DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce


If you are interested in helping with tiles, vaults, patches or documentation, this is the place for that.

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Post Saturday, 1st October 2011, 13:24

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Mychaelh wrote:I can't make sence out of double and triple swords.


Image

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Post Saturday, 1st October 2011, 13:49

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:Image


:lol:

FR: An unrandart "The Triple Sword of Gilette".

Then next year, a new unrandart "The Quadruple Sword of Gilette".

The year after, a new unrandart "The Quintuple Sword of Gilette".

(Of course, they all stop working after a while, and you have to buy new blades at great expense which you cannot actually find in any shop).

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Post Saturday, 1st October 2011, 14:07

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Thanks to MarvinPa for explanation. A curse to nicolea and murma for being khasaric s..t.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 1st October 2011, 16:27

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Finishing up the quotes patch today, don't freak out if the monsters tab looks like it is missing rows! That's called a filter!
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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 16:05

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Mychaelh wrote:I can't make sence out of double and triple swords.

I myself always imagine a double sword as a single sword that, if you press a small button, can "split" in two -- each one with its own blade (which is actually a half-blade of the full sword) and its own handle (one being solid, the other one being hollow -- the wouldn't fit in each other in the other case). So you basically get to fight with two rather thin but still sharp swords -- but you still can use it as a plain sword, so this is a one-and-a-half-handed weapon.
A triple sword, as I imagine, is just as double sword -- only that when you split it, it somewhy splits into three blades, and you do not need to hold the third blade, because it strikes on its own, obeying to your fighter reflexes. I imagine it floating above the fighter's head, always ready to chop off an opponent's head.
If you find any mistakes or typos in my post, feel free to PM me about it. Thanks in advance!

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Through each ripple and wave...
Through every living being...
The Verse binds us all as one.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 18:21

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Mychaelh wrote:I can't make sence out of double and triple swords.


Tiles has you covered:

Image Image

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 18:40

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Hey, triple swords are just a pun. The item is very old, long before anyone imagined that some poor sob might have to draw a picture of one. From time to time someone asks to remove this "silly piece of humour", but I won't have that. (Then again, I have not been able to remove the silly piece of humour that is pizzas, so it all evens out in the end.)

For the descriptions, don't make it too hard for yourself on double and triple swords. Perhaps you can find something completely off the rocks, in a book about chromosomes or whatever :)

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 20:46

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

dpeg wrote:For the descriptions, don't make it too hard for yourself on double and triple swords. Perhaps you can find something completely off the rocks, in a book about chromosomes or whatever :)


Description: "The best a man can get."

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 21:15

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I have just had the pleasure to look through 160 kb of the quotation diff. I did not read everything to the tee, but I have some comments nonetheless (Wensley has the full list). First off, the quotes are excellent, many thanks for the awesome work.

* Copies of descriptions should be avoided; use monspeak.txt-style references instead, if possible (if not, bug us until it is possible).
* While I grant you the Tolkien on the inevitable entries like Orc and Balrug, I think you can do better with dragon! Please do lest you want to chase a poor old armchair denizen into the library.
* When you have several quotes but use them on more than one entry, just split them. This goes e.g. for nagas.
* Minor inconsistency with translations. Despite popular belief, not everyone speaks Latin, for example.
* Minor inconsistency with dates. I saw that you added some, but a few are still missing. If absolutely nothing can be traced, it might be best to add "unknown date" or similar.
* I awaited a cool one for the Lernaean hydra and was disappointed. Where'y my Heracles?
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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 23:05

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

dpeg wrote:* Copies of descriptions should be avoided; use monspeak.txt-style references instead, if possible (if not, bug us until it is possible)

Ugh, so now I have to read through this 915-line help file that describes how monspeak.txt works? :P

Grimm: If you change any of the quotes that have been marked with "done" and changed to a grey background, change the background back to blue and the status back to "yes" and I'll get them on the next pass.

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 23:31

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Wensley: Just look through monspeak.txt and see how aliases are used there. Then try the same in your file.

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Post Sunday, 2nd October 2011, 23:39

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Wensleydale wrote:Ugh, so now I have to read through this 915-line help file that describes how monspeak.txt works? :P


That document is pretty out of date. Anyway, it describes a lot of stuff you don't need; the main thing you need is the @key name@ syntax, which substitutes the block of text under the the moniker "key name".

