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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

On Wed, 4 May 2005, Glen Wheeler wrote:
> However there was a huge amount of graphics released, hype produced,
> history pieces written and pretty much everything (at least, superficially)
> about the Zerg, Protoss and Terran races were known. I can't recall exactly
> when, but sometime in 1994 I saw the first screenshot of the in-production
> StarCraft.

This I did not know.

[...]
> Worst adaption ever IMO: Street Fighter (the movie), the game based on
> the movie based on the game.

Hey, I've seen the /comic book/ based on the movie based on the game!

-Arthur
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

On 2005-05-03, Hansjoerg Malthaner <hansjoerg.malthaner@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
> OTOH you can tell about Diablo II what you want. I like the game. I got
> it 2003 and I'm still playing. The online variant is addicting, more
> than single player, but I see nothing bad in that fact.
>
> Just curious, did you kill hell difficulty Ball once in a solo game? I'm
> asking, becuase I seriously doubt that your writing comes from your own
> experience, and my experience is definitely different.

No, I haven't. I haven't played it through in normal difficulty either,
I played up to the jungle land with a sorceress and then got bored. And
I couldn't beat Baal anyway as I don't have the expansion. It does seem
that I should complete the game at least once just so that I could have
even a bit better Diablo criticization crendentials. Actually I should
complete it with several characters, because character classes seems to
be something Diablo 2 has done really well and I should get a better
feel for how the different characters play.

I assume you're right, though. From what I've read, hell difficulty
really is something nasty, and probably will really require you to plan
very well to survive. When you play D2 as a more or less mindless
click-click-die-respawn game like I did, it doesn't seem like much, but
when you start to really get into character build and gear optimization,
maybe it starts to turn into a more interesting game.

I've got an idea why I didn't warm up to Diablo 2. I've lost count on
how many times I've started Baldur's Gate 2 with different character
combinations, but playing Diablo 2 seems more like a chore even though
it has more randomization. I think that important thing is how Baldur's
Gate 2 gives you a wide range of quests to go after. Even though the
quests are always the same, playing a new game feels fresh when you can
decide the course yourself. On Diablo 2, it is always graveyard chick,
steroid zombie, monastery chick, crypt critters, escher guy, goddamn
slug thing that kills my sorceress over and over again and whatever you
get in act 3 and onwards. Somehow the game seems much more like work
once you have to do all the quests in the same order every time you
play.

The tactical versus action rpg angle in Baldur's Gate probably isn't
significant. I think the very linearly plotted Icewind Dale games done
in Baldur's Gate's engine don't have much replay value, but I really
liked the action rpg Divine Divinity which basically had a really big
overworld where you could go almost anywhere you want right from the
start.

--
Risto Saarelma
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Aki Rossi <aki.rossi@iki.fi>:

>>I don't think the problem is in the mechanics themselves,
>
>
> Well, those mechanics can work fine. NetHack, and some other roguelikes,
> have fairly obviously D&D derived mechanics, and they work fine.
>
> My problem is with the unthinking use of them; for example, the emphasis
> on character progression is fine for a single-player game where you get
> the nice feel of being able to steamroller your old adversaries, but it's
> terrible for an MMO where at one fell swoop it ensures that only 1/20 or
> so of the playerbase can possibly group together.

If I were to be placed in charge of an MMO universe, I think that
the players would start out being about what they call 5th level,
and take experience quite slowly, with a maximum experience award
per 3-day period that would absolutely prevent rising to sixth
level in less than two weeks. (subsequent levels would take
progressively longer....) If people wanted to start characters
of higher initial power with a lower experience award limit, that
would be okay too.

I might cap the numbers of characters of each level, so that
when a 10th level character is killed or quits, the most
experienced 9th level character moves up, vacating a space for
the most experienced 8th level character to move up, etc....
but the percentage of the total population at each level
would remain constant.

20th level player characters should simply not appear within the
first year, and maybe not during the first 2 years. They should be
as rare as players who've had the commitment to stick with a character
and play that character consistently for a long time and the skill to
do so without getting killed.

Bear
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 May 2005, Glen Wheeler wrote:
>
>> "ABCGi" <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote...
>>
>>> Elethiomel wrote:
>>>
>>>> Not to mention the "Uncanny Valley" (
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley )
>
> Very interesting; I hadn't heard that term before. IMHO it applies
> not only to graphics (of humans or otherwise), but also to just about
> every kind of creative endeavor that tries to mimic everyday things.
> Including monster AI and user-interface design (on topic! 😉 The
> better your technique gets, the more the little bugs stand out and
> make the (user/player/viewer) uncomfortable.

