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Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 2:19 pm
GLOOMY CAVES
Explored half the level without mishap. Lots of saleable loot, found the stairs down. Suddenly a dwarf starts singing. It's day 4 and I have 44 HP, how did she manage to spawn? I guess the RNG is shining and raining this week. Retreated back to Attnam to sell some junk and consider my options. I think I'll take the wolves with me and hope one of them finds the dwarf (leaving my precious Trailing behind, we don't need two dead faithful pets in one week).

There was a polymorphed ghost of a veteran kamikaze dwarf of Legifer on the level; it can't have been responsible for the singing because the singing was about Scabies. I've fully cleared the level and there's no sign of the dwarf, the singing, or an explosion; I guess it must have been a temporarily polymorphed character.

GC2 is the wolf level! I'm bringing the wolves with me here because I like keeping life and limbs.

My wolves are getting killed, but the hostile wolves aren't piercing my armour (even my AV 2 boots) and aren't dodging my daggers. So it's just the werewolf to worry about. And I met her in human form, so everything is marvellous. Except this level. This level is drenched in blood. Looks like a mushroom infestation got nipped in the bud too.

The level's clear. No need to go back to Attnam and trade yet, I'll just drop the loot on the stairs and go to GC3. Still no fire resistance, but Attnam won't fix that. The wolves have all gotten lost or died, so I'm back to searching before every step.

Most of the level's explored. A floating eye has been following me around, and I can't find any doors with round locks to lock it behind. Had to dig my way past it once. I'm getting a bit lax about checking for mines, although at this stage of exploration most of the level will have been trodden on already. Found all gods except Mortifer, Loricatus, and Dulcis. Come on, Laurie, give me a book!

Found a thunder hammer. With a cloak of electricity resistance it's tempting! Definite maybe.

Accidentally walked into a cloud of gas, polymorphed into some very vulnerable creatures, fortunately no-one was around to take advantage. Think I squashed the mushroom before it bred.

Or maybe not. Ohhhh dear. Never mind. Level 4 will have the shop and the minefield. Onwards!
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 1:29 pm
ATTNAM
I decided to give the scroll to the High Priest. She seems to be genderfluid; when he read the scroll and gave me his quest his pronouns were different. Accepting bets on her fate at the end of my quest. The necromancer in the dungeon seems to be in denial about the whole not-escaping situation. She'll have to wait until next time.
I bought the dragon hide cloak of electricity resistance and had it repaired; 10 AC should be helpful in the gloomy caves. I'm stuck with a medium chest weighing me down, but with a belt of carrying and 15 LStr I'm only burdened. I've got +2 boots of strength in reserve if things get tough, and Mellis is making hunger a non-issue. I'm leaving the wolves in Attnam for now so they don't explode all the mines before I've very carefully hoovered up the loot in GC1.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 1:18 pm
Ischaldirh wrote
Follow up: do people actually scum-start this game? The difference between characters (beyond talents, which are not always immediately evident) seems pretty small, and easily overcome.
I started to start-scum when I discovered just how much ommel cerumen it can take to reach the Wis level needed to science talk archangels. Training rate seems to correlate somewhat with starting value, and a low training rate has a big effect on the amount of resources the player needs to spend to unlock all materials.

Mental stats aside, bad leg strength makes starving to death in UT much more likely, and bad physical stats in general make getting killed in UT more likely. Which initially is fun, but once you've exhausted most of the possibilities for dying in UT it can be more attractive to spend a couple of minutes getting a start that will more reliably take you further.

I'm not the only one; I've seen evidence of start-scumming (dozens of characters that cowardly quit the game on the world map with 0 points) in JoKe's highscore screenshots from 0507 (IIRC).
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 10:53 am
ATTNAM
The shopkeepers have some nice things too! I could get a broken mithril chain mail, another broken perception helmet, a scroll of harden material, a whip of thievery, and a torn dragon hide cloak of electricity resistance. Well, I couldn't, but maybe later. I did get a book of Silva and repair my helmet, belt, and boots. My new pet wolf is called Trailing. Mellis gave me ommel urine, tears, and snot; I can use the strength/perception/charisma boosts, but the endurance boost will have to wait until later.
Problem: there are still no sources of fire resistance or searching available the next dungeon I explore will have mines. I'm going to have to be extra-careful or win the sumo tournament early. And also decide who to give this encrypted scroll to.

