[Whining]So what's the point...

[Sar]

...of gutting book descriptions again?

Was:

  Code:

A student's primer to the magic arts of Transmutations, with many lavish
illustrations from the school's early experimental history:
half-wizard-half-Spiders, wizards with Blade Noses, or beaked tentacles instead
of legs. The text is full of reassurances that this kind of thing doesn't
happen anymore.

Now:

  Code:

A student's primer to the magic arts of Transmutations.

Wow, this is so much better, serious game for serious gamers amirite? Can't let silly things like that to distract the players from making Deep Tactical Decisions™ the game is famous for!

[Malevolent]

Yeah, I loved reading the spellbook descriptions and see absolutely no point in this.

[duvessa]

The point is to improve the flavour. Sometimes that means removing adjectives and bad jokes.

[Malevolent]

The point is to improve the flavour. Sometimes that means removing adjectives and bad jokes.

I do not think this change improved the flavor - quite the opposite.

[Sar]

bad jokes

you would know a lot about those wouldn't you

[dpeg]

Wow, this is so much better, serious game for serious gamers amirite? Can't let silly things like that to distract the players from making Deep Tactical Decisions™ the game is famous for!

The current style is higly no-frills, and to the point. Myself, I have a penchant for the more flowery old style. But I don't think it is a problem. Flavour should really come through gameplay -- whenever you have to resort to printing text, it's secondary flavour at best. So in my opinion, hydras (head growth and cauterising) is excellent flavour, because it works through game mechanics; Crazy Yiuf (speech lines, confused speech, hammer/club infestation) is so-so flavour (still funny); monster/item descriptions are almost invisible flavour.

In other words, I wouldn't have changed this myself, but I think it's good that someone (Marvin) spends the time and effort to streamline and improve the descriptions.

Also: every Crawl player is entitled to complain about changes for every release. We do what we can!

[Sprucery]

Damn, the spellbook descriptions are excellent flavour. Bring back the old more verbose descriptions!

Also implement a flavourful description generator for creating verbose descriptions for randart books!

[dynast]

Also implement a flavourful description generator for creating verbose descriptions for randart books!

And please use Cerekov for that.

[TeshiAlair]

I think if we're going to be trimming off flavor for common items, which seems utterly unnecessary but I can sorta see it why it would be done, there should be something to generate pseudorandom descriptions for randarts and misc books to emphasize their uniqueness. After all, it's not like it's something you see every game, and it's fun in the same way that ironic artefact names are fun.

[crate]

someonepa was short of his removal quota so he's trying to count removing words toward it

[Sar]

I mean, I'm not even one of those people who are against removals in principle. I've been a proponent of a few of those in the past. I just think this particular one makes Crawl a worse game. But that's only my opinion and I don't expect any change to be reverted because of it. Hence, "whining".

In other words, I wouldn't have changed this myself

why can't you just come back already and make Crawl great, again

you can remove halflings and add playable medusas while you're at it

[dpeg]

Sar: I've seen the future, and it looks bleak. Double yuck!

[dowan]

Yeah.. I know some of the flavor descriptions in books made it sound like bad things might actually happen if you used them, so I can see trimming those to make it clearer.

In this case, it was just a humorous description. Little things like that make the game charming, just like the silly description for the triple sword, etc. I know the idea of a half fish, half human whose legs can sense the presence of water and turn into a tail wielding a sword with 3 blades ruins an otherwise perfectly realistic game for some, but I think most people appreciate the little touches.

I also get saying you don't want to waste the dev time to write up those silly little blurbs. But in this case, the work was already done and someone took the time to undo it. There's no logical reason for it!

If silliness and bad jokes don't belong in crawl, then explain to me why death cobs and curse toes are still in the game.

Also, the book of battle description now states it contains songs, even though it has spells called spells in other books. And there's no songcraft skill, clearly this is going to confuse everyone and ruin the game forever!

To quote the infinitely wise Ongett's enlightened words: "Stupid devs stupid remove!"

[pumpyscump]

Until reading this topic, I had no idea that all the spellbooks I've been using contain paragraphs of fluff text.

[ydeve]

I'm a proponent of removing unnecessary-but-flavorful details that affect gameplay, but the book descriptions don't affect gameplay at all and are quite fun. Please bring them back.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Some descriptions are woefully empty, and some are indeed way excessive, but this old one was just about right, like a few others, and consistently good descriptions are what would prompt people to read more of them. Maybe tweak the early experiment jokes?

  Code:

wizards with Blade Penors; an unpopular hat-to-bat spell; the infamous Arachne.

[yesno]

agree with sar, that was a fine description, low hanging fruit worth a little smile from a new player, and in any case we're all already big nerds here, we don't need to get embarrassed and try to save face by purging any harrypotterism we see

[wizzzargh]

whose legs can sense the presence of water

To be fair, my legs can do this too

[HisMajestyBOB]

This makes me sad. I always read the info text for all items.
I miss the bazillion varieties of fruit for the same reason. Sure, they filled your inventory, but each had a unique description and usually a quote (though I don't miss the fruit descriptions enough to want all of them back).

[Sprucery]

FR: each time you view fruit, you get a random description of a piece of fruit.

