Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival game in post-apocalyptic world | Hacker News Reader

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival game in post-apocalyptic world

cataclysmdda.org

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> System Requirements

> Minimum

> “I played catadda 0.B on Lego EV3 brick through ssh about a year ago. Every simple move took a noticeable fraction of a second (like 0.3-0.5 second), crafting and such was very slow as well. The specs were - 300 MhZ CPU, 64 Mb Ram (+ another 64 Mb swap on microsd flash) running ev3dev (stripped ubuntu basically), ssh over USB CDC connection.” -burgerpro

A heads up for anyone trying to run this on their Lego EV3 Brick.

It’s been a while but I’ve played this for hundreds of hours. I highly suggest playing terminal mode, your imagination is far cooler than any tile set and the in game description of things are very detailed considering the ridiculous amount of stuff in it. I once lived long enough to build a fully military armored RV, the memory of it still feels like a whole other life, with a tragic ending. Don’t drive too fast into unexplored territory.

Also terminal mode in Cataclysm has advanced ascii art, unlike older games like nethack. It's a joy to play.

Death by turret?

Laser shooting eyeball creature. I survived the blast but my stuff was destroyed or scattered everywhere and I wasn’t armed well enough or healthy enough to get out of it.

I still remember how I lost my RVdeathmobile due to slippery road — the car felt from the bridge. It was such a nice car — with superalloy platings that I took from downed heli, plently of clean water ( I was boiling it in batches and filling one of RV tanks with it), all sorts of fuel and even turrets!

Fanniest death was caused by exploding arms. I found a distant house by the road and tried to make it my base. One night my char woke up due to the pain — fingers have exploded or something like that happened! I think it was some sort of fungal infection and unfortunately I had no medicine for cure...

If you want to play, I recommend getting the newest experimental release from https://cataclysmdda.org/experimental/ instead of the 2-year-old 0.F-3. The experimentals are in good shape right now, as the next major release is very, very near, and will be almost identical to current experimentals.

This cannot be stressed enough.

Helpful project if you want to know more about anything in game https://nornagon.github.io/cdda-guide/ saw it presented at the last Roguelike Celebration.

A review. https://youtu.be/Cyoj4-niEPc

Caves of Qud is another similar game.

Caves of Quds storytelling feels very superficial or shallow due to the procedural generation imo.

Caves of Qud actually has a bunch of handwritten story mixed in. The main quest and some of the side quests are a lot more interesting. There are a few procedurally generated elements mixed into some of the quests as well, so they feel different on repeat playthroughs.

The game is tons and tons of fun as long as you treat the procedural background stuff as just filler to be explored for opportunities to find loot and cybernetics. The main story is absolutely worth playing through at least once though. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys roguelikes and likes a game with a good story.

I like making characters based on my fiends then later informing them of what terrible way they ended up dying.

I would also suggest taking advantage of the open source nature of this game, most of the game lives in json files and they are very receptive of PRs. I personally am why smashing toilets yields wax.

Presumably because of the wax ring at the base of many toilets

I'd recommend using a launcher, they make installing tilesets, mods, or soundpacks simple.

https://github.com/qrrk/Catapult

Doesn’t work on iPad sadly.

Does anyone know similar games for iPad, that’s not infested with in-app purchases?

Progression, survival, maybe some base building?

I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for one for some time.

I get that with my kids. I'm not an iPhone user, so I don't know the app store. But my very young kid will know how to open the app store on my wife's iPhone. With Android I type "open source" or use FDroid if I don't want ads. However with the iPhone it seems like every seeming game is just an ad for more games. My poor son will get nested 3 ads or more deep (for a new game) deep sometimes.

People make a big deal about the App store being all curated, but it all junk when I looked.

The open source community driven platforms tend to have gratis games with no purchases, unfortunately iPads don't let you install such platforms, so you might need to buy a different kind of device.

The big strength of CDDA as a roguelike for me is that when you die, it's usually clear what you did wrong in the days or minutes leading up to your death.

Is it? After many, many hours in the game, and many more deaths, I've learned the following:

1. If it's early game and you think you died because zombies are OP, you don't understand the clothing encumbrance mechanic.

2. Otherwise, the reason you died is because your luck run out.

Just make note of what killed you and avoid it hence. You do usually have the choice of not engaging.

Is this a re-implementation of an old game? I ask because "whole cloth" games don't usually get posted here.

I believe it’s original. Open source and passed along through a few leads, but last I saw it’s actively developed and has quite the following.

Yeah, DDA got started when some people from the dwarf fortress forums forked the original Cataclysm by Whales. There's also Bright Nights which forked from DDA a few years back and focuses on fun over realism.

Just tried this out. After my character died the "quick saves" I'd done prior to them dying seem to have been deleted. eg no way to "quick load" or otherwise load the character :(

Guessing this is a permadeath game, though that's not mentioned in the GitHub README nor FAQ.

Unless games saves are actually supposed to work?

Perma death and brutally difficult. I’ve had a lot of fun with this game over the years.

Ugh. What's the point of "quick saves" if they get deleted when the character dies?

