A Fan Type Analysis of Roguelikes

[jim]

Crawl has a polished UI, yes, but not an "intuitive" UI with a wide casual appeal. See eclectocrat's cognitive load theory alongside jim's "mouse interface sucks" corollary. And I'll hear you tell me what you think about all of that after you bring back 15 runes and the Orb of Zot, sonny.

[Ancient]

As someone who brought to the surface the Orb and nine or ten runes* I feel compelled to answer. Crawl still supports complex but comfortable UI for a complex game approach. Things like choice of left or right finger ring was thrown out of the window and for good. Still, when some clouds litter the map with travel exclusions and break autoexplore your average newbie is going to get confused. Your average veteran roguelike player but new to crawl is going to lose ~10 minutes to that only moderately helpful command display. Not very intuitive either way.

The mana/health bars are only thing that is purely for good looks.

* Can't remember really. I was missing abyssal rune and pandemonium runes. All other were in my inventory.

[Skeletor]

Jo:

Great post, thank you for starting such an interesting thread.
I think I fall in the "complexity lover" category.. by the way I also appreciate the so called coffee-break roguelikes where there is less time but with more intensity so less errors allowed.


Z:

In my opinion, the following would make Adom a better game:

4. Mechanics should be clear. I want to be able to tell whether +2 St or +2 Dx is better.
This is a very undervalued factor, and so many roguelikes lacks it (DCSS included, despite its developers aims); I love tactics and I love math, so it's really important to me

16. Too many "display foo" commands! There should be one command (say, @ - display character information), which shows a menu with all the options, if they are really necessary.
I agree here. There should be a multi page summary when pressing "@", with any other information such as experience points, skills with weapons, identified items, etc.

22. Spell screens should show the numbers (damage etc), instead of requiring us to consult the manual.
See point 4.


The following would instead make Adom worse:

5. Permadeath should be only an option. People want to win!!
People desire other things permadeath offers, such the higher challenge, the bigger sense of achievements once some new goals are reached, and the thrill you only feel when you have only one life.

7. Single use for each item. Some things are equipment, some things are melee weapons, some things are missile weapons, some are one-use or multiple-use items. Who does wield a non-weapon or throw a non-missile anyway?
While I can agree on point 2., I'm not sure about this. Leaving this possibility encourages players to use their own creativity, try things and solve certain situations in unconventional ways.

9. Unlockable characters. New players can only play Human Wizards, Archers, or Fighters. Other 197 race/class combinations need unlocking. The amount of decisions you need to make is too intimidating for a new
player.
Nowaday every console game has this unlockable thing. I hate it. The first times I played Adom (many years ago), as a newbie I kept using human/orcs/trolls fighters without feeling intimidated and that's it, then I naturally gradually became intrigued by other class/races and started playing them and now I'd never come back to those initial combinations, but at the same time I never played a mindcrafter.

10. Equipment choices are bad. Make it obvious which armor or weapon is better. And if it is, equip it automatically.
Just no. Math is awesome, and in many situations there are no obvious choices.

17. Make movement four directional. People play on laptops nowadays, how are they to move in 8 directions?
Not my problem nor so many other people I think, maybe we should start a poll about this. Implementing this 4-way only thing would make the environment much easier to exploit.

29. Limit the inventory. Strength of Atlas or not, it's simply hard to use the inventory when you are carrying 200 items!
It's hard but still grants benefits such as avoiding the inventory-management microgame, improving the tactical aspect and avoiding things like players leaving piles of stuff in the ground in safe levels (lots of DCSS players do this), so I'd say it's a positive (and realistic) thing to have unlimited inventory space (only limit should be weight).

[Bear]

There's a big difference between making the interface easy and making the game easy.

Both are things some players want, and many players will consider them to be "the same thing" because "making it easier" -- but there's a huge difference, because making the interface easier adds to player enjoyment, and making the game easier, beyond a certain point where it's not arbitrarily unfair and becomes *possible* to win, reduces player enjoyment.  

(Note that where you draw that "arbitrarily unfair and impossible" line has a lot to do with whether you're a "Hardcore" gamer, IMO).  

So I'm always dividing the proposals in my mind.  Easier interface (mana/health bars, optional low hitpoint warnings, color-coded messages, removing meaningless options like left/right hand for rings, custom keybindings, etc) are IMO, worth it.  Easier game (single-use objects, no need for player judgment as to what's best, reduced meaningful options, etc) are, IMO, counterproductive.

