Author Topic: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!  (Read 11822 times)

Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #30 on: May 13, 2017, 02:08:26 PM »
I vote that Denton is still wearing his nametag from the Valley Inn PTA meeting, so while he intends to go with option 2 and stay silent, it ends up as option 1 anyway.

AzyWng

  • "I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans were less popular than the clap."
  • "So this was it. My easy retirement."
Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #31 on: May 14, 2017, 06:59:40 PM »
Denton is still wearing his nametag from the Valley Inn PTA meeting.

PTA meeting?

Parent-Teacher Association meeting? I didn't know Denton had kids. I thought he was a wanderer/ronin/UNATCO augmented agent.

Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #32 on: May 15, 2017, 12:42:55 AM »
It was a poorly thought out undercover/blending-in operation.

VIVIT

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Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #33 on: May 23, 2017, 06:58:12 PM »
I vote that Denton is still wearing his nametag from the Valley Inn PTA meeting, so while he intends to go with option 2 and stay silent, it ends up as option 1 anyway.
PTA meeting?

Parent-Teacher Association meeting? I didn't know Denton had kids. I thought he was a wanderer/ronin/UNATCO augmented agent.
It was a poorly thought out undercover/blending-in operation.

I like this idea. I'll go with something like this idea.


Denton opts to stay quiet for the time being.  The bartender seems rather disappointed.  An awkward pause passes before the bartender notices the name tag on Denton's vest.


"And teh weasel's called Koppa. Well, you better know in advance that the trip through Impasse Valley is pretty rough. Better not overextend yourself trying to get there. Here's some food for ya. Take it with you."

Code: [Select]
Denton got Big Rice Ball!
Denton awkwardly thanks the bartender for the gesture. It looks like this whole "mysterious stranger" schtick isn't working out as well as anticipated. Denton's gaze soon begins wandering around the room restlessly, as is its wont.


"You'll be just as powerful as you were before, but you can use that monster's 'Skill' as well. If you want to use a skill, you can pick it with the X button, or just use it directly with the L button."

How strange! What Dreamland might the beasts of impasse valley come from? Denton vows to get to the bottom of this mystery, but immediately begins to feel that this attempt at apply logic to this strange land to be a wild condor chase.


Denton then turns to an elderly looking-man and attempts to make smalltalk, when...

Aw hell nah. Seasoned wanderer Denton already knows all about the workings of magical pots -- he doesn't need to hear it from this geezer! Denton leaves before the man even realizes that his pot-addled pedagogical ramblings have fallen on deaf ears.

Finally, Shiren listens in on the conversation of two a grubby-looking men sitting next to the pot aficionado.

"I tried to steal something, but the shopkeeper was darn powerful. And when I tried to get past him, I suddenly had even stronger guards and guard dogs after me... if you run into them, you'd better not try and face them straight up."

"If you're gonna steal, you gotta use your head, man! If you can think up a good plan you can get away with stealing easy," replies his companion.

Ah, good ol' Izchakian justice. Theft is a roguelike mechanic introduced by Hack, and depending on the game it can be anywhere from easy-cheesy-bordering-on-broken to prohibitively suicidal. This game hits a happy medium at "dangerous for the unprepared."


Satisfied, Denton leaves the now-familiar pub with a stride in his step.

Next update -- Let's hit the road!

nav'

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Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #34 on: May 23, 2017, 07:25:47 PM »
Hmmm, pots... This calls for a Legend of Zelda meme. But I will resist. I must.

Shopkeepers are an interesting aspect of games in general. As a tightwad, I prefer games that let you rob shopkeepers, but it's best when the action carries meaningful consequences, like getting Doomed in ADOM or facing/evading a truly terrifying encounter. But I also enjoyed looting poor Dunmer merchants clean in Morrowind because they insisted on keeping all their items in a chest in plain sight. Very unwise indeed.
Рабинович глядит на плакат ?Ленин умер, но дело его живет!?
? уж лучше бы о он жил!

VIVIT

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Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #35 on: May 26, 2017, 09:28:18 PM »
Hmmm, pots... This calls for a Legend of Zelda meme. But I will resist. I must.
Woah no. We won't be smashing lots of pots in this game. Pots are valuable in Impasse Valley, and not just for their contents! We'll see when we start finding them -- but the pots in this game have magical properties.


Having grown restless of the chattering of the tavern, Denton heads east toward the beginning of the road to Table Mountain.

Next to the gate is a funny-looking man in a funnier-looking outfit. He speaks with a thick and unfamiliar accent -- perhaps he is one of those pallid-faced barbarians of the southern seas?

"If you make it through four areas, you'll come to a town. If you make it that far, there's a smith you can get help from there. Careful out there, brother. May Chron, the God of Travel, give you a fair wind!"

He's awfully polite and well-mannered, though -- he even knows the name of one of the gods!


If only the same could be said of this fellow. Denton holds back a sigh of frustration.

If we say we don't know, the guy explains to us an elegant bit of Mystery Dungeon's interface as a console roguelike: by holding down the "B" button, we can swap places with any friendly NPC who is not deliberately blocking our path. This is the sort of nicety that I really miss when I play classic mainframe roguelikes.


Politely shoving the man aside, Denton presses on.

