Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Discussion about Rogue Touch for the iPhone and iPod Touch
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CommanderData
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by CommanderData »

jhawk wrote:typing that out gave me a little idea of how id imagine a couple of my better suggestions getting implemented, and thought id share the vision :ugeek:

Image

Made in Over 9000 hours in MS Paint! :lol:

Just having a laugh with you... I can see what you mean. Actually I've been trying to figure out where I could put other requested items like a "move counter" and stuff. Things are just going to get too crowded or cluttered no matter what I do.

rekzkarz's post deserves its own special response just for the completely amazing amount of time he must have put into it... Hopefully mine doesn't take as long to write in return :D
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jhawk
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by jhawk »

move counter might be nice, but not really effects gameplay like an easy switch to secondary weapon, or knowing your dex, a seperate button for a more statistical view might be appropriate for more of those type requests, could even make a simple if not completely sensical solution, ie - touch the armor icon and a steps/enemies/whatever else pops up

I'd rather have more immediate beneficial additions to might be nice
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by CommanderData »

rekzkarz wrote:I just bought the game. Impressive. Great job on adaptation to iPhone. Thanks!

<snipped for brevity>

I tried to format this suggestion list so it'd be easier to read. Lemme know if any of these ideas were helpful?

Thanks again for a great version of a CLASSIC GAME. AWESOME!

As we all know, the Rogue game concept is what spawned all kinds of cool games, incl Diablo, GuildWars, Fate, & others. Maybe it's the underlying concept for the MMORPG phenomenon today? Anyway, no reason you couldn't make another game, 'Adventurer Touch', 'Wizard Touch', 'Cleric Touch', 'Magic Touch', or similar game name/concept -- and run with it.

THANKS again! - rekzkarz
rekzkarz.com

First off, let me say thank you for picking up the game and caring about it enough to come here and pour all of this out in the forum :D

I know you skimmed the 9 pages or so of this thread, you might have missed the other 25 page or so thread on the subject that I retired because it was getting too out of hand! Well that and a lot of the early pages of requests were actually addressed over the last five updates.... ;)

Let me try to step through the batch of ideas:
1) I do like the idea of "auto-repeat" X times for searching or resting at least, but how to handle that without cluttering up the interface? I don't know. Maybe it should be a Double-Tap on the Search or Sleep button to trigger it, then it'll do maybe 5x or 10x. If you find a door before 10x is up, it would cancel the remainder. Same thing if you were attacked.

2) The most critical things, throwing/shooting can be addressed by having "ranged weapon tap" turned on in settings. That lets you just tap on the equipment in the bottom-center of the screen to bring up the direction picker. That eliminates a bit of fuss, but I know what you're saying- if you are not wielding a staff and need to go in and pick it to "zap" two or more times in a row it can be a pain. That's why the inventory remembers where you last were (if you didn't notice that already), because if it bumped you back to the top of the list every time you entered the inventory it would be EVEN MORE painful :D I'm still experimenting a bit so you could see something new here.

3) The D-pad was mainly born and positioned so that the entire game could be played one-handed (or darn close to it). Requests for the reasons varied from cold weather making you want to keep a hand in your pocket, to holding hands with your significant other, etc.... The idea of multiple rings around the character triggering different actions has some appeal, it might have helped the initial touch control scheme a bit. I'd never seen anything like what I have done here, so it's funny that we came close- tapping your character for inventory, around them for movement/attacking. We never even had running or hallway following in the early versions so things were bolted on later... hence the double tap. Which I actually think works pretty well in this case. Double Tap also works with the D-pad if you want to try it out. Maybe this could be a third control scheme- classic touch, D-Pad, "new touch"?

4) I agree, we don't want to tamper with the classic rogue experience. Anything that becomes a game changer will be either optional (in the settings) or outside of the scope of the normal 26 floor dungeon. I'll let everyone ponder that thought a bit. I'm glad that you still find this VERY pure, despite the crazy types of new items and secret charcters I've scattered around. It was tough to find a balance. On the whole, it's still too easy compared to the original rogue, but I'm pretty happy with it :D

4b) I actually have ideas for MANY new games going on. We had several request threads discussing things like Nethack, Angband, ADOM, etc. We'll probably make a couple of more advanced roguelikes. There are also a few other games we want to try our hand at. Nothing concrete yet, but later this year you'll start to get more info (as my day-job contracts wind down over the next few months).