Bear

[Legend]

17. Make movement four directional. People play on laptops nowadays, how are they to move in 8 directions?
Not my problem nor so many other people I think, maybe we should start a poll about this. Implementing this 4-way only thing would make the environment much easier to exploit.

I don't see how 4 way only movement would make it easy to exploit the environment. Especially if a game is designed for 4-way movement.

Although, I prefer 8-way movement personally, I also fall in with others who use laptops so 8-way movement is actually kind of a pain. Those that use the numberpad for movement like frozen depths, I end up having to hit the top number row which I have to stop and remember which number will make me go which way. Which is why I turned to using a gamepad to play most roguelikes now days.

NON came up with what I think is a pretty simple and elegant way to get around this for Infra Arcana.

  Shift + left  = up left
  Shift + right = up right
  Ctrl  + left  = down left
  Ctrl  + right = down right

I think this was a pretty clever solution.

[Darren Grey]

I think we have to seriously consider if 4-way WASD movement is the way forward.

Hydra Slayer is exceptionally interesting in that it allows you to choose 4, 6 or 8 way movement at the start, and adjusts the game mechanics and AI to match.

[getter77]

That Infra Arcana solution is just about the classic Fushigi Dungeon one from the SNES days----4 way via D-pad, except when you hold a certain button, then it shifts from the 4 cardinal to the 4 diagonal, usually with a handy little transparent flashing arrow overlay as you adjust your facing then move.

I've said it forever, many of the bold moves of Dredmor and such have near neighbors in the old console/handheld fare---that the series has survived unto the present day with being attached to entirely different properties, undergone subtle and less subtle mechanic changes, and has remained comfortably commercial:   There's good to be had from studying the Mystery Dungeon games even if only a fraction are available in English it is a good cross section.

[Bear]

I think I have got an idea for a maybe interesting poll/exercise. Let's take ADOM as an example of a roguelike with traditional UI. Implementing which of the following proposals would make it a better game?

Proposals that depend on dubious assumptions:

• 1. Add beautiful graphics.
• 3. Point-and-click interface. Like Dredmor. You see your inventory as a window, left click to use, drag to pick up/throw/drop/equip. Similar windows for "main menu", "skills", "quests", and so on.
• 9. Unlockable characters. New players can only play Human Wizards, Archers, or Fighters. Other 197 race/class combinations need unlocking. The amount of decisions you need to make is too intimidating for a new player.
• 15. There are three "pick up" commands, three "drop" commands, two "pay" and two "pray" commands. *ONE* SHALL BE ENOUGH!
• 16. Too many "display foo" commands! There should be one command (say, @ - display character information), which shows a menu with all the options, if they are really necessary.
• 17. Make movement four directional. People play on laptops nowadays, how are they to move in 8 directions?
• 29. Limit the inventory. Strength of Atlas or not, it's simply hard to use the inventory when you are carrying 200 items!

Beautiful graphics, sure, people like 'em.  But IMO, only if you can do it and still have a tactical display as useful (in terms of CLEAR distinctions and large field-of-view) as the current one.  This isn't a no-brainer.  I for one don't know how to do it and have never seen it done to my satisfaction.

Point & Click interface. Imagine you have somebody doing things for you but you cannot tell him or her what to do.  Instead, you can only point at things.  Now, I have two questions; first, can this really express everything you need done?  Second, if it can, is it still actually simpler than a command interface where you tell the guy what to do?  I'm not really opposed to the mouse-interface idea, although it's not my cuppa.  I just doubt that the point&click language is expressive enough.  Oh, you can MAKE a point&click language that's expressive enough, if you use enough fiddly menus to provide symbols it would be easier to just type, but wouldn't it bear the same relationship to "intuitive" use of the mouse that ASL or ESL bears to "intuitive" talking gestures? -- ie, if it's that complex, it becomes a language with a syntax and grammar (or a pile of menus) that needs to be learned.  It's the complexity, rather than the keyboard/mouse mode, that presents a learning curve, and I haven't yet really seen languages of equal expressiveness that aren't equally complex.

Unlockable characters isn't really an interface-related idea, IMO.  I will however agree that certain combinations could be marked as "challenging" or "not suitable for beginners" and it might be a net win for newbie experience.

