I'm bored !

you could always try moo 3...

or join an empire and have a larf.......

Play Nethack . . . that'll put a bee in your bonnet! And its free! Just Nethack into Gooogle or some other search engine!

DON'T DO IT!!!

You'll never see the light of day again and you'll be doomed to writing YASD posts on rec.games.rouglike.nethack.

Ahhhh, good times... good times. (:(

idle

~SDC~

Advice (although I've never managed to leave the Dungeeon alive with the Amulet)

You'll need a ring of free action, Amulet of Reflection, Spell or ring of Levitation and Cure sickness . . .

I got stuck in the Elemental Plane of Air, just floating around in space looking for a door for 2 days kinda put me off the game . . . Hardest AI I've ever come across!

Nethack ... I never managed to get my hands on the real amulet. Though I did reach the bottom, I got killed by my pet troll while helpless... I'm still trying, though.

More on-topic:
The lack of map editor and separate mods strongly limit the game replayability. The expansion should provide some more hours of interesting gameplay, but I don't expect it to last as much as civ2 or moo last.

Cotal --

I'm inclined to believe that the Nethack endgame is only fun for masochists. The Elemental Plane of Fire, for instance, is just obscene -- you have to detect all the traps, then run into each one until you find the teleporter. It's almost as fun as looking for the Vibrating Square! Joy!

Somewhere along the line, the Dev Team confused "length of game" with "gameplay". I greatly prefer Angband, which -- while there's still some tedium, mostly when you're looking for stat-gain potions and building up an anti-Morgoth arsenal -- generally lacks misfeatures designed solely to frustrate the player.

As for GalCiv, the fixed tech tree and limited galaxy generation options hurt longevity somewhat I'd say. The former is particularly difficult to get around in a meaningful fashion.

Am I really seeing a reference to Atari VCS Adventure?



At least it's not Moria. YAWP == bug report. *shudders*

~SDC~

I agree that the tech tree is a problem. Too many things can't be modded in it (diplomacy, alliance, yellow stars map, government techs...), and the order in which ai's research techs.

Arturus Magi --

Could be. I never had an Atari (although I had friends who did), and thus never got into Adventure.

In Nethack, on the final maze level you need to wander around until you step on the vibrating square, then use the candelabrum, bell and book to create a staircase down. If memory serves, there is no method in the game to find that square except stumbling onto it.

What changes would you like in the tech tree?

Ultimately, it'd be good if it were somehow variable, so that research strategies (including those of AIs) would be forced to vary more.

At the extreme, one could do something like SMAC's "blind research" option, where one picks general areas on which to focus, but otherwise lacks fine control. A possibly simpler option would be to randomly tweak tech costs, possibly on a per-race basis. Preserving balance would be tricky, but it might be more interesting if the variance were large enough to seriously affect decision-making.

One particular note -- to promote at least some differences, it might be nice if the AIs were more eager to research the alignment-restricted techs. In addition, good races shouldn't be able to get much benefit out of evil tech -- e.g. the use of artificial slaves or life force power should cause substantial morale penalties as those are greatly opposed to societal values.

A big thing for modders would be to divorce the hard coded abilities from the IDs.

Stuff like new governments, being able to see yellow stars, being able to make an alliance, etc. are all chained to the tech ID. Exposing them as flags in the .tech files would enable us to completely redo the tech tree.

In addition, and this might already be in, for the AIs that use a predefined tech research path, it would be nice if they could fall back on a 'standard' research algorithm, if they can not see any of the techs on their list. IOW, if one were to completely rebuild the tech tree, and avoid using any of the existing IDs, these AIs would not be neutered, they would have a backup plan.

~SDC~

the AIs tend to trade techs among each other fairly heavily, so you wont find an AI very much different from the next AI (unless one has been bankrupt for the past few turns).

Twirlip!

Important Question! Did you get all the way through? In other words, should I bother finishing this Nethack Game I'm on . . .

Apparently if you drink a potion of object detection while confused (or caste that spell) you can see each of the elemental portals to the next level (but not the resonating square unfortunately). . With the Amulet (after you get it and pass through all the elemental planes) you go to Olympius (or whatever) and sacrifice it to yer god? Is that right?

Also Whats on the Elemental plain of water? (will I need the water breathing Amulet to get through it?) Anyone ?
I'm so close to finishing it (or am I) . . . :notsure:

Cotal --

Cursed gold detection scrolls also work to detect traps, if memory serves -- and that helps, since the portals are teleporter traps. Of course, on the plane of fire, most of 'em are fire traps, not the teleporter... at least the Amulet won't be sending you down a few levels anytime soon.

Yes, the amulet needs to be sacrificed on the Astral Plane, which is after all four elemental planes. Pick the correct altar (if memory serves, while the locations of the altars are fixed, which gets which alignment is random subject to the constraint that there's always one of each), and try to have a unicorn horn in case you run into Pestilence.

For water... if memory serves, both water breathing and certain boots will help, but it's been a while. If memory serves, the portal moves on that level (or was it just on the plane of Air?), so you need to periodically re-detect and adjust your course as best as you can.

Hey Arturus Magi, I still play moria.

B

does being called arturus magi mean you iz a king arthur fan? hang on, iz you King Arthur returned?

YES, exactly.

What I'd like also is:
-Ability to mod a race tech algorithm: Either standard or a preset list of techs/IDs, so I could tell one race to research something and another something else.
I'd like to be able to do a mod where I have techs with increasingly high cost in military, propulsion, range, production, all very separate, so that if you build a big military you can't go far, if you are fast, your ships are weak, and if you have a good production, you can only produce crappy ships. This would force the player to make choices. In particular, I want range to be limited to 0 to start with so you would have to spend lots of time on research in order to be able to expand at all. Those who would expand, if they meet a military culture, would be unable to take them, but the military would have to gain both range and speed before they have a chance to reach and damage the expanding civ.

WHATEVER


~SDC~

I do too, on occasion. It was specifically the 'YAWP == bug report' attitude the original Moria team had that I have a problem with.

(And incidentally, the Moria around today is not the Moria I was referring too, although the UMoria/PCMoria devs retained the attitude for a while. It wasn't until around the time Moria and Angband diverged that it finally started to die out.)



Yes, that is actually where I got the name from. I'm somewhat surprised that anyone recognized it, although given the general crowd around here, I shouldn't be. Latin isn't exactly obscure, even if it is more or less dead.

~SDC~