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Kornel Kisielewicz w wiadomo¶ci news:ctc2ut$lao$1@inews.gazeta.pl pisze,
co nastêpuje:
>
> True. I understand. I hope to do something about that -- any ideas?
>
Let's try and define the problem. In my opinion, this issue is caused by
following factors:
- many fights involve unavoidable damage,
- the optimal solution to most situations is often the same,
So, what I think needs to be done is:
a) introduce a way (or ways) to avoid damage,
b) implement tradeoffs between advantages (so that in different situations
different advantages are important and different tactics are optimal)
I think dodge would help a lot. Other possibilities I can think of:
- allow player to carry invulnerability globes, so that he can use them
when he really needs to.
- add invisibility globes; Invisibility could improve initiative (monsters
don't know player is there until he starts shooting) and reduce emenies'
chance to hit.
- if you reduce rocket blast radius, it will improve the safety of usage,
and player will have a broader choice of weaponry (you might want to
increase the amount of rockets carried in each slot from 10 to 15 or 20,
because with smaller explosions rockets are going to lose some power).
- if some of the stronger monsters spawn cells upon death, plasma rifles
will be less expensive to use; BFG might require rebalancing, though -
consider adding a delay between pulling a trigger and activating the BF
explosion (the oiginal BFG had this delay).
- increase chainsaw strength, so that it becomes another option in some
cases; at this moment it's pretty useless, because even a former human
sergeant need to be hit more than once; the original chainsaw wasn't very
strong either, by the way.
>
> I saw a roguelike project which had slower-then-a-turn projectiles, and
> it made a bad impression on me (but it might have been the fact that
> that roguelike project was realy bad overall, remember FIR? ;-) ).
> Anyway dodging missiles then would be so easy that it would completely
> unbalance the game!
>
Every new feature brings a risk of ruining the game balance. The question
is: is there something you can do about it? In this case I think the answer
is "yes".
First of all, note that there would still be many situations, in which dodge
would be useless:
- you can't dodge in a narrow corridor,
- it's difficult to dodge everything when you get caught in crossfire,
- it has limited usability against monsters with high rate of fire (such as
arachnotrons),
- you can't shoot when you move,
- you can dodge, but barrels cannot
🙂
- monsters can dodge too (they didn't do that in Doom, but it was possible
in some cases, because plasma bursts and rockets were "slow projectiles"
too)
I think projectiles should be quite fast when compared to monsters - 2x, 3x
or even 4x player speed (this might depend on a monster - if I remember
correctly, rockets were faster than fireballs). It would be impossible to
dodge a projectile which was emited from a short distance, and this in turn
would add a new factor to combat: Don't Let Them Get Close.
There are a few monsters, whose projectiles travel at the speed of light.
All the former humans have this ability, and - as Glen has already said - it
makes chaingun guys particularly dangerous.
>> I would add a new property to existing weapons. when enemy was shot, it
>> couldn't move nor shoot for a (very) short
>> time. It was an important advantage of chaingun and plasma rifle,
>> which had high rates of fire (in terms of game mechanics, it meant
>> that delay between two subsequent hits was shorter than the recovery
>> time).
>
> Hmm, I will think about that. AFAIR chainsaw had this feature in the most
> advanced state
🙂
>
Yes, indeed. This was my favourite way to dispose of single strong monsters
like cacodemon of baron of hell. As long as there were no other servants of
hell around, you could just stay still and deliver lead to the nastie. It
also worked very well against pain elementals, because it prevented them
from spawning new lost souls.
Oh, by the way, cacodemons seem quite rare in DoomRL. I think they would
make a good intermediate obstacle after player gets familiar with lost souls
but before hell knights show up.
>> - secondary piece of armour (armour class bonus)
>> - vision enhancement (allows to see in dark, if you implement dark
>> rooms) - binoculars (improved sight range)
>> - targeting assistant (improved chance to hit, detailed information
>> about target's properties)
>> - motion detector (reveals monsters behind obstacles)
>
> Hmm, all of these seem good! I would need to remodel level design and
> sight code for 2 and 5 though.
>
Darkness was very important in Doom, but I think total darkness should be
avoided. I would recommend implementing it as a local sight range reduction.
This would allow some rooms to be darker than others.
>>> 10) Asides from the above, what would be your most requested feature?
>> Bigger levels.
>
> Hmm, this would break DoomRL's KISS principle
🙂. And would demand a
> quite big overhaul of the whole engine...
>
DoomRL is different from most RLs in that it uses lots of ranged weapons.
While a 5x5 square in ADOM is a lot of space (enemy in the opposite corner
needs 3 turns just to get you in range), in DoomRL it's just a small, narrow
room (everyone can attack you immediately and they are close enough to have
an easy shot).
Pozdr.
--
Jacek "Zillameth" Weso³owski
zill@jimp.neostrada.pl
FAQ grupy prgk.rpg -
http://faq.prgk.net/rpg.txt
"Decisions are good, but good decisions are better"
Personally, I think it's a funny/cool item.
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