Should monsters surrender?

I'm going to be doing a pre-release of Unangband 0.6.4 this weekend*, and I have a quick game play question for you. Should monsters surrender?

I'm going to be implementing some changes to the monster AI to allow monsters to be bribed, which will allow a 'not allied but not trying to kill you either' state for monsters to be in. They'll hang around suspiciously and follow you, they won't target you with spell attacks or try to injure you with melee, and they'll either betray you or leave after some period of time, as well as periodically asking for more money or gifts.

Now this AI could also be used to allow a monster to surrender to you if you have sufficiently injured it. Unfortunately, this is directly contrary to a lot of the design and game play for a roguelike - you basically want to be able to kill stuff - so I'm interested in whether having monsters surrender could ever be an interesting choice. Do you know of any games where the surrender mechanic does work successfully?

Don't worry if you're a hard core roguelike player. I've just added a birth_evil option which, among other things, will switch the surrender mechanic off completely if I do implement it.


* Brief overview for those wondering what will be in the new version: Persistent levels won't be in until at least 0.6.5, but there's lots of fixes to dungeon generation, rebalancing of mage spell books, and some other interesting stuff I've been able to implement.

The Torchlight Thread

I took the opportunity over the Christmas break to play Torchlight - and my thoughts on playing it still haven't crystallized into an actual opinion about the game.

That's a little surprising given Torchlight is what might be considered a commercial version of the genre I design in. I suspect I'm still unsure of what I think, because the game really isn't a roguelike. I'm basing this on a much more intuitive feel than the Berlin Interpretation, and as a result, I reserve the right to change that view at a later date.

So instead, I'd like to solicit your opinions. Have you been playing Torchlight, and if so, what do you think? Feel free to comment below and try and influence my unborn non-opinion.

(Please note I'm playing on Very Hard - as I suspect difficulty level will form part of this discussion).

Indie developer Derek Yu is DOOOMED!!!!!!!!

And as a result has designed a tile set that will be used in an upcoming release of DoomRL.

You may also like the Doom fan art currently on his blog.

Puzzle Rogue

I have enormous respect for many roguelike developers' ability to create multiple, complete roguelikes in the time I have yet to finish one, but one developer I hold in particular esteem, because he also works with Angband variants.

Antoine, creator of Guild, Ironband and Quickband has just released a 7ishDRL Puzzle Rogue, based on the idea of creating a puzzle game using the roguelike conventions and features. He announced it following approximately 7 days worth of coding effort - it doesn't qualify as a 'pure' 7DRL because those days were not consecutive - and you can download the Windows binary from here. You can also follow the thread on Puzzle Rogue on rgrd.

I'm interested in the idea of puzzles embedded in a larger roguelike, especially if the puzzles can be procedurally generated. The Sokoban levels in Nethack are one example, and I've been toying with several others in Unangband. Antoine has taken a slightly different direction, and, as he notes, the difficulty with his approach is the overhead of creating the levels.

It's interesting to note that the developer of Eyangband, Eytan Zweig, went on to contribute to DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death), suggesting there's considerable overlap in the design skills required for each genre.

Full Results for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2009

I've got 99 roguelikes and a Dwarf ain't one...

For the third year running, there have been more roguelikes being written, played and voted for. Thanks to all 505 of you who voted this year. I am overwhelmed at the breadth and depth of competition, and look forward to a bumper crop again next year.

The full results were:

