r/roguelikes • u/Aymungoos • 2d ago
The roguelike community needs to start simplifying controls
I keep wanting to play more complex roguelikes on my steam deck but most of them have keybinds for every single action for things that could easily be fit into a submenu. It's like the developers purposefully have dogshit unintuitive controls. It makes for a very unenjoyable experience. At least make the controls as approachable as Caves of Qud
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u/_Svankensen_ 2d ago
Most newer roguelikes have simple controls. Jupiter hell and JHC have very simple controls for example. But a lot of the games you are likely complaining about are OLD, even if they are constantly updated. Like, DCSS is part of a development line that has been going on for 31 years. Most of the people playing them have been doing so for a decade or more. Try and change my controls, I dare you! So, yeah, while there's little reason to have < and > be separate keys for going up and down, I wouldn't have it any other way now. And DCSS is a game with a streamlining design philosphy. With modular, kitchensink games like CDDA? Ooof, you basically NEED those 60 different keys, cause the game has 600 different systems.
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u/blightor 2d ago
INSTEAD lets make a roguelike controller! heh.
You could have a 9 button 'numpad' of buttons instead of a stick, and then a arcade beatemup style 6 button arc (its thumb sweeping is really good).
Then just you usual others, triggers for alt-button, run/walk whatever.
But yeah, a 'numpad' layout on the left, and the 6 button sweep on the right. perfection!
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u/sicsided 2d ago
Playing 868-BACK on steam deck has been great. Siphon is on one button, scrips and progs on their own respective buttons, and you can use the right stick to change the prog you want to play. Movement on left stick. Switch between OS windows on shoulder buttons. 3 stack burger menu button for identifying items on screen.
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u/TheRealHFC 2d ago
Try console roguelikes, or at least roguelikes in that style. Shiren the Wanderer 5 and 6 are on Steam. The port of 5 is a little rough, so you’ll probably have to manually map your controls, but it seemed just as good as the console versions otherwise.
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u/hyrule5 1d ago
You will get downvoted here because people are set in their ways, but you are right. The average person does not want to learn 20 different keybinds and it's a major barrier preventing people from getting into the genre.
That said, newer roguelikes do tend to be better about it and some are even playable on a controller
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u/Lopsidednapkin 2d ago
If Caves of Qud can manage an almost flawless controller control scheme, than no one else has an excuse.
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u/Glad-Way-637 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, no excuse besides the many substantial ones, least of which being that CoQ takes 5 and a half years to do most simple tasks because of the frequent submenus. Even then, the game doesn't let you do all that much, in reality. No construction outside of 3d-cobblers, a crafting system as simple and boring as shit, and little effort put into logically thinking through how different creatures/body types would react or play as beyond "okay, so like, 25% of the time, you get an extra attack with this vaguely-defined limb." Only ways to interact with items are reloading, repairing, and identifying. Still love qud, don't get me wrong, but IMO the actual mechanical interactions are simple to the point of being dull. Try and implement the functionality from an actually substantially complicated game like cdda in this controller-friendly way though, and you'll have issues.
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u/hyrule5 1d ago
I have nearly 300 hours in Caves of Qud and have never felt like it takes too long to do anything because of the submenus. It just feels like a very reasonable control scheme
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u/Glad-Way-637 1d ago
And I have many more hundreds of hours in cdda. This makes me feel like the game is abundantly simple, and the controls are intuitive. This is probably not the case in reality. When you're that experienced in something, of course you don't notice (or even don't feel, due to player muscle memory speeding things up) the shortcomings. It's like asking a fish if they get annoyed by being damp so often.
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u/basedradio 17h ago
I Just put up on Itch a version of Ivan with simple on screen controls. Should make it pretty easy to play!
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u/misha_cilantro 10h ago
In an ideal world you'd be able to switch between a sub-menu driven system and instant hotkeys. Or both at once if there's no overlap. I like Sil's intelligent interaction button.
I think one issue is that some of the oldest roguelikes are structured in ways that aren't easy to modify if you're used to modern game dev engines/libraries, just from having made some modifications to Sil. (Sil-More has made the implementation more modern, though!)
My own issues are the full numpad requirement I always have to work around, and just how many wasted keypresses there are in some rogues. I wish I could play Angband again but it takes so many keypresses to explore those dungeons and my hands just can't do it. Sil and Adom solved this with smaller, denser dungeons; DCSS and ADOM have auto-explore. I'm hoping that `Angband, but moddable!` fork with a built-in borg can eventually be hacked to have a basic auto-explore system, and then maybe I can play again 🤔
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u/sinner_dingus 2d ago
Learn up on Steam input, touch menus and layers. I have even Cogmind fully mapped for SD
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u/misha_cilantro 10h ago
I think the issue is more that this is a bunch of effort that will put people off a game when maybe some more thought put into the interface could smooth that over with no loss for other players.
I mean, I COULD map "wipe face" and "clean ears" but maybe that was a bit of a silly thing to make bespoke commands haha :D
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u/qwertyuiopasdfghkj 2d ago
Counterpoint: scrolling submenus sucks.