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Sradac
01-08-2009, 05:05 AM
ZOMFGLROKLOMG!!!!!!!


I just typed up a HUGE post about roguelikes, what makes a great roguelike, what makes a bad one, and my thoughts on specific roguelikes and I lost ALL of it!!!!!!!!! damnit it seriously took me 20 min to type it up................. Talking about content, replayability, interactivity, goals, etc. im so pissed off right now............................................... .................................................. .................................................. ....................all because the forum logged me out from inactivity.

vogonpoet
01-08-2009, 07:09 AM
Notepad is your friend, buddy

Grey
01-08-2009, 10:34 AM
Or the back button sometimes...

Sradac
01-08-2009, 02:24 PM
back button usually is but this time it gave me a blank screen

Laukku
01-08-2009, 02:46 PM
I usually press Ctr+C before I hit the button to post.

Khelvaster
01-09-2009, 03:26 AM
Opera will save this kind of stuff constantly when you press back, even if you do get timed out. It also is faster than Firefox.

gut
01-09-2009, 08:42 PM
AHA HA HA HA!

No, I won't do that again : )
Back in the days when I first started posting my long-winded
nonsense on these forums, that happened to me a few times
also. These days I actually keep a dedicated folder on my HD
just for my ADOM stuff, and I only post my long-winded stuff
after I'm finished with it.

Sradac
01-10-2009, 01:47 AM
I thought about doing that after this happened gut, but I completely forgot 95% of what I said. Im playing crawl right now so some of the stuff on that I remember, mainly the interactivity such as being able to create clouds of steam to block enemies view when casting fire magic over water and training basic fighting skills against plants and fungi. And how much I looooove the auto-nav feature. Forget exactly where in the dungeon that branch or shop is? or your stash? auto-nav!

gut
01-10-2009, 10:27 AM
Agreed on that 100%. I hope so much that ADOM does one day
get those features. ADOM has strengths of it's own, like quests,
interesting NPC's, and lots of fun thing to experiment with, such
as slaughtering villages and such. ADOM could be #1 again, but
in my opinion, for now Crawl is the world's #1 roguelike : (

I typed this bit up just before TB posted his thread about a
possible source code release. After that, I didn't see much of a
reason to post it, but maybe some of my thoughts mirrrored yours,
so I'll post it now.

Crawl vs ADOM

OK, not really VS., but more like contrasts. After re-reading this mess, I realize this might sound like complaining. I'm not meaning to complain, because I like ADOM fine the way it is, I'm just hoping for some changes. ADOM was the first roguelike I ever played, and for years it was the only one. I tried several times to give Nethack a shot, but the interface was just too horrid. I was sooo used to the ADOM (better) way of doing things I just couldn't adapt. In fact, that's rather the same experience I've had with every other roguelike I ever tried. Then I recently played Crawl (stone soup of course). As a loooong time ADOM player, it was difficult for me to get used to the different interface, but I stuck with it because of how fun and challenging the game was.

A great interface can really add a lot to a game. ADOM's interface is good, but after playing Crawl 0.4.3 extensively, I have to say I prefer many things about it. It has many differences, ranging from trivial to major. For instance, the default key for casting a spell in Crawl is 'z', and the default for wand zapping is 'Z'. It's a small difference, but it's better (believe me). In the major-difference catagory is 'autoexplore'. It's very difficult to adaquately describe how good this feature is to players that have never experienced it firsthand. Suffice to say, after you get used to it, you will never want to go back. It greatly reduces tedium and interface related deaths, while maximizing the decision making aspects of the game.

I will list here some interface features I love about Crawl, and
wish to see implemented in ADOM/JADE:

The ability to set a spell/item to a specific key. It's annoying to have your spell letters shift around all the time, and it makes swapping weapons a LOT less aggravating.

The command 'd' should be default for a continuous drop action, and the regular 'drop' feature should be eliminate entirely. There is no occasion where NOT having the option to drop several items is preferable to having it. Also, dropping several items should not consume a single game turn, but several.

The autopickup feature should be enabled by default,and should function as it does in Crawl SS 0.4.3. There are a several catagories of items that most players would always want, and the list is different for each class. A wizard for instance would almost always want any un-ID'd (or ID'd beneficial): rings, scrolls, gold, books, amulets, potions, gems, and wands. For each use of autopickup, it should cost one game turn not extra energy points. It should automatically deactivate if a monster is in the PC's line of sight. It should automatically be deactivated if an invisible monster hits the PC. Again, this is to limit interface deaths.

The '5' command should be eliminated entirely, to be replaced by
the 's' command, even for continuous actions. It is never preferable to 'wait' as opposed to 'search'.