Might be related to the instinct that drives racism.

>>> Nice article. Of course were the gaming industry to
>>> reach photorealism it would then move on to target
>>> the next level of realism. The whole article was just
>>> a beat up - and wasn't the stuff about Starship Troopers
>>> just out and out wrong? AFAIK It's based on a book
>>> (RH circa 1950s), the computer game came after.
>
> The article was talking about the 1997 movie, not the 1959 book.

Yeah I know but he seems to infer the movie is based
on video games and not the book (which I have read and
enjoyed - I was impressed by the time it was written but
I guess there is a lot of great sci-fi from the past I
have not experienced).

> The two have very different plots and themes, from what I remember of
> each of them (I'm pretty sure I turned off the movie in the middle,
> and the last time I read the book was a couple of years ago).
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(movie)
> has a really good description of the controversies over the movie.

Interesting article and viewpoint.

Not from where I'm standing - they both had boot camps,
were a military campaign against aliens and so forth.
The major difference in the book (which is fixed by the
ST cartoon) is that they wore powered battle suits into
battle that could leap them around the combat zone.

What they did do with the script is meld ideas from the
book with the hackneyed WWII movie story line; boy-girl,
some main characters die, big victory at the end. Still
it worked for me, not as any great cinema but I enjoyed
it - and it did remind me of the story for Quake - so
maybe JD has a point.

> I didn't think there was a "Starship Troopers" video game. Dvorak
> just says that the movie plays as if they took a video game and made
> a movie out of it (episodic, ultraviolent, boss monsters).

Yeah there was a video game /after/ the movie came out.
An okish RTS on my PC.

*SNIP*

--
ABCGi ---- (abcgi@yahoo.com) ---- http://codemonkey.sunsite.dk
Fun RLs in rgrd that I have tested recently!
DoomRL - DwellerMobile - HWorld - AburaTan - DiabloRL
Heroic Adventure - Tower of Doom - Shuruppak - TheTombs
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
news:Y5m*5ADNq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:
> Let's be clear here; even a 20th level warrior cannot take a catapult
> shot to the chest. It's just that, as long as he has hitpoints left,
> you'll never hit him with a catapult. The mechanic's a "hit" that does
> "damage", but what happens in the game world is that he barely escapes
> it, gets scratched up by debris, tires, pulls muscles...

Except that the healing spells are described as curing injury, and so on.
And his HP still protect him if he's completely immobilized, as long as
nobody uses a coupe de grace attack on him. Or from falling off a cliff, or
being dunked in lava, or other similar methods of being damaged. It may be
the offical line that HP don't represent acutal physical durability, but
the mechanics don't back that up. It helps if you accept that the D&D rules
are at best loosely related to reality.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

ABCGi <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote in news:4277573d$0$79461$14726298
@news.sunsite.dk:

> Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 2 May 2005, Glen Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>> "ABCGi" <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote...
>>>
>>>> Elethiomel wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Not to mention the "Uncanny Valley" (
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley )
>>
>> Very interesting; I hadn't heard that term before. IMHO it applies
>> not only to graphics (of humans or otherwise), but also to just about
>> every kind of creative endeavor that tries to mimic everyday things.
>> Including monster AI and user-interface design (on topic! 😉 The
>> better your technique gets, the more the little bugs stand out and
>> make the (user/player/viewer) uncomfortable.
>
> Might be related to the instinct that drives racism.

Probably not. Racism isn't instinctual. Racism, as opposed to ordinary
xenophobia, isn't known to have existed until sometime around 1000A.D.,
give or take a few centuries. Before then, you were just hated for where
you lived, not what you looked like.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Zereth <zereth@seanbaby.com> wrote in
news:Xns964BCD5187445zerethseanbabycom@216.196.97.142:

> David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
> news:Y5m*5ADNq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:
>> Let's be clear here; even a 20th level warrior cannot take a catapult
>> shot to the chest. It's just that, as long as he has hitpoints left,
>> you'll never hit him with a catapult. The mechanic's a "hit" that
>> does "damage", but what happens in the game world is that he barely
>> escapes it, gets scratched up by debris, tires, pulls muscles...
>
> Except that the healing spells are described as curing injury, and so
> on. And his HP still protect him if he's completely immobilized, as
> long as nobody uses a coupe de grace attack on him. Or from falling
> off a cliff, or being dunked in lava, or other similar methods of
> being damaged. It may be the offical line that HP don't represent
> acutal physical durability, but the mechanics don't back that up. It
> helps if you accept that the D&D rules are at best loosely related to
> reality.
>

