Ive been watching lots of Dredmor videos on youtube and looking at screenshots and have noticed something which I think should be looked at by the Dev's. That something is that the view distance for Dungeons of Dredmor is very skewed for the lower resolutions it seems. The top of the characters head is level with the center of the screen at 1024x768 windowed resolution, that means that there is way more view distance at the top of the screen than at the bottom. Let me illustrate a screenshot for you: http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/232/dredmoroffsetproposal2.png (Revised for clarity) I have marked the default view distance in squares using green. As you can clearly see by this illustration, you can see 6 spaces north of you, but you can only see 3 spaces south of the character. Now if you look at the menu bar, portrait, and hotbars, you can see that they also actually obscure part of line -3. So if an enemy were to be standing on line -3 you wouldnt see part of him because it would be covered by the portrait. Thus reducing your view distance to the south to be -2.5 or so in some places. I am proposing a change in the character placement in purple. Simply to move the default position of the main character artwork to line +1 green (proposed as Zero written in purple). This would put the character more centered in the middle of the screen, with half his body above, and half below. With these changes, the character can see a full 5 spaces north, and 3.5 to 4 spaces to the south depending on whether the menu bar or portrait are obscuring part of the square or not. Hope this post makes sense and that you guys give this some consideration. - EDIT: (Disregard the following, didnt realize that combat text went in that spot, oops! Left in for completeness since the screenshot references this bit which is no longer valid) I have also noticed that there is what appears to be a whole row at the top of the screen which is blank except for the map. Perhaps one solution to the problem would be to simply move the entire dungeon view up to fill in that empty spot where I have written "Resolution: 1024x768 Windowed"? That would allow you to see most of the dungeon to the south that is currently hidden beneath the UI. In theory if you made use of the whole screen (got rid of that black row at the top) and shifted the character up one spot, then users at 1024x768 would be able to see ~5 squares in each direction.
Yeah, with longer sighting range at my 1680x1050, I can see monsters that are under my skill bar at bottom but they're quite difficult to target.
Not to bump my own post, but just curious if the Dev team has read this idea? (Recently moved from bugs to suggestions) Is it something feasible to do? Too technically difficult? I would love to hear more peoples thoughts about centering the character a bit better. I believe it would benefit everyone in giving them a more rounded sight radius, but especially folks using lower resolutions. 3 tiles of visibility to the south and 6 tiles of visibility to the north seems a bit skewed, especially when the interface obscures part of that 3rd bottom line. And im not certain, but the default view distance appears to be 5 tiles. So for anyone limited to a low resolution most games would start off with a row of fog of war on top as opposed to a useful row of visibility on the bottom.
I agree with this completely. Sight range towards the bottom of the screen is far too short and really needs to be improved, it's very annoying when opening doors towards the bottom and not being able to see what monsters are in the room.
That list is probably "things that we won't do". The issue has not been addressed for over a year. And this game looked so promising... I can't play it in "half-blind mode" as it is. Way too annoying.
I've noticed how the viewpoint is not exactly centered on the Hero character, but this, along with view distance, never really bothered me. I've found my laptop screen to be the most ideal playing environment for Dredmor, I can see everything I'd ever want to see, and I normally have my inventory and LuteCube open on the right side, with a medium sized minimap on top. When I play it on a 1024*768 screen setup, it's a tad more limited, I don't have my inventory open by default and I reduce the minimap size, but I'm still able to play without problems.
Why does this damn thread keep getting necro'd. Originally there was a point, David replied, and the very next reply is a snarky reply months later. Just let the damn thing die.
