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GordonOverkill
12-18-2014, 06:43 PM
Just played my first challenge of the week. Definitely enjoyed it, still here's some pieces of criticism that came to my mind:

- when starting the challenge of the week, I think that I did not get any hint that I would not be able to ascend any stairs. So I directly dove down and wasted a complete level. Also it took me some time to figure out that I was actually inside the ID
- which takes me to the interface. I heaviely missed any indication of the name and the level of the dungeon I was in
- on the main screan I couldn't find any means to check the exact number of my hitpoints and mana points. Always pressing AltGr+Q is somehow anoying
- by hovering the mouse over the character-level number, I don't get any explanation of what it does. Instead it highlights together with the class button on the left of it
- I missed some kind of experience-indication that shows me how far I am still away from the next level-up. Guess at the moment pressing Shift+X is the only way to find out about that, which is also a little anoying (probably it could be done by hovering the mouse over the character-level indicator)
- when kicking a door, the sound has some kind of a big hall effect. The sound of finally destroying the door sounds rather dry in comparison, so both sounds don't fit together very well
- the level-up screan appears very rapidly after killing a monster and actually it's almost impossible to read the kill message or watch the kill before. For unexperienced players it might be a little confusing to realize what just happened.

Soirana
12-19-2014, 11:11 AM
Decided not to make my own thread since likely not gonna play a lot anyway...

1. If current ammo stack ends and game tries reload it waits for y/n input. Which would be normal except it gives question only after receiving input, first time I thought game crashed.
2. Might be me playing with graphics for like second time but I was unable locate things like hungry/bloated status and burden levels at all. [I guess some asterisks above char are suppossed to help but personally for me not having these things at least in some secondary menu is straight unaceptable].
3. Is where an option to switch graphical mode of in steam version?

Ravenmore
12-19-2014, 11:29 AM
@Gordon

- HP and PP bars with numerical values will likely make a comeback, graphics are already there. Same for the dungeon indicator. Alignment hunger and burden are being discussed. For example in my case the small status-like prompts for hunger and burden are enough, but quite a few people feel the same way you do.

Relevant issues, a good place to make your voice heard :) :

http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3475 (alignment)
http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3478 (dungeon level)
http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3477 (satiation

- Reload y/n issue is known:
http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3484

- We might expand the tooltip for the class window to something like "character + level" or just separate the class and level boxes altogether.
- Good point about XP, I was thinking about adding an XP bar along with HP and PP.
- I agree wholeheartedly about the door sound :D One has a clear echo, the other is flat. Reported it to Soundwizard...but I guess I'll mention it again just in case ;)
- Level up screen thing is known:
http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3483

Will likely add a "level up" splash or other effect with a "space to continue" prompt or something similar.

@Soirana:

F10 should take you directly to ASCII at any point in the game.


About the missing interface stuff in general: it was a conscious decision to get rid of as much stuff as possible and bring it back step by step based on feedback and our own impressions. We're not only testing, we're experimenting on you guys :D
Thanks for the feedback!

Soirana
12-19-2014, 11:52 AM
About the missing interface stuff in general: it was a conscious decision to get rid of as much stuff as possible and bring it back step by step based on feedback and our own impressions. We're not only testing, we're experimenting on you guys :D
Thanks for the feedback!

Very strange decision for PC game. If that was for Android sure, but for PC I do not recall in any game much complaining about having access [especially via extras menus] to meaningful stuff.

Do you seriously think current minimized interface would be acceptable to newish player?

edit: After 6 loads [3 challenge game, 3 normal] game still tries update my direct X every time. Like seriously?

Ravenmore
12-19-2014, 11:59 AM
Who knows on what platform will ADOM end up in the future :)
We don't assume anything, we just picked a starting point and went from there :)

Soirana
12-19-2014, 12:05 PM
Who knows on what platform will ADOM end up in the future :)
We don't assume anything, we just picked a starting point and went from there :)

This is steam version release we speak about, right? Last time I checked steam is for PC games [or at least PC game versions]strictly.

