DungeonCrawler Gameplay Ideas/Comments

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

This is the place for any comments or ideas. Remember, no bug reports here!

Just so people know, in the future, we already have plans for a lot, including...

* Many more skills, including some very interesting ones
* More customized levels
* "boss" monsters
* More spell types
* Quests assigned to players by mobs
* Different types of store keepers who sell different types of goods
* Being able to hire underlings
* Being able to squeeze past friendlies in hallways

[Cloudcaptain]

Add clickable icons for map transitions. Monsters get caught up in traffic jams...especially in a vendor is in the way.

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

Hey!

The monsters one is a for-sure...

For the clickable map transitions, what do you mean? Like you could walk up to the entrance to another map and click it, rather than step on it and hit SHIFT A?

And hey, thanks so much for trying it out! It is a very early attempt, but we hope it doesn't suck much:)

[Cloudcaptain]

Exactly...I am not always able to shift-a on the first try and enter the new map. The game needs an options menu for restarts and such. I got owned in the barrow downs. A quick restart would be good.

Needs cheese wave file sound effects too

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

*laugh* Yeah we've been talking about sound effects! Honestly the main reason I was against them is so that you can play at work without anyone hearing it, but still, it could be a LOT of fun:)

For going between places it can sometimes be a pain (as you by accident try to attack) so I just suggest hold down shift for a second before hitting the A, just to be sure:)

A menu is a good idea, we will look at that.

The barrow downs are TOUGH, especially at an early level... if you are looking to kill evil creatures, the misty mountains are a good place to look for caves, as long as you don't wander into Moria... but the Downs are, IIRC, a mid level place. Scary:) What sort of character did you bring into the Downs?

Thanks for giving this a try, Cloud! We REALLY need the feedback, especially from people who have played these sorts of games before!

(Plus it is exciting because this is the first time anyone other than 3 of us have actually tried the game)

[Cloudcaptain]

Game put me back at the downs...I managed to "snag my body" and make it out alive.

How do you determine the stats on items?

Perhaps adding a way to shove characters would keep them from blocking hallways, etc.

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

Hey Cloud!

As of now, there is no real way to check stats, but if you click on the item it will show you the value, which generally speaking relates to the primary stat... so damage for weapons, defense for armor, and so on and so forth. Generally a piece of armor worth $30 is better than a piece worth $25. Now, there are details... for example (leather armor is better against bludgeon attacks) but that is about it as far as telling the info.

As far as restarting, the best thing to do (for now, until we have a better system... or really, any system at all!) is to just delete all the .sav files in your folder when you die... this will start you fresh:)

You get any neat decent gear yet? Enjoying the 1985 graphics? (I did all the graphics... something like 2700 of them or something)

[Cloudcaptain]

Digging the sprites...reminds me of the old Gold Box SSI games.

Maybe throw simple watermark textures into the white backdrop? A stone pattern for dungeons...cobblestone for civilized areas, etc.

Different items each with a varying sight radius would be cool. Candles and torches would be expendable. Lanterns...maybe not worry about oil but make them a bit costly. They would probably only drop off of human encounters as none of the other races would need them as much.

An armor dummy for your gear would be nice. You can just plug the existing sprites into slots on a stick figure. Would jazz up the inventory aspects a bit.

[Schismarch]

we took your suggestion for a visual display of equipment locations; it's pretty sweet! look for it in the next update, which should be coming soon.

