Post by wizorge in Deep Debris comments

Viewing post in Deep Debris comments

So as a quick preface, only terminal games I've ever tried (emphasis on "tried") as far as I can remember are DF, nethack and Cataclysm, so some stuff I bring up might just be a skill issue.

With that in mind, I was surprised how easy it was to actually get into Deep Debris considering how daunting the screenshots looked. It took a bit of learning the UI and remembering the keys (and remapping some keys since I don't have a numpad), but the interactive tutorial seemed to cover enough to get into the game. It did take me a few tries to get through the tutorial though (more on that later). I'll just list some random thoughts down below as well.

Stuff I REALLY liked:
- VERY deep cube interactions and emergent gameplay
- Excellent sound design direction, that I imagine once you've played enough, helps understand what's going on in the moment
- Basebuilding + potential for all sorts of cool contraptions (only played a couple hours across a couple days, but from what I can see, also logic networks using charges and music using various cube spawners/damagers)
- The overall esoteric worldbuilding, like it's a world that operates by its own laws of physics and that's totally normal

Stuff I couldn't figure out:
- At the interactive tutorial sandbox section, I kept trying to climb upwards, and at some point at only 1hp, I noticed I can just fly up infinitely but I could no longer go down. I'm just curious if it's some mechanic I couldn't figure out or a bug. I could not see any new traits on the player that would explain it, but I did mess around with building elevators to try to get higher. I made it up to height 7064 like that, cause I wasn't sure if I was doing something that was supposed to be possible or not lol
- Also in the interactive tutorial, at the part when you're supposed to build a teleporter, at some point I could not press some keys anymore, namely "E" to build a teleporter. I alt-tabbed out to look through documentation, but when I came back it worked again. Not sure if it's a bug or I toggled something other than Look mode without realizing it
- Is there a way to show some sorta damage log or cube interaction log? Or maybe a way to auto-pause when you get damaged? Or some sorta visual highlight of where an attack/interaction happened? Might be my issue, but it's hard to understand what's going on at times
- It seems you attack horizontally by holding Left Ctrl, but if you want to attack vertically you need to hold Left Shift. Not sure if that's intentional, or maybe I missed something
- What the text bottom-right of health means, eg n↓C@
- What the icon between the cube icon and cube name means, eg. O or X

Issues I ran into:
- If there's no saves available, and you go to Load a game, and then hit enter, the game seems to freeze with no way out
- First try in the interactive tutorial, I accidentally left the game on 10x as I kept playing, when I got to the teleporter building section the game froze at 414k ticks, I'm guessing maybe some sorta weird cube interaction happened in the sandbox that caused the permanent freeze, but idk, I just made a screenshot of the screen I froze at
- When reading cube descriptions, tickrate updating causes the text to shift every time digit count changes, making it hard to read when the game is running. Not a huge problem but I think it should be easy to fix by adding placeholder numbers based on max tickrate for the given thing, like 05/10 or _5/10
- It took quite a while to figure out you can actually attack upwards

I'm really surprised how few issues I ran into given how insanely complex Deep Debris is mechanically! I've tried making spellcrafting systems multiple times and it was a nightmare to account for so many different types of interactions.

Requests:
- Damage/interaction log - would help understanding what's going on or what damaged you (maybe you already have something like this but I couldn't figure it out)
- Auto-pause when player/something important gets damaged - same as above
- Highlighting tiles where attack/interaction happens - same as above
- Multi-key keybindings - niche issue and not sure if it's even a good diea, but I don't have a numpad and I thought it might be better to for example press left+up arrows concurrently to move northwest diagonally
- interactive tutorial teleporter building - I got lost here for quite a wihle since I didn't realize you can attack upwards. There is a hint that tells you you can use "?" to check for keybindings, but I assumed it was a sorta addendum to the whole building mechanic, rather than implying you should check it out to learn you can attack upwards. So maybe some sorta additional hint like "Try it out if you're stuck here" or something might help?
- explaining more of the UI - also likely my issue, but it took multiple interactive tutorial plays and also some experimenting mechanics to understand how most of the UI works that's covered in the tutorial, I listed above the 2 things I still couldn't figure out, so unless I missed them somewhere, I think it'd be helpful to cover them i nthe tutorial or have some sorta UI "Look" mode that let you highlight various parts of the UI and displayed an explanation somewhere or something like that

The page description sold me, but the screenshots looked confusing/daunting until I actually tried it. I was still thoroughly confused after my first session, but the next day I started getting it and it was fun! I had an idea to try to build a floating base with a sorta conical roof topped with umbrellas today as well, so I'll probably look into trying to get that going soon.

