What sort of solution do you think you'll end up using? I'm pretty interested in this myself, because I'm also working on a roguelike and have yet to nail down the controls. I'm leaning toward the keypad, myself, with redundant movement keys within the main keyboard and configurable layout.
I think that's probably what I'm going to do too. The key mappings are already configurable, so it's trivial for me to add the numpad keys as defaults alongside hjkl. I'm still undecided about the cursor keys though - it might be useful to have them as additional defaults to ease people in (people unfamiliar with roguelikes, that is), but again, no diagonals...
I think I'm probably going to also add a mouse interface. What I'm thinking is to pop up a number of context-sensitive buttons around the player when the mouse is moved on the main play screen. So empty squares around the player would have an arrow, indicating the player can move there, and adjacent monsters would have buttons for attacking, or applying something to the monster, and so on. It still needs a little thought (how to fit multiple options within a 32x32 square), but I think it could work quite well for people not ready to use/memorise the keyboard.
I'm afraid nethack (the ascii version, that is) is the only roguelike I've really spent a lot of time with, but Dungeon Crawl is definitely high on my list of games to play. I have to say though, I don't find the screenshots of the tiles version particularly appealing. To me,
this looks far better than
this . I find I have the same reaction to a lot of graphical roguelikes though. I suppose part of the reason for developing Plort is that I wanted something with a visual style more in tune with my own idea of what looks good.
unluckly i really don't like the graphics, moving a... bean? makes me miss the classic @ adventurer... at least i can think it's a fierce warrior or a silent rogue... that bean is a bean :\
Or in this case, that bean is a potato:
The difference is HUGE!
You do have a point though - there
should be beans in Plort. That's one for my todo list. Runner beans to make you go faster...
I don't actually intend to have any fierce warriors or silent rogues in Plort, as I'm fairly tired of the usual fantasy conventions. Plort's meant to be more light-hearted. Having said that, you will find the @ adventurer in there, if you look hard enough.