The Codex of Roguelikes

[Matador]

Finally due to playing some Sil, I came to try Angband. I'm currently in Dungeon level 26/100 with an humans warrior.

Other games are more about improvisation and survival with limited resources (Brogue, Infra Arcana), and some of them have more depth in the tactical combat layer with skills (TOME4) or creative God abilities (DCSS), or more deep character building (TOME4, DCSS).

But none of those games capture the sense of adventuring that comes from the preparation and planning that Angband needs to proceed in the dungeon (ADOM maybe). It's fantastic the progress you feel getting equipment upgrades for future expeditions, escaping a tight situation to rest and restock in your base, and think about what you need for the new dungeon depth.

Without a lot of resource limitations, you can go all in planning your tactical strikes to get treasure and go deeper in the dungeon against tougher enemies. You are a one army and intelligence agency with all those detection and mapping devices.

It reminds me of classic Wizardry, which is one of my favourite gaming formulas: Conquer the dungeon, win the war recovering from lost battles while you grow stronger and with better tools.

And this would seem far fetched but it reminds me also of Monster Hunter, where preparation, equipment, strategy,knowledge and some grind are paramount to hunt hard monsters.

For that old of a game I feel great and mature design. It's not a mistery is still played to this day and spawned a lot of variants. Fantastic game.

 

[Gandalf]

Is there something out there like Thief inspired roguelike?

 

[AgentFransis]

Finally due to playing some Sil, I came to try Angband

Isn't Sil-Q an Angband variant? How does it compare with Angband? I was meaning to play Sil next. Also I heard that the current Angband dev was changing a lot of stuff about the game in recent updates.

 

[Matador]

Finally due to playing some Sil, I came to try Angband

Isn't Sil-Q an Angband variant? How does it compare with Angband? I was meaning to play Sil next. Also I heard that the current Angband dev was changing a lot of stuff about the game in recent updates.

Sil has very little In common, play very differently, except the setting and engine. Is more tactical/character building based. Only 20 floors, no town, survive how you can.

Im playing last version 4.2.3, don't know almost anything about old versions. Maybe some veteran can tell us what he think about the current dev and updates.

For me is very fun, maybe it was even better on the past.

 

[lukaszek]

Is there something out there like Thief inspired roguelike?

perhaps streets of rogue would scratch your itch?

 

[AgentFransis]

It's also implied that there's a hidden boss somewhere but I scoured the whole map and couldn't find it. Maybe it's not implemented yet.

I read a guide (posted earlier in this thread) to find the hidden ending. What, the fuck. Why is it so hidden? It's way cooler than the basic ending and clearly a lot of work went into it. Still trivially easy (mostly).

Spoiler

So the dwarves tell you that there's an ancient evil the Fae sealed in a can under the ocean somewhere and the key is in the underground Fae city behind a wall you need to mine. That's not hard to find. But the prison itself is in an unmarked ocean tile north of the Fae island. Inside the first guardian drops an amulet of water breathing that's important for later.

Spoiler

Further inside is the room where the Fae sealed this monster that came on a meteor. This guy is extremely dangerous and can kill you in a few hits and has some absurd number of hitpoints. But you can kite him with blink and instakill him with a vorpal wand. Oy vey this game is just the master of anticlimax.

Then you need to travel back to the starting island. You wear the amulet of water breathing and talk to the strange boy SE of the burial mound. He then teleports you to the celestial spire.

Spoiler

So it turns out the ancients that built the shrines actually built a fourth shrine that could reach the heavens. The gods got pissed off, shattered the world into it's current configuration and genocided the builders. But a small group of them managed to teleport the spire under the ocean where they spent millenia preparing to take vengeance on the gods and waiting for a champion to appear. They give you a bunch of gear and a god killing sword and send you up the spire to kill those fuckers. You travel up through various planes until you reach the plane of the gods. Then they spawn one at a time with a group of servants until you kill them all.

 

[Metronome]

I did a little checking more, and it seems that exploring other worlds is something they could do, the only problem is filling it. Which I guess is a problem if they want to make the world actually alien, instead of like the human world, but with alien slapped in front of things.

Spoiler

The problem is that the mutagen doing things that are impossible, is that in-lore, it only improves those already consumed by the blob. You know, the overarching thing controlling all the zombies. Everyone is under its influence, even if they're not zombies. And since the blob is everywhere, even the water, it'd be really difficult for your character to stay cured, assuming he could cure himself. This ties into the original point I was dancing around with the oversized blob pits. They're planning on making zombie hordes running around in the wilderness, led by a zombie master, so clearly their thoughts are on huge, nasty hordes. My thought is that the blob pits would be a sign of its gradually growing influence, and these blob bits would be wandering around the countryside. Of course, the problem with this is it goes against the "humanity is screwed" bit. What possible reason would there be to deal with one, outside of preventing wandering enemies?
Also, judging by other bits I've read, more aliens are going to be thrown into the mix, friendly ones.