I would love to see some sorta progression if it doesn't contradict with your vision for Deep Debris Eg. a tower of cube interaction puzzle scenarios; roguelite mode/mechanicss; unlockable content like dripfeeding new cube types/buildables; achievements/goals/tasks for creative interaction combos/scenarios. But that's just the kind of games I myself like and tend to play at the end of the day.

Some sorta 3D wrapper or overlay would be really cool and helpful for understanding the mechanics better as well (eg. Stonesense for DF), least for someone like me who has a hard time visualizing ascii art lol.

Also, sorry for the unsolicited advice, but I checked your tags and looked around a bit on itchio tag categories and I thought replacing "java"/"utf8" with "ascii"/"roguelike" might be better for discovery, since at least for me those are the words that I'd think of when I think of Deep Debris.

Overall, really unique game with a ton of content and emergent gameplay, I'd imagine if you're a person who's used to playing terminal games and enjoy sandboxes, you could EASILY spend hundreds of hours in Deep Debris.

And also very sorry for the absolute mountain of text, ended up much longer than I thought, hopefully something useful in there!

Reverie Requiem7 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks for the write-up! This would probably be one of the first times someone's played and wasn't completely confused. Which means it's improving! ‎ I'll respond to a few of your points (twice as Itch decided to refresh when I was almost done writing).

Figuring Out: ‎

I suspect you managed to find yourself above a damaged orb. You can destroy it as you do any other cube, by pressing down + attack. If that's not the case, uhh...
I'm not sure, but I suspect you were in some alternative view mode. Can't recall from the top of my head, but pressing ESC once should leave it.
No logs as the game has the potential to process thousands of events per second. However, there are some useful keybinds, for example, to see what last hit you. I find this one especially useful; I don't recall what I set it to by default, but the ? menu should show it up, mayhaps with a bit of scrolling. As for auto-pause on damage, it's possible for me to add, though you can always just pause the game with default spacebar while you figure things out.
Pretty sure you can do both to attack vertically. Some systems just had issues, so there are auxiliary binds that let you do it with shift.
I think the n↓C@ is explained in the readme.  
- n is the current view order mode (for when cubes are on top of each other), in which case, n recent on top.  
- ↓ indicates the faded cubes you are seeing are below you. You can press d and D to toggle this.  
- C@ are camera view priorities. If enabled, they will show the camera cube/player on top of other cubes regardless of sort order. Press @ to change these. ‎

O and X are accessibility icons to determine if a cube is opaque or not. You can turn them off in settings if you can tell simply by contrast.

Issues:

‎ Yeah, that shouldn't crash the game. Pushed a commit to fix it, though I can't say when I'll release.
10x or not, that shouldn't happen. I can't say what it was without extra info, though. I probably need to add some sort of popup either way when people start pressing random keys in the tutorial.
Question is how high those placeholder numbers go. I've noticed this was an issue and the past and tried to address it by changing the length of the translations, so it wouldn't look as funny at base resolution. But yeah, the text is determined at the translation layer and it doesn't really know what the numbers I'm giving it even are, just that it should write 'em out. Not sure how I want to address that, but I agree it is a little annoying.
Yeah, the attacking up/down part of the tutorial is for some reason locked behind dying. I didn't expect it to be unclear as I did explicitly specify attacking worked in any move direction, but you aren't the first one with that problem. Guess I'll have to add a short section. ‎

Requests:

As said previously, you can view up to the single most recent event you were hit with an existing keybind. The primary reason there are very few logs in general is provided the massive amount of events the game has the potential to run every second. Beyond player interactions, is there anything of note?
Highlighting tiles is actually something I've considered and even attempted before, but distrusted due to technical reasons. I'd have to add a frame countdown variable to every single cube that activates each time they're hit, and I'd prefer to save resources. I also wasn't sure if it would be perceived as just another visual effect that confuses new players, or if what it added was worth the cost.
All keys are fully rebindable if you are unable to use numpad. As for multi-key binding, I've always found its existence clunky at the best of times when I see it in games, and would much rather players go ahead and set their keybinds than let themselves insist on enduring that. And unfortunately, Lanterna, which the game's graphics is based on, can't really handle more than one keypress simultaneously anyway.
Yeah, vertical attacks need clarification.
Explaining UI has always been the most problematic element of the tutorial, provided the limited space and that every tile is the same width and height - there's no clean way I could figure out to do it. I could append it to the README, possibly, but I'm still not sure how I'd want to, in a way that wouldn't look absolutely hideous. A UI look mode was an idea I've been pondering a little lately, and probably stands the best chance of getting in once I decide to deal with it (haven't been too much in a dev mood lately).

