60 fps and the story of my first god experience,text balloon

[zeemeerman2]

INTRODUCTION

Hello. Long time no see. I took some time off, still lurking around but not playing. I started a new game to see all the changes from a new perspective.

I got two issues with the game. Let's start with the easy-to-explain one: text balloons from bosses.
I'm not really interested in reading the boss text, so could there be an option to toggle off boss messages?

MY FIRST GOD STORY

I recently (re-)discovered my first god, Glowing Guardian, and did his quest to unlock him. Little did I know worshipping it would make it impossible to end the game (No items equipped but the +2 Sword from the Blacksmith: I hadn't unlocked anything else yet).
Not only would it make the dungeon more challenging by defeating five extra enemies, giving no experience, but it would also make finishing the dungeon impossible.
I played the Monk in Eastern Tundra at the moment (for the quest Deep Freeze), did the quest, calculated it out: after ending the Glowing Guardian Quest I had three high-level enemies left and the boss, and if I defeated all the enemies, combined with my equipped glyphs and potions, it would be a close call but I thought I could defeat the boss. Only problem; when finishing the quest and auto-converting to that god with 0 Piety, I had low health thanks to the enemies from the GG Quest, and no black tiles left. Not a problem, I drank a health potion, and could defeat the enemies necessary to be defeated. But Glowing Guardian thought different. He thought it would be funny to delete all my items from my inventory after drinking the potion, as it's his punishment when you have 0 Piety. Well, that's a nice introduction to the gods.

Suggestions

Maybe you guys can review this so gods are more forgiving on the first-time worship? (e.g. by giving the player 20 Piety one time only) It couldn't be misused that much as it's one time only, and offers a nice reward for the extra challenge from the god unlocking quest.

It's also a shame I can't find the practical information of what gods do without looking up a wiki. It would be nice if a practical description of the gods could be given inside the description box of the god. It shouldn't be too detailed, but fine enough to give a general outline about how to gain Piety and how to lose it. e.g. "Taurog wants you to kill, but doesn't like you to cast any spells." (You don't even need to describe the glyph conversion Piety gain, since you'll figure out by not casting spells)

FRAMES PER SECOND

Now something more technical: framerate.
With FRAPS enabled, I see that Desktop Dungeons runs at a constant 60 frames per second, even when not doing anything. Only when idling on the background, its framerate drops (but that could be FRAPS misrecording). Being it a turn-based game with not many animations, I think it shouldn't be necessary to run at a constant 60 fps (so it's less taxing on older systems).
This probably would require a whole re-write of the game, but this is beta, and we're here to aid you in making a better game, so I post my impressions here.
Comparing Desktop Dungeons to Microsoft's Solitaire game on Windows Vista and Windows 7, it's hard to tell but it looks like Solitaire's framerate is 0, and it ramps up when animations are shown and cards are dragged around (onto an absolute maximum of 30 fps). For example, if you hover your cursor above a card, it starts glowing. That fade-to-glow effect has 3 frames. When moving your cursor away from that card, it fades out, with a framerate of 6-7, only to have 0 fps again when the animation is done.
If this system could be moved over to Desktop Dungeons, I'm sure it would be a great success, even on lower-specced computers.

HUG

Thanks for the great game for what it is now, though. You guys do a great job and deserve an awesome-induced hug from everyone!

[booooooze]

There's at least one boss where you could be rather unpleasantly surprised if you don't read their balloon. (Granted, I didn't really read it, and was unpleasantly surprised anyway).

[The Avatar]

I remember I fire balled the boss at level 2 or something to get some burning (going for a super low level kill, back when they were possible). That ended my run.

[Darvin]

That particular boss speech is vague enough that you might not understand what it means and just how irreversible it is. I was playing a classic Fireheart Bloodmage back when that dungeon was first introduced (burning didn't expire back then) and was most disappointing with the results.

[dislekcia]

Ta for the feedback

I must say I like the idea of the game not forcing high FPS when it's not really doing anything, although TBH I have no idea how to wrangle that in Unity right now. Generally Unity wants to try and give you as many FPS as it can (also, it's the browser that's limiting you to 60FPS there, we get 400+ in the Unity editor) I must say this is the first time I've really thought about when NOT to update frames before and why you might want to do that.

[fall_ark]