What's the best dungeon crawler for someone new to the genre?

[Zed Duke of Banville]

For 3D games? Ultima Underworld was pretty much designed for an audience who didn't know what a mouse was,

That's funny, considering that last time I played it I used the mouse exclusively.

Yes, not sure why anyone would think that a PC game released in 1992 (and with fairly stiff tech requirements for 1992, at that) would have been designed for an audience lacking a mouse.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

For 3D games? Ultima Underworld was pretty much designed for an audience who didn't know what a mouse was,

That's funny, considering that last time I played it I used the mouse exclusively.

Yes, not sure why anyone would think that a PC game released in 1992 (and with fairly stiff tech requirements for 1992, at that) would have been designed for an audience lacking a mouse.

You both seem to lack reading comprehension. Its very clear from what I said that I was saying that it was for an audience unfamiliar with using a mouse in a 3D environment with an active pace, thus it should be easy to figure out for someone with preconceptions of how a game using the mouse should play. If you want to say I'm wrong there, fine, but I don't think there were many titles along those lines before then.

 

[JamesDixon]

For 3D games? Ultima Underworld was pretty much designed for an audience who didn't know what a mouse was,

That's funny, considering that last time I played it I used the mouse exclusively.

Yes, not sure why anyone would think that a PC game released in 1992 (and with fairly stiff tech requirements for 1992, at that) would have been designed for an audience lacking a mouse.

You both seem to lack reading comprehension. Its very clear from what I said that I was saying that it was for an audience unfamiliar with using a mouse in a 3D environment with an active pace, thus it should be easy to figure out for someone with preconceptions of how a game using the mouse should play. If you want to say I'm wrong there, fine, but I don't think there were many titles along those lines before then.

Mice shipped with computers since the 1980s. Everyone knew what a mouse was and how to use them. Are you a youngling and not alive back then?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

terrible days of having to hardboil multiple eggs every day to have an egg yolk to put in the mouse

 

[JamesDixon]

terrible days of having to hardboil multiple eggs every day to have an egg yolk to put in the mouse

I used to remove the core from golf balls and they worked fine.

 

[JamesDixon]

Morpheus Kitami You wanted a citation well here you go.

In 1982, Logitech introduced the P4 Mouse at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, its first hardware mouse.[50] That same year Microsoft made the decision to make the MS-DOS program Microsoft Word mouse-compatible, and developed the first PC-compatible mouse. Microsoft's mouse shipped in 1983, thus beginning the Microsoft Hardware division of the company.[51] However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Macintosh 128K (which included an updated version of the single-button[52] Lisa Mouse) in 1984,[53] and of the Amiga 1000 and the Atari ST in 1985.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse

Computer mice were introduced in 1982 as an add on to standard computers for the time. By the end of the 1980s, people were using mice with their computers. I know because I used an Apple IIC with one in high school in 1988.

 

[agentorange]

And yet the Ultima Underworld manual has extensive sections describing how to play the game without a mouse, and the mouse is mostly used for clicking on static menu elements rather than real time 3d navigation. Doom (which is really a dungeon crawler) was made mostly with keyboard play in mind and mouse was considered something like a "pro mode." John Romero had to specifically mention he set the level par times using a mouse which means it wasn't something many people considered. And games all the way up until Quake 1 and Thief were made with keyboard only players in mind.

So it's not as cut and dry as "mice technically existed in 1982 therefore everyone was using them for games."

 

[Sykar]

Might and Magic X is fairly beginner friendly, especially on the lower difficulty. Though sadly unless you go

you got to get entagled with Ubishit even when you buy it on Steam because Ubicrap is a piece of shit company that forces you to use their launcher even if their games are played on another platform.
So actually just pirate that shit.

 

[JamesDixon]

And yet the Ultima Underworld manual has extensive sections describing how to play the game without a mouse, and the mouse is mostly used for clicking on static menu elements rather than real time 3d navigation. Doom (which is really a dungeon crawler) was made mostly with keyboard play in mind and mouse was considered something like a "pro mode." John Romero had to specifically mention he set the level par times using a mouse which means it wasn't something many people considered. And games all the way up until Quake 1 and Thief were made with keyboard only players in mind.

So it's not as cut and dry as "mice technically existed in 1982 therefore everyone was using them for games."

You weren't alive then, but I was. We all used a mouse to play Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 1, etc... It was essential to winning at the game because they all had mouse look and required mouse aiming at the targets to hit. That's why mouse and keyboard controls got standardized to what we know today. So yes, it was cut and dry like I said. No, John Romero's comment doesn't mean that people didn't consider the mouse. We all used the mouse. There were plenty of articles about what mouse was the best etc...

Jesus you people love to make shit up to prove you are right.

 

[agentorange]

I was alive. I played point and click adventure games in the 90s with a mouse but I played Doom keyboard only.

We all used a mouse to play Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 1, etc... It was essential to winning at the game because they all had mouse look and required mouse aiming at the targets to hit. .

Objectively wrong since all of these games can be beaten keyboard only, and Doom (which I beat keyboard only again just last year) and Duke 3D had auto-aim so using the mouse for aiming was not necessary at all (in fact you don't ever aim with the mouse in Doom or Duke 3D strictly speaking because the games don't have freelook, the only thing you use the mouse for is faster strafing and more accurate movement at high speeds.) Quake 1 technically had freelook but it was a hidden mode in the original release of the game not intended for most players to be using, so again the game is perfectly beatable without a mouse.