In general I consider games using penalties/bonuses for non displayable stats being biggest sin in game design.
So giving penalties [primary speed] for burden/satiation which are not shown at all and not displaying stuff like alignment [good luck figuring if you are eligible for lawful crowning before putting money in] is certainly not improvement in my eyes.

Ravenmore
12-19-2014, 12:08 PM
That's why its a beta :) To get feedback like this and improve!

Dogbreath
12-19-2014, 12:08 PM
Please see the latest posts in this thread (http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3477) for ideas on making the UI HUD more detailed. I thing there's been a so far unanimous agreement that the HUD is too minimalistic for Steam. After all - this is the Steam release, not the Google Play release or the Apple Store release. The HUD as is might be okay for a tablet (after a few essentials like alignment and DL are fixed), but is way to sparse for desktop/laptop gamers. (i.e, Steam users)

Dogbreath
12-19-2014, 12:11 PM
That's why its a beta :) To get feedback like this and improve!

Thanks for your hard work and great attitude btw. :) It must be hard with all the criticism of the new UI, but I actually really love it for the most part and think you guys did a great job with it. There just needs to be more of it!

GordonOverkill
12-19-2014, 08:41 PM
For the interface, I think that the missing health and mana scores are indeed a serious problem. Without knowing the exact health score it is very risky to encounter dangerous early game enemies and also you never know for sure if you have got the coward speed bonus or not. Without knowing the exact mana score you cannot tell if you can still get a last casting of an important spell out without casting from HP. Both things can be critical for survival, so I definitely think that unexperienced (and also experienced) players should have easy access to the scores.

The allignment is also very important for it tells you if you can step upon an altar with or without risking to be sacrificed. Also I think that it might be very tough for a new player to find out that there actually IS something like allignment that plays a role in the game.

For the different status effects, it didn't take me very long to find out that pressing shift gives you a description of the symbols above your health bar, so I don't think that's a very big problem. What I would appreciate though is some kind of easy to recognize notification in the center of the screen when an important status change happens (like getting hungry, poisoned etc.). It's just very hard to always pay attention if or if not a very tiny icon appears above your character. Yesterday as well as today it happened several times that I didn't realize my character's groving hunger untill he was very hungry or even starving. Could probably be the same with poison or sickness if I didn't know which enemies could do that to me.

Al-Khwarizmi
12-19-2014, 09:52 PM
I basically miss all the information that was there in the traditional UI, except for experience (which may be nice to know, but doesn't have an impact on your playstyle, you are not going to play different due to being close to levelling or not) and PC name (it's constant and it's enough to be able to check it when needed.

- Numeric health and mana: it's absolutely essential. For example I know that to endure steel golem crits in Darkforge, I'd rather have 200 HP. A relative value is not enough. In the case of mana, it's even more essential, because I need to know if e.g. after casting a last bolt to try and kill someone, I'll still have enough to teleport. A wizard is doing this kind of thing all the time, and a relative display is not enough for this.

- Alignment: basically what Gordon said in the last post.

- Status effects: they are so relevant for gameplay that they should be displayed at all times. Imagine that you load a game where you have a bad status effect!

- Stats: important because they can change to things like boost potions, hunger/starvation, burden, equipping items, etc. And making these bonuses/penalties hidden is not good. What Soirana said.

- Dungeon level: well, it's the place where you are! It's super important IMHO.

As mentioned, the only thing I don't really miss is experience (I'm OK with pressing Shift+X). And also the PC name.

And now that the UI is changing, I think it would be nice to add an explicit display for tactics setting.

By the way, the original UI was designed in the age of 4:3 monitors, now most are 16:10 or 16:9 so maybe showing stuff at the side, vertically, could be interesting.

Al-Khwarizmi
12-19-2014, 11:15 PM
For the different status effects, it didn't take me very long to find out that pressing shift gives you a description of the symbols above your health bar, so I don't think that's a very big problem.
But shift doesn't work in ASCII mode, so yes, it's a big problem.