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 01:20

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

dpeg wrote:* While I grant you the Tolkien on the inevitable entries like Orc and Balrug, I think you can do better with dragon! Please do lest you want to chase a poor old armchair denizen into the library.

I only recently found out about your hostility to Tolkien. I'll look for something different for dragons.

* When you have several quotes but use them on more than one entry, just split them. This goes e.g. for nagas.

Roger.

* Minor inconsistency with translations. Despite popular belief, not everyone speaks Latin, for example.

I like leaving a few random ones untranslated, but if sentiment is against that, I shall change it.

* Minor inconsistency with dates. I saw that you added some, but a few are still missing. If absolutely nothing can be traced, it might be best to add "unknown date" or similar.

Some things are pretty difficult to source. I'll go through them all again and see what I can do.

* I awaited a cool one for the Lernaean hydra and was disappointed. Where'y my Heracles?

I haven't gone over the Uniques tab yet, so there'll be plenty to come there. I hope to have the monsters all finished by the end of next week, then I'll do items, then features, then uniques.

Wensleydale wrote:Grimm: If you change any of the quotes that have been marked with "done" and changed to a grey background, change the background back to blue and the status back to "yes" and I'll get them on the next pass.

Natch.

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 09:09

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

To Grimm.

Translations and dates: This is ultimately your decisions, I only pointed out something that occurred to me. If you think a quote is fine without translation, that is fine.

Evil Tolkien: Now, hostility towards Tolkien, such a strong word. Won't you forgive a little disdain and contempt? Not so much for the literary work, although I do believe that in essence he wrote a bloated fairy tale, the size of an ancient epic without any of the fullness of that, but more so for the blind copying of stereotypes it generated. What is worse, all of this is so deeply entrenched into Crawl that I cannot get rid of it, though Sludge Elves and Deep Dwarves are attempts at doing so.
You see, none of the unholy trinity Nethack, D&D, Tolkien is wrong, or bad per se. I am just a little unhappy about the myriad of books, movies and games that copy blindly. Also, I happen to own a D&D Monster Manual (4th edition, if someone cares) and I am at times appalled by the lack of fantasy that they use to create "fantastic" monsters.

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 09:11

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

mumra wrote:
Wensleydale wrote:Ugh, so now I have to read through this 915-line help file that describes how monspeak.txt works? :P


That document is pretty out of date. Anyway, it describes a lot of stuff you don't need; the main thing you need is the @key name@ syntax, which substitutes the block of text under the the moniker "key name".


I hate to read that. The only way is to move it online and try fixing the errors? I wasn't aware of mistakes in that file.

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 15:34

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

dpeg wrote:I hate to read that. The only way is to move it online and try fixing the errors? I wasn't aware of mistakes in that file.


I noticed some minor omissions and inconsistencies on a brief glance, so I had a more detailed look (and dug into the code as well). Some of these are issues that could be fixed in the source code rather than necessarily being documentation problems, but still:

1. New database files since 0.3 aren't mentioned (e.g. monflee.txt, monspell.txt)
2. The key lookup sequence misses some things that I can see in code are taken into account (e.g. current branch, silenced, various others)
3. Key lookup works very differently for some databases; e.g. monspell.txt has a whole load of other keys (these are detailed in the header of monspell.txt but there could still be things missing and it'd be good to have things in one place!)
4. The list of hard-coded variables also misses all kinds of things, these are set up in do_mon_str_replacements in mon-util.cc
5. Those variables don't always apply, because sometimes speech is looked up on a different codepath! An example is in _steal_item_from_player in fight.cc, there are lookups for "Maurice confused nonstealing" and "Maurice nonstealing" but these aren't piped thru do_mon_str_replacements...

All in all, I think the code needs some cleaning up before the document can be properly updated; currently it's not entirely obvious which keys and variables are available in different circumstances. Inconsistencies with keys and variables could be eliminated by centralising code and reducing the number of routes into the speech database.

Partly the reason I've been looking at this closely is because it's fairly relevant for Demigods (for speech by gods and minions, for flavouring minion spell messages, possible uses for minion building).

