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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.6.1 "Vivaldi"(formerly Savage Lands)
« on: November 14, 2016, 03:11:16 AM »
Hi, I've been playing a bit over the last day and have some feedback.
Overall I'm having a good time with the game. It's fun. I'm looking forward to the December release.
Do you have a blog, roadmap, anything with what's planned in the releases or things you're looking for feedback on?
I really like the character on display in the first village. Very cool. Loved that the grave robber quest builds the little mythology of the village. The first island as a whole was really cool.
I also really like the islands in a sea setup. Loved the exploration aspect and having to find a boat.
Liked the wide variety of classes, though I've only tried a couple so far. And haven't really gotten very far in the game, just got off the first island and got killed a few times after exploring the sea a bit and poking my head into other islands. Haven't really found a main questline. Also confused as to whether all the > dungeons scattered around are endless dungeons, seems like the descriptions suggest that?
I'd really like to have more display options. Bigger font mode, stretch font mode, fullscreen mode. Basically, more options for making the display bigger. It's too small in my screen's native resolution. If there is a way to increase this via text files, it'd be good to move it into an in-game options UI.
Another display issue is that the colors you've chosen, especially the dark-blue, I believe they're standard console colors, but I've always found the dark-blue on black background incredibly hard to read. Definitely came up when I was surrounded by shades at some point and thought I'd killed the last one... It'd be good if you had some other color scheme options like "high contrast" "lighter darks!" or something, at minimum a way to lighten up the dark blue via ini files, though that's a pain for most users.
The game wears its ADOM roots on its sleeve though. Which actually leads to one of my points: If I wasn't familiar with ADOM UI, I wouldn't have a clue how to play this game. The UI for example, I think you need to annotate the UI keys as to what they do in each menu. I believe ADOM does this as well in its ASCII version. There's a string of symbols at the bottom of say the inventory screen and I can't remember what they do in ADOM so I just leave them alone. Also, inherited the weird Equipped->Inventory 2-step inventory display system from ADOM.
There's also a lot of opaque information, despite having read through the in-game help, and the pdf guide.
It's not clear what skills do, mechanically, and which ones are smart decisions. For example, it's not clear to me whether a witchling (an example of a reduced complexity via reduced choices magic user) should invest in, "magic" or "primordial". It's not clear what "magic" does but it sounds important. It's not clear what "primordial" does, but since its the witch's only magic school, probably important. My current guess is maybe magic influences AP gain and school-specific helps with damage sides? I have no idea. This is after having read the pdf guide, the info in the guide doesn't cover anything more than you could guess by the title of the skill.
A similar point for the spells themselves. It's not clear what a spell actually does until you cast it, then you can reverse-engineer what the #, R, 2B etc mean. (Though I still don't know what B means in 2B, blast? beam maybe?) That works for damage spells, but for cloak of shadows.... does it help me dodge? Does it provide mage armor of some sort? Is it a resistance booster? No idea.
Other mechanics like # of casts aren't clear unless you've coming from Adom as well.
5 as the keybinding to rest isn't clear when using a laptop with hjkl movement. I guessed . or w,. would cause a rest, eventually hit the 5 on the 1-9 row. I also guessed shift-R from other games.
Not sure how caster classes work with stats, for example, in some other games you have a casting main stat like willpower or int or cha. Wasn't clear to me if that was the case here, specifically for the Witchling which I was mainly playing, or if it was just Int for everyone, and willpower for... mana? Can't remember.
Because the skills aren't clear as to what they really do, I didn't end up playing around much at all with skills other than magic related skills. Not sure if they open up any more interesting playstyles, or are primarily for other classes.
Overall I'm having a good time with the game. It's fun. I'm looking forward to the December release.
Do you have a blog, roadmap, anything with what's planned in the releases or things you're looking for feedback on?
I really like the character on display in the first village. Very cool. Loved that the grave robber quest builds the little mythology of the village. The first island as a whole was really cool.
I also really like the islands in a sea setup. Loved the exploration aspect and having to find a boat.
Liked the wide variety of classes, though I've only tried a couple so far. And haven't really gotten very far in the game, just got off the first island and got killed a few times after exploring the sea a bit and poking my head into other islands. Haven't really found a main questline. Also confused as to whether all the > dungeons scattered around are endless dungeons, seems like the descriptions suggest that?
I'd really like to have more display options. Bigger font mode, stretch font mode, fullscreen mode. Basically, more options for making the display bigger. It's too small in my screen's native resolution. If there is a way to increase this via text files, it'd be good to move it into an in-game options UI.
Another display issue is that the colors you've chosen, especially the dark-blue, I believe they're standard console colors, but I've always found the dark-blue on black background incredibly hard to read. Definitely came up when I was surrounded by shades at some point and thought I'd killed the last one... It'd be good if you had some other color scheme options like "high contrast" "lighter darks!" or something, at minimum a way to lighten up the dark blue via ini files, though that's a pain for most users.
The game wears its ADOM roots on its sleeve though. Which actually leads to one of my points: If I wasn't familiar with ADOM UI, I wouldn't have a clue how to play this game. The UI for example, I think you need to annotate the UI keys as to what they do in each menu. I believe ADOM does this as well in its ASCII version. There's a string of symbols at the bottom of say the inventory screen and I can't remember what they do in ADOM so I just leave them alone. Also, inherited the weird Equipped->Inventory 2-step inventory display system from ADOM.
There's also a lot of opaque information, despite having read through the in-game help, and the pdf guide.
It's not clear what skills do, mechanically, and which ones are smart decisions. For example, it's not clear to me whether a witchling (an example of a reduced complexity via reduced choices magic user) should invest in, "magic" or "primordial". It's not clear what "magic" does but it sounds important. It's not clear what "primordial" does, but since its the witch's only magic school, probably important. My current guess is maybe magic influences AP gain and school-specific helps with damage sides? I have no idea. This is after having read the pdf guide, the info in the guide doesn't cover anything more than you could guess by the title of the skill.
A similar point for the spells themselves. It's not clear what a spell actually does until you cast it, then you can reverse-engineer what the #, R, 2B etc mean. (Though I still don't know what B means in 2B, blast? beam maybe?) That works for damage spells, but for cloak of shadows.... does it help me dodge? Does it provide mage armor of some sort? Is it a resistance booster? No idea.
Other mechanics like # of casts aren't clear unless you've coming from Adom as well.
5 as the keybinding to rest isn't clear when using a laptop with hjkl movement. I guessed . or w,. would cause a rest, eventually hit the 5 on the 1-9 row. I also guessed shift-R from other games.
Not sure how caster classes work with stats, for example, in some other games you have a casting main stat like willpower or int or cha. Wasn't clear to me if that was the case here, specifically for the Witchling which I was mainly playing, or if it was just Int for everyone, and willpower for... mana? Can't remember.
Because the skills aren't clear as to what they really do, I didn't end up playing around much at all with skills other than magic related skills. Not sure if they open up any more interesting playstyles, or are primarily for other classes.