(and even if it worked... some status effects are just too important to not be displayed by default, as in, you can easily die from that. But anyway, as I say, shift is not a universal solution as it doesn't work in ASCII).

Zeno
12-20-2014, 03:03 PM
Note that you can see the exact value of current PP by pressing Z to cast a spell.

The lack of alignment and dungeon level was an oversight. No need to complain about this so many times :)

Soirana
12-20-2014, 04:25 PM
Note that you can see the exact value of current PP by pressing Z to cast a spell.
That is not the screen in which decision what to cast and if cast at all is normally made.

I mean in general interface looks good for mobile game/planchet, but it seriously looks like needlessly added complications for PC.
More straightforward it looks like making amazing pork pie for vegetarian - while pie is awesome, it is not gonna be enjoyed.

Dogbreath
12-20-2014, 08:16 PM
The lack of alignment and dungeon level was an oversight. No need to complain about this so many times :)

Oversight or not, it hasn't been addressed for fixed yet, so people are probably going to complain until it is. :) I mean, heck, my bug report (http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3475) about the alignment issue hasn't even been confirmed as being a bug yet and nobody from Team ADOM has acknowledged it. So yeah, people are going to complain about it as a way of saying "hey! We think this is actually an important issue!" until it gets fixed/TB decides he doesn't care about alignment and rejects it.

Anyway, I've quoted my suggestions from another thread regarding creating a more detailed HUD here in spoiler tags if anyone's interested in discussing the ideas! :)


Honestly, the top bar looks kind of empty right now since there's only DV and PV there. You could easily fill it out with graphical representations of important info without cluttering up the screen at all. Some recommendations (a few carried over from other threads):

HP: Have a image of a heart (or even a big red bulb, if that's not too Diabloish) that is filled in red to whatever percentage of the total HP the player possesses, and also has the current HP superimposed in white text. (30/117 or something)

MP: Same thing, but with a blue potion (chalice? bulb?) instead.

Alignment: have an image of a scale with white stones on the right, black on the left. Then have the balance of the scale roughly represent the PC's alignment. I.e, the left side is down and the right up (with more black than white stones?) = chaotic, the right side is down and the left up (more white than black) =lawful, balanced = neutral, slightly to the left or right = N- or N+, etc.

Level: An image of a stairway, with the current level superimposed in white text. (D:4, S:2, SIL, etc.)

Status: Just have an icon pop up with whatever statuses the PC is currently inflicted with. So maybe a picture of a man walking with a bar through it for paralyzed, a picture of a confused man's face for confused, a man with a "doh, just got hit with a frying pan" face for stunned, a picture of a guy sleeping for asleep, etc. This would disappear after the status is gone.

Hunger: A picture of a loaf of bread or an apple or a ration or something, that changes color (or shape maybe?) with hunger status. So long as it's easy to monitor, it shouldn't be a problem.

And optionally (since this is less important),

Attributes:
Strength: A arm flexing, with the stat number superimposed in white. Alternatively, a sword. (which is RPG standard) if you want to have a shout out to the elemental orbs, make it a fire. (for the fire orb, which enhances strength)
Learning: Ditto, but with a book.
Willpower: Kind of esoteric, but maybe a picture of a tree. Or if you want to go elemental here, a water droplet. (for water, you see the trend here)
Dexterity: A whirlwind. (A picture of a bow is pretty common, but might get confused with missile stats)
Toughness: A mountain. (A picture of a plate mail is pretty common, but it might get confused with PV.)
Charisma: Tough one. Maybe a man's face with slicked back hair smiling? Or just a picture of a mouth.
Appearance: An ornate mirror.
Mana: A glowing orb.
Perception: A pair of eyes.

And:
Speed: A pair of feet running.

paivi
12-20-2014, 08:43 PM
Just activated my Steam code, without reading the forums or anything... the feeling of initial disorientation caused by the sparse HUD was so strong that I bailed out and quit in semi-panic. :D

I'm also not overly keen on using the mouse for anything at all.

adom-admin
12-21-2014, 11:04 AM
Just to restore faith: As Ravenmore said - we just decided to start from some point the underlying idea being that ADOM on Steam now will also target more casual players who are not necessarily accustomed to tons of statistics ;-) Just to give you an example: While I totally agree with the PP display issue I'm not sure I 100% agree with the HP display issue. Most modern games have health bars without numerical scores. Roguelike games being more tactical than normal games we will restore the numerical display but i nonetheless was an interesting experiment to see the reactions.