- Schismarch

[Pax]

Some gameplay ideas:

-Shift move stops when you see someone or someone sees you

-plus on an item in inventory automatically replaces the existing item for that equip slot

-class selection should not be case sens

-allow player to assign hot keys
"1" always eats specific food item
"2" always casts specified spell
etc

-for different events (damage, picking up stuff, etc.), maybe have different text colors, or sections of display area

-to go to different dungeon areas, should be able to use > or < or =

-when looking, mobs should be clearly differentiated from doors, don't really care about door stats most of the time

-when changing equip, hitting enter when piece highlighted should move from equip to unequip and vice versa

-when in inventory, hitting t or z or whatever should work without having to leave inventory window first

-need to know if i have enough mana for a spell before i try to cast it and the turn is wasted. maybe also change color of spell text when you don't have enough mana

-would be nice to have spells or items or abilities that could help you get out of fights

-would be good to know more about the weapons and armor and items
weapons
type of damage
range of possible damage (e.g. 4-12 pts melee, 6-18 pts ranged)
if two handed

armor
which equipment slot it fits
type of damage it protects from
maybe stats against each damage type

items
what does it do
how much will it fill me up if it's food

spells
type of damage
how much damage
how much mana it takes

[Pax]

Couple questions/comments

- what's the closest dungeon to the spawn point? running way east and dealing with map redraw is painful when you do it over and over. since L1 is relatively easy death, would be nice to have a close point to start in

- it's strange that i can see well down a hall, but cannot tell if there are walls or space to the side for the last several spaces

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

Thanks for the suggestions... we will definitely implement some of the things you have mentioned:)

As for closest dungeons... if you want to serve the forces of Good you can head towards the Misty Mountains, where there are a few goblin caves scattered about (just stay away from Moria!) or you could venture into the Old Forest near Buckland. If you want to serve the Lidless Eye then you could attack any of the hobbit towns... but I would, again, stay away from Bag End, as Frodo and Sam could put a real hurting on you:)

Thanks so much for playing and giving us feedback, we need it!

[hyrax]

Hi everybody!

I've thrown a few ideas over via mail, and here are a few more that hit me during recent adventures:

1. Possible use for cash: Pulling enchants out of random loot you find in the dungeon. Visit a down, give a merchant those +2 sandals you don't need and 500 gold, and there's a chance the merchant could pull a quality enchant out of the sandals for you. Sandals get blown up in the process, and there's a chance the process will fail and you'll get nothing.

2. Add some chow to chests so you always get something you know you'll need.

3. Can there be a special key for reporting the armor/damage numbers? Right now you have to tab around and scroll up through the kill list to see the difference between items, and it would be nice if I could hit "r" to report armor/damage and just get two lines for a quick comparison. Even easier (for us, prolly not for you unfortunately) would be an automatic reporting of those stats every time you change a piece of gear.

4. Would it be possible to spit out a text description line every time you walk over a portal? Right now when I'm looking around in the world I have to click on new towns/caves to see what they are (and I can't do that if I'm already standing on them)...what I'm thinking is an automatic "The Town of Bree" or "Stairway Up" or "Mysterious Passage" showing up in the text box when you walk over the portal.

5. Auto-attack for same-aligned mobs attacking you. (I attacked one elf in a room and the other elves started hitting me, but after I killed the first elf and another angry one took his place, when I kept hitting the arrow key to attack it defaulted to trying to move instead of attack b/c he was the same alignment as me, even though he was already stabbing me in my face. My poor, poor face.)

6. Confirmation of "do you want to attack the merchant" is awesome:)

7. What are the requirements/specs for icon creation?

The game is much fun, thanks!

Hyrax

[hyrax]

Another item Schismarch and I just discussed:

Using CTRL-arrow and ALT-arrow for auto-throw and auto-zap to make fighting as a Thief/Mage easier.

Right now it's super easy to fight as a warrior...you just stumble around the dungeon and hit the arrow until the bad guy falls over. Fighting as a mage or thief requires more clicks and menu navigating, and over time each extra click adds up.

So, if CTRL-arrow would do an automatic "use auto-select to pick the best ranged item and chuck it in that direction" and ALT-arrow does a "use auto-select to pick the best zappable spell and zap it in that direction," combat as these classes would be greatly simplified.

[Schismarch]

yes, this is awersome. as we discussed, let's do ctrl + arrow as a user settable action with choices of {throw in direction, zap in direction}; we might eventually add more actions that you can set through the ui.