Udderdude
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 4
Registered: 03-20-2012
IP: Logged

I wasn't sure if I should post this in Feature Request, Bugs or here, because it has a little of everything. So I'm posting it here.

Preface: I'm a game developer/coder myself. I've made several puzzle games on my own. I don't want to paste the link to them here because I don't want it to seem like I'm spamming/bragging, and because I want the focus of this to be on my feedback, not anything else.

I had never heard of DROD or anything about it until today, so I had no preconceived notions of what it is or isn't. These are my honest first impressions of the game demos that I tried.

Also any and all comments along the lines of "You suck, you aren't playing it right, lol I can't believe you did something that stupid you suck at puzzle games and life in general just quit playing games cuz you aren't smart enough", etc. will be seen in very poor taste :p

DROD The City Beneath

Clicking a menu option while a tooltip is up doesn't clear the tooltip when it goes to a sub-menu.

Level editor works in the demo, which is a nice bonus, but would be better saved for the full version.

R key (restart room) very close to Q and W keys, easy to accidentally press it.

Tight diagonal spaces don't even look like you should be able to move through them.

A key to go directly to the options screen from within the game would be nice.

It is not entirely clear that going back to the Main Menu will allow you to click Play Game and then resume your game. In most games, going back to the Main Menu abandons your current game.

Being able to skip the "Story" segments of the game would be nice also.

Default key repeat speed is way too fast to actually be useful during the game. This is especially apparent during the "Roach maze" puzzle. (Quest for Knowledge Scene East)

Having the player need to click on panels to see their result is flawed in a few ways
1. You can't see what all panels do all at the same time, you need to switch between them.
2. It isn't particularly intuitive.
3. Since the keys require two hands, you have to move your hand to the mouse every time you need to double check what a panel does. This gets annoying fast.

Mouseover or click tips for each object would be a good idea. Also adding "Click to move" and using the left/right mouse buttons to swing your sword.

It would be much better if the panels were colored and raised/lowered whatever color wall. Maybe have it raise bright colored walls and lower dark colored walls.

Why can you kill the helper NPC in the puzzle part, but not anywhere else? I killed him entirely by accident, I had no clue that would even happen.

Too many of the beginner puzzles have you do the same puzzle element multiple times, and it gets boring quickly (again, Roach Maze is a big example of this). Another is Once South, Quince east - you do the exact same thing in all four corners. Once you know the solution, it's not fun enough to execute it 3 times again, and then have to go back to the 4 corners to kill the other roaches that escape. And pressing one wrong key in this area accidentally completely screws you over. These beginner puzzles shouldn't be that strict on execution IMO.

I don't know what the later levels look like aside from the trailer, but from the looks of it, there's a lot of 'Tons of enemies all over the place' type levels that don't look paticuarly interesting. That trailer did not compel me to buy the game at all. It bragging about being "The greatest puzzle game of all time" after that montage seemed more like a tongue in cheek joke at that point.

DROD King Dugan's Dungeon

The music is really irritating here. Had to mute it immediately.

Again the problem with puzzles that require the player to execute the same solution multiple times. It's not interesting and the combat isn't fun enough to require the player to kill a zillion roaches in a row.

After I cleared the last room, I exited the room and EXIT LEVEL! appeared on the screen. I had no clue where the exit was, or what it looked like. Apparently a gray bar lowering (that leaves no trace that it was even there except for a note on the floor) was it. Not particularly intuitive. It's not even really an exit, it's just a passage to another part of the level.

The pathway directly after is nothing but a one way maze seemingly made to waste the player's time. Why is this even here? Why not provide a teleporter or something to the next part of the level instead of having them walk through this crap?

Accidentally going down in the "Crossing" room with the giant yellow bar forces you to go through the cleared level and walking part AGAIN. Seriously? This is where I gave up.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-20-2012 08:28 PM]

asmussen
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 188
Registered: 04-02-2004
IP: Logged

So, was there any aspect of the game whatsoever that you did NOT hate?

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Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

I'll address some of these.

