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flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 11:18
by wad
Hey,

I have been a real fan of dungeon crawl for many years now. There was no TILE-version when I first played, but I was amazed by the game and its countless possibilities. Now the game has been developed so much further - this is fantastic!
I have so much fun playing crawl for days and hours trying different characters.
Thanks to the team! :D

I would just love to help to improve the game by supporting new vaults and tile creations and in fact have already done so on my local computer.
Sometimes it is pretty hard for me to understand the tutorials and to find answers on the internet because I'm from germany and although english was my primary intensive course during school, I'm unable to translate some parts.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were more appearances for the plant-TILE? Lets improve the variety!
It may look nice within the Lair, or while serving Fedhas.
I have some more ideas about new special plants and fungi but I want to avoid any game balance issues for this proposal!

How about some new monsters:
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Flytrap Plant

A plant that managed to adapt to the dungeon environment by evolving into a carnivore. It seems to be highly attractive to flying insects.

Speed: 6 | HD: 4 | Health: 28-55 | AC/EV: 10/0 | Flags: plant, !sil | Resistances: magic(40), poison, acid+++, drown, neg+++
XP: 62 | Attack: reaching within a small surrounding area
9% chance of being digesting
It automatically attacks flying insects in its surrounding.
If it succesfully has captured two insects it starts digesting and is unable to attack any more.
Destroying a digesting plant will release the insects corpse ( + 1-4 additional insect corpses - always rotting)
May be useful for necromancers e.g. for creating an abomination
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Mellow Flytrap Plant - An evolved flytrap plant

A plant that has reached the zenith of its capabilities. It is larger, faster and tougher than the common flytrap. It looks forward to being fertilized!

Speed: 9 | HD: 7 | Health: 28-55 | AC/EV: 10/0 | Flags: plant, !sil | Resistances: magic(40), poison, acid+++, drown, neg+++
XP: 424 | Attack: acidic bite/reaching within a medium surrounding area
Each turn it swallows upto one flying insect or small monster in its range.
It gathers 4-7 corpses before it begins digesting.
Destroying a digesting plant will release the insect's corpses ( + 2-5 additional corpses - always skeleton from small monster)
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Blooming Plant

This plant, thanks to Fedhas' benevolence, has managed to blossom even in the dungeon enviroment.

Speed: 0 | HD: 10 | Health: 17-46 | AC/EV: 10/0 | Flags: plant | Resistances: magic(immune), poison, drown, neg+++
XP: 0.
***Something like a 1-4% chance to appear instead of a normal plant***
The plant will ripen after the same period of time that a corpse need to vanish and ----> turn into a Fruit Plant
can be influenced by rain ----> turn instantly into a Fruit Plant
Can be evoluted into Poison Pollen

Maybe a message to the player when it turns into a Fruit Plant e.g.: You notice the smell of fresh fruit.
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Fruit Plant

This plant, thanks to Fedhas' benevolence, has managed to fruit in the dungeon environment.

Speed: 0 | HD: 10 | Health: 23-56 | AC/EV: 10/0 | Flags: plant | Resistances: magic(immune), poison, drown, neg+++
XP: 0.
the plant contains 2-3 fruits
If destroyed it will release the amount -1
If serving Fedhas, the player is able to pick the fruit from the plant.
Can be evoluted into poison pollen.
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Poison Pollen

A plant that has managed to keep away its natural enemies by emitting poisonous pollen.

Speed: 10 | HD: 8| Health: 44-73 | AC/EV: 10/0 | Flags: plant, !sil | Resistances: magic(40), poison, acid+++, drown, neg+++
XP: 245 | Spells: poisonous cloud
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Magic Mushroom

A rare fungus saturating its surroundings with magical radiance. They say shamans use these funghi to bottle the essence of magic.

