You could play a MUD. batMUD is really complex, and I think you would find it has a lot in common with Roguelikes. The race variety is especially cool, You can play a 4 armed albino ape (Barsoomian), go for a tiger spec (assassin like class) and just swing like crazy. Its cool.
1) graphical tiles
2) an honest to god usable interface
3) a Mac OS X port
What did I do to deserve this?
Stone Soup is the best thing since Powder!
Stone Soup is the business. Nothing does more to marry the soul of Roguelike gameplay with an interface that is actually encouraging you to play rather than trying to drive you off. The lesson being, it doesn't have to be arcane and unwieldly to be fun!
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
MAngband is a multiplayer version of Angband. Text based like Nethack. Seems not to have exotic races/classes like most these days.
Crossfire seems a bit like a graphical Roguelike. All the maps, of which they are many, are made by hand so no random wonkiness. Has a client/host setup.
Wyvern has a central server, is mmo like, and a bit like a Roguelike.
Graphical, ooh aah! Also no randomness I think.
I found Crossfire and Wyvern some time ago looking for a multiplayer Castle of the Winds like game but never played them much. MAngband I tried so long ago all I remember is it looked just like Nethack, and nobody was playing at that time. Maybe someone knows more or will try them a little to be a better judge!
Oh! Forgot Lost Labyrinth. Turn based with singleplayer or hotseat. All skill based system on char creation which is kinda neat, tons of skills to pick from.
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
But why not do it for another of the many roguelikes which still dwell in the land of ASCII?
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
But why not do it for another of the many roguelikes which still dwell in the land of ASCII?
Unless the plan is to completely re-program the game's graphic engine, making a decent tileset for an ASCII game sounds very limiting.
IVAN is pretty rad. Im disappointed that I didn't find out about it earlier. My dude had a spear that could make people teleport, but he himself would randomly teleport though I got to choose where he went. He starved to death but not before taking out a mutant ass.
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
But why not do it for another of the many roguelikes which still dwell in the land of ASCII?
Because a lot of the ones I like that do that don't actually have tileset support yet. For instance, I would love to do one for Incursion.
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
This is from someone who is extremely picky with graphics and stuff in general:
What's wrong with the existing Stone Soup tileset?
Judging by the dozens of roguelike tilesets I've seen before, this one is one of the best attempts so far.
(Judging by any "normal" game's standard it is pretty horrible though, but serviceable.)
EDIT: Not to turn this thread into a Stone Soup thread, but I have two questions:
1) I just encountered my own ghost, even though I wasn't dead. WTF? I ran like crazy, needless to say.
2) How can I judge if I think I can take on a monster or not? Is letting it hit me over the head once my only option?
eobet on
Heard the proposition that RIAA and MPAA should join forces and form "Music And Film Industry Association"?
This is from someone who is extremely picky with graphics and stuff in general:
What's wrong with the existing Stone Soup tileset?
I don't know, just a stylistic preference thing, I feel like they try to cram too much detail into too small a space. I love heavily stylized graphics, really simplified and immediately identifiable.
i got to the castle without spoilers, but damn i needed them after that
proceeded to start ascending regularly and then went on to use conducts
still play it from time to time.
crawl is probably the best roguelike where you don't need spoilers to win
Crawl is what I always recommend to people as a more strategic (instead of guess and check) game : D And with a passable tileset/interface that some people care about.
If only I had the pixelicious chops of Derek Yu or Ian McConville I would be all about making a tileset for stone soup.
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
This is from someone who is extremely picky with graphics and stuff in general:
What's wrong with the existing Stone Soup tileset?
Judging by the dozens of roguelike tilesets I've seen before, this one is one of the best attempts so far.
(Judging by any "normal" game's standard it is pretty horrible though, but serviceable.)
EDIT: Not to turn this thread into a Stone Soup thread, but I have two questions:
1) I just encountered my own ghost, even though I wasn't dead. WTF? I ran like crazy, needless to say.
