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Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er

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Ashannar:
By the way, any NetHacker will know that NetHack has very, very many more so-called 'interface wiggles.' ;) I'm surprised just how forgiving DoomRL is in comparison.

Napsterbater:

--- Quote from: MaiZure on March 31, 2012, 07:29 ---Yup that's what makes this Doom 'the Roguelike' - The hallmark feature of (fun) roguelikes is instant, unexplainable/unavoidable death.

--- End quote ---
I disagree. Sure, that's one of the classic features of roguelikes. But that's not a defining or even necessary feature. And DoomRL doesn't even really have it.

 I've played Angband almost as much as I've played DoomRL. Angband is much, much more dangerous than DoomRL in this way. There are so many enemies which, if you're not aware of their abilities, can bring you from 100% health to 0% health in one turn. That's instant, but not unexplainable/unavoidable. You can almost always avoid death in Angband by being prepared and using detection spells. It's the rare, one in a dozen games or so, that ends any way other than an avoidable mistake on the player's part. The control interface is cohesive in giving you all the tools you need to do so. It's streamlined. It works with your playstyle, not against it.

Sure, if you step out in front of a bunch of Mancubi/Revenants without fire protection and a lot of health, you're dead. But you (almost) always know what's around because of the sounds. Instant death in this fashion is practically non-existent. Angband does have it, but it's rare, and the monsters that can do it are (almost always) easy to detect and avoid. Sometimes you get into real pickles, but then that's what escape spells are for. They don't always kill in one blow.

And that's not what I'm complaining about. I submit that DoomRL is hampered by being tied down to this old roguelike chestnut. "Thou shalt not hold down arrow keys!" Why is that? There's only one reason, the key buffer, and that can be changed. Angband has a trap system. Angband's traps can kill you. You can also detect traps. There's a neat green line that delineates the area you've detected. Angband does the decent thing and makes it so you can't run willy-nilly over that line. You have to confirm.

All I'm asking for is that DoomRL give the player the same courtesy. It won't make the game any easier. But I do think it will make it more fun.

Napsterbater:

--- Quote from: Creepy on March 31, 2012, 03:51 ---It's not really an interface issue here; the whole "compensate for information which a player would never ignore were he really there" concept is already there, in that it gives you all the time in the world to examine the situation before acting.
--- End quote ---
DoomRL's gameplay is geared towards fast play. There's certain situations where you know to slow down. You first start hearing Revenant screams and you slow way the hell down, because getting out in the open with them when they first start appearing is very very dangerous. So you stick to corners and scan the screen after every move.

But that's not the default mode. The default mode is, you know (generally) what kind of danger you're in. Excepting commandos, every truly dangerous enemy can be heard. And you know the general pattern enemies move in. So you move in ways that diminish the number of opportunities they have to waste you. Sticking to cover, or not depending on what you're up against.

Most of the time, these decisions can be made fast. So you play fast. Or, I do. And it works great. Slowly I work on those tactical decisions, (which kill me half the time) but I'm having loads of fun doing so because speedy play is ten times funner than slow play.

But when you play fast, you make mistakes. DoomRL is a game that you could play fast the whole way through, if you just had enough help from the game to mitigate some of the more dangerous of those mistakes.

Matt_S:
For a while now, I've had an idea for a "safety mode" which I haven't suggested because I figured most people would just say to be more careful.  Basically you hit a key to activate the safety mode, and then you cannot walk on dangerous fluids (unless maybe you have 100% resistance, but then it should stop you if you have an envirosuit pack about to wear out) or move when there's enemies around (or out of sight enemies that shoot at you from weird positions) until you hit the key to deactivate the safety mode.  Or maybe things like shooting would also deactivate it since you're clearly acknowledging danger.  It would have basically the same safety features that the game already has for mouse motion and automove except you control the movement the normal way.

By the way, I really wish that there would be an option for intuition symbols to stop automoving rather than have the game run down a hallway, sense the enemies from out of vision range, then walk until they can see you as well.  And maybe having tracking data should stop automoving when enemies are right outside your vision range, as well.

Ander Hammer:
So basically, you're suggesting they implement a no-punishment clause for sufficiently stupid mistakes.

I don't know, man, maybe you should learn to play a tiny bit slower. DoomRL is not exactly Doom, and both are more games of tactics and patience than you might think. It is also honestly not that hard to stop leaning on arrow keys to move; I did it, and I'm an idiot.

Play slow, learn how to react to (or prepare for) various situations, and eventually you can probably go back, making those decisions you've learned about while taking your time faster and furiouser.

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