The Tavern

I mean yeah Lightning Bolt says "you hear a mighty crack of thunder!" or something when you cast it, but there's nothing to really signal to new players that "this spell you just cast is as loud as a scroll of noise". The game doesn't have an awful lot of feedback on how much noise you're making, so without consulting a third party source new players will never really learn that lightning bolt is extremely loud, or that mephitic cloud is as loud and explodey as a fireball.

Seconded. When I was getting into the game the notion of noise wasn't something I could even tell was a thing, let alone know how to control. It took a long time and lurking here to finally get it.

You don't need to consult any third-party sources. It's right in the spell description, which you see when you look at the spell in its book. Note the Extremely loud noise level.

Code:: Lightning Bolt Fires a mighty bolt of lightning. It inflicts less damage than other similar bolts, but its damage partially bypasses armour and it can be bounced off walls to hit targets twice. Level: 5 Schools: Conjuration/Air Fail: 100% Power : #......... Range : @--->... Hunger: ######. Noise : Extremely loud This spell will have no effect right now because you don't have enough magic.

amalloy wrote:You don't need to consult any third-party sources. It's right in the spell description, which you see when you look at the spell in its book. Note the Extremely loud noise level.

Code:
Lightning Bolt Fires a mighty bolt of lightning. It inflicts less damage than other similar bolts, but its damage partially bypasses armour and it can be bounced off walls to hit targets twice. Level: 5 Schools: Conjuration/Air Fail: 100% Power : #......... Range : @--->... Hunger: ######. Noise : Extremely loud This spell will have no effect right now because you don't have enough magic.

I've been meaning to make a GDD thread for this for a while, but the I screen has an empty column that would be perfect for a "loudness" description or some-such.

DO IIIIIIT

I don't see any empty columns?

It's probably even tighter for Ignite Poison, which is Transmutation/Fire/Poison.

PleasingFungus wrote:I don't see any empty columns?

There's space between Type and Failure for everything except like, triple school spells.

e: Thanks Doesn't. If there were to be a short, 3 character, form for each spell schol (Conjurations -> Cnj, Necromancy -> Ncr, etc) you could cut down the longest strings to 11 characters which should be enough room.

Arrhythmia wrote:There's space between Type and Failure for everything except like, triple school spells.

e: Thanks Doesn't. If there were to be a short, 3 character, form for each spell schol (Conjurations -> Cnj, Necromancy -> Ncr, etc) you could cut down the longest strings to 11 characters which should be enough room.

that's spelltype_short_name(), which is used in a few places. (most notable is probably Ru's Sacrifice Arcana.)

could work, anyway. patches welcome.

Another good thing would be making really loud spells not really loud.

goodcoolguy wrote:Another good thing would be making really loud spells not really loud.

Why?

1. Loud noise leads to degenerate gameplay through excessive kiting and luring.

2. Noise mechanics are spoilery in that it is valuable to have knowledge of them beyond what is readily available through normal play. This is especially true of loud noises.

3. Loud noise is not needed to maintain balance of spells. These loud direct damage spells are not even the best way to kill things if you only use magic, but they sure make the most noise.

PleasingFungus wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:There's space between Type and Failure for everything except like, triple school spells.

e: Thanks Doesn't. If there were to be a short, 3 character, form for each spell schol (Conjurations -> Cnj, Necromancy -> Ncr, etc) you could cut down the longest strings to 11 characters which should be enough room.

that's spelltype_short_name(), which is used in a few places. (most notable is probably Ru's Sacrifice Arcana.)

could work, anyway. patches welcome.

Patch uploaded to mantis.

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=10635

Spoiler: show

(I thought about coloring the spell noise descriptions, but my gut instinct is that we don't want to scare new players off from learning/casting things based on noise, so I left the noise descriptions uncolored.)

I also feel that spell noise should be toned down a bit. It's mostly a relatively spoilery inconvenience.

goodcoolguy wrote:1. Loud noise leads to degenerate gameplay through excessive kiting and luring.

2. Noise mechanics are spoilery in that it is valuable to have knowledge of them beyond what is readily available through normal play. This is especially true of loud noises.

3. Loud noise is not needed to maintain balance of spells. These loud direct damage spells are not even the best way to kill things if you only use magic, but they sure make the most noise.

prob true of direct damage spells but meph cloud is often the best way to kill things on a lot of wizards ime and it would be a much better spell without making so much noise

Yeah, I mean like fireball, lightning bolt, and some others.

I agree that the noise system is rather opaque, but it also produces a lot of interesting situations. I'd rather improve the UI for it than remove the system.

winning qazlal for the first time proved to me that noise matters. I never really noticed it before.

Hirsch I wrote:winning qazlal for the first time proved to me that noise matters. I never really noticed it before.

No, it proves noise does not matter. "Noise matters" would be proved if you lost

well I guess since crawl is winnable it is clear that nothing in it matters

Sar wrote:well since crawl is winnable it is clear that nothing in it matters

I think it is enough to lose a single character to noise to prove that noise matters. Winning other characters with noise proves nothing, maybe they were too OP.
It's like saying alcohol and smoking are not bad because Churchill lived 91 year while drinking and smoking often. Who knows, maybe he would live 150 years without that.

But you can clearly see the results of noise in your game being more difficult to win than a game without Qazlal.

The Tavern

Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description

Re: Really loud spells should mention noise in description