Holy F!

[Sradac]

ZOMFGLROKLOMG!!!!!!!


I just typed up a HUGE post about roguelikes, what makes a great roguelike, what makes a bad one, and my thoughts on specific roguelikes and I lost ALL of it!!!!!!!!! damnit it seriously took me 20 min to type it up................. Talking about content, replayability, interactivity, goals, etc. im so pissed off right now............................................... .................................................. .................................................. ....................all because the forum logged me out from inactivity.

[vogonpoet]

Notepad is your friend, buddy

[Grey]

Or the back button sometimes...

[Sradac]

back button usually is but this time it gave me a blank screen

[Laukku]

I usually press Ctr+C before I hit the button to post.

[Khelvaster]

Opera will save this kind of stuff constantly when you press back, even if you do get timed out. It also is faster than Firefox.

[gut]

AHA HA HA HA!

No, I won't do that again : )
Back in the days when I first started posting my long-winded
nonsense on these forums, that happened to me a few times
also. These days I actually keep a dedicated folder on my HD
just for my ADOM stuff, and I only post my long-winded stuff
after I'm finished with it.

[Sradac]

I thought about doing that after this happened gut, but I completely forgot 95% of what I said. Im playing crawl right now so some of the stuff on that I remember, mainly the interactivity such as being able to create clouds of steam to block enemies view when casting fire magic over water and training basic fighting skills against plants and fungi. And how much I looooove the auto-nav feature. Forget exactly where in the dungeon that branch or shop is? or your stash? auto-nav!

[gut]

Agreed on that 100%. I hope so much that ADOM does one day
get those features. ADOM has strengths of it's own, like quests,
interesting NPC's, and lots of fun thing to experiment with, such
as slaughtering villages and such. ADOM could be #1 again, but
in my opinion, for now Crawl is the world's #1 roguelike : (

I typed this bit up just before TB posted his thread about a
possible source code release. After that, I didn't see much of a
reason to post it, but maybe some of my thoughts mirrrored yours,
so I'll post it now.

Crawl vs ADOM

OK, not really VS., but more like contrasts. After re-reading this mess, I realize this might sound like complaining. I'm not meaning to complain, because I like ADOM fine the way it is, I'm just hoping for some changes. ADOM was the first roguelike I ever played, and for years it was the only one. I tried several times to give Nethack a shot, but the interface was just too horrid. I was sooo used to the ADOM (better) way of doing things I just couldn't adapt. In fact, that's rather the same experience I've had with every other roguelike I ever tried. Then I recently played Crawl (stone soup of course). As a loooong time ADOM player, it was difficult for me to get used to the different interface, but I stuck with it because of how fun and challenging the game was.

A great interface can really add a lot to a game. ADOM's interface is good, but after playing Crawl 0.4.3 extensively, I have to say I prefer many things about it. It has many differences, ranging from trivial to major. For instance, the default key for casting a spell in Crawl is 'z', and the default for wand zapping is 'Z'. It's a small difference, but it's better (believe me). In the major-difference catagory is 'autoexplore'. It's very difficult to adaquately describe how good this feature is to players that have never experienced it firsthand. Suffice to say, after you get used to it, you will never want to go back. It greatly reduces tedium and interface related deaths, while maximizing the decision making aspects of the game.

I will list here some interface features I love about Crawl, and
wish to see implemented in ADOM/JADE:

The ability to set a spell/item to a specific key. It's annoying to have your spell letters shift around all the time, and it makes swapping weapons a LOT less aggravating.

The command 'd' should be default for a continuous drop action, and the regular 'drop' feature should be eliminate entirely. There is no occasion where NOT having the option to drop several items is preferable to having it. Also, dropping several items should not consume a single game turn, but several.

The autopickup feature should be enabled by default,and should function as it does in Crawl SS 0.4.3. There are a several catagories of items that most players would always want, and the list is different for each class. A wizard for instance would almost always want any un-ID'd (or ID'd beneficial): rings, scrolls, gold, books, amulets, potions, gems, and wands. For each use of autopickup, it should cost one game turn not extra energy points. It should automatically deactivate if a monster is in the PC's line of sight. It should automatically be deactivated if an invisible monster hits the PC. Again, this is to limit interface deaths.

The '5' command should be eliminated entirely, to be replaced by
the 's' command, even for continuous actions. It is never preferable to 'wait' as opposed to 'search'.

Missiles must stack better. It's irritating to have to swich from the stack of 2 1d6+1 arrows, to the stack of 2 1d6+2 arrows, when they both could have easily fit into any quiver in existance. Especially since it costs game turns, and can get a PC killed.

A player should not be able to pick up such heavy weights that they crush themselves to death. That's just silly.

I'll stop here, in case it sounds like I'm being too whiny. IF anyone else wants to add to (or criticize) this, feel free.

[Grey]

Agreed on that 100%. I hope so much that ADOM does one day
get those features. ADOM has strengths of it's own, like quests,
interesting NPC's, and lots of fun thing to experiment with, such
as slaughtering villages and such. ADOM could be #1 again, but
in my opinion, for now Crawl is the world's #1 roguelike : (

You are not alone:

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.c...uelike-of.html

Though ADOM wasn't on the voting list...

I will list here some interface features I love about Crawl, and
wish to see implemented in ADOM/JADE:

I personally disagree on several counts. Auto_pickup in particular I find annoying as hell, especially if a game has a lot of junk or joke items like ADOM does. You're perhaps right about the search/wait thing, but then one could argue that there should instead be introduced a different energy cost for each action, or that players regen faster when waiting.

You are quite right about the importance of a good interface though, and one thing that really should be picked up from Crawl is the auto-travel at least (I'm not fussed about auto-explore myself, but many others like it). Getting an online server to play on should also be important for JADE - it encourages a lot more play.