Actually, there are still some rooms in UT3 to clear. Let's see what's in them.
SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.
not any fire resistance


I also returned to hoover up all the loot from UT2 and UT1 for selling. As true as Troilus I searched for Trailer. As false as Cressida it got killed and eaten by the orc slaughterer. I found the orc slaughterer's equipment discarded on the floor and a kobold wandering around without a weapon. Most likely explanation: kobold collected equipment, ate a mutant bunny corpse, polymorphed into an orc, met me; I escaped; the orc slaughterer polymorphed into something that doesn't use equipment or inventory and dropped everything; polymorphed back into a kobold; I met it again.

So, my "faithful" dog Trailer is gone. Trailing will have to wait in Attnam until I can beef it up with a big serving of ommel bone.

NEW ATTNAM
I stuck all the banana growers to the side of the shop and science talked them ad nauseam. This is so much more effective than trying to follow them around while science talking! Richel Decos was as awkward to talk to as she normally is. 12 Int, 14 Wis. Almost ready to talk to Kaethos! Speaking of ommels, Mellis is still being generous with ommel fluids; I got a dose of ommel sweat and I've already got a can of cerumen waiting to be cloned.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 10:29 am
Serin-Delaunay wrote
If usage of 'it' for intelligent nonhuman humanoids is supposed to reflect the player's bias against species or characters they consider inferior because of their appearance, perhaps charisma should be a factor that overrides a character's pronouns attribute and uses 'it' instead. For instance, orcs, kobolds, and goblins could all be given 'he', 'she', or 'they' pronouns, but any character (human or nonhuman) with charisma less than half the player's charisma would be referred to as 'it'. The more charismatic the player becomes, the more of a disrespectful asshole they become.
red_kangaroo wrote
This. This so much! I LOVE it.
Thinking again, the meaning of the charisma stat in most RPGs that have it (and presumably IVAN) is a bit broader than just appearance; it also includes a broad range of social skills useful to the player. Disrespecting other characters by misgendering them is not really compatible with these social skills, so that usage would have to be confined to "private" speech (ie. the game's text log), and not spoken lines like "Oh my frog, they've got a golden eagle feather head of Elpuri!".
Or, calling people 'it' would be something that low-charisma characters do.
In any case, adding an explicit misgendering mechanic to the game is probably something to be left until after the game's problems with representation and roles for non-male characters are fixed. It's very IVANish, but I can't say that misgendering is something that needs to be a normal occurrence in the game.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 10:19 am
BIRTH
I started with great stats first time. +1 Wis, -1 Agi, Per, Wil. +1 some other stuff, but my memory's fuzzy. Trained Agi up to 12 before going into the dungeon. New Attnam can wait.

UNDERWATER TUNNEL
I found so much loot. So much good loot. First, a wand of teleport. Then a book of Mellis. Fed an ommel tooth scythe to Trailer. Most of the denizens of UT1 were weak, but somehow an orc slaughterer appeared (!). I zapped it... or myself... away, and explored the rest of the level before descending. It didn't show up again. Neither did Trailer, I hope it's OK.
In UT2 I found some decent weaponry; replaced my steel spear with a long sword and a +2 dagger. More weirdness as a kobold with a +1 broken spear takes my torso down to red health again and again. I teleported it away twice, slowed it once, and it still kept coming. Eventually I zapped my wand of striking at it. Yeah, I found one of those too. Confiscated the broken spear in case anyone else tried to use it. At some point found broken boots of agility, looking forward to getting them repaired and enchanted.
UT3 was amazing. I found a broken helmet of piercing perception, and an arcanite chain mail. +1, because just plain arcanite chain mail wasn't good enough. And a +3 dagger to replace my long sword in the short term. I planned to teleport Genetrix Vesana the Mother carnivorous plant away, but with all this lovely equipment I was able to stomp him and his kiwi pals without any limbs going below pink. And I already have 5 cans and 3 bottles for Mellis to fill.
Stupendous.
So here I am exiting the underwater tunnel. Attnam's not far.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:56 am
This thread will chronicle the adventures of Claudia Donovan and her faithful dog Trailer in the female-dominated world of IFAN.
I swapped "MALE" and "FEMALE", and "male" and "female" in Script/char.dat. The effects are that characters described as male or female in-game are switched, and 'he' and 'she' pronouns are switched for non-god characters. I've attached the file if you want to try it for yourself.
Attached files
char.dat (186.16 kb)
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:21 am
In the meantime, if you'd like to play the pronounflip version of IVAN, replace your Script/char.dat with this. (sexes, genders, and presentation are mostly unchanged)

