Angband 80x24 sereen display - a modest proposal

[tametick]

One way of many, could be to use either pop up windows or minimized/expanded menus from a bottom located section, see examples below:

What do you think of the way I solved it with the screens sliding in/out in Cardinal Quest? You can find the free version on kongregate.

[Shockbolt]

What do you think of the way I solved it with the screens sliding in/out in Cardinal Quest? You can find the free version on kongregate.

First impression, it looks good! Gotta run (family dinner/gifts etc) so I didn't get a chance to actually try the game yet.

[Jungle_Boy]

Each month, there's about 1500 downloads on rephial. 70% Windows, 20% OS X and 10% source.

Wow, that is a lot more downloads than I would have expected. Also kind of funny that 70% are for windows and only one dev uses windows. Obviously this means we need to force the devs to switch operating systems to match the player distribution

Or maybe that most windows users are not smart enought to be devs...crap

[AnonymousHero]

1. Do you want to retain a text-only mode? I decided I did, which meant designing a system that would work with either text or graphics, which is a hell of a lot of work and requires a fundamental rewriting of the game internals in a way that choosing one display mode and going with it doesn't. If you just go with graphics, then you can hardwire them in, and not worry about piffling things like abstracting the game core from the UI before you can even get started.

(snip)

Choosing graphics and running with it would make life a lot easier.

Personally, I always play with ASCII characters, but there's absolutely no reason that can't be incorporated into a nice graphical GUI. (Character glyphs *are* graphics after all.)

Using e.g. SDL as the single UI backend could work fine. You could have nice and compact graphical representations of e.g. "exp to level" (a "percentage bar" or some such), more compact ways of showing status effects with a set of little icons, etc. etc. -- and still have good support for ASCII for the main dungeon display.

(The only reason I haven't used the SDL backends was the lack of support for multiple physical monitors.)

[relic]

The problem is that it is human nature to do cumbersome & annoying things to gain an advantages, only to later declare it's sucking to have to play this way (even though they dont have to).

I dont see how it can be both more grindy & difficult. If it is difficult it's by definition not grindy, and if it is grindable then the difficulty vanishes

I agree with your first sentence but not the second, at least as I interpret it.

If the game is easy, there is no reason to search for items because you are prepared to go deeper. If the game is difficult, you may need to grind to be better prepared for deeper levels.

[Magnate]

Wow, that is a lot more downloads than I would have expected. Also kind of funny that 70% are for windows and only one dev uses windows. Obviously this means we need to force the devs to switch operating systems to match the player distribution

Or maybe that most windows users are not smart enought to be devs...crap

The number was a surprise to me too, but the high proportion of Windows users wasn't. Linux, despite the major efforts made by distros like Ubuntu, is still nowhere near as immediately accessible as Windows. It's the classic analogy of being able to fly anywhere in the world for free but you have to build your own aeroplane seat. So Linux attracts the kind of people who like tinkering with stuff - and those are the people more likely to join a devteam ;-)

[Zediker]

(newbie poster here, i've been following some of the discussion on roguelikes for a while, but i may have an option for consideration)

if we're really wanting to separate systems, to add in tons of more flexibility, and essentially make angband and its variants more designer friendly, we may want to consider a lower-level overhaul by moving towards an Entity-Component-System architecture. I've been doing alot of personal research on it recently and have been thinking of using it as a foundational framework for some of my projects. This archetectural type should work wonders for roguelikes due to their non-heavy graphical nature as well as their usual non-real-time gameplay (ECS architectures can get a bit process heavy since it diverges from an OOP model, but you gain tremendously in ability to process pieces independently as well as enable a more data-focused design approach).

A good overview set of articles can be found at T=Machine http://t-machine.org/index.php/2007/...opment-part-1/. While the article talks about MMO architectures, it has many useful concepts i think the roguelike community could take advantage of.

[PunkCapitalist]

I hope no one takes this a arrogant thing to say (as I'm no RL's dev nor have ever participated in this forum, and my experience with Angband is minimal), but i'd like to suggest a couple of improvements to you guys. I'm very sorry if this things already exist (and I'm unaware or have already been discussed).
1. I think someone mentioned this in the early posts in this tread, but: have you thought about a DCSS-like who's on the screen feature? I mean, DCSS (Crawl) displays in it's right info column a list of monsters on screen. That worked MARVELS for me to get into that game, it is a neat feature.
2. A DCSS-like scroll-the-screen-as-you-move option (the way Angband scrolls the screen is a bit of a turn-off for me)
3. DCSS-like auto-explore funtion.
I'm sorry to suggest so many DCSS features, please don't take it like I wanna see every RL become a copy of Crawl. Nevertheless, I think the reason DCSS is so sucessful in th RL's world is that it is really really aproacheable. It is very easy to play (if you know the RL general convetions, you can jump right in to the ascii interface) for a begginer, and it offers all kind of convenience details that smoothen the getting-used-to phase. I believe, every single RL should look at what others have done right and try to learn the lessons (not necesarily copy, but analize and learn).
Sorry if I'm off-topic, etc.

