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[eobet]

* I'm really missing a 3x size of the window... the step between 2x and fullscreen is way to large.

If 3x would fit on your desktop then you would get a 3x before fullscreen. On my set up I get all the way up to 5x before it goes fullscreen.

Then this is not calculated correctly in OS X, because as I noted in another point I made, my fullscreen mode has at least 30% of the screen covered in blue borders, so there should be no problem for a 3x mode in a window on my display.

* Ok, major UI gripe still present: An item drops. I hover the cursor over the item, it just says "move". I click on it to move, and A) my cursor is no longer hovering above the item, which means that the tooltip is gone and worse B) without moving my cursor even the item is gone! Major, major UI break, imo. Also, very costly if you do a keystroke analysis on the action sequence you need to perform in order to just move and pick up an item. This hasn't been fixed and I'm very disappointed.  I mean, it's so easily solvable by adding a move-and-pick-up command.

I don't really understand the issue you are getting at here.

Here's a quick keystroke analysis for your current UI:
1. Move cursor to item.
2. Click on item. (This causes the character to move on top of the item, and the item to disappear... which I think is bad for a first time user experience).
3. Move cursor to player. (Again, you previously aimed for an object, which then seemingly disappeared and now you have to reposition the cursor and aim again for a different object, yet your goal is the same... you are chasing the original object from your first action... again a bad experience to have the user chase after something he already clicked to get).
4. Move cursor to object. (Still chasing after what we want...)
5. Click on item. *phew*

All this could have been solved by a move-to-pick-up command... 1, 2 and with no interruptions, done.

[Happy Shabby Games]

I played the demo awhile back and really enjoyed it. Just bought it! Congrats on finishing the game Oddball. To your future projects 

[Oddball]

All this could have been solved by a move-to-pick-up command... 1, 2 and with no interruptions, done.

Your solution doesn't make sense to me. How do I add in a move-to-pick-up command without adding in extra steps? What happens if someone just wants to move to a space and not pick up the item. I'd be removing some UI steps just to add in others. At the moment it's only two clicks to perform two distinct actions. Click to move, click to pick up. I do agree that items seeming to vanish when you step on them is an issue, and I did try various solutions, but non worked well enough.

[Helmeted]

Congratz on the release Oddball! I haven't had much chance to play with it yet (just one quick death) I'll be looking forward to getting into it all day at work.

[Del_Duio]

All this could have been solved by a move-to-pick-up command... 1, 2 and with no interruptions, done.

Your solution doesn't make sense to me. How do I add in a move-to-pick-up command without adding in extra steps? What happens if someone just wants to move to a space and not pick up the item. I'd be removing some UI steps just to add in others. At the moment it's only two clicks to perform two distinct actions. Click to move, click to pick up. I do agree that items seeming to vanish when you step on them is an issue, and I did try various solutions, but non worked well enough.

I haven't played this game yet, but what about if you hovered over an item on the floor and a little pop up came up and said "left click to move here OR right click to pick up item"?

[Oddball]

The game is played entirely with one mouse button, I dev on a Mac, so to have only one action require the use of the right mouse button would be a bit odd. Move-to-pick-up action would be easy to add for stacked items, the issue is mainly with lone items on a space. I considered having single items still pop up in a stack same as multiple items, but it looked odd and unnecessary above an empty space. It was one of those dev choices where it may not be perfect, but of the methods I tried it seemed the best. I could maybe have got it to work eventually but sometimes you've got to go with what you've got.

[Oddball]

Sorry to double post but... Rock, Paper, Shotgun review

[Del_Duio]

The game is played entirely with one mouse button, I dev on a Mac, so to have only one action require the use of the right mouse button would be a bit odd. Move-to-pick-up action would be easy to add for stacked items, the issue is mainly with lone items on a space. I considered having single items still pop up in a stack same as multiple items, but it looked odd and unnecessary above an empty space. It was one of those dev choices where it may not be perfect, but of the methods I tried it seemed the best. I could maybe have got it to work eventually but sometimes you've got to go with what you've got.

Ah! Okay well how's about having an option someplace the player could activate like "Pick up items on move"? If they had that unchecked then it'd play like it does now. If it was checked it would add the item to your inventory if you had enough room.

Regardless, good job on finishing this game. I will give it a try when I'm able to.

[Ant]

I've had my eye on this for ages, really glad to see it's finished now Oddball.

[Del_Duio]

I tried the demo, and the game's pretty cool.

Couple things though: Are there only 3 playable classes in this? (Elsewhere it says 6 playable classes are in the demo). Also when you die, is there an option to go back to the menu screen and choose another class because I can't find it.

