Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released!

On Feb 5, 12:19 am, Corremn <corr....TakeThisOut@dodo.com.au> wrote:
> Inventory system is painful and non intuitive?

I admit the wear and wield commands are a little strange, but I wanted
it this way for a few reasons.
1: This allows for quick switching between ranged weapons and melee
weapons, or shields and melee weapons (This will matter more as more
powerful items are added to the game).
2: This allows the player to dual-wield or attack with logs or other
crazy combinations without using the ADOM inventory system.
3: Well, maybe that's all I can think of right now. I do like the
system though, and I can't promise that it will change anytime soon.

> No fog of war.

There was when I played it...
What do you mean? Items and monsters disappear when they're out of
sight.

> Pressing an invalid key results in a game turn, I guess the speed
> system overhaul will take care of this.

Right.

> Get a look command ASAP.

Planned for version 0.5.4, after basic quests and conversation are
implemented.

> Creatures run into obsticals for no reason.

They move randomly if they don't see you. But yeah, I can make them
move differently if their action would take them into an obstacle.

> "You have just gained a skill level" it would be nice to see what
> skill and level I achieved.

Makes sense.

> Previous messages command.

Alright.

> What do the colours in the icons on the side mean. I guess green is
> good and red bad?

Yeah, that's something I forgot to include in the readme file. Cover
is the CR of each location. Defense is the AR of each location.
Armor is the hitpoints of each location.

<=20% dark red
<=40% light red
<=60% yellow
<=80% light green
<=100% dark green

> I would like to know what weapon is best without relying on experience
> from other rl games.

Well, crude < light, obviously. Also, you can check the damage of
your wielded weapons (as well as other bits of combat information) by
pressing B (something else I forgot to mention in the readme)

> Inventory messages would be good. "You equip the sword", etc.

I'm pretty sure they generate events...I'll need to look into that.

> Cave maps are good.

Thanks.

> I always like monster inventories. It would be good to inspect
> monsters to see their equipment before I slaughter them.

Unfortunately, you'll just have to learn through experience until the
look command is added in a few versions.

> Overall reasonably good. I played until I got beaten by a goblin
> around level 6 when I looked away from the screen and kept tapping the
> attack button. I think in the first few levels one should encounter a
> few enemies that are actually dangerous, as I got bored quickly by
> killing pathetic creatures, even a cave bear bearly scratched me. This
> enevitably got me killed as I was way to complacent.

I might need to give the wild monsters some ranks in unarmed combat to
increase their damage. Good idea. Also, I admit that combat needs
balancing. I threw together some numbers to get the combat engine off
the ground, and it leaves a little to be desired (it's very hard to
level the shield skill, for example).

> Cheers and good work.

Glad you liked it. =D

--
Gamer_2k4
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 5:31 am, Gamer_2k4 <gamer... DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
> Homepage:http://reptoran.rogueforge.net/
> Forums:http://reptoran.rogueforge.net/forums/index.php
> Roguebasin page:http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Labyrinth_...
>
> Download:http://reptoran.rogueforge.net/files/LoR.zip
> Version History:http://reptoran.rogueforge.net/v030.html

Good job, a few remarks:

1. I confirm Corremn's lack of fog of war, and didn't like the w/W
system much either.
2. I could walk into trees. I assume that is a bug?
3. No linux version- I had to load up windows in virtualbox just to
play your game.
4. Combat is tedious - many, many turns of "you evade them, they evade
you".
5. I think the player heals too quickly.

Keep on the good work! I am looking forward to play the next version,
which will of course run natively on linux

-Ido.
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 5:02 pm, Gamer_2k4 <gamer....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 5, 12:19 am, Corremn <corr....RemoveThis@dodo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > No fog of war.
>
> There was when I played it...
> What do you mean? Items and monsters disappear when they're out of
> sight.