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 17:46

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Grimm wrote:Yes, I definitely want to improve the spellbook descriptions. These are excellent starting points, though I want ours to be more elaborate.


I was thinking of getting started on this soon. Is the list of spellbooks on the wiki accurate or is there a more up-to-date source I could use (like just reading the source code for defintions)?

Also, two questions:
1) The Crawl Light descriptions include phrases that suggest an interaction with the user, like "The touch of this book's pages irritates your skin" or "As you browse this book, you find yourself idly removing confetti from between the pages." Would it be better to rephrase to not have explicit "you" references, like "Confetti often turns up between the pages of this book as it's read." Or is that not a big deal? (I won't actually use the exact confetti line, of course. I'm a hack, not a plagiarist!)

2) This is just a matter of personal taste, but would it be okay to tweak some spellbook names so they're not almost always named "Book of Whatever"? I feel it might add a little character, and at the very least, clear up the monotony.

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 22:23

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

dpeg wrote:Evil Tolkien: Now, hostility towards Tolkien, such a strong word. Won't you forgive a little disdain and contempt? Not so much for the literary work, although I do believe that in essence he wrote a bloated fairy tale, the size of an ancient epic without any of the fullness of that, but more so for the blind copying of stereotypes it generated. What is worse, all of this is so deeply entrenched into Crawl that I cannot get rid of it, though Sludge Elves and Deep Dwarves are attempts at doing so.
You see, none of the unholy trinity Nethack, D&D, Tolkien is wrong, or bad per se. I am just a little unhappy about the myriad of books, movies and games that copy blindly. Also, I happen to own a D&D Monster Manual (4th edition, if someone cares) and I am at times appalled by the lack of fantasy that they use to create "fantastic" monsters.


I understand and to an extent share your view. It is a shame that Tolkien's vision so dominates modern fantasy thinking (though the fact that it does suggests that his achievement has greatness). There is a rich and forgotten vein of pre-Tolkien fantasy that lies waiting for instauration. Perhaps one day we'll see games based on Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus for example.

However given that the modern notion of the dungeon crawl derives almost exclusively from Tolkien - are not Bilbo's journey under the mountains and the Fellowship's passage through Khazad-dûm the archetypes of the crawl? - I feel it would be nigh impossible to excise all the hobbitry from this or any other high fantasy game.

That being said I'll see what I can do to minimise the use of his texts in quotes. We've had a lot of excellent material from the Eddas added as a way of doing an end run on the old man.

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 22:26

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:1) The Crawl Light descriptions include phrases that suggest an interaction with the user, like "The touch of this book's pages irritates your skin" or "As you browse this book, you find yourself idly removing confetti from between the pages." Would it be better to rephrase to not have explicit "you" references, like "Confetti often turns up between the pages of this book as it's read." Or is that not a big deal? (I won't actually use the exact confetti line, of course. I'm a hack, not a plagiarist!)

I think that's a good idea, because the description should apply to any character that examines the book. So mummies or felids might not idly pick things from between pages. Avoid "you".

2) This is just a matter of personal taste, but would it be okay to tweak some spellbook names so they're not almost always named "Book of Whatever"? I feel it might add a little character, and at the very least, clear up the monotony.

I think a lot of spellbooks already names other than "Book of Foo".

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 22:29

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Grimm wrote:I think that's a good idea, because the description should apply to any character that examines the book. So mummies or felids might not idly pick things from between pages. Avoid "you".


Noted!

I think a lot of spellbooks already names other than "Book of Foo".


Well, ones that are generated randomly as god gifts and vault treasures usually have interesting names, but of the 45 "standard" spellbooks listed on the Crawlwiki only 3 of them aren't "Book of Foo" (Necronomicon, Grand Grimoire, Young Poisoner's Handbook).

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Post Monday, 3rd October 2011, 23:54

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Renaming things is not my bailiwick, so you'll have to go over my head. There are a few things I'd like to rename too.
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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 01:56

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I can't make sense out of double and triple swords.

I know tiles doesn't reflect this, but I've always pictured double swords as the medieval equivalent of
Image
I suppose that's basically what a lajatang is, but I like the idea nonetheless.

