Oubliettelikes?


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Swamp Slogger

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Post Thursday, 26th January 2012, 09:11

Oubliettelikes?

In this thread you can get some basic information about 'Oubliettelikes'-games, if you care to read on:

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The dungeon crawler game "Oubliette" (French word for 'dungeon') was first released on the PLATO system on November 18, 1977. It was later ported to the PC platform in 1983.
Oubliette predated Rogue (around 1980) and strongly influenced the first Wizardry game "Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" (1981).
'Wizardry I' counts as the great-grandfather of all commercial 3D-Dungeon view CRPGs [followers: The Bard's Tale (1985), Might & Magic (1986), Dungeon Master (1987), Eye of the Beholder (1990)]. Robert Woodhead, co-author of Wizardry, explains this in the following excerpt of a post he made on the Slashdot forum on November 14th, 2001:

"Both Andy and I were active on the PLATO system, which was a tremendous influence on us. PLATO had email, chat, newsgroups, multiplayer realtime game, and much more, all starting in the early 70's. The multiplayer dungeon games were particularly good. Pretty much all of the basic concepts of multiplayer gaming were developed there.
Wizardry was in many ways our attempt to see if we could write a single-player game as cool as the PLATO dungeon games and cram it into a tiny machine like the Apple II.
"

Most evolved Oubliettelike is 'Demise - Rise of the Ku'tan' (1999), which has to be paid for, but got a long waited-for update last year 'Demise - Ascension' (commercial open Beta 2011). There also exists an illegal for download (if you don't own Demise) renegade-mod called 'Demise - The Revelation' (free Demise add-on, 2003).

ImageImage

In contrast to 'Roguelikes', 'Oubliettelikes' have a complete pre-defined dungeon and no perma-death. If a player character dies, his body can be found by another generated player character and brought up to the town for resurrection. It's all about exploring/GRINDING (!!!) the dungeon for items, experience, gold and monsters to sell . (like Roguelikes you can play these games for years on and on and on...and on...). These games are designed to be played with a lowered state of consciousness, like watching TV after midnight or reading a book without 'inwardly listen to it.' The point in the design is to get this long time excessive play-style to perfection, to make the formulas such, that playing the game don''t let's you fall in total slumber. You have to 'know your dungeon' and be carefull about certain passages or monsters. If you switch off ALL attention - you will most lightely run into a random teleporter, pit trap or a difficult monster group, which spawn randomly new after some time in each room. And the game always sets you some character-leveling aim to jolly you along. But in the end you must define/choose your actual goals for yourself ('story'-expanding, exploring, looting, leveling, monster/item hunt, playing intense but risky etc.). Ultimate end is to tactical blend all these different tasks carefully in your particular character build - at the right time and duration - always trying 'to squish the most out' of your playing time. And you alone set also the level of difficulty by your own play-style. It all depends how deep you go with a particular character/party combination. There comes this point, where things get really hard, dangerous and resource consuming. But this is the point, where the real gain is - getting high loot, leveling experience and strong monsters to sell or take as companions. You can have as much player characters as you like and combine them into a 'party'. Add to this play mix different races, professions, alignments + lots of items, monsters and a dungeon designed 'diversified' enough - with different placed 'visual furnishing' - that one can remember 'routes' in the head after playing/exploring long enough:

Image

Revelation-Creator 'Archi' [villanized, banned and declared the greatest evil that ever existed in the tiny, paranoid world of DEMISE] about the game philosophy:

"...It's an old game with little life in it. Why ruin the little fun people who have played for 10 years have left?
I am not adding any quests. This is not an adventure game. It's a dungeon crawler, extremely repetitive and that's how we like it.
It counters out mental disabilities and turns whatever brain cells we got left OFF. ...
"

Oubliettelikes first seem boring, if you look on it like a normal CPRG/Roguelike. But if you have understood/accepted, what the game-play is about (...grinding, grinding, grinding...and...more grinding again...and then again grinding...), they get addictive like drugs. It's all about nerd playing-style evolved to the extreme!

-----
some Links, - only if you want to become a Oubliettelike-junky:

google translation of some French language blog entry about this topic: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl ... 75&act=url

Oubliette Fan Page by Snafaru: http://www.zimlab.com/oubliette/

Modern Oubliette for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oubliett ... 37764?mt=8

Demise Ascension : http://www.decklinsdemise.com/news.php
Ascension Forum: http://www.decklinsdomain.info/phpbb/index.php

Demise Revelation: http://www.dtr-dojo.com/
Revelation Forum: http://www.dtr-dojo.com/forums/
----

Feel free to discuss or add your own info about Oubliettelikes.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Friday, 27th January 2012, 06:05

Re: Oubliettelikes?

So basically Anti-Idle with an RPG covering its surface?
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Eringya's Employee

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Post Friday, 27th January 2012, 08:17

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Looking at the first pic... "Sex sells, doesn't it...?"
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Saturday, 28th January 2012, 12:06

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Well, Demise was a commercial flop. But the Box illustration was state of the art for it's time:

http://www.listal.com/list/covers-by-boris-vallejo
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Snake Sneak

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Post Saturday, 28th January 2012, 18:39

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Not sure if this is technically an "oubliettelike" (or a "roguelike" for that matter), but I remember a game called "Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol"... despite being named after a location in LotR, it has absolutely no connection to LotR :P A few things I remember from that game are:

* the main menu music, it was pretty neat ;)

* weapons had "good/neutral/evil" alignment; good characters could use only good/neutral weapons, while evil characters could use only evil/neutral weapons, and neutral characters could use anything

* despite characters having alignment, it really meant nothing apart from limits on the weapons you could use and the race and class you could play (and the weapons were random anyway, not like certain types of weapons were always good or always evil)

* combat was automatic and in pseudo-realtime: monsters would attack you every second, and you'd automatically attack one of the monsters in the room every second (you might have been able to choose a target)

* ridiculously fine distinctions between various types of spellcasters (mage, sorcerer, wizard, sage, etc.)

* death similar to early MMO's: if you die, you can either spend a lot of gold to be revived, or you can start another character and try and find the first character's corpse to revive him
The Ed draws near! What dost thou deaux?
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Saturday, 28th January 2012, 22:33

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Mordor -The Depths of Dejenol counts 100%. Mordor was a 'wild copy&paste' from Avatar and this was more or less Oubliette. In post above I linked some blog entry, which explains this.

Oubliette (1977):
Image

Mordor (1995):
Image

Demise (2000):
Image


Demise - Rise of the Ku'tan (vanilla) is really 'just' an expanded Mordor ! (3d Graphics, sounds, 10 x size of dungeon , more monster, items).

Demise - Revelation mod fixes bugs + gives maybe 3 new levels, items and monsters + removes guild restrictions for long time play (i think). An update with new dungeon level for high player characters is in the making (DTR 1.23)

Demise - Ascension (new oficial version) massively widens the vanilla dungeon (makes the 45x45 level maps to 90x90 maps and uses the new space for new dungeon areas reachable for the most part only by high leveled characters!). It also fixes a lot of bugs and fine tunes the 'statistic+formula' + gives new items and monsters and 'quests'.
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Wednesday, 1st February 2012, 17:18

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 2nd February 2012, 20:08

Re: Oubliettelikes?

"Seduce"? What sort of dungeon is that?
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Sewers Scotsman

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Post Friday, 3rd February 2012, 10:42

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Grimm wrote:"Seduce"? What sort of dungeon is that?

I don't know but I'd like to know more. Sounds like it might be a pleasant change from being chopped in half with a scythe by some guy called Sigmund.
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Monday, 17th December 2012, 17:38

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Confidence Interval wrote:
Grimm wrote:"Seduce"? What sort of dungeon is that?

I don't know but I'd like to know more. Sounds like it might be a pleasant change from being chopped in half with a scythe by some guy called Sigmund.


That was the age, when female characters still had their own 'options' in turn based combat rounds such as the thief's 'hide-option' at the start of a combat turn like later still in Wizardry or Bard's Tale.
Function was likely a kind of 'pacify' for monster mobs, I suppose...
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Wednesday, 2nd January 2013, 00:41

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Thank again for putting Demise out there for those who haven't heard of it, this is the best game I've played since DCSS. It's crack! And I'm only as far as level 7...
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Saturday, 9th February 2013, 23:09

Re: Oubliettelikes?

Malevolence - Sword of Ahkranox

http://www.malevolencegame.com/index.html

Key features:

•The game is an homage to classic RPGs such as Eye of the Beholder, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master, Stonekeep, etc
•Movement is grid-based and turn-based
It is set in an infinite, persistent world (yes, persistent, too!) :shock:
•The world is rich and full of dungeons, crypts, forests, cities, vast oceans and more
•World is NOT randomly generated, but it IS infinite, so you can share what you find with friends
Items, weapons, quests, locations, maps, NPCs, even dialogue are generated by the game :shock:
Even some graphics such as weapon images are generated procedurally :shock:

Image

The graphics and art style looks a bit lame, but I'm gonna give it a try anyways. Currently downloading...

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