The rest:

Figuring out which screenshots would best portray the game in a clear way has been a mainstay problem since release. If you have any better suggestions, let me know! And good luck on your umbrella base. I haven't tested enough how useful they are.
Scenarios are already implemented on the backend (as the tutorial exists), though puzzle rooms would take a lot to build. I figured the game might have a sort of small story at some point, though, in regards to the nature of the realm you find yourself in (a dimension of abstraction beyond our own, perhaps the subconscious abstract layer of a universe-dreaming god, accessed via wormhole, or smth).
Meta-progression and achievements were something I wanted to avoid, however, as they either subtly tell you 'proper' ways of playing the game, or spoil the point by faking an economical ending that doesn't exist where there should always be a next run. I never anyone to go 'I unlocked everything, game done.'
No idea how I'd do 3D. Tilesets alone would require remaking the graphical end from scratch.
The game technically isn't ASCII. It could classify as ANSI, but ASCII is a very specific character set. I also very insistently refuse to call this game a roguelike - it's not turn-based, has no perma-death (just reload last save), and it's not even set in a dungeon. I might be a purist, but I really can't see anything the game has in common with Rogue besides text graphics. Procedural generation? Tetris had that and was permadeath.
Honestly, while the game has some depth, I suck too badly at my own game (attention-requiring project built by ADHD developer, loam) to figure out if a normal person could realistically build a lasting base, lol. There probably needs to be a balance patch somewhere, but I could see at least a dozen hours being put in.

I hope my mountain of text is larger. It was, having to type it twice, at least.

wizorge6 days ago

Thanks for the detailed response! Seems I missed quite a lot of stuff across docs and settings.

Also don't get me wrong, I was definitely confused, but it somehow did get easier after playing for several hours multiple days straight lol. It does feel like you've made the core mechanics simple the grasp, and the whole complexity lies in figuring out what all the cubes do and how they interact, so I think that helped a lot.

I just checked the interactive tutorial and it looks o/x part was covered, I just missed it! I guess there's just a lot of info to look at so it didn't register at all. Looking now the v/b/n changing should had also been obvious, but it didn't register at all.

I think the up/down attacking confused me, cause while it is written, it doesn't become relevant until later, so it just passes through when you have so much other stuff to learn.

Think I also just figured out my Left Ctrl vs Left Shift confusion with attacks! I assumed attacking was Left Ctrl + movement, but that just applies for horizontal attacks? As vertical attacks seem to be keybound to < and > which on US layout is Left Shift + move up / down. I did find the phylactery before dying though by accident and realized what a neat loop you had set up there!

Think I found the last event key as well, "y", which yea pretty much does exactly what I was looking for. Given there's so much action going on at all times a log would probably be unusable like you said. I thought it might be nice also for for player-built buildings (like when something is breaking your roof) and the defense core, since those don't seem to have immediate feedback from what I can tell? Although it's possible I just can't read the soundscape that well yet.

Regarding the endless flying upwards, I did move horizontally, and that didn't change anything, could still keep flying up but couldn't go down. Once I realized it doesn't feel intended, I was between it being some sorta interaction I couldn't figure out, or that the "weight" trait only applies in certain conditions not every tick, and I somehow broke out of it, not sure.

Regarding the freeze, I'm honestly not sure, I think I was mostly just moving around, and using Look mode and Search mode to figure out what I'm supposed to search for and where I'm supposed to go, as I still hadn't figured out by that point there's a layer of balloons above me and I can attack above. Probably not helpful but here's the screenshot I made after I realized the game had frozen

Another idea I got regarding UI, maybe it would be feasible to visualize certain UI elements after the element is introduced in the tutorial the first time? And/or flashing the background of the character(s) for a few sec? Probably more work than any of the alternatives though.