Triple swords...well, just imagine a circle divided into three parts, with a blade at each of the dividing lines. :D
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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 06:13

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I thought about this too, would be consistent with a double-bladed axe. But as you have said, this is in game already as lajatang. Plus: Double Sword in DCSS is 1-handed with [50% Str weight!], only tripple swords is 2-handed in DCSS [60% Str Weight]. It just makes no sense and is inconsistent. Imagine a axe with parallel axe blades, - who ever invented DCSS double swords should chop a huge pile of wood with such an axe as punishment. Flamberge/Flammard is the best solution, which fits the weapon stats as they are. Double/triple/quadro/...docta (oh the pun...!) blades would make sense as claw (Wolverine/Freddy Krüger-style) or Sai (to brake blades).
ImageImage

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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 09:24

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:Well, ones that are generated randomly as god gifts and vault treasures usually have interesting names, but of the 45 "standard" spellbooks listed on the Crawlwiki only 3 of them aren't "Book of Foo" (Necronomicon, Grand Grimoire, Young Poisoner's Handbook).


Just keep in mind the badwiki is often drastically out-of-date. The latest list of books can be found in book-data.h: http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/blobs/master/crawl-ref/source/book-data.h

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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 13:25

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Mychaelh wrote:Plus: Double Sword in DCSS is 1-handed with [50% Str weight!], only tripple swords is 2-handed in DCSS [60% Str Weight]. It just makes no sense and is inconsistent. Imagine a axe with parallel axe blades, - who ever invented DCSS double swords should chop a huge pile of wood with such an axe as punishment.


I don't think anybody's all that concerned about the real-world viability of the stuff in Crawl, though.
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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 14:26

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I just tried to help with the weapon descriptions, have reported what I see as an issue in consistency and offered a solution. End of story. To much time wasted for this already.

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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 21:40

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Grimm wrote:I think that's a good idea, because the description should apply to any character that examines the book. So mummies or felids might not idly pick things from between pages. Avoid "you".


Okay! I did a few spellbook descriptions, before realizing that I was more tired than I thought and started having trouble coming up with text ideas.

I tried to avoid using "you" in the descriptions, as suggested.

I also tried to stay away from flavor that might suggest to newbs some kind of game mechanic that didn't exist. For instance, I didn't want to suggest that ordinary contact with the book might be harmful, which might have led inexperienced players to think they'd have to, say, wear gloves to read a book safely. I also tried to make sure that the flavor didn't suggest any significant interactions with the environment, lest some poor player, say, read about clouds of freezing vapor around a Book of Ice and rack their brains trying to figure out how to make the book make actual freezing clouds in gameplay. If I'm just being overly cautious and we can give new Crawlers the benefit of the doubt here, let me know.

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Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 22:39

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I think your approach is right on the money.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 00:18

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I finished up the spellbooks. I kind of wish there were more spellbooks, it's fun, although some of the books provided more inspiration than others for flavor.

I tweaked the Book of Annihilations and the Grand Grimoire (which already had descriptions) a little bit to remove a few references to "you" in the flavor. (I kept the "you" in the WARNING part, though.) Let me know if any of them need any work (there's probably a few Americanisms floating around in there somewhere).

Incidentally, while I was working on all this, I had the idea of a themed spellbook, based around the idea of a spellbook anthology series which would collect works from well-known wizards and sorcerers, and would basically be a collection of spells that had the author's name in it (Alistair's Intoxication, Leda's Liquefaction, etc). I like the spells that have the creator's name in the title, it adds a little background to the game. (There's 13 such spells, so they'd have to be split into two or three books, though.)

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Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 01:52

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae: Slap together those spellbooks and I'd be happy to code it and submit a patch on your behalf.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 05:12

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Wensleydale wrote:nicolae: Slap together those spellbooks and I'd be happy to code it and submit a patch on your behalf.


