You hit the Ed! --more--



  • Slightly amusing as I've done this *several* times now, on separate projects... but anyone here familiar with "roguelike" games? This must be the third time I've written something with a message along these lines:

     "You hit the Ed! The Ed hits you!"

     when the player character tries to rest to regain HP or for a tactical advantage.

     I really need to remember to test if the target of an attack is the same as the source before I execute the attack... :P

     The worst was one time when I forgot to give the player character any hitpoints, so the first attempt to do this said "You have slain the Ed!"



  • "roguelike" games? Aren't these games called MUDs?



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    "roguelike" games? Aren't these games called MUDs?

    No, MUDs are something different.



  • Perhaps he'll know what you mean if you mention the most notorious of all of the "roguelikes":   Nethack.  It's a lot funner than a text-based game ought to be, but so insidious as to be nearly impossible to win.  Well, without cheating, that is.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Nethack.  It's a lot funner than a text-based game ought to be

    About every 2-3 years I get a hankering for some Rogue/Nethack goodness.  It's entertaining, frustrating, compelling, and has a lot of nostalgia value (since that 'every 2-3 years' has been going for more than 20 years now)... it's a testament to the fact that sometimes a simple game can be more entertaining than the graphics-palooza of the moment.

    That and it always tickles me to get my dog (who I typically name 'Scotty the Spotty Firedog', for reasons that are lost to the mists of time) to steal things out of a shop for me.

    -cw



  • Yep, me too.  Been playing off and on for the last 20 years, never have won the game even a single freaking time, not even by playing in "debug" or "Wizard" mode.  Very frustrating.  It's got some sort of magical Murphy's Law built into it so that for every advantage you try to give yourself, the game slams two disadvantages back at you.  Or you'll be doing great and then one day all your luck turns around and you have to deal with a series of increasingly-impossible-to-beat foes.   Damn nymph robs you down to your underwear followed immediately by a very large swarm of killer bees. 

    There's a usenet group dedicated to the game.  They refer to the Murphy's Law effect as the "RNG" which literally stands for Random Number Generator, but everybody superstitiously refers to it as a godlike entity.  Think you're doing well?  Haha, the RNG will fix your little red wagon!

    I think it's the million-and-one little whimsical touches that they've coded into it that keep me coming back.  Pets, ponies, inside jokes, references to science and science fiction, etc.  It's how I learned what Schoedinger's Cat was.  And sometimes very obscure things.  I've heard that if you play a knight character, never give your horse a name, and manage to finish the game with that same original horse, it says something about "escaped on a horse with no name".  (Song reference.) 



  • Curse you all .. you just forced me to download NetHack again. I started playing Rogue and Hack (not NetHack) back in the 80's. Now I am getting my fill again.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Perhaps he'll know what you mean if you mention the most notorious of all of the "roguelikes":   Nethack.  It's a lot funner than a text-based game ought to be, but so insidious as to be nearly impossible to win.  Well, without cheating, that is.

    Oh my. I've played at least two or three "roguelikes" at some point of my life, and didn't realize it.

    Dungeon of Doom, 1987: this one was for Mac, it was graphical but preserved the "tiles" movement and most of Rogue's features.

    Castle of the Winds (circa 1995), can't really remember what it was called. It had at least two dungeons, and you could go up to previous levels (and a town in the surface, to buy/sell stuff) but it was definitely Roguelike.

    I wasn't around when the original Rogue came out, so maybe that's why I relate the gamestyle more with MUDs, even if I already played roguelikes before. :)



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Castle of the Winds (circa 1995), can't really remember what it was called. It had at least two dungeons, and you could go up to previous levels (and a town in the surface, to buy/sell stuff) but it was definitely Roguelike.

    Christ almighty I remember being so impressed with a CoW demo I found on a PC Mag freebie (5 1/4") disc that I paid good money for the registered version!  Curse you all for bring this topic up, now I'm also going to have to go and find a copy to indulge my nostalgic urges.  (That's a Level 5 curse too, so you'll be dead in 10 turns).



  • @Zagyg said:

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Castle of the Winds (circa 1995), can't really remember what it was called. It had at least two dungeons, and you could go up to previous levels (and a town in the surface, to buy/sell stuff) but it was definitely Roguelike.

    Christ almighty I remember being so impressed with a CoW demo I found on a PC Mag freebie (5 1/4") disc that I paid good money for the registered version!  Curse you all for bring this topic up, now I'm also going to have to go and find a copy to indulge my nostalgic urges.  (That's a Level 5 curse too, so you'll be dead in 10 turns).

    Right after posting I checked Wikipedia (that's how I found the game's name) and found this. Cool, the owner's giving it away for free! Same goes for Dungeon of Doom, but the only Mac I've got left (a 11-year-old Performa) is at my mom's house, and I doubt she'll let me take it.

    Oh well, at least I did spend some time replaying CoW last night, too bad my older savegames were lost in the HDD Crash of 1997.



  •  I've won both Nethack and Angband (another popular roguelike game, but much harder) a few times. I found that it was much easier to win with character-spamming, instead of trying to actually find stuff. What I would do is continually drink from every fountain I found until I got a wish or died... if your char was lucky enough to get a few wishes in a row, his gear would take him far enough down to get nice and good.

     

    And yes, I've had extremely good char's felled by the stupidiest thing. "Crushed by Drawbridge" was my favourite, as there was only one in the game, and its near the end.



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Right after posting I checked Wikipedia (that's how I found the game's name) and found this

    Thanks, appreciated.  I didn't actually have time to go and look it up yesterday, now you've saved me the trouble!



  • I still have it (and the sequel) on my flash drive. I think it's portable without modification, so you do the install once, then copy the results to the drive and carry it with you.

    I beat it and started collecting treasure.  Turns out there's a memory overflow if you have too much stashed in the town.  The workaround is to use containers, but you still wind up selling alot of it.

    My other addiction keeping me from getting the new Lenovos ghosted is Exile (now Avernum). http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/


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