You're both a little off on what D&D inflationary hit points represent.
It's damage MITIGATION. Basically, the rule of thumb is that when you
get hit, you take (damage rolled)/(character level) in hit point loss.
But division on the fly is a pain in the butt, so instead you multiply
your hit points by your level ahead of time. This is supported by natural
healing, which is multiplied by your level. Magical healing does NOT
adhere to this rationale, incidentally, presumably for game balance and
playability reasons.

In this paradigm, the more skilled/experienced you are, the better you
are at reducing the seriousness of a wound. If you still have hitpoints
left, then you by definition didn't take a wound to the brain or get hit
dead center by that boulder; instead you converted it to a lesser wound,
and you can keep this up until you run out of hitpoints. Only the wound
that drops you below 0 can ever be described as life threatening. All the
other damage IS damage, though, but adrenaline and discipline and the
fact that death spirals aren't fun keep the pain from hindering you.

A cinematic example of D&D style hit points in action: The movie Die
Hard. McClane keeps getting wounded, and it hurts him, but he never runs
out of hit points so it never really reduces his fighting ability.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

"Hansjoerg Malthaner" <hansjoerg.malthaner@nurfuerspam.de> wrote in message
news:d57897$tkt$1@domitilla.aioe.org...
> Risto Saarelma wrote::
>
>> I've got two ideas about what the qualities of the better games might
>> be. One is that the game makes you actually accomplish something. Diablo
>> and most MMORPGs are just grind games where you don't really need to
>> think up a good strategy, you just hit things till they die and get
>> resurrected if you die yourself. In Diablo, you can end up with a
>> suboptimal character, but you can always kill Diablo just by grinding
>> away long enough. Needing to make irreversible choices that can mean
>> success or failure in the game makes things more interesting than a
>> flashy clickfest.
>
> In Diablo II/LOD there are three difficulty levels, normal, nightmare and
> hell. While I agree with you for normal and nightmare, I think hell needs
> a very well planned character to survive. Just Hack&Slash will kill you in
> seconds there. It's really a big step from each difficulty tzo the next,
> and the problem is you approach with a fairly high level character in
> hell, and all basiscs are set - if you did something wrong, you're stuck.
>
> I say this because I have a few characters in hell difficulty, and only
> one seems to have potential to actually win the game (kill hell Baal solo,
> that is for me, not partied)
>
> OTOH you can tell about Diablo II what you want. I like the game. I got it
> 2003 and I'm still playing. The online variant is addicting, more than
> single player, but I see nothing bad in that fact.
>
> Just curious, did you kill hell difficulty Ball once in a solo game? I'm
> asking, becuase I seriously doubt that your writing comes from your own
> experience, and my experience is definitely different.
>

I would agree with you here, Hajo. I played D2 to death when it first
came out, but soon realised (after beating Diablo on the three difficulty
levels, and continuing with friends multiplayer for a time) that it was
merely a less complex, prettier, shorter Angband. At least that was my
opinion.

Along came LOD and I still figured it was a shaved down glossy *band, but
then came the recent patch. It's now a lot more difficult (at least on the
difficulties that matter) and the game has a much greater depth (depth in
the classic sense of looting). I still don't enjoy it as much, but many of
my previous serious complaints are now vastly reduced.

I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that as long as you can understand
me playing *band, I can understand you enjoying D2/LOD :). To answer your
(public) question: yes, I have a character from each class (or had rather,
have not played in some time) that beat Baal on Hell to get the final title.

Hardcore multiplayer was the best, but I could never find enough friends
willing to ``waste'' their time :).

--
Glen
L😛yt E+++ T-- R+ P+++ D+ G+ F:*band !RL RLA-
W:AF Q+++ AI++ GFX++ SFX-- RN++++ PO--- !Hp Re-- S+
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote in message
news😛ine.LNX.4.60-041.0505030227150.15157@unix40.andrew.cmu.edu...
> On Mon, 2 May 2005, Glen Wheeler wrote:
>> Call me naive, but Starship Troopers always seemed very much like
>> StarCraft. Of course they may both be based on the same thing, I don't
>> know...
>
> According to Wikipedia, StarCraft came out in 1998, the year /after/
> "Starship Troopers" the movie. So besides the humans-fighting-bugs plot
> that they both took from the book, I dunno. And the bugs part isn't
> unique to "Starship Troopers" the book, either:
> [...]