Udderdude wrote:
any and all comments along the lines of "You suck,

Will not be in abundance, I assure you. This is a civil community.

Level editor works in the demo, which is a nice bonus, but would be better saved for the full version.

Nah. For some people the main draw was building.

R key (restart room) very close to Q and W keys, easy to accidentally press it.

...do you also have trouble with games that use WASD to move? This is a strange complaint. Anyway, note that you can remap keys.

Tight diagonal spaces don't even look like you should be able to move through them.

I suppose there could be corner wall tiles, but I don't think this is really that hard. And I believe the tutorial takes you through diagonals. If it's an aesthetics thing, I suppose rounded wall corners are possible, though backward compatibility would mean either retconning or incomplete addressing of the issue, even if we tried some fancy context-sensitive rendering.

It is not entirely clear that going back to the Main Menu will allow you to click Play Game and then resume your game. In most games, going back to the Main Menu abandons your current game.

"most games"? Most games I've played where this is true give you a warning about that exact issue.

Being able to skip the "Story" segments of the game would be nice also.

Spacebar to flush speech and skip to the end of the current cutscene if one is active. This is in the manual. Perhaps it should be mentioned more explicitly in the game proper, along with some of the other features you seem to have missed? It's been a while, so I don't remember.

Default key repeat speed is way too fast to actually be useful during the game. This is especially apparent during the "Roach maze" puzzle. (Quest for Knowledge Scene East)

Why are you mashing keys when you're not in a hurry to get out of a room or cross a large distance? I'm not saying you're doing it wrong; I just don't see why you're doing it.

Mouseover or click tips for each object would be a good idea. Also adding "Click to move" and using the left/right mouse buttons to swing your sword.

No objections, but I like the way it is and would prefer that this be optional. Maybe I just don't need to check plates/orbs all the time?

It would be much better if the panels were colored and raised/lowered whatever color wall. Maybe have it raise bright colored walls and lower dark colored walls.

How would having different panels do different things to the same gate work, then?

DROD King Dugan's Dungeon

Is outdated. Frankly Caravel ought to stop selling it standalone.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Jacob
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3746
Registered: 10-01-2004
IP: Logged

A few responses

By "panels" do you mean the yellow doors that open/close when you hit the yellow orbs?
If so, how could you show up what multiple orbs do at the same time? What if one opens the door and another closes it. Or any combination basically? How many orb functions would you have up at any one time, how would it work cumulatively, how would you remove them?

What would having different colours add to the current functionality? Surely all it would do is limit you to a certain number of sets of doors.

Are you suggesting that going to the main menu *should* abandon your current game? I assume not, so what behaviour are you suggesting should take place?

All keys are customisable. I use T and Y for sword swinging and P for restart. You can use whatever you want.

You can skip "story" by pressing space.

Having the editor in the demo and being able to play any user-made holds is one of the great things about DROD!

King Dugan's Dungeon - I assume the crossing room is the one when you're finishing level 1. You know you can just restore back to a room before that (e.g. the last one you completed) rather than walk all the way around the level.

Also, KDD was the first levelset ever made - over 400 have been made since, so generally things like puzzles and level layouts have improved considerably. (Obviously some levelsets/holds are better than others though).

Edit: Clearly Jatopian and I rushed to post at the same time, so eager were we to reply.

____________________________
New to DROD? You may want to read this.
My Holds and Levels:

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[Last edited by Jacob at 03-20-2012 07:46 PM]

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

DROD King Dugan's Dungeon

Is outdated. Frankly Caravel ought to stop selling it standalone. I am fairly sure he meant Architect's Edition:
1. EXIT LEVEL! - AFAIK this message is different since JTRH
2. I had no clue where the exit was, or what it looked like. - Level cleared gates disappear only in AE.
I might be wrong though.

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kyevan
Level: Disabled
Rank Points: 54
Registered: 08-29-2007
IP: Logged

I always thought that hitting R should be undoable with backspace. Might be a technical nightmare, I haven't played with the DROD source any, but it'd be nice.