Cool, thanks! Here's my first attempt:

  Code:
{   // Arcane Anthology I
    SPELL_SHROUD_OF_GOLUBRIA,
    SPELL_TUKIMAS_DANCE,
    SPELL_INTOXICATE,
    SPELL_LEDAS_LIQUEFACTION,
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_REFRIGERATION,
    SPELL_FRAGMENTATION,
    SPELL_BORGNJORS_REVIVIFICATION,
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
},

{   // Arcane Anthology II
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_ARMOUR,
    SPELL_OLGREBS_TOXIC_RADIANCE,
    SPELL_GOLUBRIAS_PASSAGE,
    SPELL_ISKENDERUNS_MYSTIC_BLAST,
    SPELL_CIGOTUVIS_DEGENERATION,
    SPELL_LEHUDIBS_CRYSTAL_SPEAR,                   
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
},


If it turns out that Revivification and LCS should just solely be in the high-level books, Annihilations and Necronomicon, I have a single-book version too, which takes out those spells and takes only one each from Ozocubu and Golubria (and ditches Leda. Sorry, Leda):

  Code:
{   // Arcane Anthology
    SPELL_SHROUD_OF_GOLUBRIA,
    SPELL_TUKIMAS_DANCE,
    SPELL_INTOXICATE,
    SPELL_ISKENDERUNS_MYSTIC_BLAST,
    SPELL_OLGREBS_TOXIC_RADIANCE,
    SPELL_CIGOTUVIS_DEGENERATION,
    SPELL_FRAGMENTATION,
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_REFRIGERATION,
},


(I suppose calling it Nicolae's Arcane Anthology would be pushing it.)

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Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 08:05

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I've reviewed all of nicolae's spellbook descriptions on the items tab (they're at the bottom), so those are ready to be submitted. He's done a brilliant job taking dtsund's short descriptions and enriching them. He's also capitalised the name of the spell school that the book covers, if it's a single-school book.

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Post Monday, 10th October 2011, 10:29

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Descriptions added for war axe, broad axe, battleaxe, whip, hammer, mace, flail, morningstar, spiked flail, dire flail, eveningstar. Needs native english reader.
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Post Wednesday, 12th October 2011, 10:41

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I just viewed the spreadsheet and I saw the quote for draconians... It's totally irrelevant to dragon kin. I can't find something that fits, but the quote has absolutely nothing to do with dragon mutants.

It's from a historian named Plutarch that kept records of things that happened in Ancient Greece and wrote some biographies about interesting personalities from those times... Now, I'm not a big fan of history but being from Greece I know lots about our mythology (for example, the minotaur legendary creature was rumored to exist in ancient Crete, the lernaen hydra was part of a quest that Hercules, a demigod son of Zeus was forced to take, called the 12 feats of strength)

Anyway, in case you don't know, here's the article about the guy the quote is referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_%28lawgiver%29. :)
MuCK;
  Code:
612 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Slain by a gnoll

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Post Wednesday, 12th October 2011, 16:39

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

And that is precisely the reason I chose the Draco reference: to encourage investigation and reflection. Remember that the quotes, unlike the descriptions, do not have to be literal; they are an opportunity to display wit and erudition, to show players that Crawl is the thinking man's roguelike. Look at some of the other ones - quasit, ugly thing, and the fiends have some fun quotes.

Moreover, it would be fiendishly difficult to find any genuine references to dragon-derived humanoids, because they don't exist.

That being said we are always open to new quote suggestions. If someone wants to replace the Tolkien that's fine by me. Orcs could have something about hooligans or ruffians. The current quote for dragons is O.K. but if someone can get a nice Chinese source that would be excellent. I looked in vain.

Finally, although I promised to finish the monsters tab last week, I did not, but am in the home stretch.
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Post Wednesday, 12th October 2011, 16:46

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Grimm wrote:It would be fiendishly difficult to find any genuine references to dragon-derived humanoids, because they don't exist.


:shock:

*MIND BLOWN*
MuCK;
  Code:
612 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Slain by a gnoll

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Post Wednesday, 12th October 2011, 17:43

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Grimm wrote:Moreover, it would be fiendishly difficult to find any genuine references to dragon-derived humanoids, because they don't exist.


To be fair, this never stopped the more imaginative Greek historians from writing about tribes of headless people with faces in their chests and people with one big foot who used it for shade.
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Post Wednesday, 12th October 2011, 20:08

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:
Grimm wrote:Moreover, it would be fiendishly difficult to find any genuine references to dragon-derived humanoids, because they don't exist.