And BTW: You can always use Ctrl-n m to get back to the old ultra-statistical mode. Our interest was to find a mode that also appeals to more casual players.

Dogbreath
12-21-2014, 11:23 AM
I don't think ADOM is a casual game. I'm all for a simplified, beautified UI, but what this UI is doing is effectively lying to the player about ADOM's complexity - and doing it in a way that hurts their ability to understand or progress in the game. (I.e, having something incredibly important to the game like alignment be a completely hidden attribute, or hunger being very difficult to understand) And even as far as more casual PC games go, it's still extreme. Diablo has a lot more information on the HUD than this game does, which is sort of crazy.

Again, while I'm all for making ADOM as newbie friendly as possible (and most of my RFEs are geared towards that), I think it's a mistake to try and attract casual gamers. There are casual "coffee break" roguelikes that usually take 15 minutes to an hour to play (like Spelunky), but ADOM is by it's very nature an epic, and it's also a game that takes a lot of time, patience, and precision to master, and as soon as the casual gamers find out about it's size, depth, and learning curve (it takes over a year to win your first game on average) they'll at best be turned off, and at worst feel cheated.

That being said, I think you could absolutely do great things with a coffee-break version of ADOM - simplified stats, 1 town, 1 dungeon - and sell a lot on tablets. I've been looking for a good tablet RPG for a while now, and I'd definitely play it! But ADOM is too big (both in game world size and game mechanics) to fit into that mold.

paivi
12-21-2014, 11:32 AM
J Most modern games have health bars without numerical scores.

But in ADOM death is final, whereas in most modern games you just reload and play more carefully next time. In most games, death does not matter very much, except as an annoyance, but as Dogbreath said, in the roguelike mode ADOM is not a casual game. Every move counts, and this is what gives the game its enduring thrill, to me at least.

Not to argue against having an UI option that appeals to more casual gamers - I really appreciate all the great work you've done with Adom, and I'm super excited to see it on Steam.

Silfir
12-21-2014, 02:55 PM
If there is one thing newbies should not have had an ounce of trouble with at any point in the existence of the game, it's the two bars at the bottom of the screen. They were full of absolutely relevant and relatively easy to grasp information. Strength, Dexterity, Toughness, HP, PP... Absolutely none of these are a potential cause for confusion for any player who has played even a second of any computer RPG. It's not a matter of casual or not casual; RPGs have lots of stats and that's okay. Sometimes it's okay to not fix something that was never broken.

Steam ADOM feels almost unplayable right now. (I'm getting uncomfortable about this sentence as I'm looking at it, but it's the truth, however blunt.) Another issue specifically on my end is the resolution; things don't scale well to 1920x1080 at all. Mouse cursor and target square indicator sometimes don't match, for instance, though I'm not sure what causes it.




Most modern games have health bars without numerical scores.

Modernization is not a goal in itself; the goal is to make the game better, as in, make adjustments that improve playability and fun for the players. The right-click-bound context menu that shows relevant commands for any given tile on the screen? Perfection. There is no merit in hiding HP scores in ADOM I can see. (Or, for that matter, all the other essential information.) "Other games are doing it" is not a reason.



(Also, why are the messages now at the bottom and PC stats at the top? That's just dumb.)



EDIT: I want to try and reduce the drama level of my post a bit. The game actually looks pretty great. It just feels like I'm playing blindfolded because of the complete lack of relevant information at the top of the screen. It's such a big screen - bog standard for desktop PCs nowadays, 1920x1080, something like hundred times of what ADOM used to be built for... There should be more information on it, not less.

