Hi!
Getting into the alpha has got me right back into the original game, so I've been playing the steam version a lot again!
I'm no expert at the game - I've played hundreds of hours, mostly as a teenager, and only got past the first 4 dungeons or so a few times, and only ever did that by save scumming! I'm getting further than I used to now that I'm an adult though so there is hope for me yet! I can finally find out what all the stuff actually does now I can google it.
Weird story, ADOM was the game I was playing on my computer 13 years ago when I decided basically out of the blue that I wanted to be a developer.
I wanted to give my thoughts on the Ultimate version.
- I love the artwork in the whole thing
- I love the dungeons, all the extra items around, I can see the upcoming potential
- It's great how you can see a true representation of items on the floor, how doors auto open, blood on the floor,
- I like how I can move things around by walking into them
- I like the star system as a summary of your stats
- Upset to see that you're taking diagonal out - it's critical to avoid one extra step to get close to monsters before they hit you! In Steam ADOM, I can press two arrow keys at the same time to move diagonally - I saw a mention of not knowing how to handle laptops without number pads, but I've been playing with the arrow keys forever. Maybe it could be a bonus for high dex characters?
- Please keep support for full keyboard! I don't mind if the keys change, but it's jarring to have to switch to mouse to pick everything up off the floor. F and then A, or F and then F again should pick up everything which was on the floor.
- The dungeon looks great, the textures are lovely and crisp, but the character textures look much lower resolution.
- Perhaps it'd be good to have the option to zoom out? I play the steam version on a 4k screen so I can see a lot of the dungeon at once. It's good for planning where I need to go.
- AND/OR I should be able to click on the mini map, plus press a keyboard shortcut, to see the mini map much larger.
- I'm not sure the 5 different levels of ui config is necessary? When you figure out what everything means, would you ever go back to 1? Maybe a 'scale' option would be useful, I would scale the whole panel down to tiny, but I always feel like I need to see level IV at all times. Alternatively, it was nice in the original game (and this works this way in a lot of modern games) that things which aren't currently important, such as burdened status and satiation, are hidden until they get to a certain threshold above or below normal.
- This might be controversial, but since you're simplifying a lot about the game, is now the time to lose the two or three letter names for the zones and just use the whole name?
- I can see that skills and talents have been folded into the new skills section. Will there be a skills menu where you can use skills which aren't passive?
Overall, it's really cool, and I was excited to get invited to the alpha, so thanks! This is the first alpha I think I've actively wanted to discuss! I love ADOM, even if I've never got very far!