To be fair, this never stopped the more imaginative Greek historians from writing about tribes of headless people with faces in their chests and people with one big foot who used it for shade.


People that write fairytales are not historiographers, friend. ;)
MuCK;
  Code:
612 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Xom revived you
614 | D:1      | Slain by a gnoll

Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Thursday, 13th October 2011, 00:11

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

TehDruid wrote:People that write fairytales are not historiographers, friend. ;)


Do Herodotus and Pliny the Elder not count as historians now? (Well, I guess Pliny was more of a natural philosopher, but.)

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Post Thursday, 13th October 2011, 00:20

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Is the monster description patch still alive? I hope I didn't burn anyone's enthusiasm with my comments. It is a very nice collection. If you need help with the syntax for avoiding duplication, tell me.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 13th October 2011, 02:37

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I don't know where Wensleydale is with the patches. I'm still working on the monster descriptions that he hasn't yet marked as done.

Your comments are most welcome. I've changed some things on the spreadsheet already.
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Sewers Scotsman

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Post Thursday, 13th October 2011, 09:39

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:
TehDruid wrote:People that write fairytales are not historiographers, friend. ;)

Do Herodotus and Pliny the Elder not count as historians now? (Well, I guess Pliny was more of a natural philosopher, but.)

History and historiography are not the same thing...

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Post Friday, 14th October 2011, 02:15

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Monsters tab is completely finished, quotes and descriptions. I invite review.

I am especially happy that the statue descriptions have been made richer.

A reminder that the following creature name changes are suggested and await approval:

  Code:
spider           cave spider
giant spore      floating sporeball
fungus           cavern fungus
                 troglobitic fungus
big fish         grouper
royal mummy      pharaonic mummy (royal mummy doesn't show up in the bots)
tree             oak tree
                 cave oak
bush             privet bush
plant            tweeblaarkanniedood plant
                 !kharos
                 khurub
                 nyanka
                 onyanga
                 welwitschia
vampire knight   vampire count

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Post Friday, 14th October 2011, 10:24

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

The new monster names look good to me, (for tree I like cave oak) with the exception of plants. Some of the proposals are actually interesting but none of them will tell "plant!" to the uninitiated, I am afraid.
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 14th October 2011, 10:49

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Plants haven't any distinguishable feature to be renamed to a specific species. "Plant" stands for a generic plant but the dungeoneer probably is aware that there are several kinds of, despite their irrelevance in the game.
duvessa wrote:Christ, you can't remove anything without tavern complaining about it.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 14th October 2011, 15:43

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

I am under the impression that there are intentions to increase the variety of plant life in the game. In order to make space for them I came up with alternative, more specific names for the current plant, all of which are taken from this southern African species that visually resembles the Crawl plant.

I also intended for each of the suggested plant names to be followed by the word "plant" - welwitschia plant, !kharos plant, etc. I should have made that clear.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 15th October 2011, 15:31

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Sorry, I've been inordinately busy this past week. :) I'll have some free time to do text patching this weekend, though. I'll look into finishing up that quotes patch, monster name changes, and the Arcane Anthologies.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 15th October 2011, 16:44

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

nicolae wrote:
Wensleydale wrote:nicolae: Slap together those spellbooks and I'd be happy to code it and submit a patch on your behalf.


Cool, thanks! Here's my first attempt:

  Code:
{   // Arcane Anthology I
    SPELL_SHROUD_OF_GOLUBRIA,
    SPELL_TUKIMAS_DANCE,
    SPELL_INTOXICATE,
    SPELL_LEDAS_LIQUEFACTION,
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_REFRIGERATION,
    SPELL_FRAGMENTATION,
    SPELL_BORGNJORS_REVIVIFICATION,
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
},

{   // Arcane Anthology II
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_ARMOUR,
    SPELL_OLGREBS_TOXIC_RADIANCE,
    SPELL_GOLUBRIAS_PASSAGE,
    SPELL_ISKENDERUNS_MYSTIC_BLAST,
    SPELL_CIGOTUVIS_DEGENERATION,
    SPELL_LEHUDIBS_CRYSTAL_SPEAR,                   
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
    SPELL_NO_SPELL,
},