Speed: 0 | HD: 8 | Health: 28-62 | AC/EV: 1/0 | Flags: plant | Resistances: magic(immune), poison, drown, neg+++
XP: 2.
A player within the surrounding area of this fungus has an icreased mana regeneration rate.
*** Maybe a new spell of the alchemy category needed to bottle the fungus into a potion of magic ***
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Wandering Tinder Fungus - An Evolved Magic Mushroom

A large, knobbly fungus glowing with magical energy. It seems slightly unstable.

Speed: 10 | HD: 8 | Health: 45-73 | AC/EV: 5/0 | Damage: 23(slowing/mana drain) | Flags: plant | Resistances: magic(32), poison, drown, neg+++ | Spells: blink
XP: 471.
Behaves like a Wandering Mushroom
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I tried to stick to the proven game style and hope those new monsters fit into the main idea of the game.
Perhaps this is too much changing the game balance towards serving Fedhas?

Thanks for reading!

I appreciate any comments, improvements, adjustments, changes or rejections.

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 14:29
by BlackSheep
Even if the active plants you've proposed don't get added to the game, I think your tiles are lovely and would be a great addition to the game.

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 17:17
by Grimm
I am wildly in favor of these proposed plants and tiles.

some screenshots including the different plant/tree-tiles

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 17:25
by wad
!Thanks to galehar! I was able to test the appearance of some different plant-tiles

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 18:41
by twelwe
I totally support anything that spices up more variety in fedhas worship, including reliable fruit picked from plants guaranteed to spawn SOMEWHERE, I don't care what branch it gets tested in, if not multiple. The fedhas fruit gamble game is so stupid. On my current Mimo, I just found a vault that had: 16 bananas, 26 strawberries, 14 apples, and 20 sultanas. This is more fruit in one location than I've seen in my last three fedhas worshiping games, and I haven't even finished the vault yet because the abundance of fruit has just astounded me. There might be more fruit behind these doors, maybe oklobs, who knows?

Image

This is enough fruit to make 38 Oklob plants from scratch (growth+evolve)

(I had to drop it to count it. I know this fruit all came from this vault because I just left lair:1 to drop all the fruit I collected from the rest of lair)

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 19:50
by Jabberwocky
I like these ideas, they are well thought out and fit with the game. I also like all the tiles except the venus flytrap tiles, I think those look very "cartoony" and don't fit with the rest of the art. Otherwise, good suggestion.

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 27th February 2012, 23:31
by Night2o1
Wad this is an awesome proposal!!! Thank you for taking the time to do this. I will return with some feedback on the specifics.

Would you like me to edit your proposal's grammar and spelling? It is just the only way I can think to contribute at the moment. I will do so now and PM it to you, you can edit it in if you'd like.

/Edit

The edited proposal is in your inbox.

Re: flytrap tiles

PostPosted: Tuesday, 28th February 2012, 08:05
by wad
Thank you Jabberwocky for your valuation. I totally agree your proposal to rework the "flytrap"-TILES, because they are much too cartoony ;) - in fact I had so many attempts creating it that I kind of resigned at its actual appearance ;)
Not that easy to bring it all on 32x32pixel :D - I'm going to try to improve it.

I think it looks really better with a smaller "neck" and "head" - less cartoony

Another idea that came up while editing is that a player serving fedhas maybe should be able to evolute a normal plant into a flytrap too, when a chunk of flesh is delayed on the plant tile in front of evoluting it? Messaging:"a chunk of X flesh is consumed"

Re: grammar/spelling

PostPosted: Tuesday, 28th February 2012, 08:10
by wad
Hey Night2o1 -
it would be great if you help me with gammar and spelling! Thank you so much for your aid! :D

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Tuesday, 28th February 2012, 13:36
by Roderic
I approve the ideas. Not too many and not redundant. Their addition perhaps would make choosing Fedhas more appealing to avoid them.

coding problem

PostPosted: Tuesday, 28th February 2012, 16:10
by wad
I would like to upload some screenshots containing the different plant-tiles integrated, but I just got a problem:

After adding the additional tiles within "dc-mon.txt" and compiling the game, just the first defined tile-picture is shown in the game.
I had no problems with testing some new floor or wall-tiles-combinations so far.
Replacing the common plant-tile is also no problem.
I did it in the same way it is made for e.g. the different coloured "butterfly-tiles" without success.
Can anyone help me to fix that problem?
What is to do to make the game use the additional tiles?