Either way I think they realize that the game's too easy past a certain point, they're just not sure how to improve on that yet. I don't think they have any idea where they're going with it at this point.

The point I was getting at is that it can do things which would not be possible. Implying such exotic materials could allow for you to overcome normal physical limitations if the developers allowed it. There are already CBMs (man made) which let you do insane things like dilate time, and they are not even using exotic materials. Mutations could allow for more than that because they do. This could go both for mutant players and monsters that evolve over time. Eventually human technology would become obsolete because it is no longer being improved and is not designed for these threats. So your machine gun in a shopping cart and survivor suit would eventually meet their match. Your deathmobiles might encounter something that can outrun them. Your robots would find something that crushes them like a bug instead. In a game where realism is king, cosmic horrors take a back seat to physics, which isn't really great horror material. Unless the goal is to ultimately subvert all of this realism for better effect.

Artifacts also break the laws of physics to give you advantages. Regardless, it's never quite enough to go toe to toe with a tank or something similar. Some standard man made explosives are though. So why go through all that trouble to get an artifact? Artifacts are often duds as well to add insult to injury. CBMs have no negatives, are more effective, and are easier to find. You never get all that substantially better from exploring alien places then. Your greatest power and threats come from humanity. You can go slaughter an entire city full of zombies with your fancy mutations and then be killed right away by a bandit with a high caliber rifle. Some power armor might save you but that is human sourced as well.

Spoiler

There is the infection still. It is an existential threat but not very important in the gameplay that currently exists. Maybe at some point it could be used against the player. Like if you do something offensive enough for the blob to notice it starts to influence you. Or maybe it works like a disease that progresses in the player at a rate you can set in the menu, like monster evolution. So at some point you have to find a solution before it does something to you. Maybe the only way to be rid of it is to exploit something found in alien regions and sites? Who knows? The point is to use it as motivation for a player who has overcome everything else.

Once they have that solved they can go and take the fight to the outsiders by traveling to their worlds through portals. They can accomplish something there and see results when they return to earth. There you go. A "standard ending" of curing yourself and an "ultimate ending" of defeating the outsiders.

It's unlikely anything too interesting will happen with how their development style limits creativity. Realism as law works well for simulations, and the simulation aspects of the game are strong and getting stronger. It's also something easy to form a consensus around when so many different people want to contribute to a game. The problem is that the game does not really go anywhere without a creative drive that exists outside of the confines of simulation. Whales provided this in the early days and his influence still remains through legacy monsters and sites. These were not always compatible with the goal of realism in DDA as there would often be fantastic things. It shows in content like zombie necromancers, stones summoning vortexes, and temples carrying magical artifacts. These things still exist (I think) but are shifted into the background for the more sober setting there is now. They go to show there is at least a precedent for spicing things up a bit, and if you can explain these things through some exotic material, you could probably use it to allow for a lot more fantastic content.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

The point I was getting at is that it can do things which would not be possible. Implying such exotic materials could allow for you to overcome normal physical limitations if the developers allowed it. There are already CBMs (man made) which let you do insane things like dilate time, and they are not even using exotic materials. Mutations could allow for more than that because they do. This could go both for mutant players and monsters that evolve over time. Eventually human technology would become obsolete because it is no longer being improved and is not designed for these threats. So your machine gun in a shopping cart and survivor suit would eventually meet their match. Your deathmobiles might encounter something that can outrun them. Your robots would find something that crushes them like a bug instead. In a game where realism is king, cosmic horrors take a back seat to physics, which isn't really great horror material. Unless the goal is to ultimately subvert all of this realism for better effect.

Fair enough. As you say, they are focusing too much on realism to the point where everything not realistic has some in-universe excuse. Like the CBMs, I realize I'm missing the point you're making again, but that's also rationalized as alien technology, which is what everything sci-fi is rationalized as. I don't think there's some in-game explicit mention of it, but every bit of advanced tech in-game is reverse-engineered from a UFO that crash landed 40 or so years ago. "Of course they can dilate time because they're alien technology!" I think those friendly aliens I mentioned are intended as the future source of CBMs. Thus I guess an attempt at realism, or something. It makes sense for something to be able to beat you that isn't human, beyond the big demon spiders or a fully grown black dragon, both rare threats. The mi-gos should be interested in some human who's managed to survive and even thrive against the new world. Since they grow all their technology you'd think they'd have a tank or a helicopter that could take you out. The mi-gos are supposed to be this intelligent, space-faring race, and yet one of their bases can be taken out with a MP5 and a gas mask.