I do agree the sales system needs cleanup... ideally, there'd be one DROD engine download and everything else would be data packs, but seeing as there ARE some things that work in the older engines but not the newer ones (mostly puzzles that rely on excessively fiddly implementation details) that's probably not practical to fit on now. (Well, two engine downloads really, DROD and DROD RPG, but yeah).

Did you try JTRH? It's music is identical to KDD's, other than the menu theme. And yeah, that song is very love it or hate it. EDIT: Oh, unless you were playing AE, which is really, REALLY old and only really available for historical reasons...

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[Last edited by kyevan at 03-20-2012 07:51 PM]

west.logan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 608
Registered: 03-09-2011
IP: Logged

Udderdude wrote:
Accidentally going down in the "Crossing" room with the giant yellow bar forces you to go through the cleared level and walking part AGAIN. Seriously? This is where I gave up.

I remember doing that but it didn't take too long to go back around. At least not enough to bother me.

Sounds like you haven't really made it to any puzzles yet.

____________________________
-Logan

Jacob
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3746
Registered: 10-01-2004
IP: Logged

I assume he's talking about AE for the last section of his post.
Indeed, blue and green doors just vanish, leaving no trace - this is one of the many reasons why later versions were better.

Edit: btw, Welcome to the forums.

____________________________
New to DROD? You may want to read this.
My Holds and Levels:

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[Last edited by Jacob at 03-20-2012 08:01 PM]

hyperme
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1079
Registered: 06-23-2006
IP: Logged

In which I attempt to not come off as a terrible person. Also not representive of them oficial DROD peeps, so yeah. Hey, anything that I feel is a rude response I'll highlight red.


First up: DROD is open source, no feature saving for full version. Also The City Beneath is version 3.0 so simplifications ain't happening.

Now to address points completly at random!

Help files should be read because seriously there's an undo button.

'Panel' Highlighting: Assuming you mean orbs and pressure plates, it's hardly feasable to show information from multiple door effecters at once.

Simpler plates and orbs: Seriously? While some official rooms (and many user rooms) get complex with their doors, for the most part it's pretty simple.

Story skipping: But then you'd complain about not knowing where to go! Maybe. Anyhow, press space to speed up cutsences.

Trailer: Focuses on the more actiony parts of the game. Most of the game is mental exercise type stuff.

Tight Spaces: I swear the tutorial covers this. Anyhow, I guess it's a valid concern.

Helper NPC: I don't know why you can kill the Guide (who is female, incidentally). Comedy value I guess.

Dugan's Dungeon: Being the first DROD hold ever made, its not exactly the best of things.


Anyhow, I'm torn between pointing you towards the user-made Holds, or just telling you that maybe DROD isn't your game. User holds are much better than the demo holds at showing DROD's potenial and even work in the demo version. But DROD is complex. Each of the thirty something elements has some unique property. Roaches charge you. Goblins avoid your sword. Wraithwings have some weird group based behevior. Even elements which seem similar are different. Water and Pit affect Brairs differently. Serpents shink in dead ends, while Rattlesnakes must be attacked at the tail. Mud and Tar are weak at the outer corners and sides repectivly. And both of these set's greener members have functions beyond the logical progress. Adders each monsters to get bigger as well as having a head wekspot. Gel much by attacked to a Mother to grow, as weel as having a inner corner weakness. DROD is complicated. And your 'simplify plates' point maybe suggests you would like that.


Also, pointless advice. Since you apparently play games than post feedback without any context at all, don't play Dwarf Fortress. Just don't. It is both hidiously and beuatifully complex. And lacks a good UI.


edit oh man I spend so long on this a load of other peeps posted.

