Going Rogue - Part 11

Starting the episode: I don't know what this amulet looks like, but I hope that if Ben reaches it that it looks incredibly bland with no fanfare whatsoever. That would, somehow, be perfect to me.

Oh boy this is speedrun

The song that Vinny plays and Ben remembers from the Venture Bros is Mars, the Bringer of War by Gustav Holst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planets

you know things are getting serious when Vinny busts out the Return Fire soundtrack

Sound consistently breaks for me at 7:18? Like, the track is still there, if I skip ahead the sound returns, but it doesn't come back by itself.

Also, breaks again at 14:30. HTML5/HD player.

@fisk0: Didn't happen to me. Using Progressive/HD.

I just wanna give a shoutout to the intro of this series, it is very good!

@permanentsigh said:

Huh, alright, I was using HTML5/HD. Still happens to me if I jump back before 7:18.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Ben I give you a part of my life force so that you might someday beat rogue... and know that it will stay with you forever until you beat rogue.

Non-modal means there's only one mode the player is ever in.

In a modal game, like Castlevania, Simon can jump and that switches him from a standing mode to an in-air mode. Now Simon can only attack. But in standing mode he can walk, jump, attack, etc.

In a non-modal game like Rogue, you can always do any action at any time, from changing armor to reading a scroll. You're never locked out of any options available to you. (Apparently they ignore stuff like being frozen or confused in the Berlin interpretation)

"Non-modal" means the game only has a single gameplay "mode" where everything happens, like in Rogue.

A classic modal RPG would be Final Fantasy, where exploration and combat happens in separate "modes" with completely different interactions. Destiny is clearly modal, since it has several different gameplay modes with different gameplay rules - PvE, PvP, and non-combat social spaces for example.

Diablo would be a game descended from roguelikes, without a lot of people realizing it. It's basic gameplay loop is very similar to Angband.

There is a pretty good book (Dungeon Hacks by David Craddock) about the development histories of Rogue and some of the Rogue-likes Vinny mentioned, particularly ADOM and Angband.

Hmm, the site seems to have eaten my original post, so let's try this again...

"Non-modal" means that everything in the game happens in a single, consistent gameplay mode, like in Rogue or Spelunky.

An example of a classic "modal" RPG would be Final Fantasy, where exploration and combat take place in completely separate modes, with entirely different possible methods interaction. Destiny is clearly "modal", since it has multiple game play modes - PvE, PvP, non-combat social spaces, space travel menus - that work according to different rules.

And Diablo would be a game descended from roguelikes without a lot of people realizing it. It's randomized loot and basic gameplay loop is clearly inspired by something like Angband.

I think that's making it a bit more specific than they intended, as I've understood it, it's supposed to mean that there are not separate modes/views for say movement, combat (think how classic Final Fantasy games and many other RPGs switches to a battle screen where you have different actions than when you're exploring), shopping or any of that stuff. Whether you're in combat or not, a roguelike always have the same actions available.

I believe from the comment at the end that Vinny is reading from this Roguebasin article on the Berlin Interpretation. It's important to note that this is a pre-Spelunky document, so basically fails to consider the entire modern debate over the definition of "roguelike". It's also heavily skewed to the games that were big in 2008.

More interesting are the following articles:

On the Historical Origin of the “Roguelike” Term - by Santiago Zapata (creator of many games, roguelike or otherwise.) A 2017 article which is about the actual origin of the term "Roguelike," (a way to group certain games together in usenet,) and the debates around it.

What "Roguelike" Meant - by Zeno Rogue (creator of Hyper rogue.) A brief history of the genre after the coining of the term. And a critique of several popular "definitions" as well as the idea that idea that the "Roguelike" just means something different now.

He advocates more emphasis on "I know it when I see it." Correctly (IMHO) arguing that the definitions of roguelike are meaningless to people who have never played a "traditional" or pre-Spelunky roguelike.

Go team Venture!

Send your energy to Ben!

\o/

@flappyhands: I'm consistently having problems with these Going Rogue videos, where they just stop at random points in the videos. I wonder if it's connected. I'm currently on HTML5, haven't tried the other players. Doesn't seem to affect any other videos, though there hasn't been much new content out lately (I'm listening to the GOTY instead of watching)

I'm also having troubles with these videos quitting every ~5 minutes or so. Very frustrating.

