[HN Gopher] Going Rogue
___________________________________________________________________
Going Rogue
Author : doppp
Score : 116 points
Date : 2023-07-07 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| ourmandave wrote:
| _Next time, we'll learn how one of the most popular of all the
| slick commercial games of the late 1990s grew out of this odd
| little corner of hackerdom..._
|
| I wonder what game he's talking about. Have to circle back
| sometime or subscribe to their RSS feed.
| acheron wrote:
| (It's Diablo.)
| mtsr wrote:
| Diablo, I guess.
|
| It's got quite clear rogue influences.
| talloaktrees wrote:
| at the time when Diablo came out it was clear it was a
| polished, graphical version of Nethack
| troft wrote:
| [dead]
| omgmajk wrote:
| Very very intriguing. Always liked roguelikes and now I might
| have a nethack addiction.
| kjs3 wrote:
| There is no cure.
| the_af wrote:
| Very interesting read.
|
| I didn't expect to also end up reading about the Digital
| Antiquarian's take on Mao's Cultural Revolution, but I simply
| _had_ to follow his link in the opening paragraphs of this
| article.
| sfink wrote:
| Great article, but it did give me the "an elephant is like a
| rope" feeling--it seems like it's one person's idiosyncratic
| perspective, some of which I agree with and some I disagree with,
| and there isn't really much justification for changing my mind
| about the parts where we differ.
|
| A couple of specific things that jumped out at me, as someone who
| lived through this (and got hooked for varying amounts of time on
| several roguelikes and roguelites):
|
| I strongly disagree that today's world has the _best_ of open
| source & proprietary. (Also, omitting any mention of Free
| software is a little odd.) We do have a mix, but it's neither the
| best nor the worst to be had. The proprietary mindset has
| infected the "programmers with free time" community, to the
| extent that one reason why you don't see ambitious user-facing
| projects is because the profit motive has drained away enough
| energy and talent that the engine of open source development just
| kind of sputters along until things start to risk taking off, at
| which point someone will come up with an idea for monetization.
| And monetization kills the "true" open source spirit dead.
|
| On a related note, pointing fingers at open source games for
| lackluster design and poor user centric thinking is a little
| ironic, given that _the exact same thing_ ails today 's
| commercial game scene. Loot boxes and more subtle forms of the
| same thing have largely destroyed the freedom and original
| thinking that used to create interestingly novel experiences. We
| had a period where the indie scene carried that torch, but it has
| now been subverted in much the same way as the open source scene.
|
| There are plenty of individuals or small groups out there who
| still have the fire, but it seems like getting any traction
| (whether by growing a community or gaining users/players) brings
| those people in too close of contact with the poisonous influence
| of profit or fame or whatever, and it takes a strong character
| and quite a bit of privilege to resist those influences.
| Temptation is everywhere.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > The proprietary mindset has infected the "programmers with
| free time" community ...
|
| I don't know whether there is a difference between today and
| twenty something years ago. Anyway, as long as one has not
| enough money to live on passive income, time is money. So one
| has to somehow monetize on one's one time and skill. This is
| not poisonous. Earning money is just a matter of life, because
| one needs money to live from (or someone else has to pay the
| bills).
|
| I had a quite popular open source project about two decades
| ago. A lot of people used it (there were more than 300 people
| on the projects mailing list alone), and many of them also for
| commercial purposes. There was an option to donate to the
| project; but when I remember it correctly, I recieved only a
| single donation in all the years. However, I considered my open
| source work as a kind of quid pro quo for all the free software
| I use. But when the project ended, I had no motivation to
| invest any more time in another open source project, because I
| considered my "debt" repaid and moved on to other kinds of
| social engagement.
| sfink wrote:
| Having been involved in at least some degree over that
| period, yes there is a large difference. Not a simple one;
| there are both good and bad differences. (I would guess that
| the raw amount of open source code produced today is rather
| larger, for example.)
|
| > So one has to somehow monetize on one's one time and skill.
| This is not poisonous.
|
| It is not poisonous in general. I get paid for programming,
| and don't have a problem with others getting paid for
| programming. But the "monetize all the things" mindset is
| indeed poisonous to the original heart of the open source
| community, where people are motivated by the desire to share
| and are making decisions that are consciously aligned with
| growing the strength and health of this open source
| community.
|
| They can coexist, but there is tension and cannibalization
| between them[1]. It's more of an ecosystem. Two populations
| are living side by side with blurred edges between them. Some
| rate of defections from one to the other. An environment that
| encourages one and not the other can hugely alter the size
| and health of one of the populations, and that's what we've
| seen happen: many aspects of the environment have shifted to
| encourage the profit-driven crowd, to the point where the
| share and share alike crowd are looking anemic. It's not
| about one being good and the other bad, it's more like an
| invasive species lowering biodiversity and making all of us
| worse off.
