Weightless experimental branch playable on CSZO

[gammafunk]

We've been working on the removal of inventory weights, and there's a playable experimental branch on CSZO to this end. The justification for this change is that weight limits don't result in sufficiently interesting decisions to justify the constant inventory juggling and tedium that results. Most of us who've played crawl for any length of time have spent many hours messing around with inventory (and "stashes") because of item weights and few people particularly enjoy that aspect of the game. Slot limits are a better inventory limitation mechanic since they don't require a lot of consideration per-item-type and per-item-pile numbers.

The relevant changes in this branch specifically (UPDATED):

* Player carrying capacity and burden states have been removed; the only inventory limit is the 52 slot limit.
* Corpses and skeletons are stationary; they can't be picked up nor apported.
* Large rocks mulch at a rate of 1/30 instead of 1/50.
* Jiyva doesn't tend to shuffle into strength based on considerations of player inventory; this could be tweaked in various ways.
* This is more technical, but various uses of item mass have been removed or reduced (dancing weapons, shaft trap activation).

We'd appreciate feedback based on play-testing the branch. If anyone has problems with the resulting game-play or notices problems in general, please leave responses in this thread. There are lots of references to burden/weight/carrying capacity left to be removed or adjusted, but I'm most concerned about any gameplay problems or game mechanics that need fixing.

For Jiyva, we probably don't want to weight too much towards strength whenever a Tr/Og player is carrying large rocks, but some weighting based on that or other inventory considerations is a possibility.

Thanks for feedback and for trying it out!

[TeshiAlair]

Here's a thought:

Disallow corpse carrying.
Butchering gives you chunks and a generic pile of bones.
Animate skeleton makes a <foo> skeleton when cast on the corpse, and use all bones in your inventory to make a misshapen skeleton, with massive diminishing returns (maxed at 5 piles of bones worth).

[duvessa]

Just making corpses unmovable (so they wouldn't really be items anymore) would probably be good for other reasons (corpse rot...), but it does not really fix all of the problem with animate dead: you can still lure the living monsters to the desired level.

[Arrhythmia]

Branch distinctly owns.

[reaver]

Branch distinctly owns.

It's certainly pulling its weight.

[Klown]

So...I can carry 52 plate armours?
Isn't this a str nerf?

[tedric]

Thanks! This sounds like a great change. Do you want bug reports here too? Not sure if it's appropriate to use Mantis for experimental branches or what, they don't show up in the bug report page drop-downs.

I just rolled up a CeHu and all weapons I've found so far (aside from my starting bow) are marked as if they're unusable. I can wield and attack with them them just fine, but they're not triggering skill training:

Spoiler: show

[reaver]

Do you want bug reports here too? Not sure if it's appropriate to use Mantis for experimental branches or what, they don't show up in the bug report page drop-downs.

Mantis should be fine for bugs in experimental branches.

[Zammy]

Most of us who've played crawl for any length of time have spent many hours messing around with inventory (and "stashes") because of item weights ...

Actually at least I've spend time with stashes and and messing with inventory because of 52 item limit and item destruction. Rarely because of item weight.
How about steel javelins, should there be similar restriction to them as for large rocks?

For me weighteless items just seem weird. It just defies all reason and logic. But I do understand that reason and logic has very little to do with this game anyway.
So, let's see how this works out.

[duvessa]

Most of us who've played crawl for any length of time have spent many hours messing around with inventory (and "stashes") because of item weights ...

Actually at least I've spend time with stashes and and messing with inventory because of 52 item limit and item destruction. Rarely because of item weight.

Removing item destruction is something that many people would like to do, and removing item weight really needs to be done alongside it.
Item weight's benefits are also extremely questionable (possibly nonexistent), whereas removing the 52 item limit would have some immediate, obvious, really bad consequences.

[Zammy]

Removing item destruction is something that many people would like to do, and removing item weight really needs to be done alongside it.
Item weight's benefits are also extremely questionable (possibly nonexistent), whereas removing the 52 item limit would have some immediate, obvious, really bad consequences.

I was actually just pointing out that justifying item weight remowal with less "stashing and item juggling" doens't really adress the issue since most (of mine) isn't because of item weight.
I don't want the item limit removed beause as you pointed out it would have really bad consequences.

