Open Vore Rogue Like R4a

[JustAQuinn]

2. Dragon has only two frames of art that are each 32 pixels wide. That is why it works fine with 32. If you have 3 24 pixel wide images on the sprite sheet then yes you'll have to adjust the width value.
edit: Just to clarify, what I mean is that nothing is wrong with the way the art is imported. It's working as intended.

The image is 64x32 though, so two 32x32 images. I've added the image and data as attachments.

>inescapable-10

oh that sounds fair :O

[CorenD]

I have made a quick edit to the Dragon that was released in the most recent update adding a possible CV scene and ending. Simply replace the .txt and the .png file with the provided ones here. Enjoy!

[JustAQuinn]

Just wanted to let this feedback be known:

Darkevilme, since you merged all the art work for a sprite into one image you've made it quite annoying to represent characters who need greater size to be able to make out their details, and the goblin bug that crashed V3 if you load enough mods on level 0 was the reason I why I choose to mod for V2 instead of V3 or V4.

So here's Druiji for Version 4, sorry her sprites look a little weird, rescaling them did a number on the quality of the image.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8e5arcvqp8zc591

[darkevilme]

Just wanted to let this feedback be known:

Darkevilme, since you merged all the art work for a sprite into one image you've made it quite annoying to represent characters who need greater size to be able to make out their details, and the goblin bug that crashed V3 if you load enough mods on level 0 was the reason I why I choose to mod for V2 instead of V3 or V4.

So here's Druiji for Version 4, sorry her sprites look a little weird, rescaling them did a number on the quality of the image.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8e5arcvqp8zc591

I've converted your demon and your troll(from the older mod pack) to work with OVRL version 4 and it took me ten minutes to do. So I am baffled by how it is 'quite annoying' to use larger sprites with OVRL R4.
(although apparently you set the demons strength high enough they can outright kill a level one character in a single blow, which was certainly interesting)

As for the goblin bug...there's a goblin bug?

[JustAQuinn]

I've converted your demon and your troll(from the older mod pack) to work with OVRL version 4 and it took me ten minutes to do. So I am baffled by how it is 'quite annoying' to use larger sprites with OVRL R4.
(although apparently you set the demons strength high enough they can outright kill a level one character in a single blow, which was certainly interesting)

As for the goblin bug...there's a goblin bug?

I didn't create that, ask Challace for true credits. And its a little bit annoying because some sprites have to be stretched. Druiji's stinger, when expanded, is larger and more oval like. But sprites that are already square like aren't affected that much. It's not like I'm growling in frustration at Paint.NET or something

Look at the giantess from that modpack, also put in by Challace, from VGame I believe. Based on your examples, I should probably shrink her sprite, which would nullify the point of her towering over the player character like her original sprite. It's a new format, and its annoying to adapt to it, that's all. It wasn't too clear if height had a factor in the images.

Before, you mentioned, the goblin pretty much had to be there, where you left him, otherwise the smooth butter would explode. I think the word you used was "hard-coded". In V2, I had no issues putting any enemy wherever I wanted it. If I wanted a game with no female monsters or no M/cockvore I could change it how I wanted. I had issues the first time I fiddled with V3. HAHA DISREGARD THAT! I have no idea where I thought of that...

The other reason I focus on V2 when I mod is because each file has its own purpose. It felt simpler.

As for the strength its because Druiji is the matriarch of a type of fly demon and I have no idea how those stats work. I can edit her and the others for balancing if you wish.

[darkevilme]

http://www.mediafire.com/?ihsvz7l0fsnuxij
This is the demo mod. It contains the troll and demon from Challace's r2 monster pack. They work in r4. They have not been twisted, stretched, compacted or altered in how they appear on screen. This is purely for demonstration purposes.

As for the goblin being hard coded? It's actually not. what IS hard coded is that there must be at least one enemy to populate each floor. If it can't find an enemy whose range of depths includes that floor then the smooth butter will indeed explode as it's not programmed on how to populate a floor with an empty monster list for that floor. I know you've figured this out but I figure it should be clear for those who haven't figured it out yet.

All you need to know to put bigger than usual sprites into the game is you need to adjust the number that goes after the filename to tell it how wide each sprite/frame is. It can't guess that one. It'll automatically assume each frame is the height of the complete image file though, that bit is hardcoded.

[JustAQuinn]

Thanks for your explanation friend

[Aickavon12]

this is certainly interesting and very cool!

[Midir]

I'm not sure I can kill a single enemy there - are they overpowered or am I doing it wrong? basically running away doesn't help me to reach the next level too

[JustAQuinn]

I'm not sure I can kill a single enemy there - are they overpowered or am I doing it wrong? basically running away doesn't help me to reach the next level too

No, this game is hard as balls because there is little to no balancing. If you want to survive, edit the effect weapons and armor can cause. Otherwise, when nowhere near enemies, press 'r' to gain one health, yet skip your turn.

