FR: Allow inscribe on bare hands

[rebthor]

As it almost led to YASD twice for me, I'd like to see the ability to inscribe !a on unarmed attacks. There's nothing worse than going in for a stab and doing piddling damage against a hydra or a unique because you had been wielding chunks for sublimation of blood or simulacrum. Given that you can do it for any other weapon, doing it for no weapon/unarmed seems reasonable as well.

Alternatively, it would be better if both sub blood and simulacrum were less mechanically annoying, but that's a more difficult problem to solve.

[mumra]

If you're wielding chunks it should at least give you a warning when you try to melee, unless you've changed your config. But agreed, the interface for those spells does tend towards forgetting what you've got wielded quite often ... same with Transmuters wielding arrows for sticks to snakes.

[rebthor]

It's after the chunks are all gone that I find I run into issues. E.g. I have 4 yak chunks, I wield them and sub blood 4 times, now I'm wielding nothing. I sneak up on another yak and do no damage because I forgot to hit ' or w-whatever. Inscribing my "hands" with !a would prevent that.

Thinking about this more, I'd be happy with an init flag to auto-wield the a-slot after casting a chunk using spell and having no chunks left. It functionally accomplishes the same thing. Like I said the real issue is that sub blood and simulacrum are great spells with interesting drawbacks that become frustrating to use because of interface problems.

I agree that StS has the same issue, however in practice it is much less dangerous because 1) you are rarely going through a whole stack of arrows at once and 2) most people who bother to learn StS are Tm anyhow and as such have decent UC.

[Lasty]

How about a flag in init that does !a when you're bare-handed and your unarmed skill is 0?

[mumra]

I agree that StS has the same issue, however in practice it is much less dangerous because 1) you are rarely going through a whole stack of arrows at once and 2) most people who bother to learn StS are Tm anyhow and as such have decent UC.

Yeah I slightly misunderstood your OP. The real problem here is the interface which I would rather see improved than hacking around the issue.

Can anyone see any problem with the following:

- When you cast the spell you get a message similar to eating: "Cast with [oldest chunk in inventory]? Y/N"
- If you select N then it pops up your inventory to pick a chunk
- Casting takes an additional amount of time equivalent to how long it takes to switch weapon. This is a slight buff if casting the spell only once on a stack, a slight nerf if casting it more than twice (since usually you would have to switch twice), but since the wield time is extremely quick in any case this makes hardly any difference.
- Unable to cast if your weapon is cursed

[mumra]

Actually I would add more couple of things:

- Casting when stood on chunks should behave like eating when stood on chunks/food, in that those chunks will be offered first (the time it would take to pick up the chunk is also added on). This would be useful either when at maximum carry capacity or when butchering in sight of monsters.
- It will still be possible to wield chunks and they will be used without a prompt, e.g. if you have a large stack you want to sublime

[rebthor]

The problem is that it's a huge nerf to StS, simulacrum and sub blood to only do 1 at a time and then switch back because even with StS you cast it a few times on the stack. Having add in an extra half turn every cast would really reduce the utility of the spell.

On top of that, what do you do if you want to self-sublimate? It's perfectly viable to do so and I've done it many times in the past. Adding more prompts makes it even more of an interface nightmare.

That's why I'd just like to fix the attacking with 0 unarmed skill issue since I don't know how to fix those "wield a consumable" spells that doesn't overly buff or nerf them.

[mumra]

The problem is that it's a huge nerf to StS, simulacrum and sub blood to only do 1 at a time and then switch back because even with StS you cast it a few times on the stack. Having add in an extra half turn every cast would really reduce the utility of the spell.

It's not a huge nerf at all - switching weapon is one of the fastest actions in the game so it would only add on a very tiny amount of time and you would have to cast more than twice even for that. On the other hand, the time could still be reduced a bit more to come out with a good average. And there's still the option to wield and cast anyway if you absolutely have to optimise those fractional turns.

On top of that, what do you do if you want to self-sublimate? It's perfectly viable to do so and I've done it many times in the past. Adding more prompts makes it even more of an interface nightmare.

This is a good point and something I missed but we don't have to overcomplicate:

- If there are no chunks available then automatically self-sublimate (with no prompt, as current)
- If you are wielding chunks then use them (with no prompt, as current)
- If you aren't wielding anything but chunks are available then the prompt will be: "Use [oldest chunk]? Y/N/Self"

So this only requires an extra keypress in the event you want to self-sublimate but are carrying chunks, which I think is pretty rare. And then if you want to repeat the action you can just press the '`' key as many times as needed.

[XuaXua]

Due to unaccountable errant Sage cards, checking against an inscription is a better solution to checking against a 0 skill value.

[BlackSheep]

It's not a huge nerf at all - switching weapon is one of the fastest actions in the game so it would only add on a very tiny amount of time and you would have to cast more than twice even for that.

