck me as weird in the sense, that he isn't saying anything more than "Old roguelikes are nice too, you should try them!" Maybe I'm not the target audience for this fragment because I already play the classic roguelikes and have no problems with ASCII.

 

[Fenix]

Despite I belive all you said it's true, you still don't understand him.
He said simple thing - dualism of logical couple "old-new" lead to logical delusion that all new is better then all old.
That's how everyman, philistine thinks, because "well, it's obvious right, new cars better, new processor faster".
Actually cultural studies and philosophy deals with this issue. So his words are a special case of a broader problem.
The only fear I can found in his words is the fear of primitivization of roguelike games.
Also his point about more materialist aspect of modern roguelikes is fairly obvious, at least for me - "deity" system is the less and less common in our days, with nothing added instead.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Personally I don't get the "old roguelikes are nice too" vibe from the piece either. If anything, the bit I quoted is extremely harsh on roguelites and modern roguelikes. He's simply trying to be nice, but not, I think, in the sense you're reading it.

The way I'm reading it, it reads more along the lines of "modern roguelikes can be nice too, of course, but the classic ones are tougher and have more interesting design; as for roguelikelikes and roguelites, these are trivial and impure and must be purged".

I guess this just goes to show again how different people can read (the intentions behind) one and the same text in completely different ways.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this fragment because I already play the classic roguelikes and have no problems with ASCII.

I don't think anyone in this thread is the target audience. My impression is that the target audience is people whose primary experience with roguelikes are games like FTL or the Binding of Isaac. He wants to inform these people that the shift to modernize the roguelike has involved rejecting many interesting elements of the genre, something most of us are already aware of.

Although I don't think he's antipathetic to the moderns exactly, I think he's antipathetic to the sentiment that the moderns offer comparable depth to the classics. I read him as liking the moderns in the same way we might like candy; it's nice every now and then, but it's not food.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this fragment because I already play the classic roguelikes and have no problems with ASCII.

I don't think anyone in this thread is the target audience. My impression is that the target audience is people whose primary experience with roguelikes are games like FTL or the Binding of Isaac. He wants to inform these people that the shift to modernize the roguelike has involved rejecting many interesting elements of the genre, something most of us are already aware of.

Although I don't think he's antipathetic to the moderns exactly, I think he's antipathetic to the sentiment that the moderns offer comparable depth to the classics. I read him as liking the moderns in the same way we might like candy; it's nice every now and then, but it's not food.

And if thats the case with him, Im all in support.

 

[Alchemist]

Yeah that Paste magazine is definitely aimed a very broad audience (just look around at the other articles) - so I think the main intention is just to educate people a bit. Many Codexers, and people in this thread in particular, are already on-board with everything he says before even reading it.

It's a good, insightful article for what it is - and maybe it will lead some of the newer / younger roguelike fans and developers to explore the classics. And maybe they'll bring some of those elements that got lost, into "modern" roguelikes.

 

[Inspectah]

So, anyone here played the new Caves of Qud steam release? Is it worth it if I already played a lot of the free version?

 

[Zdzisiu]

So, anyone here played the new Caves of Qud steam release? Is it worth it if I already played a lot of the free version?

I'm playing it now. Can't say much about this version. I played the free version years ago. Didn't get far in the steam version yet, just the initial quests and a lot of YASD.

But people on reddit said the steam version stops in the same place as the free version, plotwise.

Edit: But the tileset in the steam version is nice. Rather basic but quite clear and easy on the eyes.

 

[Inspectah]

Oh I see.
Guess I will skip it for now, then, since I don't really care about tilesets

 

[getter77]

I'd say it is definitely worth jumping into---they've been wading through tech hell fixing all sorts of old bugs and optimizing the hell out of the game compared to the old days to shore up the foundations for what lies ahead and work on the first content update to the game should be starting Real Soon.

After all these years, they've finally hit upon the right timing and circumstances to get some real momentum going---so good.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Yeah, I bought Qud on steam to support the devs. Since they kept the game free while launching on steam I thought they deserved it. Also I do like tilesets, so I guess I'm a bit of a graphicswhore. Quds is pretty nice looking. It has a similar visual style to Brogue, but more brown/orange color palette to match the toxin drenched wasteland setting. The only issue is that the palette seems to be pretty low contrast, so it makes the tiles more difficult to "read" than is necessary. Brogue is crystal clear, but in the Qud tiles it's sometimes hard to notice monsters creeping up on you. That's a minor complaint however.

