Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Discussion about Rogue Touch for the iPhone and iPod Touch
LazySumo
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by LazySumo »

For the love of all that's dungeony and unholy let me listen to my music while playing! :) TheCreeps manages to let me do that and still have sound effects, please emulate.

Just got RT today and am playing around with it. Others have already pointed out the navigation issues. Would putting Inventory on it's own icon on the bottom help out?

Here's my other thoughts:

1) Three clicks each time I want to shoot an arrow even when the bow is equipped?? Simplify that please. Clicking on a remote mob should allow me to range it with a single click (or something like that)
2) Save my user name from last time, why am I entering that each time?
3) Why do I have to take off one piece of armor when I've told the game I want to put on another?
4) Can the game NOT throw me back out of Inventory when I've used something and I'm not in combat? Or give me an option to stay in Inv.
5) Any chance of getting the mini-map to show me doors? The map would itself tell me if I've been through them by what it shows on the other side.
6) Could we get the chance to scroll the playing field so we can check which parts we have and have not explored?

So, I love this so far. Very much fun and reminds me so much of the hours I've spent playing all of these originals. Didn't Rogue used to have a shop to use your gold in, or was that another Rogue-alike? Excellent implementation gents! Well done. Just please let me listen to my music!
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CommanderData
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by CommanderData »

LazySumo wrote:For the love of all that's dungeony and unholy let me listen to my music while playing! :) TheCreeps manages to let me do that and still have sound effects, please emulate.

Just got RT today and am playing around with it. Others have already pointed out the navigation issues. Would putting Inventory on it's own icon on the bottom help out?

Here's my other thoughts:

1) Three clicks each time I want to shoot an arrow even when the bow is equipped?? Simplify that please. Clicking on a remote mob should allow me to range it with a single click (or something like that)
2) Save my user name from last time, why am I entering that each time?
3) Why do I have to take off one piece of armor when I've told the game I want to put on another?
4) Can the game NOT throw me back out of Inventory when I've used something and I'm not in combat? Or give me an option to stay in Inv.
5) Any chance of getting the mini-map to show me doors? The map would itself tell me if I've been through them by what it shows on the other side.
6) Could we get the chance to scroll the playing field so we can check which parts we have and have not explored?

So, I love this so far. Very much fun and reminds me so much of the hours I've spent playing all of these originals. Didn't Rogue used to have a shop to use your gold in, or was that another Rogue-alike? Excellent implementation gents! Well done. Just please let me listen to my music!
Whew! Thats a first post!

Let's get right to it: We admit it, never occured to us how much some people like to listen to music while playing games :) That change will end up in the first update. Basically a group of settings to turn off portions of or all of the audio and vibrations that are in use.

On to the rest of the topics:
1) I agree that shooting arrows need some simplification in steps. We just need to figure out a way to cut out at least one click and keep an intuitive feel to things. Right now we don't track monsters as touch zones, but maybe you could double tap one to shoot it? Of course we don't want to do that if fast-play is using double taps... Maybe two or three fingers down on the screen at once as a shortcut to pull up the direction picker? A tough one, but we'll think of something.
2) We can definitely save your last used name, simple request :D
3) Armor is an interesting problem, the way the original game of rogue works is similar. Armor takes two turns to remove, which means all monsters get to move closer to you (or continue attacking you) during the time your're removing it. I think if we did it all in one shot a lot of people would be very upset about dying as the armor swap was happening. You might appreciate the chance to do something else, like run if necessary :lol:
4) depending on what you're using we might be able to stay in the inventory screen. As pointed out with the armor case, there's good reasons a lot of the time to end up back on the dungeon screen. We'll examine all the major usage elements and see how many items would benefit from this.
5) Mini-map doors is an odd oversight, we'd discussed adding them and somehow they were missed in the first deployment. We're definitely adding them!
6) If we can think of a good way to scroll the playfield that does not affect normal play I think that would be a possibility.

Wow, a lot of ground to cover there... Overall we're glad to hear you are enjoying the first release. Never fear, we have every intention of making Rogue Touch even better as time goes by!

I will start a topic soon about features for the first update and run down what features I think we'll get put into it, but I'd say music, doors on the map, and storing the last typed name are on top of the list!
LazySumo
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by LazySumo »

Oh, I didn't realize (been a while since I played) that the two-step armor swap was authentic. I can certainly appreciate that so no worries there.

Otherwise I made it to level 11 today before dying of hunger :? I'll definitely keep playing, thanks so much!
Betty
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by Betty »

Hi, fantastic game !

But please add sound effects !

The intro music is really good, appropriate and rousing!. The background noise is also really good.

