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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Feature Requests : Some interface ideas
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logicGamesFan
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icon Some interface ideas (+2)  
Sorry if some of it sounds preachy, but I'm just dumping ideas I have at the moment, before I forget something.

1) Moved here.

2) Save at room exit! Seriously, exiting a room by mistake can be a traumatizing event, affecting persons entire future life. By putting an additional save in "restore" menu for "room exit" (right next to "room start"), this should be fixed and lives saved. Also, it's not obvious for a rookie, that in case of such a tragedy, you can still restore to checkpoint from "restore". I think it should in a tutorial or something. It's probably in a manual somewhere, but it's really super important.

3) A tile in DROD can get crowded. I often missed that I had a trapdoor under a token, for example. I know it can checked by a mouse click, but it should be easier. Unless something is supposed to be hidden, like under tar, spiders or eyes lines of sight, we should have some mechanics for viewing it efficiently. An example would be an option (button on the left, keyboard shortcut or both) that would allow, for example, to blink monsters / characters off for a moment. Similarly maybe with layered elements like tokens, arrows, fuses... On the same note, can we have a similar on / off for a grid view. On some level themes it can get a little tricky to count the moves or see where the waterline is.

4) Not an issue really, just some improvement idea. I always felt like one of selling points of DROD games should be the epic level maps. Right now we only have room by room views and very simplified mini maps. It would be great to have something in between, a view where we scroll through all the rooms with minimized graphics (1:4 ratio maybe). It would allow us to look at a level as a whole and at the same time see a lot of details. I understand it could mean a lot of dev time, but maybe minimization can be done by a simple algo. You could at least try to see how that would work. It would really pay off, especially for carefully crafted, themed levels. Even with the current solution, I often just scroll through "restore" to enjoy the views. Maybe there is some addon for it, but it should really be in the base game.

[Last edited by logicGamesFan at 01-22-2013 07:17 AM]
01-21-2013 at 08:19 PM
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logicGamesFan
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icon Re: Some interface ideas (0)  
On point 4. I just realized there is already room view scaling in editor and even "restore" with some non-trivial ratio. There's really no excuse for this one now. You just need to put the rooms together.

[Last edited by logicGamesFan at 01-22-2013 10:22 AM]
01-21-2013 at 11:09 PM
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Someone Else
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icon Re: Some interface ideas (0)  
Well, 1 is definitely the way I'd like to go. :P

2 is a very good idea, and I can't count the number of times that might have been useful. On the other hand, did you know that you can press shift and it'll lock the room so you can't exit until you press shift again?

3 is, I think, a good idea. I use a similar feature in ADOM all the time.

On 4 - I think this would be really cool. :yes
01-21-2013 at 11:46 PM
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Jatopian
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icon Re: Some interface ideas (0)  
For #1, I note that despite snarking about how the topic is spread across multiple threads, you've started another one. Perhaps you should strike this from your post and repost it in the recent thread.

#2 - Sure, why not.

#3 - I guess a key to cycle through single layer views would be useful. Probably you'd want to automatically revert to standard view when the player moved.

#4 - You know, this would be nice. I don't know that something to keep up with realtime changes caused by builders, exploded bombs, broken walls, and whatnot would be feasible, but initial maps or even maps updated on room transition could work.

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01-22-2013 at 02:08 AM
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logicGamesFan
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icon Re: Some interface ideas (0)  
Didn't want to sound like complaining on #1. On the opposite, I'm pretty impressed with the discussion scope. It's just easy to miss something, that's all. I will move it and leave a link.

On the shift. No, sorry, wasn't aware of that. Maybe I should have read the man before posting this :? But still, since it must be turned on, it's easy to forget until it's too late. Default on would also make it a pain to navigate a level. I still think redundancy here would be nice.

[Last edited by logicGamesFan at 01-22-2013 07:33 AM]
01-22-2013 at 07:13 AM
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