Spellcasting speed effects

[Lavandula]

By default, all spells take 1 aut to cast. Can playing with that add any variability to the game? Some ideas:

• Mutations. Something in the lines of "your hulking tongue affects articulation, making your spellcasting slower" or "your delicate and small hands make your spellcasting faster".
• Same, but as innate species ability.
• God ability. Either active (i. e. like magic Finesse) or passive reduction that rises with piety.
• Making encumbrance penalize casting speed.

[watertreatmentRL]

What you call "speed effects" are not a good thing to the extent they already exist. The game would be better and certainly cleaner if it were more straightforwardly turn-based, which is to say actions are taken according to a transparent, easy to understand schedule like what exists in board games. You take a turn, the monsters get a turn. Instead, you have crawl's wet and wild system where not only do things take an amount of game time measured in something called "auts," but the amount of "auts" they take is often randomized.

To the extent that spellcasting has resisted the bad initial instinct of playing with the amount of game time a single action takes, that's been a good thing. The right direction to go is not adding variation to the time it takes to cast spells, but to remove variation from things like the time it takes to use a weapon or the time it takes for a monster to move or attack.

[Siegurt]

What you call "speed effects" are not a good thing to the extent they already exist. The game would be better and certainly cleaner if it were more straightforwardly turn-based, which is to say actions are taken according to a transparent, easy to understand schedule like what exists in board games. You take a turn, the monsters get a turn. Instead, you have crawl's wet and wild system where not only do things take an amount of game time measured in something called "auts," but the amount of "auts" they take is often randomized.

To the extent that spellcasting has resisted the bad initial instinct of playing with the amount of game time a single action takes, that's been a good thing. The right direction to go is not adding variation to the time it takes to cast spells, but to remove variation from things like the time it takes to use a weapon or the time it takes for a monster to move or attack.

FWIW I disagree. "Cleaner" is not automatically "better" or "more fun". For me, personally, the variation of action is the most unique and interesting aspect of crawl when compared to pretty much anything else that's close to the same genre.

I do, however, agree that randomization of action speed is suboptimal generally.

[watertreatmentRL]

If Linley's Dungeon Crawl played the Muppet Babies theme when you started d:1 and I said it should be removed, within an hour I'd see a post "FWIW I disagree..." Probably get some back and forth about why crawl needs Muppet Babies according to logic.

[Lavandula]

What you call "speed effects" are not a good thing to the extent they already exist. The game would be better and certainly cleaner if it were more straightforwardly turn-based, which is to say actions are taken according to a transparent, easy to understand schedule like what exists in board games. You take a turn, the monsters get a turn. Instead, you have crawl's wet and wild system where not only do things take an amount of game time measured in something called "auts," but the amount of "auts" they take is often randomized.

Turn-based system is essentially flawed, because we live in continuous and interdependent universe. The only good thing about swapping turns is that such system is easily maintained by human. Entire history of tactical games consists in movement from exchanging simple turns to doing several things per turn, and finally - to indiscrete passage of time. Once we taught computers to do it, time passage calculations stopped being an issue. Take a look at steam statistics page, each of 10 most played games use auts in this form or another, and the first pure turn-based one in the list is Civilization V on 14th position. This clearly attests that continious time passage is a step up from gamey, brainless abstract tactics built on turn counting. In-game time management helps making better games and opens new possibilities.
There might be need for tutorial section on time passage, but that's about it for clarity.
The important thing is, auts aren't going anywhere soon. I think. So they might as well be used to increase variability.

[Shard1697]

Turn-based system is essentially flawed, because we live in continuous and interdependent universe.

Why does that mean it's flawed? Games are abstractions.

The only good thing about swapping turns is that such system is easily maintained by human.

And easily understandable and trackable by humans. Which is an incredibly big upside.

[Majang]

Without the aut principle, the whole weapon system would have to be re-arranged. All of a sudden the choice between a hand-axe and an executioner's axe would become a no-brainer throughout the game. The aut principle is the only differentiating factor that creates meaningful choices within a weapons category. And take away the auts, you would have to scrap a couple of gods (Chei, Oka, Trog, probably a couple of others) who depend on that principle. It is not going to happen. If you don't like auts, play a different game.

[ion_frigate]

Without the aut principle, the whole weapon system would have to be re-arranged. All of a sudden the choice between a hand-axe and an executioner's axe would become a no-brainer throughout the game.

Yes to the first sentence, but no the second. You could instead impose massive accuracy and damage penalties on the exec axe with insufficient skill, instead of delay penalties. Then the hand axe becomes the better choice early on. I'm not trying to say that it's necessarily a better system than aut, just pointing out there are other ways to accomplish making real choices exist.

And take away the auts, you would have to scrap a couple of gods (Chei, Oka, Trog, probably a couple of others) who depend on that principle.

