Unangband competition update

We're roughly half-way through the current Angband competition with an Unangband save-file. The deepest unique killed so far is Smaug, a level 55 monster. However, the character doing so has just passed away due to an unfortunate spell casting accident, opening up the game to anyone who is able to surpass their efforts.

You can keep following the competition, or submit your own success and/or failure stories to the Unangband ladder. Remember, the point of the competition is participation and challenging yourself. Of course, the glory of submitting a winning entry is quite a nice icing on the cake.

An Analysis of Shopping In Angband - Post-Script

In a brief followup to my earlier analysis of shopping in Angband, I've found a source of inspiration for the Unangband money game here in an article about Freshly Picked: Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. From the article:

In most adventure games the cost of items is clearly established. Need to buy a shield? Some armor? A golden chicken? A village merchant or town elder tells you what you must give to get what they’ve got. In “Tingle” the non-player characters will rip you off. Want a 10-ingredient pot in “Tingle”? Don’t know how much it costs, because the lady cook won’t tell you? Well, make an offer. In a miserable twist to classic bartering, most of the game’s character to whom you make a lowball offer will pocket the money you offer them. And then they will start negotiations over from scratch. So when I found a character who promised a great secret if only I could pay him “four figures,” I made a mental note (only possessing three figures of rupees at the time). I came back to him later in the game when I had about 3000, offered him 1000 , got laughed at and left with just 2000. Did anyone else know that Nintendo published games this mean?

There's more money game goodness if you read the rest.

My first roguelike

The power of C brings you my first roguelike. More importantly, there's a link to the Literate Programming version of the Adventure source code.

This is brilliant, because I needed this for a super-secret roguelike concept I only just thought of.

[Edit: While on the subject of C programming, a big thanks to Keith H Duggar for providing the solution to a problem that I'd spent far too much time staring at to see the answer].

Results for 'When did you first start playing roguelikes'; new poll

Results are in for 'when did you first start playing roguelikes'. One short of 100 votes. It's good to see that people are still discovering the genre at a regular rate. I'd like to know who was playing prior to 1981 - Rogue was released in 1980. Speak up now - I'd like to get a feel for the impact of the game when it first came out (I was 6).

The full results are:

Haven't tried them before	5 (5%)
2004-2007	22 (22%)
2001-2003	12 (12%)
1998-2000	13 (13%)
1994-1997	13 (13%)
1991-1993	6 (6%)
1988-1990	13 (13%)
1985-1987	10 (10%)
1981-1983	3 (3%)
before 1981	2 (2%)

Next poll is 'What portable devices would you play roguelikes on?'

As mentioned elsewhere, Angband and variants (specifically FAAngband) are progressing well towards a keyboard-light / keyboard-free implementation, and it'd be good to know what platforms to focus on.

I gave away my first-born

Even though I am writing a computer RPG for OCD obsessives, face-to-face old skool table-top role playing is my first love. When I first came back from the UK for a holiday in New Zealand, I had to give all the RPG material I had accumulated over many years, because I couldn't justify paying for the cost of a storage unit. 2300 AD - I miss you.

And here are some love letters from other people so touched.

Care to share your love letters?

Unangband is from Earth B

One of the joys of Dwarf Fortress is reading reviews of it by people who have been caught up in the madness of it all. And this review is the best that I have read so far.

You had me at hello

I will link to any game-related list that has Clive Barker, John Carpenter, Peter Jackson, and oh, some other people in it...

An Analysis of Shopping In Angband

It is with tired hands and a weary brow that I have to admit to you that, in fact, I have spent the last ten or so years, working on a game about shopping.

Angband, as I have mentioned numerous times, is focused on inventory management. And a big part of that inventory management is the art of purchasing goods from the 7 stores in the town precariously perched above Morgoth's iron prison.

Let us not forget the absolute suspension of disbelief that having the fantasy equivalent of a small arcade directly above the bastion of all that is evil requires. Or the fact that the jaded and world weary shopkeepers will not cut you a discount, even when you have felled that ultimate enemy of light and heft the weight of his mighty hammer in your hand. The recent discussions on the impact on Charisma in the game point to the pithy contrast of absurdity and game balance requirements that having shops in the game entails. Of course, you can get rid of them completely, but in designing a variant which has multiple towns as waypoints onto the same final destination, I'd like to find a suitable half-way house in which they can be maintained.

Well, for a start, lets have a brief discussion about what tools that the current shop system avails us, and then look at where it might take us.

Shops in Angband consist of an inventory, a stock list of items that could be potentially generated in that inventory (with a fixed probability for each) and a shopkeeper with various racial preferences and a maximum purse from which he can purchase goods. Of particular note is the black market, which as opposed to having a fixed stock list, instead stocks items as if generated from a certain depth in the dungeon.

The player buys from the stores inventory, and buying up the entire inventory causes it to be generated anew. Periodically the inventory is refreshed, which results in some items being removed from the inventory, and others being added. This may also result in the shop keeper being replaced by one that is either less or more generous, and has a different purse size.

