...I've turned Skyrim into a Roguelike

[syclonix]

I've never played Dark Souls, but I was inspired by their catchy

commercials and the obsession gamers have with hardcore games. I know Dark Souls isn't a roguelike, but I thought how cool would it be if we turned Skyrim into a roguelike??

 

Well, I managed to get the basic mechanics down and let me say it's not for the faint of heart--Last night I was playing a new character and spawned right in the middle this gigantic feral bear's stomping grounds. I died before I even saw him coming... IT WAS AWESOME! and then I went back for more punishment by starting a new character with a different class.

 

For those that don't know what a roguelike is, one of the defining features is permanent death (think of Diablo's Hardcore mode) meaning if you die, you start over. It sounds TERRIBLE, but trust me you'll never play Skyrim the same way again. Once you know that the slightest mistake can permanently wipe out your character it brings a whole new mentality to every action you take. You get an adrenaline rush when you're near death and fighting for your life, you stock extra potions and ammo, you carefully consider whether or not to pickpocket that person, or lockpick that trapped chest because failure means possibly getting killed. Hence the name of this new mod, Fear Death.

 

Another reason roguelikes are fun is because they encourage you to try new characters and strategies every time you die. See what works, what doesn't and readjust.Now you may be thinking, but Skyrim's the same every time I play it... well that's where this mod complements my Character Creation Overhaul mod which has 200,000+ starting character combinations. My goal is to make every playthrough absolutely unique.

 

Back to the Fear Death mod: So far I've got Permadeath working nicely, a decent Autosave System, 21 Selectable Classes with semi-random loadouts that still need to be fleshed out, and I'm excited about this last one... Random Alternate Start! Whenever you start a new game, Fear Death will randomly place you in the world at a random time of day with random weather. You could end up starting in peaceful Solitude, high up in the snowy mountains, or IN THE MIDDLE OF A FRIGGIN BEAR CAVE!

 

So what do you guys think? Any features you'd like to be seen implemented? and if you've played Roguelikes, what makes a good roguelike fun to play?

Edited September 23, 2012 by syclonix

[Sjogga]

I assume you modified the save-system somehow. How does saving work in Fear Death?

[syclonix]

Hi Sjogga,

 

When you are playing a character with the mod enabled (the mod is optional even when loaded) the player cannot save. The game will periodically autosave your progress by itself. If you die, the save is "disabled". For posterity, I will also include settings to make backups of the autosaves in case anything goes wrong. The game will also create a normal save right after charater creation in case you want to play the same character after you die.

 

The mod can also easily be disabled/enabled for when you want to test out new mods. If you play multiple characters then I would highly suggest using a profile manager so your saves don't get overwritten.

Edited September 23, 2012 by syclonix

[Sjogga]

Then may I suggest adding savepoints when you sleep at safe locations, such as inns and player owned homes.

[syclonix]

Safe save points like for autosaving? Or do you mean separate save files? Unfortunately, the latter won't work because then if the player dies they can always reload that separate "safe" save file. I can however, make those "safe" saves as backups in case something goes wrong. I would make it optional through the mod settings.

[Sjogga]

I meant the first one :)

I guess a better word would have been checkpoints. Just to give the player some sort of save-mechanic. Which brings up a second question; what prevents the player from loading an autosave? Also, how does the loading work? Can the player simply load an autosave just before he dies?

[syclonix]

Hmm, after some thinking I don't think "safe" saves are a good call. the way it works right now is the game will autosave whenever the game is paused at least every 30 seconds whether or not the player is safe. This discourages people from cheating by loading an autosave when things get hairy.

Which brings up a second question; what prevents the player from loading an autosave? Also, how does the loading work? Can the player simply load an autosave just before he dies?

You can load an autosave at any time, but keep in mind that there is only 1 save slot and that saves every 30 seconds or so whenever the game is paused (i.e. whenever the player is in a menu).

 

 

 

[FowlJ]

Sounds like a very cool idea.

 

Any idea what you'll be doing with loot? Random gear is pretty much the central feature connecting all roguelikes, so I assume there will be changes made to leveled lists to support that, but there are still things like cursed gear that would be interesting. A problem I can see with the whole thing is that, as far as I am aware, there isn't any way to make Skyrim randomly generate items like Diablo or something similar would - and since items never break or anything, there would never be much reason to get rid of a really good item once you have it.

 

Difficulty is another big thing - Maybe make shop prices a lot harsher and potions rarer, for one? Slowed or disabled health regen, no regen on waiting, stuff like that.

[syclonix]

Hey FowlJ,

Thanks for the grea ideas! Random gear may be possible, I'll have to look into it prototyping it, that would be amazing to have. Love the idea of cursed gear too! Or perhaps gear that can be beneficial but has drawbacks.

 

Durability doesn't seem like it could be implemented in a smooth fashion, plus, I don't really enjoy the feature, seems more like a chore than fun for me, but I'm willing to reconsider if more people chime in on that issue.

 

Difficulty wise, I think it would be very possible to limit potions, disable or lower health regen, etc. I just have to think about whether those things will actually make the game tense and fun, or just tedious.

 

[FowlJ]

Well, I wasn't really suggesting durability, just saying that, since items never break or are otherwise rendered un-usable, once you have, say, a daedric sword with a pretty nice enchantment, you will never ever have any reason to pick up a new sword (the way Skyrim works by default, anyway). It isn't a problem necessarily, particularly if you find a way to get random gear working to mix things up a little, but, for me anyway, finding new and useful stuff is a large part of the fun - and it will still be fun anyway, and nice daedric gear probably isn't going to be to common, it just sucks that Skyrim works that way.