The "redundant" command scheme has commands that do slightly different things or operate differently.  Extended drop is not drop, for example, because it allows the player to drop more than one thing during the same game turn. That's a game difference in the effect, not just an interface difference in how the player invokes it.  That said, you could preserve the game mechanics (player is allowed to drop multiple things at once) by having the "drop" command take zero time if the previous command was also a "drop", and this would, IMO, be a good interface change because then the player wouldn't need to know about extended drop. But extended drop is *still* more convenient and faster (uses fewer keystrokes) for dropping multiple things at once, so I wouldn't get rid of it.  I'd just remove its explanation from the "quick start" guide to the commands, or possibly make it part of an "extended" or "expert" command set.  

I'm with you on newbies not needing to memorize all the different "display foo" commands, but I would never use the space in a character information screen to display a menu option if the same amount of space could display the information itself.  For example, I would never show a "display gold" menu item rather than a "Gold:1000000" display item.  Also, even if you have your "display everything" command that can be the only one newbies need to remember, the "display one thing" commands are still a convenience, in that they display desired information without breaking flow by going to a different screen.  So once again, this is the difference between the "quick start" command set which is everything a newbie needs to know to play,  and an "extended" or "expert" command set which contains all the conveniences and specialized commands.  



Actively bad ideas that simplify (or obfuscate) the game instead of the interface:

• 2. Combine Eat, Drink, Zap, Read, Use, etc. as a single "use" command.
• 4. Mechanics should be clear. I want to be able to tell whether +2 St or +2 Dx is better.
• 5. Permadeath should be only an option. People want to win!!
• 7. Single use for each item. Some things are equipment, some things are melee weapons, some things are missile weapons, some are one-use or multiple-use items. Who does wield a non-weapon or throw a non-missile anyway?
• 10. Equipment choices are bad. Make it obvious which armor or weapon is better. And if it is, equip it automatically.
• 11. Remove the horoscope. Who has time to read 148 lines of manual. The effects of Silvernight/Darknight are negligible, and other sign effects are too random.
• 14. There should be no "clean ears" or "wipe face" command, this is clearly a bad design. Two extra keys to remember for almost no reason.
• 17. Make movement four directional.  People play on laptops nowadays, how are they to move in 8 directions?  
• 23. Avoid using numbers. Present them using bars, colors, qualitative descriptions, and so on.
• 29. Limit the inventory. Strength of Atlas or not, it's simply hard to use the inventory when you are carrying 200 items!

Uh, no.  These aren't interface improvements: they are proposals to change, obfuscate, or eliminate the player's need to understand the rules of the game.  These are categorically different things from interface changes.  

It's true you can put a simpler interface on a game if the game itself has simpler rules.  Dungeons of Dredmor wanted to use a very simple language for its interface, so it had to be a game with relatively simple rules.  That's fine.  But ADOM is a game that already has rules, and part of being good at the game is to understand the rules well enough to decide for yourself whether this armor will be better for you than that armor, or whether +2 str is better in your situation than +2 dex.  

If you make changes like this, the resulting game will not reward the same strategic skills that ADOM rewards.  That's a very different thing from making ADOM easier to play.

And our final category, is Good ideas (although, in some cases, only good if you can figure out how to do them):

• 6. Rules should be clear. I want to make informed decisions, not die because I did not know something.
• 8. Make the process of character creation easier. One screen when you can choose all of the options.
• 12. Tooltips. Moving mouse over anything should tell you what it is.
• 13. Ability to record macros.
• 18. A way to configure the keyboard layout with an intuitive menu.
• 19. A way to configure other options with an intuitive menu.
• 19. Sound effects, as an alternative to reading the message log.
• 20. You should be able to target your missiles with mouse.
• 21. Effects of your actions should be visible on the screen so you won't need to read the log (for example, animated drops of blood when you hit or are hit).
• 22. Spell screens should show the numbers (damage etc), instead of requiring us to consult the manual.
• 24. Add an option to use VI key movement.
• 25. No, rather add an option to use something natural for movement.
• 26. Monsters should be accompanied by UI elements which show important information about them, like health bars.
• 27. Please don't quite the game after losing, maybe I want to start a new one.
• 28. After the PC dies, show a menu, rather than a sequence of questions (do you want to see your inventory? do you want to see high scores? do you want to create a final log? etc)

6, 22 are just examples of explaining the darn rules.
12, "saying what it is" is a reasonable default for having the mouse on something.
13, 18, 19a, 24, 25 are all special cases of "rebindable commands with a few good presets."
19b, Sure, another channel is good.  Requires a vocabulary of sound symbols at least as complex (and having as much learning curve) as the log you intend to make it possible to skip, but might help out blind players.
20.  Targeting is a pointing task, and mice are really good for pointing.
21.  Sure, another channel is good.  Requires a visual vocabulary of symbols at least as complex (and having the same learning curve) as the log you intend to make it possible to skip, but might help out dyslexic players.
26.  I think the most important things that ought to show about a monster are:

• its type (usually by default on the map)
• its present location (usually by default on the map)
• its health (a health bar is fine)
• its timing (does its next action come before yours?)
• its primary wielded weapon
• extended information might include its damage distribution and armor.

