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Known Issues Sticky

A topic by Ravenmore created Apr 25, 2020 Views: 1,421 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 5
(12 edits) (+1)

::: Known Issues :::

Emails sent to alpha testers include more detailed information about features not yet included.


::: Overall Limitations :::

  • Most "veteran ADOM" commands aren't added, like "," or ">" "<".


::: Inventory :::

  • Items have sizes, currently can't equip items of different size than yours (this will change!). This is now marked in the UI tooltips.


::: Visuals :::


::: Controls :::

  • Spacebar passes turns, this is poorly explained.
  • No diagonal movement is a deliberate design choice, feedback welcome!


::: Game Rules :::

  • Balance is nearly non-existant. We're testing stability and major bugs. Balance comes much later.
  • Currently most dungeon features cannot be interacted with, only destroyed.
  • You can massively farm XP in the animated forest by casting fire AoE spells. (see first entry in this section ;))


::: Interface :::

  • No accessible text log :( we'll get there!


::: Performance :::

  • Game slows down heavily in Animated Forest and doesn't recover. (First batch of optimizations applied!)


::: Other Bugs :::

(+3)

OG ADOM commands would be really nice to have. Is there any way we could get 'h' to handle going up/down stairs? Or are there plans for that key beyond my wildest imaginations.

(+1)

No diagonal movement. This is a no-no in my opinion. There was so much strategy involved with being able to attack and move. Not only that, I can't use the number pad. >.<

Otherwise, I'm so excited! I've been waiting so long for news on ADOM. I've been to playing since I was 11 years old. That was 17 years ago, playing old Pre-Releases. I recently bought ADOM on Steam just to support you guys. <3 Thomas Biskup, you are the best!

Developer

Once ranged combat is included (a high priority) you will be able to shoot into arbitrary directions. In our opinion this even increases combat death as there will be a more notable difference between melee and ranged combat. Let#s wait for a final assessment until that arrives.

Interesting side fact: Many early test players totally did not miss diagonal movement, espescially since many people these days play on notebooks and there is just no really sane way to handle diagonal movement on a notebook (YMMV.

The one place I really missed diagonal movement was in the Animated Forest. Not being able to move diagonally made it much harder and a lot more tedious to get through. I don't know if there's some way of making it a bit more bearable to compensate for the lack of diagonal movement, reducing the number of trees slightly or something maybe?

Developer

That's actually an excellent point. We haven't yet looked at the implications of the changed options to older maps. To be honest the current living tree level was initially created to see how well the game performs with a ton of monster - and we basically are in the same state as we were for it in the original ADOM for a couple of versions: Performance is not yet where we want it to be and things will gradually improve.

So actually redesigning the forest level for non-diagonal movement probably is the best way to go and I have put it on our list t be addressed.

Count me as another vote FOR diagonal movement, at least for those who want it. Three sane ways to handle it on a laptop are (a) use an external keyboard (or a gaming laptop) with a number pad; (b) support Nethack-style "hjklyubn" controls as an alternative to wasd; (c) use wasd but remap qezx for diagonal movement.

On an unrelated note, I am just trying the alpha for teh first time (v0.1.3) and auto-explore ('c') got stuck in an infinite loop going back and forth in a hallway near a corner (I guess it viewed two alternatives as equally attractive targets for exploration). AFAICT there is no way to break out of such a loop? No keystrokes I tried seemed to work, so I had to quit out of the game.

Developer

Rgearding diagonal movement: Our tests with many gamers show that your proposed solutions do not really work for the majority of people:

(a) external keyboards are almost "not there".

(b) These keymappings just don't work for most people. Most people really don't even think of using anything but either WASD or cursor keys (depending on their upbringing and previous gaming experience).

(c) ruins WASDEF which is a far more commonly accepted keybinding practice than the weird movement practices ruling the roguelike community since VI days (one of the lousiest UI/UX examples ever available).

We really want to reach outside of the hardcore roguelike community (because it's much too tiny to sustain the development effort required for a game like Ultimate ADOM for a prolonged amount of time) and thus we always need to ask: "What works for a much wider and much more casual community (compared to roguelike fans - you gals and guys are truly hardcore).

Side remark: Actually diagonal movement can be activated with a trivial flag in AGE (our underlying game engine) and we probably at some point will also provide a game experience with that - but for now our focus is that aforementioned "reaching out to a wider audience" and we strongly believe (at least currently) that for being successful in doing so we are better off in not having diagonal movement.


Regarding auto-explore: Please try the latest alpha. Auto-exploration has been completely rewritten and although their are still a few minor kinks and special cases wearw working on it now should be much better and faster.

Hey There! Thanks a lot by doing an awesome job. Any plans for diagonal movement? This remains my most wanted feature since Alpha is out and it's the one that keeps me from playing for long. Even though I'm using a laptop with no numpad I still miss an ability to move my character around corners or even to move it in a straight diagonal line across an open space. It just feels less natural and feels like a downgrade from ADOM. Most of the other roguelike games I play nowadays have diagonal movement as well, hence I perceive this feature more as missing than deliberately not included. Yes, lack of diagonal movement might feel good by a 21st century person who might never played a game with ASCII graphics but for a roguelike veteran or even amatuerlack of  it is noticeable right from the first steps.

I also do not believe that including diagonal movement must be a big challenge for a player.

  • First of all, we're currently in age where smartphones and tablets are taking huge part of the market. Keyboards aren't usually there and for touchscreen controls diagonal movement shouldn't really matter.
  • Secondly there's a mouse. I didn't do any analytics, but in an unknown environment I prefer to start with mouse if possible and later on learn to use keystores. Especially if you aren't a roguelike veteran and aren't used to learn lots of different keystrokes for every new game. As a bonus, mouse control in many applications allow you to control the environment with one hand (while the same can be done with keyboard, it is really designed for two hands). tl;dr, an auditory you're looking for at this stage might prefer mouse over keyboard anyway and hence diagonal movement might not be an issue.
  • Finally you're not the first thinking of how to implement diagonal movement. Yes, there no ideal solution, but on the other hand, if all common ways are implemented and there's a "controls" section in options that allows to modify it, an experienced roguelike player who used to play on laptops must surely find a way he already used to while playing another game or might get used to a new one.

Please, consider this for some of the upcoming releases. Even in a hidden test mode. I cannot speak on behalf of everyone, but this feature is going to make me enjoy Ultimate ADOM much more than I possibly could enjoy it without diagonal movement ever.

(1 edit)

Hi!

Thanks for the kind words and the detailed analysis :) You make some excellent points!

It's a trivial matter for AGE (the logic/ruleset engine) basically like turning a switch. However in the context of the entire UADOM game, it's actually quite complex, and touches on a lot of UI/UX/Controls decisions.

So far we feel the benefits of this decision outweigh the costs. There's no way around it, some people will enjoy it less for sure.

Sucks to be in that group, to which we can only say - we feel you. I guess we're all gaming fans and each of us has experiences where our beloved game went in a different direction than we expected (I'm looking at you Vermintide 2!). 

Still, we'll continue in this direction as we feel it's the best for the game as a whole, both in terms of completing the project and it's longevity.

If Thomas ever decides to release an AGE-based game again, with a different approach to UI, or even purely ASCII, then who knows? :) As for this project, this particular features' fate is sealed.