I'm gonna try and win IFAN with Claudia Donovan and her faithful dog Trailer now.
Attached files
char.dat (186.16 kb)
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:17 am
red_kangaroo wrote
And many of which should remain in my opinion, because they paint the crapsack world of IVAN. Some, however, should be addressed.
Agreed.
red_kangaroo wrote
I don't think it's that important to rename something no-one but people looking at source will concern themselves about... but if anyone is willing to do it, I say let them.
I think naming variables accurately is important to writing maintainable code. In particular, if sex-gated dungeons are added then an actual sex attribute will need to be added for them to work. And at present that attribute would clash with the pronouns attribute which is currently named 'Sex'.

red_kangaroo wrote
I'm strongly against removing the "crapsack theocratic/capitalist/patriarchal hellholes of Attnam and New Attnam" feel you talk about. The sexism is "justified" in that it gives the Attnamese society the feel of being wrong. As I said above, Attnamese sexism paints a nice crapsack picture of the IVAN world.
Agreed. But there need to be locations actually existing in the game that reflect more liberal models of society. The most recent update added a new town and new dungeon rooms with no Petrus/Decos influence and even those are entirely populated by men.
red_kangaroo wrote
However, I would love to see more female NPCs in new towns. Mondedr is supposed to be a town free of Attnamese influence. I believe it could be nice to make it evident from the dialogue of Mondedr NPCs how different the points of view of Attnam and Mondedr are, about women and everything.
Yes please.
red_kangaroo wrote
I also have some ideas about Tweraifian freedom fighters being mostly female force. They couldn't have just disappeared, right? Neither could they have been all sold as slaves.
Ples yease.
red_kangaroo wrote
Definitely. Especially the priestess.
Yep.
red_kangaroo wrote
Why not, but the lines better be interesting and/or funny! No need to add lines just for the sake of not talking about men.
Most of the lines about men aren't that funny anyway. Except "he's that farmer who's just been mugged with a frying pan."
red_kangaroo wrote
I actually like that they are refrered to as "it". In most RPG games, the humans behave as if they owned the world. Most heroes slaughter "lesser races" with no regard to them being intelligent beings. Again, it paints a nice Picture of the crooked perspective of all humans in IVAN that these races are "it". It is and should be seen as derogatory, as the humans feel as a superior race.
I did consider this perspective, and it does paint an appropriate picture of Attnamese culture, but I'm not sure that either the game's narrator or the player character necessarily subscribe to this viewpoint. Human cultures (the dark knighthood, mistresses, Mondedr?) that have been in friendly contact with eg. orc societies would not preserve usage of 'it' for long if they found the relationship worth maintaining. Also, dwarves are exempt from this rule despite their generally unfavourable disposition and methods. A likely explanation for this is that Attnamese society in employing kamikaze dwarves took the same trajectory from 'it' to gendered pronouns as I am proposing the dark knighthood did. Since the player can ally themselves with chaotic gods and factions, it would make sense for the narrator to be capable of both kinds of usage.

What pronouns would be used for elves if they ever appear in-game? Why?

