Nethack

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Its said that no man is a man until he's ascended nethack, so I recently began my own attempt.

The first thing I am struck by is the epic depth in this game. The second thing I am struck by is how incredibly unfair and inglorious almost every death has been so far (Dying of food poisoning, dying in the first shop when attacked by mimics disguised as potions, dying by drowning in a small puddle, dying from drinking a potion that was the exact same colour as a healing potion, dying from praying to my diety too frequently, thus pissing him off and getting smited, having all my weapons and armour simultaniously rust away then being killed by humiliatingly low level enemies, being paralized then being slowly, slowly killed by small lizard over a period of time...)

anyone who hasn't checked this out and likes some mix of dwarf fortress, diabolo and I wanna be the guy should invest asap.

Its free

http://www.nethack.org/

[Sleksa]

my best death so far was that i was transformed into luggage and then a monkey stole a item inside of me and i died of suffocation ~_~

[Tribulex]

My best death was when i transformed into a rock and crushed myself. I still dont understand exactly what this means. I guess it can only happen in 2d ascii land.

Also, I am a man 100 times over.

[Gota]

I died after drinking a potion that made me grasp the existence of the third dimension.

[maackey]

My first death I was an 8th level monk who was minding my own business. I found a door in the middle of nowhere and couldn't open it normally, so I kicked it down, revealing a now-angered merchant of magic wands. He started attacking me so I naturally defended myself. When I saw that things probably wouldn't be going my way, I turned tail and fled down the adjacent corridor and around a corner, naively thinking I was safe. A magic missile ricocheted around the corner and wiped out the last of my hp.

Another time I was fighting hordes of gnomes as a magic-user. I was doing pretty well, until I stepped on a transmogrifying trap and turned into a frog. The gnome who was following me turned into a baluchitherium (a super-giant rhino with no horn) He cornered me and instantly squashed me.

I much prefer Nethack over dwarf fortress tbh, even though you die much more easily and often in nethack.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

DF adventure mode has waay better combat, but nethack is way more like a game

[JohannesH]

DF adventure combat is pretty tedious imo. Cant comment on nethack much cause ive gotten too far in it, but nothing wrong with the basic hit, run, shoot, use item, cast spell stuff.

I played 1 game of Nethack too now... Came across a pool, dipped my sword in it, water daemon appears and kills me. Something with Nethack puts me off a bit though, I prefer ADOM but I've done playing that for now since I know it too well. I should try Dungeon Crawl sometime

[Gota]

Why are there no such games with nice gfx...

[SinbadEV]

Why are there no such games with nice gfx...

Because I the programmer can make a bear man wielding a staff of iron that shoots lightning bolts riding on a dragon in a rogue-like by printing to the user:

There is a bear man wielding a staff of iron abreast the dragon, from his rod a bolt of lightning arcs out and does 10 damage.

whereas in a traditional, graphics rich game... it would require someone to code a graphics/physics engine, someone to model and animate both my character, the bear man, the dragon, the lightning bolt, the dungeon walls, the interface, the weapons the armor etc etc.

and then when I want to kill the dragon and have the bear man go on foot in the rogue-like I just print to the user:

The bear falls from the dragons back and after a few moments stands up.

Then I draw a brown "B" and a green "D" on the screen next to eachother... unlike in the graphically rich game where there would have to be a complicated animation sequence and the dragon and bear man would have to be separate physics entities with 3Space pathing etc etc.

So, it's a matter of scale... if the dev wants to add a new race, class or monster to nethack it takes 3 minutes, if a dev wants to add a new race, class or monster to the graphics rich game it takes him about 3 minutes, plus the couple hours (for a professional at least) it takes the artist to build their graphics etc.

so, it could be done, but instead of taking one programmer a year, it would take a team of programmers and artists about 5 years.


Oh wait, were you be facetious?


Oh, and by the way, I want to make that second graphically rich game, want to help me?

[TheMightyOne]

Something with Nethack puts me off [...], I prefer ADOM

+1
i think its the unfairness that puts me off. you actually have to play this game for years in order to learn all the possible traps and ways to die. even if you read the wiki its still very hard.

Why are there no such games with nice gfx...

in defense of ascii i have to say:
gfx leaves no room for imagination. in that sense ascii games are like books imo.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I completed I wanna be the guy; how hard can this be by comparison

vas ist ADOM?

[TheMightyOne]

vas ist ADOM?

http://www.adom.de/adom/roguelike.php3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1UogGhq-OM

[overkill]

Lies, IK. Your are not a man until you play Slashem.

[JohannesH]

I completed I wanna be the guy

I dont wanna be that guy lol

[Teutooni]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone played MMO roguelikes (MUD), like http://www.bat.org/?

[TheMightyOne]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone played MMO roguelikes (MUD), like http://www.bat.org/?

wow, i didn't know such things exist is it any good?

[Teutooni]

I played it for a short while some 5 years ago (batMUD is like 20 years old ) and as far as I could tell, it was very kickass. All the depth of text-based games, with MMO communities, clanwars etc. I used telnet mostly, so it was a bit hard to grasp. I suppose the new client helps. I've been meaning to get back to it...

[knorke]

Final Attributes:
You were fervently aligned.
You could jump.
You are dead.

uhm yea.
so i was walking around, not knowing what buttons to hit (i managed to open doors though) while my pony trampeld lots of rats and other monsters. I met this guard who gave me lots of golds, then he killed my pony Then I died of hunger.

[jeykey]

Why are there no such games with nice gfx...

look at this, rouge like game with sdl: http://enne.walker.googlepages.com/stonesouptiles

[SinbadEV]

I have a friend for which that BatMUD thing would be perfect, thanks for the tip.