5) Classic rogue had no stats screen, basically the last line of the text terminal listed things like, HP, AC, STR, Gold, Rank/XP, and Floor #. We have all of those covered on the main screen between the top and bottom half, and do it one better by showing the current equipment (which you could only learn by accessing inventory in the classic ASCII rogue). Dex is not actually a hard trait. A ring of +2 Dexterity is basically +2 added to your "To Hit" chance with any weapon you attack with while wearing that ring. Think of it like a transferrable enchant weapon, because it's doing the same thing as adding another +2 to your weapon's to-hit value. :ugeek:

6) The death screen is actually doing a number of things in the background- clearing out the old game world, erasing your old save game, checking to see if you have a new high score, transmitting said score to the online leaderboard, and finally creating a skeleton with some of your pack for you to meet in the next game. Well, maybe not for you, since you're closing the app during all of this. We might be able to shave a second or two off of it but it's kinda busy ;)

7) A lot of people would like the "rag-doll" character which showed your true equipment. I think that's getting a bit too extreme (at least for our meager art skills here :lol: ), but I do think we should have more avatars to pick from. Pinch zoom in itself is somewhat useful still. We're thinking of adding a few touch gestures to perform other functions in the future.

8) Equipping or weilding takes a turn, basically any "action" button with an item in inventory takes a turn. Looking at these items and backing out does not cost you a move, but as soon as you do something with an item it exits the inventory so that you can see the consequences of your action. Keep in mind things like armor take 2 turns to remove, which also increases your chances of being attacked by something you didn't even know was there!

9) Well, I mentioned in 7 that Avatar choices were a hot topic. We've added a female rogue that is currently only found with the female secret characters. Eventually I'd like to get to a point where people can put their own completely custom avatar into the game. Someday....


Questions:
1) There is no-fight to the death available. We did not use any existing game's source, so were building this from some stat tables, FAQs, and our memory of how the game worked on the Atari ST in 1986... needless to say, a lot of these ideas you may take for granted we've never seen before. Never seen the palm version of rogue, wish I had... sounds like they had some neat ideas :D

2) We placed things in the settings app in an attempt to follow Apple documented conventions, and also to allow the user to turn on/off the music without actually entering the game and being attacked by loud music. This is because many of our players do so in odd situations like during work meetings and stuff! An additonal bonus is that you don't need to fire up the game to turn off music, exit out, fire up your iPod music, and then restart RT a second time just to play while listening to your iPod. If the settings were internal to the game, this would be more awkward. When you refer to "settings missing from the original rogue" I must assume you mean the Palm version? Because I don't recall any of those settings available in 1980-1986, when I was playing rogue :lol:

* how to show light --- what does this mean exactly?
* how player should run --- I assume you want Fast Play Double Tap ON/OFF
* whether to follow corridor turns --- Automatically occurs while running. Did not in earlier versions and I had so many howls of anger about it I can't imagine anyone would ever want to turn hallway following off now :D
* whether to stop at doors/objects --- I think this is a must too- if you just blew down a hallway and straight into a room and right on by the items and out the strategically aligned door on the other side of the room it would be very aggravating I'd think!
* enable/disable auto-pickup --- this is something I actually considered, but on a device with no buttons I couldn't figure out how I would represent it. If Auto Pickup was off, you'd be prompted continuously with alertview boxes asking if you want to pick this up or pick that up. So I ditched the idea.
* how stats should show / where they should show --- as I said, I think the rogue you were playing was already an advanced rogue. The one true rogue only has the stats that you see in my game. Even the shoddy free rogue out there is the same basic concept as mine (his is a direct port of rogue for OSX, which is not quite the same, and lacks the ability to throw equipment, etc, but it only has the same basic stats that we do)
* allow email to be delivered during game (that was a cool feature! A creature would run up and deliver an email msg inside the dungeon!) --- that sounds like a very modern and fun feature, must be the Palm version. Too bad Apple has us sandboxed so we can't talk to other apps. That would be cool. Also fun would be text messages showing up in the scrolling display. But we can't do that because Apple does not give access to those things... too bad... :(

3) As I have mentioned a couple of times now (sorry to sound like a broken record!), the stats you see on the main screen are the only true stats of the original rogue. I don't think any version of rogue had a stat other than STR until the 1990s, and I never played any of those versions.


