I'm really not aware of how easy this would be to accomplish nor how far the recoded DoomRL v1 is. I'm asking opinions from the computer/programming wizards in the forum to see if this is worth investing time on.
The idea:
DoomRL has a graphical output consisting of a 80x25 ASCII; if we create a second party program capable of reading that ASCII output and apply a Tileset based on it, we'd be able to have some sort of a graphical interface.
What the program would need:
- The ability to read the ASCII output from DoomRL.exe
- The ability to pass input onto the game
- A graphical window covering enough room for a 80x25 Tileset. (This is very discussable) For a 16x16 Tileset this would make 1280x400.
- A fast enough refresh rate without hoarding the processor.
Specifics:
- A full text tileset (multicolor) for whenever the game is on the menus, etc.
- A second tileset with the graphics: all the characters capable of appearing on the play screen on all colors possible (including Berserk and Invulnerable)
- The condition to apply the second tileset would be on the output on the bottom line of the game (it always has common elements*). If that element is true, then lines 3 to 22 would use the alternative tileset.
After this is working (or not) There would be a lot of small extras which would be good to add.
I'd like to know if anyone finds any big issues with the idea and, better yet, if someone with programming skills could help starting this. If you can make the program work I'll supply all the tiles needed.
* The common elements on the play area i find easy to spot are:
- Line 24, Pos 1: "Health:"
- Line 25, Pos 62: "Phobos Base", "The Chained Court", etc.
Having different tilesets based on which level it is would be awesome later on but I'd already be happy if this worked with a single tileset.
