Feedback of my first challenge of the week

[Al-Khwarizmi]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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.

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

[adom-admin]

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]

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]

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]

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.