[eobet]

The game is played entirely with one mouse button, I dev on a Mac, so to have only one action require the use of the right mouse button would be a bit odd. Move-to-pick-up action would be easy to add for stacked items, the issue is mainly with lone items on a space. I considered having single items still pop up in a stack same as multiple items, but it looked odd and unnecessary above an empty space. It was one of those dev choices where it may not be perfect, but of the methods I tried it seemed the best. I could maybe have got it to work eventually but sometimes you've got to go with what you've got.

Ok, I must admit that because the game doesn't consist of many 1-tile wide corridors, I overlooked the case where you'd actually want to stop moving on the tile of the item. I've only played for an hour or two, but the overwhelming majority of my clicks are either on monsters, doors I want to open... or items I want to pick up.

So, new proposal then: Hold down shift to enable the move-to-pick-up? (Same as temporarily enabling the display of shortcut keys, I know.)

Also, you develop on the Mac, yet it doesn't use the fullscreen feature of Lion and can't do a 3X on a standard 1440x900 display? *cough* No, sorry, I'm just ribbing you.

I've played some more now (unlocked a new class, yay) and it's an absolutely fab game. With just a little UI polish it's absolutely Humble Bundle or Steam quality and you should definitely put it on the Mac App store! 

EDIT: Just have to ask one more question... the spinning effect of poison is very nice, but it makes me wonder how confusion looks… shouldn't poison be a dripping effect? But I haven't seen confusion yet, so maybe it's not in the game (but I hope it is, because monsters beating on monsters is very entertaining).

[Oddball]

I heard that fullscreen in Lion is handled differently. I'm still running Snow Leopard here. And yes 1440x900 should be enough room to allow a 3x window, not sure why it's not.

I don't think the HIB guys will be all that interested and Steam have already knocked it back. I might try them again if the game manages to pick up a bit of a favourable groundswell.

Sorry to disappoint, but confusion was cut from the final game. Originally it was going to be a side effect of psychic damage, then it got bumped to a scroll/potion curse, but I wasn't really 'feeling it' so I shelved it.
I'm glad you gave it a second chance, and I hope you can come to love the game foibles.

EDIT
@Del_Duio: Sorry I missed your question there. The other three characters unlock depending on how many times you die. The final game has 32 characters which unlock the more you die.

[oyog]

So good.

This is Desktop Dungeons addicting.

Guh! So many fantastic games to buy!  I'm puttin' this on my list, right under Bastion and Dear Esther.

[eobet]

Ok, gameplay question:

Playing a melee class, quite often monsters refuse to engage you, resulting in everyone skipping turns indefinitely... most roguelikes don't have this problem, because even if you are a melee class you can often throw/shoot/discharge something at them.

But how do you get around that in this game? Is it by design that you need to get hit first when playing as a melee class?

Also... I'm afraid to ask... but it would be good to get a move-to-attack command for melee as well...

[Caran Elmoth]

Playing a melee class, quite often monsters refuse to engage you, resulting in everyone skipping turns indefinitely... most roguelikes don't have this problem, because even if you are a melee class you can often throw/shoot/discharge something at them.

Personally, my favourite class is the Dwarven Warrior. I use the secondary weapon slot to carry a (less effective) ranged weapon, just to handle the case you've described before.

[Oddball]

I've seen a few tactics employed to combat the not taking the first hit issue. Firstly I should point out that it's only the smarter monsters that don't want to take the first hit, so you can keep that in mind when figuring out which baddies will hold off.

Caran's tactic above is a good one in general, I'll often keep a different weapon type in the backup slot. After a monster has been hit at range they will often close fully to avoid being picked off at a distance.

Another one I've seen is, if there is a convenient wall nearby run behind it and wait for them to come round after you. If you are out of sight they'll run round the corner after you not realising you've stopped to ambush them.

[eobet]

I didn't know about the secondary weapon, but when I tried it, I discovered that it takes a turn to switch so when you do, the enemies close in and hits you, so that doesn't work.

Running around a corner, however, did seem to work.

EDIT: Ah, saw the comment about when hit once, they close in even if you switch back... so secondary weapons when the distance is great, and run around a corner when distance is close... got it!

[Dragonmaw]

Did Steam reject it because you couldn't incorporate Steam API into the game, or because it wasn't notable enough? Because they host a lot of games which aren't really notable.

[Oddball]

Steam integration wouldn't be much of a problem, so I can only assume it was the latter. It was in beta when I showed it to them and it took them about an hour to email me back saying they didn't want it. I'm guessing they took one look at it and decided it wasn't right for them. It's tough, but it's their prerogative I guess.

[JackMenhorn]

Steam integration wouldn't be much of a problem, so I can only assume it was the latter. It was in beta when I showed it to them and it took them about an hour to email me back saying they didn't want it. I'm guessing they took one look at it and decided it wasn't right for them. It's tough, but it's their prerogative I guess.

Perhaps you should have done it in Flash and gotten a toddler to make the art for it.  Then they would have probably accepted it.