Message Improvements

Revise or remove “This raw flesh tastes terrible”. “This raw flesh tastes terrible” is the message which follows the consumption of a meat chunk if the consumer is not a Carnivore or Gourmand.

It is my understanding the phrase is worded this way

• to imply you gain less nutrition than from eating a meat ration.
• to imply you are not a carnivore or gourmand

This message is misleading because:

1. The use of “raw” implies the flesh can potentially be “not raw”. This is likely why some new players attempt to find a way to cook meat chunks and others request the ability to cook meat chunks. By removing “raw”, you curb potential future confusion, which is confirmed past confusion.
2. “raw” is an unnecessary adjective. It adds nothing else.
3. “tastes terrible” implies the player shouldn't be eating meat chunks when, in fact, eating meat chunks, while not necessarily encouraged, is essential for most players, including those to whom it would “taste terrible”. If it is intended to imply the meat chunk imparts less nutrition than a meat ration, then say so on the greater description page for the item, not in a message repeated hundreds of times per game.
4. “tastes terrible” also implies the taste can be improved, when it cannot.

Proposal to revise the message as follows:

1. Remove the phrase entirely for non-Carnivores, non-Vegetarians, non-Gourmands. Alternately, if the intent is to imply there is less nutrition and you feel the player must be reminded of this every single time of the thousand times per game he eats a meat chunk, rephrase it to “You would prefer something more nutritious” or similar.
2. Leave whatever positive phrase is used when consuming a meat chunk as a Gourmand or Carnivore alone.
3. Leave whatever negative phrase is used when consuming a meat chunk as a Vegetarian alone.

This change request would do well to have all possible current phrases listed below.

Tavern Threads: Thread 1, Thread 2

There's a new option to combine different messages into one line (disable with msg_condense_short=false). Please list message combinations that were joined but shouldn't be.

• Death Messages (You Die) are currently being quashed onto the line of the action which results in death.

I rather like it this way, actually; it seems fitting that the game considers the player's death to be something of an afterthought. — og17 2010-03-09 04:21

• You have reached Level X can have other messages put after it (eg, “Your demonic ancestry asserts itself…” is put on the same line after the level up messages), it would seem that level up messages are important to warrant their own line, all the time.

— cryptic 2010-02-08 16:49

• This is a scroll of identify! o - a ring of see invisible (left hand)
• add more

• add more

• tgw wants a way to customise a list of messages to condense.
  • Two things to do: a) make up some interface for how this should work (pairs of regexps?) b) make a patch — rob 2010-03-08 16:36

• Change messages for elemental spells as follows: Instead of “The bolt of fire hits the goblin” instead print “The bolt of fire burns the goblin”. Then, the verb can be adjusted according to the monster's resistance:
  • “The bolt of fire has no effect on the orb of fire.”
  • “The bolt of fire (singes|slightly burns) the dragon.” - first sounds better, second is clearer
  • “The bolt of fire (scorches|somewhat burns) the fire drake!” - as above, clarity vs brevity
  • “The bolt of fire burns the mummy terribly!”

And for cold

• “The bolt of cold freezes the goblin!”
• “The bolt of cold has no effect on the Ice Fiend.”
• “The bolt of cold barely cools the white imp.”
• “The bolt of cold chills the mummy!”
• “The bolt of cold grotesquely freezes the imp!” (probably a better adjective there)

And shock

• “The bolt of lightning has no effect on the ball lightning.”
• “The bolt of lightning electrocutes the wizard!”
• “The bolt of lightning mildly tingles the pit fiend.” (I don't believe there are any elec+ monsters, but if I'm wrong, “shocks” is an appropriate verb for them.)

This has one huge benefit: the ambiguous ”<Monster> resists” messages can be removed, not only making it clearer (it is not at all an unreasonable assumption to think ”<Monster> resists” implies the monster took no damage) but also less message-spammy. As for partially-resistible spells, their messages can be left as-is. That removal of <foo resists> for partially-resisted spells makes <foo partially resists> clearer in meaning (i.e. there was an irresistible component. And <monster resists> will be reserved purely for things to do with MR. -IonFrigate

I think this is great, but the problem with variety is that lua scripts tend to be reliant on particular, unchanging messages or message parts to identify occurrences. — XuaXua 2012-02-07 16:36

Are there any scripts that would need to identify ”<Monster> resists”? Up until a few days ago this message could refer to three different things: failed displacement, (completely) resisted hex, resisted elemental spell. It can still refer to two messages. So it seems unlikely any script would use that particular message. As for the messages referring to the particular type of attack, that part is unchanged - i.e., any time a bolt of lightning is around, the string “bolt of lightning” will still appear somewhere. -IonFrigate

• Add the name of the spell you memorized to the string You finish memorizing. Spell assigned to 'c'.
• An option to make a line break (-more-) appear if you take heavy damage in one turn or a lot over time. I know I'm dumb and impatient for dying like that, but it would be nice.
• There should be an option to show EXP gained after each monster slain message, another option to show EXP remaining till level after each kill
  • Monster EXP is pretty static, changed only by draining, ghoul feeding and some shapeshifting/polymorph shenanigans (allies exping is irrelevant here). Repeating the same number over and over you can check in a table would be of little use. — KiloByte 2011-06-23 11:07
• Option to have the message area on the top or the bottom of the screen
  • Possibly with a view towards making the entire interface configurable
• Adding the - early (to indicate messages from previous turns) is nice, but needs to only be added on actual turns. Right now, moving into walls causes it to happen.
• New messages should always show up on the bottom of the message area, and scroll up from there (rather than the first few messages showing up at the top until the message area fills up
• The message area shouldn't clear after full-screen messagea are shown and things like that
  • Perhaps it should also be preserved across saves, like the ^P window is now - this isn't quite trivial because the message area includes prompts, which shouldn't show up in ^P (maybe prompts shouldn't actually be a part of the message area history?)
    • I would really appreciate it if prompts would show up in ^P, it's useful context. — sorear 2009-11-27 03:26
• Maybe we could have old messages and new messages be differentiated by background color? this may be too ugly, but it could help (foreground color should always remain the same)
• There was the idea of indicating every turn without a message by an additional - in the same line. It was dismissed almost immediately but for players who don't see the turn counter, it would be useful: resting would have a visual, bar-type display. — dpeg 2009-11-27 19:03
• show wound levels (lightly, moderate,…) for monsters seen in the status bar; this way I would not have to waste time to x (examine) them multiple times to decide whether to keep fighting or run. It is useful especially when fighting multiple monsters.