Summary of conversation with Thomas

[Guest]

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

Juho-Mikko Pellinen wrote:

> > xhoch3 wrote:
> *snip*
>
>> But it is a fact that without reverse engineering we would not know
>> about certain bugs. We couldn't be sure whether falling at least once
>> when entering the rift is a bug. Now I don't want to support reverse
>> engineering, it's illegal after all, that's just something to think
>> about. Though I hope we will be able to ask these planned other adom
>> developers if we discover a possible bug.
>
> IIRC reverse engineering for educational purposes (not commercial of any
> kind) is legal in EU. At least it was few years back, when I checked on
> things like that. As long as no-one makes money with information gained
> from reverse engineering (not meaning in-game money) it is legal.

No; whether or not it is allowed has nothing to do with money
whatsoever. There are some exceptions for educational use in
universities and the like, but even in those cases, you would never be
allowed to pass the information on to outsiders, like posting it on the
newsgroup or putting it on the web. Even passing it on to other
researchers is out of limits. Trust me on this; I work as a researcher
and know about this from personal experience.

Besides, I have read the law text. I don't want to start another
discussion with people who haven't. ;-)

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

Erik Piper wrote:
> bork bork bork Marcus bork 1:42:02 PM bork 2/1/2005 bork bork:
>
> [Malte: What other games have you tried? It may be another roguelike has that
> which ADOM is missing for you.]

I'd advocate writing this as "Malte wrote:" or some such. I first
understood this as a question directed at me. 🙂

>>Angband (V, O, Pern/Tome, Z, various others to a lesser degree), Nethack
>>(just finished my first two ascensions this month), Slash'Em, Crawl, Doom,
>>and a bunch of other miscellaneous and/or lesser known ones. I like
>>different aspects about each (and naturally, am annoyed by different aspects
>>as well 😉
>
> <advocacy>Darshan's (so-called) Travel Patch, and especially recent
> improvements to it, have made Crawl quite a different game than it was at the
> time when 4.00b26 was released roughly two years ago. You might want to take
> a new look at it. Travelling and inventory management have become much, much
> less annoying.</advocacy>

When I first tried Crawl, I was repelled by the bad user interface and
general ugliness, but once you've got used to it, it's a truly great
game. I enjoy it a lot even without Darsham's patches.

Another roguelike game I'd recommend giving a good try is GearHead. I
don't know zilch about anime and mecha, but still I think this is a
thoroughly enjoyable game with many great ideas.

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

xhoch3 wrote:
> Malte Helmert <helmert@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
>
> I never meant cheating by editing the RAM or disassembling adom. I just
> wanted to keep adombot's ability to automize game actions which is some
> kind of cheating in my opinion. And it is still black box testing. It's
> just not possible to get the needed quantities of eg scrolls of balance
> while playing yourself to ever validate how much effect the amulett of
> order has.

I'm not sure if that's a good example, since that was done without ADOMBot.

>> I think that Thomas enjoys it if the community finds out something by
>> trying and playing and posts it for everyone; I think that's one of
>> the reasons he wanted to have an official ADOM wiki. The distinction
>> is not between "I should discover it personally" and "The group
>> should discover it". The distinction is between discovering it by
>> playing or by looking at the code.
>>
> That's perfect with me. I just wanted to give an example how broad the
> meaning of the word cheating can be, so if you say cheating is evil,
> you'd have to say what sort of cheating you actually mean.

Do you mean the general "you" (like "one")? Because I never said that
"cheating is evil". You were replying to anxious triffid, not to me
(although I don't think he said that either).

Unless I am misrepresenting other people's opinion, *you* are the one
who persistently argues that these things are cheating. What statement
that anyone has made do you disagree with?

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

bork bork bork Malte Helmert bork 3:14:45 PM bork 2/1/2005 bork bork:

> Erik Piper wrote:
> > bork bork bork Marcus bork 1:42:02 PM bork 2/1/2005 bork bork:
> >
> > [Malte: What other games have you tried? It may be another roguelike has
> > that which ADOM is missing for you.]
>
> I'd advocate writing this as "Malte wrote:" or some such. I first
> understood this as a question directed at me. 🙂

I use the "Person:" approach a lot, but it tends to work better when multiple
people are quoted or when I'm quoting the person I'm replying to. Sorry.

[...]

