My parting gift to you

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

You want a good suggestion here’s one for ya.

MAKE THE FUCKING GAME ACCESIBLE TO PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF YOUR FUCKING NERD CIRCLE!

This means realizing that people are coming in for the first time who have NEVER played this type of game before.

Make instructions easy to read. Make sure your god damn web pages are up to date and working properly. if they are not find another alternative.

WRITE A FUCKING MANUAL so that people can pick it up and read it without having to go to university for ten years just to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Stop making things far more complicated than they need to be.

You’re welcome.

2

I suppose the lack of a “hold-your-hand like you’re a five year old” tutorial that’s commonplace in every CoD-Clone is a fault on our part. So, I’ll inform you of some basic things.

Simple controls: Use the num-pad keys to move in that direction. Press ? for help in game. Most options can be configured via the main menu “Options” selection.

I guess “English” is part of our nerds only club but hey, whatever. I’d be curious to know if you picked up minecraft and immediately put it down because it didn’t come with a “Press W to move forward” tutorial.

The wiki, much like any game more complicated than Call of Duty (Well, even Call of Duty) is useful, unlike CoD and other games it’s a tad out of date but it can teach you the basic mechanics. The wiki is accessible via the same page as the one you used to get to the forums. But, if you need a link: http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Unless of course you’re the umpteeth coming of he who shall not be named and you’re just trolling the forums with yet another new account.

3

YOU MUST BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

I AM A TEENAGER, AND I COULD EASILY PLAY THIS GAME AT FIRST GLANCE

YOU ARE DUMBER THAN A TEENAGER.

4

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:3, topic:7586”]YOU MUST BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

I AM A TEENAGER, AND I COULD EASILY PLAY THIS GAME AT FIRST GLANCE

YOU ARE DUMBER THAN A TEENAGER.[/quote]
THE CONTROLS ARE SO EASY, THIS RAGES ME SO MUCH I COULD JUST 'C’LOSE A DOOR AND 'S’MASH HIS FACE INTO IT. MAYBE I SHOULD MAKE HIM 'E’AT HIS SHIRT OR JUST 'W’EILD A SLEDGE HAMMER AND HIT HIM WITH IT MAYBE 'F’IRE A SHOTGUN AT HIM AFTER I 'R’ELOAD. MAKE HIM '$'LEEP FOR GOOD! I 'Q’UIT.
(Ok I think you see what I am doing by now)

Seriously though, a lot of other roguelikes have harder to master controls like Dwarf Fortress and UnReal World.

5

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:3, topic:7586”]YOU MUST BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

I AM A TEENAGER, AND I COULD EASILY PLAY THIS GAME AT FIRST GLANCE

YOU ARE DUMBER THAN A TEENAGER.[/quote]

That would be implying that teenagers are dump? Does dump mean inexperienced? Maybe my english isn t good enough.

@ bubbadoo yeah the controls are pretty intuitive… but the first thing i looked up via ? was how to walk down stairs :stuck_out_tongue:

6

[quote=“Valpo, post:5, topic:7586”][quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:3, topic:7586”]YOU MUST BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

I AM A TEENAGER, AND I COULD EASILY PLAY THIS GAME AT FIRST GLANCE

YOU ARE DUMBER THAN A TEENAGER.[/quote]

That would be implying that teenagers are dump? Does dump mean inexperienced? Maybe my english isn t good enough.[/quote]
He isn’t saying dump, he is saying dumb which means stupid and unintelligent
and well… teenagers do REALLY stupid things, like doing a dare that involves jumping into a patch of cacti, or playing a game with a knife where you have to try and stab the spaces between your fingers with out stabbing you fingers as you pick up pace, or play the pass out game where you basically force hyperventilation and the last one conscious wins and people have died from it.

7

Misspelling on my part. Many of those things seem fun though … if they have fun while at it was it worth the risk or not? Anyway teen do stupid things and grown ups do stupid things. What younger people do ismostly a result of theire willingness to test new things cuppled with theire inexperiencedness. While when someone grown up does something stupid its more often out of stupidity then out of curiousity.

/totaly derrailing this on purpose xD

8

[spoiler][quote=“Jimbo_Gee, post:1, topic:7586”]You want a good suggestion here’s one for ya.[/quote]
Seems more like a rant to me

why are you playing a difficult rogue like if you don’t expect to be challenged? Did you expect to start playing the game and suddenly become good at it like you’re playing CoD or something?

just wondering, are you implying that no other games have the same entry difficulty? I’d love to see the spam you’d make after seeing dwarf fortress.

