Vrogue: Vore Mod for Brogue (M/M) [Alpha Version 0.20.2]

[Myconid32]

Just a note as I attempt to solve the crashing bug: I appreciate that people are trying to send me saves in which they have crashed, but i can't open them in my debugger. They don't sync properly on a separate computer.

[Revx_Z]

That's weird. Although the sync is a fickle thing. Sometimes even my own saves desync too when attempting to load them; quitting the game and loading them again usually works.

Is there perhaps some way to disable the sync in test builds and only save game state, not game history?

[randomguy15]

this might possibly help with the crashing -

i only ever get a crash when a pred has swallowed something that is friendly to me (i've saved it and it follows me) and then tries to follow me up or down stairs with the friendly still inside it.

as in, reproduction steps - rescue something from inside a pred to make it friendly, make sure it follows you and doesn't get separated. go to the stairs, get the friendly swallowed by a pred. make sure the pred spots you after and is aggressive. now head down/up stairs. the game crashes ~5 turns later.

i don't get a crash if an aggressive pred is following me down/up stairs and has a hostile creature inside it. the crash also applies to jumping down chasms and being followed by rocs which have friendlies inside them, too.

as an aside, i love the game

[warbrand4]

I can confirm this, my save that has the crash, this happens when a roc moves over the gap with the bandit that was following me is eaten by it.

[Myconid32]

as in, reproduction steps - rescue something from inside a pred to make it friendly, make sure it follows you and doesn't get separated. go to the stairs, get the friendly swallowed by a pred. make sure the pred spots you after and is aggressive. now head down/up stairs. the game crashes ~5 turns later.

I released a bug fix last night (see the top of the thread) and I can't reproduce this error in that version. Try downloading the newest game and see if you can still make this bug occur.

[Kunnati]

I don't suppose there's going to be another easy mode for the game, is there? I can't find a way to increase my strength to be able to wield better weapons.

[Deioth]

I don't suppose there's going to be another easy mode for the game, is there? I can't find a way to increase my strength to be able to wield better weapons.

Drink potions. Some are strength potions. Once you find a strength potion, you'll know which ones are for the remainder of that playthrough. You may want to consider reading the base Brogue's wiki for a quick run down on the mechanics.

[Myconid32]

I don't suppose there's going to be another easy mode for the game, is there? I can't find a way to increase my strength to be able to wield better weapons.

Drink potions. Some are strength potions. Once you find a strength potion, you'll know which ones are for the remainder of that playthrough. You may want to consider reading the base Brogue's wiki for a quick run down on the mechanics.

The planned difficulty curve of the game starts will start out easy but rely increasingly on finding/drinking Potions of Life and Strength as you go deeper. They even extend to the vore mod, since Potions of Life make it more difficult for enemies to swallow you and heal the Wounded status, while Potions of Strength will boost your struggle damage when swallowed. This will be simplified if you use the Educated toggle (once the final version is released, anyway), as the potions will be clearly labeled.

[gman6500]

Have you ever thought about a mode that would let you play on after you die as the thing that digested you. An example would be that you were eaten and digested by a dire wolf, you become that wolf and go around eating things and going through the dungeon but other preds can eat you. If you get eaten by another pred, you become that pred until you get eaten by a apex pred. Then you can eat whatever but you still have to worry about other apex preds. This mode would be activate able like easy mode. I hope you give this a read mycon!

[Nibor]

I'm for that idea!

[Kunnati]

Okay, I finally got to level 30 before a message appeared in red, saying something like there is something "lurking underneath," but nothing is there, so I'm presuming there's going to be a boss at that level eventually. Everything went smoothly, no crashes or anything this time.

I'm just hoping for some werewolf CV to happen when I face them next time. Other than that, I can't wait to see some new enemies appear. It looks very promising.

[AceTheAvenger]

Have you ever thought about a mode that would let you play on after you die as the thing that digested you. An example would be that you were eaten and digested by a dire wolf, you become that wolf and go around eating things and going through the dungeon but other preds can eat you. If you get eaten by another pred, you become that pred until you get eaten by a apex pred. Then you can eat whatever but you still have to worry about other apex preds. This mode would be activate able like easy mode. I hope you give this a read mycon!

YES. OH MY GOODNESS YES.

Devourment in Skyrim did that, and it's my ALL TIME FAVORITE feature of that mod!!

[Myconid32]

Have you ever thought about a mode that would let you play on after you die as the thing that digested you. An example would be that you were eaten and digested by a dire wolf, you become that wolf and go around eating things and going through the dungeon but other preds can eat you. If you get eaten by another pred, you become that pred until you get eaten by a apex pred. Then you can eat whatever but you still have to worry about other apex preds. This mode would be activate able like easy mode. I hope you give this a read mycon!

Maybe someone can add that feature once the game becomes open-source, but I won't be including it in my final version. It makes too little sense in the context of the game's setting (which won't be clear until I add more story-related content).

[Snowytiggy]

okay. I have to echo the sentiments of a few previous posters: the random generated loot needs to be tweaked to be slightly less random. I've had several playthroughs so far. a lot get cut off by 5-7 because either a lack of armor, or lack of weapons, or lack of potions, or getting cursed armor or weps.