> When I first tried Crawl, I was repelled by the bad user interface and
> general ugliness, but once you've got used to it, it's a truly great game.
> I enjoy it a lot even without Darsham's patches.

Situations like these are, I guess, why the phrase "YMMV" was born. Great
though it is, and even though I could always handle the ugliness, my early
attempts to get into Crawl crashed into the interface troubles like into a
brick wall. Far worse for me than even the "there's a jackal pack by my
starting position" problem, which is something I got used to (partly by
finding solutions and partly by just counting these as a small and acceptable
waste of time).

YMMV. 🙂

Erik

 

[Guest]

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

Erik Piper wrote:
> bork bork bork Malte Helmert bork 3:14:45 PM bork 2/1/2005 bork bork:
>
>>Erik Piper wrote:
>>
>>>[Malte: What other games have you tried? It may be another roguelike has
>>>that which ADOM is missing for you.]
>>
>>I'd advocate writing this as "Malte wrote:" or some such. I first
>>understood this as a question directed at me. 🙂
>
> I use the "Person:" approach a lot, but it tends to work better when multiple
> people are quoted or when I'm quoting the person I'm replying to. Sorry.

I think it's only problematic if the first thing after the colon is a
question. 🙂

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:50:35 +0100, xhoch3 wrote:

> Malte Helmert <helmert@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
>
>> I think that Thomas enjoys it if the community finds out something by
>> trying and playing and posts it for everyone; I think that's one of the
>> reasons he wanted to have an official ADOM wiki. The distinction is not
>> between "I should discover it personally" and "The group should discover
>> it". The distinction is between discovering it by playing or by looking
>> at the code.
>>
>
> That's perfect with me. I just wanted to give an example how broad the
> meaning of the word cheating can be, so if you say cheating is evil, you'd
> have to say what sort of cheating you actually mean.

Here's a quote from "Cracking Adom CRC" by Jumping Spider.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Whenever a group of people gather on a given topic for any length of
time, a culture emerges. Usually the nature of a democratic forum
prevents the culture from adopting extreme positions, even though many
of the members of that community may have such strong feelings. By and
large, the Adom community is no different. One position that has been
championed to the extreme, however, is a disdain for cheating, hacking,
scumming or abusing the game in any way. People who engage in such
activity are publicly and forcefully scorned in the Adom community.

I could go on about how this has affected the Adom community for both
good and ill, but I won't. Personally, I like the Adom community just
fine the way it is.

But let's get one thing straight: I am an outsider to that community. I
cheat. I cheat a lot. I don't play games for the challenge of playing
them; I play to relax. Personally, games that are difficult or
challenging are not the way I like to spend my time. I am by profession
a programmer who happens to have an enjoyable, rewarding, high-stress
job where I am frustrated and challenged every day with the pressures of
the software community. When I get home, I like to do something
different.

For me, the perfect way to blow off some stress is to load up Quake,
stick in a Gravity Kills CD, crank it to max, switch to God Mode, and
slaughter everything in the game with nothing but the hatchet. For me,
*that's* entertainment."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now, a few words from me.

I believe the moral aspect of cheating is something very personal.
Cheating is very normal for some people. Sometimes, when playing the
game becomes hard and losing becomes extremely annoying, the player
usually either drops the game, or looks for methods to cheat. And if he
likes the game, at some point playing with cheats becomes boring, and,
now more experienced, the player can return to playing the game honestly
again.

Remember those who save-scummed. We all do it just for a while, until we
feel we are ready to play the game For Real. If save-scumming were
somehow made impossible, I doubt that would add to ADOM's popularity.
And save-scumming is just a variation of cheating.

Although I understand Thomas wants people to play his game fair and
square, I think he should concentrate on concealing those secrets we
"code-divers" so easily find, as well as the numerous bugs and other
stuff.

Note: I feel loosely connected to my language skills today. What I wrote
above might not represent my actual opinion.

--





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[Guest]

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

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

> Now, a few words from me.
>
> I believe the moral aspect of cheating is something very personal.

Agreed, at least as long as public highscores etc. are not involved, and
as long as it *stays* personal. For example, everybody is entitled to
their own personal political opinions, but I would prefer them not to
discuss them in this newsgroup.

> Cheating is very normal for some people. Sometimes, when playing the
> game becomes hard and losing becomes extremely annoying, the player
> usually either drops the game, or looks for methods to cheat. And if he
> likes the game, at some point playing with cheats becomes boring, and,
> now more experienced, the player can return to playing the game honestly
> again.