Al-Khwarizmi
12-21-2014, 06:35 PM
And BTW: You can always use Ctrl-n m to get back to the old ultra-statistical mode.
Phew, good to know, at least with that I'll be able to get past the SMC in r53! With the minimal UI I keep dying :D

Soirana
12-22-2014, 05:58 AM
I'm not sure I 100% agree with the HP display issue. Most modern games have health bars without numerical scores.

So called modern games don't usually have big difference in that HP number, at least not Adom like difference.
[I mean if health bar is at certain point player can have reasonable expectations about what is survivable.]

Troll at 20%HP likely can plow through extra tension room in low level area, while [mist] elf would be in quite a danger.
Comes with a race of course, but how does mention casual player figure why this is happening?

p.s. f10 into "ctrl-n m" sounds good. Is there also shortcut to kill off music? Cause it is cute but sword jangling for 50+times gets boring rather fast.

Dogbreath
12-22-2014, 12:51 PM
+1 to Soirana's comment about health bars.

As far as going back to the old statistical UI: I don't think the argument here is old vs. new. I think I speak for most people here by saying I like the graphical enhancements to the UI, especially the scrolling message buffer (which needs a few quirks ironed out) and the tactics being reflected by DV color, and other things. And if you read my post in the previous page of this thread, you can see some ideas for one way to reflect *all* of that statistical data in a graphical, minimalistic-yet-effective way.

The real issue here is the current UI is utterly illogical with what it chooses to display and not display, and it hides extremely important information that makes the game less accessible, not more. The only problem with the old UI was that it was outdated in the way it portrayed this information. There was nothing wrong with the amount of information being portrayed - indeed, I can't think of a single newbie (and I've seen and talked to a *lot* in the past 14 years) who has ever complained about the amount of information on the main screen. It's all pretty intuitive and important.

So basically, you're trying to fix a problem that isn't really there and creating a much bigger one in the process. The <more> prompt was a huge problem and I'm glad it was fixed. The stats - or alignment display, or dungeon display, or burden display, hunger display, or speed display - was a problem that absolutely nobody complained about, so I'm baffled why it needs to be "fixed."

adom-admin
01-07-2015, 06:55 AM
We are now trying to have R54 out at the weekend and I believe that you will be very pleased with the UI additions. It's been a leap forward and I think it was worth it to start from scratch with the minimized Steam UI. Even though it was universally hated ;-) You will see that a number of UI improvements now are available that we probably never would have thought about without the fresh restart!

Dogbreath
01-07-2015, 01:52 PM
Oh, everyone liked the new UI just fine. :) We just wanted more of it.

GordonOverkill
01-07-2015, 02:41 PM
Sounds very promising! Got a completely free Saturday ahead of me, so I am very much looking forward to experience the latest changes :-)

Dogbreath
01-07-2015, 03:02 PM
My birthday is Sunday, sounds like a perfect birthday present. :)

GordonOverkill
01-07-2015, 10:04 PM
Just by the way, will R53 save games fit with the new version? Got a nice hurthling paladin who's very likely going to be my first winner on steam (at level 18 he's got PV 45 (including robes of resistance) and he is wielding Justifier). If I cannot play him on the next version, I'll have to finish the run during the week ;-)

adom-admin
01-08-2015, 06:05 AM
Just by the way, will R53 save games fit with the new version? Got a nice hurthling paladin who's very likely going to be my first winner on steam (at level 18 he's got PV 45 (including robes of resistance) and he is wielding Justifier). If I cannot play him on the next version, I'll have to finish the run during the week ;-)

They should (everything else would have to be considered a bug). A while ago Jochen rewrote the wholesale game code and we now try to take care and keep save files compatible. Anything else probably would seriously annoy users who get auto-updates via Steam so we had no choice and I had to give up 20 years of freedom ;-)

GordonOverkill
01-08-2015, 06:45 AM
Sadly the char just got lost. Game crashed (NotEye crash) after killing the Snake From Beyond. Kind of was my own fault. I was asked if I wanted to continue playing normally, play in save mode or some other options. I decided to play normally, just to find out if it works. So next time I'll try the save mode ;-)