Announcement: Remember: you are giving away your fantastic ideas for free, and somebody else might even make money from them (or appear to). That's just how the world works! If you're worried about it, maybe you shouldn't post your ideas here.


Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Feature Requests : Planning mode (A way to plan things out visually)
New Topic New Poll Post Reply
Poster Message
Bent
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 92
Registered: 12-11-2015
IP: Logged
icon Planning mode (+4)  
Most of the joy I get from DROD come from analyzing a room and planning out how to solve it, but often when I do, especially in complicated monster manipulation or maze puzzles, the following happens: I figure out that the goblin needs to be at this tile and the roach at that tile, I start to set up the situation, but on the way I forget which tiles this and that refers to. Or I finally find a path I believe leads out of the maze, but before I reach the end of it, I forget where I planned to go next. I find this very frustrating, and it often leads me to solve puzzles though trial and error, rather than using the solution I had previously found...

Therefore, almost every time I play DROD, I wish for a way to directly record my plans while analyzing the board. I could of course use a notepad, or screencap the room and edit it in MS-paint, but in most cases I find these alternatives to be tedious and breaking my immersion in the game.
I think an ideal solution would be to have a planning mode, activated by pressing a hotkey on the keyboard, which brings up a little toolbar, along with the ability to add and remove simple symbols (like arrows, letters, digits, and colored lights) to and from the board. When pressing the hotkey again, the symbols and toolbar would be hidden until you reactivate the planning mode.

Here's how I picture it:
Click here to view the secret text

Similarly to unlimited undo, I think the addition of this feature would feel liberating to many players by allowing one to focus purely on the puzzle at hand, rather than having to memorize coordinate numbers, the exact length of a fuse, whether two tiles are diagonally connected or not, and so forth...
07-17-2016 at 12:58 AM
View Profile Send Private Message to User Show all user's posts This architect's holds Quote Reply
TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1373
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged
icon Re: Planning mode (+1)  
Heh. Reminds me of something I posted.. twelve years ago. (Yikes.)
07-17-2016 at 05:22 AM
View Profile Send Private Message to User Show all user's posts Quote Reply
Bent
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 92
Registered: 12-11-2015
IP: Logged
icon Re: Planning mode (+2)  
TripleM wrote:
Heh. Reminds me of something I posted.. twelve years ago. (Yikes.)

Hm... While it probably isn't as user friendly, your suggestion from back then is at least possible to achieve without diving into the DROD source code and making a custom build, by using the free program Epic Pen. Using this program has a couple of drawbacks though: It has no line drawing mode, so drawing anything other than dots is pretty hard with a mouse, also it will not work if DROD is in fullscreen. You can make DROD look like it's in fullscreen though, by changing your screen resolution to 1024*768 and using the free program ShiftWindow to make the window borderless (assuming you're running Windows).

Here's a screenshot of me using it within DROD:
Click here to view the secret text

While this solution is not ideal, it's certainly better than nothing!
07-17-2016 at 03:03 PM
View Profile Send Private Message to User Show all user's posts This architect's holds Quote Reply
New Topic New Poll Post Reply
Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Feature Requests : Planning mode (A way to plan things out visually)
Surf To:


Forum Rules:
Can I post a new topic? No
Can I reply? No
Can I read? Yes
HTML Enabled? No
UBBC Enabled? Yes
Words Filter Enable? No

Contact Us | CaravelGames.com

Powered by: tForum tForumHacks Edition b0.98.8
Originally created by Toan Huynh (Copyright © 2000)
Enhanced by the tForumHacks team and the Caravel team.