DRL > Discussion
Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
Napsterbater:
--- Quote from: Ander Hammer on March 31, 2012, 12:52 ---This is not as hard as you're making it out to be, and is in fact a valid strategy for not wasting dozens of games because of lazy moves; you're going to save time in the long run if your games take twice as long, but you die less than half as often/early.
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Forget strategy. This is about fun. Sure, it's technically the 'right' choice to waste a tenth of a second before every move and ascertain whether it's the right one or not. But is that fun? I don't think so. I'm arguing that a more forgiving interface makes for a funner game.
--- Quote ---arguing about it is not going to manifest it in the game
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Err, yes, it is. Discussing these things on the forums is exactly how Kornel gets the idea for new features. If there's enough of a demand, and the feature is well-defined enough, it can also be taken to the bounty board to incentivize Kornel to implement it.
--- Quote ---I understand where you guys are coming from.
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I don't think you do. "Taking a few stings from early on" is not what we're talking about. My focus when playing DoomRL is not to win. This might seem counter-intuitive but I don't play to win. I play to have fun. Taking a few stings due to overzealousness is just part of the game.
--- Quote ---I don't think you understand where I am coming from. I'm going to re-iterate here: DoomRL is a turn based game, one that tends to reward caution regardless of build, and this is from someone who likes shooting rockets indiscriminately when he's not in melee.
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DoomRL does not reward caution. At least, I don't feel rewarded when I have to exercise it. I feel punished. I feel like, rather than walk the tight tight line between life and death, I have to fight an interface. It's no longer me and Mancubi and Arch-Viles, it's me and the effing reload button. Rather than making decisions like, "can I make it to this pillar before the Vile rounds that corner, revives the Mancubus and it blows up the pillar?" I have to scan for enemies for a fifth of a second after every time I hit 'r'. Every time I have to find the comma key so I can run rather than just do what every other roguelike does and let me shift-move to run, it breaks the feeling of fun. Now I'm fighting a keyboard.
If you want to sit around and take half a second between moves that's up to you. You might think that's fun, I don't.
Matt_S:
--- Quote from: Murkglow on March 31, 2012, 12:39 ---If you step in lava because you hit the wrong key, you should die.
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I'll keep that in mind whenever I walk into lava after fumbling with my laptop's awkward numpad feature, and I will curse myself for not having a proper keyboard.
And I'll keep that general idea in mind when I accidentally double tap u, or hit i and u, and waste that brand new hatred skull because there's apparently no longer an option to change the menu behavior.
And in the past I would have kept that in mind if I pressed f without any bullets in my gun, and then accidentally walked into the open and die when I try to aim. But now the current version is babying people because it allows a prompt if you try to fire without any bullets in the gun. Come on, they deserved to die!
--- Quote from: Ander Hammer on March 31, 2012, 12:52 ---This is not as hard as you're making it out to be, and is in fact a valid strategy for not wasting dozens of games because of lazy moves; you're going to save time in the long run if your games take twice as long, but you die less than half as often/early.
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I never said it was hard, but it's far more annoying and time consuming than it ought to be. Consider auto-travel and auto-explore in DCSS. Consider the heavily detailed auto-inscription system and remembering potions and wands and scrolls. Is it "hard" to play the game without these? Why not just move one space at a time? Why don't you just grab some paper, or open up notepad and keep track of items yourself? What about map memory? In the old days people kept track of that on graph paper (not roguelikes, but other rpgs)! I don't always like the direction they go with development, but I very much agree with DCSS's philosophy that choices should be interesting and meaningful.
Going back to DoomRL, let's say there's a health globe several spaces away that I want to grab. If I'm playing the graphics version, I can click it and Doomguy will walk towards it as long as it's safe - the game automatically looks out for enemies and dodges lava tiles. If I'm not, I have to avoid lava and watch out for enemies myself. I already made the interesting choice to go get the health globe; playing screenwatch until I get there isn't interesting. If I encounter an enemy, then I have an opportunity for another interesting choice, but if I don't then the game just wasted my time. I'm just asking for the same safety of mouse movement with the keyboard.