VIVIT

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  • ow my hand
Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #36 on: May 27, 2017, 12:43:38 AM »
BGM: Old Cedar-lined Road



We begin our quest proper on an Old Cedar-lined Road. It's a nice place to get acclimated to the exploration and combat mechanics of the game. That little critter at the bottom-right of the screen is a bean bandit, probably the most dangerous enemy in these woods, though that's not really saying much. This one is asleep, making it even more harmless.



You'll notice some funny little geometric shapes on the left side of the screen -- that's the mini-map. It automatically fills itself in as we explore the world. The yellow dot represents us, while the red dots represent other monsters. This is another little hack the Mystery Dungeon games use to get around the difficulties of creating an interesting and accessible console roguelike. Classic rougelikes will show you the maps of entire floors drawn with ascii art. On a standard-sized computer terminal this would afford us an even two thousand tiles to display at once, minus 160 or so for the message lines, but the SNES only has room for so many decent-resolution sprites on the screen at once. Mystery Dungeon compensates with a mini-map on the HUD providing much of the information that the main display would tell you in a computer roguelike.


As Denton attempts to sneak up on the creature, he quickly finds himself surrounded! Not only have his clumsy footsteps awoken the bandit, but other creatures in the clearing have also taken notice of him. Suddenly, the odds are not looking quite as great.


Denton makes a strategic retreat.


While he escapes, a small woodland mamul nips at his heels! Mamuls, being the weakest enemy on the path to table mountain, pose little threat to our hero -- far less than the bean bandit to the west, which would have gotten a free stab at Denton had he not chosen to take a hit from the mamul instead.


As he passes by, Denton takes a hit from another mosnter as well, this time a kid tengu whipping at him with its hair.


With a stab from one of the bandits, Denton has already lost over a third of his health. Koppa smugly reminds him not to underestimate small woodland creatures.


After that, though, it apprears Denton is safe from attack! He hurries forward a brisk pace, with the monsters close behind, dancing just out of the reach of their attacks.


And with that, Denton has the high ground! By guarding a choke point, Denton forces the monsters to attack him one at a time.


His health getting low, he decides to retreat again to buy time...


Aw fuck.


Fuck.


Fuck.




And with that, Denton's first forays into impasse valley have come to an end. The wilds at their very weakest have bested him. It will surely be a long road ahead.

If you're wondering at all what happened up there, it might help if I explained the turn system of Shiren -- and other classical roguelikes. It's about as simple as a turn-based system can get: time is divided into turns, and on each turn, every standard unit may take exactly one action. They can move in any of the eight cardinal directions, attack in any of the eight cardinal directions, use any special ability, or, in the case of the Denton, use an item or talk to an NPC. There is no zugzwang; both Denton and his enemies may also choose to pass a turn, though few monsters ever actually choose to do this. The whole system is simple and elegant, but deep and engaging enough that roguelikes have been using it for nearly 40 years now with almost no alterations.

Denton decides that maybe his quest can wait for now.

Next update: the mysterious fourth building!
« Last Edit: May 29, 2017, 07:16:08 PM by VIVIT »

AzyWng

  • "I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans were less popular than the clap."
  • "So this was it. My easy retirement."
Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #37 on: May 27, 2017, 11:06:48 PM »
So how do we not get swarmed by a bunch of woodland creatures?

Also, kid tengu? As opposed to a crow or wolf tengu?

Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #38 on: May 28, 2017, 12:00:15 PM »
I was reading recently that those one-toothed clogs Aya wears are called "tengu geta".  They are strongly associated with Tengu mythology but they are apparently not impossible to wear by real people. 

Ever since I can't help but immediately notice how every depiction of Tengu will be wearing them, even when it is a tiny 2d sprite that is only a dozen pixels tall.

« Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 09:49:17 PM by dosboot »

VIVIT

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Re: Free as the Mountain Wind: Let's Play Shiren the Wanderer!
« Reply #39 on: May 30, 2017, 03:34:42 PM »
So how do we not get swarmed by a bunch of woodland creatures?
Firstly, I should have realized that there were waking monsters in the clearing with me before I decided to try to sneak up on that sleeping bean bandit. Sleeping monsters don't wake up unless you step next to them and they succeed some kind of awareness check, or you attack them. Had I gone straight for the choke point, I would not have had to skedaddle the way I did and give the monsters a bunch of free hits on me while I was running. Furthermore, it only takes a few kills for you to get enough EXP for your first level up, so by the time I had to deal with any other monsters like the unseen bandit making its way down from the northwest, I would have been able to put up a bit more of a fight. You'll see that I did level up earlier when I was being surrounded by enemies in path between the trees, but unfortunately I was already hurting enough already that I wasn't able to make it.

Quote
Also, kid tengu? As opposed to a crow or wolf tengu?
A tengu of the long-nosed humanoid type, who just happens to be juvenile.

To my knowledge, the wolf tengu is just a Touhou Project thing, but don't quote me on that.

I was reading recently that those one-toothed clogs Aya wears are called "tengu geta".  They are strongly associated with Tengu mythology but they are apparently not impossible to wear by real people. 

Ever since I can't help but immediately notice how every depiction of Tengu will be wearing them, even when it is a tiny 2d sprite that is only a dozen pixels tall.
The more you know! Thanks for that little tidbit, Dos.