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[Ratha]

I was recently playing and thinking to myself 'its hard to tell the difference between a pistol and a double shotgun', as they all use the same character to display, and a similar color which is hard to distinguish at a quick glance.

My thought was that it would be nice if they all used a separate graphic/character that way you could use color to represent a loaded or unloaded pistol, shotgun, chaingun ect. I find myself constantly scavenging weapons, and then forgetting if i have already unloaded em, and then have to manually use the look command to check. The proposal would solve that problem by say using a lighter color for a partially/fully loaded weapon (more visible so it can be easily seen) and then a darker color of the same shade to indicate a fully unloaded weapon which would stand out less compared to the loaded ones.

Obviously there are problems with this idea, such as finding enough representative characters for each different weapon, and then using a dark and light color to represent unloaded/loaded that wouldnt conflict with some of the uniques and whatnot.

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As a second part to this feature request, id like to see the list of items in the color.ini be somewhat less vague and incomplete. Adding the primary items/weapons/powerups/monsters (leaving out the spoilers/rares) you are likely to run into during the first few levels. It might also help to include the color that the items are by default, that way people could compare what they've already seen with how they want to change it, instead of having to trial and error till they find what they want. Also including a link to the relevant wiki page in the file would save people some trouble i suspect, myself included. >_<

Currently, i think that link is:
http://doom.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Modding:sID and or http://doom.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Item_IDs

EDIT: Removed question. The "entity IDs" apparently are apparently the 'Name' of the object and not the ID afterall. I tried searching for "item id" and "entity id" and similar stuff on the wiki but couldnt seem to find the right page. Strangely enough a search for "item ids" or just plain "item" results in the proper page.

Currently as of 0.9.9.1 the color.ini says:

// Custom coloring based on entity ID's. Search the DoomRL wiki
// for id's for entities. Colors can be:
// BLACK, BLUE, GREEN, CYAN, RED, MAGENTA, BROWN, LIGHTGRAY, DARKGRAY,
// LIGHTBLUE, LIGHTGREEN, LIGHTCYAN, LIGHTRED, LIGHTMAGENTA, YELLOW, WHITE

[Colors]
// pistol = "MAGENTA";
// former = "GREEN";

Would appreciate feedback on the idea, and any question answering you guys can do. :)

Thanks.

[GenTechJ]

I'm not sure this is possible in the current incarnation, but would be something worth trying. I can take a look into it, but it might take a day or two due to other commitments here.

Short answer, I'll look into whether or not it's possible with the current version.

[Tavana]

Just a note: personally, I wouldn't want to see the amount of ammo in a weapon easily displayed via colour. I'd want to have to look. The main reason being: This would be what would need to happen in real life. Even being able to see from afar that a pistol is [1/6] is a bit "Oh, c'mon." so to speak. Granted there is a level of "I just unloaded it, I should know", but then we're also saying you're a marine on a downward plunge into hell trying to eradicate as many demons as possible. I reckon there might be more important things for you to remember.

TL;DR: While DoomRL breaks a lot of "reality" barriers, I don't think this one should be broken.

[Ratha]

Its just more of an idea for an interface time saving and accessibility measure. IE when an item is already in your line of sight, you can Look at them which tells you how much ammo is in them, so why not just extend that one step further and be able to physically look at them on the screen to tell that they are different weapons (no possible confusion between pistol and double shotgun for example if they are different symbols/color groups) and if they are empty or not.

The two easiest ways of making more information more easily available to the player are by changing/adding colors, and changing/adding different symbols. Color tends not to add much complexity if applied properly, but more symbols to learn can be daunting to a new player and potentially detract from an experience. So its all about balance either way ya look at it.

Its obviously not a perfect proposal for a change, and would require a bit of work re-thinking character groups and colors. There are some downsides such as adding complexity if the number of characters a player needs to understand increase. DoomRL is a pretty simple game compared to other roguelikes, keeping it that way is important i think. Whatever changes may come from the idea will hopefully keep that in mind and add to the player experience and make discerning information easier, without adding unnecessary complexity.