Feature Request: Create These Zombies?

[bcadren]

When you use Fedhas Madash's Reproduction ability; you get a nice display that shows where the spores will be created. Can we get the same for Raise Dead? (Both from Yredelemnul and the Spell) It's annoying not knowing if the spell will have an effect. [Corpses aren't usually on the top of the pile for an intelligent enemy's drops, so it's hard to know. [See a Weapon or an armour that may become a zombie; not a corpse.]

Start to cast the spell. Shows either "No zombies to create." (forbid casting spell) or "Create these zombies? [Y/N]" with a display of the new zombie tiles spawned. Then cast the spell and check fail rate, etc. Big improvement on wasting MP and a turn when it can't do anything; because you didn't know it couldn't do anything.

[twelwe]

we [should do] can do this (if the right motivation is there [anyone motivated to do this] sufficient to get the devs involved [feedback important though first]) (agree/disagree?)

[Sar]

I think that AD could use a some kind of prompt/message if there are no corpses in LoS, but I would hate using it if it was asking me if I really want to cast it with corpses in sight, because in an average game with AD I cast AD a lot and answering some silly prompt every time would kind of suck.

[twelwe]

It would save turns though. I think this should go in immediately, and to everyone who agrees: i agree also

[Berder]

I think this is not needed. It's only 3 MP, which is not a lot to waste. And honestly casting it with no corpses to raise does not happen that often. I suppose if you knew whether it would have an effect you could use the strategy of casting it in the middle of combat for every new corpse.

There's nothing so horribly wrong with not being able to use that strategy as much. Not knowing how many corpses are around just alters the strategy of how to use the spell, slightly, and that's not a bad thing.

If something like this was done, I think it should only give a Y/N prompt if there are no corpses in LOS. Otherwise it would be annoying to have an extra keypress every time you cast it.

[jejorda2]

Make it work like Hibernation or Dispel Undead: "There are no applicable targets in range: use Z to cast anyway."

[Arrhythmia]

Make it work like Hibernation or Dispel Undead: "There are no applicable targets in range: use Z to cast anyway."

Considering there's no such thing as an invisible corpse, if there are no corpses in sight, it should just refuse to cast.

[bcadren]

I mostly suggested the confirmation showing which zombies and their placement because...it being useful DURING BATTLE (when living enemies are visible) would depend on how many corpses there were in range to animate. [IE using it to animate one Orc during a fight with a Warlord on Orc: 4 would be a waste of a turn and MP. Using it to animate 9 might turn the tide of the battle.]

[bel]

If you type Ctrl-x, you can see all items (including corpses) in LoS.

[wheals]

i have bcadren on ignore, so I'm not actually sure what the suggestion was, but at some point i implemented a thing where, if you had no visible corpses in LOS, you couldn't cast Animate Dead with 'z'; you could use 'Z' since there might be corpses under other items. it was pretty unpopular, since in most combats there end up being corpses under items (so i reverted it)

[PleasingFungus]

basically there are a few choices for abilities/spells that affect corpses in LOS

(0) don't preview the affected corpses at all (current functionality) - not ideal because it's annoying as hell
(1) abort when there are no visible corpses (wheals' z functionality) - as discussed, works poorly when corpses are automatically moved to the bottom of stacks)
(2) check success/fail (against spell success / ability success rate) before displaying a set of affected corpses (the old fedhas reproduction solution) - not ideal, since you can see the 'targeter', cancel out to check your inventory or w/e, re-activate the ability, and lose your turn when the ability fails
(3) display affected corpses before success/fail (current fedhas reproduction approach, as of daa30c611e ) - not ideal, since in principle this is an information leak, so the Hypothetical Optimal Player is encouraged to spam the ability just to see where there are hidden corpses. it's Free Information

all of these have problems. I'm most of a fan of (3), since I am not a fan of stack items being hidden information at all, but (2) is probably more consistent with the Crawl Philosophy.

anyway, I'm retired, so it's not my problem

[bcadren]

since in most combats there end up being corpses under items (so i reverted it)

Fact that they are under items keeps you from knowing if the spell will have an effect is the problem. O_0;

[gammafunk]

Corpses are under items because corpses (and skeletons) are immobile and have to be at the bottom of a stack of items. We don't show information about items under the top item in item piles that the player hasn't visited because it basically would encourage xv or ctrl-X every time an enemy died. With the current system you can only see what's on top in LOS,and ctrl-X and xv only give you details of this top item (until you visit the pile, after which you can see see everything with ctrl-X). So if you see carrion (corpse or skeleton) in a pile, you know there's only more carrion underneath. If dcss were a more mouse-driven game perhaps with a slicker UI, I wouldn't be surprised if we did just always show all pile information, like PleasingFungus suggested. But you don't have the mouse at all in console or WebTiles.