|
| Think of it as value creation vs value capture, if that works
| better for you. My claim is that the community has swung too
| far in the value capture direction. Most work these days that
| looks like the older model is actually being funded by
| massive value-capturing organizations; they're just capturing
| the value from somewhere else. I applaud such contributions,
| but don't pretend that they're passion projects of civic-
| minded individuals anymore.
|
| I'm not going to look down on someone who works for money.
| It's not a bad thing to do, and there are good reasons why
| they might even want to do things differently but cannot.
| It's just that they're not part of the particular community I
| care about, and I am interested in the health of _that_
| community.
|
| [1] Ok, monetization generally cannibalizes open source and
| not the other way around.
| handwarmers wrote:
| The criticism of open source software the author presented is a
| lot more nuanced, and I for one agree with it. Even long before
| loot boxes etc, the overwhelming majority of "original thinking
| that used to create interestingly novel experiences" in gaming
| did not originate from the OSS community.
|
| It is a completely different story when it comes to non-gaming
| software though.
| chubot wrote:
| [on open source] _As for the ideas they introduced into the
| public discourse: they were real, valid, and in many ways
| incredibly valuable, but in the end they would be woven into the
| fabric of existing corporate-software production practices rather
| than burning down the old ways wholesale._
|
| Ouch
|
| _For rigid ideology seldom makes a good fit with the real world;
| pragmatically mixed national economies, for example, succeed
| vastly better than dogmatically capitalist or communist ones._
|
| Agree with this too, you need diversity in ideas / ideology
| flyinghamster wrote:
| A nice read, and it was nice to learn the back story of rogue.
| One slight correction: PLATO was at the University of Illinois
| (Urbana-Champaign), not Chicago. I think there were some
| terminals at UIC, but not U _of_ C.
|
| There was another rogue clone that I remember grabbing from
| Usenet back in the day, by Tim Stoehr. It was intended to be as
| direct a clone as possible (nethack was already a thing by thing
| by then). I implemented hand grenades in my long-lost copy.
|
| https://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Rogue_Clone
|
| Unfortunately, link rot has set in. Only the Sourceforge link
| still works:
|
| https://rogueclone.sourceforge.net/
|
| It seems to be a DOS/Windows port.
| arp242 wrote:
| It just so happens I did some work on "rogue clone" a few weeks
| ago - this will run on most modern systems (AFAIK) and has a
| few convenience enhancements: https://github.com/arp242/rogue-
| clone
| lordfrito wrote:
| Brings back fond memories of stumbling across moria on some unix
| system I was using when I was an intern for the Air Force back in
| 91 or so. There's something about that style of gameplay that
| immediately draws you in (that is, if you're the type that "gets"
| it).
|
| Also, filfre.net is a treasure.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I was a save-scummer. I played Nethack locally, and save-scumming
| was the only way that I could make meaningful progress beyond the
| noob levels. Yeah, I knew all the spoilers by heart, I knew the
| secrets, I had access to the rumors and the Wiki, but I had some
| bad habits that led to YASD every time, such as hoarding
| everything in inventory, melee attacks when ranged would be
| better, not making much use of spells or magic, and I would often
| forget that I was carrying a particular item that would be
| perfect for a particular situation, so I'd die with it still
| unused.
|
| So save-scumming was my solution. Sometimes I played in Wizard
| mode, but I enjoyed save-scumming immensely, and it allowed me to
| get quite far, especially to the Castle and drawbridge level, and
| even sometimes down to Gehennom.
|
| I did reach the Astral Plane a few times, but I never actually
| ascended as far as I can recall, but frankly, after the Castle
| level, the game gets kind of boring and unfair for me. I never
| liked the Wizard's harrassment as you climb back up the dungeon,
| level by level. Also all the curses really got me down. Save-
| scumming can really only take you so far if you're not an expert
| at planning and execution too.
|
| I quit playing Nethack entirely a few years ago. I have moral
| objections to worshipping false gods, even if it's "just a game".
| But I bow to the genius of the Developers Who Think of
| Everything, especially Ken Arromdee, who's played the same
| MUDs/MUCKs as me, and is also an occasional Wikipedia editor.
| runesofdoom wrote:
| Curses can be addressed by: 1) blessing everything that matters
| before you start your ascension 2) carrying inventory in an
| oilskin sack (which will work fine while cursed, and protect
| items inside it from being cursed) 3) carrying holy water
| and/or scrolls of remove curse 4) knowing the remove curse
| spell 5) certain Artifacts and armor will reduce the effect of
| curses on your inventory 6) carrying a lot of lightweight junk
| as a curse "buffer" so that curses will have a lower chance of
| hitting something critical 7) wielding Magicbane, that blocks
| 95% of curses.