[darkevilme]

No, this game is hard as balls because there is little to no balancing

This, sounds like something I need to address. Though I'll need more feedback to do it. Gentlemen, the floor is yours to toss suggestions. What do you want to see in the next update? preferably things that address the fact the game is excessively hard even for a roguelike.

[JustAQuinn]

Stronger base equipment sounds nice.

[komaru]

I do think some new weapon tiers might help on higher floors, there's a point where the base stuff doesn't really cut it anymore.

another suggestion, if it'd be possible to implement, may be to either make the player slightly more resilient when naked, or possibly add a set of very weak "starting armor", as right now, sometimes it feels like I need to start up 3 or 4 games to get a decent spawn without ending up as goblin food ;p.

other than that, I still thoroughly enjoy the game, and have been playing around with monsters and such quite a bit :3

[Someone92]

An update of the explanations of the game mechanics would be good.

Through a lot of testing a managed to fine-tune two enemies for the first floor in V3, one was nigh unbeatable without a piece of clothing, the other one without a weapon. I have no idea how to mimic their evade and inescapable behavior in V4, and thinking about how tedious it would be to balance enemies on the second floor by testing makes me shy away working on more enemies so far.

Some suggestions regarding game balance:
Monster can no longer run diagonally (it makes it impossible to run away from enemies who are as fast as you, and in V4 enemies can use it to run "through" walls). Make the more common enemies slower via the slow perk; I kinda like that you have to grab a weapon/armor first before being able to defend yourself but with the fast monsters it comes down to getting a lucky starting point with a weapon/armor nearby.

[vintious]

I didn't consider this game that hard, but I DID run to a higher floor and heal just because otherwise dragons were nearly impossible to kill.

Got up about 6-8 floors, killing every monster in sight before it became boring when there is nothing new to hunt for.

[Midir]

Sorry, I'm rather new to this, myself, so I don't know how useful my advice would be... But don't you think it could be more interesting to make the RP lines more like an interactive story? With different branches.... different attempts from the enemy's sides..like...not just "STAGE1: CHOOSE 1 OR 2 OR 3", "STAGE2: CHOOSE 1 OR 2 OR 3", but more branched? And YES I know it's not what roguelike games are supposed to be!.. But I still would find it pretty curious...

[darkevilme]

@Justaquinn & Komaru: What I'm getting is that if the players only way of dealing with monsters before they find a weapon and basic armour is running away then the player should start with the weakest weapon and armour. Can be done, we'll also add a tier above the top one.

@Someone: Right, will put an updated explaination of game mechanics out by the weekend. Also while I disagree somewhat with the idea of refusing diagonals to enemies I will consider making monster base movement across the board slightly slower.
I added a potion that makes the player faster though with this stuff in mind, so this just shows more work is needed.

@Vintious: Yes yes we'll put another three monsters in this version to populate the deeper depths

@Midir: Interesting proposal, It's certainly possible. I dunno if it'd be popular though and it's a fair bit of work to construct a branching story tree structure so I'm only gonna have a crack at it if there's a general consensus. Additionally, I'm sure as hell not writing the darned things so I'm going to need to let the game use the old system for existing monsters and just leave this as a tool for third party writers to add their little predatory choose your own adventures.

[Shadowlyger]

Branching "story" sounds like a neat idea, if it isn't an overwhelming amount of work.

[darkevilme]

The story system has the advantage of being essentially the infrastructure we'd need for a branching dialogue engine (sorta like the one i implemented but never used for space odyssey). So this could be considered a path towards outdoor settings, expansive worlds, at the very least a town for you to bum around in and maybe shop for supplies. If we wanted to go that way that is.

That being said, I'll need one of you who expects to actually use the system and create things in it to describe more fully the requirements of it and or show an example branching vore encounter tree written in structured english. Quite simply I have no idea what features people will want to prioritize.

[Someone92]

Okay, if I've understood Midir's suggestion correctly it's that some descriptions of the vore stages are mutually exclusive. Wouldn't increasing the number of maximum vore blocks be an easier solution to achieve this? E.g. instead of limiting of the descriptions choices in stage 2 to description 21, 22 and 23 if description 2 has been chosen in the first stage have multiple vore blocks with, and one of them would have description 2 for stage 1 and description 21, 22 and 23 for stage 2.
I'm hope I'm making sense right now, it's late and I'm kinda tired.

Another suggestion:
Include a stage between normal and being digested, meaning a vore block will consists out of 7 instead out of 4 stages:
- Vore starts, being inserted half-way in, no digestion damage
- Being fully inserted; digestion damage
- Failed escape attempt when fully inserted; digestion damage
- Escaped half-way, successful escape attempt when fully inserted; no digestion damage
- Being pulled fully inside again, failed escape attempt when halfway escaped; digestion damage
- Escaped, successful escape attempt when half-way inserted or halfway escaped
- Text for health reaching -10