<sarcasm>Item destruction should actually be buffed so that electric based attacks could destroy wands and rings </sarcasm>

[Jeremiah]

Just making corpses unmovable (so they wouldn't really be items anymore) would probably be good for other reasons (corpse rot...), but it does not really fix all of the problem with animate dead: you can still lure the living monsters to the desired level.

A living monster powerful enough to make a useful zombie would presumably be somewhat dangerous to lure to another level. Especially if it was a new, unknown level where there might already be monsters next to the stairs when you go down.

[gammafunk]

I just rolled up a CeHu and all weapons I've found so far (aside from my starting bow) are marked as if they're unusable. I can wield and attack with them them just fine, but they're not triggering skill training

This has been fixed in weightless and the branch has been rebuilt on cszo, so weapon training should work now. Thanks!

[Hurkyl]

Most of us who've played crawl for any length of time have spent many hours messing around with inventory (and "stashes") because of item weights ...

Actually at least I've spend time with stashes and and messing with inventory because of 52 item limit and item destruction. Rarely because of item weight.

Some species/backgrounds have it worse. SpWz, for example, can become burdened simply by carrying the food, scrolls, potions it finds before a level 7 temple!

[Klown]

Most of us who've played crawl for any length of time have spent many hours messing around with inventory (and "stashes") because of item weights ...

Actually at least I've spend time with stashes and and messing with inventory because of 52 item limit and item destruction. Rarely because of item weight.

Some species/backgrounds have it worse. SpWz, for example, can become burdened simply by carrying the food, scrolls, potions it finds before a level 7 temple!

Isn't this the point/designed drawback of them being small, weak creatures?

[dck]

Carryweight in most situations in crawl isn't really a gameplay drawback itself, but an interface annoyance.

[XuaXua]

Weight isn't the problem; inventory slot consumption is the problem.

[Tiktacy]

The only real issue with item weight that I've experience is the fact that food(ESPECIALLY chunks) have weight, which really doesn't make sense from a gameplay standpoint. Otherwise, things like item destruction, carrying too much ammo, and other weight affiliated issues don't really seem like "issues" rather than just a strategical hurdle(which imo is at least interesting enough to remain in the game).

Not carrying enough food is never going to kill you, but perhaps only holding on to 1 blink scroll rather than 2 might? Or maybe leaving all of your heal wounds outside of ice caves? Or not bringing enough ammo(or the right kind?) with you on a trip to vaults:5? Those are all at least somewhat interesting choices that don't seem to interrupt gameplay in such a way that makes the game less fun.

[duvessa]

Not carrying enough food is never going to kill you, but perhaps only holding on to 1 blink scroll rather than 2 might? Or maybe leaving all of your heal wounds outside of ice caves? Or not bringing enough ammo(or the right kind?) with you on a trip to vaults:5? Those are all at least somewhat interesting choices that don't seem to interrupt gameplay in such a way that makes the game less fun.

and item weight is related to exactly 0 of them

[dck]

Pretty much of my interaction with consumables that doesn't consist in shoving them down my throat is picking them up as I find them and then drop excess on the stairs to avoid centaurs eating them and whatnot.
I've yet to play a character where I had to drop !might under the standard I usually carry or had to decide which important consumable to carry based on weight restrictions so I think these interesting choices based on weight just don't happen in reality. This could be of course changed by moving item weights around, but I doubt that would result in anything other than bitter tears given the way carryweight has worked in crawl so far.

[XuaXua]

Not carrying enough food is never going to kill you, but perhaps only holding on to 1 blink scroll rather than 2 might? Or maybe leaving all of your heal wounds outside of ice caves? Or not bringing enough ammo(or the right kind?) with you on a trip to vaults:5? Those are all at least somewhat interesting choices that don't seem to interrupt gameplay in such a way that makes the game less fun.

and item weight is related to exactly 0 of them

Can't carry 2 blink scrolls? Carry around your food more tactically, or carry fewer wands or rods or carry less ammo.

Can't carry 7 Heal Wounds? You should only ever need to carry 3.

Can't carry 150 ammo? Bring 75 or drop a few low-quality wands.

[HilariousDeathArtist]

Weight isn't the problem; inventory slot consumption is the problem.

I agree; for the majority of characters this is usually the limit that they will hit more often unless they feel the need to carry massive stacks or have low STR.