Yes your FOV works fine, FOW generally means that outside the FOV in
explored areas a "fog" obscures vision of objects in a way that the
player knows what is happening, E.g outside the FOV is darker than
than inside, this also gives more of an indication of your FOV in
large explored areas. Actually most RLs probably dont do this, I
guess I am used to playing sewerjacks
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 10:05 am, Martin Read <mpr....TakeThisOut@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >> Pressing an invalid key results in a game turn, I guess the speed
> >> system overhaul will take care of this.
> >Right.
> I managed to get *this* basically right in MPR7DRL and still boggle that
> people ever get it wrong

Hah. I didn't even notice I got it wrong in cryptrover 7drl until
someone mentioned it on rec.games.roguelike.misc, which is exactly the
kind of reason I think releasing early and often is good for - you
might be missing something really obvious until someone else plays
your game.

-Ido.
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On 5 helmi, 06:31, Gamer_2k4 <gamer....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a pretty big deal to me; I've been working for about five
> years (off and on, in several languages, with more than my share of
> rewrites)

Respectable.

> If you like the game or have suggestions or bug reports

My first impression was that wielding and wearing is
a bit complicated. You should make the equipment screen (e)
interactive: put items in their slots/remove them there.
You can then remove w and W commands, and all other keyboard
commands that are used to equip something. It's better that
way than having aeon old Nethack w/W-pair.
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 2:08 am, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Yehi....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. I confirm Corremn's lack of fog of war, and didn't like the w/W
> system much either.

Well, I'm 0 for 3 with the inventory system. Maybe it's worth
changing. =P

> 2. I could walk into trees. I assume that is a bug?

Nope. Initially they blocked both movement and sight, but I found
that that made exploration difficult. Just assume you're walking
under them. =)

> 3. No linux version- I had to load up windows in virtualbox just to
> play your game.

An unfortunate side effect of running programs written by me. =P

> 4. Combat is tedious - many, many turns of "you evade them, they evade
> you".
> 5. I think the player heals too quickly.

Yeah, combat needs to be balanced much more than it is.

--
Gamer_2k4
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 3:05 am, Martin Read <mpr....TakeThisOut@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Gamer_2k4 <gamer....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Feb 5, 12:19 am, Corremn <corr....TakeThisOut@dodo.com.au> wrote:
> >> No fog of war.
>
> >There was when I played it...
> >What do you mean? Items and monsters disappear when they're out of
> >sight.
>
> Which is notably inferior to Crawl's system, where out-of-sight areas
> are (a) marked with a different colour (b) marked with the *remembered*
> monster or item.

1) I tried the fog thing with an earlier version and honestly didn't
like the look. I prefer that the entire map be colored than for just
a small part to be. I suppose I can make it an option though.
2) I don't like the "remembered" system at all, especially with the
monsters. Monsters are almost never going to be where the player
remembers them, so what's the point of showing a lot of letters that
are just going to disappear later? Items may be worth remembering, I
admit, but from a coding perspective it was just easier to do it this
way. It's something to consider for the future though.

> >> Pressing an invalid key results in a game turn, I guess the speed
> >> system overhaul will take care of this.
>
> >Right.

Yeah, it's an unfortunate side effect of having a clumsy speed
system. It WILL be fixed eventually; right now, though, I consider it
non-crucial.

> >> Get a look command ASAP.
>
> >Planned for version 0.5.4, after basic quests and conversation are
> >implemented.
>
> Dude, a look command is vastly more important than quests (and if it's
> hard to implement a look command with your current UI system, your UI
> system is jacked up and you need to fix it).
>
> Hell, MPRDB has a look command.

No, a look command isn't hard to implement. Magic Monsters has one.
It's just that at this point, it's not crucial to the game, and I feel
that it can wait until the interface overhaul version.

--
Gamer_2k4
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On 5 helmi, 10:08, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Yehi....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. I could walk into trees. I assume that is a bug?

It's odd that people complain about this. You can walk through
forest in real life, why not in a game?
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

Gamer_2k4 <gamer2k4.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Feb 5, 12:19 am, Corremn <corr....TakeThisOut@dodo.com.au> wrote:
>> No fog of war.
>
>There was when I played it...
>What do you mean? Items and monsters disappear when they're out of
>sight.

