Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

[LordGek]

All this talk actually inspired me to grab the latest release of Angband and mess around with a little bit today (instead of working...sigh).

Some interesting things in the Jan 09 release....but most interesting is that scrolls and potions now have a chance to be present in stacks. Which is really kind of different but cool so far.

Some other ideas for possible drawbacks to super items:
Gold drain (as if gold was powering the weapon) which would be neat if gold is part of scoring.
Less inventory space.
Blocks reading scrolls or using potions while equipped.
Blocks use of staffs and wands while equipped.

Nice!

[dod488]

In addition to the directions N, NE, E, SE,S,SW,W,NW for throwing and zapping things, add the direction of SELF such that you can zap yourself.

Thanks, Hal

p.s. Love the game

[kennfusion]

Personally I thought the super weapons did not drop much before, and now I have not seen one since the patch, only about 5 games (I die a lot to Trolls around floor 16), but still, no level feelings at all.

In addition to some of the other balance ideas about how to include more of these special items to give more of the "ohhhh shiny" factor, here is a new one I have been thinking about.

Gaming theory is a lot about risk vs reward. The problem with too many super weapons dropping is really that it is a whole lot of reward without any additional risk. The balanced super items with drawbacks add a sense of risk in.

Another thought for pure super items with no draw backs is when they load, have them load on a super monster and not on the floor. This should increase the risk enough to justify giving the reward.

[kennfusion]

I am having one of those games where I am getting lots of the same type of items right now, this time it is thrown items. I have arrows, darts and daggers. I am assuming daggers are better than arrows or darts, so using those. But what might be interesting is if lesser items had special abilities when thrown. What if darts had the chance to blind (confusion) the enemy when hit, even a really small chance. Or if you throw a mace, it might have a chance to stun temporarily. Lots of neat ideas around thrown items to make lesser ones more interesting.

[DaveH]

So at this point I've been able to beat the game 3 times, twice with v1.1 and once with v1.2. I love the game, and wanted to give you my current list of enhancements focused on how to keep it appealing to replay even after winning.

My current requests are:
1. It needs to be easier to throw ranged weapons repeatedly. A repeat last command would work, or an extra slot on the bottom which you could assign one of your throwable items (and then tap it to bring up the direction) would work too. I find I never ever equip a bow or crossbow anyway, it just doesn't seem worth the extra turns.

2. Would it be possible to toggle search 'on' so that you automatically do a 'search'? Each move would cost two turns with regards to eating (or even with regards to monster-movement), but it would make it much easier to actually search if you wanted to do so. In the later levels searching is really critical but it gets monotonous to do all the tapping. (move/search/move/search/move/search)....

3. Ability to destroy items. I hate it when I drop things I don't want and then get them again from monsters that picked them up.

4. Adding more detailed info and scoring to the hall of fame table would really help replayability. If you can come up with some sort of scoring system that takes into account multiple factors, that would be great! For example, the amount of gold, the number of moves, the value of your equipment you ended up with (it would be nice to auto-"identify" everything you have at the end after you win/lose as part of this), the level you made it to, your ending rank and EXP) could all be factored into a final "score." Making an online high score table would be really great as well. Finally on this topic, saving your equipped weapon/armor/rings with your score would be a nice touch too.

5. Once you get the amulet and make it back to around lvl 19 or 20, there really isn't anymore of a challenge unless maybe you don't have enough food. Very few items appear, and because of your level you can easily overpower the monsters at around this time. I guess this is 'classic' rogue, but it is kind of a "boring" way to finish out the game. It would be nice to have a more exciting/engrossing/challenging way to finish the game. Maybe every level on the way back up could have a treasure room, and at least some of the monsters from the lowest levels have a chance to appear (both in the treasure room and regular rooms)? You could then make the decision to try and increase your "score" by getting more EXP and/or items (risking death too), OR moving as quickly out as possible avoiding confrontations. Another idea might be to make the amulet become "heavier" over time, requiring you to carry less items and/or eat more food the longer you take getting back out.