But the game is desperate for footsteps, clinks, clunks , growls, squawks etc (you get the idea where i'm going with this!)

Also can ask if you have a final screen when the game is completed (not that i may ever see it !) ?

or perhaps you could have some unlockable when you complete the game? something that really makes everyone keep playing. you've hinted at hidden secrets in the game, I just hope these secrets don't make the game too easy allowing people to 'cheat', as many will lose interest if the game becomes too easy.


Everyone vote for the game on itunes, lets keep the interest going !
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CommanderData
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by CommanderData »

Betty wrote:Hi, fantastic game !

But please add sound effects !

The intro music is really good, appropriate and rousing!. The background noise is also really good.

But the game is desperate for footsteps, clinks, clunks , growls, squawks etc (you get the idea where i'm going with this!)

Also can ask if you have a final screen when the game is completed (not that i may ever see it !) ?

or perhaps you could have some unlockable when you complete the game? something that really makes everyone keep playing. you've hinted at hidden secrets in the game, I just hope these secrets don't make the game too easy allowing people to 'cheat', as many will lose interest if the game becomes too easy.


Everyone vote for the game on itunes, lets keep the interest going !
Betty, many thanks for that! It seems as though quite a few of you really like the game!

I agree that it's pretty well calling out for more sound effects (as well as the ability to silence portions or all of it). Sometimes it is even hard for us to believe that we used to play Rogue in ascii without any sound or animations. We're working on it!

Yes, there is another separate victory screen with music of it's own. We'd like to do even more with that, but most people won't be seeing it for a while. I think we may have some time ;)

As far as unlockables go, the current secrets are triggered by some non-obvious methods that do not require you to beat the game. We'll be looking at a mix of features in the next update or two that expand on that and even provide a new more difficult challenge after you beat the original Rogue :twisted:

Hopefully your good words will encourage a few additional iTunes reviews to help boost us a bit more :oops: Thanks again, and I'm sure you'll like what you see and hear coming up!
Ihateants
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by Ihateants »

How about an online Hall of Fame? With Roguelikes part of the fun is seeing "killed by a mouse" at the end. It'd be nice to see everyone else's :)
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CommanderData
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by CommanderData »

Ihateants wrote:How about an online Hall of Fame? With Roguelikes part of the fun is seeing "killed by a mouse" at the end. It'd be nice to see everyone else's :)
A very good idea! Unfortunately my Server-Fu is weak, it probably won't make it into the game for a while. I must go meditate with the PHP Monks for many moons first. ;)
gregban
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by gregban »

I would like to see the following:

Why can't I exit a door on a diagonal? If there is a trap right in front of a door there's no way around it.
Where are the stairs for the way back up? I fell down a hole before I picked up the loot on a floor and I want to go back up to retrieve them. But the stairs up is not there?
Is there a way to "pan" the view only to see the map of where I've been? I don't want to actually walk there, I may want to strategize a way around some tough monsters.

Great game by the way.
Did you ever think about having some of the features from NetHack implemented. (my favorite game from long ago). I miss the dog/cat from Nethack.
gaerisl
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by gaerisl »

First off, Thank you for being such a receptive developer. It really is very nice to know that feedback is actually being read!
Congrats on launch, and for producing a very good port of rogue.

Basically, I am a veteran player of the TI-89 calculator version of rogue (I think it's called CalcRogue), a fairly developed game. So, I guess you can say I'm a bit spoiled. In any case, there are a load of good features on that version of the TI-89 rogue that I feel made the game very, very good. While I understand it may seem like I'm asking you to make a copy of another game and ditch your own originality (or make an un-faithful-to-original version of rogue), i am not, please do not take it that way. Instead, I am trying to give insight into some features that would make the game much, much more enjoyable for everyone.

in any case, lets get down to the brunt of it...

1) light radius/fog of war/vision range-
-whatever you call it, The TI-89 version of the game had a critical difference: it breaks down like this:
-areas where you have not seen (black, you already have this feature)
-areas where you can see (lit up, you have this feature)
-areas where you have seen but cannot see right now (gray-ed out, or shaded).
Your engine already sort-of distinguishes between out-of-range-vision and in-range-vision (as seen in the dark rooms). that's fine. the annoyance and lack of features comes in to play in areas that are not intentionally dark, where you have already visited. (for example, those hallways). it appears as if you can can see everything (as all the squares are lit up) but you really don't (as you can not see a monster two or three squares away from you, but it appears lit, like you CAN see what's on the square).

from this, you could also do light-vision radius rings/modifications.
Also, another nice (but real pain to program) would be vision lines-of-sight, that allow you to see diagonal around edges and through doors (imagine standing diagonal to a door, now make yourself into a bishop chess piece. what you can see beyond the door is everything along the line of movement as a bishop chess piece... limited by your vision range, though). And what i meant by "around edges" is more for corners, where you can see along the straight diagonal around a wall, but the areas "blocked" by the wall, you cannot see. (for example, you walk parallel to the side of a house (about 2 feet away from the wall)... and as you clear the corner, more view is _gradually_ unfolded for you to see). (kind of like "slicing the pie" if you play paintball or airsoft.)

