Feature Requests for Rogue Touch

[CommanderData]

Sorry if this has already been brought up, but there is no way im digging through 19 pages.

I understand you are trying to bring an original version of the Rogue game or whatever to the table, but this game bothers me because it is so close to a version I played in the past, but is missing many of the elements that I liked the most about it.

I think the game I played before was called "moria" or something, and I remember it being a little deeper than RT. You could pick a race, and you started out at "ground" level which had shops you could buy and sell things at. You could move up/down levels of the dungeon at will, and the goal was to defeat a balrog dude like 50 floors down or something(something i never cam close to).

Anyways, I really do like RT, I was just wondering if anything like the features I have described are in the works for a near or far update?

Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Welcome to the group elswitzer! There's definitely been a lot of talk about those kind of features over the previous 19 pages. Unreal, 6 weeks ago we were just getting started out, and look at this place now!

Many of the more advanced roguelikes have features like you describe. We've had a lot of requests to port over Moria, Nethack, ADOM, and Angband (which is still in consideration). Rather than live off other people's ideas indefinitely I think our next game will be a more home-grown combo of great parts of all of those games, mixed in with our own secret sauce.

That's not to say that Rogue Touch won't be getting some more features like this too... We still want to do an "advanced mode" switch in the options, that will allow people who want to play "Rogue" to play it as it is in "classic mode". Flipping the advanced switch will provide stuff like shops within the dungeon, and things like that. For either mode in Rogue Touch we're going to maintain the basic "must go forward" premise, so there will be no returning to the surface early. In exchange, there will be more to see and do, and a deeper target in the dungeon in advanced mode.

That's about all I can say right now because honestly we don't have all the details sorted out yet. We've been spending a lot of time on making these smaller jumps forward in content and quality, just submitted version 1.5 last night. You'll see this type of stuff in version 2.0. We may have one or two more point releases before jumping forward to 2.0, but we'll get there!

Thanks for supporting us, and I'm glad that you do like what you see so far!

[Bommoom]

I thought of am idea for some new scrolls first one is "scroll of capturing" and the way it would work is you would throw the scroll at any monster and after you kill the monster it would drop a scroll that would have whatever monster you just killed on the scroll and then you could read the scroll and become that creature for a certain amout of steps amd then you would go back to normal. And my second scroll idea could be called "scroll of transformation" and all it would do it change you to a random creature anywhere from a goblin to a dragon atleast I think dragons exist? I've never made it that far. Thanks for reading my idea

[MikeB]

it has been a LONG time since a game adaption has impressed me so much. A perfect capture of the original Rogue, with almost everything just right -- not too much, and certainly not too little. Rogue/Angband/DnD old school games were so simple in their basic concept, yet with a perfect blend of complexity to keep you coming back.

As posted above, I am sure some of these ideas have been suggested before, so pardon the duplication...

1 - Shops -- I know this is already in the idea hopper, but I hope it comes soon. In some version of Angband, there was even a city above the dungeon -- I could see that working so well here -- a weapon shop, a magic shop, potion shop and tavern (for an in-game visit to the leaderboards, etc). A food shop would be so nice.

2 - Food Balance -- I know one of the charms of Rogue is that everything is randomized. But let's face it, it is entirely possible to get dropped into a Catch-22 because there simply is not enough food... therefore, no matter what you do, the game is a guaranteed loss. Can we make a provision to automatically drop a food item somewhere in the level if you show up without grub?

3 - DnD Special Locations -- In the old school DnD game (MS DOS, baybee!) there were special locations scattered in the dungeons. For example, an altar. You had four actions you could try, or of course you could just leave it alone and go on your way. The results of your actions were random (sometimes giving you goodies, sometimes generating monsters, and occasionally killing you outright) and after so many uses, the option to interact was taken away. Primitive, yes, but it did perk things up and stop it all from being hack and slash.

4 - Riddles -- How about this as another interactive element, randomly encountered and giving out negligible experience points?

5 - More Monsters -- Yes, we have the A-Z (literally) covered, as Rogue mandates. But some versions had double the bestiary, by using the lower case too.

6 - Ghosts -- A version of Angband had your previous slain character sometimes appear as a ghost. Granted, some may find this fun, some may find this annoying.

7 - Character sprite changes -- Can we choose from different characters, or have them appear differently when they wear different armor?

