Search found 451 matches

Thursday, 4th June 2020, 15:09

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: Spell descriptions

Replies: 6

Views: 2490

Re: Spell descriptions

The I menu does show the description. You just have to select the spell whose description you want to read.

Tuesday, 2nd June 2020, 13:29

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

Replies: 23

Views: 8183

Re: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

Homie, if you want me to read this, you need to get to a point within the first five or six sentences.

Saturday, 30th May 2020, 13:16

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

Replies: 23

Views: 8183

Re: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

What makes the internet worse is 50 million nerds popping off with nothing to say. And you know, about the OP, this is not some new player who just doesn't know what they're talking about because it's a complex game with lots of ins and outs and everything's been discussed for years and years so tha...

Wednesday, 27th May 2020, 16:31

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Simplify the damage formula

Replies: 39

Views: 13744

Re: Simplify the damage formula

Apparently understanding why something works and what makes it good is less important than figuring out what the goals of its designers were and then pursuing them more authentically. I don't know why I bother lmao

Wednesday, 27th May 2020, 00:32

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Simplify the damage formula

Replies: 39

Views: 13744

Re: Simplify the damage formula

The important thing is the ease of design, not simplicity of the formulas themselves, which you don't have to know anything about other than a couple of key statistics. You will not come up with significantly simpler formulas than the existing ones that have the same kinds of narrow tails and produc...

Tuesday, 26th May 2020, 13:47

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Simplify the damage formula

Replies: 39

Views: 13744

Re: Simplify the damage formula

So the highest entropy distribution on a bounded interval is the uniform distribution. Generally speaking, you impose some kind of constraint to select a set of distributions, for example a prescribed expectation value, then maximize entropy within that set of distributions. In this way you get inte...

Tuesday, 26th May 2020, 12:12

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Simplify the damage formula

Replies: 39

Views: 13744

Re: Simplify the damage formula

Actually, no, the higher moments are not individually important -- this is the same as saying you have to closely approximate the current distributions. The quantity you want to look at to control the unpredictability of combat is the Shannon entropy, to which the higher moments contribute. In fact,...

Monday, 18th May 2020, 14:53

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Connect magic schools with player resistances

Replies: 17

Views: 5392

Re: Connect magic schools with player resistances

Equipment that confers skill bonuses would be good in my opinion. In fact, a skill system based largely on such bonuses could easily provide a superior alternative to existing crawl skills. The brilliance potion already has a similar effect, though, so it's not a wildly outre suggestion. I don't see...

Friday, 15th May 2020, 12:50

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

Replies: 22

Views: 11311

Re: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

In some sense, the "best" curves would be exponentials and describing the relationship between their parameters and their statistics is somewhat complicated. It is possible though and the machinery for doing so would provide the bridge between convenience in design and intuition for the pl...

Thursday, 14th May 2020, 23:41

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

Replies: 22

Views: 11311

Re: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

I suppose this is true as far as it goes, but the issue isn't so much calculating the statistics as presenting them to players in a convenient and digestible way.

Thursday, 14th May 2020, 12:40

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

Replies: 22

Views: 11311

Re: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

I think complexity of the formulas, or more generally of the procedures that generate the numbers, is a red herring. The bigger problem is that basic statistics about them are not available to the player and that the design of the formulas is somewhat haphazard -- they seem to work more by coinciden...

Thursday, 14th May 2020, 12:37

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

Replies: 23

Views: 8183

Re: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

What I don't understand is why people can't take their resentment of tavern and strawman arguments to the subreddit where they will be unanimously appreciated. What we have here is a video game forum where the only check on posting nonsense is social opprobrium -- there's no moderation for content, ...

Wednesday, 13th May 2020, 17:01

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

Replies: 22

Views: 11311

Re: What are the actually effects of +str on damage?

About sil and brogue damage formulas, I agree that they are easier to analyze mathematically because they involve less complicated dice formulas, but the formulas are inferior to crawl in terms of combat dynamics. Both brogue and sil generally have more predictable, static combat in part because of ...

Wednesday, 13th May 2020, 13:15

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

Replies: 23

Views: 8183

Re: Please get rid of ally based XP drain

An extremely poorly reasoned post, so much so that even addressing it in a serious way would be ridiculous, but the general idea that the XP penalty for damage dealt by allies is unnecessary and bad is correct. The problem is that the mechanics of allies break the game, both in terms of usability an...

Monday, 11th May 2020, 16:35

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Nerf Sacrifice Experience

Replies: 3

Views: 1983

Re: Nerf Sacrifice Experience

Should just apply -2 to your experience level wherever it's checked instead of screwing around with experience points to apply the effect.

Monday, 4th May 2020, 12:16

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Replies: 123

Views: 47998

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

This goes back to things I've been saying for a long time. The monsters sticking to walls thing is a layout problem. Noise up the straight edges you see everywhere in crawl layouts and open up corridors to at least two tiles wide with irregular walls. For the rest, removing manual spell targeting is...

Sunday, 3rd May 2020, 12:06

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: Can a melee fighter defeat the Tomb?

