Are you sure it's not because the filename isn't right ? The readme for last official version says you should name the file "rpgdemo". It also says to put it in the "resources" directory, which you apparently haven't.
I think you're going too far describing the artwork - which parts were awful ? I think Diablo3 artwork looks awful.
Anyway, Diablo had some very stupid design decisions. For example there are early enemies which can permanently damage your HP. There's selling to shops, item identification. And Butcher is just frustrating unless you're a warrior, and even then he may be too tough. The only reliable way of killing him relies on what I would classify as a bug (a monster who can wield tools, axes, can't open doors).
...and realism should be our least concern here. Not being able to sell is not realistic, but so is selling huge numbers of junk to a single person isolated from society. Where's the demand for it ?
Regarding "you can sell everywhere", my opinion is that half a bad idea is still a bad idea. At least consider the approach Nox used - yes, you can sell almost anything, but often you can't go back to shop (because the path has collapsed etc). And inventory space is limited. So yes, you can fill your inventory with items to sell, but from that point the collecting of items is over until you find a vendor. (You may still want to pick up items if you find something more valuable than what you're carrying, but Nox has item weight and it makes it more complicated).
FLARE has ambitions to be an enjoyable game too - right pfunked ? And once you enable the selling, there's no "players may grind if they want" option. Either you grind, or you have less money than everyone else. You won't afford the gear necessary to kill the harder monsters. The designer has to choose one balancing point, either for janitors or for people who don't sell everything.
It appears that selling to shops has just been implemented.
[quote="Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup manual"]
Unfortunately, the shopkeepers all have an exclusive deal with the Guild of Dungeon Procurers which prevents them using non-guild labour to obtain stock, so you can't sell anything in a shop. (But then, what shopkeeper would buy stolen goods from a disreputable adventurer, anyway?)
(...)
Anti-grinding
Another basic design principle is avoidance of grinding (also known as scumming). These are activities that have low risk, take a lot of time, and bring some reward. This is bad for a game's design because [b]it encourages players to bore themselves.[/b] Even worse, it may be optimal to do so. We try to avoid this!
This explains why [b]shops don't buy: otherwise players would hoover the dungeon for items to sell.[/b]
[/quote]
Please disable selling to shops ! Or at least limit selling to rare items. I can always work as a janitor in the meatspace if I feel like it.
- [i] I don't like the suggested "Moderna" GUI.[/i] At least not the screenshots. It looks a lot like Warcraft3 / Diablo3, not like Diablo1. I like the current GUI for most part because it's more like Diablo1. Not too colorful (could use more colors, yes), not cartoony. Icons are symbolic.
- It would be nice to display skill information when you hover the cursor over it (icons on the bottom of the screen). Not just name "Block", but what it does.
- Tiles are quite monotonous, but otherwise high quality. A lightning system even like Diablo1 would help, but I'm much more eager to see Nox-like line of sight (not to be mistaken with light, not that light in Nox is bad). Colored lightning would be especially good, because with relatively small effort level designers could make the same tiles look different. (Jānis Legzdiņš who made Vavoom source port has made colored quake2-like lightning that works in DooM in software mode, let it serve as an inspiration for you !)
- Player character can stand too close to pits. I can stand so close that my feet are in the pit, it looks bad. A narrow "do not enter" area around the pit could solve this.
- monsters are very passive, don't react when their nearby comrades are attacked. In general, I don't think A* is a necessity, one flaw of pure A* could be that monsters always move in the same way. Take a look at DooM AI - it's stupid, it can't navigate past complex obstacles, but it will move around most simple ones and it moves unpredictably. It would be enough for a while, and better than current movement.
- it is clear that monsters don't shoot in my direction, but rather, like in GTA1 and 2, shoot in direction they're currently facing.
- when I try to put on a leather armour and fail, there's no message why it fails.
- the atmosphere would be much better if you had ambient sounds played in various areas (Quake2 called the entities "speakers"). The game feels quite empty because there are no ambient sounds. Once you get the basic functionality, stuff like volume changing depending on distance, it should be a simple(?) matter of getting nice ambient sound effects.
- health regeneration is quite boring. Maybe speed up the regeneration a lot, and disable it when player is moving or attacking ? And make health regen kick in after several seconds, to prevent healing in combat. Unfortunately melee combat seems to be based on having more AC or HP than opponent and enduring all hits. In Nox it's more about not getting hit and avoiding attacks.