____________________________
[Insert witty comment here]
Qzvlkx?

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[Last edited by hyperme at 03-20-2012 08:06 PM]

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
IP: Logged

Aight, I'm some random troll, lemme try to address your concerns. (the trick here is the game dev does this, he isn't listening to feedback, but as a random player I get to do it)

(secreted for oh christ words)


tl;dr he has some good points in there, it's worth actually bothering to read the post but he descends into 'I obviously started playing games when they started spoonfeeding me' further on'

and there is a coherent argument we would sell more copies if we acquiesced to his demands but most of them in the latter half would sharply reduce the complexity of the game in a variety of ways, alternately I guess he complains at one point that he screwed up and had to hit restore and it punched him in the eye

also I guess
okay

you can make this argument that 'making the game more accessible makes it more fun' and that's the thing you're doing with Gunthro but I am going to set up big glaring alarms here that if you lower the bar to suit this guy's frustrations with LEVEL ONE of KDD you're either going to have to neuter the difficulty in the latter half of the game or depend entirely on user holds for difficulty

also I started chortling when his requests actually started contradicting each other

my monocle popped

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
IP: Logged

doubleposting to say seriously you guys did you really sneak in like 8 posts while I was writing all that?

This is why I only write short pithy posts and avoid being constructive usually

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 4
Registered: 03-20-2012
IP: Logged

Jatopian wrote:

R key (restart room) very close to Q and W keys, easy to accidentally press it.

...do you also have trouble with games that use WASD to move? This is a strange complaint. Anyway, note that you can remap keys.

I'm aware you can remap keys, I was going from the perspective of someone who wouldn't attempt to do so or would just start the game w/o checking to see if it's possible to remap the keys.

Jatopian wrote:

Tight diagonal spaces don't even look like you should be able to move through them.

I suppose there could be corner wall tiles, but I don't think this is really that hard. And I believe the tutorial takes you through diagonals. If it's an aesthetics thing, I suppose rounded wall corners are possible, though backward compatibility would mean either retconning or incomplete addressing of the issue, even if we tried some fancy context-sensitive rendering.

Yes, the tutorial does show that, but there it really looks like you can't slip through. If this is a "Backwards compatibility" issue, maybe it's time to move forward, or give an option to use "old" or "new" map formats.

Jatopian wrote:

It is not entirely clear that going back to the Main Menu will allow you to click Play Game and then resume your game. In most games, going back to the Main Menu abandons your current game.

"most games"? Most games I've played where this is true give you a warning about that exact issue.

Yes, they do give a warning, but it's still not paticuarly clear. Users may, for instance, hit Escape and then think they've inadvertantly quit their current game with no warning, or no clue that they can go back to the game later.

I should add that pressing Esc should bring up a smaller in-game menu that appears on top of the game, which should itself be faded out slightly.

Jatopian wrote:

Being able to skip the "Story" segments of the game would be nice also.

Spacebar to flush speech and skip to the end of the current cutscene if one is active. This is in the manual. Perhaps it should be mentioned more explicitly in the game proper, along with some of the other features you seem to have missed? It's been a while, so I don't remember.

I did discover that Space skips cutscenes. I don't remember if this was actually mentioned, or if I was just hitting keys at random to see if it would skip (The space bar is nice and big, so I may have ended up hitting that first). Even with Space skipping cutscenes, you have to run for quite awhile through the city, including that scene with the line-up. And skipping the dialogue leaves you with no real clue where you're supposed to go, so it may actually do more harm than good.

Jatopian wrote:

Default key repeat speed is way too fast to actually be useful during the game. This is especially apparent during the "Roach maze" puzzle. (Quest for Knowledge Scene East)

Why are you mashing keys when you're not in a hurry to get out of a room or cross a large distance? I'm not saying you're doing it wrong; I just don't see why you're doing it.

The time before key repeat starts is a little short. It's kind of in this wierd in-between zone where when you want to use it, you don't have many spaces you want to move, while setting it lower makes you move across emptier rooms slower.

Maybe the best solution is to have an auto skip toggle key, one that toggles it from moving fast to slow. Like an auto-run key or something.

I should add that having to press move over and over in one direction gets old fast, and when holding it down causes you to overshoot your target half the time, it's frustrating. This is why features like click to move are so much easier to deal with.

Jatopian wrote:

Mouseover or click tips for each object would be a good idea. Also adding "Click to move" and using the left/right mouse buttons to swing your sword.

