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[Retropunch]

An interesting analysis, and certainly an 'oldschool RL' one. I get what you're trying to say, but I think the hypothesis falls down in equating 'being a better player' with having any impact on your enjoyment of the game.

For some, being the very best is certainly their main aim (and I'd heartily agree with you for multiplayer games) but as RLs are almost exclusively single player pursuits, the key is surely, with any game, to have the most fun possible. Regardless of how 'serious' the game is, by virtue of it being a game it is something that someone must do for enjoyment. 

One of the very core parts of RLs - and what I believe most people enjoy - is 'unlocking' - be that by levelling up or finding items. Meta-unlocking is just unlocking on a grander scale. Furthermore, most games (Risk of Rain flying into view) tie these unlocks to specific challenges, not just how many times you die. This is important, because some of the Risk of Rain meta-unlock challenges are more difficult than actually beating the game and many meta-unlocks don't really affect the difficulty one way or another. All this to say, I don't think there is any problem with meta-unlocking unless it actively rewards the number of times you've died by throwing more stuff at you, and I can't think of many games that give you lots of stuff depending on how many times you've died. Even if this was the case, it only prolongs the inevitable that the player either learns from their mistakes or doesn't.

More than that though, dying IS demoralizing and keeping the player enjoying themselves should surely be the core principle of a good game. A game shouldn't be judged to be good just because it keeps to the oldschool laugh-in-your-face-as-you-cry method of handling player death, and rewarding the player for their tenacity could be seen as just as encouraging to building up RL skills as anything.

[Neonivek]

Honestly the way I generally judge the Roguelike's pernadeath mechanic ESPECIALLY in longer games is as follows:
1) How many of these deaths are just random?
2) If it wasn't random was there a way I could have avoided it?
3) Do I know what was my mistake?
4) How long until I improve enough not to die in the same way?
5) How much do I have to play until I am allowed to pass that point?

Roguelikes tend to hold onto their permanent death mechanic like a crutch and unfortunately the genre is suffering as a result mostly because the vast majority of roguelikes play in a way where the player is expected to get to a certain point of the game, die, and replay it over and over, until he can get to the next road block... on and on until they beat the game.

Don't get me wrong the fact that you can easily die because you didn't think of a solution and need to play it a few times isn't a problem... But instead of thinking "How would a player think of a solution?" they think that players will want to beat their head into a wall and hope that when the wall crumbles will be a solution, but often no.

See a long time ago there were these games called Point and Click adventure games... and some of them included some really nasty traps like object that if you pick them up, will kill you half-way or even at the end of the entire game... Roguelikes have taken those and have inherited it.

I think Roguelikes are a great genre but I think that creators of roguelikes need to think about their games more critically rather then just flaunting features as if they were "good in it of themselves".

[Robsoie]

The Crawl : Stone Soup tournaments are a good way for that game devs to observe what is going on with their game, and possibly modify things to get it better and/or more balanced in regards to specific situation.

And a good way to check feedbacks from the stats regarding the new areas/classes/species they introduce/remove from time to time.

Those stats are least are useful in the way that they're provided directly by players gameplay, not only game theories.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

There's no reason whatsoever to re-generate a brand new world every time a player loses a game

That's a good point, especially with a game with such a detailed world as URR. With the promised family trees, you could probably take my offspring idea (you keep playing as your kid in the same world) and run with it

I have considered having worlds bleed into each other... but I'm not sure how yet!

An interesting analysis, and certainly an 'oldschool RL' one. I get what you're trying to say, but I think the hypothesis falls down in equating 'being a better player' with having any impact on your enjoyment of the game.

For some, being the very best is certainly their main aim (and I'd heartily agree with you for multiplayer games) but as RLs are almost exclusively single player pursuits, the key is surely, with any game, to have the most fun possible. Regardless of how 'serious' the game is, by virtue of it being a game it is something that someone must do for enjoyment. 