Regarding screenshots, I don't really have good ideas, I did have a hard time understanding what I was looking at before playing it, whether I was looking at some UI or ingame movement, might come more naturally to people who play more games with this artstyle but I felt like an sheltered amish man looking at a smartphone. Maybe some sorta overlay captions on pics would be worth considering? Not sure if that would help though.

Yea I think I do get your perspective regarding stuff like achievements/meta-progression, I hadn't considered that since for me that sense of progression in the rigid mechanics set by the game is the really satisfying part of most games, numbers going up, clearing goals, unlocking new things and whatnot. Some sorta story mode or curated scenarios would be really cool to see in the future though!

I think DF handles isometric "3D" by mods/hacks, basically rendering visuals on top of the game from reading the runtime game tiles. I don't know anything about Java much less your codebase though, so it was mostly just me thinking loudly how cool it would be to have all the cubes falling visualized in first person or even isometrically.

Yea the tag stuff is fair, I didn't even know the ASCII part lol, and I do get now after playing it that it's not really a roguelike, but if that's the connection most people make it might help get it in front of the people who'd wanna play it, even if it's not factual, so just wanted to bring that up

And I do get the struggle, as an autist with ADHD it's a constant battle between wanting to stick to something comfortable and starting something new lol, I think i have like 17-19 projects (apart from Wender) I've put anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months into. I was actually planning to look into making an traditional roguelike-kinda-playing roguelite with procgen cause I realized it might be easier to work on systems and rely on procgen for content to keep my brain interested.

I think for a game like Deep Debris, the chaos is a big part of the fun though. Actually, have you considered something like a Rimworld-esque storyteller type AI that would work to ensure a balanced stream of chaos based on how well the player is doing or something? I always thought that was a really cool concept (also personifying the game's difficulties but that's beside the point).

Reverie Requiem6 days ago (1 edit)

Defence core plays a sound (globally) when it's damaged. Not sure if I have a last-to-hit keybind down for it yet though.

Infinite flight was most likely an orb. Surprises me sometimes too, but easily navigable by destroying the orb.

Yeah, any number of things could have caused the freeze, but if the game crashed, it'd probably show up in the crash logs within the same directory, assuming you haven't re-run the game since. If it's a proper freeze, oh dear. Can't wait to figure out what interaction caused that.

It's possible, but would take a lot of work, ye. And most likely the blinking UI will either distract from reading or they'll be too focused on reading to notice.

I wouldn't be sure what screenshots captions to add. There's already a hover text/tooltip for the page screenshots, describing what they are. Did you notice that?

You're not the first to say they'd love to see proper 3D visualizations of their world, perhaps surprisingly. Not too sure how I'd go about it except as a sort of side project of its own, but it'd take me learning 3D...

Atm, procedural generation comes down to two things: whether ease mode is on/off, and the seed. So there ends up being a lot of possible variation, but either you use the same seed, making it too predictable, or you don't, and you get a random result. There's already a little categorization of cubes, but niche scenario AIs with certain 'specialties' would take a lot of ironing out. I suppose ordeals sort of fill that role, currently, but you don't get any choice there, and they certainly don't decide themselves based on your current performance.

Glad you're enjoying the game, nonetheless. I'm open to watching gameplay, if you want to stream it to me on Discord or smth sometime.

wizorge6 days ago

Oh yea, reading "orb" description now that would make sense! Pretty cool, since I was fairly sure it was some sort of a state lock bug.

Regarding the freeze, it looks like the log is long gone as well if it did populate, if I had realized it would overwrite I would had copied it. Maybe it'd be possible to store logs containing errors / certain warnings more permanently?

I totally missed the screenshot captions, I do use some firefox with some image auto-zoom addons so might be just my setup making it easy to miss as well

I'm not huge for sandbox games so I'm not sure how long I'll keep at it, I've usually preferred games with a more rigid structure or some ingame goals to work towards (think the last things I've played were mostly incrementals and openworld survivalcraft sorta stuff), but I wouldn't mind recording some recording some gameplay or screensharing or something, every time I see a new person playing Wender I tend to come back with 10-20 notes of stuff to improve so I'd love to help out some time!

Reverie Requiem6 days ago

Sure, I'm `reverie_requiem.` (with the dot) on Discord if you're down for it. Maybe I can play Wender as well. Or I can try another screenshare platform if you have something else.

itch.io

Viewing post in Deep Debris comments