🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <713975014.17374@zooid.guild.org> ron@zooid.guild.org (Secret Mud) writes:
>>Wolfenstein 3D is one of the best examples of the fact that while some people
>>have remarkable skill at writing code and doing graphics, the skill of writing
>>a game is something else that they don't always have.
>
>But after playing it for a little while, didn't your soul ache for the really
>wonderful games that could have been done with the graphics/sound engine?
>
> - Ron Sharp.

What my soul aches for is Nethack with a Wolf3d front end ....

Unfortunately it might be difficult to fit into anything even _near_ 640K
for DOS.  (for the code, never mind the data files).
You would probably want a couple of dozen images per monster, too; 16
rotations and 3-4 attack images and some running images too.
The best way to go for that would be to make little clay figurines,
photograph them with an electronic camera and convert the images.
Or is there an easier way to go with some kind of solid modeling program?

If you made it a realtime game the play might end up being rather different.

There would also be the issue of whether you would want movement strictly
on a cell-by-cell basis (i.e. like the original ASCII dungeon maps) or
incrementally like Wolfenstein.  I think incrementally would be the way to
go.

You could reduce the power of magic use since you could make
magic spells take a certain number of ticks depending on how hard the
spell was.  This would equalize things somewhat for magic users and
reduce the imbalance that spellcasting ability usually brings. 

Another change in the game would be the fact that you (and the monsters)
would be facing and attacking in a particular direction, and changing
direction would take time.  This, I think, would actually add a lot to
the play ... it always seemed a little unrealistic that you could attack
an orc to the east and then the next turn attack an orc to the west!
I don't know how much original Hack code would be left by the time you
finished doing all this ...

I'm not really talking about recreating Ultima VI here; keep the Wolf-style
graphics and don't for gods sake make the user solve a zillion stupid little
puzzles to get to his goal (sorry adventure game fans a slight peeve of
mine erupting there.)
So any thoughts on this, anyone?

urbndv8@ucscb.ucsc.edu

-- 
"The possessed's mad speech is the higher wisdom of the world, since it is 
human...Why have we not yet acquired this insight in relation to the world
of the free will?  Because outwardly we are the masters of madness, because
the insane are violated by us, and we hinder them from living according to
their ethical laws...Now we must endeavor to overcome the dead point in our
relationship to insanity."       --Wieland Herzfelde, 1914