However there was a huge amount of graphics released, hype produced,
history pieces written and pretty much everything (at least, superficially)
about the Zerg, Protoss and Terran races were known. I can't recall exactly
when, but sometime in 1994 I saw the first screenshot of the in-production
StarCraft.

There were another series of books exploring the various histories of the
three races (and others) in StarCraft; has anyone read them? Perhaps
another adaption...

Worst adaption ever IMO: Street Fighter (the movie), the game based on
the movie based on the game.

--
Glen
L😛yt E+++ T-- R+ P+++ D+ G+ F:*band !RL RLA-
W:AF Q+++ AI++ GFX++ SFX-- RN++++ PO--- !Hp Re-- S+
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

The Sheep wrote:
> Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 20:29:14 -0400,
> Twisted One napisal(a):
>>What? It was clearly an English sentence, since it started with the
>>words "He is", which are English. Besides, English is the de facto
>>lingua franca of this newsgroup.
>
>
> DON'T CONTRADICT ME!
>
> Hell.
>
> DON'T CONTRADICT YOURSELF!

Sheep, come on! You're loosing your temper! Did you have a bad day? I
don't recognize you 🙂
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Invalid thought detected. Close all mental processes and
restart body."
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl> wrote:
> This is like our special student's chess version -- which allows
> for begginers to have fair chances against masters:
>
> Each chess piece type is represented by a different 40ml glass.
> The black pieces are filled with vodka and a drop of strong
> cranberry-essence juice, the white ones are plain vodka. Each time
> a player takes the piece of the opponent, he must drink it.
>
> The master rule is also that if you spill any piece (the moved one
> or one on the board -- you loose).
>
> The funny thing is that master's of student's chess have sometimes
> severe differently tactics then chess masters -- sometimes it's a
> good tactical decision to let the opposing player take a couple of
> your pawns right at the beginning.

There is a story I've heard told (though was told to mas as an urban
legend and almost certainly untrue) about Emanuel Lasker and
Capablanca. A wealthy man comes into a chess club and says, "give me
your two best chess players to play a game in my house with my set and
my rules, and I'll give ten thousand marks to the winner." They of
course agree. When they arrive, they see that each of the pawns is a
shotglass, the other pieces are larger quantities of alcohol, and the
queen is a big tankard of vodka. The game proceeds
W: Lasker
B: Capablanca
1. e4 e5
2. Qh5 Nf6
3. Qxf7ch Kxf7
Capablanca passes out, and Lasker wins.

Based on this anecdote, I would say that a better rule is that you have
to drink when your piece gets taken, rather than when you take a piece.

--
CalcRogue: TI-89, TI-92+, PalmOS, Windows and Linux.
http://calcrogue.jimrandomh.org/
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Chipacabra wrote:
> Then you're obviously not an anime fan.

Indeed I'm not. Is that a crime?

> Given how ubiquitous the otaku are on the internet

How ubiquitous the what are?

--
http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm
Reichstag fire -> 9/11
Communist "arsonist" -> Iraq "weapons of mass destruction"
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

jimrandomh <usenetNOSPAM@jimrandomh.org> wrote:
>Based on this anecdote, I would say that a better rule is that you have
>to drink when your piece gets taken, rather than when you take a piece.

The point of the vodka in alcoholic chess is to handicap the player who
is better at normal International Chess.
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
My roguelike games page (including my BSD-licenced roguelike) can be found at:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mpread/roguelikes.html
Everyone expected the Bavarian Inquisition.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in news:OaidncjjjYppSuXfRVn-
2g@rogers.com:

> Chipacabra wrote:
>> Then you're obviously not an anime fan.
>
> Indeed I'm not. Is that a crime?
>
>> Given how ubiquitous the otaku are on the internet
>
> How ubiquitous the what are?
>

Otaku. It's an English word, included in Webster's, so I shouldn't have to
explain it to you.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Chipacabra <chipb@efn.org> wrote:
> Paul Derbyshire <twisted0n3@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:OaidncjjjYppSuXfRVn-2g@rogers.com:

>> Chipacabra wrote:
>>> Then you're obviously not an anime fan.
>>
>> Indeed I'm not. Is that a crime?
>>
>>> Given how ubiquitous the otaku are on the internet
>>
>> How ubiquitous the what are?
>>
> Otaku. It's an English word, included in Webster's, so I shouldn't
> have to explain it to you.