Replies: 16

Views: 6056

Re: Can a melee fighter defeat the Tomb?

Good to be reminded of the uselessness of posting in this subforum.

Saturday, 2nd May 2020, 19:09

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: Can a melee fighter defeat the Tomb?

Replies: 16

Views: 6056

Re: Can a melee fighter defeat the Tomb?

Magipi's god options do work, but if you want something more generic, darkness + silence is a strong option for any extended melee character in tomb.

Thursday, 30th April 2020, 15:05

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: Triple defense hypothesis

Replies: 24

Views: 10104

Re: Triple defense hypothesis

So you figure the average damage is going to go negative in that second plot or what? Like knives in my brain reading this shit. Look, obviously there are thresholds. When you roll multiple dice, you get S-shaped cumulative probability distributions and the more dice, the steeper. You'll see this wi...

Wednesday, 29th April 2020, 21:13

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Issue: Flying and Shafts

Replies: 7

Views: 3185

Re: Issue: Flying and Shafts

Flying hasn't protected you from shafts for a long time, but the way they work now they aren't even associated with the space they catch you on. Total nonsense both from the perspective of its roots in simulation and abstract game design. There's no sensible way to describe what's going on with thes...

Tuesday, 28th April 2020, 14:30

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Issue: Flying and Shafts

Replies: 7

Views: 3185

Re: Issue: Flying and Shafts

It is intentional.

Tuesday, 21st April 2020, 14:15

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

Replies: 123

Views: 47998

Re: Positional Attack Magic Implementation [Now Playable]

re: duvessa, I think the writing was on the wall when general methods of converting existing spell effects to untargeted variants were categorically rejected. Too much commitment to this shell game with players who cannot accept the truth about manual targeting. It is analytically false that optiona...

Tuesday, 7th April 2020, 16:33

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Miscast Simplification

Replies: 33

Views: 12121

Re: Miscast Simplification

I just saw the dev wiki page on this reform and I gotta tell ya, and I say this with all due respect, you are way overthinking this thing.

Monday, 6th April 2020, 13:12

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Miscast Simplification

Replies: 33

Views: 12121

Re: Miscast Simplification

Yeah, I was going to say a fail rate cutoff would make a lot of sense. About the issue of swapping items that modify fail rate and their interaction with duration effect spells, you could recompute fail rates turn by turn and cancel duration spell effects whose fail rate has exceeded the cutoff. Thi...

Monday, 6th April 2020, 04:09

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Miscast Simplification

Replies: 33

Views: 12121

Re: Miscast Simplification

Miscast effects, to a first order approximation, do nothing. The player has too much control over the circumstances that create significant miscast effects for them to have any impact on a reasonably informed player's games (as you mention). For most spells, you will not see significant miscast effe...

Saturday, 28th March 2020, 19:57

Forum: Suggestions & Criticism

Topic: Do forum sessions have a timer now?

Replies: 3

Views: 25042

Re: Do forum sessions have a timer now?

If it was a good essay (criticism I haven't thought of myself, supportive of notions i've already put forth, not whining about the changes), I think you should try posting a brief outline of it, quickly hitting its main points. Otherwise, wow, that sucks bro. (Feel free to reach out over PMs if you'...

Sunday, 22nd March 2020, 17:55

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Rethinking orc battlecry

Replies: 15

Views: 5913

Re: Rethinking orc battlecry

Scientifically speaking, the player will not know for sure that their character is progressing and to what degree without a standardized set of monsters available to test against at regular intervals throughout the game. (You could say the player should just look at their stats, skill levels, etc. b...

Sunday, 1st March 2020, 17:21

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Proposal: Alternative hydra head-chopping mechanic

Replies: 11

Views: 4202

Re: Proposal: Alternative hydra head-chopping mechanic

Agree with bel about removing the head-chopping mechanic and replacing it with nothing, but would also push back on the idea that removing it makes hydras "less interesting." Head-chopping may have "flavor," but it's a bad mechanic easily defeated by a reasonably proficient playe...

Friday, 28th February 2020, 21:26

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Replies: 15

Views: 5545

Re: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

I tried the lane removal thing too. Here's .map from a successful test run: #### ######## #### #..#######################......#######################..# #...........................................)............# ##.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#.####.##########..###########.## #.........................# ...

Friday, 28th February 2020, 01:22

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Replies: 15

Views: 5545

Re: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

interesting link. Weird that they'd remove the gaps at the ends of the lanes between quadrants and but not remove the lanes entirely. edit: This is the relevant commit for anyone who'd like to do some homebrewing: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=b6c2c797741ae9d739a63a4a17db2476716fe0...

Thursday, 27th February 2020, 22:46

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Replies: 15

Views: 5545

Re: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Hm, should cook up a version of hellcrawl without the ring.

Thursday, 27th February 2020, 21:59

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Replies: 15

Views: 5545

Re: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

About the outer ring, one big demerit is that you can escape hatch directly into it, which demotes probably the best fight in the game to a depths enclosure vault. The lanes have roughly the same problem, though they're more exposed and open. Of course these issues apply to teleports too. In general...