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Tuesday, 28th February 2012, 17:05
by galehar
You need to edit the _tileidx_monster_base function (in tilepick.cc) to make it use _mon_mod. Also, in define_monster (mon-util.cc) you need to generate a random colour. Keep following the butterfly example.

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Wednesday, 29th February 2012, 10:17
by evktalo
The plant variation tiles look very nice. Thanks for providing the screenshots too, seems like they fit in well. The new flytrap tiles look much better, they look like they fit in with the rest of the Crawl tiles too.

--Eino

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Wednesday, 29th February 2012, 10:51
by galehar
This is very nice. Could you package the tiles and code change into a patch and submit it on mantis?
We can use the tiles right away as variety for normal plants. You can put your proposals for the new plant monsters in the mantis issue for additional comments.
You can even submit the title screen image.

Thanks again, good work!

.....

PostPosted: Wednesday, 29th February 2012, 13:51
by wad
.....

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Wednesday, 29th February 2012, 17:14
by dpeg
Wad: Many thanks for the input, obviously quite some effort was spent.

Let me start by spraying water: it is very hard to make interesting stationary monsters. Slow monsters are generally not very interesting, so it's even harder for non-moving ones. If the stationary monster is too hard (Roxanne), players will make an exception and ignore it. Also, all kind of evil LOS abusing tricks have been devised.

On to the meat:

Flytrap plant: Cute idea (insect corpses) but will be a non-issue if not catered for. Some ideas: They should grow in protected corners, like so

  Code:
xxxx.x
.xPx.x
x...xx
xxxxxx


Also, constriction would help (vines!), as would having them clustered near exits/entries.

Fruit plant: In my opinion, it is good design that Fedhas uses a finite resource. If I understand your proposal correctly, a follower could use Rain to turn ordinary plants into fruit plants, hence fruits. That will only lead to boredom. Having fruits come from (not respawnable) plants is in principle okay; should probably reduce the amount of fruits from vaults then. (It would mean that fruit number variance goes down, since you can rely more on fruit plants than on vaults, I think.)

Poison pollen: Not sure that poisoning is interesting enough. The poison will rarely kill players, and they can always choose a more convenient battlefield location for the moving opposition.

Magic mushroom: Luring monsters to the mushroom for the effect is out of the question.

Tinder Fungus: I like it!

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Thursday, 1st March 2012, 07:43
by Night2o1
What if Magic Mushrooms slowly saturated their surroundings with a magic, causing a damaging effect or perhaps .1-.5 points of contamination per turn on those ground tiles. the radius would slowly change, growing to a maximum -> shrinking to minimum(0 or 1 radius) -> growing to max -> shrinking to min.

just a random idea, might spice up battle field decisions if a magic shroom could end up encroaching on the hallway you decide to stand and trade in.

tiles and maps

PostPosted: Monday, 5th March 2012, 12:09
by wad
The attachment comp.rar cointains all tiles as .png + maps :)

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Monday, 5th March 2012, 13:16
by galehar
Thanks. I've uploaded it on mantis to get more feedback. Feel free to add comments and explanations there if needed. You can use it too if you've got anything else to upload (udpates, patches,...).

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Friday, 8th June 2012, 06:00
by Grimm
These plant tiles are in trunk now and look great.

A lot of really great work is being done on the tiles.

Re: flora variety

PostPosted: Friday, 8th June 2012, 16:03
by sgrunt
I'm glad that someone has noticed this and brought it to my attention - these ideas would make for a fantastic addition to any plant or forest-themed areas. (Say, a revived Forest branch. ;))