I don't believe (though I could be wrong) that duvessa is proposing no speed system, just a greatly simplified one. For example, you could make it so that every action takes one turn, two turns, or half a turn. Chei, Oka, and Trog pretty much get fixed right there. Having .5, 1, and 2x speed is what Brogue does, and while Brogue has lots of other issues, its speed system is not one of them.

And yes, I know that Haste/Slow were originally 2x/.5x speed, and were nerfed because Haste was too strong. But now that it's a much more limited-availability effect, I think double-speed Haste would be a lot less of a problem.

[Siegurt]

If Linley's Dungeon Crawl played the Muppet Babies theme when you started d:1 and I said it should be removed, within an hour I'd see a post "FWIW I disagree..." Probably get some back and forth about why crawl needs Muppet Babies according to logic.

I have to assume that if Crawl played the muppet babies theme at the start of D:1, that you would not have been interested enough in it to play long enough to post anything about it on any forum anywhere... (Indeed, I strongly suspect if Crawl did play the Muppet babies theme at the start of D:1, there wouldn't have been a large enough following to generate the interest needed to create a forum, or any kind of open source development contribution at all)

[Majang]

@Siegurt: You probably have never heard of the Brony community, where exactly this did happen, just not based on Muppet Babies, but on My Little Pony. It's an interesting phenomenon.

[Siegurt]

@Siegurt: You probably have never heard of the Brony community, where exactly this did happen, just not based on Muppet Babies, but on My Little Pony. It's an interesting phenomenon.

I
I have in fact heard of them, I actually know more about bronies than I care to, and your suggestion is completely and totally misses the point.

[Majang]

I don't recall that I suggested anything. Calm down.

[Siegurt]

I don't recall that I suggested anything. Calm down.

Well, you suggested that "exactly this did happen", what the "this" is unclear, however by referencing bronies, you seemed to imply that somehow adult males who seeming-inappropriately enjoy a television show marked towards young girls is related to the playing of the muppet babies theme at the start of a dungeon crawl game. The only inference I could draw is that you presumed I was saying that it was inappropriate based on either gender or maturity for someone to like the muppet babies theme song.

My point (the one that you missed entirely) was not that, it was instead that cramming *any* song at the beginning of a dungeon crawl game would be annoying, but doubly so for a song like the muppet babies theme, which has a very shrill sound and extremely off-topic theme. I also alluded that playing the muppet babies theme at the start of each crawl game was probably not something that would make people want to play dungeon crawl (in particular not watermelon_rl, who seemingly made it clear that he would find such a feature abhorrent, as would I, frankly)

I was simply stating that attempting to relate the actual point of my statment in any way to the bronies phenomenon demonstrates a lack of understanding of what i was trying to say, since the apparent dissonance created by the bronies is wholly unrelated to it, even at an allegorical level.

It'd be as if I said "I like potatoes" and you responded by saying "Well, I bet you never saw a mermaid!" Whether or not your response was true or false has nothing whatsoever to do with the original statement, that's what i meant by "you totally missed the point"

I'm also not excited or in any particular way not-calm.

[Majang]

Okay. Please believe me that I did not intend at all to draw wrong inferences to what you originally said. I have to admit, to begin with, that I do not know the Muppet Babies theme song. My apologies.

[watertreatmentRL]

Interestingly, the argument that fractional time makes crawl unique among roguelikes is totally incorrect, while it would actually be true for the Muppet Babies theme. It's instructive to suss out these kinds of hypotheticals. Gives a feel for how seriously arguments that proceed from notions like "uniqueness" should be taken.

[Airwolf]

Feature request: Muppet Babies D:1 uniques and/or entry vault!!!

(This is not intended to antagonize Siegurt. I found this to be a hilarious non sequitur.)

[luckless]

Without the aut principle, the whole weapon system would have to be re-arranged. All of a sudden the choice between a hand-axe and an executioner's axe would become a no-brainer throughout the game.

Yes to the first sentence, but no the second. You could instead impose massive accuracy and damage penalties on the exec axe with insufficient skill, instead of delay penalties. Then the hand axe becomes the better choice early on. I'm not trying to say that it's necessarily a better system than aut, just pointing out there are other ways to accomplish making real choices exist.

Or just give a chance to automatically miss if your delay was greater than 10 auts, and a chance to attack twice (or more) if your delay was less, so that your expected damage over time was the same. (This is already pretty much how Wu Jian attacks work.)

You'd still have to do something about different movement speeds, though.

[ion_frigate]

You could theoretically apply the pattern you just mentioned to movement as well, although it would look weird and be confusing (since, for example, a speed 15 monster could conceivably take 4 single steps in a row, or could sprint across with four double steps - both are reasonably probable).

Honestly I think just making everything .5x/1x/2x speed would be a better solution. Even though your solution works reasonably well for weapon attacks, I still think it'd be better if we could only have three speeds for weapons, instead of dozens.