Udderdude
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mrimer wrote:

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!

Thanks. I suppose I'll leave one more piece of feedback related to the default auto-run speed, and those little notes on the ground. They're very easy to miss and the text only flashes on the screen if you're auto running over them. I think some users may not even notice they pop text up on the screen when you run over them so quickly. Possibly you could have the user stop when they hit a note for the first time, and have them click an OK button to continue playing.

And don't be afraid to have beginner friendly default options in the game. Advanced users or fans of the game are already pros at it - they'll just change the options to whatever they want anyway. Beginners, on the other hand, likely won't bother, or won't know what the options do well enough to modify them much.

I'll also add something about the levels themselves, since I had such issue with it. I think one of the bigger problems is Quantity over Quality. Basically, if the game has 300+ rooms, there's no way all 300+ of those are going to be top notch grade A material. And indeed it felt like there were a lot of rooms that were just filler, or the same puzzle again but with a slight change done. You could strip the game down to ~100 puzzles and it'd actually be better off. Sometimes, less is more.

I actually did this with one of my own games, Marbleicious. Originally, it had 100 levels. Then I went back and took 15 of the levels that I liked the least or felt weren't that great, and scrapped them. The game was actually better off because the player had less not-so-great levels to play through.

I should add that having an undo feature is not a good excuse to have the player solve the same mirrored part of a puzzle 4 times in a row. It's boring even if you execute it perfectly that first time.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-21-2012 01:10 AM]

da rogu3
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Udderdude wrote:
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.

I think you've definitely stumbled across the main problem there, beginners won't know exactly where to start and may give up too soon. There was even a thread somewhere discussing how to fix this (edit: here). But as of now the only detailed guide explaining everything is Jacob's Beginnner's Guide to DROD (maybe the developers could patch that guide into the help files, or something like that).

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[Last edited by da rogu3 at 03-20-2012 11:11 PM]

robin
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skell wrote:

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.

It's in AE, KDD 2.0 and JtRH.
"Sister Gates" are new in 3.0

____________________________

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[Last edited by robin at 03-20-2012 11:28 PM]

Tim
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I thought the comments were very interesting, and confirms my ideas of being beginners unfriendly.

DROD is brutal in this aspect, and it shows a design of a 10+ year old game. Well, that's probably because it is. That means that it will have its own advantages and disadvantages. Many modern gamers demand handholding to the end; which this game will not offer because gamers from a previous generation are expected to read the manual, for example.

You are right that this puzzle game is currently not designed for people who don't want to spend time on it. On the other hand, this is not a flash game where people will vote 1/5 because there is no mute button. (Note to myself, remember to suggest this for a flash version of a game).

That doesn't mean that it can't be a bit more beginner friendly, but it's something that takes time. You don't want to end up like this.

I personally find that Caravel usually listens to any constructive comments. Your main point is a good one, your technical suggestions on how to improve the game, however, I do not share. I'd say that there are better ways to improve the experience of a beginning dungeon delver, but that's for a later post. (past midnight around here)

____________________________
The best way to lose customers is to let little kids running loose on a forum with too many mod points.

asmussen
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Udderdude wrote:

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.

I'm having a little trouble understanding what your purpose here even is. By your own admission you failed to find even one single thing about the game that you liked. While some of what you said probably contains points worth considering, did you ever consider that not every person can like every game? If the game in your eyes is so worthless and shitty that you can't even find one single positive thing to say about it, then maybe you should just accept that this game isn't for you and move on instead of trying to instruct the authors here on exactly what they need to do to transform it into something that IS for you.

____________________________
Shawn Asmussen

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
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Tim wrote: DROD is brutal in this aspect, and it shows a design of a 10+ year old game. Well, that's probably because it is. That means that it will have its own advantages and disadvantages. Many modern gamers demand handholding to the end; which this game will not offer because gamers from a previous generation are expected to read the manual, for example.

Even NES puzzle games like Lolo could be figured out w/o a manual. And Lolo is 23 years old.

My comments weren't nessecarily "Beginners will have no chance at learning this and give up and quit", but more like a bunch of issues that I felt added up to decrease from the entire experience I got from starting out with the game.

Also, another thing about appealing to new players .. I know it's a puzzle game, and the art doesn't matter as much, it still matters enough that I think people are going to be turned off by the character art and portrait art. That really needs improvement. Maybe in the next game it already has been improved, I don't know. But if there's one art improvement that should be made, it's that.

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
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asmussen wrote:

Udderdude wrote:

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.

I'm having a little trouble understanding what your purpose here even is. By your own admission you failed to find even one single thing about the game that you liked. While some of what you said probably contains points worth considering, did you ever consider that not every person can like every game? If the game in your eyes is so worthless and shitty that you can't even find one single positive thing to say about it, then maybe you should just accept that this game isn't for you and move on instead of trying to instruct the authors here on exactly what they need to do to transform it into something that IS for you.

My purpose is to leave feedback which should hopefully give the developers some ideas on improving the game in certain areas of it. If I only came here to say "Your game sucks, lol", I wouldn't have written multiple page feedback and several replies clarifying my position.