Missiles must stack better. It's irritating to have to swich from the stack of 2 1d6+1 arrows, to the stack of 2 1d6+2 arrows, when they both could have easily fit into any quiver in existance. Especially since it costs game turns, and can get a PC killed.

A player should not be able to pick up such heavy weights that they crush themselves to death. That's just silly.

I'll stop here, in case it sounds like I'm being too whiny. IF anyone else wants to add to (or criticize) this, feel free.

Grey
01-10-2009, 03:37 PM
Agreed on that 100%. I hope so much that ADOM does one day
get those features. ADOM has strengths of it's own, like quests,
interesting NPC's, and lots of fun thing to experiment with, such
as slaughtering villages and such. ADOM could be #1 again, but
in my opinion, for now Crawl is the world's #1 roguelike : (

You are not alone:

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/01/winner-of-ascii-dreams-roguelike-of.html

Though ADOM wasn't on the voting list...



I will list here some interface features I love about Crawl, and
wish to see implemented in ADOM/JADE:

I personally disagree on several counts. Auto_pickup in particular I find annoying as hell, especially if a game has a lot of junk or joke items like ADOM does. You're perhaps right about the search/wait thing, but then one could argue that there should instead be introduced a different energy cost for each action, or that players regen faster when waiting.

You are quite right about the importance of a good interface though, and one thing that really should be picked up from Crawl is the auto-travel at least (I'm not fussed about auto-explore myself, but many others like it). Getting an online server to play on should also be important for JADE - it encourages a lot more play.

WERDNA
01-10-2009, 05:38 PM
Crawl sounds pretty fun. Where can I download it?

Thanks,

WERDNA

Sradac
01-10-2009, 10:34 PM
Werdna: http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/ for the crawl stone soup home page.

Many good points gut. I'll try to remember some of the ones I made

The things I do prefer in adom over crawl, overland and quests. I hate dungeon divers. main reason I cant stand nethack. Its so boring to just go to the bottom of a dungeon then come back up. fortunatly for crawl they make it alot mroe interesting with dungeon branches and collecting runes. Spell system. Man I love crawls. Having a spell belong to multiple realms only makes sense. A magma bolt SHOULD be both an earth and fire conjuration. I miss adoms stats in Crawl. Having only 3 stats just seems...limited. I would prefer a combination of both games skill systems. Skills should be able to learned by anyone like in crawl. In adom you cant just get the detect traps skill from dealing with enough of them you have to pay for it. But i think adom has a better selection of skills as well. I'd have to put all this into a text and finish my thoughts, i spoke on more than just adom and crawl in the Original post.

gut
01-11-2009, 10:25 AM
> Auto_pickup in particular I find annoying

Before I started playing Crawl, I would have agreed completely
with your feelings about Auto Pickup . I went probably 7 years of
ADOMing without ever bothering with it, and never felt deprived
in the slightest. Crawl's implementation of it is proper though, and
if you became accustomed to it, you wouldn't want to do without
it. Crawl has useless and even harmful items as well, after they are
identified they are no longer automatically collected, but you can
still pick them up if you want.


There are lots of thing that are better about ADOM. For one thing,
it took me way too long to figure out how to simply not starve to
death in Crawl, but maybe that was due to my love of conjurers.
I don't particularly care for Crawl's limited item identification in the
early game. I don't need hordes of items, but I DO need to know
what they are : ) It also seems to me that in Crawl's attempts to
limit scumming, they have also eliminated a lot of freedom and
features. There are no shopkeepers as they might cause scumming,
there is an extremely limited supply of early-game food as that may
cause scumming too, there are no skills such as smithing or herbalism
available... because some may scum it. Personally, I like to have
the option of doing things like that if I like. There was even a time in
ADOM that I had a lot of fun with smithing, and certain challenge
games like 'fling the bling' would not be remotely possible without
herb scumming.

Sradac
01-11-2009, 06:26 PM
The greatest part of adom though, is the inventory. I have to admit I hate crawls inventory, its so cluttered and hard to navigate half the time. ADOM is so nice you can filter the view to specific items, and the best part is your equipment and inventory are on seperate screens not the same one.

gut
01-11-2009, 09:57 PM
I've actually become quite accustomed to the Crawl inventory system.
For a player like myself, who cares little for items in general, the screen
stays pretty clutter-free. Crawl's inventory management system would
drive me batty though, if it allowed as many carried item's as ADOM does.

I think it is irritating though, that one is expected to have several item
stashes throughout the game, in order to keep the inventory limited. I
know it's more realistic, not being able to carry rediculous amounts of
items, but it's inconvenient as far as actual playing is concerned.

