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Welcome to Open Discussion
Hi! I'd like to say that I love NLarn. It's easily become my favorite
roguelike game. I was able to get in and start playing with no problem. The
system is simplified and fun and I really enjoy playing it.
I'd try to mess around with it but I don't know C (Only QuickBasic, and yes
I've tried designing a roguelike many times but I'm not very good at that
either.) I really do enjoy what you've done in remaking the game.
If possible I think it'd be really cool if you did a few other things with the
engine, though it would most likely take a lot of coding to do. I don't want
to seem like I'm imposing or anything like that because again I'm very pleased
with the game.
Things I think would be great, maybe not for Nlarn but with the same engine
(and yes, I'd be more than willing to donate, beta test, and help with
design/ideas since I can't code ^-^):
A semi-randomized world map. Maybe a continent or something; Doesn't have
to be massive, but just enough for fun with the locations of towns placed
randomly within a specific area on the map to keep things fresh but still
maintain familiarity. Another idea since it doesn't seem like there is a
scrolling system for moving would be a grid based world map, where there are a
certain amount of rooms of randomly generated nature areas between towns with
multiple exits going in different directions.
Quests! They don't have to be random, but that would be cool too. Even a
mix of random and fixed quests. Maybe things like bounty quests (the standard:
'goblins have been terrorizing the local farmers, please go and thin them out
by killing x number of them')., People requiring regents for certain reasons,
or many more varied kinds of quests. It doesn't always have to be a grind-
style quest. Maybe something like a town up on a mountain or in a snowy region
has sent a lot of their young men off to war and so they're having trouble
with getting wood for fires so you have to take a wood cutting axe and go hack
down trees (pretty easy to code if you just make the trees as monsters that
are immune to most everything but the wood cutting axe and maybe of course
fire spells) and they'd drop lumber you'd bring back to the town as a
repeatable quest for a meager amount of gold or some really common kind of
supply.
Tons of dungeons. Something like a town or area you need to get to in order
to deliver something is behind a vast mountain expanse that you can't walk
around. You'd have 2 options, you can either scale the mountain (entering an
'over land' dungeon) or traverse the mountain tunnel ordered constructed ages
ago by some mad king who was tired of having to wait forever for messengers
and goods to get from point A to point B.
Some bows and a few other kinds ranged weapons. I love the idea of not
having classes still. It is very nice and allows for more immersive character
development.
The idea would be to keep the game as simple to play as it is now but with
adding some other things to expand the game play environment without having to
know 500 different key combos/commands, worry about constantly starving to
death every 5 steps, or instantly dying from some kind of unfair circumstance
that you need to have kill you just so you can avoid it the next time you play
while getting killed 10 steps after that by another unforseeable thing that
you again need to avoid the next time. The gameplay is fine, and when I die I
enjoy being able to call myself an idiot for placing myself in the situation
that lead to death. I'm not saying it has to be easy, just not unfair or
requiring you to play for 4 years/read a wiki just cast a spell, or starve to
death after taking 100 steps because each turn lasts '3 seconds' according to
the game and your character must eat once every '300 seconds' (equates to 5
minutes in the games that stick to DnD standards) because they're somehow
mystically starving again (gluttonous wretches o.o). It just kills immersion
when you think about it.
If you're interested in implementing anything like this, please let me know.
Again I'll be willing to devote a lot of my time to helping in ways that I can
including donating to ensure continued motivation.
Once again I really love Nlarn!
Thank you for your thoroughly nice feedback!
Currently the generic parts and the NLarn specifics are interweaved too much
to allow reusing the engine for other games. But I plan to move export the
entire interface to the engine internals to Lua and move the NLarn specifics
to Lua. Once this is finished, the engine may be used by other games. And Lua
allows to mod the game much easier or create completely new games with it.
I won't add a world map, quests and more dungeons to NLarn, as I try not to
move away from Larn too much. But ranged weapons will definitely be in the
next version (or the one after it). The plan is to allow different styles of
playing without adding character classes and limiting the player in the choice
which way to go.
Sounds good. I've been learning C and eventually hope to make a game similar
in simplicity to Larn/Nlarn and this has been a very good inspiration to me of
how it would look and play.
I agree with you entirely about the classes thing. I believe you should get
better at a skill the more you use it, not just be proficient because your
class dictates it.
Would be like saying "Sorry you can't learn C because your class is base
worker at a dining hall". Classless keeps things fun and allows greater
character structuring.
Thanks for replying ^-^