Really needs a COOP mode once it reaches a more mature state :p

Have you considered pets, henchmen, or other allies?

I wouldn't worry too much about the details of unicode (i.e. RTL, making the UI so flexible etc) until way into the project.  Just being able to display the characters will make most people happy, and then perhaps somebody a bit more enthusiastic about their languange needs can help out.

I haven't tried OSARE yet, since there's no Linux build and I have no idea how to make one. But then again I just remembered I have a windows machine right next to me I could (should) use. As far as I can tell you're doing a great project, first building a solid base from which larger games can grow. Will provide more feedback once I get to test it.

Ok, tested the game and here are my thoughts. Some of these you might already know of and have plans for, but I'm listing all my observations nonetheless and leave it to you to filter them :)

UI: click on icons to enter inventory, character screen, powers, log rather than only using shortcut keys to access them.

Inventory: Right now you can only drag'n'drop an item into a slot. Would be useful to be able to one-click on an item to "bind" it to mouse and one-click again to release it when the mouse is over the desired slot.

I really like how numbers appear over the health/mana bar if you hover your mouse over it. On the other hand, the health bar changes its colour too fast when health goes down. At one point it's green and at the next it's already red. A more gradual transition would be better e.g. green-yellow-orange-red (or any other fitting combination of colours)

When you die there doesn't seem to be any restart, you have to close the application to start again.

Monster pathfinding doesn't work well in some situations, monsters can't find their way around obstacles even if the player is right at the other side of the obstacle.

Monsters can be killed through closed doors. This might cause exploits in some situations.

No idea how to consume food or put items into quick slots.

I like the pseudo elevated tiles.

A mini-map you can check would be useful.

When exiting one map and entering a new one, the exit could be depicted more interesting, for example open doors and similar.

A fun element would be to bash and destroy map obstacles, barrels, boxes etc.

Map tiles could use some colour variation. Right now they are mostly grey (and I mean really grey grey). Grey, black and similar monochrome colours feel really dead. Even with slight hints of other colours (e.g. a slight blue-ish tint) would improve the situation. If you analyze some of the rembrandt paintings, you will see that very rarely is black a solid black, but rather a very very dark tone of some other colour. To contrast the grey stone elements, flags and such could have stronger colours.

But all in all you're doing a great job, the game is playable, runs without any major problems and focuses on the important core mechanics. Can't wait to see more progress, (such as archery and magic systems ;)

ha! If only all programmer art looked like that.

I agree, that's some fine programmer art :)

Using Blizzards tilesets would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, but I wont get ito it further because I don't think pfunked will entertain the notion

It seems like most times when users want a feature or content that is not practical that people always suggest having optional settings, but this takes a lot of pointless work on things which would remain illegal, endanger the project if Blizzard got pissed, and would suck up developer time. OGA is a work in progress as are all our skillsets, but OSARE is looking really great for it's age and will only get better.

This is just a quick observation

I loved Diablo 1 from Blizzard, and OSARE makes me feel like I'm playing diablo again. This is by no means insulting in any way, in fact it's just plain awesome, maybe in a future it will have some more gameplay fun, not just a "slash and kill game" but apply other elements to it. (like, and as horrible as it sound, farming, brewing your own potions, etc). Have some kind of "hero points" everytime you kill mini bosses and use them to acquire skills, equips etc. 

Now, in the ambient how about adding some fog, it's not an element that will change the game but it will give it a nice "dark" touch to it. 

Portals - You know I have disliked some games due to their lack of showing where the portal is to go to the next map. How about putting a glowing circle or something fancy around portals so the user don't feel frustrated figuring out where is the portal to the next map. 

In the ambient, I know artists consume hours and hours of work so I'm not really going to ask much, but in the wall and columns it should be considered mud, vines, some tiles broken in half or pieces of stone in the floor. Also if its a temple, is it a broken down temple? I mean you could break "the roof" and put some source light glow into it or rain :)

good luck! I'm trying to learn how to create games via Python (cocos2d), most of the time I spent my time in web development but I grew tired of it (coming from a PHP environment to python is kinda overwhelming at first, but not to be a hypocrite I still cherish what I've learned in PHP :) ) Too bad it's written in C++, not really motivated to jump languages since it consumes times to get used to the syntax and take advantage of the language

I tried the demo, and I liked what I saw.  It reminds me of a number of old games which I enjoyed a lot back in the day.  I'll be watching its progress.

Just one question, though: is the four eq slots thing fixed in place, or something that might be edited later/by a user/developer?  One thing I really like in such games is aquiring a vast array of "sw33t loot," and of course more slots would mean more swag on display, even if it also meant more asset making (of course, I also enjoy making equipment assets, so I might not be the best one to think through such obstacles).