2) How can I judge if I think I can take on a monster or not? Is letting it hit me over the head once my only option?
It's a ghost from one of your previous adventurers. So it will have the same stats and skills and try to kill you.
That is generally your best bet. You just need to keep some escape options open to you (blinking/teleport scrolls, wands, staircases). Some of it is just common sense (giants and dragons will ruin your day). Playing a berserker can be a good way to gather that type of general information, since you can engage in regular combat to see how things measure up but you always have an emergency escape button if things get out of hand.
IVAN is pretty rad. Im disappointed that I didn't find out about it earlier. My dude had a spear that could make people teleport, but he himself would randomly teleport though I got to choose where he went. He starved to death but not before taking out a mutant ass.
Too bad it teleported away, you could have eaten that ass.
Fucking super meat men are unkillable. Even doing the "level up mid fight" trick I can't put out enough damage. Have yet to find a shrine of Mystera Annur while playing a wizard, though.
edit: alright, Mystera Annur makes a wizard into a tiny god.
Maybe its just because I played a million hours of stone soup, but I never found desktop dungeon to be that hard. You just really have to take advantage of every trick. For example:
Make sure you know the basics. Exploring heals health and mana. If you're at full health and mana while exploring, you're doing it wrong(except in rare cases where you simply have nothing you can do). Kill the highest level monsters possible, as soon as possible. Get that bonus exp whenever you can.
Gods: Some are better than others. Tikki is always good, as he gives you a free potion, a small dodge chance from kills, and never gets mad at you. I wouldn't suggest taurog, because you need to make extensive use of magic, regardless of class, to do well most of the time. Jehora's pretty good, I believe the only thing you give up is first strike glyphs(which you might not even find). He's cool if you find him really early, or after you're pretty sure you won't find first strike. Earthmother sucks, I've yet to find what the pactmaker does. Dracul's oretty cool, but not being able to kill undead generally makes it not worthwile(depending on class. I'd take it on a vampire, regardless of undead numbers).
Some stuff on glyphs...
Lemmisi: A godsend for early play(by that, I mean without things unlocked). See, it pays for its mana cost(as it explores three spaces, which heals three mana), and essentially lets you heal without needing to explore. This might not seem great, until you realize how many spaces on a map you can't actually get to(blocks within blocks, etc). This works even better in conjunction with things like poison, but you get that later on.
Poison: Use this to kill the highest level monster you can find once you get it, as long as the monster won't one-shot you. Get fat experience from this, also great for taking on bosses that you can take hits from.
Killing Blow Protection: Similar deal with poison. More "expensive" in terms of need of exploration than poison, but you can kill things like crazy with this.
I hope this helped at least a bit. I've unlocked everything in DD, I'm just working on beating all the special levels with every class now, to get the bonuses. Speaking of super meat man, I made a human wizard on a new account(so I wouldn't get any extra help from my bonuses and unlocks), and came up against him. I used to think he was unkillable without extra's, but I applied what I knew now, and kicked his ass.
Wait, there's an editable config file? I ask because I want to keep track of what classes have beaten which levels.
it is utterly illegible. If you open it in notepad++ you can see it uses NUL and ENQ characters to denote what's locked and unlocked. There are a lot of them. You can spend some time mucking about with that or you could download this save file I've handily uploaded for scientific purposes.
edit: it goes in \chardata\ and you can either rename it to whatever name you're already using and replace the one that's already in there, or you just change your profile to Unlock from inside the game.
Exploring heals health and mana. If you're at full health and mana while exploring, you're doing it wrong(except in rare cases where you simply have nothing you can do). Kill the highest level monsters possible, as soon as possible. Get that bonus exp whenever you can.
Following that simple advice really helped. I technically knew it before, but I tried being really conservative with exploring, and looking for the highest level enemy I could kill first, and I just won twice in a row, once with the Fighter and again with the Priest. Thanks!
