
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup - nodivbyzero
https://github.com/crawl/crawl
======
deathanatos
If you like rougelikes like NetHack, you should love Dungeon Crawl: Stone
Soup. Decently hard, but what I like about it instead of NetHack is that
doesn't require the level of rote memorization that NetHack requires. (Or Wiki
hand-holding.) The game does a good job of killing you, and making you feel
that, "yep… I did not play my hand right there." whereas NetHack will kill you
for looking at it funny. (Usually in DCSS, I find that I should have retreated
much sooner than I did.) The game will generally warn you outright if you try
to do something considerably dangerous. (Aside from, notably, running headlong
into combat when you shouldn't. But, for example, it will warn you if you try
to eat a mutagenic corpse, or wield something that will royally peeve your
deity.)

The artwork is beautiful, and I'm especially fond of the dungeon generator:
it's a mix of random layouts and human design, and the result feels a lot more
natural and interesting. On some levels, large parts of the level will be
random, but a human designed piece might get integrated into it (randomly).

You can play online, too:
[https://crawl.develz.org/](https://crawl.develz.org/) (and I prefer this
myself, as you can also spectate other players, and chat w/ them.
Occasionally, I learn a thing or two.)

The point of the game is to get the Orb of Zot and get out, much like NetHack.
Somewhat unlike NetHack, you need 3 runes to get the orb, but there are 15 in
the game, making all of them considerably optional, and it's _much_ more
difficult to get all. The game has a few challenges beyond that, as well.

(I've only escaped w/ the Orb once, as a Gargoyle Fighter.)

~~~
pmarreck
Nice, I knew you could play Nethack in a browser, but not DCSS! Might have to
dungeon-dive a bit! Do you know which version I should play? (is "trunk"
generally safe? Is there a test suite in the code?)

Any tips for noobs?

~~~
kibwen
No test suite, but trunk is usually quite playable, especially since the devs
are considerate enough that a specific player's savegame won't update to a new
version of trunk if that new version breaks save compatibility. But do be
prepared to deal with any goofy/unbalanced/unpolished features that the devs
might be trying out. :)

Tips for noobs: press "?" for in-game help (especially useful are the list of
keyboard shortcuts and the searchable in-game database of
monsters/items/etc.), join ##crawl on irc.freenode.net, inspect every enemy
that you're seeing for the first time, press "o" judiciously, and always be
willing and capable of running from a fight!

------
inconshreveable
Unlike many other games, DCSS has an explicitly articulated design manifesto
explaining the ethos of what is fun and why. It's _amazing_ and you should
read it: [https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl-
ref/docs/cr...](https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl-
ref/docs/crawl_manual.rst#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq)

I've pulled a few highlights:

> Speaking about games in general, wherever there's a no-brainer, that means
> the development team put a lot of effort into providing a "choice" that's
> really not an interesting choice at all. And that's a horrible lost
> opportunity for fun.

> Another basic design principle is avoidance of grinding (also known as
> scumming). These are activities that have low risk, take a lot of time, and
> bring some reward. This is bad for a game's design because it encourages
> players to bore themselves.

> The interface is radically designed to make gameplay easy - this sounds
> trivial, but we mean it. All tedious, but necessary, chores should be
> automated. Examples are long-distance travel, exploration and taking notes.

> the joy of discovering something spoily is nice, once. (And disappears
> before it can start if you feel you need to read spoilers - a legitimate
> feeling.) The joy of dealing with ever-changing, unexpected and challenging
> strategic and tactical situations that arise out of transparent rules, on
> the other hand, is nice again and again.

~~~
bhickey
crawl dev here! I'm generally pretty dumbstruck by the rest of the team.
They're as good or better than professional groups I've worked with. A handful
of super devs really drive the project along and we've had a fairly long
history to develop over. My own involvement is 7 years, while I think there
are others who have been hacking on it since 2005. For a lot of the time dpeg
has been our de facto tastemaker/PM.

~~~
inconshreveable
i've been impressed with how well the crawl dev team has maintained the
velocity and consistent vision over the many years (5+) that i've followed the
project. thank you, and well done! is dpeg the author of that section of the
docs?

~~~
bhickey
dpeg is _probably_ the original author of the manifesto. Some of it is
undoubtedly formed by accretion. He is also one of the originators of the
contentious [Berlin
Interpretation]([http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretat...](http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation))
of roguelikes.

------
empressplay
Some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking
pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their
food stores with the hungry travelers. Then the travelers go to a stream and
fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire.
One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The
travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful,
although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which
they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with a few carrots to
help them out, so that gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by,
inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup
which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little
bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each
adding another ingredient. Finally, the stone (being inedible) is removed from
the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.
Although the travelers have thus tricked the villagers into sharing their food
with them, they have successfully transformed it into a tasty and nutritious
meal which they share with the donors.

------
pmoriarty
I've been playing Nethack and other roguelikes for well over 20 years. Nethack
has to be the one game out of all the games that I've played that I played the
longest. As you can probably tell, I love Nethack.

DCSS is the game that has made me more or less abandon Nethack to play it
instead. It improves on Nethack in so many ways: from the super useful auto-
explore, to the beautiful and innovative use of colors, lots and lots of
really bizzare and unique gods, beautiful and interesting thematic levels, a
Lua scripting interface, and much, much more. I'm seriously impressed with how
much the DCSS developers have achieved, and how quickly they've achieved it.

It's also telling that Nethack has traditionally had a glacial development
cycle, while DCSS development is super active. There are tons of new features,
races, levels, and gods in nearly every release, and new releases come out all
the time.

That said, there are still other things that Nethack does best. The crazy
number of things that you can do with items and bodies in Nethack seems deeper
than DCSS, as are some of the relationships with one's god in Nethack, and the
use of pets (such as training them to steal from shops). Someone told me that
a DCSS deverloper motto is "when it doubt, don't do it like Nethack", which is
a pity, because they could learn from Nethack and take some of the things it
does best and improve on them, instead of stubbornly refusing to be like
Nethack. That said, none of this is going to stop me from playing DCSS, which
is now by far my favorite rougelike of all.

I strongly recommend anyone who has even the remotest interest in rogulikes
give DCSS a try, if you've somehow missed the boat and haven't already.

Also, playing in ASCII is the one true way to play. ;) You can ssh or telnet
in to a server to play, if you want to play online (or watch others play).[1]
Or you can download and compile the game itself to play locally on your own
machine.[2]

Finally, if you ever need help, check out ##crawl on freenode.[3]

[1] -
[https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto](https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto)

[2] -
[https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/](https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/)

[3] - [https://freenode.net/](https://freenode.net/)