Interesting thoughts! Now, I would draw a distinction between "fun" and "enjoyment" (or some other word) - I think Jon Blow has spoken a lot on this topic (my apologies for endlessly quoting him, but the man's design philosophy is extremely close to my own). To me, "fun" implies a level of irrelevance, of triviality, frivolity, and passing amusement (which there's obviously nothing wrong with), whereas "enjoyment" (though I personally prefer "engagement") implies something much deeper, much more meaningful, and significant to the player in some way. I don't think roguelikes are "fun", but I think they're incredibly engaging/enjoyable... but as you say, the core goal is to give the player a _______ experience (fun/enjoyable/whatever), but I remain confident in my hypothesis that, in the longer run, lacking the ability for a "true win" (whether or not a player considers an unlock to be a "minor win" or not) is detrimental to player ______.

I totally agree about unlocking! But I think it is great when that is reaching a new dungeon level, finding a new boss, acquiring a new Rune, entering Gehennom for the first time, going to the Far East in TOME, reaching the Chest in Isaac, whatever, because these "unlocks" are a) part of the game, not "on top" of the game, and b) they should yield massive satisfaction without changing future playthroughs in a game mechanics sense, but they should change future playthroughs in a gamer skill sense, since they've learned how to get that far.

More than that though, dying IS demoralizing and keeping the player enjoying themselves should surely be the core principle of a good game. A game shouldn't be judged to be good just because it keeps to the oldschool laugh-in-your-face-as-you-cry method of handling player death, and rewarding the player for their tenacity could be seen as just as encouraging to building up RL skills as anything.

I fully agree! But I think a player's longer-term enjoyment will be higher if "forced" to learn (even if that makes some players fall by the wayside) - or, rather, I think not having metagame unlocks polarizes players towards those who will grab the bull by the horns and run with it, and those who will drop out, and I think cultivating those amazing "I just beat NetHack for the first time after ten years and IT IS THE MOST AMAZING FEELING" posts is more important than ensuring *all players* get something.

Don't get me wrong the fact that you can easily die because you didn't think of a solution and need to play it a few times isn't a problem... But instead of thinking "How would a player think of a solution?" they think that players will want to beat their head into a wall and hope that when the wall crumbles will be a solution, but often no.

[...]

I think Roguelikes are a great genre but I think that creators of roguelikes need to think about their games more critically rather then just flaunting features as if they were "good in it of themselves".

Great analysis (both the bits I have/haven't quoted) and I agree with pretty much all of it. The issue you identify in the first line is a major one: I think it speaks to a condescending attitude towards players, assuming players can't think of a solution and would just rather level up/grind/keep trying the same thing over and over (I'm sure we've all seen people trying literally the same approach in a game a thousand times instead of adapting). Maybe the "fault" lies both with players and developers here.

And the last line I quoted, I am in complete agreement. Permadeath is not a glorious mechanic in its own right, but only when coupled with a lot of others.

The Crawl : Stone Soup tournaments are a good way for that game devs to observe what is going on with their game, and possibly modify things to get it better and/or more balanced in regards to specific situation.

And a good way to check feedbacks from the stats regarding the new areas/classes/species they introduce/remove from time to time.

Those stats are least are useful in the way that they're provided directly by players gameplay, not only game theories.

Agreed - that ties into a few of my minor "world blurring" ideas for URR... but let's get NPCs out first!

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Teaser for the next URRpdate:

[Servant Corps]

I have considered having worlds bleed into each other... but I'm not sure how yet!

You probably already thought of this 'bleeding', but just in case...

The whole point of the game is to sneak your way into the final dungeon and start modifying history, right? So if you lose, somebody else was able to successfully modify history instead. Lower Iraq is renamed to Uqbar, the origin story of the Ejiop civilization changed, maybe the war-mongering Tribe of Narik started embracing pacifism instead, etc. But the winner decided to do only just minor changes and variations. Enough to keep the player off-balance, but still retaining enough familiarity for the player. I would suggest keeping the world name the same, though, to make it blatant the continuity. Eventually, after a few hundred deaths, the minor changes will add up and produce a world completely unfamiliar to the starting conditions.

[Scoops Novel]

I have considered having worlds bleed into each other... but I'm not sure how yet!