If usage of 'it' for intelligent nonhuman humanoids is supposed to reflect the player's bias against species or characters they consider inferior because of their appearance, perhaps charisma should be a factor that overrides a character's pronouns attribute and uses 'it' instead. For instance, orcs, kobolds, and goblins could all be given 'he', 'she', or 'they' pronouns, but any character (human or nonhuman) with charisma less than half the player's charisma would be referred to as 'it'. The more charismatic the player becomes, the more of a disrespectful asshole they become.
red_kangaroo wrote
I don't think that's such a good idea. Using 'they' or 'zie' in the way you describe is a neologism that would confuse the heck out of most players. And my eyes would hurt reading 'zie'. Please, don't use 'zie'.
If singular they should be excluded from consideration because it's a neologism, then all of the game text should be rewritten in Middle English. Wikipedia
I would be content with 'zie' and other actually neologistic pronouns not added to the game, but I'll assert that their use would not be nearly as confusing as you suggest. Probably the two most common uses of personal pronouns in IVAN are when looking at a character and being hit by a character with a weapon.
Quote
Fryndal the quartermaster is standing here. Zie doesn't care about you.
Sherarax the mistress monarch slashes you in the right arm with hir spider silk chameleon whip +5! Your right arm bleeds very badly.
red_kangaroo wrote
OK, but no bearded mistresses, I dare you. Leaving all dwarves with beards but making some female would be hilarious (see Terry Pratchet).
None of the mistresses are wise enough to grow beards. But if you fed Sherarax enough ommel cerumen...

red_kangaroo wrote
Generally, I think it depends on the particular creature. Some should remain one gender race because of rule of fun, some should be changed.
Agreed. Sexism manifests differently in different cultures, but that doesn't mean IVAN humans or Attnam are likely to be the only ones that develop strict gender roles.

red_kangaroo wrote
Add new towns to contrast with Attnam, leave Attnam be the sexism crapsack dictatorship it is now.
Sounds good. Xinroch's tomb should be a part of that contrast too.

red_kangaroo wrote
I really like the simple beginning the game has now. Other roguelikes may take quite a while to create a PC in, but IVAN just let's you start and build yourself in-game. Especially for new players, this might be an interesting boon as opposed to contrieved character creation.
Agreed. I like that you can go directly into the gameplay without spending too long customising. Well, except for the two story screens. And the several restarts if you decide you want to try to win.

red_kangaroo wrote
And I really, really love the quote Kaethos has about your white skin and violent personality. Again, it makes a nice piece of background for me and I would loath to see it go.

If everyone agrees to have variable skin color, though...
I like that quote too, but IVAN devs are an inventive bunch, I'm sure they could find something equally striking
red_kangaroo wrote
I guess because these are quotes from young male fandom.
It might be easier to get more input about the game from people who aren't cis men if the game's only community website didn't have text that's directly hostile to them on the front page.

red_kangaroo wrote
Not actually a gendre issuve, but I would *love* to have a town of non-human NPCs. Kobold families with whelps, baby orcs, goblin grannies...
Love it.
And it is a gender issue because of how these species' sex and gender are currently represented in game (by which I mean not represented).
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 6:26 am
IVAN has a loooooot of gender issues, many of which have been addressed here, but this is still going to be a beanplatingly long post.
And I'm going to preface it by saying that I love IVAN and have a lot of fun playing it. The following criticism is intended to gather together areas of possible improvement so that it can become an even better game.

There are currently three sexes extant in IVAN: male, female, and undefined. Gender is only present in names and dialogue, rather than mechanics and code, and each character's pronouns are determined by their sex: he, she, or it. The default sex for a creature is undefined, but the default for a humanoid is male.

A fourth sex, transsexual, is defined in the code but unused, and if my reading of character::GetPersonalPronoun() etc. is correct they would also use 'she' pronouns. According to Doc/Obsolete/Main.txt it was intended to be 'something between the three'. In the nicest possible terms, that is total fucking bullshit. 'Transgender' or 'trans' is currently preferred. Neither 'transsexual', 'transgender', nor 'trans' is a sex or a gender; it is used to qualify existing genders. For example, a woman may be a trans woman, a man may be transgender , a nonbinary person may be trans. Being trans is distinct from being intersex (which describes someone's sex) or nonbinary (which describes someone's gender).