Anyway, I've succeeded in that purpose, as one of the developers has already posted in this thread saying they'll consider my feedback.

I will say that if the game was improved, I could likely enjoy it, but that's because it would be a better game overall, not just because I personally like it more. It is not "worthless and shitty". Don't know where you got that idea, but if it was that bad I prob. wouldn't have even posted about it if I thought it was beyond redemption. It's a puzzle game that with some improvements could be better. On the other hand, if there are enough issues, I won't be enjoying myself, no matter how good the rest of the game is.

Here is another game I left extensive feedback on .. http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=24374.msg695448#msg695448

Despite that I did the same 'Giant list of things I felt could be changed/improved', I actually did enjoy playing that one. Mostly because the beginning levels were actually fun instead of feeling like a slog.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-21-2012 12:51 AM]

12th Archivist
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Udderdude wrote:
Also, another thing about appealing to new players .. I know it's a puzzle game, and the art doesn't matter as much, it still matters enough that I think people are going to be turned off by the character art and portrait art. That really needs improvement. Maybe in the next game it already has been improved, I don't know. But if there's one art improvement that should be made, it's that.

That artwork is one of DROD's more unique features. The artists (mostly Erik) that draw those portraits draw that way because they enjoy it and think it fits the style of the game, not because their poor art skills severely limit them. Yes, the portraits and on-screen representations of characters look rather silly. That is the whole point of the art style. People that live in the Eighth look like caricatures of people that live in the real world.

My point is that the art style is going to stay. Most comments I hear regarding DROD's graphics rag on the simplistic playing screen, not what the avatars look like. Maybe some members of this community should ask around and see how many people are annoyed by the avatars.

On an unrelated note, what do you think of how speech is handled? I have heard several people think the speech in TCB and RPG is terrible, but never why they find it terrible? Is the box of text annoying? Is the sound quality somehow morbidly low? What are your thoughts?

____________________________
It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 03-21-2012 12:39 AM]

Lamkin
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Udderdude wrote:
Also, another thing about appealing to new players .. I know it's a puzzle game, and the art doesn't matter as much, it still matters enough that I think people are going to be turned off by the character art and portrait art. That really needs improvement. Maybe in the next game it already has been improved, I don't know. But if there's one art improvement that should be made, it's that.

Yeah, I dunno...the portrait art was one of the things about the game that had appealed to me most strongly at first; I really liked (and still like) Erik's art. To each his own, I guess. Maybe it's Beethro's death-tongue animation that you don't care for. (I know my children don't.)

12th Archivist wrote:
Yes, the portraits and on-screen representations of characters look rather silly. That is the whole point of the art style.

Yeah, I agree with 12th that it's meant to look silly...I got that right away and embraced that silliness. I wouldn't have stuck with DROD if it had taken itself too seriously.

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[Last edited by Lamkin at 03-21-2012 01:00 AM]

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
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Lamkin wrote: Yeah, I dunno...the portrait art was one of the things about the game that had appealed to me most strongly at first; I really liked (and still like) Erik's art. To each his own, I guess. Maybe it's Beethro's death-tongue animation that you don't care for. (I know my children don't.)

That, and the length of the death animation/flailing, was what tipped me over the edge of really not liking the portrait art. Apparently the devs are proud of it, though; it even appears in the trailer!

12th Archivist wrote: On an unrelated note, what do you think of how speech is handled? I have heard several people think the speech in TCB and RPG is terrible, but never why they find it terrible? Is the box of text annoying? Is the sound quality somehow morbidly low? What are your thoughts?

I muted it before I even started the game. This is something I do in pretty much every game I play that I don't already know has top notch (Read: Valve game quality) levels of voice acting. Anything else drives me up a wall. And if it was just the programmers doing their best voice acting they can muster, I really doubt it would be up to par.

Edit: Actually, I think I did catch a little bit of it in the trailer, now that I remember. And it was pretty much like I described, the programmers doing their best shot.

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[Last edited by Udderdude at 03-21-2012 01:01 AM]

Tim
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Udderdude wrote:
Even NES puzzle games like Lolo could be figured out w/o a manual. And Lolo is 23 years old.

I don't see your point at all. Just because a game from the 8 bit era doesn't need a manual to be completed doesn't mean that there is a generation where manual are required for playing games. (It also doesn't mean that all 8 bit puzzle games can be played without a manual, but I won't bother you with that.)

My comments weren't nessecarily "Beginners will have no chance at learning this and give up and quit", but more like a bunch of issues that I felt added up to decrease from the entire experience I got from starting out with the game.

I agree with that. Your comment is more like ""Beginners _like_you_ will have no chance at learning this and give up and quit". That is what also I'm talking about.

Also, another thing about appealing to new players .. I know it's a puzzle game, and the art doesn't matter as much, it still matters enough that I think people are going to be turned off by the character art and portrait art. That really needs improvement. Maybe in the next game it already has been improved, I don't know. But if there's one art improvement that should be made, it's that.

I like the way you say that you _think_ that people are going to be turned off by some art. I, on the other hand, can _prove_ that there are people who like that kind of art.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

(And now it's time for bed. It's way past midnight over here. I don't really want to argue that much because you clearly has a point, but have you lok at the art in your own games lately?)