8 - How about more sound effects? Arrows firing, dragons growling, maybe even death screams?

9 - Having the character's name somewhere on the screen would be nice... maybe even a counter of how long he's been alive...

10 - How about multi-colored dragons, slimes or bats? Doesn't seem like that would be hard to do, but would add more variety.

Anyhow, keep up the great work.

MikeB

[LordGek]

4 - Riddles -- How about this as another interactive element, randomly encountered and giving out negligible experience points?

Nooooooo! It might just be me but I hate shoot like this. I can't see how this could be implemented without:

1) Now in the midst of the adventure needing to have the little keyboard pop up and then find out, doh, you just entered "rime" by mistake, no special bonus for you.
2) Or, even more annoying, oh it's that silly "Time" riddle again (running into the same riddles many times so they just become tedious).

Also there is something neat about the Rogue experience where everything you do and the choices you make are based on your experience WITH this game, no outside knowledge (well, other than secret character names) is needed. Once you start in with riddles it often feels like your getting into trivia or something that gives an upper hand to those who already know all of the common riddles out there.

Other than item 4, then, I think you have some great suggestions there, MikeB!

[DaveS]

First of all, great game and even better implementation. This is the first app I have purchased without a trial, and it is without a doubt the best game I have found on the App Store yet.

I have to confess that I have never played an actual Rogue before, but I have been a Nethack player for years (never solved, but I have been close a few times). One thing that I miss from Nethack is that when you die, the game tells you all of the things you had in your pack. This is a neat feature because you can see what all of those unidentified items in your pack were. Not having ever played a true Rogue before, I'm not sure if this was a feature or not but it would be neat to see in a future version here. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else I could want save for a better battery in my Ipod, but I guess that keeps me from playing too long anyhow.

As far as some other suggested features, I feel part of the fun of this game is the simpleness as compared to some other hack games. Nethack for example is very complicated, and takes a long, long time to really learn. Having to decide what corpses to eat to keep from starving for example is a lesson in frustration. Perhaps a completely new, much more complicated game would be a neat future project but I kind of like the simpleness of Rogue.

Dave

[MikeB]

As far as some other suggested features, I feel part of the fun of this game is the simpleness as compared to some other hack games.
...
Perhaps a completely new, much more complicated game would be a neat future project but I kind of like the simpleness of Rogue.

Great post, Dave, and an important thing to remember: Rogue's simplicity is the hook.

Some version of Angband had like 100 different control options, so that the interface did in fact get in the way and make the game complicated. Perhaps these lofty features we are all suggesting should be incoporated into a different dungeon crawl app and leave Rogue as the simple hack-n-slash dungeon crawl. After all, one of the great appeals of the game to me is that it is a spot-on remake of the old ASCII Monster Mash, just with a very cool graphic presentation.

I remember a programmer once talking to me about scope creep. He observed, "when a Swiss Army Knife has too many attachments, it's not a Swiss Army Knife any more. It's a Swiss Army -thing-, and it ironically becomes less useful."

[Wizzard]

Great game.

How about a potion of levitation that allows you to float over traps for a number of moves. Downside would be that you can't pick up items or descend stairs. Additional upside could be that only creatures with the ability to fly (bats, kestrels, vampires, griffins and dragons) can hit you.

[Krogothic]

Wow guys nice work, the effort really shows. I do miss playing all the games everyone has talked about and some great idea's
1 feature I would like too see is one from Telengard. maybe a cube with a random lvl teleporter, and of course some sort of scroll return. This could be offered in a elite or advanced version for them folks that finsh it or something.

Nothing like taking a chance on walking around them hard lvls looking for some good loot before you die or scroll back too a low lvl.

Keep up the great work you have quite the following !!!!!!!

[CommanderData]

Everyone, some fantastic ideas and comments here from old and new members! I will be out on the road for my day-job today, but I think it's about time that I settle in and answer everyones thoughts in this thread again... especially since version 1.5 is nearing release... we need to determine what neat stuff will end up in 1.6 so it can be prepared!

If everything goes well and I get back home at a decent hour I'll be here to go over these!

Thanks very much for all the support!

[jhawk]

Since this is now 20 pages of probably pretty redundant suggestions I'd like to suggest maybe starting a new thread for 1.6+ suggestions.