Again, agreed, although some people have stated here in the past that
the mere *opportunity* for cheating has changed the game for them so
much that they don't enjoy it any more. Kind of a variation of the Piper
syndrome. ;-)

> Remember those who save-scummed. We all do it just for a while, until we
> feel we are ready to play the game For Real. If save-scumming were
> somehow made impossible, I doubt that would add to ADOM's popularity.
> And save-scumming is just a variation of cheating.

Agreed.

> Although I understand Thomas wants people to play his game fair and
> square, I think he should concentrate on concealing those secrets we
> "code-divers" so easily find, as well as the numerous bugs and other
> stuff.

I partially disagree here. I don't think he should concentrate on
concealing stuff; I think that's mostly wasted time. It would be much
preferable if there were some code that would make concealing stuff
unnecessary. Maybe I am too idealistic, but I prefer a world where locks
aren't needed to one where locks are so strong that nobody can break
them. Especially if fashioning those locks keeps somebody from
contributing to the society more usefully.

> Note: I feel loosely connected to my language skills today. What I wrote
> above might not represent my actual opinion.

My take on this is: Everybody should mind their own business as far as
private things like cheating are concerned, but it should not play a
large part in the "official" ADOM communities. I am not sure I correctly
understood everything you said, but it seems to me you are saying
something similar. Am I understanding you correctly?

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

xhoch3 <xhoch3@safe-mail.net> wrote:

> It's
> just not possible to get the needed quantities of eg scrolls of balance

Unless you become an archmage Play more, dissassemble less.

brojek.

 

[Guest]

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

Twinge wrote:
> > bork bork bork Vladimir Panteleev
> >> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to
ADOM,
> >> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"
>
> No. If I didn't have the ability to save-scum when I first started
> played, I believe I would've gotten frustrated enough to give up on
the
> game completely before actually making it anywhere. ADOM just has
such a
> massive learning curve; I actually recommend new players save-scum at
> first just to ease the frustration a bit.

For contrast: I didn't ever save-scum. For me, it would have taken away
all the fun of those early victories: saving the carpenter, rescuing
the puppy, finding the dwarves for the first time. Somewhat perversely,
I might not have stayed with the game very long if it had save/load
functionality built in; the very frustration of losing after making
another character level / dungeon level / etc. over my last run was
what drove me to continue.

That said, it's no skin off of my nose if others feel the need to
cheat. As long as it doesn't intrude on my enjoyment of the game, it
doesn't bother me. So no, I don't think the game should have iron-clad
anti-cheat protection. For those like me, we're self-policing; for
those like Twinge, they have the flexibility they want.

I have to admit I fall in Thomas' camp with regards to
reverse-engineering and source-diving, though.

(This post was made with Google Groups, for which I apologize. I don't
currently post often enough to have bothered configuring a proper news
client. I'm hoping it attributes the quoted material properly and wraps
the lines correctly; if it doesn't, let me know and I will install a
client regardless.)

 

[Guest]

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

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 21:36:07 +0100, Malte Helmert wrote:

>> Although I understand Thomas wants people to play his game fair and
>> square, I think he should concentrate on concealing those secrets we
>> "code-divers" so easily find, as well as the numerous bugs and other
>> stuff.
>
> I partially disagree here. I don't think he should concentrate on
> concealing stuff; I think that's mostly wasted time. It would be much
> preferable if there were some code that would make concealing stuff
> unnecessary. Maybe I am too idealistic, but I prefer a world where locks
> aren't needed to one where locks are so strong that nobody can break
> them. Especially if fashioning those locks keeps somebody from
> contributing to the society more usefully.

Alas, there will always be curious people who will take my place at
hacking the binaries. Cheating and reverse-engineering are two
different, but somewhat similar problems. However, it's much easier to
protect your data from being modified than from being read.

Actually, I didn't mean to emphasize the problem of reverse-engineering
in what I said above.

>> Note: I feel loosely connected to my language skills today. What I wrote
>> above might not represent my actual opinion.
>
> My take on this is: Everybody should mind their own business as far as
> private things like cheating are concerned, but it should not play a
> large part in the "official" ADOM communities. I am not sure I correctly
> understood everything you said, but it seems to me you are saying
> something similar. Am I understanding you correctly?