Here is a very rough estimate on the number of items that a typical character with a rune will want to be carrying:

  Code:

1-6 weapons (a bit high to include ranged weapons)
4-7 pieces of worn armour
3-10 pieces of jewelry
3-10 wands
3-10 scrolls
3-10 potions
1-2 stacks of permafood
1-3 stacks of chunks
0-6 miscellaneous items


Total: 19-64 items.

The low end is a bit extreme and pretty much only includes your equipped items. The high end doesn't feel too extreme to me, and feels like a situation that occurs frequently.

A couple ideas I had that could help mitigate dealing with hitting the item cap:

1. Increase number of item slots to 62. (Using 0-9 to address them)
2. Make permafood/chunks stack better. (This could provide relief to maybe 4 item slots)
3. Make wands/misc stack better. (Not sure of a good way to do this, but maybe could free up a few slots)
4. Lower the number of tactical jewelry/wands/scrolls/potions/misc items. (I don't like this idea)

Removing item weights encourages carrying around larger stacks of items in my opinion, which doesn't seem to create any new problems.
However, this only helps solve the item management issue for characters who like to carry large stacks or have low STR.

I would be much more excited to see the item cap increased since there are so many useful/fun/tactical items, but I can tell that there is some serious concern over changing this (arbitrary?) number.

[crate]

Using 0-9 to address them

so how do you drop a portion of a stack with this system?

[HilariousDeathArtist]

Using 0-9 to address them

so how do you drop a portion of a stack with this system?

Good point. Although it would be a bad solution, we could put only items that can't stack on 0-9.
EDIT: This would also break inscriptions where you assign numbers to actions such as @w0, @e1, etc., please ignore 0-9 suggestion.

I understand there are some technical issues but I think there must be a solution.
I don't care exactly how we address them but it should be possible; for instance, search results have more than 52 items.

[Leafsnail]

I feel like inventory restrictions in general don't work fantastically in a game where you can almost always easily go back and pick up everything you dropped. I'm glad to see this one gone, I cannot remember a single case where inventory weights have caused me to make a significant decision (unless large rocks were involved, but that's still in). At least the slots limit is easy to manage.

[Klown]

Along with this odd change
Change inventory slots by species.(ie, less for spriggy, more for ogre)?

[Tiktacy]

Keep in mind, the situations I described were just some of my experiences, I don't know if other people have the same experience as me. If thats not the case, then I back out from my argument.

[and into]

I feel like inventory restrictions in general don't work fantastically in a game where you can almost always easily go back and pick up everything you dropped. I'm glad to see this one gone, I cannot remember a single case where inventory weights have caused me to make a significant decision (unless large rocks were involved, but that's still in). At least the slots limit is easy to manage.

Agreed. It also has very bad interactions with butchering/chunks + autopickup, and just with autopickup in general. Really cramps the game up from time to time, with very little gain in terms of confronting you with meaningful decisions. Low strength just means you have to autotravel back to where they dropped stuff more often, which isn't meaningful except in niche cases (banishment or shafting when you have relatively few consumables with you), but those can already be very frightening/intense scenarios and they don't need, and aren't made much more interesting or compelling by, weight limits.

I wouldn't say the "value added" by weight limits is absolutely 0. But it is very low, and it comes at the price of a lot of hassle for many characters. So, overall, the "annoyance to value added" ratio is bad. I'm happy to see this branch and I look forward to trying it out once I've killed or ascended the weird Cherufe^Igni I am running on the Smith god branch. (If weightless hasn't already been merged with Trunk by that point... one can hope.)

[Patashu]

I think a big quality of life improvement would be to make strategic consumables not take up a slot in your inventory (enchant, cure mut, recharging, amnesia, etc). After all, item destruction is getting removed soon, and with no item destruction + no item weights there are 0 interesting tradeoffs to how you decide to carry strategic consumables around, and they also don't need quick access via a letter because you won't be using them mid-battle/in a situation where you don't want to think just push buttons.

Maybe picking up such a strategic item would automagically consume it, and add a 'charge' of that strategic consumable accessible under for example the a menu, or a new menu.

[NessOnett]

Oh my God would this make the life of a bat so much easier. And not dying to randomly getting str-redux mid-fight and suddenly being overburdened when you don't have spare time to work with.