Which is notably inferior to Crawl's system, where out-of-sight areas
are (a) marked with a different colour (b) marked with the *remembered*
monster or item.

Actually, I have a piece of advice for all roguelike authors: Look at
Crawl's UI. In most respects, Crawl has the best UI of any roguelike
currently available:
- Autoexplore command with tunable settings.
- Long distance travel, including the ability to mark squares as
off-limits to the long-distance travel commands.
- Stash tracking, including the ability to travel to a remembered item.
- *Inter-level* long-distance travel to remembered items and
interesting dungeon features.
- A level-wide map view that shows what your character remembers about
items and monsters.

>> Pressing an invalid key results in a game turn, I guess the speed
>> system overhaul will take care of this.
>
>Right.

I managed to get *this* basically right in MPR7DRL and still boggle that
people ever get it wrong

>> Get a look command ASAP.
>
>Planned for version 0.5.4, after basic quests and conversation are
>implemented.

Dude, a look command is vastly more important than quests (and if it's
hard to implement a look command with your current UI system, your UI
system is jacked up and you need to fix it).

Hell, MPRDB has a look command.

>> Previous messages command.
>
>Alright.

This, I admit MPRDB and MPRHB doesn't have (though the last 19 messages
are always visible unless you've been doing things like inventory
operations).
--
\_\/_/ some girls wander by mistake into the mess that scalpels make
\ / are you the teachers of my heart? we teach old hearts to break
\/ --- Leonard Cohen, "Teachers"
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 5:58 pm, Krice <pau... DeleteThis @mbnet.fi> wrote:
> On 5 helmi, 10:08, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Yehi... DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2. I could walk into trees. I assume that is a bug?
> It's odd that people complain about this. You can walk through
> forest in real life, why not in a game?

Probably because i'm used to them blocking me in tome.
I agree that it doesn't have to be this way, though.

-Ido.
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On 5 Feb, 19:32, "Auric__" <not.my.r... RemoveThis @email.address> wrote:
>
> I'd think it would be good for the game to remember for you where the
> Unkillable Ooga-Booga was last seen.
>

I'm taking this to mean the game features a monster called "the
Unkillable Ooga-Booga".
If not, someone needs to do something about this immediately.
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Feb 5, 7:50 pm, "pol" <p... DeleteThis @pol.net> wrote:
> When I press ''R" and then press esc it crashes

Don't press 'R' then escape. =P

That was a stupid error on my part; I fixed it with 1 line of code
just now.

I'll try to get a new version out by the end of the week with all of
the bug fixes and some of the RFEs, but we'll see how much free time I
have.

--
Gamer_2k4
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released! 

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:43:34 GMT, Gamer_2k4 wrote:

> On Feb 5, 3:05 am, Martin Read <mpr... DeleteThis @chiark.greenend.org.uk>
> wrote:
>> Gamer_2k4 <gamer... DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>> >On Feb 5, 12:19 am, Corremn <corr... DeleteThis @dodo.com.au> wrote:
>> >> No fog of war.
>>
>> >There was when I played it...
>> >What do you mean? Items and monsters disappear when they're out
>> >of sight.
>>
>> Which is notably inferior to Crawl's system, where out-of-sight
>> areas are (a) marked with a different colour (b) marked with the
>> *remembered* monster or item.
>
> 1) I tried the fog thing with an earlier version and honestly
> didn't like the look. I prefer that the entire map be colored than
> for just a small part to be. I suppose I can make it an option
> though.
> 2) I don't like the "remembered" system at all, especially
> with the monsters. Monsters are almost never going to be where the
> player remembers them, so what's the point of showing a lot of
> letters that are just going to disappear later? Items may be worth
> remembering, I admit, but from a coding perspective it was just
> easier to do it this way. It's something to consider for the
> future though.

I'd think it would be good for the game to remember for you where the
Unkillable Ooga-Booga was last seen.

--
LiveJournal is the Jerry Springer Show of the internet!
 >> Stay informed about: Labyrinth of Reptoran public beta demo released!