The inventory being together with worn items only bothers me
sometimes. There are instances where it is actually handy, like when
comparing rings or something, you don't have to uniquip anything to
have a side-by-side comparison.

Sradac
01-12-2009, 01:59 AM
well like I said someplace else there are no wheres near enough ID scrolls in crawl so i end up having 10 different un identified rings and amulets and about 20 potions. gets hard to manage sometimes. I read scrolls whenever I find them because i have never died from reading an un-id'd scroll but there have been plenty of chars that accidently drank a potion of poison or potion of mutation and that pretty much caused the death of that char. It would be nice if shops got new goods in. I guess its for anti scum purposes but if I find a scroll shop with only 2 id scrolls thats all i will ever get from that shop. farthest i've gotten in crawl was d15. been to the orc mines and elven halls (summoners there suck!) and i've been through the hive and the lair. never made it farther into the lair spined frogs poison is really mean.

gut
01-12-2009, 10:02 AM
When reading this, please take into consideration that I have
only beat the game once, and have focused on playing only
one race/class combo, a deep elven conjurer.

> end up having 10 different un identified rings

As a rule of thumb, I only use ID scrolls for jewelry. The only
time I use an identify on something else is if I get 2/3 identifies
for one scroll and have no unidentified jewelry remaining.

> I read scrolls whenever I find them

As do I, but I tend to wait until I have some armor/weapons on
me first, that way if I read a scroll of detect curse it will actually
identify the scroll instead of just turning to dust. I find the most
abundant type of scroll to be teleportation.

> i have never died from reading an un-id'd scroll

Oddly enough, niether have I. Must be a bug : )

> drank a potion of poison or potion of mutation and that pretty much caused the death

The most abundant type of potions are 'healing'. Once you ID those,
you are safe to try out most of the others. Mutations are only a
bother sometimes, other times they are great. Also, if you find a
potion shop that sells any potion for 1/2 gold, buy it, as that will
ID it.

> farthest i've gotten in crawl was d15.

That seemed to be a sticking point for me as well. It seemed that
after I got past that point, I only killed 2 more PC's before beating
the game. One was from stupidity on Vault 8, and the other was
from stupidly entering Pan without knowing what the heck I was
doing : )

> been to the orc mines

A mistake I was making for a long time was going here as soon as
I found it. Now I stay in the main dungeon, and even do a few
levels of Lair first. It's much safer that way, and Lair 1 is a great
stashing zone.

> and elven halls

I now stay AWAY from this place until I have cleared Lair, Swamp,
Snake, Slime, and some of Vault. My pre-winning PC was banished
to the Abyss 3 times in there, and my winner was banished once.
Deep elven demonologists are ScARy!

> never made it farther into the lair spined frogs poison is really mean.

Acquiring -poison is one of the biggest differences in game difficulty.
Make sure to ID every single piece of jewelry helps, as well as staves
(might be -poison variety). Some rand-arts give -poison as well, so
whenever you find an armor/weapons shop, make sure to examine the
properties of the goods. I think it's 'v' then the item letter. It's worth
spending a horde of money, even to get a -3, -5 piece of junk, as long
as it has -poison. Of course you will then be gauranteed of finding a
-poison ring on the next level : )

Sradac
01-12-2009, 02:43 PM
thanks gut, all really good tips. I cleared one room in the elven halls before running away. it was a big room full of elven casters and fighters but lucky for me a long narrow hallway lead up to it so I was able to throw in plenty of Mephitic clouds to confuse the lot into butchering themselves. easy cleanup after that. but then after clearing that room I came across 2 summoners bringing in hordes of 3's 4'2 and even a couple 2's I turned and ran. I only like going to the orc mines for the money there. The one time I skipped it a few levels later I found a portal to the bazaar with a spellbook shop inside, and I was only able to afford 2 of the 8 books. high level books too, books of wizardry, party tricks, control, and i think death. is there a crawl forum?? i looked and never found one. feel funny getting into long crawl discussions on adoms forum.

gut
01-12-2009, 04:10 PM
rec.games.roguelike.misc

There's also an IRC channel, but I never IRC, so can't
remember it. There is the akrasiac server that you can
log onto, and I picked up a few things by watching other
players there. The good players move kind of fast though,
and my connection is slow, so it wasn't much help for me.

Gareshra
01-18-2009, 09:46 PM
Ouch. My heart goes out to you man. Maybe it's just me though, but if something I write is lost, it comes 10x easier the second time because all the thoughts are organized in my head.