Movement question

[anpd]

Hi I am thinking about wether to have only vertical and horizontal movement and skip diagonal movement. What are your toughts about that kind of movement system?

[Darren Grey]

Works well with laptops, and ultimately doesn't take a lot from the game.  Just be sure your dungeon generator is favourable to this sort of movement.

[Kalantir]

Why?  It's trivial to add support for diagonal directions and some roguelike players (such as myself and all my friends) will find the lack of diagonal support to feel restrictive and in some cases, this borders on making the game unplayable.

If you choose not to add diagonal movement, make sure to also leave out diagonal attacks on the part of creatures to avoid enemies getting cheap shots on you.

[guest509]

  I prefer only four direction. Powder does this. Works well with the movement keys and I only have a lap top.

  As for making enemies only attack in 4 directions. Sneaky little gnomes and such can attack at a diagonal to add flavor.

[Hi]

Hi I am thinking about wether to have only vertical and horizontal movement and skip diagonal movement. What are your thoughts about that kind of movement system?

Thanks for asking 
I like this idea, powder does allows spells to travel diagonally which adds some tactics.

[Fenrir]

Flavor? Tactics? I think this defies the player's expectations of how the world should work. I would find it annoying. Unless you're specifically targeting the laptop crowd, I see no reason to do it.

[anpd]

Thanks for your thoughts, my plan was to use animated pixel art so it would be a way to avoid a lot of animation work.  I was planning to add mouse support for movement so people on laptops would still be able to play.

[Krice]

I see no reason to do that. You can add diagonal move support for laptops also, using control keys with arrows. I believe the diagonal support doesn't take anything away from the gameplay, if someone chooses to use only four directions for moving. Unless the gameplay tactics is somehow strictly built for four directions only, but even then it could feel strange.

[Z]

I think you should ignore people who don't like 4-way movement and go on. 4-way and hex-based movement have both some advantages and some disadvantages over 8-way movement. Even if 8-way movement has more advantages, it is better to add more variety to the roguelike genre -- you will probably lose people like Fenrir, Kalantir, and Krice, and possibly those for whom your game would be the first roguelike (as I suppose 4-way movement would be strange for them... but I am not sure), but get those who like this idea or just like variety. It will be harder to create the "best roguelike in Universe", but easier to create an original one. (Unless your plan *is* to create the best roguelike in Universe, of course.)

[Krice]

Will 4-way movement make the game original?

[anpd]

Well the main reason would be to keep the amount of art needed down. Hoping to have animations for all movement, attacks and so on in all directions.

[Fenrir]

Have you ever played Battle for Wesnoth? They don't have attack animations for all the directions. They use two attack animations (really just one that is flipped horizontally), but the sprites move in the direction of the attack, and it seems to work well enough. You can see a little of what I mean in the official trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIt69vznegs#t=50s), but it might not be enough to illustrate the point.

[anpd]

Yes I have tried Wesnoth, more aiming for SNES RPG style but hopeing to stay clear of looking like a RPGMaker game.

[Fenrir]

Well, you have your answer. Some people will like it. Some people won't. You can add diagonal movement later if you want, so just keep moving.

[anpd]

Yes you are right, thanks for all the input.