[Adonthell-general] WE 0.3: impressions as an Adonthell newbie

[Paul Jenner]

Hi.

I recently downloaded and played Wastes Edge 0.3 (my first experience of
Adonthell).  I hope some basic impressions of a newbie may be helpful
for future Adonthell releases.  My apologies if this post is over long
or off topic for the list.

1) building / installing:

Building as an RPM from the distribution was slightly painful (although
I hope the Makefile.am patch submitted should make this easier). 
Installing was a breeze but why does the RPM install to /usr/local -
since as an RPM it is managed by the package manager and so not "local",
I would expect it to install to /usr.

2) running:

Having installed a game called "Wastes Edge", I naturally ran
"wastesedge" to play it.  It took a bit of digging to find that the
wrapper script was actually "adonthell-wastesedge".  Next release I
would suggest calling the wrapper script the same as the game name for
ease of use.

3) display:

When I first started the game it came up in windowed mode.  I found the
config file under ~/.wastesedge and edited it to change to full screen
mode.  However it would have been nicer to default to full screen (and
for newbies to change this in the options menu in game although I guess
this is a later game engine feature).

The choice of 320x240 as the resolution is a bit low.  I haven't found a
way to get X and my graphics card to go down to that yet, so I am
currently playing at 640x480 with a big black border.  I guess the next
release will be 640x480 as the graphics engine improves though?

4) game play:

Wow! As soon as you start the game with that intro tune and scenes you
are impressed.  This only continues with really good music and graphics
which are really in tune with the genre.  The dialogue and action is
involving and even without objects / combat, there is a lot of game play
here.

All in all, great engine and release.  Adonthell is going to be
brilliant as it progresses.  Hopefully a few of my user impressions are
useful and make the next version easier for the newbie to get right
into.  Once they do, they'll be hooked!

Thanks and I eagerly look forward to the next release,

Paul