Yes, that too, but my point would be that I don't think he should be
categorically against cheating. At the age I started to play ADOM, the
only way for me to learn the rules of the game was to cheat. Some time
after, that got boring, and I had a few save-scummed wins. I quit
save-scumming only last year.

My point is, I doubt that anti-cheat protection will add to the game's
overall popularity.

> Again, agreed, although some people have stated here in the past that
> the mere *opportunity* for cheating has changed the game for them so
> much that they don't enjoy it any more.

That's because they always cheat. Some people cheat in games just
because they can, not because they can't play the game without cheating.
Some people won't play a game if they can't cheat in it, but if they
can, they just fly through the game with all cheats enabled. I think
it's obvious that this will spoil their game experience.

Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"

--





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[Guest]

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

bork bork bork Vladimir Panteleev bork 3:04:47 PM bork 2/2/2005 bork bork:


> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"

I'll bite.

No.

Yesterday I wanted to find out if a strategy I had in my mind for taking on a
certain task in another roguelike was a waste of time or worth executing.
Because I could source-dive, I could find that out, and today I can go on to
enjoy the experience of actually implementing the strategy. I consider that
as adding to the fun of the game, not subtracting from it.

(Of course, when I was absolutely new to ADOM, the concept of source-diving
scared me and it took me about 3 years from my first recent stab at
roguelikes to my first source-diving, so maybe the correct answer above is
"yes," who knows?)

Erik

 

[Guest]

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

Erik Piper wrote:
> bork bork bork Vladimir Panteleev bork 3:04:47 PM bork 2/2/2005 bork bork:
>
>
>
>> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
>> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"

No. If I didn't have the ability to save-scum when I first started
played, I believe I would've gotten frustrated enough to give up on the
game completely before actually making it anywhere. ADOM just has such a
massive learning curve; I actually recommend new players save-scum at
first just to ease the frustration a bit.

 

[Guest]

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

Malte Helmert wrote:
> 1. The Future of ADOM
>
> The good news first: ADOM is not dead!
>
> Therefore, it is likely that after the next release, there will be a
> change in procedure. In order to allow Thomas to focus on JADE, he plans
> to change the development model of ADOM. Instead of the current one-man
> system, he would like to turn into an effort by a small, closed group (a
> kind of DevTeam, if you will) of maybe 4-5 people under his supervision.
> Thomas will make all decisions regarding which features will or will not
> be added to ADOM, but actual implementation, bug fixes and the like will
> be delegated. ADOM will *not* go Open Source -- more regarding this
> under the third topic.

This sounds great!
I personally think this is exactly what ADOM needs now that Thomas doesn't
"like" the code much anymore (and still doesn't want to let everyone see it).

> 3. Reverse Engineering
>
> Regarding this topic, Thomas stated his opinion very clearly: He does
> not want people to disassemble ADOM for any purpose. He had already
> planned to revised the ADOM license so that his opinion on this issue
> will become very clear to everybody. He also briefly discussed the legal
> aspects of this, mentioning the effort involved in international
> lawsuits.
>
> Most significantly, Thomas expressed his contempt for patches that
> change the rules of the game.

If he's so strongly opposed to it (even considering lawsuits), I'm rather
surprised that he's never answered any of my emails, or tried to contact me. I'd
think he'd want to, seeing how (I believe) I was the first to try mapping out
how the game works through a full disassembly. Same about patches, stopping mine
would only require answering my email.

> Finally, Thomas is also very much against disassembling the executable
> to discover game mechanics and secrets. He referred to the section in
> readme.1st where it is stated that the good effect of ADOM staying
> closed source is "that ADOM will remain the most challenging and
> mysterious of all roguelike games, simply because you just can't take a
> look into the sources and find all the secrets right away once a new
> version is released".

I don't recall any important "mysteries" being solved from disassembling.

Some questions have been answered definitely etc, but I simply can't think of
any major "discovery" that had not already been postulated. Now I may very well
be wrong, and what's "major" or not is subjective, but I still believe all of
the "mysteries" were solved a long time ago.

The part about "once a new version is released" is in any case moot - there
hasn't been any new content for a very very long time.

