Gauging interest in a Dominions Roguelike...

[rylen]

Depending on my courseload and the shape of the game, I'd help develop.

ADOM and Nethack I think are good models for the game.

Angband is heavily modded, and looks easy to make monster and item changes, but I don't like its progression rate or inventory system.

What do you mean a Dom II roguelike? Bringing in the objects? The magic paths / research? The indeps and critters? Small unit tactics? Creating SCs?

Rylen

[Ed Kolis]

By a Dom2 roguelike, I primarily mean bringing in the magic paths and spells (possibly even forging), along with the different nations as player "races". But other ideas could be incorporated, such as the artifacts (anyone ever find it silly that you could forge ancient artifacts BTW? )...

I didn't intend to use any Angband code, only borrow ideas and UI heavily from Angband, for two reasons: 1. I don't want to spoil Angband for myself, and 2. I don't want work in C; I prefer to use C# What don't you like about Angband's character progression and inventory system? The inventory I think I can see; it's the limited slots that are annoying. I plan on having multiple inventory pages like Nethack and ADOM so that shouldn't be a problem. As for the character progression, what's wrong with it, is it too fast? Well how else do you expect a human character to defeat a dragon or other pretender god? Or is it just too artificial, with everything depending on "character level" which is gained almost exclusively by slaying monsters? That can be changed, and indeed it has in several Angband variants, such as CthAngband, where there are no character levels, and skills are improved by successfully using them at a dangerous enough dungeon level to correspond to the current skill level.

[Gandalf Parker]

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? )...

I never thouight about it but yes thats a good point.

Magic Sites? could come in but on a one-use only. You find the one that lets you enter for training, or the one that lets you summon something if you are of a particular magic class. Even the gem income I guess since you were considering forging.

[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 )

[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!