tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post8917201217226932751..comments2023-10-22T12:22:54.333+02:00Comments on The Official Blog for ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery): On introducing newbies to roguelikesThe Creatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12906302439863860854noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-57194639309374009952012-08-15T22:38:00.349+02:002012-08-15T22:38:00.349+02:00Ultimately, things like that definitely add a sens...Ultimately, things like that definitely add a sense to things. What I'm mainly gunning for is straight-away doings---things to captivate/impress folks before they've died a single time, let alone dozens. The original ADOM having set pieces remains one of the defining traits---it just needs to be kicked up several notches towards the logical conclusions.<br /><br />Spend some time watching how the first half-hour of any number of modern or classic RPGs and/or Roguelikes unfold via Youtube---then seek to better them on one front or another. The ADOM stable can't compete in terms of massive budget, but what it can do, and frankly needs to do, is be ruthlessly agile in terms of adventuring circumstances for the playerbase bearing in mind what the competition of all stripes are managing.Brian Jeffearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15444299963610329817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-75425906171954151812012-08-15T13:06:26.363+02:002012-08-15T13:06:26.363+02:00Unfortunately we may have missed the boat for many...Unfortunately we may have missed the boat for many of them. It's hard to get people's attention more than once.Darren Greyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00792164422274663420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-47280730837514848852012-08-15T11:26:05.660+02:002012-08-15T11:26:05.660+02:00Yes, unfortunately it seems that those hordes of p...Yes, unfortunately it seems that those hordes of people saying "I don't donate because there are no tiles" don't put their money where their mouth is...Al-Khwarizmihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17417380066614629061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-58036833903989160162012-08-15T07:18:06.941+02:002012-08-15T07:18:06.941+02:00Thanks everyone for considering the alternative ap...Thanks everyone for considering the alternative approaches. I agree with many but my point is that I don't see these options as mutually exclusive.<br /><br />Look at it like this: ADOM II still is in a very early state of development. Although it's now been out for more than a year, it's still version 0.2.8 and I'm kind of old school as far as version numbering goes... so ADOM II still is a game in its infancy. <br /><br />I e.g. totally agree with making the start of the game a lot more interesting to newbies and I happily will comply with that... once there is enough content in ADOM II to allow for that. Right now ADOM II still is a pretty light on content and I am still working on making it more feature complete... thus it's now much easier to simplify the initial learning curve than to make the game a lot more enticing... simply because a lot of content detail still needs to be implemented.<br /><br />Otherwise I totally agree. Remember that the very first versions of ADOM II didn't even feature the Drakalor Chain - or in other words: There is no reason to really always start in that place. It's so for now just because... so accessibility (from the fun point of view) will be a gradual addition... each minor version at least should add another important aspect. Nothing is mutually exclusive. So keep the suggestions coming as there is no one true way.<br /><br />You also can see that in the crowd funding campaign (a lot of people clamored about "add tiles to get ore folks into the campaign") and so far this is not really the case ;-)The Creatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12906302439863860854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-92121216193465577742012-08-15T05:16:52.351+02:002012-08-15T05:16:52.351+02:00For an "interesting" happening, one poss...For an "interesting" happening, one possibility might be to have the PC's starting history affect their location a little bit, say after the first 20 or 30 deaths. Eg. Occasionally your PC will start the game as a prisoner on the third level of an orcish settlement, will have to steal some equipment and fight (or sneak) their way out, or start in a settlement that is under siege or something, or will begin adventuring as a result of the non-debilitating corruption that you picked up or something. Play up the RPG elements a little.Aaronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618911343817647877noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-60400698976398295702012-08-15T04:06:17.329+02:002012-08-15T04:06:17.329+02:00I had presumed we were at the point where the &quo...I had presumed we were at the point where the "4-way solution" was to simply have a button press serve as a simple toggle like the Chunsoft games have been doing since the very first entry when all anybody had was a dpad?<br /><br />I would also say focus less on "newbie friendly" and moreso on "newbie impressive" outside of obvious things like getting the number of controls keys under control as per Silfir above and whatnot. For many Roguelikes, that sadly never gain too much tractions, you begin unremarkably and tend to soon die horribly before coming across any "interesting" happenings that serve as hallmarks of the institution that somewhat do much of the heavy listing in terms of distinguishing the lot from others in the RPG camp---things like Angband Orc Pits, Tension rooms, etc.