Leaking information just about carrion only perhaps isn't so bad, so maybe a prompt where you only ever hit enter or escape would be ok. Like Sar said, when you use the spell, you tend to use it a lot (unlike Fedhas' Reproduction ability), so it has to be really unobtrusive.

[Berder]

basically there are a few choices for abilities/spells that affect corpses in LOS

(0) don't preview the affected corpses at all (current functionality) - not ideal because it's annoying as hell
(1) abort when there are no visible corpses (wheals' z functionality) - as discussed, works poorly when corpses are automatically moved to the bottom of stacks)
(2) check success/fail (against spell success / ability success rate) before displaying a set of affected corpses (the old fedhas reproduction solution) - not ideal, since you can see the 'targeter', cancel out to check your inventory or w/e, re-activate the ability, and lose your turn when the ability fails
(3) display affected corpses before success/fail (current fedhas reproduction approach, as of daa30c611e ) - not ideal, since in principle this is an information leak, so the Hypothetical Optimal Player is encouraged to spam the ability just to see where there are hidden corpses. it's Free Information

all of these have problems. I'm most of a fan of (3), since I am not a fan of stack items being hidden information at all, but (2) is probably more consistent with the Crawl Philosophy.

anyway, I'm retired, so it's not my problem

There's a fourth option: if there are no corpses in sight even under stacks, the spell will refuse to cast. I believe this is what Arrhythmia suggested and I think it is the best option aside from keeping the current behavior.

[PleasingFungus]

There's a fourth option: if there are no corpses in sight even under stacks, the spell will refuse to cast. I believe this is what Arrhythmia suggested and I think it is the best option aside from keeping the current behavior.

what advantages does that offer over (3)? it has the exact same problems (information leak), so I'm not sure why you think it's better...

[Siegurt]

There's a fourth option: if there are no corpses in sight even under stacks, the spell will refuse to cast. I believe this is what Arrhythmia suggested and I think it is the best option aside from keeping the current behavior.

what advantages does that offer over (3)? it has the exact same problems (information leak), so I'm not sure why you think it's better...

The information leak here is really that you don't know in advance that corpses were dropped for creatures who were carrying equipment, but only if there was already things in the square where they died or if they were carrying more than one bit of equipment (You can tell if there's a second item under the top one, so if the creature only had one item and there's two items in a pile one must be a corpse)

Also oddly, prior to corpses not being pick-upable, they always generated on top, so it used to be always known if creatures dropped corpses, this is a newly-obfuscated bit of information.

It's actually fairly non-intuitive that you can't tell if a corpse dropped without walking over to the square in which it dropped, whereas you always can know if a creature had equipment before it died (even if you can't see the rest of the equipment after it died until you walk over to the square)

So my first question is, why is "this creature dropped a corpse" a hidden bit of information in the first place?

[treerex5]

Make it work like Hibernation or Dispel Undead: "There are no applicable targets in range: use Z to cast anyway."

Change that to:
Make it work like Hibernation or Dispel Undead: "There are no applicable targets in range: use Z to cast anyway like a moron and waste your MP and a turn for no reason."

[cerebovssquire]

Invsible enemies exist...

[Berder]

There's a fourth option: if there are no corpses in sight even under stacks, the spell will refuse to cast. I believe this is what Arrhythmia suggested and I think it is the best option aside from keeping the current behavior.

what advantages does that offer over (3)? it has the exact same problems (information leak), so I'm not sure why you think it's better...

Primarily, fewer keystrokes. (3) would involve a second keystroke to confirm, on every cast. Arrhythmia's (4) would involve no additional keystrokes.

Invsible enemies exist...

Invisible enemies leave visible corpses, so it would make sense to be able to see a corpse falling out of midair.

[cerebovssquire]

What? I was replying to treerex5 because I thought they were implying that there was no reason to cast DU/EH with Z.

[Berder]

What? I was replying to treerex5 because I thought they were implying that there was no reason to cast DU/EH with Z.

oh