6. I know it's small, but can you make it possible to skip the RIP scrolling screen by tapping before it is done?

7. Some items I'd like to see: identify and remove curse wands (e.g., with multiple charges); scrolls that can "bless" your weapon and/or add a special feature? You could include a small chance that your weapon will get destroyed when using these scrolls to add a risk/reward decision. A way of avoiding traps (like the levitate scroll you mentioned) and/or identifying them on the map (with its own scroll or as part of the magic map) would be great too.

Anyway, great job again, every release gets better, and whatever you decide to do next with this game or with your next one, I look forward to it!

-dave

[BigDrahma]

5. Once you get the amulet and make it back to around lvl 19 or 20, there really isn't anymore of a challenge unless maybe you don't have enough food. Very few items appear, and because of your level you can easily overpower the monsters at around this time. I guess this is 'classic' rogue, but it is kind of a "boring" way to finish out the game. It would be nice to have a more exciting/engrossing/challenging way to finish the game. Maybe every level on the way back up could have a treasure room, and at least some of the monsters from the lowest levels have a chance to appear (both in the treasure room and regular rooms)? You could then make the decision to try and increase your "score" by getting more EXP and/or items (risking death too), OR moving as quickly out as possible avoiding confrontations. Another idea might be to make the amulet become "heavier" over time, requiring you to carry less items and/or eat more food the longer you take getting back out.

What if (and I haven't beaten the game so it might already do this) the Amulet did something random every few levels that made enemies better (angered them, haste, higher strength, higher dex, etc)... and these random abilities were persistent, and stacked. So that, on level 25, it hasted enemies, then on 20 it also angered them, and on 15 it strengthened them, etc. So, on lvl 5, you have chintzy enemies that are simply buffed to oblivion screaming towards you. From a story standpoint, it even makes a little bit of sense (ala The One Ring, it wants to be found and returned to the deep by the minions of the dungeon, so it calls to them)

That's probably too brutal, but you get my drift.

[LordGek]

I think a potential simple fix is that mixed in with the level appropriate baddies on the way back are some 26th level baddies (or the furthest down you've made it in this run)?

[CommanderData]

So at this point I've been able to beat the game 3 times, twice with v1.1 and once with v1.2. I love the game, and wanted to give you my current list of enhancements focused on how to keep it appealing to replay even after winning.

My current requests are:
1. It needs to be easier to throw ranged weapons repeatedly. A repeat last command would work, or an extra slot on the bottom which you could assign one of your throwable items (and then tap it to bring up the direction) would work too. I find I never ever equip a bow or crossbow anyway, it just doesn't seem worth the extra turns.

2. Would it be possible to toggle search 'on' so that you automatically do a 'search'? Each move would cost two turns with regards to eating (or even with regards to monster-movement), but it would make it much easier to actually search if you wanted to do so. In the later levels searching is really critical but it gets monotonous to do all the tapping. (move/search/move/search/move/search)....

3. Ability to destroy items. I hate it when I drop things I don't want and then get them again from monsters that picked them up.

4. Adding more detailed info and scoring to the hall of fame table would really help replayability. If you can come up with some sort of scoring system that takes into account multiple factors, that would be great! For example, the amount of gold, the number of moves, the value of your equipment you ended up with (it would be nice to auto-"identify" everything you have at the end after you win/lose as part of this), the level you made it to, your ending rank and EXP) could all be factored into a final "score." Making an online high score table would be really great as well. Finally on this topic, saving your equipped weapon/armor/rings with your score would be a nice touch too.

5. Once you get the amulet and make it back to around lvl 19 or 20, there really isn't anymore of a challenge unless maybe you don't have enough food. Very few items appear, and because of your level you can easily overpower the monsters at around this time. I guess this is 'classic' rogue, but it is kind of a "boring" way to finish out the game. It would be nice to have a more exciting/engrossing/challenging way to finish the game. Maybe every level on the way back up could have a treasure room, and at least some of the monsters from the lowest levels have a chance to appear (both in the treasure room and regular rooms)? You could then make the decision to try and increase your "score" by getting more EXP and/or items (risking death too), OR moving as quickly out as possible avoiding confrontations. Another idea might be to make the amulet become "heavier" over time, requiring you to carry less items and/or eat more food the longer you take getting back out.