Bear

[Skeletor]

Bear:
Very good posts, I fully agree with what you said.
The only thing I don't get is why you put point number 4 into "Actively bad ideas that simplify (or obfuscate) the game instead of the interface".
Only when a player knows games mechanics (how weapons work, damage is calculated, which bonus grants that skill..), he can make informed decision and his brain is challenged.
Otherwise one can only guess.. but no one would guess that the best attacking option in DCSS is a double katana wielding ogre, for example. And that character shouldn't be a reward for sourcecode-diving.


Legend:

I don't see how 4 way only movement would make it easy to exploit the environment. Especially if a game is designed for 4-way movement.

Because you can exploit at your advantage every empty square between two walls being attackable by only one enemy instead of three if there were 8 direction moving/attacking monsters.
#####
#____#
#____#
##@##

If otherwise monsters have the ability to move/attack in 8 directions and you don't, then it looks kind of a cheesy solution to me (oh well, my ratling fencer isn't able to move diagonally like those 8 chainsaw-bears surrounding me because some roguelikers play with laptops and laptops only have 4 directional keys..). Personal taste.

NON came up with what I think is a pretty simple and elegant way to get around this for Infra Arcana.
  Shift + left  = up left
  Shift + right = up right
  Ctrl  + left  = down left
  Ctrl  + right = down right
I think this was a pretty clever solution.

I never played IA with a laptop but I'd say it's a brilliant solution, I'd like to know if other laptop roguelikers find it intuitive/satisfying. If so, this could be used to solve this 4-arrowkeys problem.

[eclectocrat]

Point & Click interface. Imagine you have somebody doing things for you but you cannot tell him or her what to do.  Instead, you can only point at things.  Now, I have two questions; first, can this really express everything you need done?  Second, if it can, is it still actually simpler than a command interface where you tell the guy what to do?  I'm not really opposed to the mouse-interface idea, although it's not my cuppa.  I just doubt that the point&click language is expressive enough.  Oh, you can MAKE a point&click language that's expressive enough, if you use enough fiddly menus to provide symbols it would be easier to just type, but wouldn't it bear the same relationship to "intuitive" use of the mouse that ASL or ESL bears to "intuitive" talking gestures? -- ie, if it's that complex, it becomes a language with a syntax and grammar (or a pile of menus) that needs to be learned.  It's the complexity, rather than the keyboard/mouse mode, that presents a learning curve, and I haven't yet really seen languages of equal expressiveness that aren't equally complex.

Bear, have you ever played Ultima Online? It leveraged realworld knowledge to make an awesome point n' click interface. If you double click a knife (or sword, or any bladed weapon) a targeting cursor appears. What do you think would happen if you targeted a rabbit corpse? You cut up the corpse into skin and meat. Now granted there isn't an option to gouge out the eyes and repeatedly stab the corpse while yelling 'I'm a good little boy mother!', but it's pretty darn intuitive anyways.

Most skills were used in the same way.Use a hammer on an anvil and you get an option to forge weapons and armor . Use a needle/thread combo on leather and you could make leather armor. Use a piece of meat on a fire and you cooked it.

Most people think that mouse UI == endless submenu UI. Not so.

[Krice]

The 'double commands' thing (as opposed to just a single 'u') is because roguelikes traditionally go way back to text adventure games.

Traditional doesn't always mean it's good. This whole UI thing depends largely on the type of UI you want. If it's old school ascii then mouse actions can look dumb in that context. But there is certainly room for improvement in traditional ascii UI. It can be a number of minor stuff that was not invented in old roguelikes. For example I improved the typical far look in Teemu (I think it's in dev version 1.3, not yet in release version) by making the cursor go through the list of visible objects from near to far, but also allowing free movement during that with arrow keys. I think it's a huge improvement, because you don't have to move the cursor with arrow keys just to see the important stuff.

Besides (u)se command can be there with the direct commands. That way you can use use command to do the typical/automatic task with object, but you can also use specific command keys if you don't like (u)se.

