Castle characters

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Hey everyone, in my roguelike I'm having trouble deciding which would
be the best character to use in castles.

This isn't the evil-lord dungeon-like scary castle, it belongs to the
emperor, who is a good guy. The traditional # character wouldnt work
because when a player sees that, he thinks, "scary".

However, I can't think of any tiles more suited to being a wall. I
mean, it's heavier than most characters.

What other character is good enough to be a wall?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Maybe the equals sign? Many *bands use grey 'blank' tiles for walls.

I think the trick to making it look less malign has less to do with the
wall character and more to do with lighting, layout, and maybe textual
tone (if its possible, try to give the text output of the commands a
more uplifting feel?). You can also add little 'splashes' like
tapestries, red velvet carpets (red ground tiles), and stained-glass
windows to various rooms, so as adventurers explore, they feel warmer
with those details.

 

[Thomas]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

The plus sign would work well if it wasn't also a door.... maybe a
yellow plus...

a * would also work

**************
*
*
*
*

or

+++++++++++
+
+
+
++++++ ++++
+
+

I would say, just experiment.

-Thomas
RL: CHAZM

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

I think the plus signs look spiky and uninviting personally, but again,
as long as the atmosphere was right...

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

At 8 Aug 2005 20:48:52 -0700,
Verdagon wrote:

> Hey everyone, in my roguelike I'm having trouble deciding which would
> be the best character to use in castles.
>
> This isn't the evil-lord dungeon-like scary castle, it belongs to the
> emperor, who is a good guy. The traditional # character wouldnt work
> because when a player sees that, he thinks, "scary".
>
> However, I can't think of any tiles more suited to being a wall. I
> mean, it's heavier than most characters.
>
> What other character is good enough to be a wall?

Rogue and NetHack used line-drawing characters, like this:

+----+
|....|
|....-....
+----+

Moria and probably some old *bands used '%' character for mineral
veins and other 'special' kinds of walls.

ZAngband, IIRC, uses '*' for some kinds of unpassable terrain(mostly
trees).

The ':' character usually denotes some kind of obstruction in *bands,
altrought it's rather small and can be easily mixed with floor tiles.

If you don't need all letters for monsters, you could also use characters
like 'X', 'H' or 'M'. Also '8' and '0' seem to be pretty 'large'.

But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Oo) 3 Eh?
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

The Sheep ha escrito:

> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.

Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of

But might be less scary if it is colored differently, because we always
see it grey for dungeons. Could be white or yellow for castles, meaning
that it is a well lit, quiet place.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Ah! I see. So it's all in the coloring... good idea.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

At 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700,
Kaleth wrote:

> The Sheep ha escrito:
>
>> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
>
> Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of
>
> But might be less scary if it is colored differently, because we always
> see it grey for dungeons. Could be white or yellow for castles, meaning
> that it is a well lit, quiet place.

Pink! Make all the walls of dungeon pink and fluffy, covered with
friendly-looking fur.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Oo) 3 Eh?
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

On 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700, "Kaleth" <unodejunio@gmail.com> wrote:

>The Sheep ha escrito:
>
>> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
>
>Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of

Yeah, *stone*, same as a castle. Frankly, I've never considered the
*walls* threatening. Monsters, yes. Traps, yes. Walls, no.

>But might be less scary if it is colored differently, because we always
>see it grey for dungeons. Could be white or yellow for castles, meaning
>that it is a well lit, quiet place.

Yeah, because castles are so well-lit and quiet. I guess you have a high
fantasy castle in mind.

--
R. Dan Henry = danhenry@inreach.com

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

The other item I was thikning about has nothing to do with color or
characters, but more with design.

A good-guy castle should probably be less labyrinth and more spacious.
Have a courtyard in the center, wide (2x or 3x) hallways, double doors
for larger rooms (like a throne room), etc. In a normal dungeon,
details like that probably matter less since you're more or less
concerned with how Dungeon Crawl will try to kill you next, but in a
pleasant castle, it certainly helps the atmosphere. This is true for
conventional console RPGs as well - look at the details in a dungeon
(cave walls, some doors, maybe some statues.. oooh!) v. town
(bookcases, desks, chairs, maybe some farm animals).

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

At Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:23:47 -0700,
R Dan Henry wrote:

> On 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700, "Kaleth" <unodejunio@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The Sheep ha escrito:
>>
>>> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
>>
>>Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of
>
> Yeah, *stone*, same as a castle. Frankly, I've never considered the
> *walls* threatening. Monsters, yes. Traps, yes. Walls, no.

You could have a collapsing wall trap
"The wall collapses on you. You die..."

Or, maybe, a spiked wall, which isn't as safe to bump into as normal
walls. Which would work as something more than 'hah! gotcha!' if there's
a way to push creatures against their will.

Of course there are those illusory walls you can pass trough. But they
aren't really dangerous, just annoying.

In Larn, AFAIR there was a wand shooting out walls -- you could get
embedded. It was a killer for most monsters.

You could have some kind of a 'wall monster', a close relative of Mimic or
Xerox, that would disguise itself as walls and do surprise attacks.

