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Caves of Qud [1] is a fantastic roguelike with procedurally generated backstory, quests, towns, etc. If you like the classic Fallout games (1 & 2) and you enjo

Caves of Qud [1] is a fantastic roguelike with procedurally generated backstory, quests, towns, etc. If you like the classic Fallout games (1 & 2) and you enjoy roguelikes with a lot of weird stuff, I think you’d get a kick out of CoQ. The game has incredible atmosphere that gives you this feeling like you’re exploring a real, living, breathing world. There’s a lot of depth to the gameplay as well, with deep character building and a complex crafting system. I really want to get back to playing it but I’m in school right now and have a ton of work to do! [1] http://www.cavesofqud.com/ http://www.cavesofqud.com/

kibwen 6y ago
I just learned about Caves of Qud by this great talk by its developer that goes over examples of its procedural history generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGAApZYIvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGAApZYIvI Apparently it's slated to leave early access in Q4 2020, so I'm holding off on buying it for the moment, but I'm very eager to play it.
- chongli 6y ago
  Definitely make sure you don’t forget to play it. It’s an absolute treasure. I’ve played to the end of the campaign so far and I can’t wait to play some games again when I get on a work term this fall!
- programd 6y ago
  And here is the paper [1] about how they procedurally generate the histories in Caves of Qud. Very interesting both from a storytelling theoretical point of view, and from a practical programming point of view (state machines and replacement grammers) [1] http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_Mythic_Biographies_in_CavesofQud.pdf http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_Mythic_Bio... Makes you wonder what you could do applying something like the GPT-3 AI text model to this kind of problem (history generation).
rhn_mk1 6y ago
I tried Caves of Qud, but after dying a dozen times due to botched combat, I can't get into it. The way I played I got more of a NetHack in an open world setting vibe, rather than a sandboxy exploration of a generated world. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. Was I focusing on battle too much? Is it even avoidable when the plains are full of monsters, and goals are placed on the other side of the plains?
- chongli 6y ago
  CoQ has a steep learning curve with the combat. There are some things to learn that are really not obvious. Building a new character is a complicated process and it's easy to mess up and make a character that seriously struggles in the early game. It took me about a hundred hours of play before I got a quasi-win (reached the end of the quest line as they've written it so far). You can play characters which avoid combat to a large extent, in quite a few different ways. You can get so good at talking to people that you can get some extremely powerful allies to do all the fighting for you. You can also tinker up some really powerful automated turrets that will clear enemies no problem, and use force fields to protect yourself from attack. You can also avoid combat to a considerable extent by picking up some wilderness lore. Having said all that, combat is a major part of the game, just as it is in most roguelikes.

kibwen 6y ago

I just learned about Caves of Qud by this great talk by its developer that goes over examples of its procedural history generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGAApZYIvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGAApZYIvI Apparently it's slated to leave early access in Q4 2020, so I'm holding off on buying it for the moment, but I'm very eager to play it.

chongli 6y ago
Definitely make sure you don’t forget to play it. It’s an absolute treasure. I’ve played to the end of the campaign so far and I can’t wait to play some games again when I get on a work term this fall!
programd 6y ago
And here is the paper [1] about how they procedurally generate the histories in Caves of Qud. Very interesting both from a storytelling theoretical point of view, and from a practical programming point of view (state machines and replacement grammers) [1] http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_Mythic_Biographies_in_CavesofQud.pdf http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_Mythic_Bio... Makes you wonder what you could do applying something like the GPT-3 AI text model to this kind of problem (history generation).

rhn_mk1 6y ago

I tried Caves of Qud, but after dying a dozen times due to botched combat, I can't get into it. The way I played I got more of a NetHack in an open world setting vibe, rather than a sandboxy exploration of a generated world. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. Was I focusing on battle too much? Is it even avoidable when the plains are full of monsters, and goals are placed on the other side of the plains?

chongli 6y ago
CoQ has a steep learning curve with the combat. There are some things to learn that are really not obvious. Building a new character is a complicated process and it's easy to mess up and make a character that seriously struggles in the early game. It took me about a hundred hours of play before I got a quasi-win (reached the end of the quest line as they've written it so far). You can play characters which avoid combat to a large extent, in quite a few different ways. You can get so good at talking to people that you can get some extremely powerful allies to do all the fighting for you. You can also tinker up some really powerful automated turrets that will clear enemies no problem, and use force fields to protect yourself from attack. You can also avoid combat to a considerable extent by picking up some wilderness lore. Having said all that, combat is a major part of the game, just as it is in most roguelikes.