Option: auto ascent / descent when touching town edges, wilderness edges and stairs

[dennis-roof]

I think auto-descending and auto-ascending stairs would be inconvenient for any advanced player, but still helpful for new players trying out the game and still learning the many keybindings. Auto-ascending on touch could also apply when touching town edges and wilderness edges.

[DGoldDragon28]

I don't quite understand what you intend here: please clarify.

[dennis-roof]

I would like to introduce an option that will make Unangband more accessible to people familiar with modern graphical roguelikes, but unfamiliar with the Angband keybindings. There are a lot of unfamiliar keybindings to learn for them and they might not be used to reading manual pages, looking up and memorizing multiple keybinding. Though if they experience enough unique parts of the game, they might want to put more effort into looking up and memorizing keybindings that would advance them in the game. So for this target group, the goal would be to have them experience enough of the game to get them invested.

One way to do that is to minimize the keybindings necessary to get to the wilderness, to the first dungeon and experience the first level. Walking is essential and arrow keys are a common keybinding in games. Keys < and > for moving between areas and levels are not common keybindings outside Angband variants, so I propose to not to have to use them for new players, at least until they experienced the first dungeon level.

What I propose is to have the option to ascent and descent stairs when touching the < and > symbols on the map. Also, to move from the first town to the next area, the player could walk to the edge of the town and touch the edge instead of typing < to get the option to travel to the next wilderness area. This option would be useful even to people who choose the starting option "played roguelikes before", because The Binding of Isaac and FTL are also very popular roguelikes that do not use the Angband keybindings. So having played roguelikes before today is no guarantee that the player actually knows the keybindings. Most likely they don't.

That narrative sidebar that explains all important on-screen characters in real-time might also be very helpful for this target group. Within the Angband community, sure it's unnecessary or maybe even unwanted. But outside the Angband community within (for example) the Steam roguelike gamers group, this could really help them out and increase the chance of them picking up and playing the game. It depends on who you want to promote Unangband to.