Future "rogue-like" game ideas (love this stuff!):
1) Doll with slots is a possibility here :mrgreen:
2) Multiple Stats (with an actual stats screen even!) I would say maybe classic D&D attributes, and a ton of skills that you can earn points for maybe?
3) See #2
4) Cool idea!
5) Roger that, we'll do our best!
6) Pets... maybe, or at least temporary summons or charms!
7) One of our ideas would be a more futuristic roguelike, so the tech skills would be an obvious fit
8) like the get along with animals- maybe the standard bid/dog/rat/bat type monsters would be friendly towards a character like that
9) could be drugs or implants in a futuristic setting I suppose too
10) More crazy out there stuff :D
11) Falling Down was a great movie! What's wrong with the street?! I always ask myself that question when driving through construction :ugeek:
12) Sounds a bit like Ultima IV (I think it was 4, and virtues and stuff), had to balance your good and bad deeds, could not attack retreating enemies, steal, etc. great game....


Ow. My hands and brain hurt now! Anyway, I'm very glad that you like the current Rogue Touch, keep in mind that it is still evolving a bit and you may see little bits you really like appearing in the future. Also watch these forums for upcoming game announcements!

Thanks again for sharing! Hope you stick around and join in further discussions here :mrgreen:
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swhatley
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by swhatley »

CommanderData wrote:Just having a laugh with you... I can see what you mean. Actually I've been trying to figure out where I could put other requested items like a "move counter" and stuff. Things are just going to get too crowded or cluttered no matter what I do.
How about this:

Double tap on gold count to toggle between gold count and move count.
Double tap on Str to toggle between Str and Dex.
Double tap on HP to toggle between HP and ????.
Double tap on weapon to toggle between primary and secondary weapon.

Enjoy life!
Steven
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by Berenzen »

2 suggestions that I would like to pose
1) Shouldn't the medusas be called gorgons instead? I mean, Medusa was just one of them, albeit being the most famous of them.
2) ring of lucidity- protection against confusion and hallucination. I mean there is protect armor and sustain strength but at the deeper levels I get killed cause the medusas confuse me for an insanely long time. I truly think this game needs this as a medusa counter.
Proof I'm unlucky- 1313th post
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swhatley
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by swhatley »

swhatley wrote:How about this:

Double tap on gold count to toggle between gold count and move count.
Double tap on Str to toggle between Str and Dex.
Double tap on HP to toggle between HP and ????.
Double tap on weapon to toggle between primary and secondary weapon.
Also, Double tap on Rank Name to toggle between Rank Name and the numeric current exp./next level representation.
Search and Rest buttons can also have double tap features like rest until HP is restored or a monster shows up.

Speaking of the Search button, I've on many occasions been tapping on it and my finger gets slightly off causing me to accidentally move diagonally, sometimes stepping into a trap or next to a Venus Fly Trap.

Just more thoughts.

Enjoy life!
Steven
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by Elysium »

Potion of Phasing (aka Potion of IDCLIP :)): Allows you to walk through monsters for x number of turns (very short, maybe 10-20). If the effect ends while you are "inside" a monster you fuse together and die. During the effect, monsters within 1 square of you will not move (so they don't just keep you inside them by walking where you walk). Throwing one at a monster freezes it in place and allows you to walk through only that monster.
nohbdy
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by nohbdy »

Elysium wrote:Potion of Phasing (aka Potion of IDCLIP :)): Allows you to walk through monsters for x number of turns (very short, maybe 10-20). If the effect ends while you are "inside" a monster you fuse together and die. During the effect, monsters within 1 square of you will not move (so they don't just keep you inside them by walking where you walk). Throwing one at a monster freezes it in place and allows you to walk through only that monster.
wonder what gave you this idea....lol
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jhawk
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by jhawk »

Having a miserable night with slime I thought is ask and suggest a couple things

If you hit a slime and then it divides, do they both full heal or have the same amount of damaged life

I don't see how the slimes can divide and attack you in one turn, dividing should take up a full turn
Bulgroth
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch - Part TWO!

Post by Bulgroth »

I keep finding myself wanting to turn the iPod sideways to play the game. I think this would be a great function to have, so you can hold the iPod better while playing :)

Great game, btw. Never managed to get a successful run-through, but I still enjoy the game. Nicely done!
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