On the other hand, I always hear Strength being criticized as being the least useful of the 3 stats by far. And this nerfs it even further.

(And as for item destruction, God it is the worst thing ever. Makes me hate myself whenever I play an FE, because if I ever see a ghost of one of those, all of my scrolls are instantly gone)

[dck]

To be concise this isn't a str nerf; if carryweight didn't exist and str was to be found insufficiently determining compared to other stats (which I can't really agree with seeing how I would train str on some guys sometimes) then this side effect being added to it would not be a buff either, it'd just mean a few combos chosen are physically painful to play unless you get str.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

IMO this is a buff to rings of strength; in this branch I occasionally use them!

[and into]

Well this is a bit embarrassing since I contributed to the derail myself (mea culpa), but I've moved the discussion of the relative value of stats to dungeon crawling advice:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12431

I don't want to shoot down that discussion, but it was starting to veer into questions of how good strength damage is versus dex, and the like, and this experimental branch that gfunk wants feedback on hasn't done anything different to those aspects of stats. Thus they aren't relevant.

If you have concerns about weightlessness making strength less valuable to an extent that unbalances the game, and you want to discuss that fact vis-a-vis game design, do so in this thread.

Other stuff about stats can be discussed freely in the thread in DCA I linked to above. Thanks!

[Zicher]

Interesting change, if a bit against logic. I kinda liked the fact that as a Spriggan I simply had to take care about what items I carried, but I guess I can get used to this change.

My question is, how is drowning and scrambling out handled now?

[duvessa]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commitdiff;h=63a232999fb6

[gammafunk]

Based on some discussions with the dev team, I've removed the large rock inventory limit. Now you can carry as many as possible, but they mulch at a higher rate. I go into a bit more detail and suggest other possibilities in the commit

Another change I've implemented is duvessa's idea to make corpses and skeletons stationary. I like this idea because it prevents the annoying mini-game of picking up and moving lots of corpses for purposes of corps rot/kiku prayer/fedhas spores from ever being optimal. In trunk it's not possible to move the large corpses, but you can do corpse shenanigans with the smaller ones. On a weightless branch with movable corpses, those games would certainly become more common. Luring live monsters around or between levels is still possible, but at least there's the drawback of keeping alive a (presumably) dangerous monster there. Also, this change doesn't render any of the corpse-dependent spells/abilities useless by any means.

That's the last of the major changes we wanted to do for this branch. It's going to sit a few days before merging so people can play-test and comment on any problems/bugs. I ascended a spriggan before these most recent changes (SpEn of Dith, my second won-on-first-try species, woo), and I'm probably going to play a Troll next. Feel free to give it a try on CSZO or CBRO and leave feedback in the thread and/or bug reports on Mantis. Thanks!

[Hurkyl]

Can autoexplore be made not to stop when seeing a corpse?

It's a minor edge case, but when playing a mummy, I find some utility in being able to clean up the dungeon floor in the early floors so that it's not painful to forget the map and autoexplore to clear it 2 or 3 times to make extra sure the floor is safe for retreats. If we're forced to leave corpses lying around, it would get a bit annoying.

I've also done in Orc:4 so that the sorcerers won't animate the skeletons of the bajillions of orcs I've killed.

[Klown]

gammafunk, can there be some kind of STR buff alongside this?
It feels like it hugely cheapens STR.
Ogres suddenly lose their few large rocks quicker for no reason, even though they could already carry a load of them.
Instead of Spriggan players dropping crucial potions to stay afloat, needing to choose wisely, they just join the Pantheon and carry whatever now. Encourages ring/item swapping even more now. There is nothing stopping you from keeping every ring/armor/etc. until the 52 mark. Species with low STR have less drawbacks from it now.
People can point out all of these miniscule +'s STR gives, but I can play a MiFi pure STR and MiGl pure DEX, and they'll feel the exact same.
No offense~ And if this feels too out of place for this specific thread, feel free to move/delete it.

[duvessa]

Now this is an excellent change. Right up there with the monster summoning change.

[dck]

Seeing how a MiGl starts with nineteen str I find it hard to believe str for carrying purposes was a deciding factor in how different "a MiFi pure STR and MiGl pure DEX" felt.
Also ogres and trolls could never really carry more than like 5 rocks without wanting to kill themselves with inventory management.
Regarding moving corpses, this is good although it makes some vaults that play with skeleton ambushes and shadow imps silly. Then again that's more of a problem with the vaults themselves.
Rip corpse chucking.