No objections, but I like the way it is and would prefer that this be optional. Maybe I just don't need to check plates/orbs all the time?

It's fine if it's optional.

Jatopian wrote:

It would be much better if the panels were colored and raised/lowered whatever color wall. Maybe have it raise bright colored walls and lower dark colored walls.

How would having different panels do different things to the same gate work, then?

This is a difficult question, I guess it's not really possible to do with the puzzles as they are in the game. Maybe you could make the highlighting automatically appear when you're close to a panel. This wouldn't be an issue unless the panels were very close to eachother and did different things. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were levels with that in them as well.

DROD King Dugan's Dungeon

Is outdated. Frankly Caravel ought to stop selling it standalone.
I agree, that or make a revised version of the game that has all of the bigger issues ironed out.

And just to clarify, the only two games I tried were DROD - The City Beneath and DROD - King Dugan's Dungeon.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-20-2012 08:30 PM]

Jacob
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3746
Registered: 10-01-2004
IP: Logged

I love how about 20 of us descended on the post to post pretty much the same thing.

Of course, Banjooie wins as usual.

I have to say Jatopian has an interesting point about selling KDD and whether since we should continue to do that, especially if FlashDROD KDDLite is freely available.

____________________________
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kyevan
Level: Disabled
Rank Points: 54
Registered: 08-29-2007
IP: Logged

Well, I want to pick up KDD 2.0, since JTRH has several things I'm pretty sure are callbacks... I'm pretty sure at least one of them (the level where they introduce mud) would 'break' with the different room size, too. I suppose you could argue that the correct answer is to make KDD 2.0 free, but is The Choice really enough to carry the entire thing? Plus you risk cheesing off people who bought it...

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[Last edited by kyevan at 03-20-2012 08:25 PM]

Someone Else
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1315
Registered: 06-14-2005
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The thing that you said last "...has all of the bigger issues ironed out." makes me laugh. Honestly, I've never found any of these things to be issues, except the diagonal spaces. But since that seems like a lot of work for little gain, I'd rather Mr. Imer keep working on making DROD be awesome.
Also, you might not want to continue on in KDD to level 13. Just a hint.

RoboBob3000
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1978
Registered: 10-23-2003
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Welcome to the forum, Udderdude!

I always think it's cool when developers poke their head into our forum. It's always fun to hear different perspectives. I'd love to see some of your work and I don't think anybody would mind if you shared a link.

I believe one of our members discovered a game of yours a couple of years ago. I remember playing and enjoying it!

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Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

Ah, so he's a Flash guy. I was wondering where that bizarre "Main Menu abandons your current game" thing came from.

Jacob wrote: I have to say Jatopian has an interesting point about selling KDD and whether since we should continue to do that, especially if FlashDROD KDDLite is freely available.

More like whether we should continue to do that when it's available as a Smitemaster's Selection still, really. The interesting bit is what to do about JtRH and perhaps someday soon TCB, but this is really more of a subject for another thread. Anyone who wants to discuss this further should probably start one.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 4
Registered: 03-20-2012
IP: Logged

RoboBob3000 wrote:
Welcome to the forum, Udderdude!

I always think it's cool when developers poke their head into our forum. It's always fun to hear different perspectives. I'd love to see some of your work and I don't think anybody would mind if you shared a link.

I believe one of our members discovered a game of yours a couple of years ago. I remember playing and enjoying it!

Yep, that's me. Not all of my games are puzzle games, though. I try to tackle a wide variety of genres.

So if any of my feedback pissed you guys off, feel free to play my own games and say whatever you want about them! :p

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/toast/index.html

From the sound of things, the levels in DROD get much harder than anything in my own puzzle games, except maybe Runner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwljzxUnpcc a later level from Runner.

Also, I was amused by Banjooie's "I am so much cooler than you that I don't even need to explain why your comments are misplaced and will just write snarky crap in all lower case" attitude. I said I went into the games knowing nothing about them, how much clearer does that need to be? No need to be [MOD EDIT: like that] about it.