- Tor Gunnar Houeland

 

[Matija]

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

Vladimir Panteleev, completely geschtonkenflapped, wrote:
> Some people cheat in games just because they can, not because they
> can't play the game without cheating. Some people won't play a game
> if they can't cheat in it, but if they can, they just fly through the
> game with all cheats enabled. I think it's obvious that this will
> spoil their game experience.

don't forget that a number of games also cheat. for example,
i played NFS:U a few months ago and simply got stuck on
a particular point in the game. i just couldn't win some
races, even though i drove very good and tried 30-40 times
over the course of a week. then i found out that the game
engine was _designed_ to cheat! rot13 spoiler:

gur snfgre lbh tb, gur snfgre gur pbzchgre-pbagebyyrq pnef tb,
ohg gurve fcrrq vapernfr vf abg yvarne naq gurl raq hc n ybg
snfgre guna lbhefrys - vg jbhyq gnxr *cresrpg* qevivat gb jva,
naq gung'f obeqreyvar vzcbffvoyr. fb, v whfg ercynprq zl
yriry guerr nppryrengvba/gbc fcrrq tvmzbf jvgu yriry bar fghss
jurarire v tbg fghpx, naq v fgnegrq jvaavat ntnva. cyhf,
vg jnf npghnyyl zber rawblnoyr naq yrff fgerffshy qevivat ng
n fybjre fcrrq.


--
there is a cheer. the gnomes have learned a new way to say hooray. [-shpongle]

address is scrambled - remove the superfluous "x" marks to reply

 

[Guest]

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

ToGu wrote:
> Malte Helmert wrote:
>
>> 3. Reverse Engineering
>>
>> Most significantly, Thomas expressed his contempt for patches that
>> change the rules of the game.
>
> If he's so strongly opposed to it (even considering lawsuits), I'm
> rather surprised that he's never answered any of my emails, or tried to
> contact me. I'd think he'd want to, seeing how (I believe) I was the
> first to try mapping out how the game works through a full disassembly.
> Same about patches, stopping mine would only require answering my email.

I guess that keeping on top of ADOM e-mail can be challenging. I
remember reading or hearing that he sometimes receives several hundred
ADOM-related emails per week. Probably when you see that you can't catch
up there is a point where you delete everything to get a clean slate.
Only one possible reason; after all the ways of the Creator are
ineffable and all that. ;-)

>> Finally, Thomas is also very much against disassembling the executable
>> to discover game mechanics and secrets. He referred to the section in
>> readme.1st where it is stated that the good effect of ADOM staying
>> closed source is "that ADOM will remain the most challenging and
>> mysterious of all roguelike games, simply because you just can't take a
>> look into the sources and find all the secrets right away once a new
>> version is released".

> I don't recall any important "mysteries" being solved from disassembling.

Good; if nothing important is discovered by it, surely there isn't much
point in disassembling and we need not argue about Thomas' view on this. ;-)

> Some questions have been answered definitely etc, but I simply can't
> think of any major "discovery" that had not already been postulated. Now
> I may very well be wrong, and what's "major" or not is subjective, but I
> still believe all of the "mysteries" were solved a long time ago.
>
> The part about "once a new version is released" is in any case moot -
> there hasn't been any new content for a very very long time.

You are applying the quote to pure story content exclusively, but I'm
not sure that's how it was meant.

Talents are a recent [1] additions, and the way some talents work
exactly (consider Treasure Hunter) was a hotly debated topic before
information from the executable were provided. Many room effects have
also been mostly mysterious until recently. Same for some birth messages.

Regarding story content, consider the (once) open questions surrounding
the scroll of omnipotence or the weird tome.

Malte

[1] In the sense of: introduced in recent versions. Of course recent
versions are already quite old, but that's another issue.

 

[Guest]

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

Malte Helmert wrote:
> As far as I remember, ADOM Sage is merely an input/output filter is
> neither a patched version of ADOM nor based on disassembly. You might
> want to check with Joshua to be sure.

ADOM Sage technically does more than just input/output filtering, but
that's only because it's much easier to read and alter the messages that
ADOM generates while they're being formatted internally rather than when
they're output to screen. For all practical purposes, ADOM Sage just
alters input and output.

I think that I did a little bit of disassembly to help debug ADOM Sage,
and I used disassembly to find out how to work around a bug in ADOM
1.1.0, but otherwise I used no patches or disassembly. Thomas mentioned
ADOM Sage in a newsgroup posting around the time ADOM 1.1.0 was released
and didn't object to it, so I'm pretty sure he's okay with it.