2)Hidden shops. (of random size, with random items. probably with extremely expensive prices.)
(Use that gold to buy stuff, hog useless items to sell)
2.b) the ability to go UP stairs
(probably just another type of tile, right?) If there are shops, there is a need to return to them =D... (in case you don't find more further down..)

3)These are all equipment related-
3a) Damage ranges listed (ex: bow: 1-5 damage, dagger: 1-4 damage, longsword:1-6 damage. spear: 2-8 damage)
3b) Identification on equip (I've only played for about an two hours- correct me if i am wrong- only cursed equipment identifies itself upon equip. everything else- ring, weapons, etc doesn't get identified upon wearing.)
Identification on equip makes it more fun for two reasons: you don't need one scroll of identify for every weapon/armor/ring. Second, there's a greed/risk element to it. get greedy and identify a new item, or avoid, for risk of being cursed? it'll get more people to get trapped in cursed equipment >D
3c) randomized equipment stat/quality (broken bow:1-2 damage. bow:2-5 damage, superior bow:3-6 damage, etc)
it'll also make people wait for the perfect weapon to apply those enchant scrolls =D
3d) more Identification scrolls (well, appearance rate is fine right now if identification on equipping feature is included).

4) a manual on game mechanics
What is this mean? "A +1,+0 Mace" ? what is +1 and +0 describing? +min damage and +max damage? what is the damage range? i have no clue?

5) room geometry
no offense, but i've been halfway down to level 26, and room geometries are all the same: is there a way to fix the generating algorithm so that there are tighter packed and smaller boxes as rooms? maybe even pillar areas and stuff? (or like, the TI89 version had changing landscape as you got further down- around lvl 20, it changed to a randomized city landscape. that was a real rush first time seeing it.)

6) local and global high scores. It's fun to compete against friends (separate iphones), but not on the global top 10 list. the global top 10 list will probably look like "1. no-life-person.... 2. no life person.... 3. no life person... 4.no life person.......... 9. lucky person.. 10)no life person". so it's impossible for most people to get into the top 10 (once this game becomes really popular)... so, the local high scores (probably done through manual score transmission/merging) will be more fun for groups of friends.

in any case, sorry for the long post. I hope you'll give these suggestions a good thought. please feel free email me if you feel like discussing any of these. talking about this stuff makes me wanna bust out programming =P. lol.

thanks for listening,
-Gaerisl
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CommanderData
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Re: Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

Post by CommanderData »

gregban wrote:I would like to see the following:

Why can't I exit a door on a diagonal? If there is a trap right in front of a door there's no way around it.
Where are the stairs for the way back up? I fell down a hole before I picked up the loot on a floor and I want to go back up to retrieve them. But the stairs up is not there?
Is there a way to "pan" the view only to see the map of where I've been? I don't want to actually walk there, I may want to strategize a way around some tough monsters.

Great game by the way.
Did you ever think about having some of the features from NetHack implemented. (my favorite game from long ago). I miss the dog/cat from Nethack.
Gregban, Thanks for the compliment. If you've been more of a NetHack player than the musty old original Rogue you probably don't realize that those things are just based on the original game. Let me explain a bit- The goal of course is to reach the Amulet. To push you forward, the original (and our game as well) will not allow you to climb back up a staircase unless you have picked up the Amulet of Yendor. Falling through a pit trap is awful when you were eyeballing a bunch of nice equipment in the room, but that's just one of the many ways Rogue keeps you coming back for more punishment.

Exiting a door on a diagonal is also a standard feature. It would be nice to avoid that trap, but if we allowed you to exit on a diagonal you could squeeze past that monster blocking the exit as well. Although Jessica would love that, as she's famous for getting stuck in a room surrounded by monsters no matter how many times I tell her to fight them from the doorway ;)

We hope to put up a detailed FAQ to cover things like that soon, but we're trying to complete an update (v1.1) to the game first :D

There's no way to pan yet, only zoom. Hopefully once we add doors on the mini-map it will eliminate a lot of the need/desire to pan. If not we'll try to come up with a plan-for-pan!

Final thoughts- Some Nethack-ish features will be making their way in, a shop for example will likely be in version 1.2.
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