Man, now I really want someone to create a gamejam where the objective is to make a clicker game with no numbers.

Venture brothers scene referenced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73gYxsxRrs

X-Com fits that Rouge-Like interpretation right? Or at least close enough?

Something that I have been surprised by over the course of this series is how dangerous slimes are.

@thelastgunslinger: Not at all, but X-Com and XCOM do kinda evoke the feel of XCOM. Especially in iron mode.

Who had 11 episodes before they got into the “what is a rougelike” discussion?

I made a rule for myself to not fight monsters longer than for 4 rounds. After that book it or use an item like teleportation scroll, wand, or whatever. Worked pretty well for me!

Unrecorded run isnt best run, they only got to floor 8. moist got to floor 14.

And good timing on the "make a big move" comment, vinny.

I love Rogue, I learned to read by playing this game. But my top Roguelike is ZAngband version 2.4.

It's very modal (the completely separate base building, geoscape and combat modes), and also isn't focused on a single character, but a team. Then there can be arguments on how it handles randomness, to me the spirit of rogue is in large party the procedurally generated levels, but X-COM doesn't do that, it just randomly picks a selection of pre-made maps. It does meet the turn based, grid based and (with ironmode on) permadeath criteria though.

They aborted early at floor 8 when they recognized they weren't recording. By their account, Genji-Gloves had some good items and therefore had potential for more.

Great episode! I could listen to Vinny read game design articles while Ben plays Rogue all day. \o/

@hansberg: lmao agreed

One yeet that was never meant to be

Ben exclaiming “it worked” after that scroll was perfection.

\o/

Not surprised Shiren ticks a lot of the Berlin classification checkboxes. That series is probably my favorite of the genre.

A lot of the more modern interpretations of the genre are totally valid too, maybe we need to update the classification system for 2021 :P

Berlin Interpreters Hate This Area Mom For This One Weird Trick

BIG FISH

Slimes don't do big damage, but if a slime lives long enough to split you basically need to retreat into a doorway/hallway so you can fight them one at a time. I know Ben has done this in the past, but in recent episodes he has lost his way :(

"What's the word you said?" - Vinny

"Oh, "yeeted"." - Ben.

Same...

@fisk0: For me, the "Spirit of Roguelike" is the deeply ingrained meta-game aspect, specifically the way that improvement comes largely from thinking about the game systems and the ways they interact with each other to be exploited, rather than just improving in technical or tactical skill.

Permadeath and run-based are important qualities too I guess, but I don't think they're as fundamental as the systematic meta-game. Being grid or turn-based don't feel important to me at all, but maybe that's because Spelunky was my introduction to the genre.

@engineno9 said:

Same for me with this and the previous episode. I wonder if it's because the archive broke and only goes up to part 8, and the video player bugs out and tries to go to the next-newest episode (08) instead.

As much as I think taking the Berlin Interpretation seriously is ridiculous, I'd never realised how effective that first statement that, "...The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue..." is as a reading comprehension exercise, until Vinny read it out loud.

5 easily available games (ironically Rogue would have been the hardest to find at the time,) all of them free, all ASCII, all turn-based, all matching the proposed definition nearly exactly.

Yet rather than spend 5 minutes playing each of these well-regarded games, some would rather construct long complaints wondering why their favourite run-based platformer, (from 10 years after the event,) was excluded. And attempt to infer a meaning of Roguelike they like via textual criticism of post-Spelunky games as if pre-spelunky roguelikes were lost books of the bible or something.

Roguelikes: non-endless run-based randomized games with permadeath

Roguelites: non-endless run-based randomized games with permadeath and a progression system

I live!

I'm disappointed the term "roguelike-like" didn't catch on for the games that aren't turn-based dungeon crawlers but still have very roguelike feels (e.g. Spelunky and FTL); it's descriptive and ridiculous! The term has expanded in use since the Berlin interpretation was written

lol didn't expect to hear vinny talk about G codes and M codes today