There was maybe one suggestion that would require you to "Chop the game's difficulty in half" or whatever, and it was because I didn't know enough about the game's later puzzles, which I think can be excused.

I still think having to move your hand off the keyboard and back to the mouse repeatedly is an interface issue that could be improved in some way.

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[Last edited by Schik at 03-20-2012 09:03 PM]

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

Udderdude wrote:
I'm aware you can remap keys, I was going from the perspective of someone who wouldn't attempt to do so or would just start the game w/o checking to see if it's possible to remap the keys.

I'm still a little mystified that you hit R instead of W often enough to be an issue.

Yes, the tutorial does show that, but there it really looks like you can't slip through. If this is a "Backwards compatibility" issue, maybe it's time to move forward, or give an option to use "old" or "new" map formats.

No. God no. If you weren't so new I'd call you crazy. Arguably the biggest draw of this game, and its biggest source of replay value, is the mass of quality user-created content. To suddenly make walls rounded where they were once angular is to disrespect the aesthetic choices of - depending on how you count them - 5 to 15 years of architects' own aesthetic choices hinging on angular walls. It's a grid, dude; it's not that hard. Does it also bother you that you often have to pick up the bishops in chess in order to move them?

I should add that pressing Esc should bring up a smaller in-game menu that appears on top of the game, which should itself be faded out slightly.

Meh. If anything "Play Game" could become "Continue" or something once a game is in progress.

skipping the dialogue leaves you with no real clue where you're supposed to go, so it may actually do more harm than good.

Double-clicking the player portrait (the picture in the upper left) gives you a log of all speech said in the room, which persists until you exit said room. Again, perhaps something to be emphasized more, but that's all.

This wouldn't be an issue unless the panels were very close to eachother and did different things. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were levels with that in them as well.

Well at least you had that second sentence in there. Yeah, that describes a lot of orb-driven puzzles.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

Udderdude wrote: Also, I was amused by Banjooie's "I am so much cooler than you that I don't even need to explain why your comments are misplaced and will just write snarky crap in all lower case" attitude. I said I went into the games knowing nothing about them, how much clearer does that need to be? No need to be [MOD EDIT: like that] about it.

Looks like you're the one most in need of your warning about insults, dude! Calm on down. If you actually read Banjooie's points I think you'll find most of them pretty cogent aside from the last few or so in the secret tag, where they're accurate but not as explanatory as they could be. For example, not knowing where the exit was. Man, you have to look at the map for unexplored passages? Not that unreasonable if you ask me.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 03-20-2012 09:13 PM]

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 4
Registered: 03-20-2012
IP: Logged

Jatopian wrote:

Udderdude wrote:
I'm aware you can remap keys, I was going from the perspective of someone who wouldn't attempt to do so or would just start the game w/o checking to see if it's possible to remap the keys.

I'm still a little mystified that you hit R instead of W often enough to be an issue.

To clarify again, I didn't actually ever hit R accidentally myself. I am talking from the perspective of a game/interface designer who tries to make the interface nice, not naughty. The puzzles should be hard, the interface shouldn't.

Jatopian wrote:

Udderdude wrote: Yes, the tutorial does show that, but there it really looks like you can't slip through. If this is a "Backwards compatibility" issue, maybe it's time to move forward, or give an option to use "old" or "new" map formats.

No. God no. If you weren't so new I'd call you crazy. Arguably the biggest draw of this game, and its biggest source of replay value, is the mass of quality user-created content. To suddenly make walls rounded where they were once angular is to disrespect the aesthetic choices of - depending on how you count them - 5 to 15 years of architects' own aesthetic choices hinging on angular walls. It's a grid, dude; it's not that hard. Does it also bother you that you often have to pick up the bishops in chess in order to move them?

Insulting comments about bishops and chess aside, another solution would be to only use the new format for official maps. That way, the official maps can have the nice angular walls while user-made maps will stay the same.

You're really getting defensive here and it's starting to get tiring, so this is likely my last reply.

