Diablo 3 and...well...just Diablo 3.

There has been a lot of talk lately as gamers get all antsy in their pantsy about Diablo 3's upcoming release date, May 15th.

Aside from Diablo 3 and the occasional and non-life-changing updates and patches to various RLs around the "internets", there hasn't been a whole lot of news on the Rogue-front.

While Diablo 3 has been the subject of much hype and fan-boy salivation there are those who aren't too enthused about the real money "Auction House".

Many beta testers have in fact lamented that there is a disctint drop in decent loot in Diablo 3.  It sounds to me like they have increased the "grinding" on Diablo 3 to a God-like level or what you may also know as Every-Korean-MMORPG-Ever-Made.  It makes sense of course to avoid market saturation but it sounds like the odds are in the casino's favor more than they are in yours.

Blizzard's take from auction sales has also been criticized.  Blizzard charges a dollar for you to post the item, regardless of whether or not it sells.  For stackable items they take a 15 percent cut on all sales.  Alright!  You finally sold something and want to transfer it to your PayPal?  Blizzard takes a 15 percent cut on top of that!  Then of course you have to pay the PayPal transaction fee as well.  So if you're selling commodities it will cost you a dollar plus 30 percent of the sale to post, sell an item and pull the money out.  For non-stackable items it will cost you a dollar plus 15 percent to post, sell and pull out your greenbacks.

You can find out more about the auction house drama here at Gamespot.

Server Regions are separated into 3 categories, Americas, Europe and Asia.  To give you an idea of the lumping going on here the Americas includes US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.  Europe includes Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Middle East and UAE.  Asia includes South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Talk about one of these not being like the other.  I'm expecting there to be some serious server division and possibly some straight up hate between some players.

There is something called Global Play which will allow players to Region jump to play with their friends but you basically only get to take yourself and won't be able to transfer any items between Regions because God knows, if a US player took a glowing, purple sword from a South Korean player and brought it back to the Americas server the whole world would implode.

And as some added last minute disappointment D3 will not ship with PVP and supposedly Auction House will take at least a week before it's up and running in the Americas and longer in other regions.

So in other words, get ready for the release! ...and then get ready to continue beta testing it.

Game on!

MarioRL: But our princess is in another castle!

I'm working on MarioRL right now as my entry in the annual 7DRL contest.  7DRL is a programming competition that takes place annually.  The goal is to make a finished, playable Roguelike (aka dungeon crawler) game in 7 days.

There aren't any actual prizes or places.  If you finish your game in the allotted 7 days, you're a winner basically.

There are a lot of great roguelikes based on other games such as DoomRL, CastlevaniaRL, ZeldaRL and so on.  I realize a Mario themed anything isn't incredibly original but it hit me this weekend that no one has ever made a roguelike based on Super Mario Bros, a game ripe for rogueliking.  I mean, you travel through various dungeons, fighting monsters trying to rescue a princess.  A little cliche sure but perfect!

I'm using GM:HTML5 which I just purchased last week so I'm not sure how great of an idea that was but I'm rapidly learning the GML scripting language.  GM:HTML5 does have drag and drop game creation but for something like a roguelike game you definitely have to use the scripting language.

It's similar to Java or C++ in a way and while I'm no expert in either, I'm picking it up fairly quickly.

With any luck, I'll have a playable game by the contest's deadline and once that's over, I'll take my tune polishing and fine-tuning it.

And of course, here are some screenshots:

Feast your eyes on the new DoomRL!

For those newcomers to the Roguelike genre who are still put off by text mode games there is now officially not a single damn reason not to download and play DoomRL...right BLEEPing now!

DoomRL has long been heralded as a Top 10 Roguelike but the lastest release finally brings a long lusted after graphical interface to DoomRL.

This new release is best described as a Doom inspired wet dream bathed in the blood of demon corpses.  In addition to graphic tiles it now also features an updated user interface and mouse support.

It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac so stop reading this article right now and go check it out at the official DoomRL website before they run out of bandwidth!

Lost on Level 1

I've been playing for a couple days now, halfheartedly in an attempt to knock off the ole' cobwebs.  I originally tried playing Priest but my prayers even near death only seemed to anger my deity unfortunately.

I could barely remember how to play after so many years and NetHack uses a daunting list of keyboard commands so I've been keeping the Guidebook and the Wiki open while I play.  I am however trying to avoid spoilers for the most part and paying the price for what I can't remember.

So, I messed around a little but from hereon out I will keep an official tally of how many heroes I send to their death.

Starting now, this is my first.

Ye Dude:  Monk, Male, Human, Chaotic, Deity: Huan Ti

This time, the first floor of the dungeon presented a problem to me.  No stairs.
I repeatedly searched with no luck.  Fortunately, I had picked up a couple extra scrolls so I started reading.  As luck would have it the first scroll I read was a mapping scroll and revealed where the hidden door was that I was I searching for along with a large general store as well, which is incredibly convenient for level 1.

Using my dog, I stole a couple of spellbooks but did end up paying for a bag.

On level 4 I drank from a fountain and a water nymph popped out and stole a cursed genocide scroll from me.  I started with an uncursed genecide scroll as well.  Both of these can be quite useful.  Fortunately, luck was on my side again as I found a Floating Eye on the same level, killed it, ate it's corpse (sorry), put on a blindfold and then tracked down that thieving water nymph and got my scroll back.  Also, my tame pup has grown into a tame dog.

On Level 5 I found a Chaotic altar and took the chance to identify the BUC status of all my scrolls.  Moving on to Level 6 I found a gravestone, used my pickaxe to dig and somehow dug up my own corpse, "a corpse named Ye Dude.".  Unfortunately, I had no turn undead or wands to see how that would have worked out.

I also came across a spotted jelly and after whacking it a few turns then getting hit for 20 damage, I decided to leave it alone.  I also found a shop that was ridiculously infested with Mimics but managed to deal with them.

Moving down to Level 7 and some further exploring I came across a Horse.  I dropped an apple to see if I could tame it but the damn thing was biting me so I attacked it for about five turns until somehow this Horse landed a deadly blow on me.  So uh...note to self...avoid horses.