The Gaming Den

Is it just me, or is the Infinite space mod making FTL way harder. I don't remember a lot of enemies having 3 shot burst lasers, halberd beams, or type 2 shields in the first fucking sector and now it's legitimately really hard to even get to the first beacon. What the heck?

-Username17

I made my own Rogue-like about six years ago, which was somewhat of a cross between a Rogue-like and NES Zelda. I also wrote a program to edit the map, but I'd only ever completed maybe 10 - 15% of the map.

Sadly, since I got my new PC, I've not been able to load the map edit program, and it's made me lose interest in the whole thing. I may have to post some screen shots of it, later.

FrankTrollman wrote:Is it just me, or is the Infinite space mod making FTL way harder. I don't remember a lot of enemies having 3 shot burst lasers, halberd beams, or type 2 shields in the first fucking sector and now it's legitimately really hard to even get to the first beacon. What the heck?

No, it's harder. You pretty much have to scrounge the whole first sector to survive the later ones, and upgrading your engines early is actually not a bad idea so you can escape unwinnable fights.

FrankTrollman wrote:Is it just me, or is the Infinite space mod making FTL way harder. I don't remember a lot of enemies having 3 shot burst lasers, halberd beams, or type 2 shields in the first fucking sector and now it's legitimately really hard to even get to the first beacon. What the heck?

-Username17

Seriously, now I can't start with the weirder ship designs, because they just can't compete with the enemy.

With the weirder builds you pretty much want to get to a shop immediately, and use the extra 150 scrap the mod gives you to shore up your weaknesses.

SlyJohnny wrote:

Lokathor wrote:

SlyJohnny wrote:Roguelikes mostly piss me off, but I have all kinds of time for FTL That game was distilled genius that was polished to perfection before release.

I hope you're joking because within the realm of roguelikes it's a poor showing. Most of the time the player isn't given any significant choices or way to influence things.

How do you come to that conclusion? Sure, your ship build might be limited by the total contents of all the shops you encounter, but that seems like an extension of the normal roguelike "random drops", to me.

I suppose what I want is to have your ship and crew to affect your odds in the non-combat missions. Particularly, in tile based roguelikes you can meet your foes or challanges at all sorts of distances and tactical map-shapes and so on. In FTL your tactics are as flow-chart based as they might be in other roguelikes, but the game does a worse job of hiding that from me.

Plus the game needs more content and a less centralizing last boss.

So you didn't dig on the decision trees? I guess I can see that. I found them well-written, and eventually Pavlovian conditioning kicked in and I smiled and felt retroactively clever every time a blue option popped up. Even if it was a blue option for a slug I picked up randomly last beacon, etc.

Sigil wrote: Judging__Eagle: I have played the original Rogue and, yes, it is very hard. I don't think, though, that it is an absolute necessity for someone to play it to understand roguelikes. Modern roguelikes are frankly just better than rogue. Also, you're right, they aren't the greatest shit ever, no more than any genre of games is. They can be great games when executed well though (just like an FPS, platformer, puzzle game, etc).

That's true, Nethack and others are substantially better.

What I meant to also say was that the creation of Roguelikes today are often made by people who haven't also played Rogue itself, and thus don't see what really were the better and worse parts of the Roguelike style of game overall.

Judging__Eagle wrote:

Sigil wrote: Judging__Eagle: I have played the original Rogue and, yes, it is very hard. I don't think, though, that it is an absolute necessity for someone to play it to understand roguelikes. Modern roguelikes are frankly just better than rogue. Also, you're right, they aren't the greatest shit ever, no more than any genre of games is. They can be great games when executed well though (just like an FPS, platformer, puzzle game, etc).

That's true, Nethack and others are substantially better.

What I meant to also say was that the creation of Roguelikes today are often made by people who haven't also played Rogue itself, and thus don't see what really were the better and worse parts of the Roguelike style of game overall.

And what you meant to say is also retarded. I don't need to play Chainmail to know what are the better and worse parts of TTRPGs. Likewise, if the people making roguelikes haven't played rogue, they can figure out for themselves what are the better/worse parts by playing better games.

I am playing dungeon's of dredmor again to see if I can win with a warrior or rogue, but somehow wound up playing a mage again.

Anyone else play the Pit? I have been thinking of picking it up, to support the genre if for no other reason.

I've been playing more pit lately, last night finially going further than 9 floors on normal (got to 21 same run). Having played a little more, I'd like to update my opinion on it.

I still think the crafting could be better, but it isn't as bad as I originally thought. There are good items to craft, and the best armor in the game is crafted even, but it still suffers from the fact that you're supposed to learn these recipes by decoding messages at terminals. Which in practice means "keep your browser open and hit Ctrl+F and type in your ingredients to see if it fits into a recipe.

Also, it seemed that there wasn't much in the way of cool equipment at first, but now that I'm good enough to get past the 7th/8th/9th floors I'm certainly finding much more interesting equipment. Apparently playing on the harder difficulties simply pushes the spawns you'd normally get on later floors (both items and monsters) to earlier floors, but I find Normal plenty difficult.

If you're willing to put a bit of time into it, I'd now say its worth the full $10 price if it sounds interesting to you.

Having fucked around with the Infinite Space mod a bit more, I have the following to say:

• Infinite Space is not actually compatible with the "extra starting scrap" mod that comes with the mod manager. You're supposed to start with 140 extra scrap and an extra crewman, but if you just hit "toggle all" you only get 28 extra scrap, the rebel fleet is still coming to kill you, and the opening message is full of bug text. Make damn certain that Infinite Space is the only active mod.
• The game ratchets down in difficulty pretty damn fast. The scrap gains stay bullshit in subsequent sectors, but autoassault craft never stop showing up with type one shields. The first sector is a brutal nightmare, but the tenth sector is a cake walk.
• The gate guardians and bosses are repetitive. They need more things to say. I do appreciate how they are individually different and less centralizing than the Rebel Flagship, but the fact that there isn't anything which is as strong as the Rebel Flagship is disappointing.
• The "advanced tech" stuff is hit and miss. The thing where you can get a Pegasus Missile Launcher for 2 power is nuts, but the Advanced Hull Beam is still garbage because it's still a fucking Hull Beam. In any case, you only get these things for besting boss ships, and by the time you can do that, you don't really need weapon upgrades.

-Username17

I've been playing The Sewer Goblet, a Wu-Tang Clan themed roguelike. The "classes" are different members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Not amazing depth, for a roguelike, but fun for what it is. [/url]

The DoomRL guy is apparently making a new 3d roguelike. It seems like it will be a lot like DoomRL.

In a love/hate relationship with this game:

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/