MovieMovies1
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File: DROD_OLDCOMP.PNG (21.1 KB)
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License: Public Domain

So, some days ago DimWiddy introduced me to DROD. One of the things I noticed is that the gameplay would translate fairly well onto old computer hardware, due to its tile-based gameplay.
Room size would have to be reduced, but the core gameplay would probably be fairly easy to transfer. Check the attached file.

The only one that is kinda problematic gameplay-wise is the Game Boy one, since diagonals are either impossible, or would have to be implemented by pressing something like select at the same time as a direction, which is not very comfortable.

I may make more of these in the future.

DimWiddy
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I have to wonder what the music would sound like too, if there would be any!

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Chaco
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One of the tricky parts of designing an art style for older computers is that DROD often layers multiple elements on top of each other (e.g. a roach on top of a NE-facing force arrow on top of a yellow door).

Implementing undo or checkpoints (let alone Restore) would also be a bit tricky since at some point it involves going back to the start of the room and replaying all the moves before the rendering loop gets too impatient. On the PC-8801 this would work pretty much the same way as on modern computers, but I figure it would probably be a bit hard on the Gameboy.

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skell
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MovieMovies1 wrote:
The only one that is kinda problematic gameplay-wise is the Game Boy one, since diagonals are either impossible, or would have to be implemented by pressing something like select at the same time as a direction, which is not very comfortable.

Controls are never a problem, I just don't understand how come almost no one ever comes up with this.

Instead of the game reacting do d-pad being pressed make it that you select the direction to move with d-pad and "confirm" the move with a button. Want to move NE? Hold that diagonal on d-pad and press the button once (or more, or hold it). Want to wait? Press the button without moving.

Game boy gives you d-pad, A, B, start and select. Control scheme:
- D-Pad + A - movement
- A - Wait
- Left + B - Rotate CCW
- Right + B - Rotate CW
- Down + B - Undo
- Up + B - (unused)
- Select - Restart room
- Start - Pause

I've played the game like this and it is pretty comfortable and has good usability .

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Pekka
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If you have limited number of tiles to use or are working with low resoltuion, it is difficult to display multiple layers at once. One way of getting around this problem would be to have a View room option, which would remove all the movable entities from the display and let you view the terrain (for lack of a better word) only.

In this vein, I wonder if you could make a decent ASCII version of DROD. By this I mean using letters and other symbols from the basic character set on a grid to represent the game state.

You'd obviously translate Beethro to the classic @ of roguelikes, and you could use |/-\ for his sword. Representing monsters with letters would lose the ability to show their orientation, which would be a problem at least with Eyes. However, if you can highlight squares, you could at least show their lines of sight using highlighting.

This is of course idle speculation, since we already have a graphical version of DROD, but if anyone wants to continue from here: Do you think any gameplay elements in DROD cannot be represented well using only ASCII graphics? What if you add a selection background and foreground colors to the display?

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Someone Else
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It probably wouldn't be clear, but you could use E for evil eyes, using ∃ for it facing west, ш for it facing north, and so on. Unicode, and you can only get orthogonal with that, but it's not bad.