|
| A lot of this is really just, as mentioned, time spent on
| planning and execution.
| Enk1du wrote:
| Nethack was promoted to me as a good way to learn how to cursor
| around in vi (hjkl keys)
|
| I always played the Tourist and managed to get all the way to
| Level 3 after I learned how to use the +3 Nikon effectively.
| Everyone knew who the ghost belonged to as well.
| pmontra wrote:
| In proud to say that I graduated in CS in the 90s despite
| countless hours of Nethack. I never ascended though.
| dopu wrote:
| Have been really enjoying Brogue lately. Besides the difficult,
| turn-based gameplay (decision making is more cerebral than
| reactive), I think ASCII graphics are part of what makes these
| games so enrapturing. Our brains are incredible at constructing
| rich narratives from limited information.
| colinflane wrote:
| Brogue is genuinely beautiful. I know pure roguelikes should be
| white ascii on black, but it's incredible what a little color
| can do. And the way it handles dynamic events in its
| environments. Really makes the cave "biome" come alive.
| djur wrote:
| Even the original Rogue had color and graphical tiles as soon
| as it was ported to systems that supported them. I'm sure
| there are people out there who think "true" roguelikes have
| to be monochrome but I'm lucky to never have met them.
| somat wrote:
| For me the funnest way to play nethack was with a copy of the
| source nearby. It's cheating of course, but it is the fun sort of
| cheating. I always thought of it like being a monk or wizard,
| journeying forth armed with the hidden secrets of the world.
|
| I never did beat the game, but My most memorable experience was
| once when I was messing around in wizard mode(a sort
| debug/creative mode to try things out in) and summoned a high
| level demon for grins and giggles, which promptly killed me. I
| did not think much of it at the time. but nethack, when you die,
| writes a bones file with what you had on what level and what
| killed you. it normally lets you find what killed you and a
| chance to get your stuff back. But now my nethack install is
| tainted with Juiblex, the faceless evil, on dungeon level level
| 2. I probable could have fixed it but it made the game hilarious,
| every play through containing a mad dash through level 2 and
| fervent usually unanswered prayers that the infernal thing would
| not follow you to the next level.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I watched an extremely cool talk in college where a professor
| showed off some of the functionality of gdb by hooking it up to
| a running copy of Nethack and using it for various cheating. It
| was a bit over my head at the time but still felt pretty
| magical.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| In my opinion, source diving and using spoilers aren't
| cheating, if only because the games are so thoroughly
| randomized. You can know everything about your inventory, but
| one misstep and you're toast. Any ascension is as much a matter
| of luck as it is of skill.
|
| > Juiblex, the faceless evil, on dungeon level level 2.
|
| LOL! Wands of polymorph can result in interesting monsters
| showing up in early-level bones files. Nothing like waltzing
| down to level 3 and getting digested by a purple worm named
| Spud...
| LexiMax wrote:
| > Any ascension is as much a matter of luck as it is of
| skill.
|
| Is it? Admittedly, I've only fooled around with NetHack
| occasionally, but from observing good players it was my
| impression that with encyclopedic knowledge of the game,
| ascending can be done pretty consistently, barring some
| _incredibly_ unlucky happenstance or attention-related
| carelessness.
| moomin wrote:
| When I was a student, a lot of people played on one guy's
| machine. I got lucky with a polymorph trap and by dog became
| a Xorn. Inevitably I died and that bones file became the
| absolute bane of the other player's existence.
|
| Someone finally beat it and then, of course, conscripted me
| to spend the next half hour trying to remember what exactly
| I'd dropped.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > Any ascension is as much a matter of luck as it is of
| skill.
|
| There are people who can consistently ascend on nearly every
| run, if they pick a favorable class.
|
| It requires extremely careful play and encyclopedic knowledge
| of all the little tricks to avoid danger. There are a lot of
| them in the game, and so long as you remember that the game
| is turn-based and that so long as you are careful, you can
| almost always just leave if things look hairy.
| runesofdoom wrote:
| <raises hand>
|
| I played Nethack a lot during school. The only obstacles to
| ascending any character were my free time, patience,
| ability to stay focused, and occassionally the unfavorable
| early-game RNG.
| jmclnx wrote:
| As a rogue addict, nice read. But rogue is a gateway drug to the
| nethacks :)
|
| * ssh nethack@alt.org
|
| * ssh nethack@hf
|
| * ssh play@server.gnollhack.com
|
| * ssh slashem@slashem.me
| anthk wrote:
| Ditto, I play Slashem daily. My deepest level it's been 13 or
| 17, but I won't surrender. Also, IF games and csokoban games.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Since it's a hard google: Interactive Fiction
| nineplay wrote:
| This is all I need, I'm already trying to break my Larn
| addiction. (/s)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I liked Larn (and Omega). I wasted many hours on Larn.