Jatopian wrote:

Udderdude wrote: skipping the dialogue leaves you with no real clue where you're supposed to go, so it may actually do more harm than good.

Double-clicking the player portrait (the picture in the upper left) gives you a log of all speech said in the room, which persists until you exit said room. Again, perhaps something to be emphasized more, but that's all.

Is it mentioned that you can double click the portrait and see the dialogue again? I don't think I caught that. My suggestion from the beginning is that you should just be able to skip the story and only play the puzzles, anyway. You're twisting what I said way in another direction!

Jatopian wrote:

Udderdude wrote: This wouldn't be an issue unless the panels were very close to eachother and did different things. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were levels with that in them as well.

Well at least you had that second sentence in there. Yeah, that describes a lot of orb-driven puzzles.

Personally, I don't like puzzles with such loose, arbitrary rules around what game objects do or don't do. I prefer game elements that do one thing, and one thing only. That way, the player doesn't have to worry about it doing something unexpected, or having to check what every single object in a puzzle does to figure out what's going to happen.

If that makes the puzzles too simple for your tastes, so be it. I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree there.

Jatopian wrote: If you actually read Banjooie's points I think you'll find most of them pretty cogent aside from the last few or so in the secret tag, where they're accurate but not as explanatory as they could be. For example, not knowing where the exit was. Man, you have to look at the map for unexplored passages? Not that unreasonable if you ask me.

This is the kind of thing I was worried would pop up when I first made this thread. Remember the part about "omg ur such an idiot how did you not do that"? Yeah.

As far as I could tell, the minimap doesn't show areas you've explored or not anyway.

And AGAIN, my original suggestion of just having a teleport so you don't have to run past 1. A completely arbitrary and empty series of rooms with no puzzles or goals in them, 2. An area where you can potentially get locked out of and have to run through again. And yes, I did try hitting both R and Backspace, neither brought me back before I was outside the crossover room again.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-20-2012 09:22 PM]

Jacob
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Jatopian wrote:
The interesting bit is what to do about JtRH and perhaps someday soon TCB, but this is really more of a subject for another thread. Anyone who wants to discuss this further should probably start one.

Funnily enough I just did that, though on a super-secret developers board

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Someone Else
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Actually, Banjooie has been a lot nicer here than he is lots of places, so...
(Sorry Banj. I know that wasn't your goal)

Blondbeard
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I don't really get it. What is your message?

"Cool, you have this puzzle game, which obviously have a following of people who absolutely love it. You should be aware, though, that the first impression you get from the game can be quite poor due to these reasons, were some might be improved in the future"

Or

"Uhh... Okay, I just played your game, and it seems as if it sucks. If you liked it you kind of have a bad taste, and there are lots of things that needs to be improved."

I thought it sounded like the latter, which confuses me since it would be pointless to write such a long post, and not try to be helpful. Anyway I think it is a bit unfortunate that the tone of your post made at least me (partly) interpret it in that way.

It didn't feel entierly respectful of the people who love this game, neither the players nor the developers. Again: I don't think it's intentionally disrespectful, and maybe it's just me being sensetive

12th Archivist
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I agree with Blondbeard here. Not every response in the later parts of the thread were quite as nice as the first few, but you (udder) did seem to want feedback to your own feedback. People told you why some of your ideas were either implausable or not actual concerns, and then you started to assume people were getting defensive.

Maybe we all just have a bad aftertaste because your post only focused on suggestions on fixing the negative of your experience, instead of enhancing and building upon the positive. Surely you found something enjoyable during your play time. Perhaps you could make a comment on that, even a short one?

Do not feel like we are trying to chase you away. We appreciate your constructive criticism.

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da rogu3
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@the OP

Can I just say that the official TCB hold isn't the best place for a DROD newbie to start due to its complexity and non linear nature (personally I dislike it). Also KDD, being about 10 years old, isn't that great either. You haven't given JTRH (best intro to DROD imo) a try. Also there are many usermade holds which surpass the quality of the official holds.