--- Quote from: Ander Hammer on March 31, 2012, 12:52 ---Okay. So. DoomRL is a Roguelike. It controls like a Roguelike. Okay, sure, it's probably possible to get a keypress buffer interrupt doohickey in to prevent mistakes like this, but arguing about it is not going to manifest it in the game, and if and until it's a feature, it's not going to make holding down or hammering a command in a turn-based game any less of a bad idea.
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If all unbound keys made Doomguy shoot himself in the foot, it would certainly be a bad idea for players to accidentally press any of those unbound keys. The question is whether it's a good design decision, and that discussion is kind of what the discussion forum is for.
Ashannar:
--- Quote from: Napsterbater on March 31, 2012, 13:59 ---I'm arguing that a more forgiving interface makes for a funner game.
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I'm not sure how the feature you want is able to be implemented. What if I want to lean on the keys while an enemy is visible? What if I can see an enemy but it can't see me? Then your feature is actually a hindrance.
--- Quote ---I don't think you do. "Taking a few stings from early on" is not what we're talking about. My focus when playing DoomRL is not to win. This might seem counter-intuitive but I don't play to win. I play to have fun.
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Then why are you so bummed when you die?
--- Quote ---DoomRL does not reward caution. At least, I don't feel rewarded when I have to exercise it. I feel punished. I feel like, rather than walk the tight tight line between life and death, I have to fight an interface. It's no longer me and Mancubi and Arch-Viles, it's me and the effing reload button. Rather than making decisions like, "can I make it to this pillar before the Vile rounds that corner, revives the Mancubus and it blows up the pillar?" I have to scan for enemies for a fifth of a second after every time I hit 'r'.
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As opposed to what, exactly? It seems absolutely absurd to me that you complain about getting hit if you reload while enemies are in line of sight. What else is supposed to happen? Reloading is part of the tactics in this game. You have to do it intelligently. That's why there are traits to improve reloading time. And that makes it a fun consideration for the majority of us.
--- Quote ---If you want to sit around and take half a second between moves that's up to you. You might think that's fun, I don't.
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I'm not sure why this is such a problem. In the graphic version, at least, the move animation allows plenty of time to scan for enemies, and prevents the key buffer from queuing moves.
I will agree with you that full reload is pretty sketchy in this game and should either stop when an enemy comes into sight, or be scrapped entirely. But I have no sympathy for you when you complain that tapping 'r' while enemies are in sight gets you killed. Or walking into lava gets you killed. Where do we draw the line? "Are you sure you want to walk around that corner? You might get hit if you do! Y/n" ?
Napsterbater:
Not sure if I can better articulate my playstyle so you could understand why I'm complaining about these things. Oh well.
Ander Hammer:
Okay, I have to apologize. I read through the whole thread and came in late and was pretty biased.
I agree that a lot of the things you people are saying - a better run function, some streamlining of awkward commands - would be nice. It's just that a lot of it is cloaked in words that I perceived as whining which read 'I pushed (key) too many times and died, fix it' so you can potentially have more fun with a run and gun playstyle.
Also, things like this.
--- Quote from: Napsterbater ---forget strategy
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This game is all about strategy. Yeah, you can play it how you want, and if you don't mind getting killed rather than winning most of the time, there you go, have fun.
re: pillar archvile mancubus firestorm: The definition of 'caution' seem to be different between some of us; mine is more akin to being proactive, shotgun scouting, listening to monster calls, and I guess spending a tenth of a second per move checking to see if there are monsters. Yours seems to be waiting until you're in trouble before trying to play it safe, which might just not be fun for you.
re: manifesting the feature: yeah, arguing about it gets discussion going, I kinda worded it wrong. If/Until something like it gets implemented, you're going to have to play as you are and possibly wind up with preventable deaths, or not play and wait.
I might recommend cleaning up the ideas in this thread and posting the basics in Requests For Features.
I guess I kind of like old-school roguelikes, where anything beyond shift+direction was a single move that you had to think about.
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