Then as a stark contrast my current play through where I had attained a +2 regen ring and a str and life potion on floor one, and by floor 6 I had gotten a +3 chain mail of mutuality, sharing incoming damage with enemies and a +7 ring of regen. From that point on I breeezed on through to level 20 and beat the troggmother without any problems, then flew down to level 30, despite the lack of enemies, and got the message "an alien presence threatens to overwhelm you" but coudn't find anything on the level aside from lumenstones.

Essentially pure luck of the draw makes you fragile as china or impervious as adamant. some playthroughs I'm hiding desperately in the corners and clawing my way out of preds every other turn, and others I can jump into a chasm, war axe ablazing and slash everything to pieces, then when bored I can go willing and kill all preds from the inside.

I would suggest maybe making one wep or armor per floor guranteed? and maybe one positive potion?

I'm reeeeeeally tired, so this is hard to articulate. anyway, hope that helps some. let me know when predation by the player is implemented :3

[Revx_Z]

okay. I have to echo the sentiments of a few previous posters: the random generated loot needs to be tweaked to be slightly less random.

I would suggest maybe making one wep or armor per floor guranteed? and maybe one positive potion?

In the spirit of constructive criticism, I would suggest another possible way to handle this: consider letting the respawning monsters drop new loot, random or not.

As I see it, the problem isn't the random loot by itself, but the combination of random loot that can be terrible or awesome plus low loot rates which make the random factor extra important in any particular drop plus limited amount of drops that can "run out" which means that bad luck in one playthrough won't be compensated for by future good luck until you die and start a new playthrough, so some games just get stuck.

There doesn't seem to be any easy fix. None of the three factors are an obvious choice for changing:

• Not-quite-random loot betrays the spirit of the roguelike, allowing players to get into a rut, relying on the guaranteed loot rather than adapting to what they find
• high drop rates will deluge the dungeon in +0 daggers and potions of confusion and lot of other junk
• unlimited drops allow people to grind the first floor until they get a ring of regeneration or whatever (you could make such rings only appear at depth X or greater, but then people will grind depth X instead)

If I had to pick one, I'd go with unlimited drops but encourage people to avoid excessive grinding/level scumming by having monsters from deeper floors wander up if the player stays on the same floor too long.

---

On an unrelated note, I'm loosely hoping that the final product will feature at least one new monster appearing per dungeon level to keep things interesting. How close are we to having that in terms of number of monsters - and approximately how much time do we contributors have if we want to write more monsters and send them in before feature freeze?

[Deioth]

From the sounds of it, certain toggles should help a lot for those who aren't too keen on or too good with roguelike games due to the randomness, so we just need to wait for them. The current pre-release beta makes it ridiculously easy for me so far, though. Employing a bit of strategy could get to to level 6 with just default equipment now. Sergals, Feris, and Hawk Kin are going to be too strong, but you might be able to get through goblins now. Digestion damage was really reduced across the board (even prey don't seem to get harmed) and you can tear out of any pred just about in only a couple of turns right now.

[Salanth]

From the sounds of it, certain toggles should help a lot for those who aren't too keen on or too good with roguelike games due to the randomness, so we just need to wait for them. The current pre-release beta makes it ridiculously easy for me so far, though. Employing a bit of strategy could get to to level 6 with just default equipment now. Sergals, Feris, and Hawk Kin are going to be too strong, but you might be able to get through goblins now. Digestion damage was really reduced across the board (even prey don't seem to get harmed) and you can tear out of any pred just about in only a couple of turns right now.

It seems like you got the "broken" version, like I got first. The newest version should have a changelog in the brouge folder and is definitely harder than the broken version. Still significantly easier then the original version though.

[Snowytiggy]

well, from what I've seen there are not respawning monsters, but a finite number. I cleared down to level 30 and then walked all the way back up. only encountered like 4 enemies on floors 1-10 that I had gone throuhg and cleared. a few more on later levels that I skipped through, but having cleared floor one, gone down all the way to 30, exploring all sides of the floors, then coming back up and re examining weapons on the floor, getting to floor one and walking around it to find not one wolf suggests there are no respawns. A finite number of monsters, and I've not seen them drop any loot save for bandits dropping what they've already stolen.

[RakeVuri]

well, from what I've seen there are not respawning monsters, but a finite number. I cleared down to level 30 and then walked all the way back up. only encountered like 4 enemies on floors 1-10 that I had gone throuhg and cleared. a few more on later levels that I skipped through, but having cleared floor one, gone down all the way to 30, exploring all sides of the floors, then coming back up and re examining weapons on the floor, getting to floor one and walking around it to find not one wolf suggests there are no respawns. A finite number of monsters, and I've not seen them drop any loot save for bandits dropping what they've already stolen.

It's quite the contrary, I found a Charm of Telepathy, and I occasionally I see monsters spawning in empty rooms. You could contribute that to them dropping between levels, but it's clearly not that if I'm on level 1 and they're appearing randomly. It's just once you get to level 20ish that there are no vorish monsters that spawn. You just need to keep an eye out for traps.

Speaking of that, I have a completed file where I got the amulet and saved right at the entrance of level 1. Complete with +9 Ring of Transferance and a drained Wand of Polymorphism. Feel free to download it if you feel like messing around in the lower levels and seeing all the monsters.
Note that it won't work the first time you load it, it'll give you a playback error. Just quit to menu and try loading it again, it should work the second or third time.

Okay, seeing as how I can't attach the save file, here: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/kbiy9inzjr02mx ... broguesave

[Kunnati]

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