You probably already thought of this 'bleeding', but just in case...

The whole point of the game is to sneak your way into the final dungeon and start modifying history, right? So if you lose, somebody else was able to successfully modify history instead. Lower Iraq is renamed to Uqbar, the origin story of the Ejiop civilization changed, maybe the war-mongering Tribe of Narik started embracing pacifism instead, etc. But the winner decided to do only just minor changes and variations. Enough to keep the player off-balance, but still retaining enough familiarity for the player. I would suggest keeping the world name the same, though, to make it blatant the continuity. Eventually, after a few hundred deaths, the minor changes will add up and produce a world completely unfamiliar to the starting conditions.

Ok now that's good.

[Mipe]

Teaser for the next URRpdate:

Where can I order one? And please tell me you're shipping to Europe!

[puke]

Hey Mark,

Do you have any blog posts that talk about your actual artistic techniques?  These are some of the high level bullet points I'd love to see you expound upon a bit:

- which portions of a art are procedural rendered, and how

- I assume you do a lot of mixing-and-matching between a selection of "templates", how do you make them fit together?  How do you decide what the parts will be and how they will interact?

- I assume things like color and pattern are overlays, what are the challenges of making an overlay fit on an image (especially one that gives an impression of depth).  An example here is how the pattern rolls onto the sleeves in the images above.  Another example is wood grain on some of the furniture you have

- How do you decide when to use diagonal tiles, and when not to?  For example, you use them in the front of the robe, but not on the collar or sleeves or cuffs.  It seems that the design is both practical (does not give the exact angle you might want) and also stylistic (use of tile types is consistent within various parts of the image)

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

The whole point of the game is to sneak your way into the final dungeon and start modifying history, right?

Ja! I was thinking about having this an ongoing thing, but actually I think it might be more interesting if it's *only* the final sequence in the game where you reshape the world? Still thinking over the specifics, but yeah, that's about right.

So if you lose, somebody else was able to successfully modify history instead. Lower Iraq is renamed to Uqbar, the origin story of the Ejiop civilization changed, maybe the war-mongering Tribe of Narik started embracing pacifism instead, etc. But the winner decided to do only just minor changes and variations. Enough to keep the player off-balance, but still retaining enough familiarity for the player. I would suggest keeping the world name the same, though, to make it blatant the continuity. Eventually, after a few hundred deaths, the minor changes will add up and produce a world completely unfamiliar to the starting conditions.

That's a cool idea! But it still means the *player* in the second playthrough has more knowledge than the player *character*, and a totally new world each time ensures this can't happen. So I haven't decided for sure, but I'm probably going to go with a much "milder" bleeding effect.

Where can I order one? And please tell me you're shipping to Europe!

Ha, soon, soon! Though I might actually make some merchandise if/when I finally put up a Patreon like lots of people have asked for.

Hey Mark,

Do you have any blog posts that talk about your actual artistic techniques?  These are some of the high level bullet points I'd love to see you expound upon a bit:

- which portions of a art are procedural rendered, and how

- I assume you do a lot of mixing-and-matching between a selection of "templates", how do you make them fit together?  How do you decide what the parts will be and how they will interact?

- I assume things like color and pattern are overlays, what are the challenges of making an overlay fit on an image (especially one that gives an impression of depth).  An example here is how the pattern rolls onto the sleeves in the images above.  Another example is wood grain on some of the furniture you have

- How do you decide when to use diagonal tiles, and when not to?  For example, you use them in the front of the robe, but not on the collar or sleeves or cuffs.  It seems that the design is both practical (does not give the exact angle you might want) and also stylistic (use of tile types is consistent within various parts of the image)

Hey! For the most part, I don't - the blog updates which are about URR are always design/creatives updates, not "technical" updates. This is basically because I don't particularly find writing about the technical details of the game to be especially interesting, and when one has written a blog every weekend for the last three and a half years, you need to keep writing stuff you find interesting! It's also partly because I don't want to "give away" stuff unique/distinct to the game. However, I will since you've asked I will see if I can put together an entry of that sort... but i have a lot of URRpdates coming in the next few months, and a backlog of at least half a dozen general games criticism entries which I haven't written yet and still need to upload, so I'm afraid I can't guarantee it'll be any time soon!