|
| Author didn't go into the fact that some of these games
| arrived with PCs; AFAIK there was never a Unix version of
| Larn.
| m463 wrote:
| I thought larn was unix-only
|
| EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larn_(video_game)
|
| (I think I recall playing larn because it was one of the
| roguelikes available on unix)
| nineplay wrote:
| Whatever you do, don't visit https://larn.org. You'll
| never get that time back
| pinewurst wrote:
| That's not at all true. I played Larn on an Ultrix VAX 8600
| circa 1987.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| My wrong. It was written for Unix.
|
| Well, I guess there's something funny with the license;
| it's not packaged for Debian, and I can't remember a time
| when it was.
| djur wrote:
| Larn has a noncommercial license, so it's nonfree by
| Debian standards.
| anthk wrote:
| I think Larn had a free clone called ularn.
| tux3 wrote:
| (hf here is hardfought.org)
| guestbest wrote:
| Why not just connect to a MUD?
| hfkwer wrote:
| That's a completely different kind of game. Roguelikes are
| single-player games, MUDs are multiplayer games. Roguelikes
| usually feature permadeath, MUDs rarely do. It's the
| difference between an RPG and a MMORPG.
| anthk wrote:
| Also Nethack offers a turn based top down gameplay
| simulated with ASCII chars, MUDs are real time or almost
| real time based with a wall of text and prompt based, like
| a text adventure.
| guessbest wrote:
| I don't think anyone plays MUDs with plain telnet. Just
| use a client with an automapper like tintin++
| anthk wrote:
| Or kbtin.
| tnecniv wrote:
| On top of what others have said, the advantage to using one
| of these remote versions (besides removing the need for a
| local install), is that they often provide support for
| arcade-style features like leaderboards and the ability to
| watch other players games either live or as replays.
| kibwen wrote:
| Newcomers to old-school roguelikes may find Dungeon Crawl Stone
| Soup more accessible as an entry point to the genre, which can
| be played in a graphical interface in your web browser via
| https://crawl.develz.org/play.htm or via classic SSH interface
| at joshua@crawl.akrasiac.org (password "joshua").
| awayto wrote:
| You can install it locally as well and play in your terminal.
|
| https://crawl.develz.org/download.htm#linux
| adamrezich wrote:
| I've been playing DCSS super casually, on-and-off, for well
| over a decade now, and the last time I checked in, it felt
| like they've perhaps sanded _too many_ of the sharp edges
| off. I _enjoyed_ the hunger system. butchering creatures into
| chunks for my kobold to eat was fun. throwing potions was
| cool. the identification minigame was good classic roguelike
| fun, and cursed equipment was fun. I could go on and on.
|
| I understand that they have to keep updating it to keep it
| fresh for long-time super-experienced players, but it's like
| an entirely different game now, compared to the one I first
| played years and years ago.
| kibwen wrote:
| The online servers for DCSS often host old versions if
| you'd prefer to play those; crawl.akrasiac.org hosts
| versions back through 0.11 (released in 2012). Given that
| it's so easy to play old versions, I'm happy that the devs
| are open to toy with getting rid of sacred cows in the new
| versions.
|
| Also, item identification still exists, even if everything
| else you mentioned has been changed in some way. :P
| adamrezich wrote:
| identification is still a thing, but iirc cursed items
| aren't a thing anymore?
|
| but yeah, it's nice to be able to go back and play older
| versions, but at this point I don't even know which
| version I would like to play. I'm fine with playing trunk
| here and there, it's just interesting to see a long-term
| project like this gradually shift focus over time.
|
| I just liked playing as a kobold berserker, a
| cannibalistic little bastard tooling around a dungeon,
| getting into trouble, killing stuff and chopping it into
| chunks to eat, and occasionally being rewarded by my
| blood god.
| anthk wrote:
| DCSS is more combat oriented, Nethack/Slashem about thinking
| out of the box and doing crazy stuff to survive in critical
| places/situations.
| cptroot wrote:
| That was a nice read! I would have loved to take a brief dip into
| the less hardcore rogue-lite scene that sprung up, but that might
| have doubled the length again.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| It's a surprisingly late place for this in Filfre's overall
| story.
|
| So much of the early Filfre content was Zork focused, and
| Zork's Coconut of Quendor is such a direct nod to the Amulet of
| Yendor, that I would have expected this entry very early on in
| the Digital Antiquarian.
|
| I am interested to see what narrative threads lead him to hold
| this subject for such a late exposition.
| djur wrote:
| It's the setup for discussing Diablo.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-07 23:01 UTC)