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

[Alexandre Courbot]

> 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.

No problem - your post is very informative to us, and actually we wish
we had more like this! :) No off-topic neither.

> Building as an RPM from the distribution was slightly painful (although
> I hope the Makefile.am patch submitted should make this easier). 

It has been usefull and integrated to the CVS AFAIK.

> 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.

Right. Local directory is rather intented for stuff you compile yourself
and don't want to pollute with packaged programs. Would it be possible
to change that behavior Kai? Maybe even the binaries should go to
/usr/games, as I've done for the Debian packages. It depends on RPM base
policy, but Debian's one for example requires that games go there.

> 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.

Right. Although we are still hoping most users do read the README ;).
But for a packaged program, you usually don't expect to have to read
anything to be able to run it. The best way would be to add a Waste's
Edge entry to the system menus. This is what (sorry, speaking about
myself again :p) I've done with the Debian packages: once you've apt-get
Waste's Edge, you just have to click on Games/Adventure/Adonthell -
Waste's Edge, no matter whether you are running Window maker, Gnome,
KDE, etc... I think RPM distributions propose such a system as well.
Maybe to take advantage of this we should make more
distribution-targeted packages (one for Red Hat, one for Mandrake,
etc...).

> 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).

Well, making fullscreen the default with Waste's Edge was a bit
problematic, because:
-The game resolution is 320x240, and most users doesn't have this
resolution set up in X. As a consequence, they would find themselves
with a little game screen and plenty of black borders.
-Such fullscreen apps can lead to a hard reboot if they crash and the
user can't get control back to X. Although Waste's Edge should never
crash (it never happened yet, at least), we preferred to leave the
window mode by default.

But I agree a hotkey to switch between window/fullscreen mode is
something users are in right to require. I'll whip myself with a gamepad
cable as a punishment.

> 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?

True and true. Everybody complained about the resolution. We're
definitely switching to 640x480 (but will still provide an optional
320x240 renderer for slow machines and PDAs - shouldn't look terrible
though). The graphic quality will also gain a lot. How to set up your X
server to have 320x240 mode available is described in the NEWBIE file,
in case you still want to do it.

> 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.

Nice to hear that! :) We had only a few feedbacks (fortunately it was
always good, but angry users rarely complains...). We are currently
rewriting a big part of the engine. We're first, of course, switching to
640x480. The map engine will no more limit user's moves to
squares-by-squares, and will be much more flexible too. Network play
will be possible (probably not very soon, but the game is designed with
this idea in mind at least). Basic items handling and combat will be
part of the next release, as well as internationalisation. And, last but
not least, we'll do our best to take less time to release! ;) All in
all, the next release should have much more gameplay.

> 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!

Your comments were very usefull, yes - and motivating, too! ;)

> Thanks and I eagerly look forward to the next release,

Thanks for your kind words! :)
Alex.
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