You could play a MUD. batMUD is really complex, and I think you would find it has a lot in common with Roguelikes. The race variety is especially cool, You can play a 4 armed albino ape (Barsoomian), go for a tiger spec (assassin like class) and just swing like crazy. Its cool.
There's also tons and tons of them. Of varying complexities and with a multitude of themes and settings. You should go to www.mudconnector.com and check it out.
Wait, really? I just assumed he hadn't died to any of those because he hadn't encountered them yet. That's usually how it goes in Spelunky, right? See something new, die within the next twenty seconds?
I remember there being bats early on in Spelunky. They were occasionally a pain to hit, but you could take them out easily by running into a tunnel and forcing it to move down to your vertical level to enter, at which point you can just whip them.
Never dying to them is quite viable. I'd expect they'd be in the first spot on the list.
shit ok between here and the webcomic thread I have like 4 suggestions cause I left to eat dinner
let's see, my next few characters are going to be:
1. Human Fighter "John Doe"
2. Merfolk Arcane Marksman "Bubbles"
3. Demigod Rogue "Lokipants"
4. Vampire Transmuter "Edward"
Let me know how the Demigod rogue works out. With the reworking of evasion and stuff it could end up actually being kind of good but it will probably be terrible.
Posts
You could play a MUD. batMUD is really complex, and I think you would find it has a lot in common with Roguelikes. The race variety is especially cool, You can play a 4 armed albino ape (Barsoomian), go for a tiger spec (assassin like class) and just swing like crazy. Its cool.
Stone Soup is the business. Nothing does more to marry the soul of Roguelike gameplay with an interface that is actually encouraging you to play rather than trying to drive you off. The lesson being, it doesn't have to be arcane and unwieldly to be fun!
For me, it's all about Hill Orc Chaos Knights. I love the random stuff the gods of chaos do sometimes.
"Nyarlothotep glances breifly in your direction. You are now a turkey sandwich. Game Over."
Actually, you know what would be totally sweet? If we did a whole in-house tileset thing in here! I think I'm going to try and get started on this shit tonight.
MAngband is a multiplayer version of Angband. Text based like Nethack. Seems not to have exotic races/classes like most these days.
Crossfire seems a bit like a graphical Roguelike. All the maps, of which they are many, are made by hand so no random wonkiness. Has a client/host setup.
Wyvern has a central server, is mmo like, and a bit like a Roguelike.
Graphical, ooh aah! Also no randomness I think.
I found Crossfire and Wyvern some time ago looking for a multiplayer Castle of the Winds like game but never played them much. MAngband I tried so long ago all I remember is it looked just like Nethack, and nobody was playing at that time. Maybe someone knows more or will try them a little to be a better judge!
Oh! Forgot Lost Labyrinth. Turn based with singleplayer or hotseat. All skill based system on char creation which is kinda neat, tons of skills to pick from.
Ported to various systems. I like the Nintendo DS version the best. I abhor the PSP interface. The windows version is OK:
http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release
edit: Ah I see Powder was mentioned already, in passing.
But why not do it for another of the many roguelikes which still dwell in the land of ASCII?
Also here's the link to the Derek Yu tileset, as every single link to it on the last page has stoped working.
Unless the plan is to completely re-program the game's graphic engine, making a decent tileset for an ASCII game sounds very limiting.
Because a lot of the ones I like that do that don't actually have tileset support yet. For instance, I would love to do one for Incursion.
This is from someone who is extremely picky with graphics and stuff in general:
What's wrong with the existing Stone Soup tileset?
Judging by the dozens of roguelike tilesets I've seen before, this one is one of the best attempts so far.
(Judging by any "normal" game's standard it is pretty horrible though, but serviceable.)
EDIT: Not to turn this thread into a Stone Soup thread, but I have two questions:
1) I just encountered my own ghost, even though I wasn't dead. WTF? I ran like crazy, needless to say.
2) How can I judge if I think I can take on a monster or not? Is letting it hit me over the head once my only option?