How about porting it to HTML5 and Javascript like freeciv?

That would solve the compatibility issue and everyone could play it, even ipad owners.

I know it's probably too far into development to ask for this, but a OSARE with this 2D engine would be awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww

http://groups.google.com/group/ethanon/

BTW: Quake2 has been ported to HTML5 and webgl by google, and it runs not bad at all ;)

Unfortunately, the ethanon engine isn't ported to Linux just yet...  the code that it runs on top of doesn't support OpenGL at the moment, so it's tied to Windows.  Too bad, too, because it looks amazing.

Wow, that engine definitely rocks! Great idea with the normal and depth maps and shaders, it looks too cool to be true :) Unfortunately, it uses XNA..... Somebody needs to port it :)

Edit: in the FAQ of the website it says "There are plans for native network functions bindings and objects, but the priority right now is the cross-platform version.". Looking forward for it.

Edit2: Sorry for hijacking your thread pfunked, I stop it now!

Hi, great work. This project is very exciting!

Personally, I like the dungeon art. I do agree it could use a little variation as the above poster mentioned, but the dark grayscale coloring gives it a distinct atmosphere.

A couple quick points:

Suggestion: After an attack (or spell) animation ends, check to see if the mouse button is still held down for successive attacks

Observation: Currently, walking speed varies based on direction. Up/down is much slower than diagonal, for example.

Usually small things right now should be added to tie things over while you work on the heavier stuff. Things like minimap, maybe options to change gamma and volume of things would fit. Usually establishing a foundation I think and expanding that would be better then just putting them into the game. Just something to tie them over and show where you are going with the game.

Hey,

Just wanted to say I love the progress you're making with the game. I especially like the setting based on Wu XIng. I don't know why, but it has this certain appeal and feels non-cliche, even if the different climates are the standard desert, tundra, mountains/mine etc. It all sound as if you can pull it off to make it feel fresh. And I really like the black tortoise mythical beast idea.

what I would suggest is make more differentiation in the armory. http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/armory.php . What I see in the armory is what I see in many of the other games as well. When you pick a new version or better version of armor, it should have something unique which can be told apart at a glance. Something more added. The player should be able to look at the armory and know at a glance what it is without looking at the stats of the armor. I am sure this would be perhaps somewhere down in the roadmap, it would be cool......

One thing I noticed when I was playing it, is that I wish it had an outline on the enemy when the mouse is hovered over the enemy, to show who to shoot at or even when picking up gold. Its not a "HUGE" problem, but sometimes when I click for gold to pick it up I miss it  and use a spell a couple times. Its just a thought.

I just compiled the v 0.10 on ubuntu lucid lynx and it works perfectly (I installed the libsdl packages corresponding to the notes in the readme). How do you remap keys ? I looked in the setting.h and few other files but didn't find where it was hardcoded. I use french layout for keyboard and WASD do not match. However with the arrows it's okay, but f1, f2 ... can't be used with this configuration.

On the game :

- First very nice job. With few randomness (dungeons, caves, ...) I could play this game for hours. I loved Diablo I & II and you are really close to catch half the magic of diablo I :). Only by changing monsters color and scale, you could have 5-10 different levels (If I remember well, there was only carvers, skeletons and zombies in the first 4 levels of diablo I)

- The game is a little bit too fast, it's quite tricky to hit & run. But for the moment that's okay. There is a need for path finding, but it's not a big issue. The only problem I see for the moment is that it's possible to lure the boss at the opposite of a square obtacle, heal safely and then attack again.

- Bosses have no visual special effect : you see you're fighting a boss because he's really quick and hit hard. Perhaps scale them up a little bit and add an aura or glowing effect if it's possible ?

- Highlight the currently selected monster.

- hide secret rooms on the mini map ?

I like the build system (no classes but 4 attributes). Loots and difficulty seems correctly balanced. I was very happy to drop a blue sword and then wanted to farm blue items :)

Keep up the good work !

• Increase range on missiles (i.e. arrows, magic bolts).  They should be able to be fired well out of the screen's range.
• Art for missiles hitting objects or walls, instead of just instantly disappearing
• When an enemy is activated, or becomes awake and starts chasing you, all other enemies in a proximity range should be awoken as well.
• Add better pathfinding, look into "A Star" algorithms.  (This should be lower priority, it's honestly not bad for the most part.)
• Starting out is a little difficult, I realize it's a demo though.

Great work, I can tell you've poured your time into this.  I'll stop by more later.

Peace.