RL Concepts

[Pueo]

I've been thinking about roguelike concepts, so I just felt like throwing them out and seeing what the thought is:

a) Moving the HJKLYUNM (or is it BN?) movement set-up to JKL;UINM, this allows you to play in a (I think) more natural feeling position, as everyone learns how to type with the index fingers on the F and J. This also leads into...

b) The # key (or meta-key, as I think it's referred to).  When a game passes a certain amount of commands, it ends up using this, allowing you to type #quaff, or similar.  However, I would think that, with a little bit of work, you could turn the # key into a sort of mini-parser, where you can type #drink and it would effectively act as quaff.  
This couples with 'a', because when you are already playing with your hands in a proper typing position, typing #quaff is very easy.  
This does, however bring up the problem of: how does the player know what to type when they want to #quaff (can they type #chug, or #gulp?), and how does the program know if the player wants to Zap a wand or throw a dagger when they type #cast (since cast is a synonym for throw as well as being a word for spellcasting).  A message that states, "Did you want to Zap or Throw?" just seems clunky.

c) Creature Size. Example:
@ - This is you
D - This is a dragon
Except they look exactly the same size. Of course, you can solve it with this:
      
      DD
DDDDDD
      DD

Sure yeah, that kinda looks like a dragon. It could also be a giant butterfly. And any uninitiated in this concept will think they're screwed, because they think they have about 15 dragons coming sraight for them.  
Sounds bad. It also leads into...

d) Creatures you know to be large (in semi-real life) following you through 1 tile wide corridors and doorways.  This could be solved by the creature destroying walls in its chase to follow you, but the you'd be presented with the bizarre sight of a tile-wide letter disintegrating any tile within a four tile radius. This can be solved with 'c', but then it creates all those problems up there.

and beyond...

That's all I have for now

[Krice]

Except they look exactly the same size. Of course, you can solve it with this

This is a thing that doesn't need solving at all. In grid-based game you can't have any scale that's possibly even nearly equal to reality. Don't worry about the scale in this case, there is nothing you can do about it.

[Pueo]

there is nothing you can do about it.

That's what bugs me    It just feels wrong to have Dragons, Rats, and the player be all the same size, when you know that dragons are supposed to be huge.

[Legend]

there is nothing you can do about it.

That's what bugs me    It just feels wrong to have Dragons, Rats, and the player be all the same size, when you know that dragons are supposed to be huge.

It is unwritten that all rats are giant ROUS's and dragons are midgets in roguelikes.

[Pueo]

It is unwritten that all rats are giant ROUS's and dragons are midgets in roguelikes.

I guess I can live with that for now

[guest509]

  Position on the grid is an abstract concept. The actual area of each grid space is large enough for the biggest monster. The 'r' on the grid space is telling you a rat is there. Not that the rat is taking up the entire grid space. Further when a player dodges or evades a blow he does so without leaving the grid space because the space is large enough to allow for footwork associated with sword play. At other times the grid space is small enough to be blocked by a rock small enough to be moved by hand....

I am wildly in favor of keyboard commands taking advantage of the homerow position we all (should have) learned while learning to type. If I can I always alter the control scheme of a game to take advantage of homerow. People hate playing my old WoW account because of this. I use ESDF instead of WASD to move.

As for parsing or typing in full commands down that road lies folly. Especially if you try to start recognizing synonyms for known commands. The old adventure games were famous for this. Tons and tons of commands recognized but never the one you type in. Frustrating as hell. A limited command set is an advance in gaming interface I really enjoy. Go play the old Quest for the Holy Grail, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc...The games are just too frustrating to be fun. Wonder why I played them at all?

[jasonpickering]

in regards to size I mentioned this before but why dont people try doing something like this:

Now that scorpion looks quite big, mush bigger then the guy, and will probably cause quite a problem. Mechanically it is no different they are all the same size, but visually different. You could even do this with Ascii

@ r D watch out for the tiny rat and Dragon!

just make your grid the size of your largest creature and then center all other things. they all take up the same space, but the rat is not really all that scary now, its a tiny little thing, what could it do to me?

[Pueo]

Position on the grid is an abstract concept. The actual area of each grid space is large enough for the biggest monster. The 'r' on the grid space is telling you a rat is there. Not that the rat is taking up the entire grid space. Further when a player dodges or evades a blow he does so without leaving the grid space because the space is large enough to allow for footwork associated with sword play.

I had never really thought of it like that, thanks

I am wildly in favor of keyboard commands taking advantage of the homerow position we all (should have) learned while learning to type. If I can I always alter the control scheme of a game to take advantage of homerow.

I think I will add in a few keyboard layouts, with vi keys, num-pad keys, and home-row. The arrow keys will be always on, I think.

As for parsing or typing in full commands down that road lies folly. Tons and tons of commands recognized but never the one you type in. Frustrating as hell. A limited command set is an advance in gaming interface I really enjoy.

Thanks, I think I might go for something NetHack-esque, where the # key will let you type in a longer command, but only certain words.

in regards to size I mentioned this before but why dont people try doing something like this:

If I eventually add in tile support, I was going to do this, thanks to your previous comments on it
 

Now that scorpion looks quite big, musc bigger then the guy, and will probably cause quite a problem. Mechanically it is no different they are all the same size, but visually different. You could even do this with Ascii

@ r D watch out for the tiny rat and Dragon!

just make your grid the size of your largest creature and then center all other things. they all take up the same space, but the rat is not really all that scary now, its a tiny little thing, what could it do to me?

I had never thought of being able to do it in ascii, I'll try it out, I hadn't thought of changing the font size

And by the way, good work on your (yet unnamed?) roguelike-ish

[wire_hall_medic]

I've thought of doing large monsters as taking a 2X2 area, and just drawing the character at twice the size.  It requires a little more work for the pathing and targeting LoS algorithms, but it's not too terrible.

It's easier if instead of asking the map if an actor is at a particular location, you ask each actor.  Large creatures would just respond true to their origin, and origin x +1, origin y +1, origin x + 1 y + 1.

I think the main thing you gain is the "oh $hit" moment when the player opens a door, and sees a giant scary letter glaring at him angrily.

[Hi]

I have done that method before and it works well.