Artifacts also break the laws of physics to give you advantages. Regardless, it's never quite enough to go toe to toe with a tank or something similar. Some standard man made explosives are though. So why go through all that trouble to get an artifact? Artifacts are often duds as well to add insult to injury. CBMs have no negatives, are more effective, and are easier to find. You never get all that substantially better from exploring alien places then. Your greatest power and threats come from humanity. You can go slaughter an entire city full of zombies with your fancy mutations and then be killed right away by a bandit with a high caliber rifle. Some power armor might save you but that is human sourced as well.

I've found enemies that use mininuke hacks tricky to deal with, but that's still humanity being the biggest threat. For a game with all this cosmic horror stuff in the lore, even a crappy artifact should be worth fighting for. As it stands the only one really worth something is the clairvoyance one, and I don't think its possible to get that legitimately.

Spoiler

Also, the blob stuff you're suggesting sounds like a cool idea. Humanity might be beneath notice, like bacteria is beneath our notice, but we do notice if we have an illness. But considering the devs opinion on the blob's ability, that might be less subtle influence and more the earth splits open and swallows you whole kind of stuff. Assuming they say the blob notices you at all. I'm not sure how this works and I'm not sure they know either. If the blob's moved on and the blob's terraforming the Earth, why can't we save it? Course, I consider it to be good game design in general to include absolutely happy endings, because there's always going to be one guy playing your game who makes a joke of all the enemies that could possibly be a threat.
But it is worth pointing out that your idea has some basis in the game, though with the Myloss/fungal faction. That's a whole mutation tree. It could be done that you slowly mutate into a sentient zombie master, achieving a part of the blob's wisdom or whatever, and hunt down the remaining humans. Hmm, I think one could mod something like that in now. I once had a thought of making an Italian horror film inspired zombie master game, you know, being a spooky demon dude, gradually destroying the world. Could be interesting...

It's unlikely anything too interesting will happen with how their development style limits creativity. Realism as law works well for simulations, and the simulation aspects of the game are strong and getting stronger. It's also something easy to form a consensus around when so many different people want to contribute to a game. The problem is that the game does not really go anywhere without a creative drive that exists outside of the confines of simulation. Whales provided this in the early days and his influence still remains through legacy monsters and sites. These were not always compatible with the goal of realism in DDA as there would often be fantastic things. It shows in content like zombie necromancers, stones summoning vortexes, and temples carrying magical artifacts. These things still exist (I think) but are shifted into the background for the more sober setting there is now. They go to show there is at least a precedent for spicing things up a bit, and if you can explain these things through some exotic material, you could probably use it to allow for a lot more fantastic content.

I am admittedly a later player of the game, I wasn't there when Whales was handling things. I think I started at 0.C. But it does sound like the parts of the game that I like are all his idea. I think the problem, for now, is that some of the developers want there to be more interesting alien/zombie/elderitch stuff, but because everything is strictly on the realism factor, they're playing catch-up on getting it in. Any clever monsters they think up usually need some realistic explanation to get in. I think there was discussion about a rust zombie because of this.
For me, there are basically two aspects to the game I really like, having a Dawn of the Dead-style game world, which is more or less already there, and going full Lovecraft with the setting. The problem, as you note, is that they don't have enough of it. Every bit of Lovecraftian horror is sealed off in an easy to avoid location. Like they have a few tricky enemies that have a good shot against a late-game character, but you have to go out of your way to find them, and I'm not certain some of them are still in-game. There should be more of it. Like have some of the more human facing Lovecraft deities appear. Nyarlathotep is fond of screwing with humans, for instance, have a mysterious man in the middle of a horde of zombies. Fishpeople, fishpeople zombies, since we can change into a bear or whatever, have zombie animals gradually turn into more terrifying versions of themselves. Hell, there are zoos around, are exotic wildlife even in yet? Resident Evil had a zombie elephant.

 

[getter77]

There was an amusing Reddit victory post on Shadow of the Wyrm some months back that managed the all the secret doings with an Unarmed character, IIRC, that also floated a lot of feedback to the dev who has been addressing it and more bit by bit in the updates that have followed since and continue to every roughly Some Months at a time.

There's precious few at all ADOM-Likes out there in the Roguelike world---so it is good fortune to have somebody sanely receptive to feedback putting in time and work on it steadily.

 

[Gandalf]

scratch your itch

It scrathed my other itch. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[JBro]

Shut up and play Jupiter Hell.