~~~
chongli
I've seen a lot of these threads and without fail the comparison between DCSS
and NetHack comes up. I can't remember the last time somebody said they loved
NetHack in one of these threads, so kudos to you!

Personally, I am one of the rare birds that loves NetHack and just can't stand
DCSS. NetHack feels far closer to a proper role-playing game with an actual
dungeon master who will listen to your crazy ideas and give you back a result
that actually makes sense. DCSS, on the other hand, feels more like an arcade
beat-em-up style game to me. I guess it doesn't help that my favourite combo
(fulsome distillation and evaporate) was removed from the game a few years
ago.

Beyond that, I find DCSS really dry. Most of the time you're just mashing the
auto-explore key and then bumping into a few enemies or repeatedly casting
your best spell at them. For the style of game it is (beat-em-up Roguelike
with zero role-playing) I'd much rather play TOME[0], a game that has far more
intricate and involved character classes.

[0] [http://te4.org/](http://te4.org/)

------
phs
I've never played DCSS, but after a few nethack ascensions I've found its
"chores" (getting the wand, etc) interfere with actually enjoying the parts of
the genre I like most: resource management in an unknown world. I suspect DCSS
will be a similar experience.

For those that feel similarly, I heartily recommend giving brogue[0] a try.
It's beautiful, balances many strategies without giving dominance to any
(dwarven valkyrie, anyone?) and drops the "schlepping" associated with nethack
and related titles.

[0]:
[https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/](https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/)

~~~
paroneayea
If you've never tried DCSS, I think you should try it. I think it also
mitigates a number of the same things you complained about. The game's built-
in manual has a whole section about its game philosophy you're likely to find
appealing, especially if you were frustrated with Nethack for those reasons:

    
    
      https://web.archive.org/web/20160304070026/http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq
    

Anyway, you should try it!

~~~
phs
Interesting! Glad to hear that they're explicit design goals.

------
out_of_protocol
Works on android beautifully.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crawlmb](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crawlmb)

~~~
devopsproject
Looks like all the graphics are missing, it is just showing a bunch of weird
computer type symbols, dashes and what not. Still needs a lot of work /s

~~~
barbs
That's cos it's the ASCII version :).

~~~
devopsproject
whoosh

~~~
barbs
Doh! Was wondering what the /s meant ><

------
Mizza

      $ brew cask install Caskroom/cask/dungeon-crawl-stone-soup-console
    

If you were wondering!

------
xenihn
DCSS is the only roguelike that I've been able to sink lots of hours into.

------
SlyShy
As someone who came second in a DCSS tournament back in the day, let me tell U
that this game rocks if U enjoy tactical gameplay. It can brutally punish U
until U learn sufficient caution and U tune your situational awareness and
resource management.

Have fun!

~~~
GavinMcG
I might be speaking for myself, here, but I really value clear and precise
communication.

Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater costs
than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you, and are
willing to engage with you.

I'm not trying to be prescriptive – I don't think using U vs. you is a moral
issue, or makes you good or bad or smart or dumb or anything like that. But
people react to things like that, even if it's not fair that they do so.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater
> costs than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you,
> and are willing to engage with you.

This is true. However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will
be understood as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any
doubt as to what you meant. Thus, I find your lead comment, "I really value
_clear and precise communication_ ", interesting. What about the U symbol do
you feel is unclear or imprecise?

On a different note, I generally see people use "u" rather than "U". U is
harder to type, but it does bring out a certain parallelism with "I".

~~~
DanBC
> However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will be understood
> as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any doubt as to
> what you meant.

I'd be interested to know how well people with dyslexia or with English as a
second language cope with it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
It poses no problems for English-as-a-second-language people, if my experience
with Chinese students going to the US and immediately developing the style is
any indication.

Think about it for a minute, and you'll see that (1) it's an extremely common
word, so anyone with any experience with it at all is likely to have quite a
lot of experience with it, and (2) there are no other candidates for what "u"
could mean. It might pose problems for foreigners living abroad whose only
method of determining what a word means is looking it up in a dictionary; it
poses no problems for anyone talking to the person using it (even pretty
difficult things can be understood if the other person is there to help you),
or just living in an english-speaking country.