*sigh* I've been saying for over a year now that I need to finish up
the next version of ADOM Sage and release it. Hopefully sometime soon...

--
Josh Kelley
ADOM Sage - frontend for ADOM - http://www.jbc.edu/~josh/adom-sage

 

[Guest]

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

Twinge wrote:

> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>> bork bork bork Vladimir Panteleev bork 3:04:47 PM bork 2/2/2005 bork
>> bork:
>>
>>> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
>>> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"
>
> No. If I didn't have the ability to save-scum when I first started
> played, I believe I would've gotten frustrated enough to give up on the
> game completely before actually making it anywhere. ADOM just has such a
> massive learning curve; I actually recommend new players save-scum at
> first just to ease the frustration a bit.

I think somebody introduced a strawman here. Nobody was talking about
features that prevent save-scumming anywhere; even though Thomas doesn't
like it, he doesn't try to actively prevent it either. The "anti-cheat"
measures he was talking about are about hex-editing save files and
memory locations and things like that. So if nobody argues for it, why
argue against it?

That being said, I did save-scum initially for the first few roguelikes
I played, but never for the ones I started later, and I got success much
faster with the ones where I never save-scummed. For example, I got a
Crawl winner rather quickly, but never really got anywhere in Nethack.
Of course there can be other reasons for that.

I'm not saying save-scumming should be made difficult -- that's a
personal decision -- I'm just saying that it is not necessarily a good
way to get proficient in a game.

Malte

 

[Guest]

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

Marcus wrote:

>
> Ah, that'd be the version I play 😉 In fact...
>
> http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html
>
> That one frequently, which is a modification of Darshan's patch with a
> really nice set of tiles included. I generally always prefer ascii, but
> Crawl works quite well with these tiles.
>
>

Thanks for dropping another interesting roguelike my way 🙂
I didn't try Crawl yet, but this version seems a lot of fun (although I
die approx. every 1000 turns 🙂))

Christian "BlackFurredBeast" Pohl

 

[marcus]

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

Christian Pohl wrote:
> Marcus wrote:
>
[crawl discussion]
>>
>> http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html
>>
> Thanks for dropping another interesting roguelike my way 🙂
> I didn't try Crawl yet, but this version seems a lot of fun (although
> I die approx. every 1000 turns 🙂))
>
> Christian "BlackFurredBeast" Pohl

Haha, it's a brutally difficult game, but pretty entertaining. The
distinction between ac/ev, the spellcasting variety, the insane number of
classes and races, and the interesting skill system all make it pretty fun.
Not sure if it was apparent, but it has travel built in - hit x (or X? -
can't remember, my keys are remapped) and then > < (or another symbol) and
then a . and you can zip instantly to a staircase. Handy in Crawl's big
strangely shaped dungeons.

 

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

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:

<snip>

> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"
>

As long as it doesn't involve a save-scum blocker, I couldn't care less.
I'm not regularly save-scumming anymore, but my first deeper stabs into
the game wouldn't been possible without savescumming. But if Thomas
wants to discourage from item-hexing or stat-boosting, I say let him go
for it. IMHO roguelikes' biggest selling point is the random element,
and with "deep cheating" like item, stat or character editing (however
helpful it may be in bug searching), the game loses a lot.

 

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

matija wrote:

>
> don't forget that a number of games also cheat. for example,
> i played NFS:U a few months ago and simply got stuck on
> a particular point in the game. i just couldn't win some
> races, even though i drove very good and tried 30-40 times
> over the course of a week. then i found out that the game
> engine was _designed_ to cheat! rot13 spoiler:

<rant>NFS:U (and many other EA games) are a design lesseon in BAD AI. I
had the absolutely same problem, same game. What good is a difficulty
switch when even on the easiest level the AI cars seem to have triple
your speed and insane sk1llz0rz??? Oh well.</rant>

Sorry 'bout that
Christian "BlackFurredBeast" Pohl

 

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

On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 02:35:33 +0100, Malte Helmert wrote:

> Twinge wrote:
>
>> Erik Piper wrote:
>>
>>> bork bork bork Vladimir Panteleev bork 3:04:47 PM bork 2/2/2005 bork
>>> bork:
>>>
>>>> Perhaps we should make a poll: "If you were absolutely new to ADOM,
>>>> would you like the game to have anti-cheat protection?"
>>
>> No. If I didn't have the ability to save-scum when I first started
>> played, I believe I would've gotten frustrated enough to give up on the
>> game completely before actually making it anywhere. ADOM just has such a
>> massive learning curve; I actually recommend new players save-scum at
>> first just to ease the frustration a bit.
>
> I think somebody introduced a strawman here. Nobody was talking about
> features that prevent save-scumming anywhere; even though Thomas doesn't
> like it, he doesn't try to actively prevent it either. The "anti-cheat"
> measures he was talking about are about hex-editing save files and
> memory locations and things like that.