 

[buffalo bill]

Shut up and play DoomRL.

fixed

 

[PapaPetro]

Whenever I hear DoomRL I'm always reminded of MetroidRL for some reason (maybe it's the RL suffix?).
https://slashie.net/info/metroidrl.html

Interesting implementation of verticality/platforming in a roguelike(ish).

 

[Fenix]

It kinda kills the tension when I can walk around blasting with basically infinite ammo.

Play with sity size set to 0 and minimal item generation like this guy.

https://www.twitch.tv/ouroboroses

You will start with digging stick and the peak will be steam engines.

There's a whole bunch of ways to bypass the 60 range turrets.

There is other - lure Zs there, they will crush everything. They will rise no matter what.

 

[Fenix]

As for JH - I played a lot of it recently, after release, specifically nightmare only.
Turned out Marine is the strongest class, yeah. And strongest master trait is Surviver.
I did nigthmare easy-peasy with it - melee style.
Other classes can't win nigthmare-melee without lucky find of powerful exotic weapon, maybe unique - it's design or unpolishness?
Also, some tings clearly unpolished - worst level on nightmare is the first one - you need to finish it with 100 hp, to be able to survive next, and you need sniper rifle for that, as it coudl gib mobs, which is what you need on nigthmare, but it's not guaranteed to drop.
Also, to get enough exp to lvl up you need to eliminate everyone at level - which is hard caue they "alive" again after 25 turns out of LoS.
And you don't have armor.
Usually it's take ~30 min for me to get proper start - with 100 hp at the end, and sr, and with lvlup.
Devs clearly didn't played it properly.

Also, after I win with marine, I won with scout melee, and to understavd how ridiculous it was - I have found exotic Hammerhead, automatic rifle-railgun.
I used it till last level, and only there I used sword.
If this is ways of melee on nightmare, I don't want to play it.
Tech-melee simply can't survive nigthmare, as he can't reliably gib mobs, cause at best he has 25+20+20(or 25) crit chance, those mobs he didn't gib become alive again and wear him down. Armor coudn't last even a level.
Also wound some combo that would be later nerfed I guess, cause it's best armor right now - med-fiber armor with B mode, set to auto-repair.
Armor itself heals up to 50% hp for its durability, mode repair armor - infinite healing!

So I play UV now - but feels too simple after nightmare.

 

[The Fish]

Anyone know if KeeperRL is any good? It looks like it's lacking some of the complexity and chaos that makes other base building "roguelikes" fun.

 

[PapaPetro]

Anyone know if KeeperRL is any good? It looks like it's lacking some of the complexity and chaos that makes other base building "roguelikes" fun.

If you like Dungeon Keeper and roguelikes then it's for you.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Dunno...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ok, I tried a pirated alpha 12 of Ultimate ADOM. Game is ridiculously easy (its alpha and bugged as fuck might be why). That version is probably a piss poor version of the final one sold. Couldn't go doen stairs and shit errors happened. Still, it seemed damn easy so maybe the bobble headed characters fits it. Must be for wee baby rogue like players.

 

[Sacibengala]

Ok, I tried a pirated alpha 12 of Ultimate ADOM. Game is ridiculously easy (its alpha and bugged as fuck might be why). That version is probably a piss poor version of the final one sold. Couldn't go doen stairs and shit errors happened. Still, it seemed damn easy so maybe the bobble headed characters fits it. Must be for wee baby rogue like players.

I bought on release and performance is awful. Lagging all the way, menu, moving, attacks, everything. The game is ridiculously much easier than the base Adom. Can't recommend the game the way it is. The graphics is better playing than I had expected, though.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So it really is for babies? Lol. Glad I pirated the first level. Will they fix their bugs?
What about GOGs other ADOM entry?

I recall the free adom a long time ago, how foes it compare to the GOG one (not this ultimate rubbish)?

 

[Sacibengala]

So it really is for babies? Lol. Glad I pirated the first level. Will they fix their bugs?
What about GOGs other ADOM entry?

I recall the free adom a long time ago, how foes it compare to the GOG one (not this ultimate rubbish)?

The GOG version is the same as the free version, exactly. The difference is that the GOG and Steam versions have "easy mode" achievements and whatever. The first one is great and I believe still gets an annual patch.

 

[BlackGoat]

Anyone know if KeeperRL is any good? It looks like it's lacking some of the complexity and chaos that makes other base building "roguelikes" fun.

If you want to give it a try he released a free version last year

https://keeperrl.com/index.html@p=10891

 

[PapaPetro]

Just play the ASCII version for added difficulty

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

In ULTIMATE ADOM? You lose your bobble heads.