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From: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Newsgroups: net.games.rogue
Subject: Re: Urogue seems too arbitrary
Message-ID: <328@polaris.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Dec-85 21:18:32 EST
Article-I.D.: polaris.328
Posted: Tue Dec 10 21:18:32 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Dec-85 00:28:27 EST
References: <179@milo.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Distribution: net
Organization: IBM TJ Watson RC
Lines: 44

In article <179@milo.UUCP> ded@milo.UUCP (Don E. Davis) writes:
>I've recently been playing the urogue written by Herb Chong.  It
>has many nice attributes which I find interesting, but one
>which spoils the game for me.  That one is:  You have been summoned
>by the lesser god something-or-other; you are terrified; now hit your 
>space key until you die.  You might as well say:  you're doing too
>good; you die.
>
>This is not fun.  I have no chance to react, to drop my scare monster scrolls
>or quaff a potion of hero.  Is this arbitrary death a "feature?"
>Or is there something I can do to avoid it?
>

you haven't thought carefully enough about what is happening:
1) you notice that the monsters are from a much deeper level of the
dungeon than the level number indicates (about 3 times, in fact).
2) the particular monsters you ran into terrified you or other such nasty
things AND there were a lot of them.  you may have noticed that you were
completely surrounded
 
there are three conditions for being summoned:
1) 1 in 100,000 turns totally at random (i.e. about once in every
120 levels into the dungeon, or about once a game)
2) a possible effect of misactivation of an artifact
3) possible while going upwards through a stairwell while carrying an artifact


i know of at least two total winners (carrying all 8 artifacts) and a lot
of people getting killed on the way back up.  i'm one, but that's not 
surprising since i do know the code very well.
in my opinion, since i have not even come close to being a total winner at any
other version of rogue, urogue is too easy.  the next version will be harder.

Herb Chong...

I'm still user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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