Feedback on a few ideas

[bzizizi]

Hi, I'm new here, and I'm fairly new to roguelikes. I registered here to get some comments or advice or something on a few things.

1) I'm making a roguelike game for mobile phones with J2ME. The game would require atleast 2MB of heap memory on the phone. Do you own such a phone and would you consider playing a (free but not open-source) roguelike? Since you're already giving out specs, what screen size does you phone have?

2) Are SLASH'EM tiles protected by the NGPL and can I use them in my game? If I can, are there any conditions? I know you'll probabaly give me a RTFM on this one, but I'm having a hard time reading licences - english not being my primary lanuage, and I want to be sure.

3) The game would be mostly based on NetHack. I'm not talking about a port of NetHack to J2ME, but more of a very NetHack-like in my own kinda way. The biggest issue I see here are controls. I'm currently having controls setup in 2 modes; normal and action mode. This gives me a total of 34 buttons, with these bindings: http://brain.pastebin.com/f71b76703. Does that seem right? Do you have a better idea?

and the last one:

4) Do you think this is readable on your mobile phone screen without permanently damaging your eye sight?



I have already started a week ago and made nice progress. I have a zoomable map, item drops / pickups, turn managment mechanic, doors, randomly wandering monsters, line of sight, custom fonts, and a bunch of little things.

Thanks in advance!

[Krice]

Do you own such a phone and would you consider

No.

4) Do you think this is readable on your mobile phone screen without permanently damaging your eye sight?

Don't use too big contrast and use bigger fonts. You know, there are lot of great ideas, but making a roguelike for handheld devices is not one of them.

[jaydg]

1) I'm making a roguelike game for mobile phones with J2ME. The game would require atleast 2MB of heap memory on the phone. Do you own such a phone and would you consider playing a (free but not open-source) roguelike? Since you're already giving out specs, what screen size does you phone have?

Yes. I own a Nokia 5800, which unfortunately has no keys at all, so you would need a completely different input strategy.

4) Do you think this is readable on your mobile phone screen without permanently damaging your eye sight?

I believe this would work for a very short time only.

[Slash]

Hi, I'm new here, and I'm fairly new to roguelikes. I registered here to get some comments or advice or something on a few things.

Hello! please introduce yourself

1) I'm making a roguelike game for mobile phones with J2ME. The game would require atleast 2MB of heap memory on the phone. Do you own such a phone and would you consider playing a (free but not open-source) roguelike? Since you're already giving out specs, what screen size does you phone have?

* I dont really know how to get the heap memory data... My cellphone has 128MB RAM of which about 70MB are available for programs
* Of course I would!
* I have an HTC Touch, my screen is 2.8" LCD touch screen with 240 X 320 dots resolution.

2) Are SLASH'EM tiles protected by the NGPL and can I use them in my game? If I can, are there any conditions? I know you'll probabaly give me a RTFM on this one, but I'm having a hard time reading licences - english not being my primary lanuage, and I want to be sure.

IIRC the Slash'EM tiles were mostly made by Denzi as part of the (extended) http://rltiles.sourceforge.net/ project?... he currently uses a CCbySA license... check http://www3.wind.ne.jp/DENZI/diary/

3) The game would be mostly based on NetHack. I'm not talking about a port of NetHack to J2ME, but more of a very NetHack-like in my own kinda way. The biggest issue I see here are controls. I'm currently having controls setup in 2 modes; normal and action mode. This gives me a total of 34 buttons, with these bindings: http://brain.pastebin.com/f71b76703. Does that seem right? Do you have a better idea?

Sounds nice... I guess you'd want to have as less commands as possible

4) Do you think this is readable on your mobile phone screen without permanently damaging your eye sight?

I believe you need an higher resolution font... this one is far too small!

I have already started a week ago and made nice progress. I have a zoomable map, item drops / pickups, turn managment mechanic, doors, randomly wandering monsters, line of sight, custom fonts, and a bunch of little things.

Good luck!

[bzizizi]

Thank's for the feedback. I see the biggest problem are the fonts, so that's what I'll work on today and post a new look.
Anyone knows of a free font which looks good and is readable in about 1.5x - 2x the size of this one? (this one's 8 pixels high).

Hello! please introduce yourself

Just did!

I dont really know how to get the heap memory data... My cellphone has 128MB RAM of which about 70MB are available for programs

You can probably find it in the specs somewhere, but most (all) newer phones have at least 2mb reserved for heap memory.