 

[Inspectah]

That's cool, guess it will go to the "gotta buy eventually, when I don't have to choose between buying food or buying games"
Really nice seeing the old roguelikes coming back, though

 

[getter77]

Price isn't going to increase after the Early Access period either, so yeah, just jump in whenever and wish them well from afar as they continue to bash Unity upside the head and work around it to get results.

 

[Korgan 2.0]

I bought Caves of Qud! It's awesome, the flavour is amazing!

(ps take 4-5 unstable genome, it pays off; if you are really tempted to, restart if nothing good mainfests by level 3, as you'll have wasted like 10 minutes max)

(also, Golgotha will fuck you up so bad right now. Bring like 10+ salves/ubernostrums and some invulnerability.)

 

[JudasIscariot]

(ps take 4-5 unstable genome, it pays off; if you are really tempted to, restart if nothing good mainfests by level 3, as you'll have wasted like 10 minutes max)

How does putting more than 1 point into Unstable Genome help? It doesn't seem to raise the odds of you getting a mutation at all and you can't level it like other mutations.

 

[Korgan 2.0]

Each time a mutation manifests, it takes off one point and then it goes on until all of UG manifests! So it ends up kind of randomly spaced over the first 15 levels... most of the time.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's basically a cheaper way of buying random mutations. You pay 3 points instead of whatever they'd normally cost (probably 4 or 5 if you're picking something decent.)
Though one could easily make the argument (especially if you mixing both types of mutations) that it's more valuable to have exactly the right mutations for your intended build. Randomness is fun though.

Just started playing this today. Lots of fun, very detailed game. Made a super strong hammer dude. Sadly, could not find a two handed hammer, so it felt a bit wasted, wasn't even worth using hammers until I got bonecrusher, and even then it was kinda meh compared to what it seemed like swords could do if I'd specialized there instead.

Died in the grit gate after waking up a critter I shouldn't have. Kind of annoying to die to the equivalent of a floating eye after reaching level 7 or so, but whatever, gives me a chance to try a new build.

 

[Korgan 2.0]

Just died to a random snapjaw scavenger (the single weakest enemy in the game... usually) with a fucking flamethrower. Some of the randomness is beyond hardcore and straight up bullshit.

(sometimes they have simpler artifacts like grenades, or carbide-tier gear, but I've never seen that before)

 

[Korgan 2.0]

Late-game footage from an earlier version; dude is delving the post-apocalyptic Bethesda HQ, fighting trolls and all sorts of popamole mutants. Realistic!

(Why anyone would look at graphic tiles instead of CoQ's beautiful unicode graphics is beyond me, though.)

 

[getter77]

Quest for the Unicorn hit a big v6.0HC update---Silver Anniversary at that as the dev as been at it overall for 25 years now. There's a new class, modes, fixes---pretty much the works for this aged titan of ASCII.

http://elf-emulation.com/rcs/unicorn5/index.html

Windows only, though the Source should be up at some point. I half wonder if this constitutes some kind of record at least in the Roguelike scene as far as the original fellow still being at it as the only others that come to mind are Biskup and Kornel alongside their relatively younger projects compared to the likes of this?

 

[JudasIscariot]

Each time a mutation manifests, it takes off one point and then it goes on until all of UG manifests! So it ends up kind of randomly spaced over the first 15 levels... most of the time.

Huh, I thought it was a permanent thing, did not know it would get used up. Thanks!

Speaking of CoQ, has anyone who played a True Man found any cybernetics and if so, when did you find any? I like playing a True Man every now and then but it's hard to give up those mutations since they add a lot of flavor, imho.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Ultima Ratio Regum developer on modern graphical vs. classic ASCII roguelikes:



http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/07/before-spelunky-and-ftl-there-was-only-ascii.html

There's a lot of very sound points in that article and I would go as far as expand those concepts to gaming in general, not just roguelikes->roguelites; especially the idea that chronological forward movement doesn't mean progress, and that metagaming, in-between rewards (starting with advantages through simple amount of playtime) contribute to the decline of everything. Thanks for linking this.

I still play DCSS with tiles instead of ASCII though

 

[Zdzisiu]

I've got my second win in DCSS recently, once again Gargoyle Fighter of Okawaru. Gargoyles are just too damn good with their intrinsics to not play them. It was just a 3 rune win but I believe I could have some fun in Hell with maxed resistances, torment dealing less damage to me and both +9 Demon Whip and +9 Eveningstar of Holy Wrath. At the end I had 70 AC with maxed Armour skill, and around 200hp so I was pretty tanky.

But one thing that playing GaFi does to you is make you underestimate the enemies on other characters. The things you can tank with GaFi since midgame will kill you ass on less tanky characters easily.

Also, the last few patches made the game easier in many ways, thats a thing too.