-bug: Bleeding effect carries over death. This may not be an issue because the finished game might not have respawning.
- collision detection not implemented ? I can run through monsters.
- it would be nice to have melee weapons that differ in range.
- rpgdemo runs in window by default. In the heat of melee combat, when I need to run away alot, it is quite frequent for mouse to leave the window. This often causes death.
Vision in Nox is quite unique (for a roguelike player) because it looks quite precise, a line is drawn from each corner of a tile. And it changes very dynamically, even when doors are opened and closed. In comparison, roguelike algorithms generally work on a per-tile basis. Vision in Nox is much more fine-grained.
I can't post the link - RogueBasin is a website (wiki) dedicated to development of roguelike games. It has a bunch of articles about FOV, even some new (amateur) research.
If you could pull this off, it would be great. It's more than just atmospheric/flavor. It would be very fun in multiplayer for sneaking on other players, and in single player it allows to create more action-packed levels, because you can't see all monsters from afar !
This is a wild guess, but perhaps - if implemented intelligently - it could even improve performance ? I mean, if you don't even have to draw most of stuff that's farther away...
This (scripting language) is really important for me. I dislike C++ quite a lot. I'm developing a mod for Hexen, using VavoomC (a language similar to C++) and I would quit a long time ago if I didn't like Hexen. Most source ports use DECORATE language for modding, which is much less powerful. I have lots of ideas and need flexibility.
If you really want FLARE to be an engine liked by modders, you should integrate a language like Python or Lua.
A while ago I dabbled in modding Notrium (which is like a roguelike game except with realtime action). Notrium has easy and reasonably powerful homebrew language. If you are about to create your own custom modding language, you may want to take a look at Notrium.
From the FLARE website:
[quote]
I'm doing this because I'm having fun. Writing low-level game code is how my brain spends its spare cycles. And of the genres of game I'm interested in, 2D isometric action RPGs are probably the most interesting/ambitious. [/quote]
Imagine some people think in a bit higher level code, in game logic code. C++ is not a language good for scripting and game logic. It's okay for the engine, for performance-intensive bits, renderer and so on.
Are you sure it's not because the filename isn't right ? The readme for last official version says you should name the file "rpgdemo". It also says to put it in the "resources" directory, which you apparently haven't.
I think you're going too far describing the artwork - which parts were awful ? I think Diablo3 artwork looks awful.
Anyway, Diablo had some very stupid design decisions. For example there are early enemies which can permanently damage your HP. There's selling to shops, item identification. And Butcher is just frustrating unless you're a warrior, and even then he may be too tough. The only reliable way of killing him relies on what I would classify as a bug (a monster who can wield tools, axes, can't open doors).
Speaking of Diablo and Roguelikes, Diablo had 2 features distinctive for roguelikes:
- random levels, quests, monster spawning
- permanent death (Yes ! Load game if you wish, but it had no respawning)
At the moment, FLARE has neither.
...and realism should be our least concern here. Not being able to sell is not realistic, but so is selling huge numbers of junk to a single person isolated from society. Where's the demand for it ?
Regarding "you can sell everywhere", my opinion is that half a bad idea is still a bad idea. At least consider the approach Nox used - yes, you can sell almost anything, but often you can't go back to shop (because the path has collapsed etc). And inventory space is limited. So yes, you can fill your inventory with items to sell, but from that point the collecting of items is over until you find a vendor. (You may still want to pick up items if you find something more valuable than what you're carrying, but Nox has item weight and it makes it more complicated).
FLARE has ambitions to be an enjoyable game too - right pfunked ? And once you enable the selling, there's no "players may grind if they want" option. Either you grind, or you have less money than everyone else. You won't afford the gear necessary to kill the harder monsters. The designer has to choose one balancing point, either for janitors or for people who don't sell everything.
It appears that selling to shops has just been implemented.
[quote="Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup manual"]
Unfortunately, the shopkeepers all have an exclusive deal with the Guild of Dungeon Procurers which prevents them using non-guild labour to obtain stock, so you can't sell anything in a shop. (But then, what shopkeeper would buy stolen goods from a disreputable adventurer, anyway?)
(...)
Anti-grinding
Another basic design principle is avoidance of grinding (also known as scumming). These are activities that have low risk, take a lot of time, and bring some reward. This is bad for a game's design because [b]it encourages players to bore themselves.[/b] Even worse, it may be optimal to do so. We try to avoid this!