They’re easy to read to me, and the wiki is being updated daily from what i can see

There is one http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Guides, and although the guides may be a bit outdated the basic principles still apply. If it’s difficult to tell what’s going on for you, you could always install a tile set.

No, sometimes it makes the game fun to have it more complicated

[/spoiler]

Thanks for giving me something to do, I was getting bored.

9

Seems more like a rant to me

why are you playing a difficult rogue like if you don’t expect to be challenged? Did you expect to start playing the game and suddenly become good at it like you’re playing CoD or something?

just wondering, are you implying that no other games have the same entry difficulty? I’d love to see the spam you’d make after seeing dwarf fortress.

They’re easy to read to me, and the wiki is being updated daily from what i can see

There is one http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Guides, and although the guides may be a bit outdated the basic principles still apply. If it’s difficult to tell what’s going on for you, you could always install a tile set.

No, sometimes it makes the game fun to have it more complicated

[/spoiler]

Thanks for giving me something to do, I was getting bored.[/quote]

THANK YOU KEYREPER

10

Oh its easy is it? Well explain this to me? How comes when I install the game im met with a screen size thats too small so when I try to increase it it ends up bugging out?

So I follow the instructions only to find out half the fucking links dont work and the other half may as well be written in a god damn foreign language? Need further proof? happy to oblige.

This is taken directly for YOUR fucking website just so you dont think im making it up…

MinGW&Msys Method
To start, you’ll need the MinGW+MSYS bundle. Get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer/mingw-get-inst/
Afterwards, grab the source from https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA and unpack in somewhere.

What they dont tell you in the above bit is that you are then hit with two fucking menus. TELL THE PERSON FOLLWING THE INSTRUCTIONS WHAT TO EXPECT BEFORE THEY GET THERE YA FUCKING IDIOTS! CLEAR CONCISE INSTRCUTIONS. NOT FUCKING DIFFICULT.

Now, you’ll need to make a small edit. In the source code’s directory, open up “Makefile.Windows” in Notepad or something and change this:
“CXX = i486-mingw32-g++” to “CXX = g++”.
(Warning though, MS Notepad is shit and will jumble up the lines. It might even corrupt the makefile. Advanced editors like Notepad++ are recommended, but don’t use word processors like MS Word.)

Run the MinGW shell, navigate to the code directory and type “make -f makefile.windows”. Executable will be in that directory.
Run and play afterwards! (To redistribute, you only need the data folder and executable.)

11

Or you could just go to en.cataclysmdda.com, click on the link that says ‘download stable version’, and play that…

If you’re talking about increasing the screen size, go into ‘options’, under one of the tabs should be an option to tell how many tiles high and wide the screen should be. You will have to restart the game for it to take effect.

12

as TheFlame said, you don’t need to compile it yourself…
compiling implies that you know some basic stuff, or are willing to learn those.

both the experimental and the stable version’s exe are widely available.
and … what kind of idiot cannot understand that ‘options’ could include an option to make the game fullscreen or resize it???

13

To increase the screen size go into the options menu and increase the windows size in there (I think it’s under the graphical tab) and then restart the game. Microsoft Windows sadly doesn’t really support automatically resizing terminals, so unless you want to switch over to linux or mac that’s about the best you are going to get.

The instructions you saw are more aimed at compiling your own version for development purposes and, as such, require some higher level computer knowledge. I’ll see if I can get the name changed to make that a bit more clear in the title.

If you have any more questions hit up the IRC channel linked from the main page. I should be in there in just a bit if you want any more help.
[hr]
Also can everyone please calm down a little. Insults aren’t ever a good option, even in response to other insults.

14

Granted, I started with Whales’ cataclysm, but I didn’t find it particularly complex to grasp the basics.

Then again I have (and had, back then) been playing Dwarf Fortress in both Adventurer and Fortress mode on and off for a couple years, plus other interesting Roguelikes/Ascii games so I wasn’t new to the basic concepts and controls.

You might want to play something more entry-level like IVAN or Caves of Qud before Cata, it would help.

15

[quote=“TheFlame52, post:11, topic:7586”]Or you could just go to en.cataclysmdda.com, click on the link that says ‘download stable version’, and play that…

If you’re talking about increasing the screen size, go into ‘options’, under one of the tabs should be an option to tell how many tiles high and wide the screen should be. You will have to restart the game for it to take effect.[/quote]

Yeah I’m aware of that sadly when I try and bring it to an acceptable size it messes up. Clearly nobody had the foresight to add a suggestion for how to overcome this. Just for future reference for the rest of you. Some of us actually have to go and work during the day. We dont all have the luxury of sitting in our parents basement and playing video games all day.