Whilst some of your points might be relevant, most (permanent saving, level editor in the demo, etc..) just display ignorance of the way DROD and its community works. (don't take this as an insult, I'm just pointing things out)

Udderdude
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12th Archivist wrote: People told you why some of your ideas were either implausable or not actual concerns, and then you started to assume people were getting defensive.

I don't mind that people are telling me my suggestions won't work. It's the added snark/'you suck' etc. comments that were rude.

I get that there's a dedicated fanbase that makes custom content for the games, but my perspective, one of a complete beginner, is something that should be taken into account and not ignored because people who already play the game are used to it and all of it's quirks/things that could be improved.

12th Archivist wrote: Maybe we all just have a bad aftertaste because your post only focused on suggestions on fixing the negative of your experience, instead of enhancing and building upon the positive. Surely you found something enjoyable during your play time. Perhaps you could make a comment on that, even a short one?

I tried to find something to say that I found positive or enjoyed about the game. I really did. Ultimately, though, I didn't want to just "Make something up" that I enjoyed about it. Maybe if I stuck with it and got to the later puzzles I might have started enjoy it more, but when even the beginner puzzles are not fun to me, it doesn't bode well. In no way did I find them too difficult to figure out; I just didn't enjoy them, for reasons I described. That is really my biggest issue, beyond the control issues and everything else.

Some people don't really like it when they get a whole page full of negatives with no positives. But that's just how things end up sometimes.

12th Archivist wrote: Do not feel like we are trying to chase you away. We appreciate your constructive criticism.

I'm afraid that unless the developers of the game are genuinely interested in making the game more appealing/accessible to beginners, and not just to the dedicated fans who've played it for years, it really is falling on deaf ears.

da rogu3 wrote: Can I just say that the official TCB hold isn't the best place for a DROD newbie to start due to its complexity and non linear nature (personally I dislike it). Also KDD, being about 10 years old, isn't that great either. You haven't given JTRH (best intro to DROD imo) a try.

You're right, I didn't try that one. But again, how is a beginner supposed to know? Most people aren't going to register on the forums just to ask and find out. Most people won't even visit the forums, actually. I actually did download the demo to JTRH but somehow ended up trying KDD first. Probably because it was ahead in alphabetical order in the list of games after I installed all of the demos.

12th Archivist wrote: Also there are many user made holds which surpass the quality of the official holds.

I would honestly be surprised if any of them were tuned towards beginners. Most user made content made for moddable games is very hardcore, even more difficult than official maps.

And what beginner is going to try the user made content before the official content? Not likely to happen.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-20-2012 10:17 PM]

MHighbrow
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I'm a bit too tired to wade in on this properly and most of my thoughts have already been voiced, but:

Udderdude wrote: I'm afraid that unless the developers of the game are genuinely interested in making the game more appealing/accessible to beginners, and not just to the dedicated fans who've played it for years, it really is falling on deaf ears.

I believe this is what Caravel is trying to achieve with its current projects, the new DROD and the Flash remake of the original levels.

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[Last edited by MHighbrow at 03-20-2012 10:09 PM]

Dischorran
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Jatopian wrote:
Double-clicking the player portrait (the picture in the upper left) gives you a log of all speech said in the room, which persists until you exit said room.

Wait, really? I never knew that either.

Also, I'm totally in favor of lopping a bit of a corner off of the two walls surrounding diagonal passages (although I'm not convinced that calling that "moving forward" is the most artful way to phrase a suggestion ).

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mrimer
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Udderdude wrote:
I'm afraid that unless the developers of the game are genuinely interested in making the game more appealing/accessible to beginners, and not just to the dedicated fans who've played it for years, it really is falling on deaf ears.

Udderdude, thanks for stopping in on the forum and taking the time to post some thoughtful feedback about the game. I'm one of DROD's developers. I've read through your observations and suggestions, and I'll consider carefully what can be done to improve the game along these lines in a future release. It's helpful for me to pool ideas with fellow game developers, so I welcome anything else insightful you have to say about DROD or game design in general. Thanks for sharing some of your work, and good luck on any future creations!

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