Longtime Dungeon Crawl player, very disappointed.

[Furrfire]

I have played Dungeon Crawl for like? 8 years? I started on version 3 I think, and quickly found the tiles and fell in love instantly... Then eventually I tried stone soup and it just got better, and finally someone even made a cool sound pack to use with it! Awesome! I kick on my playlist of oblivion and skyrim dungeon music and have a great night of Crawling into awesome dungeon branches and even slaying many beasties in the fearful ziggurats of doom!

Well, I finally got around to trying a different roguelike after so much time only playing one... This GAME here on steam!

Boy does it make a baaaaaaaaad first impression coming from crawl... I only played maybe 30 minutes and I couldn't stomach more. It just makes me wish I was playing crawl instead.

What's wrong with it?
The controls, the ui, the awkward movement\spell cast direction with numpad because of the iso view, the lacking examine description page for anything you right click, no sounds or visual effects when casting spells, and so much more! It just all seems so lousy compared with crawl. Am I missing something?

Why is there so many keys to do so many things? Couldn't they just condence that down? R to rub a lamp? Because use item isn't good enough? Sophisticated simplicity is always better then needless complexity!

I might refund, unless the future plans are going to bring a drastically improved UI and controls, sound, visual effects for spells and more! It sounds like you folks are planning something along these lines? I wish you guys were making such plans for Crawl!


When I started playing Crawl all those years ago, I didn't realize it would place a curse on me... I thought only my items got cursed... but no I WAS CURSED TOO! A greater curse. A curse of SPOILED BY GREATNESS, that prevents me from enjoying lesser rogues!? How do I remove this? NetHack sounds deep and interesting but the controls and ui are awful, I can't stomach it!

=,<

[BossGalaga]

The controls and ui can be a bit daunting to first time nethacketeers. It gets easier once you get familiar with the hotkeys.

That said there is a huge upgrade currently in the works including an overhaul of the ui and a complete graphic makeover.

[Amnekian]

I can tell you really didn't play the other major roguelikes. DCSS has the tamest control scheme whereas Angband, NetHack and ADOM have some clunky control schemes. But I can say that all those games can feel quite nice after playing a while. I started with NetHack and when I tried DCSS I was impressed by the smoothness of the controls.

That said, I'm still waiting for the ASCII version of NetHack in here. I'm not a fan of the isometric view but I'm a fan of clocking my play time and achievements.

Also, is there a character dump in this game? Or is it in the works?

[Furrfire]

A long time ago I played an acient old ascii rogue. It was this weird one on the amiga labeled as adventure hack, and I am pretty sure at this point, it really was just NetHack stolen code and rebranded or something. It was almost identacle to this game. I don't remember it having so many controls though, and this was like 20 years ago.

I think I'd be much happier to use the top down tiles that are free on the net. The iso view just drives me crazy trying to move around or shoot in a direction. And having no projectile fly out from the character really stinks! Even the old ascii games showed a little letter projectile right? or am I not remembering correctly?
I can honestly say, atm I do not like Vulture. The plans they have as I dig more, sound pretty great though! I should be quite happy with Vulture in the future. Until then, I'll keep playing Crawl for my Rogue fix!

[mimizukari]

just chiming in here to say crawl is the only one I know that's still regularly updated, < http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=log > every single day, some days having 20+ updates still, so if you manually compile the meta is always changing, and it always stays fresh, and they take suggestions from the community and implement good changes almost immediately (see https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewforum.php?f=8 ) all of this could be part of the reason that crawl feels much better than other roguelikes.

[Tooslow]

There was a game called "Rogue" on ST and Amiga that was, well, Rogue with a tileset. Licensed from the original developers and possible even programmed by them. It was released in 1986, so thirty years ago. Not familiar with "Adventure Hack".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMiLGEJAgYc

[Amnekian]

What the hell? I didn't know NetHack tiles were based on Rogue tilesets. Amazing!

[Furrfire]

Heh, that is pretty cool. So ancient, so slow, but totally the type of thing I woulda played to death back in the day! Looks fun. See I would play that over the current Vulture. I just can't stomach trying to aim spells or move around in the iso view. Maybe I should refund? Vulture was gona get an enhanced overhead view mode in addition to the iso mode? right?

[Amnekian]

Originally posted by Furrfire:

Maybe I should refund? Vulture was gona get an enhanced overhead view mode in addition to the iso mode? right?

That is why I still haven't got the game, despite being a NetHack fan and subscribed to this forum. I will only grab this game if the game gets an overhead view.

[Shrub]

I just can't wrap my head around the iso view. I tried a 3-d tileset on another roguelike called Cataclysm DDA and it did the name NW is N thing. I end up getting frustrated long before I get used to the wonky controls.

[Furrfire]

@-thunt

Yeah I get why they want ISO, visually it's beautiful. You can really show off some cool art this way. But in a turn-based roguelike using numpad to move, it just isn't a good feel. Very curious to see how the team will address this.

A tilted top down like dungeons of dreadmore or Link to the past, is probably the best view of all that they could use. Or full on 3d where you can rotate the camera how you want.

[Shrub]

Originally posted by Furrfire:

@-thunt

Yeah I get why they want ISO, visually it's beautiful. You can really show off some cool art this way. But in a turn-based roguelike using numpad to move, it just isn't a good feel. Very curious to see how the team will address this.

A tilted top down like dungeons of dreadmore or Link to the past, is probably the best view of all that they could use. Or full on 3d where you can rotate the camera how you want.

Yeah, I can see it being marginally tougher to handle walls when it's alligned, but I think the cost to the player is too high. It's almost like playing an FPS with the viewpoint tilted 45, it just doesn't feel natural. It does look great though. Dungeons of Dredmor looks great, I wouldn't mind playing any dungeon game like that.

[BossGalaga]

Originally posted by Furrfire:

@-thunt

Yeah I get why they want ISO, visually it's beautiful. You can really show off some cool art this way. But in a turn-based roguelike using numpad to move, it just isn't a good feel. Very curious to see how the team will address this.

A tilted top down like dungeons of dreadmore or Link to the past, is probably the best view of all that they could use. Or full on 3d where you can rotate the camera how you want.

Okay well don't quote me on everything here but I believe the plan for the future is to have ISO (with massively updated awesome looking graphics, if you've seen some of the teaser updates), ASCII top-down and Steam Workshop custom tiles for both ISO and top-down.

[Yakuza]

Why don't you just play original Nethack with tiles then? It is perfectly comparable to DCSS.

[mimizukari]

Originally posted by NecroCorpse:

Why don't you just play original Nethack with tiles then? It is perfectly comparable to DCSS.

lmao, nothing is comparable to DCSS at this point in time.

[ĐɛʌƉƓʊƔ]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is in my opinion the very best Roguelike game!
that said I am also a huge fan of DCSS, and Nethack