16

As I pointed out earlier the problem is sadly with how Microsoft implemented their support of terminal programs. It’s not exactly something we can overcome easily while still working in the terminal. :frowning:

17

Sleeping 6 hours —> work 8-12 hours —> play on my pc 6-10 hours /Valpos workday (for weekends cut the work and replace with playing)

Plenty of time xD

18

Most of us certainly have to work. But we still love playing something more complex and more interesting than CoD in our spare time.

19

What is this cod even and how does it relate to the issue?

20

[quote=“Jimbo_Gee, post:10, topic:7586”]Oh its easy is it? Well explain this to me? How comes when I install the game im met with a screen size thats too small so when I try to increase it it ends up bugging out?

So I follow the instructions only to find out half the fucking links dont work and the other half may as well be written in a god damn foreign language? Need further proof? happy to oblige.

This is taken directly for YOUR fucking website just so you dont think im making it up…

MinGW&Msys Method
To start, you’ll need the MinGW+MSYS bundle. Get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer/mingw-get-inst/
Afterwards, grab the source from https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA and unpack in somewhere.

What they dont tell you in the above bit is that you are then hit with two fucking menus. TELL THE PERSON FOLLWING THE INSTRUCTIONS WHAT TO EXPECT BEFORE THEY GET THERE YA FUCKING IDIOTS! CLEAR CONCISE INSTRCUTIONS. NOT FUCKING DIFFICULT.

Now, you’ll need to make a small edit. In the source code’s directory, open up “Makefile.Windows” in Notepad or something and change this:
“CXX = i486-mingw32-g++” to “CXX = g++”.
(Warning though, MS Notepad is shit and will jumble up the lines. It might even corrupt the makefile. Advanced editors like Notepad++ are recommended, but don’t use word processors like MS Word.)

Run the MinGW shell, navigate to the code directory and type “make -f makefile.windows”. Executable will be in that directory.
Run and play afterwards! (To redistribute, you only need the data folder and executable.)[/quote]

…What drugs are you on? Nowhere does it say you need to build your CDDA game to play it.

Since apparently you need to have your hand held I’ll walk you through it /real/ slow like. But first I’d like to make a suggestion:

Would you kindly, calm the fuck down?

  1. Now then. Go To the Website and Download the Windows Graphical build of the latest version (On far, right hand side of the screen under “Experimental Builds”) Here’s a link: http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/jenkins-latest/Windows/Tiles/
    Generally speaking you want the experimental version because it has all the features the people on the forums speak of, it also tends to be more stable than the “stable” version.

  2. The screen you should be looking at is a little confusing at first, there are a bunch of links and dates. Look for the most recent date and select the link next to it. (At the bottom)

  3. Once you’ve finished downloading the game, extract it. Hopefully you know how to do that, if not I suggest googling “how to use WinRAR”

  4. Run the EXE in the first folder. It’ll pop up the tiny screen. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the main menu and select “Options” then press enter. This is how you navigate menus, use the arrow keys as well as the < > keys occasionally, and sometimes the Tab key. You don’t get to use your mouse, just your keyboard. It’s a little difficult to grasp at first, but you’ll pick it up quickly.

  5. Configure options to your liking, each has a description on it. To adjust the screen site press > until you reach “graphics” screen. Use the down key on your keyboard until you reach terminal width. You can set the size by using the left and right arrow keys, in the area where the description is you can see how large the “terminal” (The window the game is in) will be in pixels, for it to be “full screen” you want it to be slightly smaller than your resolution.

  6. There are other options you’ll want to configure before playing but I’m hoping you can read the descriptions and figure out what you want from the game. Though I’d recommend you leave them default until you’ve been playing for awhile.

  7. You’ll need to restart the game (Either by pressing escape until it closes or just pressing the X button on the window with your mouse.)

  8. Go to “New Game” the game will generate a new character, or you can make your own using points and the menu navigation I spoke of earlier. It will also ask to generate a world just remember the menu navigation and you’ll be fine.

  9. Playing the game is the hard part because people who’ve been playing forever and a half have been handling the balancing so the odds are good you’ll die a lot until you know the game. Good luck, and remember if you need to know controls, press ? in game.

The other mechanics of the game will come to you as you play, but a lot of learning to play Cataclysm is failing. So if you can’t handle loosing a lot to learn to win, you won’t be able to play Cataclysm. Good luck, and I am now letting go of your hand. Remember, CALM. YOUR. TITS.

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