[Robsoie]

Are you considering a sound system for URR ?

I mean usually roguelikes and co are mostly silent, but there are some exception (recently replayed DoomRL and Infra Arcana) that feature a sound atmosphere that contribute a -lot- to the immersion in what is otherwise just terminal console coder stuff.

While DoomRL has to help itself the Doom franchise that put before even playing the player into the ambiance even if the monster/weapon sounds weren't there, Infra Arcana sound system is building the lovecraftian atmosphere and the tension all around fantastically.

Maybe this is something URR could benefit from, by example walking in a city street while hearing some medieval city sound, entering some temple and hearing some ... temple-related sound, walking in forest and hearing ... etc... would certainly make the game more immersive in my opinion.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Are you considering a sound system for URR ?

I mean usually roguelikes and co are mostly silent, but there are some exception (recently replayed DoomRL and Infra Arcana) that feature a sound atmosphere that contribute a -lot- to the immersion in what is otherwise just terminal console coder stuff.

While DoomRL has to help itself the Doom franchise that put before even playing the player into the ambiance even if the monster/weapon sounds weren't there, Infra Arcana sound system is building the lovecraftian atmosphere and the tension all around fantastically.

Maybe this is something URR could benefit from, by example walking in a city street while hearing some medieval city sound, entering some temple and hearing some ... temple-related sound, walking in forest and hearing ... etc... would certainly make the game more immersive in my opinion.

A most intriguing question. I am, though it's not high on the priorities list. I totally agree with your logic though: it could lend a wonderful sense to it... particularly if I could somehow get some kind of system going which creates different ambient music for each nation?!?!

?!?!?!?!?!

At the same time, though... I know nothing about music, and I'm not sure if I could ever create such a system myself, which would necessitate some degree of outside help, so we'd have to see. I'm certainly not ruling it out though!

This week's update:

So, last week I posted an entry which generated a huge amount of discussion here, on Reddit, on Twitter, and (if past experience is anything to go by) probably a few other places I haven’t even noticed. To those who I still owe replies to – I’m getting to them! I’ll be posting a follow-up next week, but this week we’re onto another URRpdate, finally!

Clothing Generation

This week I’ve been working on both generating clothing styles for different civilizations. There are currently six “archetypal” clothing styles, each of which has three sub-styles within it, and each sub-style has its own variation between specific items of “identical” clothing (just small things like the width of clothing relating to the size of its owner, fractional colour differences, that kind of thing). As the maximum number of feudal civilizations the game allows at any one point is eighteen, this works out perfectly, so all/most of the styles will be reflected in each game (though I might add more later). I’ve so far worked entirely on upper-class clothing for rulers, aristocrats, military commanders, etc. There are several dozen colour combinations, and each nation will pick one for its upper-class clothing and then have those same colours reflected, to a lesser extent, in its middle/lower-class clothing. This week we’ll have the upper-class clothing, then next week the follow-up to the metagame post, then the week after that, probably the remainder of clothing and some early development of crowd mechanics, if we’re lucky?! So, here’s an illustrative sample of five of the six “archetypal” clothing styles (the last one is not yet finished):



Going clockwise from the top left, these are inspired by “classic” Western medieval clothing of leather (or other material) waistcoats and a shirt underneath, though here I’m treating them as a single garment; the second is inspired by Japanese kimonos; the third is inspired primarily by older Chinese styles of dress, and also some more “tailored” Western styles; the fourth (i.e. the bottom-right corner) is inspired from a range of styles including far more ancient Babylonian and Hebrew dress; the fifth is based on a lot of Eastern European royalty, and the sixth will be based on Renaissance Western Europe (but is proving surprisingly tricky to realize). These then have the three sub-styles as described above – which consist of different patterns, different locations of buttons, lengths of sleeves, sizes of collar, colour schemes, etc. To take a closer look at the variation within one archetype, let’s go with the Hebrewlonian () archetype, of which I’ve included three below. (There are actually a dozen different possible patterns which can appear on the “clasps”, but just weirdly enough, all three I took for this picture happened to select the same one, and now I’ve only just noticed this and I’m severely disinclined to go and generate them again, so we’re just going to have to make do with these). The right is “average” size (which will include “muscular” or whatever other build definitions I wind up with), the middle for someone slim/athletic, and the right for someone much heavier-set. So these would be belong to three neighboring civilizations who might have experienced a level of cultural bleeding between each other’s society, but maintain their own styles of dress nevertheless:



So, each of these might be tethered to a different culture, but I’ll also be sure to place those cultures next to each other (think pre-modern China, Korea and Japan, for instance), so that you get some sense of “similarity” (sometimes) between clothing styles of nearby nations (though given that many nations might have complex territorial shapes, there is only so far this can be pushed). Naturally there will be coupled with appropriate lower-body garments, boots, gloves, etc, and then we’ll be done with clothing for this release (with armour and weapons… next release?). In the new NPC lookup (or the same for the player) you’ll be able to scroll through all the clothing on an NPC to let you examine what culture you think they might be from. Maybe a logical mechanic would be to have NPCs judge the player, at least in part, based on their clothing style (and many other factors) so that there might be some ability to attempt to pass “undercover” in nations unfriendly to your own. As with everything else: the game will never tell you “this is the clothing style of Nation X”, but once the player has that learned that, you should be able to come to recognize those you encounter in the street, or the origins of foreign merchants/travelers, etc.

I’m now working on two things simultaneously: crowd mechanics, and remaining items of clothing for middle-class and lower-class citizens, and then lower-body garments, boots/shoes, etc. I’m basically working to an “interim” deadline right now since I want to show off a stable build with crowd mechanics functioning (and all clothing items implemented) at the IRDC 2015 I’m hosting on 27-28 June, so all academic work is on hold now whilst I grind towards that goal. Metagame follow-up next week, then more delicious URRpdates!

[Retropunch]

A most intriguing question. I am, though it's not high on the priorities list. I totally agree with your logic though: it could lend a wonderful sense to it... particularly if I could somehow get some kind of system going which creates different ambient music for each nation?!?!

?!?!?!?!?!

At the same time, though... I know nothing about music, and I'm not sure if I could ever create such a system myself, which would necessitate some degree of outside help, so we'd have to see. I'm certainly not ruling it out though!

HNNGGGGG!!!! Procedurally generated music is fascinating and I long after it with a deeply depraved and barely contained lust. I've attempted it in the past and it is difficult to make good 'songs' but to make ambient/background music/sounds is a lot simpler.

Basically (and some of this you will no doubt know) - music revolves around scales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_%28music%29). however, on top of that there are broken chords and arpeggios which are sort of like rule sets. This is how jazz musicians are able to improvise for hours and hours at a time, as they just follow a scale and it all works - as long as you stick within a scale (and some other rules - circle of fifths and so on) you literally cannot 'clash'.

As you can see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_scales_and_modes) there are LOADS of scales, so you could just stick to those (see caveat) - they all have a very different feeling. The 'Gypsy' scale produces a very 'gypsy' like tone for instance (thanks captain!). You could link a scale with each civilization along with certain instruments (from the basic MIDI list) and that'd give an incredible personality to each civilization.

Caveat: It's really, really hard to 'make' your own scales/rules - your made up ones just won't sound like music to how most people perceive music. Whilst this takes some of the 'whole new world' away from things, it's necessary to do that otherwise 98% of your players would find it excruciatingly painful to sit through.



I'd give it some serious thought as it could be incredible.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

HNNGGGGG!!!!

[Further comments]

I'd give it some serious thought as it could be incredible.

HNGGG indeed! I will give it some thought, but it's inevitably not going to be anywhere near the top (or even the middle) of the priorities list

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

This week, a follow-up to my previous piece on metagames! Travelling back from Canada today and done with conferences for a little while, so a nice few weeks of pure URRpdates are on their way .

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2015/06/05/roguelike-metagames-the-sequel/