At the moment the full list of female humans and nonhumans appearing in IVAN is:
* goddesses of love and art; health and nutrition; nature; assassins and thieves; forbidden pleasures; mutations, disease, and famine; wrong knowledge and vile magic;
* the priestess of Silva;
* the enner girl; ~
* the dolphins;
* Petrus's wives; #@~
* the housewives; #@~
* the female slaves; @~
* all mistresses including Sherarax; @
* all angels including archangels; ~
* Genetrix Vesana;
* the female carnivorous mutant bunnies (though their sex is undefined);
* the female tourist. @~

Notice how many of them have an identity solely defined in-game by being someone's wife (#). There is exactly one male NPC referred to as a husband (and it's not the name displayed in-game). The only humans (@) in the list who science talk are the mistresses, and they're as effective as puppies and hunters (though that's for the best since the player can spawn unlimited friendly mistresses). Especially prominent as being unable to science talk is the priestess of Silva. Many female characters' friendly dialogue lines are at least 33% about male characters (~). Yes, I chose that percentage bound in order to write lots of ~s. More female humans should science talk. Their roles in towns should be diversified by adding new NPCs and/or changing the gender of existing NPCs. Some of their dialogue should be replaced.

The full list of humanoids with sex specified as 'undefined' is:
* goblins
* golems
* zombies
* imps
* werewolves
* kobolds
* gibberlings
* orcs
All of them are non-human, except for zombies who may be made of human flesh. The eunuch guard is not included here (he is male), which means that a character's sex attribute does not refer to their genitalia, or at least not their gonads. Identifying almost all nonhuman humanoids that appear in game as having undefined sex muddies the interpretation of the sex attribute further. Are these species composed entirely of sexless clones? Does the player only encounter warrior individuals, who are sexless clones? Does the player character only regard humans and beings with high charisma as having sex or gender? I think the correct interpretation of IVAN's sex attribute is 'pronouns', since that is the only effect it has on gameplay. The sex attribute should probably be renamed to pronouns. From here on I will generally talk about characters' pronouns rather than their presentation, gender, or sex (which are all different things), except when relevant.

In general the pronouns we use for sentient beings should correspond to the referent's gender (or stated pronoun choice), rather than their sex or presentation. When we use pronouns to refer to animals the choice matters much less, since it's is generally not likely to be offended. If it has an owner they may disagree.

Many of the nonhuman humanoids in IVAN (kobolds, goblins, orcs at least) use tools and have names and hierarchical societies, and are in constant contact with representatives of gendered human societies (Attnam, the dark knights, mistresses). It's not unreasonable to suppose that gender roles would arise in these cultures (the existence of a kobold patriarch and goblin king confirms it in two out of three cases) and be communicated during nonhostile interactions with humans (probably dark knights and mistresses).

Using 'it' as a pronoun to refer to another human who has not explicitly asked for that pronoun is in most cases (including all the use cases in IVAN's log text) very disrespectful, and during nonhostile interactions with intelligent nonhuman humanoids as hypothesised above, we could reasonably suppose that 'it' would not be in use for long. The pronoun attribute of intelligent nonhuman humanoid characters should probably be set to something other than 'it'.

If gender in these cultures is similar to current Attnamese culture as it currently appears in-game then they may have a strict gender binary; if it developed independently, then like real-world human cultures they may have a variety of non-binary gender identities which may or may not use pronouns other than 'he', 'she', and 'it', for example 'they' (which would require alternative verb conjugation for much of the game text) or 'zie' (which wouldn't). It may be a beneficial to add a fourth option 'they' or 'zie' to the pronoun attribute, or split it into 5 text attributes which do not have hardcoded values (subject, object, possessive dependent, possessive independent, reflexive). This would also accommodate nonbinary player characters.