[PunkCapitalist]

By the way, about the download stadistics:
Linux distros get their Angband from the repos, not from the dev's homepage (I'm sure you guys know it, but noone mentioned it, so...)

[Derakon]

Thanks for the suggestions, PunkCapitalist. And welcome to the forums! To respond to your points in order:

1) There's a monster list that you can pull up with one of the '[' or ']' commands (the other one's the item list). You can create a new term window and set it to always display the monster list (go to the window settings in the '=' screen) so you can always see what monsters you're aware of.

2) Modern Angband should have an "always center on the player" scroll option. I'm not familiar with DCSS but that option makes the scrolling update with every movement, not just when the player gets near the edge of the screen.

3) We talked about an auto-explore option awhile back. As I understand it (again, not familiar with DCSS), DCSS is readily able to tell when the player might need to make a meaningful decision. It's a lot harder to make that kind of decision in Angband, especially given how you need to know what monsters are in the area before you actually see them. I don't think that the Angband developers are philosophically opposed to having an auto-explore option; it's just not clear how Angband auto-explore could work.

[will_asher]

1. I think someone mentioned this in the early posts in this tread, but: have you thought about a DCSS-like who's on the screen feature? I mean, DCSS (Crawl) displays in it's right info column a list of monsters on screen. That worked MARVELS for me to get into that game, it is a neat feature.
2. A DCSS-like scroll-the-screen-as-you-move option (the way Angband scrolls the screen is a bit of a turn-off for me)
3. DCSS-like auto-explore funtion.

We already have #1 and #2 of your suggestions.
#1 is the monster list. Set it up by making a second window visible in the window>visibility dropdown menu. Then go to options (=) then (w) for subwindow display settings and you can set the monster list to show in the second window.
#2 is the "center map continuously" option. Go to options (=) then (d)isplay options and turn on center map continuously.
I always play with both of these things turned on.

We don't have any auto-explore. Personally I think the dungeon is too dense with monsters for an auto-explore to be useful.
There is a run command which helps move around faster when there's nothing dangerous nearby (I don't remember what the command is in the default keyset because I always use roguelike commands).

EDIT: Derakon beat me to it.

[PunkCapitalist]

Sorry for suggesting things which are already implemented (just trying to give some imput )
You should give a thought on enabling some of these by default, a new player might be confused by the options, so offering for-noobs defaults should be a good option (remember: first impressions ussually stick). Angband was probably the first RL I tried, but didn't stick to it because I found the interface king of confusing (I then went on to Nethack, and latter Crawl.
I have never played a multi-window RL, I'll pick-up Angband to get a taste of it (although, I like playing in a single-window terminal style).
Sheers and happy festivities (is that the inclusive way to say it? hahaha)!

[buzzkill]

You should give a thought on enabling some of these by default, a new player might be confused by the options, so offering for-noobs defaults should be a good option (remember: first impressions ussually stick).

Without changing the legacy/default options, couldn't this be accomplished easily by packaging several 'sets' of ini and/or pref files, and then giving the end user a few simple choices (splash screen) upon first execution.

1. I'm new to Angband and would like to try playing with graphics.
2. I'm new to Angband and would like to try playing with text-only (ASCII).
3. I've played games like this before. I'll set my own option in game.

Obviously, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Other 'themes' (sub-windows, etc) could be presented as well.

Aside, While I'm certainly biased, starting with the 32x32 tile set enabled just makes sense to me. Veterans presented with 32x32 tiles will know how to enable ASCII. Noobs presented with ASCII (as default) might not know or stick around long enough to ever realize that there are other options.

[Zediker]

Many of comments and I think, barriers to entry into roguelikes and Angband in general, deal with the arcane interfaces. While after experience and help menu diving can yield understanding and eventually familiarization, new players will usually experience frustration and confusion. This is why you see RLs like ToME, DoD, CQ, etc fair much better with early adoption than the elder RLs. It is usually clear, or easy to discover what one can and cannot do. ex) hate it or love it, the ribbon interface in MS office did expose more features that generally were not known to all but the power users. ToME and DoD did exploit this concept and have done rather well because of it.

I think perhaps adding context sensitive menus, or implementing a branching UI interaction system that is obvious or apparent may help with exposing features and systems that may go unnoticed. (i.e., how helpful was that radial menu in Bioware's Neverwinter Nights when you first played it?) However, almost all of these will require a rethink in the existing screen space and ui framework. It may not have to be that pretty or fancy, but its usefulness is obvious as far as exposing features.

I also have seen keyboard-mouse 2D games work to great effect in games like S.P.A.Z. (not a RL, but it has a good keyboard+mouse implementation) and Realm of the Mad God. So, we know it can be done, but that doesn't mean that it should be done either. Keyboard + mouse on a desktop isn't bad, keyboard + mouse on a laptop or netbook would be horrendous.

Anyway, those are some thoughts.

[DarkGod]

A game should be fully playable with either only keyboard/only mouse/a combo of both IMO.

One thing that is sorely lacking in angband: a hotkey bar. Allowing you to assign a spell/item/.. to a hotkey in an intuitive way would go a long way toward making things easier.
It's near incomprehensible to me that in 2012 you still need to make a macro to cast spells in any efficient ways.