Some kinds of walls could be especially 'fat', blocking most of the
corridor and working similar to diagonal passage in NetHack.

In Rogue you could die a horrible death when your potion stopped working
when you were in the middle of passing through a wall.

Kicking a wall in NetHack isn't very safe.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Qq) 3 Sob?
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

R. Dan Henry ha escrito:

> On 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700, "Kaleth" <unodejunio@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >The Sheep ha escrito:
> >
> >> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
> >
> >Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of
>
> Yeah, *stone*, same as a castle. Frankly, I've never considered the
> *walls* threatening. Monsters, yes. Traps, yes. Walls, no.

Well, it could be some kind of stone golem guard embedded into a hole
in the wall, coming to life when an adventurer got near him

> >But might be less scary if it is colored differently, because we always
> >see it grey for dungeons. Could be white or yellow for castles, meaning
> >that it is a well lit, quiet place.
>
> Yeah, because castles are so well-lit and quiet. I guess you have a high
> fantasy castle in mind.

Why, of course. That's the type I thought Verdagon was trying to
represent in his game.

> --
> R. Dan Henry = danhenry@inreach.com

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

R. Dan Henry <danhenry@inreach.com> writes:
> On 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700, "Kaleth" <unodejunio@gmail.com> wrote:
> >The Sheep ha escrito:
> >
> >> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
> >
> >Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of
>
> Yeah, *stone*, same as a castle. Frankly, I've never considered the
> *walls* threatening. Monsters, yes. Traps, yes. Walls, no.

ADoM has wall beasts and living walls. Meet a few of them and you
start considering the walls threatening, especially if you get a
situation like this, as I once did:

#/#/#
#.#.# The wall beast hits you!
##.#.##
....#@..
##.#.##
#.#.#

I had a hedge maze level based on a similar principle.

--
Chris

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Chris Morris wrote:

> ADoM has wall beasts and living walls. Meet a few of them and you
> start considering the walls threatening, especially if you get a
> situation like this, as I once did:
>
> #/#/#
> #.#.# The wall beast hits you!
> ##.#.##
> ...#@..
> ##.#.##
> #.#.#

nice, are the beasts the whole wall, or just 1 square?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

On 11 Aug 2005 10:07:59 +0100, Chris Morris <c.i.morris@durham.ac.uk>
wrote:

>R. Dan Henry <danhenry@inreach.com> writes:
>> On 9 Aug 2005 15:57:15 -0700, "Kaleth" <unodejunio@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >The Sheep ha escrito:
>> >
>> >> But I really can't see anything 'evil' in the '#' character.
>> >
>> >Well, # is the material that cursed dungeons are made of
>>
>> Yeah, *stone*, same as a castle. Frankly, I've never considered the
>> *walls* threatening. Monsters, yes. Traps, yes. Walls, no.
>
>ADoM has wall beasts and living walls. Meet a few of them and you
>start considering the walls threatening, especially if you get a
>situation like this, as I once did:

Zangband had wall mimics, too, long ago. Silly monsters don't make walls
scary, IME, they just break any immersion and if mimics have that effect
on you *any* symbol is *oooh spooky*, so that doesn't help the OP.

--
R. Dan Henry = danhenry@inreach.com

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

"jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com" <jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com> writes:
> Chris Morris wrote:
> > ADoM has wall beasts and living walls. Meet a few of them and you
> > start considering the walls threatening, especially if you get a
> > situation like this, as I once did:
> >
> > #/#/#
> > #.#.# The wall beast hits you!
> > ##.#.##
> > ...#@..
> > ##.#.##
> > #.#.#
>
> nice, are the beasts the whole wall, or just 1 square?

Just a single square. Normally they look like this:

###+####
#......#
..@...#.# Spot the wall beast. This one's easier
#......#
########

but that one (just to the left of the PC) was in exactly the right
place to blend in to the wall.

While it's theoretically possible, if very unlikely, you could also
get a wall beast like this after some digging has taken place:
#########
.....@.... Spot where someone killed a wall beast before going on to
####.#### attack every single wall in the dungeon just in case...
###

You could also, in theory, get a horde of wall beasts or living walls,
though I've never heard of one of those.
###########
+######/@..
########### Spot the living walls.
########
##+#####

--
Chris

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Chris Morris wrote:
> "jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com" <jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com> writes:
> > Chris Morris wrote:
> > > ADoM has wall beasts and living walls.
IIRC, ADoM has a "look" function- to identify a square. does this
incidental action perchance, reveal the fake? that is, does the
creature blend in with walls to the character, or just the player?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

At 12 Aug 2005 13:46:56 -0700,
jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com wrote:

>
> Chris Morris wrote:
>> "jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com" <jasonnorthrup@yahoo.com> writes:
>> > Chris Morris wrote:
>> > > ADoM has wall beasts and living walls.
> IIRC, ADoM has a "look" function- to identify a square. does this
> incidental action perchance, reveal the fake? that is, does the
> creature blend in with walls to the character, or just the player?

Depends on the version, but there's a tendency to fix this as bugs.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
<..> ] 0110110?
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .