Comments on: Crawl 0.17: “Squaring the Circle”

By: not mps

not mps — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 08:37:27 +0000

Huge divide between casuals who show up in the blog comment sections and online regulars, tavern gdd people, etc. People pissed off about removing rotten chunks, “mountain dwarves,” other irrelevant flavor smdh. Death cobs are bad, but otherwise it’s a pretty good release — squareLOS is incredibly good and cool.

By: Kami

Kami — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 21:18:26 +0000

Hi guys!

I suppose it’s a little bit late and very few people will join any further discussion but I’d like to share some of my thoughts regarding latest versions. I’m rather a casual crawl player, jumping in and out every couple of months to see what’s new, usually playing trunk versions to experience most recent iteration of the game. After longer breaks it’s quite easy to see how much it is evolving and how much effort went into it. It’s something awesome but also a bit shocking in the same time. Having read developers’ manifesto it’s actually not that hard for me to understand logic behind almost every change made in this and earlier versions. Above all other things gameplay is supposed to be noob-friendly, smooth and provide meaningful choices while maintaining as much balance as it is possible. I think that it’s pretty good development philosophy and I don’t want to question any of the developers decisions, however I’m a bit scared that in the end it leads to unnecessary simplifications that may remove cool aspects of the game. All in all, what’s the point of all this if you have to remove thing that people actually enjoy?

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 05:18:57 +0000

“Squaring the Circle” – Someone is a Niel Hancock fan.

By: blami

blami — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:42:21 +0000

Thank you for the 0.17 release and tournament. I am glad, that you are still doing such a great work. It was a lot of fun. But I was kind of disappointed to see my skeleton and zombie friends decompose in no time. The good times of hanging around with my lovely undead friends will never come back. It’s probably more balanced gameplaywise. But I will miss it. Just like I miss elven and orc armour and statues being destroyed by wands of disintegration. I was never a very active player. And everytime I came back to crawl it was a bit of a shock. I think that’s normal. New players won’t know the difference and will benefit from the changes. I didn’t get along with the new 0.16 Elyvilon btw. First time I played it was in the 0.17 tournament and it was a huge difference.

By: apparatus

apparatus — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 17:52:47 +0000

Toupee, you might have missed this:

* Non-magic-immune monsters are now always confuseable

By: Oldguy

Oldguy — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 06:14:26 +0000

Congrats on another great release (from a 0.4.3 player).

Comment on necromancy changes. Timer for animate is a good idea (and good balance with Yred). My problem is most classes feel powerful around lvl 15-17, but I don’t get that with necromancer/Kiku. Idea – remove Borg spell and make Borg a Kiku ability. Regards.

By: ToupeeForSale

ToupeeForSale — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 06:19:05 +0000

“many, many additions” Nothing was added to the game in this recent “update”. There were only removals or changes. RIP hex-stabbers. You will be missed dearly.

By: Rob "Tottoro" Tottousal

Rob "Tottoro" Tottousal — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 19:10:23 +0000

As always thanks for all the effort devs, your dedication and hard work is inspiring. Having that said I have to admit I don’t like the direction Crawl is heading. Every new version seems to be watered down, simplified form of former releases :( It is something that tears my heart. I love crawl for so many awesome things: great interface, useful commands, amazing rich dungeon generation… but gameplaywise it became simple, generic roguelike with no spirit.

By: plaintextman

plaintextman — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:48:49 +0000

With every release that made radical new changes, for almost all changes I was able to follow the theory behind the change, or to recognize its benefits after a lot of playing. But square LOS is a new level of ‘whut’ to me. I fail to see why it is ultimately the optimal choice for the player. Why couldn’t time calculations be made more precise instead? Maybe it was simply considered too much effort to invent, code and balance an improved but still “logical” time/space system? But on the other hand square LOS doesn’t seem like a change that will have minimal impact on ranged combat balance!

By: Timbermaw

Timbermaw — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 01:40:59 +0000

I agree with the changes, when you look back now the circular LOS was kinda odd since everything in the game uses squares for calculations.
Some were against it, i’m sure, but i think we will all come to like the square one over time.

By: Pythagoras

Pythagoras — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 14:26:05 +0000

@tejón”“Why is square LOS preferred over circular?” – Because it matches movement, I think. You don’t pay 1.4142x auts to move diagonally, so having circular ranges for everything else was inconsistent.”

So there were two options:
1 – making movement cost more complex
2 – simplifying everything else

Now guess what they decided for… It’s frustrating.

By: Clevelandgrab

Clevelandgrab — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 13:08:39 +0000

Holy crap, where are the Mountain Dwarves? You developers are imbecils! How will I play as Gimli now?

By: tejón

tejón — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 10:47:33 +0000

@Matt: “Why is square LOS preferred over circular?” Because it matches movement, I think. You don’t pay 1.4142x auts to move diagonally, so having circular ranges for everything else was inconsistent.

By: Old fart toguelike player(tm)

Old fart toguelike player(tm) — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 22:57:11 +0000

Another simplifications and taking out complexity?
STOP MAKING TO DUNGEON CRAWL, WHAT BETHESDA DID TO FALLOUT SERIE!!!!

By: TehRei

TehRei — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 18:15:04 +0000

Loving the changes! Square-LOS is absolutely amazing. Reducing the amount of levels in the lair branches is also nice. I’m hoping for some more levels being cut in the future, but it’s definitely an improvement as it is right now.

Death cobs feel sort of weird in 0.17 though. By Zot you have enough perma food to just always explore at engorged, which makes them less of problem (most of the time) and more of an interface annoyance. On the other hand, at least they’re relevant (albeit annoying), whereas previously they were popcorn 100% of the time.

Anyway, huge thanks to everyone who worked on this! I love you all and want to hug you in a completely non-sexual way :)

By: gammafunk

gammafunk — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 06:40:17 +0000

Ask, and ye shall receive! The os x packages are available on the download page.

By: David

David — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 03:23:44 +0000

Hi, I was wondering when 0.17 would be released for Mac? Cheers!

By: DaStockMan

DaStockMan — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 02:15:13 +0000

Gotta say I don’t like almost every change made over the last couple years: always taking complexity away and making it more trivial. I now consider this a rogue-lite not a true roguelike. Only reason at all I even consider playing is the online webtiles is very user friendly.

Sorry I’m sure the devs are working hard but the direction they have taken has dumbed this down just too much. Not a fan anymore…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 21:21:41 +0000

Why is square LOS preferred over circular?

By: Leonard

Leonard — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 19:48:14 +0000

And sorted no more than two minutes later… nice

By: Leonard

Leonard — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 19:46:27 +0000

I can’t download 0.17 from the page =c
Still has 0.16.2 on the download links

By: hubbles

hubbles — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 19:43:24 +0000

I hope the tournament DoubleDamage™ bonus is turned on this time!

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 19:25:03 +0000

No 64bits build for Windows this time?

By: reaverb

reaverb — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 17:04:00 +0000

Thanks for the report! Errors fixed.

By: Yannis

Yannis — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 16:37:07 +0000

Hey, couple of errors in the post:

“square Line of Site” -> “square line of sight”

And the changelong link is broken.

Thanks for the great work as always