 

[JamesDixon]

I was alive. I played point and click adventure games in the 90s with a mouse but I played Doom keyboard only.

We all used a mouse to play Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 1, etc... It was essential to winning at the game because they all had mouse look and required mouse aiming at the targets to hit. .

Objectively wrong since all of these games can be beaten keyboard only, and Doom (which I beat keyboard only again just last year) and Duke 3D had auto-aim so using the mouse for aiming was not necessary at all (in fact you don't ever aim with the mouse in Doom or Duke 3D strictly speaking because the games don't have freelook, the only thing you use the mouse for is faster strafing and more accurate movement at high speeds.) Quake 1 technically had freelook but it was a hidden mode in the original release of the game not intended for most players to be using, so again the game is perfectly beatable without a mouse.

You don't seem to know what you're talking about.

This is you moving the goal posts. I never said that those games couldn't be beaten with a keyboard only. I said that mice were bundled with computers beginning in 1982 with the release of the Logitech mouse.

Please do continue to tell the class that computers didn't come with a mouse from the earliest days of computing.

It appears that it's you that doesn't know what you are talking about which is why you had to move the goal posts and create a strawman. Bravo, did you want a cookie for it?

 

[Serus]

And yet the Ultima Underworld manual has extensive sections describing how to play the game without a mouse, and the mouse is mostly used for clicking on static menu elements rather than real time 3d navigation. Doom (which is really a dungeon crawler) was made mostly with keyboard play in mind and mouse was considered something like a "pro mode." John Romero had to specifically mention he set the level par times using a mouse which means it wasn't something many people considered. And games all the way up until Quake 1 and Thief were made with keyboard only players in mind.

So it's not as cut and dry as "mice technically existed in 1982 therefore everyone was using them for games."

Amiga 500 existed since 1985 and was shipping with a mouse. I don't thing that Workbench (that was the OS back then) could have been used without a mouse. Certainly no one did. As to explaining how to play without a mouse, sure, we also have extensive sections about how to use a mouse TODAY in some games and especially in YT tutorials to anything. Or how to copy and paste, i'm not joking. In 30 years people will claim that mouse wasn't popular in the 2010s-2020s period.

 

[JamesDixon]

And yet the Ultima Underworld manual has extensive sections describing how to play the game without a mouse, and the mouse is mostly used for clicking on static menu elements rather than real time 3d navigation. Doom (which is really a dungeon crawler) was made mostly with keyboard play in mind and mouse was considered something like a "pro mode." John Romero had to specifically mention he set the level par times using a mouse which means it wasn't something many people considered. And games all the way up until Quake 1 and Thief were made with keyboard only players in mind.

So it's not as cut and dry as "mice technically existed in 1982 therefore everyone was using them for games."

Amiga 500 existed since 1985 and was shipping with a mouse. I don't thing that Workbench (that was the OS back then) could have been used without a mouse. Certainly no one did. As to explaining how to play without a mouse, sure, we also have extensive sections about how to use a mouse TODAY in some games and especially in YT tutorials to anything. Or how to copy and paste, i'm not joking. In 30 years people will claim that mouse wasn't popular in the 2010s-2020s period.

Yup, Tandy, IBM PCs, PC Clones, etc... all came with a mouse standard starting in 1984 since many of these systems used a GUI that sat on top of DOS. Yes children, there were Graphical User Interfaces long before Bill showed up with Windows 1.0.

Next thing you know they'll be claiming that keyboards didn't exist back then.

 

[wishbonetail]

In 30 years people will claim that mouse wasn't popular in the 2010s-2020s period.

Im claimin it now. Mouse is dying. Todays UIs are developed with touchscreen in mind. Started with smartphones around 2010.

 

[JamesDixon]

And yet the Ultima Underworld manual has extensive sections describing how to play the game without a mouse, and the mouse is mostly used for clicking on static menu elements rather than real time 3d navigation. Doom (which is really a dungeon crawler) was made mostly with keyboard play in mind and mouse was considered something like a "pro mode." John Romero had to specifically mention he set the level par times using a mouse which means it wasn't something many people considered. And games all the way up until Quake 1 and Thief were made with keyboard only players in mind.

So it's not as cut and dry as "mice technically existed in 1982 therefore everyone was using them for games."

Oh speaking of John Romero...



Doom was made for Keyboard and Mouse.



Here's the Doom Manual.

You were saying that not many people considered using a mouse for playing Doom?



https://www.doomworld.com/forum/top...hat-doom-is-meant-to-be-played-keyboard-only/

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Jeffrey John Heinen
Sep 30, 1994, 9:53:36 AM

For good mouse control in a 3D perspective game, I always liked Ultima
Underworld for the PC. A cursor was displayed on the screen that
functioned as a hand to manipulate objects. To move, you held down one
of the mouse buttons and the cursor changed to an arrow. As you push the
mouse forward you move forward, and your speed is dictated by how high up
the cursor is on the screen. The speed was completely variable from slow
crawl to dead run. For turning, you moved the mouse sideways and the
arrow would bend, the more bend the faster the rate of turn. It was the
visual feedback of mouse position that made it easy to use. The problem
I get with most mouse controlled games is that I find myself
over-correcting all the time. In fact, Underworld has so far been the
only game in which mouse control was viable. For Doom, SO, PID, etc. I
always end up using the keyboard.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.mac.games/c/iRnt1wT0cqg/m/Qbm9XkZEH1IJ

 

[Asymptotics]

Guess it's settled then - the best dungeon crawler for someone new to the genre is a Logitech mouse made in 1982.