Gauging interest in a Dominions Roguelike...

[rylen]

Hmm .. my problems with Angband.

You got all three of them.
1) Inventory limits. It makes a degree of sense, but I prefer the multi page setup, perhaps w/ an ADOM & Angband style equip page. (That's how Dom2 does it, instead of the Nethack noted item system.)

2) Magic system. I'll probally ***** regardless. I've always like the theory under the Ultima runes system. And told myself if I tackled this I'd allow HERO system style combination of forms (shape of spell), elements (effects of spell), and special effects (what it looks like.) Potentially extremely flexible, but difficult.

The DOM2 mimic would have pre-written spells which become available when you have paths and knowledge.

3) By pacing, I feel Angband is too SLOW, not too fast. You can get fairly deep into Nethack or ADOM in a few hours. To reach the equivalent place in Angband takes weeks.

For personal RPGs I vastly prefer spendable upgrades (HERO or HeroQuest) to D&D style discrete jumps, but I understand how that's easier to code.

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How are you thinking of structring the game? Ye olde dungeon descent? Wandering the land? One thought I've had, a Roguelike RTS. (Of course, not RT.) Each char represents big monsters, units of troops, or important folks w/ bodyguard. Depending on direction AI you could order your folks to fight other folks.

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I'm trying to learn C# myself.

Rylen

[Karacan]

rylen said:
How are you thinking of structring the game? Ye olde dungeon descent? Wandering the land? One thought I've had, a Roguelike RTS. (Of course, not RT.) Each char represents big monsters, units of troops, or important folks w/ bodyguard. Depending on direction AI you could order your folks to fight other folks.

Go and play a summoner in Crossfire.

I find it sad that Ed decides against the cool combatsystem of Dominions. I'd certainly like a more complex combat system than "run into this and see if you hit, and then it runs into me". Anyone ever played the roguelike Omega? That was a combatsystem I found pretty entertaining. You had several actions per attack (determined on your skill) and had to chose how many actions of those go into attack, defense, parry, block, riposte, dodge, etc, all dependent on your skills and equipment. Very exciting, and made playing a fighter just as fun as playing a mage.

[Ed Kolis]

"Against the cool combat system of Dominions"? What factors from Dominions' combat could be incorporated into a roguelike? I already said I was planning on including protection value, albeit as dice so weaker creatures have at least a chance to damage heavily armored creatures... what else did you have in mind?

Oh, yes, I was planning on "ye olde dungeon descent" (), just because it seems the easiest to implement and balance - ye olde monster strength and ye olde item power should be directly related to ye olde dungeon depth, right? I always hated it in games like ToME where you could suddenly run into level 35 monsters when you were only at level 10, just becasue you happened to wander into the wrong square on the overworld map! (Of course, I still like ToME for a lot of other reasons )

[quantum_mechani]

My 2 cents:

-As much as possible of the Dominions battle system should be used.

-Try to only use Dominions units as monsters (not too hard considering all the myth Dominions draws on)

-A random god generator, preferably based on the current god title system. Each game a set of gods would be rolled, and each title would add a diferent blessing/curse they could give (so, one with the title 'god of courage' could bless you to resist fear effects, or bestow a curse that any creature is able to scare you).

One thing that would be a bit difficult to transfer is blood magic.

[Ed Kolis]

Blood magic? Well, assuming I don't manage to get some sort of pets/companions system in (which would be perfect for blood slaves ), I can always have blood magic drain the caster's HP or Constitution...

[rylen]

Further thoughts -- everything follows from the story. Let me sketch some increasingly big ideas.

V1: To kill a god. A Dom2 prequel. You, an asperant, climb through a series of challenges to petition the great god. A nice, linear dungeon crawl.

V2: For the greater glory. You are an assassin / army leader. At game start you pick a faction and a chasis. You pick or are assigned an opponent faction. You enter their land, avoid or defeat patrols, find the fortress, move through it, kill their Pretender, and go home.

V3: Dom2 from the ground up. Again you are an assassin / army leader. At setup you spend points on yourself, and paths and scales for your pretender. The compter does the same for other factions. Then you go to neighboring lands, find several flags, and claim the place for your faction. You may poke around heavily and find magic sites which give your pretender gems and bonuses. As you wander around, your pretender does research, recruits units to guard the places you've grabbed, and summons increasingly powerful critters. Eventually, you find a different factions land. Capture or skirt their provinces and find their keep. Enter, kill their pretender, taking the magic item that allows him to seek godhood and bring it home for your guy. Rinse and repeat.

While your doing that, your pretender is securing some lands and buying some troops. The other factions also have their Rogue-Heros and armies trying to grab and regrab lands and kill the other guys.

