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[Evilpotatoe]

I'd have thought it's the "Dev" forum, here on ChaosForge, but it looks a bit lethargic.
(I'd love an all-members-accessible tracker, like https://en.boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1131.  Not hoping for it, but can't resist throwing the idea)

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So, shall I post here, in the general ?  Or rather on <Erk> Steam </Erk> forums ?


Here are some appetizers "requestions" & suggestions, about little things I miss sooooooo much @v0.85 :

• Can't use from the ground yet ?  You put a lot in improving the gameplay fluidity, but this one doesn't seem heavy to implement, and brings a lot. (Especially with current absence of inventory shortcuts or keybindings.lua to add custom binds, which needs many keypresses for basic things like using a medkit).
  One of the best improvement between DoomRL 0.9.9.6 and 0.9.9.7 imo, really)
  
• An actions log, please !
  Even a raw one, with things like "R inflicted 18 impact to @" would be better than the current void.
  I'm often wondering what just happened, what did I kill, what did I just grab, etc...  this would really help. (and so would, having the last actions text-described in the upper left.)
  
• Why no ability to "run" ? (read "move in a direction until something is encountered").  Playing slow bores me, but spamming move keys often turns in getting "ambushed" and reacting too late.  I can't think of any obstacle to implementing this.  Is there any ?
  
• Why is there no "look" command ? We have a targeting cursor and a function to display infos about the item we stand on. Easy to add, wouldn't it ?
  
• Add some more drops & powerups please !  I'm sure this is planned, of course, but such contents greatly contribute to the gameplay dynamic.
  Even simple things, like little health/armor bonuses, or ammo, would incite the player to priorize or skip areas, and influence the gameflow a lot.
  

Subsidiary question : are the absence of powerups or run command linked in any way with the 3D render ?

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

We do have an internal tracker for tasks (that's what the numbers in the changelog refer to) on GitHub - maintaining two would be very annoying and prone to desynchronation. Currently the Steam forums seem to be most active if you're searching for other people comments not just our replies :P.

Use from ground is simply SHIFT-G - in info mode (SHIFT) just press pickup.

There's already too much text on screen, an action log would make it much messier, especially that with the character density and sometimes 8-10 actions per turn you'd basically have half the screen filled sometimes with action report.

Run - just keep the move button pressed instead of spamming it - it will cease to move if an enemy is spotted. We have two more ideas in this regard, so stay tuned (one is to extend the ability to chord keys for flow, the other is a safe move modifier).

Targeting is look mode. There's no more info to add. Maybe we could allow a peak at the items that are on a square, but after a short while you know what you're looking at anyway.

Powerups and more drops are planned as mentioned. As they are only the icon in terms of graphics, this is completely unrelated to the 3d.

[Sereg]

As far as an action log, even if there are a lot of actions per turn, the log wouldn't necessarily have to be overly spam-y. Another game I play, Dominions 5, implements three different toggleable levels of detail for its combat log, which means I can find out the exact details of what's happening down to specific numbers, or just get a brief overview of the most important events, as I choose.

Another possibility is a message recall - a way to open up and browse the log on a separate screen at leisure(given that this is, after all, a turn-based game, even if it can be played a lot faster if desired). This seems to be an element in many roguelikes I've played, especially those with limited space to display detailed messages on the proper game screen.

Just some thoughts on that point - the others seem to have been addressed satisfactorily, but there're definitely ways to do a log that don't cause excessive additional clutter on the screen. Even dumping to a text file for post-game perusal would be helpful for players who value such a log, and is almost trivial to implement, assuming there's any sort of standardized infrastructure already tracking those events in some form.

Edit: I'm also well aware, perhaps better than most, that there's always more to do than there is time to do it on a game development project. I'm sure you have quite a lot on your plate as it is, so I want to be clear I'm simply offering ideas, not demanding features, here =P

[Evilpotatoe]

Thanks a LOT for your thorough answers (I factorize for 3 threads :p)

About the tracker, just wanted to spread the idea (& show a working example).
Posting here is fine for me then.
I could post (more) pages of feedbacks and open troll-prone debates with the community... but think waiting&see may be a better approach. (think of points like the addition of powerups)


I answer back to most points, but am perfectly aware all this takes time, and am not in a hurry (waiting years doesn't bother me, really).


--
Oh, Shift-G ?  Great !
Too bad it's not in the "Keyboard" infos.  Please think of a simple readme file with undocumented features like this, the ctrl-mousewheel zoom in/out, or command line switches (only discovered --gl atm, but had to ask for it).
All those are extremely useful.... providing one is aware they exist.

About the action log, I meant a "messages" view, like we have with p (or is it ctrl-p) ? in DoomRL (and Angband, and probably ToME, etc.).  On screen, I'd like only the last message in the upper left (which could be an option, in a .ini file if you don't want to burden the GUI)

Keeping the key pressed : just tried it again, but it doesn"t do what I need : I have to wait for the repeat to take effect, and even then, it is slower than repeatidly pressing the key.  I wish I could just instantly reach the destination, skipping any animation.

Targeting beeing look mode sounds ok (maybe call it selection mode then ?).  Adding the "view item/enemy/[ground] description" would definitely be a great addition.  I agree we quickly "get familiar with" most things, but beeing noob-friendlier and allow quick checking of some details would be a big step for ergonomy.
Note we currently can't "target" when bare-handed.
Also, I wonder if there's a way of knowing the colour of an advanced armor atm, since I think they all look cyan.

About "more drops", I'll just insist that they are what creates the level's uniqueness and helps having it feel "filled"... but can understand it's one of a zillion priorities.
Glad to know the graphic aspects won't interfere here.


I'll stay tuned, of course.  Both to your answers and new versions.
Keep up the good work.  I paid for your passion, not for the delivery :)

[Moonshine Fox]

Action log is not as great as it sounds. DRL and AliensRL both have it, and it's most often completely unusable as its packed with single-shot denotions. If it packed similar messages together with a <Message x15> then that might make it more useful.

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

SHIFT-G *is* documented in the keybindings : "  SHIFT      - (hold) show/compare/use item on floor (G to use)". It's also documented in the tutorial.

Ctrl-mousewheel wont appear in any help file as it's not just undocumented, but also unsupported. Any bugs that happen there are not going to be fixed, hence we will not support/document it anywhere (unless we decide to promote it to a feature). It might break any time!

--gl is only a compatibility hack - we don't want people using that unless their card really doesn't support Vulkan - in most cases people didn't update their drivers and that's what they should do. For the small minority with GL4.3 compatible cards that are not Vulkan compatible we'll have an automatic detection soon, and the game will automatically fallback to Vulkan. No reason to document something that will any moment be removed.

As for the message log, as mentioned before, a single turn if in the middle of the enemies could take up a whole screen of space, and with the current font be very unreadable. We'd rather have people report that some actions are non-obvious and fix the need for a message log, then provide a very shitty "band-aid" solution. We know there's a lot of work to do here, but patching it with a sub-par solution is not something that is reasonable to do.

That said, we probably will need some kind of it for the ASCII version, but I'd rather rethink it to have a better solution than a wall of text - so this is definitely an open topic!