I should have explicitly noted that save-scumming is out of the
question. Probably the one reason Thomas won't fight save-scumming is
because it's impossible to prevent it, unless either the game will store
information in a global system location (which would be OS-dependent,
and still easy to detect) or if the game would have to connect to the
Internet. I doubt either will be implemented, giving that ADOM is a
cross-platform game.

> So if nobody argues for it, why argue against it?

Yes, guess this was a pretty much empty discussion after all. My bad for
wasting everybody's time 🙁

--





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

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 02:35:33 +0100, Malte Helmert wrote:
>
>>I think somebody introduced a strawman here. Nobody was talking about
>>features that prevent save-scumming anywhere; even though Thomas doesn't
>>like it, he doesn't try to actively prevent it either. The "anti-cheat"
>>measures he was talking about are about hex-editing save files and
>>memory locations and things like that.
>
> I should have explicitly noted that save-scumming is out of the
> question. Probably the one reason Thomas won't fight save-scumming is
> because it's impossible to prevent it, unless either the game will store
> information in a global system location (which would be OS-dependent,
> and still easy to detect) or if the game would have to connect to the
> Internet. I doubt either will be implemented, giving that ADOM is a
> cross-platform game.

There are some simple measures against save-scumming though, like not
allowing a reload if the same character (as evidenced by the adom.cnt
file contents upon creation of the character, for instance) is already
in the high score. Some roguelike I played actually implemented this,
although I don't recall which one it was. Of course this and all other
simple measures against save-scumming can be circumvented by copying the
entire ADOM installation rather than just the .svg file. I guess it is
still somewhat effective way to get honest scores on a multi-user system
with a shared highscore list.

Personally, from the little discussion we had on this topic, I don't
think that the technical difficulty is Thomas's only reason not to try
to do anything against save-scumming. Unlike hex-editing and the like,
save-scumming is a mass phenomenon. It's not limited to ADOM either, and
many people enjoy playing the game this way. I think that Thomas's
attitude on this is something like "live and let live". As you said,
probably everybody save-scummed in some game some time.

Malte

 

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

On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 23:55:04 +0100, Malte Helmert wrote:

> Personally, from the little discussion we had on this topic, I don't
> think that the technical difficulty is Thomas's only reason not to try
> to do anything against save-scumming. Unlike hex-editing and the like,
> save-scumming is a mass phenomenon. It's not limited to ADOM either, and
> many people enjoy playing the game this way. I think that Thomas's
> attitude on this is something like "live and let live". As you said,
> probably everybody save-scummed in some game some time.

Someone (Vladimir?) said, earlier in this thread, that its easier for
Thomas to build in safeguards against savefile editting than it is for
players to break those safeguards.
As you've alluded, savescumming is exactly the opposite if you have
control over the machine on which you're running. Its far easier (trivial
in fact, on Linux) to circumvent anything Thomas could do in that regard
than it is for him to implement...

 

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

Marcus wrote:

<on Crawl>

> Haha, it's a brutally difficult game, but pretty entertaining. The
> distinction between ac/ev, the spellcasting variety, the insane number of
> classes and races, and the interesting skill system all make it pretty fun.
> Not sure if it was apparent, but it has travel built in - hit x (or X? -
> can't remember, my keys are remapped) and then > < (or another symbol) and
> then a . and you can zip instantly to a staircase. Handy in Crawl's big
> strangely shaped dungeons.
>

Is there any "first steps" hint collection around? I'm not after
outright spoilers, more like gentle hints which get me off the ground a
little? So far, my most successful characters are Dwarven Fighters
axe-cleaving everything to bits, but I'd like to play something
spell-casty too. Too bad that my caster charas die almost instantly 🙂)

Help would be much appreciated
Christian "BlackFurredBeast" Pohl