How do turns work?

[seth]

I always thought that your character did an action immediately after you press the keystroke for it, but I just died to Nessos after I tried to go upstairs. How does this work? What types of actions can I expect to actually complete and which ones will leave me in danger while I try to do them?

[mrbobbyg]

Relative speed is important for all actions.

I know for certain that traveling up/down stairs prompts attacks of opportunity. So, expect that everything that can hit you to get one free attack if you go up or down.

[mageykun]

I'll do my best to explain it, though my understanding is a working one, not a technical one (ie, this is what I think I've puzzled out from experience, not reading code).

A "turn" is not the basic unit of time in crawl. It is merely the count of how many actions you take. Many actions all take one turn to preform, but cost different amounts of time to preform. One turn is not necessarily the same length as another.

This may seem counter intuitive, because any action you preform happens instantaneously from your perspective. The time cost happens is usually after- the longer an action takes, the longer you have to wait till your next turn, and the longer enemies have to take free hits at you. Stairs are a special case I think- the vulnerable waiting happens before you take the action, not before. This is why sometimes mashing < right after coming into a crowd is a bad idea- it may give the crowd more hit opportunities than blinking, or a scroll of fog, or a screen of butterflies, ect.

For reference, one of the fastest things you can do is swap weapons. Attacks with weapons take longer or quicker depending on weapon skill- this is why it's so important to train weapons until you reach a minimum delay- attacking with "quite slow" is a good way to get killed. Hitting @ will tell you your attack speed. So far as I can tell, spells, reading, quaffing, invocations, and (a)bilities all seem to take as long as movement (though there might be special cases). Water can make moving faster or slower depending on race or transformation (ie, menfolk and hydra faster, dwarves slower). Stairs cost more time than moving. Praying I'm unsure about- it may vary. Eating depends on the food- some are faster to eat than others (fruit). Equipping armor or memorizing spells is probably the slowest actions, since they take multiple turns.

Edit: forgot some races have movement penalties or bonuses. For instance, naga move slower, so often taking another action is a better choice than running. Spriggans move faster, so often running is the best choice. Etc.

[Kate]

In trunk there's an option (show_real_turns) that changes the turn counter from being based on player turns (where swinging an executioner's axe and swapping weapons is still one "turn", despite taking different amounts of time) to being based on actual game time. It even has a nice indicator of how many turns your last action took (swinging an executioner's axe with no skill takes 2 turns, taking stairs takes 1.4 turns, wielding something or swapping weapons takes 0.5 turns, unwielding something takes 0.3 turns, and so on). It's pretty awesome.

[seth]

Marvin: I turned that on, but I don't see a difference?

Anyway, I get that different actions take a different amounts of time (or, rather, different actions take different amounts of time to recover from them, e.g. swinging an executioners axe and a hand axe will both happen instantaneously, the only thing that's affected is how long until you get to act again. Am I understanding this right?) What I'm confused about is what actions are anomalies, like stairs, where your character doesn't take action right away, and gets hit in between the time you tell him to take the action and when he actually does it. It seems pretty arbitrary right now, and is pretty frustrating when you have all these actions seem to operate by one set of rules, and then these special cases like stairs that operate completely differently.

[Kate]

Ah, you also need show_gold_turns = true to make the line with the turn counter actually display (I wish it were default ).

[danr]

I would totally support making game time the standard turn count. This would really help players understand game mechanics without being too spoily. I see no reason why it should be opaque to the player how long it just took them to do something.

[galehar]

You immediately start climbing the stairs, but as it takes more than one turn, the monsters can hit you while you're climbing. And even knock you off the stairs if they can trample you. The point is to make stair dancing harder and more dangerous. It's a bit like a delayed action if you like.
There is no such thing as attack of opportunity in crawl.
I implemented the show_real_turns option. I didn't make it default because it's a bit technical and decimal numbers would maybe confuse new players. Especially with the recent addition of the second number. On the other hand, the speed system is quite important, and making it more apparent might be a good thing.

[7hm]

I would totally support making game time the standard turn count. This would really help players understand game mechanics without being too spoily. I see no reason why it should be opaque to the player how long it just took them to do something.

It would screw around with online scoring. Not saying it's a bad thing to switch, just that there would be an effect. I like that you can have both systems visible right now.

I turned it on, so I see the real time on the main screen. But in % I see the turns I've taken.

[galehar]

I would totally support making game time the standard turn count. This would really help players understand game mechanics without being too spoily. I see no reason why it should be opaque to the player how long it just took them to do something.

It would screw around with online scoring. Not saying it's a bad thing to switch, just that there would be an effect. I like that you can have both systems visible right now.

I turned it on, so I see the real time on the main screen. But in % I see the turns I've taken.

I think he just meant making the option default to on, not using game turns for score calculations. That would be really bad indeed. On the other hand, I should add game turns to the morgue file someday. Speed runs would be more interesting if judged by game turns instead of player turns (rewarding slow weapons is silly for example).

[seth]

You immediately start climbing the stairs, but as it takes more than one turn, the monsters can hit you while you're climbing. And even knock you off the stairs if they can trample you. The point is to make stair dancing harder and more dangerous. It's a bit like a delayed action if you like.
There is no such thing as attack of opportunity in crawl.
I implemented the show_real_turns option. I didn't make it default because it's a bit technical and decimal numbers would maybe confuse new players. Especially with the recent addition of the second number. On the other hand, the speed system is quite important, and making it more apparent might be a good thing.

Are there any other actions like this, or are stairs a completely unique case?

I understand the need to make stair dancing more dangerous, but it's incredibly frustrating to die because you didn't know that this one action in the entire game is executed completely differently than all others. I wish there was a more graceful way of balancing it.

[galehar]

Are there any other actions like this, or are stairs a completely unique case?

I don't think there is.

I understand the need to make stair dancing more dangerous, but it's incredibly frustrating to die because you didn't know that this one action in the entire game is executed completely differently than all others. I wish there was a more graceful way of balancing it.

True, this is one of the things you have to learn the hard way. Using stairs can be dangerous. I don't know how we could explain that in-game. Maybe add it to the tutorial?

[TwilightPhoenix]

The tutorial and hints mode would probably be the best places. The tutorial could ask you to stair dance with a wimpy enemy once or twice and say like "Notice the training dummy has hit you while you were climbing the stairs" and hints mode could give a message after using stairs to the effect of "Be careful when using stairs as enemies can take free shots at you as you use them and follow you up and down them at the same time."