The player can also sell equipment that is found in the dungeon to the appropriate store. In this instance, the shopkeepers purse is the maximum sale value that the player can get for a single item. The sale price is guaranteed to be no more than the purchase price, and the black market is not worth selling to. Obviously the player can only make a sale if the store inventory is not full.

The disadvantages of this mechanic have already been discussed in Andrew Sidwell's analysis of Charisma, with particular reference to the impact that Charisma has on shop prices. It should be worth noting that various variants have tried to fix parts of this design, by creating store services, which allow the player to spend money in store in return for having their weapons enchanted, items identified and so on, and on allowing shops to stock better items than their original inventory, sometimes requiring an investment of funds for this to be the case.

As is always the case, it is worthwhile going back to first principles to analyse why we would potentially want shops at all. They serve the following functions:

1. To justify the function of money.
2. To allow low-level players to get additional cash by selling items found in the dungeon to the shops. This is useful up to a point, beyond which money stops being important.
3. To allow players of all power levels to get various essential supplies - food, light, magical healing, escape magic, ammunition for their current weapon, and so on.
4. To allow players to upgrade their existing equipment through purchasing scrolls of Enchant Weapon and Armour.
5. To sometimes allow players to spend a larger amount of money in return for a useful item.

Point 1 could be substituted for the original purpose of money in Rogue, which was a measure of score. This works well, but I'm not sure that game players these days are as focused on score as they may have been previously.

Point 2 works well, as mentioned, up to a point. There is definitely a tipping point where the amount of money recoverable from selling items exceeds the ability of the player to spend it. This actually occurs in several stages: the first can be exploited through a quick descent to level 3 in the game, where the first wands start occurring. Wands are problematic in that they are light and valuable, and reaching wand depth is usually results in you can afford all the basics. The next major boost is usually when you start finding enough ego-items to be able to haul them up and sell them. Very quickly after that, money stops being an issue and the actual contents of the store inventories becomes your limiting factor.

Point 3 is usually frustrated by the actual selection of required consumables in the stores. If you are out of something 'essential', you have little choice but to descend to level 1, and rest it out until the shop stock rotates, at which point you can have a chance of finding the item again, although it is not guaranteed. Of course, the definition of what is 'essential' differs from character to character.

Point 4 is the most effective money sink in the game, because of the diminishing returns on investment of the various enchantment spells. At the same time, this results in much game-balance breakage, resulting in warriors wielding (+9, +9) daggers instead of long swords, because they've been able to enchant the lower powered weapons up, and the poorly thought out combat design encourages lighter weight weapons.

Point 5 is a great money sink, very occasionally. Usually what happens is 75% of the stores are filled with 'useless' non-consumables, such as 3 Morning Stars, or 7 Maces, piles of which are less than useful for just about anyone.

Rectifying the situation will have to be done very carefully. Just making money useful again by allowing more appropriate purchases will have the unbalancing effect when money stops being a problem to acquire.

So what are my recommendations? I'll discuss what is best suited for Unangband, since that is where my interest primarily lies.

1. To address point 2, you want the shop keepers to scale down the amount of money they'll be prepared to offer the player for equipment. I'd do this by adjusting the shop keepers purse directly. If they buy stuff off the player, decrease the purse size by the value of the purchase - if they sell stuff to the player, increase the purse size. That way, the purse becomes a direct measure of how 'profitable' the shopkeeper is.

So what happens when a shop keeper runs out of purse. Well, to avoid this happening, I'd scale down the amount the shopkeeper is prepared to offer, as their purse size drops, and treat some of the scale down as future 'profit' which the shopkeeper realises the purchase by selling it to some other suckercustomer. And as their purse increases, increase the chance that shopkeeper will rotate out, by retiring, so that the player can't recoup their 'losses' through a big sale.

Alternately, you could periodically reduce the value of a high purse shopkeeper, and in return add to the selection of consumables that they stock, as discussed in point 2 below.

2. Point 3, the selection of consumables, is too random at the moment. The list of consumables should be a list of fixed items available, which is regenerated with each shop refresh.

However, the actions of the player should be allowed to change the consumable list. I'd recommend the following sequence of events.

a. The player sells an item to the store that the shopkeeper hasn't seen before.
b. The shopkeeper gives the player a quest to find x of these items, so that he can analyse them to work out how they are made.
c. The player completes the quest. The shopkeeper gives the player a quest to find a set of ingredients in order to make the items. These happen to be made from a monster.
d. The shopkeeper starts stocking the item in question.
e. Periodically, the shopkeeper runs out of ingredients for a consumable item that the player has purchased. This means that the shopkeeper cannot restock the consumable, until the player completes a similar ingredient quest.

3. Point 4 has been 'fixed' in Unangband, by adjusting the weapon enchantment routines. I can only recommend something similar for Angband.

4. To address point 5, and deal with the problems Andrew discusses around Charisma, I recommend making stores stock one or two high level items each, and have those rotate frequently. The 'level' at which the item occurs should be based on a number of factors: Charisma being the most important one. If you drop Charisma's impact on prices, and make high Charisma result in better 'special' equipment available, Charisma will still have a much needed impact on shopping, without affecting the overall money supply. In fact, higher Charisma will result in the player having less money, as shops will create 'more appropriate' items for him.