Currently all humanoid characters share a pronoun set with all other characters made from the same character prototype. There is one humanoid prototype (tourists) which has paired male and female configurations; my understanding is that these configurations are also separate character prototypes. The implication of this is that all non-tourist/priest occupations represented in the world of IVAN are strictly gender segregated. In the crapsack theocratic/capitalist/patriarchal hellholes of Attnam and occupied Tweraif this (along with other sexist institutions like palm-leaf-waving female slaves as background decoration, and the limited dialogue options of female NPCs in town) may be thematic and unsurprising, but it is reasonable to suppose that some of the other cultures represented in the game (especially angels) could have less rigid gender roles, and even Attnam could be retconned into something less sexist. I would suggest either making configurations with different pronoun sets or randomising spawned characters' pronouns, for some or all of the non-unique character prototypes of intelligent races.

As a sprite game with 16x16 tiles each packing so much information into a small space, I'm not sure that titillating presumed straight male players by having 'she' pronoun player characters be topless by default with 2x2 pixel breasts is a grave concern. If Tweraifian culture includes female nipples being taboo, then probably even under Decos's rule it wouldn't be difficult to obtain some garment for them. If Tweraifian culture doesn't include that taboo, shrug.

'She' pronoun player characters (and more) would be a very good addition to the game. Presentation (so far reflected in the alternative hair sprites, which are great), gender, and sex are separate attributes which correlate strongly in Western culture, and need not necessarily correlate in IVAN. People of any gender can have or not have beards, breasts, and long hair. Player choice of pronouns and presentation is an interesting issue. At present the player chooses nothing directly at birth; colours, stats, and training rates are randomly assigned at birth. Before I discuss gender issues at birth I'll talk about stats.

Currently it is possible to start-scum by looking at the new character's stats, comparing them to desired minimum values, and restarting the game until satisfied. Angband used to work like this, and had the same grindy optimal play at birth. Later it implemented an autoroller. The player types in minimum stat values, and the game rolls tens of thousands of characters until it hits a maximum or the requirements are satisfied. A few versions later the maintainer realised that was a terrible mechanic and replaced it with a point-based system. You have 20 points and you spend them to increase stats. Leftover points (used to) increase your starting gold. The standard roller (one character per keypress, no highscore left behind) is still in the game for some reason. IVAN may have a penchant for needless cruelty, but it can still learn from Angband here. Manually scumming for start stats is a bad mechanic, worse when it takes 8 keypresses and a loading screen for each new character. Automating the process is not a big improvement. The only good way to implement varying stats at birth is with a point-based system.

So, if the player can assign points to stats at birth, suddenly there is an appropriate point in the game for the player to state their preferences about the PC's appearance (long or short hair, beard or no beard, chest shape and possible covering, hair and skin colours) and pronouns (a field to type in just like their name). Possibly also gender, and sex if that ever becomes an attribute that exists in-game. If these options did become available, some NPC dialogue (Kaethos, mistresses, housewives) would have to be altered to remove the implication that the player character is white and male.

An alternative possibly more in line with IVAN's style is to make all of these attributes independently variable at birth and randomly chosen. But following the same arguments as stat assignments, it would make more sense to let the player spend points to choose them at birth (and avoid random assignment). Another possibility is to take the Rust approach and fix the player's appearance and pronouns for all games by using eg. the computer's MAC address to seed the birth RNG.

In conclusion, wow there sure is a lot of work to be done!

TL;DR?
* Remove "TRANSGENDER" from "Sex" attribute enumeration
* Rename attribute "Sex" to "Pronouns" and change the enumeration values appropriately
* More diverse women in towns
* More human women science talking
* Women talking more often about things that aren't men
* Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs (maybe more) should not have 'it' pronouns
* Add 'they' option to Pronouns attribute, or split Pronouns into 5 text attributes
* Long hair good
* Do not make any of Pronouns, beard, long hair, chest attributes fully dependent on another; at most they may be correlated
* Make randomly spawning humanoids have randomised Pronouns, beard, hair, chest attributes
* Change some town NPCs' Pronouns attribute and/or add new NPCs who aren't men
* Let the player have any Pronouns attribute
* Spend points to increase stats at birth
* Choose skin colour, hair colour, hairstyle, beardability, chest shape, and pronouns at birth, using points if you feel cruel

Also, why are there so many rape jokes in the website's random quote box? If we want to decrease misogyny in the game, we should also try to decrease the misogyny on the website.