General thoughts (Music/UI)

[Canderel]

So far I am enjoying it thoroughly, albeit it feels a little more like a late alpha than a beta, but there is a huge amount of potential.

For me the biggest stuff is:
UI, it is improving (ie. you don't have to guess most of the stuff), in fact I'll say it's getting pretty good. The hints are awesome, we can use them even more (as per other thread). I know as with most roguelikes screen space is limited, but try to have clickable buttons with the keyboard shortcut for all the frequently used stuff... So in this case:

• Main Menu (Esc)
• Use talents (m)
• Rest (shift-r)
• Inventory (i)
• Character Sheet (shift-c)

Now obviously this will get too much for the screen, so you have grouping buttons that bring up menus/other buttons. So

• Main Menu (Esc)
• Actions (Rest, Use Talents, Read Scroll, Quaff Potion, etc.)
• Information (Char Sheet, Inventory, Equipment, Gain Talents/Stats (actions?))

Just remember to put the keyboard shortcut (the binded one, not hardcoded) on the button, this enables people who isn't comfortable with roguelikes to pick up the game, and eventually play more with the keyboard than the mouse, but initially they can play the game with the mouse, and work their way up the curve (which will hopefully be less steep now).

Next is the music... I wrote some of it, but it gets tired... Either it needs to be top notch (and the link I mailed DG will have CC stuff that is top notch) or it can rather be left out. Also, one will typically spend at least 1 hour (real time) in a dungeon. Setting up a playlist per dungeon might be better than just one song per dungeon. (I know that makes the game even bigger, but you can have the same song in different playlists). Offer a download with the songs (they are 19mb of the 23mb download), and one without.

EDIT: I changed the thread title to reflect more the way it's changed.

[darkgod]

Well the first beta is obviously near the last alpha
About the UI stuff, yes I had about the same idea, my goal is to have new players not completly lost. Which is also why I try to avoid as much as possible to add very specialized keybinds.

About the music, that's true..
But you mailed me ? to which address ? I have got nothing, so either the server was down (should be more stable now) or you sent it to darkgod@t-o-m-e.net which is too spammed to be readable
Use darkgod@te4.guesswhat

[Canderel]

About the separate downloads without music? Can we do that? We can set up a team for Creative Commons music search and evaluation so that multiple opinions are taken into account before deciding any music is good enough.

Also, that team should be responsible to ensure that the legalities are in order. I am still for the playlist for a dungeon rather than 1 song... (enough so that I'll mention it again).

[darkgod]

Probably a good idea yes.

Well good for you, I nominate you as the head music searcher!
I'll ship next beta without music for now.

Speaking of music, while you are at it we need sound effects too, currently I took them from where I could find them to try it out but they are probably not very very legal :/

[greycat]

My general thought at the moment is that this doesn't really feel like an Angband variant at all. With the *band games, I generally expect a character to live for days or weeks while I explore a huge non-persistent dungeon. And while there's certainly a chance of death during those days/weeks, it's generally avoidable by choosing to grind (for stats, equipment, whatever) at some safer dungeon level, before diving to the dangerous level.

This, on the other hand, feels a lot more like Rogue or Crawl or some insane Nethack variant, where you can get zapped by a gnome with a wand of death on level 2 and you don't stand a chance. Only without all the finishing touches yet. I've gone through about a dozen characters in only a few hours of playing.

Is that the way it's supposed to play out? Or am I doing it wrong? Or is the game desperately in need of tweaking?

[darkgod]

It's not meant to be a *band, it has not been for ages. It's meant to be its own game

Even though even in *bands you can stumble upon a bad OOD monsters and meet your doom shortly.

But my goal is not to punish players, the start is probably too hard, not sure about the middle/end.
But its not meant either to be a cruise through the dungeon without any fear of death

As for persistent levels, you'll notice you can actually grind since monsters & objects regenerate after a while out of the level.
Also zones(dungeons, ...) adapt to your level the first time you enter, afterwards they keep their level so you can go back to easy levels
when you have "grown up"

[getter77]

:chimes in as the one voice that is cool with the music during character creation at least---and that's saying something considering I've been in those screens for the last...4 odd hours straight:

[Canderel]

Well good for you, I nominate you as the head music searcher!
I'll ship next beta without music for now.

I'll take it on, it really is a pity that the files on that site (freemusicarchive.org) is in .mp3, maybe I can scour the net for CC .oggs.

Speaking of music, while you are at it we need sound effects too, currently I took them from where I could find them to try it out but they are probably not very very legal :/

Could you send me a list of sound effects you need? I'll try source decent ones. (.ogg I presume?)

[Canderel]

:chimes in as the one voice that is cool with the music during character creation at least---and that's saying something considering I've been in those screens for the last...4 odd hours straight:

Actually I don't think it plays by default, only when you've died the dungeon you were in's music continues to play. I think that there should be music, just not specifically the music that were playing before you died... (which my get it's own music?)

[darkgod]

Why couldnt we convert them to ogg ?
We can play mp3 is need be anyway.

For sound effects we need wav.
Anything you can think off, spell sound, melee combat with various weapons, getting hit, ...

[forkbomb]

Why couldnt we convert them to ogg ?

It's generally not advisable to convert from lossy to lossy. However, I suppose it'd work for simple music and sound effects.

We can play mp3 is need be anyway.

I'm not so sure. T4 being licensed under the GPL, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. The legal status of the intellectual property of mp3 is... sketchy. A number of Linux distros, for example, won't put mp3 codecs in their default repositories because of said sketchiness.

[darkgod]

TRue and true, but yes it hsould be good enough for music, or we can also contact the authors and ask them for oggs ?; )

[getter77]

:chimes in as the one voice that is cool with the music during character creation at least---and that's saying something considering I've been in those screens for the last...4 odd hours straight:

Actually I don't think it plays by default, only when you've died the dungeon you were in's music continues to play. I think that there should be music, just not specifically the music that were playing before you died... (which my get it's own music?)

:shrugs: Well, that has been the only track I've heard since the first time I booted up the game without fail...so beats me.

As to soundfx, you could swing by my prior/ever haunt http://jcrpg.blogspot.com/ and see if any of the stuff there would suffice(ask timong first on the forum though I recall it being on a good licensing scheme)---a chunk of which was made by me alongside several voicepacks.

As might it do good to hunt around here http://www.freesound.org/

/has many bizarre links in keeping with the whole one-man-dev goal.

[Canderel]

Thanks, the freesound link looks awesome, but the blog didn't respond for about a minute. I'll check on it later.

[getter77]

http://jcrpg.ath.cx/phpbb/index.php Direct forum link as that does happen sometimes.

There might also be some good music and sound stuff at the Ryzom topic I made in the Contributions forum.