I don't know, just a stylistic preference thing, I feel like they try to cram too much detail into too small a space. I love heavily stylized graphics, really simplified and immediately identifiable.
Crawl is what I always recommend to people as a more strategic (instead of guess and check) game : D And with a passable tileset/interface that some people care about.
It's a ghost from one of your previous adventurers. So it will have the same stats and skills and try to kill you.
That is generally your best bet. You just need to keep some escape options open to you (blinking/teleport scrolls, wands, staircases). Some of it is just common sense (giants and dragons will ruin your day). Playing a berserker can be a good way to gather that type of general information, since you can engage in regular combat to see how things measure up but you always have an emergency escape button if things get out of hand.
However, the resolution would probably butcher it to nothingness.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
It's kicking my ass too, I've won a single game as a Thief out of more than at least thirty games. I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
3% isn't that bad a win percentage!
edit: alright, Mystera Annur makes a wizard into a tiny god.
Make sure you know the basics. Exploring heals health and mana. If you're at full health and mana while exploring, you're doing it wrong(except in rare cases where you simply have nothing you can do). Kill the highest level monsters possible, as soon as possible. Get that bonus exp whenever you can.
Gods: Some are better than others. Tikki is always good, as he gives you a free potion, a small dodge chance from kills, and never gets mad at you. I wouldn't suggest taurog, because you need to make extensive use of magic, regardless of class, to do well most of the time. Jehora's pretty good, I believe the only thing you give up is first strike glyphs(which you might not even find). He's cool if you find him really early, or after you're pretty sure you won't find first strike. Earthmother sucks, I've yet to find what the pactmaker does. Dracul's oretty cool, but not being able to kill undead generally makes it not worthwile(depending on class. I'd take it on a vampire, regardless of undead numbers).
Some stuff on glyphs...
Lemmisi: A godsend for early play(by that, I mean without things unlocked). See, it pays for its mana cost(as it explores three spaces, which heals three mana), and essentially lets you heal without needing to explore. This might not seem great, until you realize how many spaces on a map you can't actually get to(blocks within blocks, etc). This works even better in conjunction with things like poison, but you get that later on.
Poison: Use this to kill the highest level monster you can find once you get it, as long as the monster won't one-shot you. Get fat experience from this, also great for taking on bosses that you can take hits from.
Killing Blow Protection: Similar deal with poison. More "expensive" in terms of need of exploration than poison, but you can kill things like crazy with this.
I hope this helped at least a bit. I've unlocked everything in DD, I'm just working on beating all the special levels with every class now, to get the bonuses. Speaking of super meat man, I made a human wizard on a new account(so I wouldn't get any extra help from my bonuses and unlocks), and came up against him. I used to think he was unkillable without extra's, but I applied what I knew now, and kicked his ass.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
Plus, hit up the wiki. There are a bunch of little mechanics in there that aren't immediately evident.
You play your way, I'll play mine, don't judge me!
We do have a nice meaty Stone Soup/Crawl thread here for all your needs:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=57826
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
it is utterly illegible. If you open it in notepad++ you can see it uses NUL and ENQ characters to denote what's locked and unlocked. There are a lot of them. You can spend some time mucking about with that or you could download this save file I've handily uploaded for scientific purposes.
http://www.filedropper.com/unlock
edit: it goes in \chardata\ and you can either rename it to whatever name you're already using and replace the one that's already in there, or you just change your profile to Unlock from inside the game.
And I really need to leave those shopkeepers alone.
There's also tons and tons of them. Of varying complexities and with a multitude of themes and settings. You should go to www.mudconnector.com and check it out.
So the only way to get an enemy to show on that list is to die to it? That'll be obnoxious.
Never dying to them is quite viable. I'd expect they'd be in the first spot on the list.
let's see, my next few characters are going to be:
1. Human Fighter "John Doe"
2. Merfolk Arcane Marksman "Bubbles"
3. Demigod Rogue "Lokipants"
4. Vampire Transmuter "Edward"