This explains why [b]shops don't buy: otherwise players would hoover the dungeon for items to sell.[/b]
[/quote]
Please disable selling to shops ! Or at least limit selling to rare items. I can always work as a janitor in the meatspace if I feel like it.
In no particular order:
- [i] I don't like the suggested "Moderna" GUI.[/i] At least not the screenshots. It looks a lot like Warcraft3 / Diablo3, not like Diablo1. I like the current GUI for most part because it's more like Diablo1. Not too colorful (could use more colors, yes), not cartoony. Icons are symbolic.
- It would be nice to display skill information when you hover the cursor over it (icons on the bottom of the screen). Not just name "Block", but what it does.
- Tiles are quite monotonous, but otherwise high quality. A lightning system even like Diablo1 would help, but I'm much more eager to see Nox-like line of sight (not to be mistaken with light, not that light in Nox is bad). Colored lightning would be especially good, because with relatively small effort level designers could make the same tiles look different. (Jānis Legzdiņš who made Vavoom source port has made colored quake2-like lightning that works in DooM in software mode, let it serve as an inspiration for you !)
- Player character can stand too close to pits. I can stand so close that my feet are in the pit, it looks bad. A narrow "do not enter" area around the pit could solve this.
- monsters are very passive, don't react when their nearby comrades are attacked. In general, I don't think A* is a necessity, one flaw of pure A* could be that monsters always move in the same way. Take a look at DooM AI - it's stupid, it can't navigate past complex obstacles, but it will move around most simple ones and it moves unpredictably. It would be enough for a while, and better than current movement.
- it is clear that monsters don't shoot in my direction, but rather, like in GTA1 and 2, shoot in direction they're currently facing.
- when I try to put on a leather armour and fail, there's no message why it fails.
- the atmosphere would be much better if you had ambient sounds played in various areas (Quake2 called the entities "speakers"). The game feels quite empty because there are no ambient sounds. Once you get the basic functionality, stuff like volume changing depending on distance, it should be a simple(?) matter of getting nice ambient sound effects.
- health regeneration is quite boring. Maybe speed up the regeneration a lot, and disable it when player is moving or attacking ? And make health regen kick in after several seconds, to prevent healing in combat. Unfortunately melee combat seems to be based on having more AC or HP than opponent and enduring all hits. In Nox it's more about not getting hit and avoiding attacks.
-bug: Bleeding effect carries over death. This may not be an issue because the finished game might not have respawning.
- collision detection not implemented ? I can run through monsters.
- it would be nice to have melee weapons that differ in range.
- rpgdemo runs in window by default. In the heat of melee combat, when I need to run away alot, it is quite frequent for mouse to leave the window. This often causes death.
Vision in Nox is quite unique (for a roguelike player) because it looks quite precise, a line is drawn from each corner of a tile. And it changes very dynamically, even when doors are opened and closed. In comparison, roguelike algorithms generally work on a per-tile basis. Vision in Nox is much more fine-grained.
I can't post the link - RogueBasin is a website (wiki) dedicated to development of roguelike games. It has a bunch of articles about FOV, even some new (amateur) research.
If you could pull this off, it would be great. It's more than just atmospheric/flavor. It would be very fun in multiplayer for sneaking on other players, and in single player it allows to create more action-packed levels, because you can't see all monsters from afar !
This is a wild guess, but perhaps - if implemented intelligently - it could even improve performance ? I mean, if you don't even have to draw most of stuff that's farther away...
This (scripting language) is really important for me. I dislike C++ quite a lot. I'm developing a mod for Hexen, using VavoomC (a language similar to C++) and I would quit a long time ago if I didn't like Hexen. Most source ports use DECORATE language for modding, which is much less powerful. I have lots of ideas and need flexibility.
If you really want FLARE to be an engine liked by modders, you should integrate a language like Python or Lua.
A while ago I dabbled in modding Notrium (which is like a roguelike game except with realtime action). Notrium has easy and reasonably powerful homebrew language. If you are about to create your own custom modding language, you may want to take a look at Notrium.
From the FLARE website:
[quote]
I'm doing this because I'm having fun. Writing low-level game code is how my brain spends its spare cycles. And of the genres of game I'm interested in, 2D isometric action RPGs are probably the most interesting/ambitious. [/quote]
Imagine some people think in a bit higher level code, in game logic code. C++ is not a language good for scripting and game logic. It's okay for the engine, for performance-intensive bits, renderer and so on.
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