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What I really like about this idea:
1 -- it replaces depth based difficulty with time based difficulty. The nearby provinces are a challenge for a starting character. The first faction you fight has some basic troops and commanders. Much later you'll face experienced elite troops, equiped commanders, and strong summons. You'll also have the option of using your own nations troops.
2 -- it recreates the story from a different perspective
3 -- it has a Dom2 choice b/w short and long term power. Having a high path, good scale boss means great assistants and items, plus secure provinces in the long term but a weak chasis and equipment. Or vice versa.

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Yeah, way too complex for the start. But I think the narrative is the big thing.

Rylen

[Vicious Love]

Ed Kolis said:
But other ideas could be incorporated, such as the artifacts (anyone ever find it silly that you could forge ancient artifacts BTW? )...

Not in the slightest. The moment I realized this was happening, I immediately assumed that either
A) The artifact was being reforged, Anduril-style
B) The legend/soul of the long-gone artifact was being given a new vessel
C) Some sort of sickeningly postmodern divine power, not unlike the one alluded to in the description of the Wish spell, was, indeed, MAKING an ancient artifact out of scratch


Getting back on topic, I have to admit, I never actually liked playing Roguelike games. With a few exceptions: I always enjoyed character creation, and I always delighted in thinking up stats for things. It was the theory I adored, not the practice.

That said, if you've got a use for me, I'd love to be on the team. I've had some experience with C, a bunch of Languages that don't matter(Prolog, BASIC, have I mentioned Java? Personal bias), and Perl, but that was all a relatively long time ago, by my goldfishesque reckoning.
Besides which... bad things happen when I attempt big projects. Just take my word for it.
Methinks I'd rather be helping out in other departments. Ideally ones that don't require talent.

[Demosthenes]

This thread got me back into ADOM. Curse you Ed Kolis!

[Endoperez]

I don't believe that one should be creating a pretender/god in the RL. That closes of the possibility to become one! Well, you could also be *playing* one, but we have Dominions for that, don't we? The view of commander/soldier/assasin for your god does give a whole new view to the game.

I also like the idea of a story. To blind the opposing Cyclops that was harassing your homeland with his fiery armies, to destroy the spirit that guided Pythiumian forces past defending armies to destroy your home... Really, that sounds great! And you can have *16* main targets!

About races and character classes, what about the already-suggested Abysian, Caelumian, Pythiumian etc. with Gladiator, Legionaire, Theurg, Hydra Trainer... for Pythium. Each nation would have some classes unique to them. Crawl-like classes that show what the character has learned in the past but that don't affect what he can (or will) learn might not suite Dominions very well, but adding some of it would not hurt...


About magical sites: many roguelikes have Vaults, known by different names in different games. They are huge rooms filled with many/stronger than usual monsters, often guarding great treasures. "You discover a way to get past the fiery wall, and find a way leading to the Tar Pits. There are two experienced Fire Drakes and a huge Fire Elemental guarding it."

Sorry if these ideas distract you, I don't except you to be far enough to implement any of these yet. I just am quite excited about the idea...

[Kristoffer O]

Some thoughts on the game system.

Some have said that you should use the dominins combat system. I'm not sure if this is a good idea. I like the dominins combat system, but I think it wouldn't fit a rougelike very well.

Most roguelikes focus on character development. Your character begins the game as a looser that kills puny monsters. When you have killed enough puny monsters you can go on and fight more powerful monsters. Unless there is a steep development of your character's combat abilities there is not much reward in the killing. If you have the same problems killing a bear for the first time or the 101st time as you have killing a warden for the first time you will not feel as if you have progressed. Resistance will never change and you do not need to (or have the ability to) increase your power to enter the magic keep or horrible dungeon. You will always be good or bad depending on your startup. Some kind of research would of course alleviate this problem if you have a magically adept character.

If you use the dominions system progression will have to focus on the story instead, more like a regular pen and paper RPG (not AD&D). This might be good, but it leaves the rougelike gameplay and demands a lot more of the plot (which would not be replayable infinitely).

Dominions does not focus on development as much as quantity and deployment of troops and equipment. The magic system is an exeption. I believe that characters in a rougelike needs a means to achieve great powers (compared to the beginning character) if the game is to be replayable for any length of time. The combat system of dominions is good, but does not allow much development. Artifacts can boost a character, but very few humans can become SC's in the dominions system.

I would prefer to see wardens very powerful and not something slightly better than a tower guard.

The 2d6 system of dominions might be used, but stats should be increasable to high levels.


Hmm, I'm starting to suspect that I misunderstood what you meant by using the dominions combat system. Good luck anyway. I have started the Great Waiting.

I wonder if I would prefer to play or fight wardens, guardians and other national troops? Dark blue 'G' surrounded by green 'W'.