I should say, DoomRL is probably the game I've spent the most time playing in my life -- Doom being probably #2. Hundreds of hours! So thanks
Thank you, it's an honor!
I was really looking forward to the graphics, however in hindsight I guess this is maybe never going to be as good in terms of UI (fast readability, all information conveyed clearly) as ASCII.
An old friend of mine once said "If hackers were ever to use virtual reality... it would show a bunch of terminals floating around". I do understand the need of ASCII, and I'll always support ASCII (even for DoomRL 2, although in a ... different way). However, there are people born after us, that'd never look at a screen made of ASCII. I wanted to bring DoomRL to the wider audience, and I wanted it to be done in style, not just a overlay of images over where the characters should be.
That said, there's a couple usability features that will make it to the GFX version that will not be present in the console one -- ones that actually couldn't make it. I believe that the next version might change the balance of things a little usability wise.
Zooming out to the point where the whole level is on-screen will probably make the graphics much less readable (currently it's already quite easy to miss e.g a pistol laying on a corpse). Perhaps outlining the sprites in a bright colour -- maybe the colour used in ASCII mode? -- might help, but I think that fundamentally the game was designed with ASCII mode and thus it works best that way.
True, that's why it took so long to make it semi-userfriendly in the first place. However, this job isn't done yet, and things like highlighting are planned -- actually with an inspiration from Diablo's Alt key that highlighted all items on map with basic info.
Similarly with keyboard vs. mouse, it's much easier to play quickly and precisely with keyboard, mouse seems very sloppy and tedious in comparison.
When I initially implemented the mouse, so did I think -- but the more "hidden" possibilities I implemented, the more I saw potential. At the moment it still holds true, but there are a few things that are lot more easier -- easy look information, faster firing at non-default targets and faster movement to an explored position (due to the pathfinder).
Also, it has to be said -- DoomRL has the best ASCII graphics of any roguelike I've played. The use of colour and lighting, and the choice of characters, is really well done, striking a great balance between looks and functionality.
Again - thank you - much care has been taken here, not to make it look like an ununderstandable friut salad :>.
Finally -- sorry for being so critical! -- I don't know that the new high-quality wavs sound better than the old ones. I would imagine Doom's sounds were 11khz or whatever anyway (i.e low-rez) -- how did you even get high-quality versions of them?!
The HQ sounds are from a project by a person who tracked down the source samples that were used to create the original sounds, and recreated them based on the exact same sounds, but saving them in a higher quality. It's an interesting history actually -
http://www.perkristian.net/game_doom-sfx.shtmlI moved the wavs in from 0.9.9.5 and IMO it makes a big difference to the authenticity/feel... it just doesn't sound right without the weird distorted/crusty bitrate
I agree - but that holds true only for people that played much of the original. And as someone noted, DoomRL has surprisingly much appeal to people who didn't play Doom at all. Personally I prefer the original files, but I noticed that people who didn't play Doom prefer the HQ ones. However, despite having access to a great soundcard-based midi-synthesizer Sonic Clang's recreations of the Doom tracks are too good to go back to midi...
tl;dr version -- I acknowledge and fully symphatize with the old-school DoomRL player base, but I want to expand the game (not loosing the old appeal) to people that do not understand the nostalgia factor.
Player