6. I know it's small, but can you make it possible to skip the RIP scrolling screen by tapping before it is done?

7. Some items I'd like to see: identify and remove curse wands (e.g., with multiple charges); scrolls that can "bless" your weapon and/or add a special feature? You could include a small chance that your weapon will get destroyed when using these scrolls to add a risk/reward decision. A way of avoiding traps (like the levitate scroll you mentioned) and/or identifying them on the map (with its own scroll or as part of the magic map) would be great too.

Anyway, great job again, every release gets better, and whatever you decide to do next with this game or with your next one, I look forward to it!

-dave

1) Do you use the ranged weapon tap option? I know that's still not quite what you're looking for but it does take an extra touch out of the equation. A secondary slot probably will never exist in "classic" Rogue Touch, but maybe in Advanced

2) That's being considered as an option right now!

3) Most anything you don't want will disappear if you throw it at and hit a monster (weapons are an exception here). Advanced rogue may have some sort of "magical recycle bin" on random floors- it's an oddball idea we've been tossing around but it could be neat! I will leave it's function in the land of speculation for now...

4) We have a prototype here which keeps track of all currently displayed HOF stuff, plus some extra hidden flags, and 3 major stats- Gold, # of Kills, and # of Moves... We want to keep these three stats separate and visible for competition, but there may be an "overall score" which factors these in with other things like your rank and deepest floor reached. Saving a list of all your equipment may not happen, but we could probably factor in it's value in scoring!

5) Those are some really cool ideas! I agree that in our game and the original as long as you had enough food it was more or less a hunt for the stairs on each level. Your ideas are hereby noted. We'll do something to spice up the endgame, but the details of exactly what might happen will be hidden until you make it there again. Maybe we have enough time to squeeze this in before version 1.3 goes to Apple

6) I think that was brought up before. We can shorten the delay there, it was mainly done to give time for the text to scroll up and the music to play. Artsy stuff

7) New items--- Boy we have some neat ones thought up! I like the tie in of risk versus reward here. Something like that exists with Vorpalize weapon scrolls right now, but to have a few more opportunities like that would be great. It's tough to debug too many new items at a whack, so we'll try to keep it to 1/2 dozen or less each update...


So, for the tl;dr crowd- we want to improve endgame challenge, replayability, and add more items/misc features

What if (and I haven't beaten the game so it might already do this) the Amulet did something random every few levels that made enemies better (angered them, haste, higher strength, higher dex, etc)... and these random abilities were persistent, and stacked. So that, on level 25, it hasted enemies, then on 20 it also angered them, and on 15 it strengthened them, etc. So, on lvl 5, you have chintzy enemies that are simply buffed to oblivion screaming towards you. From a story standpoint, it even makes a little bit of sense (ala The One Ring, it wants to be found and returned to the deep by the minions of the dungeon, so it calls to them)

That's probably too brutal, but you get my drift.

Oh I definitely get your drift. It'd be brutal all right.... Thanks for the ideas! *scribbles furiously in notepad*


And LordGek, posting as I'm composing! You continue to supply excellent ideas to the cause

[xaric]

I have been playing rogue-type games for over 20 years .. and this version is great!

I have some requests:

1. For the auto-walk, make it traverse hallways automatically (so if the hallway has a bend, the auto-walk will follow the bend)

2. Show specific stats for damage inflicted during a fight. Other than that, it is a guess as to which weapons do more damage (unless I am missing something?)

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

[CommanderData]

I have been playing rogue-type games for over 20 years .. and this version is great!

I have some requests:

1. For the auto-walk, make it traverse hallways automatically (so if the hallway has a bend, the auto-walk will follow the bend)

2. Show specific stats for damage inflicted during a fight. Other than that, it is a guess as to which weapons do more damage (unless I am missing something?)

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

For #1, lr100 has been the most vocal on this- but after a PM discussion we had I think I've determined a good set of rules for hallway following... Now for the actual implementation!

#2, weapon stats have been a request for a while, as kennfusion's thread on the subject here shows! We're honestly not trying to hide it from you and I promise we'll have something detailed up this week, which will have weapon capabilities as a component of it!