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[Creamcorn]

A little SS

Let me start off by saying that I didn't grow up on ASCII, instead I grew up to love it.  How this oh so wonderful addiction to depicting dragons, elves or dwarfs with a simple character developed was by my simple act of downloading a game called ADOM.

I started playing ADOM at, oh... the age of nine.  And while I continued to dive deeper into the dungeons of ADOM, doing so made my mind become fascinated with the idea of how a 'W' could represent a shadow wyrm; the fascination only deepened when I read the detailed descriptions given to me by examining the creatures of ADOM.

In short my fascination with ASCII is not necessarily the elitism [sarcasm]of knowing that my mind is more imaginative than most people[/sarcasm].  It is that most or all that is given to me in ASCII games develops as I progress along.

And even though it's just ASCII I've yet to see a machine represent images of anything better than a human's mind or perhaps any other creature for that matter. 

If ASCII does give way to what most people term as real graphics, than I hope that there is at least some hope for middle ground to ASCII lovers.

[Alexhans]

And you should note that ADOM is one of the most static roguelikes... A lot of things are ALWAYS the same...

DF is just Incredible... It's world creating algorithms are FAN TAS TIC.

[ToonyMan]

I dream letters.

[Duke 2.0]

 Again, like always when we bring up graphics, DF has the best ascii system I have ever seen. Walls look like walls. Items look like their respective items. Doors look like doors.

 Of course, I never really accepted the whole # is a wall system. And the whole /'s and -'s as doors things.Or the repetitious level generation system that results in a bunch of rooms with halls connecting them.

[azrael4h]

I believe part of the problem lies in that alot of the Rogue-likes simply copy each other in terms of UI and what each character stands for. While some like g or D make sense, others... do not.

Df seems to use obscure characters that even I've never seen, highlighting, and other aspects ignored by most RLs. It even uses colors and similar characters (~ and the double ~ for instance) to provide animation.

Even so, I played a RL long ago, on a AMD K6-2 system,  which used all of that and more. It was more colorful and vibrant a world than most games made in the 1980's for PC's. Sadly, I can't recall the name, and my searching has failed to find it again. I may have it on a floppy, but I've not taken the time to dig through the last box of disks I have.

[DeadlyLintRoller]

You should expand your post into a full-length article, then try to get featured in some semi-major gaming website as a spot for DF. But don't trust me, I use the Mayday set.

[inaluct]

ADOM sucks.

I just needed to say that.

[Enzo]

ADOM sucks.

I just needed to say that.

You have insulted my honour sir. I must challenge you to a duel.

[inaluct]

ADOM sucks.

I just needed to say that.

You have insulted my honour sir. I must challenge you to a duel.

"You dare sully your honor by defending this harlot!?"

Inaluct slaps ADOM and paces towards kinseti.

"I accept your challenge, sir! It is unfitting of a gentleman to take up the cause of such a vile roguelike, but I accept your challenge nonetheless!"

No, seriously. ADOM sucks ass. It has crap controls, stupid, unoriginal races and classes, everything follows the static and retarded story line that's the same in every game, it's closed source, caters to babies who can't play Crawl, and it follows an uninspired religion system. You just get a race and alignment and BAM, you worship Coral Midnightflowers, or whatever gay elf deities there are. In Crawl, you get to pick your own god, and the gods are all unique and useful. I would like to eat your children. And also, ADOM has terrible logic. You can use a fletchery kit to make arrows, but you need wood. How do you get it? Chop down a tree or kick down a door, or use a club. Wow. It's like the guy who made ADOM lived in a tiny hut and had never seen a tree or heard about branches before. And 30% of the races in ADOM are elves. Very nearly one entire third of character races are elves. That is one of the most solidly retarded ideas ever. Elves suck. In Crawl you would need EIGHT flavors of elf to have them be 30% of the races. And the skill system in ADOM is bland, illogical, stupid, and unimaginative. In Crawl, you learn skills by practicing them. In ADOM, you clumsily add points to irrelevant skills every time you level up. Some of the skills, like bridge building, are only learnable through certain static events. It's almost as if Biskup was trying to make some sort of Final Fantasy clone.

And you know what else? ADOM is gay.

[Enzo]

Ah, off topic ramblings at dusk. A gentlemens duel.

First, let me remind you that ADOM and I have been an item since Crawl was still suckling at her programmers teat. Clearly your love for Crawl has clouded your judgment, as why the hell are we talking about Crawl anyway? I will concede ADOM has too many elves. One elf is too many. And nobody plays a rougelike for the story. Honestly. Moving on. ADOM has detailed character creation, lots of directions for character development, massive randomly generated dungeons, vast amounts of loot, fairly simple combat, dynamic encounter scaling, brutal difficulty, 20 goddamn classes...you know, things that good roguelikes have? The overworld isn't randomly generated but at least it has one...Anyway, I think you were trying to say "I wuv Crawl" but instead you said "ADOM sucks."

[inaluct]

Crawl first came out in 1997. And yes, I wuv it. It has just as much history as ADOM. And you know what else Crawl has? Simple, dynamic character creation that allows you to quickly tailor a character to your playstyle, a large dungeon with great item persistence, many unique and interesting dungeon branches, vaster amounts of loot than ADOM, higher difficulty than ADOM, and 28 classes. Soon to be 29. Because development hasn't stalled for Crawl.

When was the last time Biskup updated ADOM? 2002, right?

[Enzo]

play Crawl, In Crawl, In Crawl, In Crawl Crawl first Crawl for Crawl.

You forgot Crawl.

Isn't this a deductive fallacy or something? Crawl is good, ADOM is not crawl, therefore ADOM is not good?

[Muz]

I love ADOM. It is fun. That's all that matters. I don't care if it has 20 variants of elves, or is unrealistic.. it's still fun. It has a great deal of depth, enough to make me want to play it over and over again, and enjoy the deaths. And it's a lot for something that only one person made in a short amount of time. It is fun, and it is fun to play over and over and over again, which is what a roguelike should be.

I think I've tried Crawl once, but got bored after 2 hours. You just have to play roguelikes for a while to really enjoy them.

[inaluct]

Well, my first roguelike was ADOM. I was convinced that it was the King of Roguelikes, towering over all others. I even made a bunch of games dedicated to killing children until one of them finally spawned a corpse, just to see if it was possible.

And then, I gradually drifted away from it. Eventually, I started playing Crawl. I came back to ADOM not too long ago and realized that it wasn't nearly as good as my nostalgic memories had led me to believe. It had a bad user interface, the world seemed arbitrary and poorly thought out (I blame this on Biskup not taking enough input from players), and it's gameplay was lacking.

At that point, I thought "Hey, well, this was just one guy doing all this. As far as one man devteams go, Biskup is pretty damn good."

And then I found DF, and realized that as far as one man devteams go, Biskup is pretty damn mediocre.

For me, ADOM isn't fun at all any more.

It's late here. I'll post a longer and more pointless diatribe later.

[bhelyer]

Games are not objectively good or bad.

(And ADOM is awesome!  )

Biskup is pretty damn mediocre.

Toady is insanely productive. ADOM was never Thomas's full time job, as far as recall. I do wish Biskup would just release the source and admit he isn't going to work on it any further. There are bugs still in it, and it hasn't been updated in seven years. He did mention the possibility of an iPhone port at some point, but I'll believe it when I see it.

What I've played of Crawl I've enjoyed, but I haven't really sat down with it, which I shall have to remedy.