If it turns out that Revivification and LCS should just solely be in the high-level books, Annihilations and Necronomicon, I have a single-book version too, which takes out those spells and takes only one each from Ozocubu and Golubria (and ditches Leda. Sorry, Leda):

  Code:
{   // Arcane Anthology
    SPELL_SHROUD_OF_GOLUBRIA,
    SPELL_TUKIMAS_DANCE,
    SPELL_INTOXICATE,
    SPELL_ISKENDERUNS_MYSTIC_BLAST,
    SPELL_OLGREBS_TOXIC_RADIANCE,
    SPELL_CIGOTUVIS_DEGENERATION,
    SPELL_FRAGMENTATION,
    SPELL_OZOCUBUS_REFRIGERATION,
},


(I suppose calling it Nicolae's Arcane Anthology would be pushing it.)


I think it's fine if Borg's and LCS are in these books, but we'd have to make them at least as rare as the high-level books. And since there are a lot of good spells in there already, maybe we should split them up into three books. Here's my proposal:

Arcane Anthology I:
Ozocubu's Refrigeration
Iskenderun's Mystic Blast
Leda's Liquefaction
Cigotuvi's Degeneration
Tukima's Dance

Arcade Anthology II:
Lehudib's Crystal Spear
Alistair's Intoxication
Ozocubu's Armor
Shroud of Golubria

Arcane Anthology III:
Borgnjor's Revivification
Lee's Rapid Deconstruction
Olgreb's Toxic Radiance
Passage of Golubria

Also note that Orb of Destruction technically belongs to Iskenderun, but this hasn't been mentioned in-game for a long time. I've decided to omit it from this round. If someone comes up with a better arrangement, let me know.

Also! There are two wizards who once had spells, but have since had those spells removed. These wizards are Maxwell (themes: armor, metal, smithing) and Eringya (themes: nature, flowers). If someone wanted to reflavor some existing spells to give one to each of these wizards, we'd be able to put exactly five spells in each book.

Grimm: some comments regarding monster renaming:
1) Why rename giant spore? If it's to better express its danger, I think we need a name better than "floating sporeball" (since spores, by definition, are balls that float :P ). Perhaps a name to express that it explodes, or is fast, or can infect your food.
2) Royal mummies aren't in the bots because I think you're referring to greater mummies. And actually, I think I like "royal mummy" better than "pharaonic mummy" (what a mouthful!).
3) "Grouper" isn't exactly very threatening, how about "piranha" or "lionfish"?

For this message the author Wensleydale has received thanks:
nicolae

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Post Saturday, 15th October 2011, 18:42

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Wensleydale has good points regarding the monster names.

The books look okay to me, but they should get different titles (typo on the second one? :) ) and I wonder how they've been assembled?

If you want to stress the encyclopediac nature (in order to keep the titles), sort them alphabetically (wizard names). Other ideas would be thematic grouping, or by levels.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 15th October 2011, 19:05

Re: DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

Wensleydale wrote:Grimm: some comments regarding monster renaming:
1) Why rename giant spore? If it's to better express its danger, I think we need a name better than "floating sporeball" (since spores, by definition, are balls that float :P ). Perhaps a name to express that it explodes, or is fast, or can infect your food.

The reason for renaming giant spore is that it ISN'T a giant spore, it's a floating ball of spores that explodes and spurts the spores all over the place. I am not married to "floating sporeball". Maybe "ballistomycete sporeball".

2) Royal mummies aren't in the bots because I think you're referring to greater mummies. And actually, I think I like "royal mummy" better than "pharaonic mummy" (what a mouthful!).

Right, I lost track of what the change was from and to. (I didn't make the original change). Royal mummy is fine, I just thought pharaonic was more apropos for mummies, what with their curses and overall Egyptian flavour.

3) "Grouper" isn't exactly very threatening, how about "piranha" or "lionfish"?

Five reasons: 1) the monster itself is not very threatening, 2) the current tile looks like a grouper, 3) groupers are big ("small" in game terms), piranhas and lionfish would be "tiny", 4) piranhas come in swarms, lionfish have poison, 5) quokkas.
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