Paul has already explained in previous threads that he is unable to look
things up because he was molested as a child. There's no use in beating
a dead horse.

--
Jim Strathmeyer
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Chipacabra wrote:
> Otaku. It's an English word, included in Webster's, so I shouldn't have to
> explain it to you.

It's not a common word, seeing as how nobody I know uses it. What does
it mean?

--
http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm
Reichstag fire -> 9/11
Communist "arsonist" -> Iraq "weapons of mass destruction"
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Quoting Zereth <zereth@seanbaby.com>:
>David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
>>Let's be clear here; even a 20th level warrior cannot take a catapult
>>shot to the chest. It's just that, as long as he has hitpoints left,
>>you'll never hit him with a catapult. The mechanic's a "hit" that does
>>"damage", but what happens in the game world is that he barely escapes
>>it, gets scratched up by debris, tires, pulls muscles...
>Except that the healing spells are described as curing injury, and so on.

Sure. They close up those scratches, unpull the muscles, whatever.

>And his HP still protect him if he's completely immobilized, as long as
>nobody uses a coupe de grace attack on him.

Sure, because again it's epic fantasy. Heroes don't get just hacked down.

>Or from falling off a cliff,

Sure. The guy with lots of HP will land on the boggy spot, or whatever.

[That said, if a player ever says "I have n hitpoints, I can definitely
survive this fall", they're asking for it.]

>or being dunked in lava, or other similar methods of being damaged.

I think a character plonked down into bona-fide lava will just die; but -
as with any set of mechanics - one does try not to pick at the edge cases.

>It helps if you accept that the D&D rules are at best loosely related
>to reality.

Of course they are! That's a very good thing. What they are closely
related to is the conventions of the genre they aim to portray.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Wednesday, May.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Quoting Chipacabra <chipb@efn.org>:
>Then you're obviously not an anime fan. Given how ubiquitous the otaku are
>on the internet,

Auf Englisch, "fanboy", bitte.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Wednesday, May.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

David Damerell wrote::
> Quoting Chipacabra <chipb@efn.org>:
>
>>Then you're obviously not an anime fan. Given how ubiquitous the otaku are
>>on the internet,
>
> Auf Englisch, "fanboy", bitte.

Hey, I never knew that you speak german :)

--
c.u. Hajo
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>
>>Of course players will find ways to munchkin, but it's the GM's job to
>>keep them in line. And that's every system's rule. No P&P RPG system is
>>a self-player. But when the players are mature enough there is such
>>problems. And it doesn't pose such stupid powerlevelling rules as DND does.
>
>
> On the contrary; a level-based system is less prone to this sort of abuse
> than a points-picking system. When levels determine a lot of your ability,
> and the GM controls access to levels (ie, you can't decide to get
> experience points in the way you can decide what spells to use), character
> power is effectively constrained.
>
> One of the ways that levelling _does_ serve most MMOs well is that level
> is made a much bigger determinant of character ability than any other
> factor; this lets the very limited GM oversight available per-player be
> used effectively to look for abusive ways of gaining XP.

A level-system wouldn't be so bad if the differences between power
between levels wouldn't be soooo huge. I mean compare a level 1
character to a level 40 character in any game...
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Invalid thought detected. Close all mental processes and
restart body."
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Raymond Martineau wrote:
> That would lead to ramming the queen right against the enemy king for the
> sole purpose to get an opponent to drink the 60Ml. (e.g. ramming the queen
> down to the frontline at d2, e2, f2, d7, e7, or f7.)
>
> Also, it becomes a problem when pawns get promoted.

ROTFL ;-)
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Invalid thought detected. Close all mental processes and
restart body."
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in
news:OfqdnRcmUoR_buXfRVn-oQ@rogers.com:

> Chipacabra wrote:
>> Otaku. It's an English word, included in Webster's, so I
>> shouldn't have to explain it to you.
>
> It's not a common word, seeing as how nobody I know uses it.
> What does it mean?
>


Big offense if it's not used half seriously by before mentioned.
 
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