<br /><br />So, perhaps center on making the first...hmm....5-15 minutes compellingly outlandish so that the players will want to see the likes of it again, or how much further down the rabbit hole goes, versus expecting them to wrestle with controls and "unremarkable tedium" to even get to any of the "good stuff" many quite literally wouldn't know they've been missing out on and take it from there? Drama/Relative Calm/Drama tends to beat Calm/Drama/Calm when it comes to garnering an audience and holding them in terms of games and just about everything else...<br /><br />Controls as a thing to "master" or "exploit" beyond twitch reflex situations just seems to run counter to the actual "Game" thrust of things---all it need be is a spiffy, straightforward enabler allowing the player's ever-growing wits and interactions with the world at play to come through without any nonsense.<br /><br />Alternatively: My *Draft Silfir* campaign would SURELY help draw in newcomers---his is the perfect voice for a grizzled dwarven veteran to explain the mindset to the approach for an adventure in such a context before saving the fledgling player via sacrifice against some ludicrous horde and then leaving them to ponder and act upon his last words~Brian Jeffearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15444299963610329817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-29382640842871777022012-08-15T03:22:44.365+02:002012-08-15T03:22:44.365+02:00Just to be clear, I'm not saying that trying t...Just to be clear, I'm not saying that trying to reduce the learning curve is necessarily a bad thing either; having some built-in tutorial options is probably a good idea. However, I believe that simplifying the interface is probably worth doing even if it didn't reduce the learning curve at all.Aaronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618911343817647877noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-92145964311703799762012-08-15T02:25:30.561+02:002012-08-15T02:25:30.561+02:00Would they, though? Sure you don't have to thi...Would they, though? Sure you don't have to think of alternate solutions for laptop users without numpads that way (laptop user does not equal not having a numpad), but they're still playing a game with only half the movement - a much different, overall shallower game, if you ask me.<br /><br />If you're diagonally adjacent (not technically adjacent, but I'm not sure how to say this) to an enemy in the no-diagonal system and they move, they have to pick a side to approach you from (one of two, both of which are whopping 45 degrees off). If they pick the wrong one, you can just run a circle. You can endlessly avoid fights by moving away from the adjacent position - and all that in much smaller spaces. Of course you can tune the AI so that it will always pick the route to approach you that blocks off all escape routes - but now you're programming a pathfinding AI just for the non-diagonal scheme so it isn't terrible!Silfirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15556090754583144358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-35663585509833330742012-08-15T01:42:22.195+02:002012-08-15T01:42:22.195+02:00I have to sort of agree with Silfir here. There ar...I have to sort of agree with Silfir here. There are two different problems that are worth considering here, and they are not completely overlapping. A lot of the steps that you talk about in your post are more aimed at solving the problem of "How do I reduce the learning curve of getting people into the game?" I don't know that this is necessarily the question that needs to be answered. I think the question at the heart of many of the recent discussions is more like: "How do I make the user experience as pleasant as possible without sacrificing content that I want to keep?"<br /><br />By my count, there are 123 separate keystroke commands available to the user in ADOM I. I started playing ADOM in 2001 or so, and have been playing off-and-on fairly consistently since then, and I would say that there are at least thirty commands on that list that I have never intentionally used in play and wouldn't know what button to press to activate them, and probably another thirty that I know, but use once per game or less. I'm sure that other experienced players would probably roughly agree with that assessment. In other words, I would suspect you could probably get rid of half of the commands available in ADOM, and you would probably not see any significant changes in the play of the game. With a smart, sleek, interface, you might be able to cut that down to 40 keys, maybe less. This would be a *HUGE* improvement in the playability of the game, both for beginners and for experts, at virtually no loss of content. And it makes the game more newbie-friendly as a bonus, because the result of such a purge will (hopefully) result in making the play of the game that much more intuitive. Although perhaps it is not as complicated of game as ADOM, I note as reference that, excluding play-customizable hotkeys, Skyrim uses 25 keys and mouse. I suspect that you'll find that's probably the upper limit on most modern, certainly commercial, games.Aaronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618911343817647877noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-73470820644769955192012-08-15T01:14:15.607+02:002012-08-15T01:14:15.607+02:00I do think the introduction to diagonal thing is a...I do think the introduction to diagonal thing is a bit misguided. There should simply be a 4-way option in the game. Anyone playing on a laptop would benefit from this.Darren Greyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00792164422274663420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-6603877432581296532012-08-15T00:32:17.113+02:002012-08-15T00:32:17.113+02:00Being introduced to diagonal movement during a tut...Being introduced to diagonal movement during a tutorial at level 3 would make me close the game in disgust. There's making the game less harsh on newbies, and there's actively insulting their intelligence.