Wednesday, 26th February 2020, 19:40

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Replacement for the skills menu

Replies: 3

Views: 1854

Re: Replacement for the skills menu

The difference between rounding to 4 or 5 in an EV calculation is small enough not to worry about, in my opinion. I think a menu that allows shows the change in things like defenses, attack delay, fail rates, and spellpower to the player for each possible change in skill in a system like this would ...

Wednesday, 26th February 2020, 12:25

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Replacement for the skills menu

Replies: 3

Views: 1854

Re: Replacement for the skills menu

The principles described in the first half of the post seem okay to me, but the system described in the second half not as much. Tying skills to various kinds of item or other resource allocation, including items that should be removed, is not the way to go. One thing I like about your proposed syst...

Tuesday, 25th February 2020, 20:58

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

Replies: 15

Views: 5545

Re: finally figured out how to do vaults 5

I find that walking between the guards at the beginning toward the most favorable of the generally two possible quadrants to do this with, somewhat as borsuk suggests, produces consistent results even with low level characters, say xl 17 or 18. Of course, best practice is to delay entry until just b...

Tuesday, 25th February 2020, 18:48

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

lmao

Tuesday, 25th February 2020, 14:35

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Opaque skill system is severely wounded

Replies: 46

Views: 13928

Re: Opaque skill system is severely wounded

Default skill targets and settings that get the player to d:5 with better allocation than autoskill would be easy to put together for every background other than wanderer and that's just using existing features. Straightforward extensions to the skill target system (e.g. targets with priority) would...

Tuesday, 25th February 2020, 13:45

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

The deeper problem is the roguelike item idiom itself. Identification is just one of many layers that obfuscate the deeper truth that items as understood in roguelike games are inherently tedious and the more you have the worse it gets. Have you considered the possibility that you don't actually li...

Monday, 24th February 2020, 15:27

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

I wouldn't call that a mechanic, so I find this line of argument unconvincing.

Monday, 24th February 2020, 15:21

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

Unenchanted daggers are good/interesting. Okay.

Monday, 24th February 2020, 14:53

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

I'm sorry, you're asking if the player's ability to use an untrained dagger in zot should be removed? What does this even mean? (To be clear, I can think of one way to do that that would result in a clearly superior game, but I don't want to get that far off track.) edit: Ah, what the hell... The wh...

Monday, 24th February 2020, 14:36

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

Relatedly, hellcrawl has no identification at all. All items are always identified. I rather like it because if a mechanic is not good enough to last a whole game, it shouldn't be in the game at all. [edit: Btw, the blog posts from the golden krone hotel guy linked in this thread are a great example...

Sunday, 23rd February 2020, 16:43

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: Can you be killed by lava overflow in Volcano?

Replies: 3

Views: 2156

Re: Can you be killed by lava overflow in Volcano?

I believe that's a negatory, good buddy.

Sunday, 23rd February 2020, 15:46

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Remove the id game (new reason)

Replies: 58

Views: 40230

Re: Remove the id game (new reason)

I'm not super familiar with rogue, but it is my impression, backed up by commentary on the game I've seen, that optimal or at least adequate navigation of its identification system is actually very straightforward and can be summarized in a small flow chart. You should always be suspicious of a glos...

Sunday, 23rd February 2020, 15:36

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: Opaque skill system is severely wounded

Replies: 46

Views: 13928

Re: Opaque skill system is severely wounded

Narrator: It simply was true.

Saturday, 22nd February 2020, 22:43

Forum: Dungeon Crawling Advice

Topic: What gives you mutations in Tomb?

Replies: 5

Views: 2813

Re: What gives you mutations in Tomb?

You were mutated by contamination, probably from casting cblink and using haste potions.

Saturday, 22nd February 2020, 17:33

Forum: Crazy Yiuf's Corner

Topic: Rogue (the roguelike game)

Replies: 14

Views: 6156

Re: Rogue (the roguelike game)

The board game analogy is apt. Roguelike games are essentially solitaire board games. The complexity budget absolutely applies, but the emphasis shifts to making the user facing elements of the game simple, possibly at the cost of internal complexity. Dice roll-based mechanics, in particular, make s...

Saturday, 22nd February 2020, 13:30

Forum: Crazy Yiuf's Corner

Topic: Rogue (the roguelike game)

Replies: 14

Views: 6156

Re: Rogue (the roguelike game)

I never really played hack, seems to have been a pretty straightforward derivative of rogue. In some sense the first proper roguelike (i.e. not just rogue) was moria. It was the first to bring in complex dungeon generation, a large number of items and monsters, full spell systems, character classes,...

Friday, 21st February 2020, 12:47

Forum: Game Design Discussion

Topic: How can we simplify the summoning school?

Replies: 11

Views: 3756

Re: How can we simplify the summoning school?

It's important to emphasize the connection between summoning/allies and boredom. It's not incidental. Having an essentially free, computer controlled monster fight for the player is obviously going to be boring. There are no stakes, no risk, barely any tactics most of the time. Safety doesn't come a...
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