3069	4 (0%)
8rogue	1 (0%)
Agduria	1 (0%)
aemoebaRL	1 (0%)
Angband	24 (4%)
Angband/65	1 (0%)
Battlement	0 (0%)
Blast Tactics	0 (0%)
Brogue	8 (1%)
CastlevaniaRL	16 (3%)
Caverns of Xaskazien	0 (0%)
Chickhack	1 (0%)
Craftband	1 (0%)
crashRun	2 (0%)
CyberRogue	2 (0%)
Cypress Tree Manor	0 (0%)
DaJAngband	8 (1%)
Dawn of the Dead	1 (0%)
The Dawn of the Dead II	0 (0%)
The Dawn of the Dead III	3 (0%)
Dimension Dungeon	0 (0%)
Domination	3 (0%)
DoomRL	227 (44%)
Downfall	0 (0%)
Dreamhack	2 (0%)
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup	170 (33%)
DungeonMinder	8 (1%)
Dweller	5 (0%)
Elona	32 (6%)
Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper	0 (0%)
Escape from Lab 42	3 (0%)
Excitable Digger	2 (0%)
Expedition	1 (0%)
Faerie's Lair	0 (0%)
First Age Angband	15 (2%)
Fortress of the Goblin King	3 (0%)
Fruits of the Forest	3 (0%)
FOTRW	0 (0%)
GearHead2	27 (5%)
G.O.R.E.	1 (0%)
Goblinhack	1 (0%)
GGRogue	1 (0%)
Gumband	3 (0%)
Grendel's Mother	0 (0%)
Gruesome	3 (0%)
HamQuest	0 (0%)
Hokuto-no-rogue	5 (0%)
Invader Tactics	0 (0%)
Ighalsk	0 (0%)
Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King	69 (13%)
Interhack	4 (0%)
Kharne	3 (0%)
Jacob's Matrix	7 (1%)
Legerdemain	15 (2%)
Liberal Crime Squad	12 (2%)
Lords of DarkHall	2 (0%)
Mage Guild	10 (1%)
Martin's Dungeon Bash	2 (0%)
MAngband	5 (0%)
MetaCollider	0 (0%)
Mines of Morgoth	2 (0%)
Minute Dungeon	3 (0%)
Nazghul	6 (1%)
Neon	0 (0%)
NLarn	5 (0%)
Nyctos	1 (0%)
Papaki	1 (0%)
PBR: Peleron's Briliant Rebirth	5 (0%)
Persist	1 (0%)
Plague	0 (0%)
Plains of Sedia	2 (0%)
PlantForce	0 (0%)
POWDER	48 (9%)
Privateer: Ascii Sector	19 (3%)
Prospector	17 (3%)
Pyromancer	9 (1%)
RealtimeRL	0 (0%)
Rogue Touch	2 (0%)
Sane Roguelike	0 (0%)
Settlement	6 (1%)
SpiritsRL	1 (0%)
SporkHack	11 (2%)
TetRLs	2 (0%)
The Tombs of Asciiroth	1 (0%)
Tomb of the Aztecs	0 (0%)
Tomb of Rawdin	0 (0%)
T.o.M.E.	17 (3%)
Tower of Druaga	1 (0%)
Triangle Wizard	18 (3%)
Tzar	1 (0%)
UnAngband	21 (4%)
Underbooks	2 (0%)
UnNetHack	12 (2%)
URRogue	0 (0%)
Warp Rogue	3 (0%)
Wayfarer	8 (1%)
When Zombies Attack!	0 (0%)
XAngband	1 (0%)
Z+Angband	11 (2%)
Zot Defense	11 (2%)

Honourable Mentions for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2009

Even without Dwarf Fortress qualifying as a candidate this year, there were 130 more voters this year than last year. And four roguelikes have consistently garnered more votes than the rest, while not finishing up in either the winning or runner up positions - two from previous years, and two gaining in popularity enough to warrant special mention for the first time.

Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King is a D20 based fantasy roguelike by Julian Mensch that features deep game mechanics and a 'next-gen' religion system. It's possible to win this game as everything from a warrior or summoner or assassin or even a diplomat, and starting characters are considerably more powerful than many other roguelikes. John Harris on Incursion in his column @ Play.

POWDER is the premier portable roguelike, developed originally for the Gameboy Advance but ported to multiple portable and cell phone platforms. While the name is a play on the frequent mispelling of rogue as rouge, the game play comes in tactical bite size chunks winnable in an afternoon. John Harris on POWDER @ Play.

Elona, or Elona: Eternal League of Nefia is a graphical roguelike, with animated high quality tiles, developed in Japan but translated into English and with updates released on an almost monthly basis (including a Christmas edition). While John Harris hasn't featured Elona @ Play, the fact you can marry virtually anything you can encounter in game, and bear playable children, leaves me more than a little intrigued.

GearHead2, the mech based science fiction roguelike, builds on a robust arena combat system with a procedurally generated plot and anime style art. The fact that the winner and this popular choice are so successful while avoiding the typical fantasy tropes bodes well for the future of alternate genre roguelikes. Again, John Harris has yet to feature either GearHead2 or it's predecessor @ Play.