[Sar]

to forget the map and autoexplore to clear it 2 or 3 times to make extra sure the floor is safe for retreats

Not only this sounds awful and tedious, but also kind of pointless, since monsters do keep spawning (and the longer you stay on one floor, the higher are the chances that spawn will be something terribly out of your depth).

[Hurkyl]

to forget the map and autoexplore to clear it 2 or 3 times to make extra sure the floor is safe for retreats

Not only this sounds awful and tedious, but also kind of pointless, since monsters do keep spawning (and the longer you stay on one floor, the higher are the chances that spawn will be something terribly out of your depth).

It really isn't tedious at all if the floor is clear, since you can mostly just let autoexplore run and it only stops for stairs. While you can't thin monsters out completely, you can often do a lot better than just once through the level, and there is indeed a balancing act between overdoing it.

[Sar]

Well, you still are wasting real time for something that might not even contribute positively towards your winning chances, instead of just going deeper, playing the game and having fun (assuming you do have fun playing the game). But well, whatever works for you.

[johlstei]

I think the piety loss hurts more than the exploration helps.

[Hurkyl]

I think the piety loss hurts more than the exploration helps.

I use this mostly on D:1 and the next few floors (and the corpse moving on Orc:4). Sif's piety decreases relatively slowly, however, if I decide a later floor deserves being extra clean.

[Bim]

I get that this is going in the direction of simplification that crawl is going in at the moment, but I really think that removing weight completely is a step in the wrong direction.

While weight can become tedious for certain aspects (dropping that one scroll to be below burdened), it certainly adds a tactical/strategic element in some - especially for certain species. For instance, carrying weapons with a few different brands around (especially fire for hydra/undead, holy for demons and say your 'main' weapon) or carrying armor with a few different resists/sInvs/etc. will now become much, much easier.

Most middle-strength species would struggle carrying around multiple armors/weapons and this leads to having to strategically choose what to sacrifice. Similarly, smaller/weaker species tend to have to balance consumables/food and find being burdened more of a detriment. I know some players will say 'well then you're carrying too much stuff' but newer players don't know what is optimal/needed, and that adds more tension/strategy.

How about just not having weight for consumables? This would stop the tedious shuffling of potions/scrolls, but would still stop players carrying around silly amounts of armor and weapons.

[Sar]

I almost never carry around different armour because you can't really swap it in combat (and if you are not in combat you might as well backtrack).

[Patashu]

Weight was already arbitrary irrelevant for some kinds of weapon swapping anyway (for example, demon whips weigh only 3 aum)

[gammafunk]

You don't need to carry more than a few weapons ever, and carrying a few weapons was quite possible when we had inventory weight. It's easier to do that now, but the 'difficulty' that was removed was really just hassle balancing out excess consumable and didn't involve much strategic thinking you weren't already doing elsewhere. You had to know which consumables you'd want and make a reasonable guess as to how many of each you'd want to have for a while. Then there was a mini-game where you balance out all of your inventory piles until you hit the magic burden number you wanted (you got a high score in this game if you could do the math without using show_inventory_weights). You need to know how to effectively use consumables in order to know how which and how many you'll need, so the inventory juggling didn't bring any new strategic thinking. You could also always carry as many as you'd actually need, so the only effective limit was the game not giving you enough of a consumable type, or you made a mistake and used too many. Carrying extra body armour is generally not very useful, and alternate armour pieces for the other slots were easy to carry with item weight just like they're easy to carry now.

I don't think any interesting gameplay was lost due to item weight removal; there may be some cases like large rocks where we actually need to balance the ability to carry so many, but there are not many cases like that.

[gammafunk]

I guess I should also mention that the weightless changes were merged into trunk a while ago and are already live on CSZO and CBRO. One additional and mostly technical change that was necessary is that corpses and skeletons are always put below any non-stationary items in a pile. This is because they are stationary items that can't be picked up or apported, and we don't want them to block apport by being on top of a pile.

I had a glorious, golden-haired high elf that was walking around Snake with 94 Fruit (spoiler: I had to ^qyes because Sif and I are going through a rough spot).