Some thoughts after playing Brogue

[buzzkill]

Actually this was very much true up until the 1.7 release. The first 2 levels are still trivial but things get really uncomfortable starting on D5+ now.

There's also the pacifist route. Since XP/level/HP (I'm not quite sure how to define character's advancement in Brogue) is no longer predicated on killing stuff, you can try to play without killing anything... if you want a challenge.

Although this is entertaining occasionally, I'm not sold on the whole NO XP thing.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Actually this was very much true up until the 1.7 release. The first 2 levels are still trivial but things get really uncomfortable starting on D5+ now.

Excellent news!

[ggoDeye]

It may just be that the difficulty level is set at a tad too low level for me to enjoy the tactically complex choices.

Actually this was very much true up until the 1.7 release. The first 2 levels are still trivial but things get really uncomfortable starting on D5+ now.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It's the only video game that I've ever played that is as tactically challenging and complex as chess.

This sounds really good, and I actually believe both you and buzzkill that Brogue is one of the greatest roguelikes of all time.

It may just be that the difficulty level is set at a tad too low level for me to enjoy the tactically complex choices. There may be twenty different ways to beat a monster, some of them better than others, but the problem is that any of them will do the job, at least early on.

Perhaps the real challenge comes only after 10 or so dungeon levels? The only problem might be that the game starts slowly. (EDIT: I actually recall the designer saying something about this, maybe on Roguelike Radio? Because the strength of your character depends only on random finds, you have to give the player some time to grow with easy beginning.)

My last Brogue experience is from a year ago, so things may have changed. I introduced the new cool roguelike to my friend and watched him play for 15 or so levels. There was never any threat of dying. Perhaps in the end my friend died because he got bored and started playing sloppily -- that's a common Angband way of dying and I hate that in games. In all other respects we really enjoyed the game.

It's very hard to get the challenge level just right, I know, I've been struggling with my own Halls of Mist. Based on some threads about Ironband here it has a similar problem, the challenge level raises too slowly. It's very common in roguelikes.

IMO Epilogue has much less elegant mechanics than Brogue. The thing that makes Epilogue so enjoyable for me is that the challenge level forces me to consider every tactical option in every fight. Brogue doesn't do this.

EDIT: It may well be that my critique isn't relevant for most players. Me and some of my friends have a niche opinion. Many beginning Halls of Mist players complain that it is too merciless and no fun. The fact that Brogue gives beginners some easy levels may help the whole roguelike genre to grow in popularity.

[ggoDeye]

I will start this by saying that I am biased (and slightly defensive) and feel that Brogue 1.7 is the best roguelike I've ever played. Best user interface, best tension, best tactical challenge, least tedious BS, best designed, most aesthetically pleasing, etc...

While I've only been playing Sil for about a week and like it enormously, most design choices that separate it from other bands (more transparent, tactical, sense of tension, etc) are executed more elegantly in Brogue.

However, it is missing a beautifully designed leveling/xp system like SIl has. No amount of knowing the game mechanics will let you create equivalents to Psi's singing/forging monstrosities.

It's the only video game that I've ever played that is as tactically challenging and complex as chess. In this regard it is much more like a board game than an RPG.

The true beauty of the game is found in the zen like state of creative problem solving that is required to beat it regularly. Most good players probably win 5% of the games they start, but could win closer to 50% if played smarter and more patiently. Most RLs just aren't winnable in these ratios due to how much of the game is based on luck instead of skill. Games of Brogue are lost because you weren't tactically smart enough to figure it out.

Enough rambling praise from me. I encourage you to read this brilliant post by one of the devs (?), Joshua Day who is far more articulate than I: On the outlandish balance of Brogue

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I feel discussions about other roguelikes very much belong here in oook. Of course Idle chatter exists too, but personally I feel roguelikes are the bread and butter of the oook forums, and belong right here under Variants. Renaming it to Variants & other roguelikes might be a good move?

Discussing other roguelikes is good in many ways. Many of us agree that Angband devs should be more aware of other roguelikes. Lively discussion might bring other roguelike players and developers here. Players googling for the latest cool roguelike might end up learning about Angband.

[buzzkill]

Brogue is great, but I think it is too easy to be my personal game of choice.

Quick and random thoughts...

Have you read the Brogue wiki. There's a lot of page devoted to Brogue's dungeon generation method that I found interesting.

Anyhow, I just got back into Brogue last night. Upgraded from 1.5.6 to 1.7 but haven't played 1.7 yet. I read the change log and was wondering how it would play without XP for killing stuff.

Looking forward to the whole one-and-done weekend competition thing. I always thought one-and-done comp would be interesting.

From what I read (and I read a lot) the recording/playback thingy also doubles as the game save mechanism, which is neat.

Also, there's UnBrogue.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In Angband you are free to choose your own difficulty level, so it is arguably the best, but only if you have the right mindset to play it.

Hmm, actually one thing lowers Angband's difficulty level points for me. Escaping tough levels is too easy. Because you don't have to sacrifice anything for it, it becomes a boring default answer for many problems. (This was one of the reasons for why I stopped spending much time on *bands.)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Speaking of epilogue, I downloaded it, but couldnt figure out how to move

Arrow keys? You can only move in four directions.

[emulord]

Speaking of epilogue, I downloaded it, but couldnt figure out how to move

[Mikko Lehtinen]

- The quality of generated items is completely independent of floor depth. So, that +3 Warhammer of Holy Shit you just found on DL16 could just has easily have been found on DL1. This is really fun as it rewards exploration at the earlier depths.

Items do get better later on, but only because of Enchant scrolls. The number of Enchant scrolls you find is strictly controlled. Enchanting items is one of the most important mechanics in the game.

Brogue is great, but I think it is too easy to be my personal game of choice. It takes a long time until fights start to get dangerous. I feel Sil, Epilogue and my own Halls of Mist are better in this respect. In Angband you are free to choose your own difficulty level, so it is arguably the best, but only if you have the right mindset to play it. Some people choose to make their game experience boring because they really want to keep their character alive.

[Patashu]

...wait, is this an issue with a single computer's FPU being nondeterministic? Or with different FPUs on different computers not behaving the same, so that replays cannot be shared across systems? The latter is much more of an acceptable issue than the former, though it's still not great.

I think the latter only.

[Derakon]

I heard on the Brogue forum that most of Brogue's out of sync errors are due to floating point computations not giving exactly the same result, and that Pender is rewriting all float computations that can effect the game to integer computations to prevent this.

...wait, is this an issue with a single computer's FPU being nondeterministic? Or with different FPUs on different computers not behaving the same, so that replays cannot be shared across systems? The latter is much more of an acceptable issue than the former, though it's still not great.

Rather than ditch floating point calculations altogether (ugh...), we could switch to using Python's Decimal library for fixed-precision floating point arithmetic. It's a bit tedious to set up, though, since Decimal instances don't interact with normal floating-point values (you have to do e.g. "decimal.Decimal(2.5)" instead of just "2.5").

Alternately, a different approach to replays would be to store them as incremental state updates. Assuming those updates are reversible, you'd also get the ability to rewind the game. But implementing that in the first place would be very tricky.

[Patashu]

I heard on the Brogue forum that most of Brogue's out of sync errors are due to floating point computations not giving exactly the same result, and that Pender is rewriting all float computations that can effect the game to integer computations to prevent this.

[Nick]

I would like Pyrel to support replays; it ought to just be a matter of recording the initial seed and the player's input stream, and then playing them back as an alternate input source instead of the keyboard.

Pete Mack wrote a replayer for V once - I don't recall what happened to it, though.