* I have an HTC Touch, my screen is 2.8" LCD touch screen with 240 X 320 dots resolution.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to work out a control scheme for a touch screen. Any suggestions?

IIRC the Slash'EM tiles were mostly made by Denzi as part of the (extended) http://rltiles.sourceforge.net/ project?... he currently uses a CCbySA license... check http://www3.wind.ne.jp/DENZI/diary/

Thanks for pointing me to Denzi's site. As far as I can tell from the licence (the site is in japanese), I should give credit to Denzi and include the same licence for the tiles.

Good luck!

Thanks!

You know, there are lot of great ideas, but making a roguelike for handheld devices is not one of them.

I'll have to disagree. Dweller is quite popular as far as I can tell, but I feel there's a lot of room for improvement there.

EDIT:

Is this font size better?

[getter77]

I lack any of these magic phones, but that new font is a much better size than the first one.  Keep at it!

_{But do a PC port at some point...}

[jaydg]

* I have an HTC Touch, my screen is 2.8" LCD touch screen with 240 X 320 dots resolution.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to work out a control scheme for a touch screen. Any suggestions?

Perhaps something case-sensitive like the BF2 in-game menus: tapping an item on the screen encircles it with available actions:

Code: [Select]


   pick up    whatever
          \  /
 move to - ? - look
          /
      read 
 

being the ? a scroll somewhere in the dungeon. Movement could work by ticking the @ and moving it interactively or ticking a known place in the dungeon and choosing "move to" from the context menu. I guess that should work just fine.

[Slash]

Unfortunately I have no idea how to work out a control scheme for a touch screen. Any suggestions?

I guess most touchscreen cellphones have at least some hard keys (Accept, cancel, luckily a directional pad), at least mine does.

And I guess most of them allow having virtual keyboards (All Windows Mobile ones should probably allow them), which I guess J2ME would treat like normal input?

Now, talking about innovative uses for a touch screen is another thing...

Thanks for pointing me to Denzi's site. As far as I can tell from the licence (the site is in japanese), I should give credit to Denzi and include the same licence for the tiles.

The CC-by-sa license is international and pretty standard, you can find it here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[Etinarg]

Is this font size better?

It goes from barely readable to readable. You must consider that some people have bad eyesight in general.

For a cellphone you must really design differently. The screen estate is very limited. In sunlight, most phone screens are hard to read. You want to have little information there at the same time, but this little as readable as possible.

[bzizizi]

The CC-by-sa license is international and pretty standard, you can find it here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

While searching thru Denzi's site, I noticed he made some tiles for SLASH'EM but not the tiles I'm using (the 16x16 ones), so I guess that the NGPL licence (which applies to SLASH'EM) applies to them.

Specifically, we want to make sure that you have the right to give away
copies of NetHack, that you receive source code or else can get it if you
want it, that you can change NetHack or use pieces of it in new free
programs, and that you know you can do these things.

So judging from this paragraph it's perfectly okay to use their tiles.

About the touch screen controls... I like the "radial menu" control style, I'll keep that in mind when I'll do the touch screen version.

The game currently looks like this:


New question:
Does the name "Swords and Shit" sound appropriate for a roguelike that's a bit humorous?
Does this icon represent the name well?

[Etinarg]

I'd say, try bigger tiles. Try a game that works with only 11x11 or 9x9 tiles on screen. Don't try to make a roguelike as known from 80x20 terminals on a phone screen.

You must design the content so that it works well on the device.

[purestrain]

I'd say, try bigger tiles. Try a game that works with only 11x11 or 9x9 tiles on screen. Don't try to make a roguelike as known from 80x20 terminals on a phone screen.

You must design the content so that it works well on the device.

Full Ack. Try bigger graphics, maybe small icons instead of STR, DEX - if the visible area is crucial you should implement either indicators for out-of-screen things or just a small minimap. If i encounter a new monster if would be nice to focus the screen for one second on it and move back to the player.

Just as an example at what size i'm aiming:

[Slash]

Just as an example at what size i'm aiming:

This looks pretty cool, is this your current project?

[purestrain]

It is one of my current projects, yes. Thanks to assemblee part 1 from tigsource 

[5v3nd0ttg]

New question:
Does the name "Swords and Shit" sound appropriate for a roguelike that's a bit humorous?
Does this icon represent the name well?

I lol'd. Appropriate for all audiences? Probably not. Appropriate for the majority of RL enthusiasts? Most likely.