That being said, thanks for confirming it's a permadeath game. :)

It's bizarre they don't mention that anywhere.

You are playing a somewhat unstable game (don't play the stable version).

As KyleBerezin hints at, they're for when the game crashes. Also when you lose power, or some other random event kills the game process.

Not sure if it's still the case, but last time I played (~2 years ago), closing the game window would also work as such "exceptional circumstance", so if you want your quick load, be quick with your ALT+F4 when your character dies :).

(I am not going to elaborate on the reason I know this.)

Cool, thanks. :)

This is something everyone who plays Cataclysm long enough learns. The first time the rage quit is real. But once you start the game again and realize you can continue from your last save the save scumming begins. Honestly some of the scenarios are so difficult it's either save scum or repeat the same opening dozens of times hoping RNG will let you escape the initial onslaught.

Tried it. A little too complex or my simple little brain. Dungeon crawl stone soup is what I prefer. crawl.develz.org

I like turn-based games and look forward to trying.

Went to download... someone is overthinking version numbers: "0.F-3 Frank-3"

Nothing is wrong with a simple 1, 2, 3 counter. Maybe a single decimal if you really want to signal minor vs. major upgrades (but all too many projects wind up at 0.x or 1.x).

They just looped. 0.9, 0.A, 0.B, etc.

0.F.3 but of course that doesn't vocalize well so "Frank 3".

Postgres rules though, so 0.B to 0.C was (potentially) breaking.

It's worth mentioning that Postgres no longer follows that rule. I just looked it up to see what you meant and after version 10 it does not apply

Tbh this project is not very good at regularly cutting releases, I'd recommend grabbing the experimental. When I played I'd just build off main

Forgive my ignorance, but it's not jumping out at me: what makes this game special?

The depth of the simulation mostly.

I even used it as a table top role playing game, where I was the only one seeing the screen, would describe the situation, and players come up with the actions. There were no action they asked for I couldn't perform in the game.

An extremely extensive crafting system as well. The crafting system is fairly realistic too (within reason). You can get a lightstrip from tearing apart something (like a plastic jackolantern) then combine it with a water bottle, wire amplifier circuit, and some batteries to get a flashlight. There are thousands of recipes for hundreds of items, and if you find that something is missing, you can change some json and PR to get it added to the next experimental.

My preferred starting character type is a taylor, of all things.

Your starting inventory isn’t great but you can craft a coat, backpack and cargo pants from the starting refuge’s courtains. You are effective at repairing your clothing from the start.

Great game.

Tailor is an over powered start for sure! Things fall apart constantly in the apocalypse, and another name for clothes is armor if you’ve got enough of it on.

Never considered starting as a tailor, but after enough playtime I eventually realized that tailoring is something I should skill up in very early in game, as it makes a lot of difference.

This game interested me but I just couldn’t get into it. A shame. It felt like what DayZ wanted to be but never became.

Here's a dump of notable characters for me:

Strong unwilling mutant build: Got lucky and got a reinfroced car early, stocked up really well and cleared out a small town just driving through them, that yeiled lots of resources including guns. I even was able to patch up the car. I spent a lot of time clearing out the town, healing up in between & training skills. I didn't really have any more books to read through & even completed a mission from a lab style compound.

I got ambushed by a really fast mover and was luckily able to shoot it. I retreated back to the town to heal up and foolishly ignored an eye bot. Once I realized what was happening the riot control bots were all over me. I didn't have my stuff on me and was away from the car, I tried to run and just got gased bad. I tried going back and submitting to arrest, but the police bot just killed me instead.

By the time I was dead I had mostly transformed into a tree & was Very strong (str 14 total). I had tons of ammo & all around was pretty decked out. A really sad and preventable death.

Strange bowman: I started a happy mutant build thinking I'd go more towards archery & survival, but after getting a bite wound early I needed to seek out antibiotics. I ended up finding a car & driving almost a full day until I found a downed military chopper. This set me with with great clothes, guns, knifes & MREs. I found a small town, Mattamiscontis, just ~20 buildings, to try this out at. I ended up needing an extensive stay as I didn't do most of the clearing with the car, but rather methodically worked through using knifes, guns if necessary & developing my archry ability. By the time I cleared the town I had read through most of my books, gotten my skills quite good & was well on my way to mutating to a bee. My tear through the town was seriously slowed down by catching the flu. It's hard to find enough vitamins, but I kept fairly free from junk food.

After surviving for 28 days I drove too close to a military outpost and was immediately shot in the head.

Strange dodger: I spawned in the outskirts of a city. I was lucky to find a lot of valuable stuff early, two working cars (one of them a semi) a garage with welding gas & even an autodoc! I was training my important skills after clearing much of a block with the semi, and drinking coffee. This threw my sleep schedule off and I ended up feeling tired when I needed to run away from some zombies. It was just 3 normal zombies that were able to surround me. I was able to fight them off, but I suffered 3 bite wounds. I tried to just rely on antibotics that I had on me, but that wasn't enough, I got to badly infected and tried to find more antibiotics, but got over whelmed just venturing out.

I should have used the semi more & worked to try and treat the bite wounds instead of relying on the anti biotics.