<br /><br />The same goes in general for the distinction between "expert mode" and "beginner mode". That just seems an overall misguided concept to me. ADOM just IS a complicated game. ADOM II will be even more so (at least that's the direction it's taking). You can't and shouldn't attempt to pretend otherwise.<br /><br />Take a game like Dwarf Fortress. Complexity isn't a vice. Dwarf Fortress is somewhat easier to get into simply because it has a menu system that tries to get the controls you need displayed when you need them. (It doesn't even have less buttons - it just does a better job of showing them to you than the ADOM keybindings list.)<br /><br /><br /><br />I really, honestly think you've been victim to a misunderstanding (or I am, in which case I apologize, I don't know any better): ADOM isn't "too complex". The CONTROLS are. That's what you need to adress. Points 6 to 11 sound perfectly reasonable. But you're going to have a hard enough time just developing ONE game. If you're going to add different modes at all, don't make the easier mode less complex, i.e. interesting. Make it more forgiving.<br /><br /><br /><br />In fact, you need just one configurable option, if any at all, and it's mystifying to me why it wasn't listed above. You need a box that can be unchecked before game start which says "Death is permanent". If you're going to deviate from the old-school roguelike tradition of being fiendishly hard in order to chase the "modern roguelike" train, start with that one.Silfirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15556090754583144358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-74837261668937922132012-08-14T20:19:21.390+02:002012-08-14T20:19:21.390+02:00Modularity is the second name of ADOM II -that'...Modularity is the second name of ADOM II -that's why it's so much fun to extend ADOM II compared to what it takes in ADOM...The Creatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12906302439863860854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-74137594993348394952012-08-14T20:18:49.241+02:002012-08-14T20:18:49.241+02:00But look at it like this: On the beginner screen t...But look at it like this: On the beginner screen there are two options: Start tutorial and start game (besides reading the manual and restoring a game). Pretty simple. The tutorial activates everything that simplifies your life, the beginner game just deactivates the most lethal danger in the beginning and adds some explanations.<br /><br />The expert screen is just that... an expert screen. All the keyboard shortcuts will only come into play once you really get the hang of it and the rest is very graphic and mouse-controlled. With contextual help everywhere.<br /><br />Let me try to surprise you... I think that Darrens ideas really lead into the right direction, I personally just don't enjoy enforcing a game style on people that is too different from my preferences ;-)The Creatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12906302439863860854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-73783995092093733982012-08-14T20:16:11.615+02:002012-08-14T20:16:11.615+02:00Yeah, important point to keep in mind ;-)Yeah, important point to keep in mind ;-)The Creatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12906302439863860854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-32809400394465654542012-08-14T19:10:04.023+02:002012-08-14T19:10:04.023+02:00Aren't you overcomplicating game with a lot of...Aren't you overcomplicating game with a lot of options, modes, e.t.c?<br />It an art to make game both complex and user-friendly. <br />And lot of options is not the right way.DiceMasterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08183620413945767366noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-46747880337225668552012-08-14T14:05:18.998+02:002012-08-14T14:05:18.998+02:00Sounds like you're planning on making ADOM II ...Sounds like you're planning on making ADOM II almost modular, like ToME 4 is - great idea! :)Edhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12186766341193266503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-23244085604862717762012-08-14T13:51:49.259+02:002012-08-14T13:51:49.259+02:00Just be careful how you refer to such modes - call...Just be careful how you refer to such modes - call them Quick Play or something similar rather than "Newbie" mode.Darren Greyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00792164422274663420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586507643754859034.post-90790837610932873232012-08-14T08:59:56.775+02:002012-08-14T08:59:56.775+02:00I think Incursion Roguelike is dealing with beginn...I think Incursion Roguelike is dealing with beginners in quite a good way: a bunch of options allow the game to be really easier (no out of depth monsters, halve monsters life, give hints, no permadeaths, and some others) and when any of these options is changed from normal value, the game is set in explore mode, thus not recording highscores.<br /><br />Whenever the player is feeling more confident in his skills within the game, he will set back to normal roguelike parameters anyway!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com