Runner Up for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Last year's winner put on a brave run for second place, but while the voting fans seem to have rested on their laurels a little early, the developers have tirelessly continued to work on the game, taking it from version 0.4.5 at the start of the year to version 0.5.2, as well as migrating to a git-based source repository. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup also celebrated a well-deserved third birthday party in September, from when they branched, or more correctly took up the torch and kept running from the original Linley's Dungeon Crawl.

The fact that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup didn't win, while getting 50 more votes than last year, is testament to the strength and dedication of the community around the roguelike genre in general. I can only refer you to the write up of last year's win for more Crawl resources and the obligatory John Harris article.

Winner of the Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2009: DoomRL

This year, there was never any doubt... the movie featuring Dwayne 'The Rock' Hudson and Karl Urban had inspired an unstoppable roguelike force that lives up to it's unforgettable tag line 'No One Gets Out Alive'.

Ahem. DoomRL is the enfant terrible of the roguelike world - the quick play game that shouldn't be good but is instead great, and is one of the few roguelikes that has successfully broken out of its genre niche and achieved popular acclaim. Kornel Kisielewicz has gone on to make other roguelikes inspired by the likes of Aliens and, in a post-modernist twist, Diablo, but this game is arguably now superior to its inspiration. DoomRL also predated the now common trend of 'demakes' - taking a modern game and porting it to an older platform.

It looked for most of 2009, that this 'coffee-break' roguelike had gone for an extended latte - but version 0.9.9.9 of DoomRL was released in October 2009 and I'm sure version 1.0 will be 'real soon now'. The DoomRL community features PR managers, a monthly newsletter (The Phobos Times) and lively forums.

For further reading: John Harris has featured DoomRL in one of his @ Play columns where he describes it as 'set[ting] out to do one thing and do it well'.

Don't stop voting because it looks like a foregone conclusion

The race for honorable mentions is still wide open...

It'll be a busy few weeks for some people

Because who wins really matters.

Games I've Not Played in 2009

Looking back on my year of gaming in 2009 makes me realise I'm stuck in 2008. With the exception of Torchlight*, I have bought no major commercial releases this year, and Torchlight is not a full priced game. With the ability to buy games as cheaply as the sales that Steam and other digital distribution services have on now, as well as the discounting curve that most major release games follow, I have no incentive to pay full price for a game. I am prepared to shell out not very much money for iPhone games, of which I've bought a few. Unfortunately, the only one I play on a regular basis is Civilisation Revolution.

Of the games of 2009 which interested me:

• Borderlands: Procedural weapon goodness. I'm there. Ridiculous Australian pricing. I'm not.
• Left4Dead2: Censorship Australia has censored my wallet. Yes, I can hack around it, but I'd rather not buy, on the basis that Valve has more chance of pressuring the Australian government to change that set of ridiculous laws then I do (I'm a foreign national, so I can't vote in Australian elections). Besides which, I'm more angry about other ridiculous laws that are getting passed here...
  
• Section 8: My multiplayer experiences this year have been cramped by a poor ADSL connection. And is it better than the continually evolving Team Fortress 2?
• ARMA 2: Waiting for the patch that fixes everything...
• Men of War / Order of War: Just didn't get into the demo enough to justify buying at this stage.
  
• AI War and Solium Infernum: Played the demos. I can see how these games could be good in a world where I had a lot more time than I do now. What I want is a strategy game that plays like Civilisation Revolution on the iPhone. On the iPhone. Uniwar doesn't feel like it has the depth I need. And I'm sick of tower defense.
  
• Dragon Age: I have Baldur's Gate disc sitting in the package, unopened. I've played the first 30 minutes of Oblivion and the first two hours of Morrowind. Why buy another RPG I won't play because of time constraints and the paralysis of 'which mods do I load?'
• Captain Forever / Successor, Spelunky, other critically lauded indie games: I'll play these as soon as they start developing them in a genre I enjoy. Just not platforming / scrolling shooter... to be honest, this is the one area I regret not spending more time on.
  
• Some console games which have got rave reviews: I still don't have a Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii. And I'd only want to play Metal Gear Solid anyway. To the point where I might go look for a PSP second hand.
• Some great sounding Nintendo DS games: Since I bought the iPhone, I haven't picked the DS up once. Actually, since Brain Training...

So a disappointing year all round. But it's been entirely my fault...

So what have I been playing?

