butsam
Level: Master Delver
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There is a minor bug when travelling between rooms on Build 29. I don't know if it's intentional or not.

If you move diagonally in the direction that takes you out of the room, you will not actually get to move diagonally, even if it is a legal move. In other words, try going to the left edge of the screen and moving diagonally up and to the left--you will instead just move straight left, even if the next room has space that would permit the diagonal move.

If the diagonal move is blocked in some way, then I understand just straight left, but I don't see why a pure diagonal move cannot be allowed if there is empty space in the next room at the proper point.

I know, we're getting to the nit-picky stuff now This is a good sign!

Sam

eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

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This isn't a recent bug/feature - it has been the case forever; definitely as far back as 1.5 and I think as far back as webfoot. Not that that has any bearing about whether or not it should be fixed; personally, I think it would be nice to have it fixed but if collision detection will be too big an issue it will be fine as is.

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ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Not allowing diagonals is intentional. There's arguments for and against, but mainly I think it's counter-intuitive to navigate diagonally from the corners. The DROD-elite would pick up on the behaviour and exploit it in level design like they do every other quirk that I leave laying around. Then less DROD-savvy people would say "I beat all the rooms in the level, but I can't exit!" and eventually, with some frustration, would learn that the diagonal navigation trick is required to discover other rooms in the level.

DROD is supposed to be about dealing with predictable behavior, so stuff like this gets left out. I can understand the counter-argument that diagonal navigation is actually more intuitive than forcing Beethro to navigate orthogonally, but I think people will get irritated when they encounter a level where they have to know that there is a third room which can be accessed from a corner.

It's a war between me and the DROD elite! Dumb it all down for the masses--I say!

-Erik

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Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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I don't think the original post was about moving to a room diagonal from the current room. I may be mistaken, but I think it was just about this:

----------||-------
          ||
          ||
room1     Y     room 2
           X
          ||
----------||--------

One might think you should be able to move from X to Y, but you can't. Pardon my craptacular ASCII art.


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eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2708
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Okay, so here's a question -

Why not allow diagonal movement, but not from corners? I.e., you could only move to a room which is orthogonal to the current room; but in the following situation:

..
--
B.

Where B is Beethro, . is an empty floor square, and -- is the room boundary, if beethro moves northeast, he will end up as follows:

.B
--
..

To me this seems the most intuitive behavior. At the moment, if you move diagonally from anywhere in the room, you end up doing something un-intuitive - and it is important: often in rooms where timing is important I stepped into them diagonally, and had to move out and reposition myself because I kept forgetting the diagonal movement weirdness. If my suggestion is accepted, then there will be only four squares which may or may not be intuitive (the corners) depending on your idea of how corners work, while still not allowing people to hide rooms behind corners. I think that captures the best of all worlds.

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Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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As a physicist, I highly approve of the use of the word "orthogonal" whenever possible.





What?




Game on,

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ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Schik wrote:
I don't think the original post was about moving to a room diagonal from the current room. I may be mistaken, but I think it was just about this:

Oops. Yeah, you're right. It's embarrassing for me when I write a long response based on the wrong premise.

Okay, I am going to enter a low priority bug for this.

EDIT: Actually, I rechanged my mind. There are some issues in determining what is a valid diagonal move from the exit that make the task more complicated than it first looks. I'm trying to get to the release more quickly, so I think we'll live without this for now.

-Erik

[Edited by ErikH2000 on 07-17-2003 at 08:29 PM]

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

butsam
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 114
Registered: 05-20-2003
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Very good point It's best left as-is.

Sam

Quath
Level: Goblin
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You could make the simplifying assumption that a diagonal is ok if the current room would allow for the move to be broken into 2 steps.

So if you move diagionally down and right and you are on the right side of the screen. It could accept the diagonal move only if the square down is free to move to.

Quath