____________________________
The best way to lose customers is to let little kids running loose on a forum with too many mod points.

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[Last edited by Tim at 03-21-2012 01:04 AM]

Udderdude
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 4
Registered: 03-20-2012
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Tim wrote: (And now it's time for bed. It's way past midnight over here. I don't really want to argue that much because you clearly has a point, but have you lok at the art in your own games lately?)

And we have ad hominem! Thank you and goodnight!

Really though, I don't think anything in my own games is as bad as that character art. It's not amazing or anything, but hell, it's not that :p

I mean seriously, how can you not like this boss, which is basically a giant floating space vagina?

[url http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopbundle/xopBlackLevel3.png

Jatopian
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Well, since you asked? It's like someone uglified and pixelated Touhou. The art style can't seem to decide if it's trying to look like canvas or a DOS computer screen. That's how I personally can't like it.

I like Erik's art style on the whole. Beethro is supposed to be ugly, but it wouldn't bother me if one of these days it was narratively justified that he cleaned up a bit.

Regardless of any mud I or others may or may not have slung, I do feel that cowboy here has given us some valuable insight into the mind of someone who doesn't like TCB or KDD, and for that we should thank him. Thanks, cowboy. The question is, does he represent:
a) someone who doesn't like those implementations of the DROD concept
b) someone who doesn't like DROD as a whole
c) someone who just doesn't like puzzles as much as he thinks he does

Personally I don't know that b really exists except as a subset of c, but I'm likely biased. In any case, it would probably be illuminating to hear his thoughts on JtRH and/or a high-quality user-made hold.

____________________________
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 03-21-2012 01:43 AM]

Rabscuttle
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It's always interesting to see someone's first impressions, and some of your observations are interesting.

But when you say...

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

...and then you say...

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.

... it kinda sounds like you're trying to make up criticisms.

This is something that you admit you didn't have a problem with, and I'm at a loss to see how anyone would ever mistakenly press R instead of Q or W.

In standard play, you're only using the two keys over there - you don't need to move your hand around. Unless you're using your little finger on the Q, R isn't even going to be naturally be under a finger. Maybe it could happen if you're a left-hand mouser and you miss (by two keys) when returning? maybe?

Someone Else
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Lamkin wrote:
Maybe it's Beethro's death-tongue animation that you don't care for. (I know my children don't.)

That was my favourite part of the AE art!

Rabscuttle
Level: Smitemaster

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Where's that Russian box art?

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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'I am a game developer you should take seriously, my name is Udderdude'

'here is some giant space vagina from my game'

I desperately hope nobody is taking this thread seriously anymore.

okay guys i'm

i'm going to go through this guy's games

in some thread on electronics games

guys i'm going through effort for you you had BETTER APPRECIATE THIS

i could be roleplaying as a pony or something instead

edit: where doin this

where maken this hapen

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[Last edited by Banjooie at 03-21-2012 06:14 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Udderdude, I appreciate the additional ideas you shared above about game design. We're trying to target the ideas you suggest, but I guess we can't hit them all perfectly. For instance, we did try out many room designs for some levels you mention that we didn't end up keeping, and the rooms we did keep went through several iterations of tester feedback. We'll keep working on improving these aspects in future titles, as much as is realistically feasible.

Meanwhile, I have some suggestions to help you fit in here on the forum. To provide some context, I must admit I'm becoming a bit confused by the discussion you're continuing on this thread. To me, the way you're presenting your thoughts is in poor taste. For instance, when someone encouraged you to share constructive criticism earlier, I already quoted your reply

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.

The message I get from this is a pessimistic expectation that the developers of the game have their set way of doing things, so your words aren't going to mean much. But, if that's the case, then why did you start posting anything at all? Who's your target audience? Are you just trying to troll fans?

You see that the fanbase is positive toward various aspects of the game design, and you continue putting these things down for vague personal reasons. Maybe you're just trying to stir up the proverbial hornet's nest. I ask myself why would someone come to complain about aspects of a game they say they've never heard of before, they just tried for a bit today, and they can't really be bothered to play further. Your approach seems to be like showing up at some random person's house, telling them you don't like their furniture, and suggesting they should change it because, after all, you weren't really planning on coming over any more anyway.

So, in order to share ideas for improving DROD, I'd like to invite you to post any additional suggestions as topics on the Feature Requests board. Please note that DROD:TCB and DROD:KDD were released about five years ago now, and the dev team likely won't be considering making any changes to those games at this point. Please make suggestions for anything you would like to see in future game releases and we'll be happy to consider your ideas. You're also welcome to write any of the Caravel Games e-mail addresses with specific feedback to the developers in particular.

Also, I'd invite you to stay tuned for the upcoming release of "DROD 4: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder", which is currently in beta. It makes various improvements and is targeted to be more accessible, but if you already don't like DROD, then likely it still won't be your cup of tea, as each new release builds on preexisting game mechanics to preserve backwards compatibility, and they preserve the general look and feel of previous game engine iterations. In many ways, DROD is a game made by fans, for fans, and it is a labor of love.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, and for listening.