Radiation leak This build is great! It has low amounts of radiation leak as well as radiogenic. This yields a pretty good healing factor for very cheap. I cleared a small town and stumbled upon a great security van in working order. With this I slowly aquired most of my important skills and a lot of small arms & small arm ammo. I even had a couple shotguns, but mostly bird shot. I was feeling decked out enough to start exploring a lab. I ended up save scumming and getting killed by a turret in the lab. It was a one hit kill b/c I was walking around without bullet protection & Overburdended.

On the save scum I was more careful and never really got far into the lab. I was going around killing almost everything with a fire axe. I had a couple close calls, but got much better about dropping my loaded backpacks before fighting & keeping back up stuff on me.

I was heavily mutated in a really good way. I could recover from near death within two days. Unfortunately I was also very ponderous which was a big drawback. I had 17 STR (!)

Marti Urban Spawned as a bionic sniper in a helicrash. I had a bad wound on my arm, and some minor bleeding. Thankfully I was next to a unbelivably tiny town with an apartment building. Clearing it with just a combat knife wasn't much of a problem and it gave me plenty of food, fabric & books to get a good base of skills & something to do while healing up. From there I walked to a farm where I found a 4x4 in decent enough shape. That took me to the edge of a large city. I am slowly working my way through the city, developing my archery skill & I even found a pistol w/ 30 rounds of ammo.

While routine looting of a house I went into the basement to find a gigantic naked mole rat. It looked very dangerous and thankfully was far away from the stairs. I ran up the stairs and ignored it. As the clearing & looting when on & I started piling up some salted fish & beef jerky I noticed that the house with the naked mole rat is straight up collapsing. The mole rat appears to be destroying the foundation and whole sections are crashing down on it's head. I took advantage of that to lure some zombies into the hole. I went down to watch the fight between the mole rat and the zombies and it didn't even take a scratch from the zombies, it was mauling them one by one and it was barely hurt by the building falling on it's head. Those things are brutal. I've been luring almost all the zombies within a block into the naked mole rat pit. It's been a slaughter. I was enjoying going down there to watch, but after I made a couple pot shots at it with my bow it turned to attack me and I GTFO as fast as possible and haven't gone back in to check on it yet. I was able to sneak in and grab an assault rifle from a dead zombie soldier while there though. No ammo for it yet though.

Slowly cleaning out ~4 city blocks has yield plenty of gear, I finally made it to a library and have been reading up on lots of skills while healing. I've gotten a pretty good set up and keep on aquring more and more skills. Finally working my way up to compound bow + metal arrows has given me a lot of pretty safe kills, it takes a long time to properly kite the zombies, but as long as there isn't too many it's worked out very well. I am constantly carrying a pistol, a shotgun, a bow and a combat knife and fall back to whatever is needed to keep myself alive.

Just cleaning out a couple blocks has put me all the way through spring. Once they were all cleared out I started working on getting a good crafting set up. I used a quad bike to get around for that, and it took many days, I kept myself amused by using a pickaxe to bust into a bank (they just had precious metals, meh) and into a doctors office (looks like I can use the autodoc here!).

After a couple days of crafting I have just about everything I need to make a death mobile. I used this to get a humvee up and running and almsot fully repaired. I had it all set up and decided to drive over ~4 blocks to an electronics shop. I really wasn't ready for the number of zombies there were. It was right next to a park and the zombies are getting scarier and scarier. I lost a panel and was focused on just mowing down zombies. I've gone through enough to level up again, but I forgot to keep track of the disel. I ran out of gas! Luckily I wasn't in the middle of a swarm, I was able to ditch what I thought was my tools & food pack, but it also had my ammo. I ran as fast as I could with ~40 zombies chasing me. Thankfully there were only a couple zombies that could keep up enough to pay attention to me. They were tough zombies, but I took them out with pistol & bow. It'll be hard to get back to my stacked hummvie, but I can go back to the fairly safe area and make a plan. There's a safer route to the hummvie as it's on the edge of the city. I should get some more ammo, some disel & arrows before going back to try and reclaim it. I'm already half way through the summer.

I had a break to run in and refill the hummve, but it's too heavy for it's engine! I narrowly jumped back on the quad bike and got out of there. The current plan is to make a ton of arrows and slowly pick off the zombies from the comfort and safety of my moving quadbike. Current kills before the slog: 697

It was going really well until I wasn't watching where the quadbike was going and got it stuck on a boulder. I was surrounded and overwhelmed. I could have made it out if autopickup/pulp wasn't on. I got surrounded because I stopped to do that.

That sounds exactly like what I want out of the game. My characters tend to go a little bit more like this:

I run outside, and die from a hoarde of zombies.

Or:

I run outside, and am killed by an automated tank

Don't feel any shame in turning down the difficulty a bit while you are learning (turning down spawn rate, starting with more stats etc.) My brother turns off spawns all together and just plays it as a survival sandbox game. That's pretty extreme but the game has a lot to offer outside of combat, and if the difficulty is too high to get to any of that, turn it down.

With that being said, you should be dying pretty often. I think I made about 50 characters before I made it to winter for the first time.

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