[Ancient]

Bear, have you ever played Ultima Online? It leveraged realworld knowledge to make an awesome point n' click interface. If you double click a knife (or sword, or any bladed weapon) a targeting cursor appears. What do you think would happen if you targeted a rabbit corpse? You cut up the corpse into skin and meat. Now granted there isn't an option to gouge out the eyes and repeatedly stab the corpse while yelling 'I'm a good little boy mother!', but it's pretty darn intuitive anyways.

Most skills were used in the same way.Use a hammer on an anvil and you get an option to forge weapons and armor . Use a needle/thread combo on leather and you could make leather armor. Use a piece of meat on a fire and you cooked it.

I think you are missing the point. Chopping up a corpse, forging, sewing armor and cooking are just single actions involving two items at once. The point and click interface is actively limiting choices there. What if you wanted to make useful burning the piece of meat instead of cooking it? Either you present the menu or introduce mouse gestures over the fire to change meaning. This way you increase complexity of interface way beyond what accomplishing the same with keyboard would take.

Try to design good mouse based interface for using Nethack towel or Zap'M roll of duct tape *and* make it more friendly and faster than keyboard commands at the same time. You'll see what Bear means.

[XLambda]

NON came up with what I think is a pretty simple and elegant way to get around this for Infra Arcana.
  Shift + left  = up left
  Shift + right = up right
  Ctrl  + left  = down left
  Ctrl  + right = down right
I think this was a pretty clever solution.

I never played IA with a laptop but I'd say it's a brilliant solution, I'd like to know if other laptop roguelikers find it intuitive/satisfying. If so, this could be used to solve this 4-arrowkeys problem.

I've implemented a similar thing (the Shift key adding 45° to the angle of the pressed cursor key), and I like it quite a bit. I think this one might be even more intuitive, though.

[eclectocrat]

Bear, have you ever played Ultima Online? It leveraged realworld knowledge to make an awesome point n' click interface. If you double click a knife (or sword, or any bladed weapon) a targeting cursor appears. What do you think would happen if you targeted a rabbit corpse? You cut up the corpse into skin and meat. Now granted there isn't an option to gouge out the eyes and repeatedly stab the corpse while yelling 'I'm a good little boy mother!', but it's pretty darn intuitive anyways.

Most skills were used in the same way.Use a hammer on an anvil and you get an option to forge weapons and armor . Use a needle/thread combo on leather and you could make leather armor. Use a piece of meat on a fire and you cooked it.

I think you are missing the point. Chopping up a corpse, forging, sewing armor and cooking are just single actions involving two items at once. The point and click interface is actively limiting choices there. What if you wanted to make useful burning the piece of meat instead of cooking it? Either you present the menu or introduce mouse gestures over the fire to change meaning. This way you increase complexity of interface way beyond what accomplishing the same with keyboard would take.

Try to design good mouse based interface for using Nethack towel or Zap'M roll of duct tape *and* make it more friendly and faster than keyboard commands at the same time. You'll see what Bear means.

I'm not missing the point at all, the point is an intuitive and expressive vocabulary of game actions. Keyboards will always be more expressive, simply due to the sheer combinatorial volume of keypresses. I can make a command in roguelike that requires you to write war and peace if I like. But this is not intuitive.

So if I want to burn meat, first I'll cook it and then I'll cook it again. Done. Slower, yes, easy, yes. If burning meat is really important to the plot, then a good designer can streamline the process. Perhaps troll meat is extra sensitive to fire and burns right away, skipping the cooking stage.

If I want to blindfold myself with a towel, use it on my characters paperdoll head. If I want to wipe my hands, use it on the paperdolls hands. Fast, yes, easy, yes.

Just like in real life objects in games can be context sensitive, and if the designer is cautious, then the relationships between objects are pretty intuitive. This requires hard work on the part of the designer, but it can certainly be expressive enough to achieve a huge variety of actions, and in a way that can be divined without a FAQ or manual.

[Leaf]

NON came up with what I think is a pretty simple and elegant way to get around this for Infra Arcana.
  Shift + left  = up left
  Shift + right = up right
  Ctrl  + left  = down left
  Ctrl  + right = down right
I think this was a pretty clever solution.

I never played IA with a laptop but I'd say it's a brilliant solution, I'd like to know if other laptop roguelikers find it intuitive/satisfying. If so, this could be used to solve this 4-arrowkeys problem.

I've implemented a similar thing (the Shift key adding 45° to the angle of the pressed cursor key), and I like it quite a bit. I think this one might be even more intuitive, though.

Except for us folks that use Sun/Unix keyboard layouts (capslock and left control swapped from the way it is on a PC-101 keyboard). ;P