Helherron - great party-based roguelike RPG, need help!

So am I, but didn’t he promise updates in the past that never came? Seem to remember someone from OO was working on a graphic update with him as well. (I could be completely mis-remembering this.)

I have to give him credit for actually doing it! Sometimes I cringe at the best laid plans of hardcore hobbyist developers. Not that I blame them.

Yes. He promised source code but never did it. And the span between updates previously had been lengthening. That said, there are a few reasons for optimism here. IMO I will list them, numbered but in no order, for your (the editorial your but also you, LeeAbe) At the end, I will include a useful protip for anyone looking to get ahead!

  1. He just released 2.10. It includes some significant changes. AI overhaul, a massive UI quality of life improvement (albeit one that’s not likely to matter to a lot of people; it’s the “character dies and now all their stuff drops into a single item that’s a container” change is awesome. Most people jus t reload on death, sure. But sometimes you won’t want to and this is a godsend). There is now a x64 version of the game (mind you that in and of itself is not a complicated undertaking). There was also some balancing and plenty of new goodies (consumables and item affixes; not new areas. Yet). And some new graphics which look pretty sharp IMO…

  2. 2.10 appears to come on the heels of signfiicant time spent in the source code. This is the “refactoring commentary”. It could be bullshit of course, but it seems likely to me given that we’ve seen a significant update. Working in legacy code can be the stuff of nightmares. I would wager that this contributed to his drifting away from the game (although by no means would I say it was the only reason; I simply don’t have the information to know either way). The undertaking to “modernize” can be daunting but there’s a certain satisfaction in it.

  3. He’s got a video of the game running on a Mac, and wants to port to iPad. Them’s “big plans”. To say nothing of more content to come down the road.

Caution is certainly reasonable. And there’s no guarantee that he won’t drift off again. Or maybe this is like when Redigit came back to Terraria, and it turned into it’s own little mini empire (1.4 in the works currently!). We shall see! But I think there are significant positive signs here. Even getting a higher resolution version would be amazing. But he wants to add mouse support.

PROTIP: spiders are the enemy. Kill them all.

I rolled up a new party yesterday for the new 64 bit version (which took forever, btw) and noted on the OO forums that it seems like the upper stat values have been increased. The dev responded thusly:

Initial attributes are now normally distributed, which means there are no strict upper and lower limits. So in theory you could have strength 100 at the beginning of the game, but that’s super unlikely.

Now, that’s pretty cool that you might get one outrageously godly outlier stat in your roll (and I saw one or two of those) but the trick is pairing that one stat with other decent stats. I spent a lot of time and was able to get one good roll that did that but I stupidly rerolled and never saw anything that good again. While it’s nice you can theoretically roll a monster character now, it does make it more tempting to keep trying to do that, which may not be so good for my power gamer mental health.

In any case, I am in the goblin caves now and have not had any stability issues. I fought a battle with bunch of spiders and grid bugs aplenty with no crashing or other problems. It seems rock steady so far. I’m hopeful that now I can at last finish a run through of this game.

[quote=“Coldsteel, post:96, topic:63700”]
I rolled up a new party yesterday for the new 64 bit version (which took forever, btw) and noted on the OO forums that it seems like the upper stat values have been increased. The dev responded thusly:[/quote]

Yeah I’ve seen some 31 and 32 Con scores for Golem Barbs which I don’t recall as possible. It frightens me how much time I might spend rolling just to see what I can get.

Yeah, well, it certainly happened to me.

Do you remember what the highest number you saw was?

Glad to hear your optimism peacedog, and that he sounds committed to updating it. I will without doubt a jump back into once he has rolled out some updates. Will probably have to buy it again, but I have no issues doing that.

I didn’t buy it again; the site just has downloads to the executables right now without any sort of “did you buy before?”. I expect that he’s aiming to touch it up enough that he can properly re-release it (steam, Apple Store, maybe Google Store as well?). That means a lot more art changes (which he has said is coming) in addition to the resolution changes. And more UI overhaul, certainly. I mean, Helherron 2.04 was 2006. Which means, holy crap, I am pretty sure the initial release predates OO (OCT 12 2004) but memory is foggy. Wow time flies.

32 strength, I believe. 33 constitution. On separate rolls.

Actually, he just posted the below over on OO this evening in answer to a question I had:

Yes, mobile versions are on the roadmap. But before that, higher resolutions and mouse support for the desktop (but those who prefer the classic interface will always be able to use it).

Mobile versions need hardware rendering which means some extra work. I suspect the current software rendering would kill your battery way too fast.

Well I am glad you didn’t miss a 100 :)

Would someone who is playing post some new screenshots from your game?

Sure @jpinard . These are 1280x800, the current highest. There are more resolutions coming but the dev has font issues to sort out before that. Is there something specific you are looking for?

how do you even launch this thing

Are you really asking how to run an executable?

yes?

so I downloaded it again and now there’s an executable.

So. . . no. Speak plainly, man.

I don’t know why your download didn’t include an .exe but mine did. Mind you I grabbed it yesterday. Although I just redownloaded and it still has one. That’s so weird. Maybe gremlins?

I’ve finished clearing the goblin caves and while my priests and mage have had no issues getting XP and are in fact already at level 2, my melee guys are struggling to get XP and remain far from level 2, even though they have made the vast majority of the kills. I assume this is because the magic users cast a spell every turn and get XP for that and the melee often do nothing more than guard or move.

So, question: Is there anything I can do improve the rate at which my fighter, monk and golem get XP or are they doomed to always lag far behind the others in level?

D0med. It won’t be a massive difference over the long haul. Or it didn’t used to be (I have way more pre 2.0 experience with the game than post 2.0 experience).