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[Normandy]

Ah, I see what you mean. I guess I'll just look into music for giving that 'epic' feel, haha. And you're pretty much dead-on about the separate artist stuff. It's very difficult to coordinate - especially since I do this maybe one or two hours per week or so.

[Muz]

Hrm. Although I appreciate the responses about ASCII vs. Graphics, my original question is if a symbolic mode of display really could lend itself to epicness. It's a question of whether or not it's moot to try and create breathtaking ASCII (or otherwise symbolic) landscapes. It's a subjective thing, indeed, which is why I'm asking people about it.

Yeah, I'd find it quite pointless to try to create breathtaking ASCII. DF shows splashes of blood on the walls during a fight, the wind blowing on the grass, the rain trickling on the ground and the fish and insects splashing about in the rivers. IMO, it's the best ASCII ever. But I'd throw it all away for a tileset and never turn back. Bad pixel art communicates more to my "imagination" than really good symbols.

That video you pointed out is nice for an ASCII game, but with that much work, it'd be far better with sprites. I can't even tell if the guy is standing on water or fishing or swimming and that doesn't feel epic at all. There's going to be a niche who do love it. It's really up to you. If you believe you can do it and have a good plan, go for it. If not, focus on something else.

[Normandy]

Alright then. Another side question:

I'm planning a combination stepwise/realtime system. I want exploring and running to be in realtime, but combat to be stepwise. This is for obvious reasons - stepwise combat allows for more thoughtful, tactical combat, but realtime exploring/running leaves a more visceral and vibrant feel to it. So my solution:

Inbetween every action taken by the player (walk, swing sword, etc...), there is a certain maximum 'delay' before the next action is carried out. You can give your character the next turn's actions during this delay. So, say after swinging my sword at a goblin, the game now delays for 1 second; during this 1 second, I decide whether I step backwards, or swing again, or something like that. Essentially, a delay of 0 seconds represents realtime control and a delay of infinity represents stepwise control.

The advantage of this system is that combat is essentially in realtime, but there's time to make tactical decisions, so that it doesn't become a button-mash fest. It adds a sense of drama - like bullet time.

I admit, I do have to work out some nagging details in the system; like how to properly aim ranged attacks in this sort of context (preferably without the mouse, if possible, as this allows more keyboard inputs), or the fact that I don't want the game to go into bullet time every time I walk next to a particularly large rat.

What is your take on the system? What details would you envision as being problems, and would you have any solutions for them?

[Supermikhail]

Wuahaha. Just imagined this scene - the Matrix where every fifteen seconds Neo goes into bullet time to fight a rat, a la Baurus in the sewers of the Imperial city. Would be a swell to play.

Do autoaiming for shooting, so you can switch between targets with a single press of a button.

Also, about rats - just don't make them enemies. Make your game realistic - rats will run from a human, even large rats. Even more, almost everything tries to avoid a human in nature, wolves would probably circle for a long time in a pack; a mother bear would attack, a male bear in heat would attack, most creatures <= human size wouldn't attack unless provoked, even before gunpowder, I think. This way you go into bullet time only when you meet a worthy adversary to use it against.

[qwertyuiopas]

One easy solution to cover the border cases is giving the player the ability to override it manually.

I can see situations for either type of override:
-A powerful fighter is killing weaklings, and disables it so that they finish faster, although at a loss of some efficiency.
-A (starving | poisoned | fatally wounded | assasin) character enables it to make the most (efficient | controlled) use of their turns.
-A hardcore player plays with it *always* (enabled | disabled), no exceptions, for the fun of the additional challenge.

[Normandy]

The problem with a manual override is that it may break certain portions of the game intended for otherwise. Sure, there's always that argument that the player should limit him/herself themselves, but I think that's overly optimistic and defeats the whole point of game design in the first place.

Although, to be fair, all three of the situations you mentioned are actually perfectly viable uses of the system.

[Mechanoid]

1) Do you think ASCII tiles can repeatedly give a feeling of grandness and magnitude?
Grandness is in the players' mind, so the representation on the screen is of little importance. Breaking in to a cave for the first time is always going to be interesting for what you can find, but at the end of the day it's still just a cave. It's up to the player to find something 'grand' about it (like a perfectly square multiple zlevel collumn)

2) How visceral do you prefer your combat?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgHMXQLtjS0
Skip to 1:34 for a fight against a Troll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Gp-QVSJCQ
Skipping to 0:25, the player must play a racing minigame to lure a water monster into a whirl pool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdykNWPmq5w
The player is immediately given some items that are directly used just seconds later against a dragon and wizard. Two fights in one area, based on the same theme of timing.

Compare with other combat systems also on the NES (i'm not lying) or even with combat systems today, and you'll see why i prefer something that lets me use my brain instead of just mashing the "KILL" button over and over on some gun with a pathetic range/damage with the model of a knife doing a swinging/stabbing animation. (seriously, knives are treated in code in today's games as guns with almost no range/distance value for its hitscan check)
Also, fuck "luck" and random numbers in combat. The only reason why his arm doesn't get chopped off is if he has a "My arm can't be chopped off" item/skill. [All luck and random chance does IMO is force the player to advance to a point where he does what he wanted to do reliably in the first place; if you know you'll never fail your level 3 spells when you're level 6, do you really want to cast your level 3 spells at level 5? No, because you have a chance to fail them, and thus a chance to die. So you waste time and enjoyment making sure the game won't fuck you over the first chance it gets.]

3) What is your take on item systems?
DF-like material/item system but not necessarilly so in-depth as DF.

4) Simply put: High magic or low magic?
Low magic. High magic turns into "StarTrek Teleporter" combined with World of WarShits' user interface of skill buttons. Basically, if i can turn air into fire, or water into ice, why can't i just burn the air in my targets' lungs and turn his squishy water-filled brain into a neuralogical icecube?

"StarTrek Teleporter" :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You have a machine that can alter the fundamental structure of an object by moving its parts around on an atom-per-atom basis, as evidenced by the many "accidents" for the "safest way to travel" which reduce people to goo.
- You can make a perfect copy of yourself who lives a "What if i didn't get off the planet?" situation (TNG)
- You can make a bullet-shooting gun USEFUL in a setting where everyone and their mother have PZZSHEW rayguns... By teleporting the bullet directly to its target moments after being fired. (DS9)
- You can combine people into a new being, and then have your psychotic bitch captain order him uncombined back to their original selves so she can add "murderer" to her resume for admiral (Voyager; epside "Tuvix")

5) Finally, do you prefer playing mods or competitive gameplay?
Fuck competition. Fuck cookie-cutter mods. But mostly, fuck competition. IF a mod isn't cookie-cutter (and they almost always are cookie cut-outs of something else) then that's awsome, but sadly they usually die for reasons other then being cookie cutter.