• Civilisation Revolution: I had to stop playing this, and start functioning as a human being. So I did what I always do to stop making a game enjoyable for me. I redesigned it.
• Canabalt: Great two minute filler. Should really download the improved version. Review is here.
  
• Puzzle Quest: Challenges of the Warlords: Parts 1 & 2 for the iPhone: Review is here.
• Rolando 2: Bought this on the Edge's recommendation as iPhone Game of the Year (or at least #1 in their top 50 lineup). I can appreciate the vibe, but it just doesn't click for me.
  
• Far Cry 2: Haven't reviewed this beyond some snide comments, but the game is surprisingly pick up and playable if I have a spare hour or so. People complain about the check points, but I enjoy the flow of planning a path through or around check points and having it go horribly wrong. Feels repetitive if you play it too long in one sitting.
• Team Fortress 2: BFF.
• Plants vs. Zombies: So apparently this is a 2009 commercial release. Consumed it in one sitting. Never went back. Will get my wife to play this over Christmas some time.
  
• Defense Grid: The Awakening: Consumed it in two sittings - one with no sound due to a Windows bug, one with sound to see if the sound track and dialog was worth it. It really wasn't. Never went back.
• Red Orchestra: If you ever want to feel like a hero, play this game. I cannot recommend this FPS highly enough.
• Day of Defeat: If you ever find that all the players on your Red Orchestra server are bots, play this instead for a slightly slower, more cerebral version of TF2.
• Torchlight: Played the heck out of the demo. Bought it, while feeling ambivelent about the poor monster path finding, resulting kiting gameplay and the slot machine loot fest. Haven't touched it since.
• Stalker: Clear Sky: Ended up trapped in a warehouse that was just a buggy as the Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl release. Never made it out with enough motivation to keep playing. Would go back, but suffering from mod paralysis.
• Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space: Really fun pick up and play games. Would be perfect for the iPhone other than screen size constraints. I'd recommend the Weird Worlds demo ahead of downloading the free version of SAiIS if you want to try before you buy.
• Vampire: the Masquerade: Absolutely enjoyed this while feeling guilty about playing this now I'm married. Stopped at the painful sewers section, which I understand is for the best.
• Dystopia: Still playable. Still fun. Still only play Mediums with Assault Rifles and Mediplants.
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay: Really enjoy the production values and story. Couldn't figure out the stealth sections so shot everyone. Ended up in the second Super Max facility, where I apparently turned into Link from Zelda and have to do fetch quests for everyone. Will revisit this with an FAQ.
  
• Spore and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Went back with the new computer, for an honest reappraisel and to give these games a second chance. They failed.
• Research and Development: This is my GotY. And it's a free single player map pack for Half-Life 2.

* And the Void, which I just picked up this morning off Steam.

Review: Avatar

James Cameron has clearly spent his time since Titanic both becoming a fervent environmentalist and working closely with the team at Weta workshop developing his new 3d technology, because Avatar both recycles the plot and characters from hundreds of science fiction stories and contains all of the nauseating overindulgence and none of the quirky characterisation of director Peter Jackson.

In this remake of Jim Henson's the Dark Crystal for the Harry Potter generation, any time this Jim is in any danger of expressing an original idea, he instead refers to the scribbled notes he copied as an angsty teenager whilst getting beaten up by seniors and reading Orson Scott Card. Actually, that's an offensive suggestion: the Dark Crystal had balls and something to say, whereas this movie makes Ewoks: The Battle for Endor read like Solaris. These skinny blue Ewoks with boobs set back the cause of science fiction - no, make that rational thought, by a decade.

The only person to emerge with any credibility is Sam Worthington, avoiding this train wreck of a film by managing to spend less than fifteen minutes on screen. Nonetheless, I have never punched the air quite as hard as when the protagonist dies at the end of the movie (spoiler warning), which is longer than any of the characters spend reflecting on the deaths of most of the supporting cast. African and Carribean traditional dress and accents are used as shorthand for alien, which speaks volumes about the racist sensibilities of the production and design direction.

Normally the special effects team would be commended in an otherwise lackluster big summer blockbuster, but they appear to have been lost in the collision of a truck carrying hyper colour t-shirts and a tanker of vaseline.

Ages 5 - 13 will find this movie an enjoyable and inoffensive rollercoaster ride.

1/5