Gauging interest in a Dominions Roguelike...

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Gandalf Parker said:
Any consideration toward doing something marketable?

Thanks for reminding me. I'll probably NOT help if the license is not GPL or similar. Specifically, I do not usually contribute to "BSD"-licensed projects. Which should not deter you at all, of course, as I'll probably be more interested in helping Planetscape in any case

[Ed Kolis]

Ooh, never even thought of doing this as a DO mod... heck, I never even *bought* DO

Would make it easier than coding from scratch, but then having never bought DO, I wouldn't know how moddable it really is...

What really got me going was the magic paths and how you have the spell level in each element (fire, astral, death, etc.) but then there are the seven or so schools of magic on the other axis, which form sort of a "tech grid" (for those of you familiar with SE4 modding )... and then there are of course zero or more spells in each combination of element and school, so the magic would work something like cthAngband's Hermetic magic... oh, and of course there would be magic gems you could use to cast spells or empower yourself

As for the licensing issue, yes, I did want to release this if not under the GPL at least under some sort of freeware license; if anyone at Shrapnel or Illwinter thinks I'm stealing their ideas, I'll try writing a roguelike based on something else, but you do know that Zangband's magic system is just as heavily based on Master of Magic, don't you?

Religion? Hmm, to be honest, I wasn't even worrying about that at the moment, strangely enough for a game based on Dominions! That would definitely be something to take into account...

Programming language wise, I personally prefer to work in C#, and I've already started some stuff using C# 2.0 (the new beta from Microsoft), just because it has console color attributes and generic classes and all kinds of handy stuff like that yah laugh at me for using C# to write a roguelike, well if I had to use C or something it would *never* get done at all that's for sure!

As for "kind of system", I hadn't really planned that out yet, but my basic idea was to have 4 combat stats, determined from basic 6 D&D stats & the character's equipment. Combat stats are Attack, Defense, Damage, and Protection. Attack improves your chance to hit the enemy, Defense decreases the chance for the enemy to hit you, Damage is the damage you do, and Protection is the amount that hits are reduced in hitpoints. I kinda borrowed this idea off ADOM, as that's the only roguelike I've seen with an equivalent to SE4's "emissive armor" or Dom2's "protection" stat... but in my system, Attack, Defense, Damage, and Protection will all be rolled up as dice, not just Protection, so if your armor has a Protection rating of 2d4 and your shield is 1d3, and you get hit with a 3d5 broadsword, say, you could take no damage at all or you could take as much as 3*5-2*1-1*1 = 15-2-1 = 13 damage. (This helps prevent uber-armor which is impossible to penetrate, sort of like Dom2's open-ended damage rolls, as well as randomizing combat a bit more )

Oh, and I do *hope* to have monsters wielding items, as both "monster" and "player" are subclasses of "creature", which contains equipment slots

But all I have right now is a simple stats display and a grid of green dots representing the ground...

Finally, I plan on having the game's interface quite... inspired... by Angband. But I do not plan on using any Angband code; I wouldn't want to spoil the game for myself by peeking at the code, and besides, it's all C anyway and I don't like C very much!

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Ed Kolis said:
Ooh, never even thought of doing this as a DO mod... heck, I never even *bought* DO

[...]

Finally, I plan on having the game's interface quite... inspired... by Angband. But I do not plan on using any Angband code; I wouldn't want to spoil the game for myself by peeking at the code, and besides, it's all C anyway and I don't like C very much!

Well then, I'm not going to help. I don't do freeware, and I certainly don't do Java or any of it's clones.

Java or C# --- they're like C++ without the cool features and limited libraries. What's the point? In any case I'm not laughing... If I was going to write something like this from scratch I would have chosen Perl, Ruby or maybe Python.Why mess around with lowlevel stuff for a game that's not even graphics-intensive?

And writing a game from scratch when there's already plenty of suitable engines and similar games is just a waste of time --- IMO.

Good luck --- and I don't let me cynism deter you

[magnate]

I'm a huge fan of roguelikes and will gladly help. I can't code for toffee, but I can do ideas, docs, tables and balancing. Let me know when you get started.

CC
(P.S. I never finish any projects either, such as rewriting the random artifact code for Angband, so I know exactly how you feel.)

[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.

---

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.

----

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.

[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.