[Cheibrodos]

This makes me sad. I always read the info text for all items.
I miss the bazillion varieties of fruit for the same reason. Sure, they filled your inventory, but each had a unique description and usually a quote (though I don't miss the fruit descriptions enough to want all of them back).

I miss the snozzcumber most of all. Oh, to have that putrid green cumbersplooge drip down the corners of my lips one more time...

[duvessa]

ok fine you win. for crawl 0.19 we're writing erotic my little pony fanfiction for all spellbook descriptions

[ololoev]

Also implement a flavourful description generator for creating verbose descriptions for randart books!

Awesome idea! Gotta implement that in Java and see how it would work!

[adozu]

dccs: dungeon crawl choko soup.

bland.

[Sar]

ok fine you win. for crawl 0.19 we're writing erotic my little pony fanfiction for all spellbook descriptions

oh no! reductio ad absurdum! whatever shall we dooo!

[Malevolent]

ok fine you win. for crawl 0.19 we're writing erotic my little pony fanfiction for all spellbook descriptions

I'd prefer Harry Potter femslash myself, but I'll compromise.

[ZipZipskins]

boop beep

these descriptions are not beep utilitarian enough it would be best if they were gone beep boop

beep while we are at it rename xtahua to fire dragon plus and rename Roxanne to boop travel exclusion beep

beep boop

[duvessa]

it's hard for me to take this complaint seriously when you're pointing at spellbook descriptions that are so bad in the first place. the one in the OP reads like something from a 10 year old boy's rpg maker game. the whole point of purging these descriptions is to improve the flavour, not "remove flavour" (how that's even supposed to be possible is beyond me) and the idea that there's some campaign to "streamline" crawl is nonsense in the first place, because equally ridiculous descriptions are added all the time, nevermind all the new mechanics/monsters/items/spells that show up with every version.

[dowan]

Aside from the seemingly random capitalization, what was wrong with the description in the OP? It's a humorous glimpse at the silly things that might happen if such magic were real.

[Sar]

can't wait to see the kind of deep and thoughtful flavour that will replace the puerile crap that was purged

what happens to one who kills the monsters? was player the bad guy all along? what if it's all in their head? can they be assured of the reality of their existence and experiences? did they actually have any choice? if tomb is a womb and zot:5 has lungs, then why is the orb of zot located between lungs, is that a tumour? is the game a metaphor for cancer?

so many exciting possibilities to make an old and busted dungeon crawling game into a true masterpiece of game narratives

[Sar]

the one in the OP reads like something from a 10 year old boy's rpg maker game

I thought you liked Undertale

[duvessa]

hey now don't equate game maker with rpg maker

[yesno]

crawl, a dungeon game with pretty elves, evil toes, zombie corn, evil clowns, a goblin that throws other goblins, three-bladed swords, and pizza just lying around on the ground. a description that reads like something from a 10-year-old boy's rpg maker game is totally appropriate. lets not put on airs now.

[adozu]

no i'm pretty sure crawl is a mature game, we have alistair's intoxication after all.

[Pereza0]

Looks like the new dragon hide descriptions make no mention of the fact they can be turned into proper armour unlike the old ones??

Jokes and flavour aside, this should be reverted or fixed. Or is this mentioned elsewhere for all hides?

[PleasingFungus]

Looks like the new dragon hide descriptions make no mention of the fact they can be turned into proper armour unlike the old ones??

Jokes and flavour aside, this should be reverted or fixed. Or is this mentioned elsewhere for all hides?

It's automagically added.

[Sar]

I guess whining does work sometimes! Or maybe that was the plan all along, and I just overreacted as usual. Either way, new book descriptions:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commitdiff;h=139b6001410bddc6b2c9deaea226cd4fe41a6394;hp=3b92f7b4791db4e86ecf4124b5c325e329866b52

I really like some of the new ones. Thanks, PleasingFungus!

[dpeg]

I wanted to thank PF (which is impossible because he doesn't post here). Then I wanted to at least mention how his nice commit could reinforce Sar's whining tendencies. Now I see you already made the link!

By the way, descriptions (monsters, items, spells, branches etc.) are easy to do -- everyone can contribute here. Admittedly, it'd be good to have some form of guideline. With some luck, there'll be one in the future.

[dowan]

Hey, that's great. And I see the atrocious grammar has been cleaned up.

"The somniloquent utterings of a famed mystic, using uniquely bizarre imagery
and cryptic digressions to describe spells drawn from the mystic's visions."

Funny that the tavern software marks somniloquent and utterings as non-words. I guess you're succeeding in your goal of teaching new words, the first student apparently should be the spell check software here

[crate]

uh, I think that's your browser's spellcheck

[duvessa]

noooooooooooooooo

[ZipZipskins]

Hahaha! Eat it! Things get described! Haha!

[Reptisaurus]

This is the happiest day of my life.

[PleasingFungus]

I guess whining does work sometimes! Or maybe that was the plan all along, and I just overreacted as usual.

Pretty much (:

Glad you like the new descriptions!

[scorpionwarrior]

ok fine you win. for crawl 0.19 we're writing erotic my little pony fanfiction for all spellbook descriptions