This is the most complex recommendation, because you still want to have the player able to have most of the equipment come from the dungeon, while encouraging him to spend money where ever possible. So tuning the nature of the items is critically important. Ideally, you want the shops to generate '2nd-tier' alternatives for the player: say items about 80% of the power of what he is finding in the dungeon. I suspect you'll want to cheat, and pick item abilities directly based on what items the player currently has. If you make Charisma work on the 'appropriateness' match as well, that'll encourage the player to focus on Charisma further.

Of course, the brokeness of the stat-gain mechanic is food for thought and potential discussion in another article.

[Edit: I've followed this up with a brief post-script.]

Co-op Portal - Part Two (Help Wanted)

I've come up with a complete design for a Co-op Portal level (see part one for some of the initial thinking around this). Now I need help.

If you're a Half-Life 2 mapper, I'd like to hear from you. Co-op Portal will be a single map consisting of 7 rooms. It will be be built on the existing Half-Life 2 Death match engine using only existing design elements from Portal (plus rocket launchers, which I've found a better use for). I'm quite happy to work on the scripting side, but I have no experience with Hammer.

It's important that you realise that Co-op Portal does not and will not be using the Portal gun.

If I don't hear from anyone, I'll start working on this myself, but obviously it'll take a lot longer.

Also I'd like to spruce up the design document before presenting it, by including the various visual elements. Does anyone have a good recommendation for design software (preferrably freeware) that could be used to get the same visual look as the Portal in-game artwork? I'd prefer to use isometric projection if possible. And does someone have the Weighted Companion Cube in a Visio template form?

[Edit: Looks like you can't put up help wanted on the Valve Developer Community without a mod, and they recommend you don't create your mod page until you have screen shots. Hmm... a little Catch-22. Besides which Portal is probably a registered trademark. Let's call the mod Lab Rats from now on].

Jonathan Blow on Game Design

He's the guy who wrote Braid. He recently talked at MIGS 2007 about game design, in particular being highly critical of current game design practise, and has thoughtfully made available some slides and audio from his presentation.

Annoyingly, I had queued up an article idea myself along the same lines. I'll have to figure out if I have anything left to say beyond what he has covered.

In all the excitement

I forgot to mention my 20 Underused Game Mechanics article got syndicated to GameSetWatch. Also, I just deleted my first piece of comment spam. Happy days.

First horse out of town

Eidos have pulled their advertising already. Reading through Rock, Paper, Shotgun's take on things, it looks like more experienced journalistic minds than mine have a credible explanation:

Review appears.
PR or someone similar phones up and go apeshit. Really apeshit. This is par for course. A major game getting sub average reviews is something which PR *have* to phone up about. It’s what their bosses expect. Better PRs and Editors all know that it’s part of the game they play with each other, and roll with it.
Problem in this case, is whoever above Greg isn’t a good editor or manager. They’re someone who actually takes the threats seriously instead of something that’ll blow over by the next game. The panic, cave and sack the guy.
Now, this is the last thing any experienced PR would expect. I dare say Eidos are as surprised as everyone else at the sacking - and horrified, as a sacking over a review score is the worst publicity they could ever recieve if it got out (And, of course, being the internet it WOULD get out).
Internet chaos.

So it looks like my previous statement may have been an over-reaction. My apologies Ian. It looks like the entire industry has ethical problems, not just yourself.

The reason why I say this, is that the unholy trinityuneasy triangle of game journalism, game PR and game advertising is ripe with ethical irresponsibility. Games journalists rely on game PR for a large proportion of their content: footage, previews, early code to review and so on. This historically has been more important, but the power of the Internet is such that even if you don't get the scoop, you can quickly link to whoever does and represent it as a breaking news story anyway (which is why you get so many duplicate stories in Google Reader for instance).

However, the power of game advertising has grown proportionately. When you are giving away your content for free, as opposed to retail or subscription models, the revenue from advertising is your only source of income. For the independents, this is not a huge problem, because you get a name for yourself, and write where ever you can get the work. But for in-house journalists, such as those employed by Game Spot, it is a delicate line between integrity and income. As a journalist, you rely on your editors to protect you. As a Game Spot, you rely on taking an hit on the income in the event someone pushes too far, and the kudos you get for saying no.

But as a major games publisher, you should recognise the serious conflict of interest integral to the industry. In 'the real world', what you'd do is develop a code of conduct at the board level to ensure that situations such as what is currently developing don't occur. And then you push the code of conduct out at all levels within your organisation, to ensure you don't have PR ringing up and going apeshit on people.

You do this because you have a fiduciary duty to your share holders to maximise return, while minimising the risk of failure or legal misadventure. And clearly this hasn't happened.

Eidos has already gone into damage control mode. Maybe when they pull their head back out of the sand, they'll realise the problem and ensure that such a document gets developed. I'd like to see some heads roll on the Eidos side at a senior management level first. You just don't make mistakes like this.

[Edit: Kevin Grifford at GameSetWatch has another great take on this, from a slightly different angle.]