Unwielding something costs 0.3 turns. Wielding something costs 0.5 turns (even if you're already wielding something else). Including a switch to and switch back would make casting Sublimation cost 2 turns (barring haste).

[rebthor]

@mumra, but it still doesn't resolve the whole reason I posted. Let's take the case when you decide to wield the stack and use it all. Then you still need to remember to wield a weapon. Far better to allow inscription on the hands and then perhaps look at how to fix this kind of spell in the future.

Maybe it's good enough to just allow it to be cast out of the inventory without a wield always (no option to wield) and in return they all lose 1 pip of spellpower, so sub blood will gain less mana, sts and simulacra lose duration. It still doesn't really solve the sort of edge case where you want to eat the chunks and self-sublimate though...

@Blacksheep - to be fair, he was buffing the spell so that the wield foo/ wield weapon only took .5 turns total which would be a buff if you only want to use the spell once.

[mumra]

It's not a huge nerf at all - switching weapon is one of the fastest actions in the game so it would only add on a very tiny amount of time and you would have to cast more than twice even for that.

Unwielding something costs 0.3 turns. Wielding something costs 0.5 turns (even if you're already wielding something else). Including a switch to and switch back would make casting Sublimation cost 2 turns (barring haste).

Yeah, I went and checked the times. For some reason I'd been under the impression it was slightly quicker. Anyway with my proposal it would mean sublimating direct from your inventory would take 1.5 turns. It's a buff of half a turn but only for the first casting - if you were sublimating more chunks then normally it would take 1 turn from the same stack or 1.5 turns in the very common situation where you have several single chunks. Whether this would average out as a buff or a nerf over the course of a game I'm not sure. I actually don't think it'd be a huge problem to make it 2 turns and therefore strictly a nerf, especially if you can manually wield a stack anyway. Streamlining the interface would make me actually want to use these spells again, even if they were slower! (I used to love them but the amount of keypresses does get very annoying.)

There is another option that would ensure the exact same amount of time is used, but the implementation would be more complex. Basically the game could remember if your last action was one of these spells, and if so which stack you used. So you pay for the switchback on the first cast, and repeat castings would be quicker. So, first cast is 2 turns (if holding a weapon) or 1.8 turns (if unarmed) or 1.5 turns (if unarmed and sublimating a single item stack, since no switchback time would be required anyway). A second cast from the same stack would be 1 turn, or 1.5 turns from a different stack. Like I say, a massively more complicated implementation; is situationally losing or gaining 0.5 of a turn with these spells really going to destroy game balance?

@mumra, but it still doesn't resolve the whole reason I posted. Let's take the case when you decide to wield the stack and use it all. Then you still need to remember to wield a weapon. Far better to allow inscription on the hands and then perhaps look at how to fix this kind of spell in the future.

There is a major problem with this; hands aren't an inventory item so allowing inscription on them would probably be quite elaborate, for a very situational net gain which few players will be aware of. On the other hand, sorting out the interface problems with these spells would be a massive gain for a lot of players now and in the future (and I've seen several conversations in the past about improving the interface for these spells). In terms of coder time to game improvement I know which I would rather do.

Maybe it's good enough to just allow it to be cast out of the inventory without a wield always (no option to wield) and in return they all lose 1 pip of spellpower, so sub blood will gain less mana, sts and simulacra lose duration.

I would rather not see spell power actually nerfed unless any of them are considered OP. Which of course they might be, just not enough players can stand fighting the interface long enough to abuse them

It still doesn't really solve the sort of edge case where you want to eat the chunks and self-sublimate though...

As suggested, a Y/N/S prompt allows you to self-sublimate with 'S'. It's an extra keypress in that one situation, but over the course of a game you are saving a lot of keypresses by not having to juggle items. (It's not just the quantity of keypresses - it's also the time you spend stopping and scanning the wield screen to see which letter the chunk is on, which is what I find more jarring .)

[galehar]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just prompt for confirmation whenever attacking unarmed if skill(slot_a weapon) > skill(unarmed)? Currently, this only happen if you have been interrupted while butchering and didn't swap back to your main weapon.

[crate]

If you want to wield chunks for sublimation you can autoinscribe them with @w1 and then to wield them you just press w1.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Why not just have the spells automatically pull items from the inventory without all these awkward interface issues. If a player wants to pick a specific chunk or arrow, they could cast the spell with Z instead of z (or whatever they changed the key to). No prompts if you don't want them and no unwieldly interface. And it's not like those three spells are so brokenly overpowered that they need to be balanced by annoyance.

[XuaXua]

Sticks to Snakes and Simulacrum have similar, but less frequent problems.

[Psieye]

Having to wield chunks to cast Sub.Blood/Simulacrum is not merely an interface annoyance - it's a tactical decision. While using those spells you do not get the benefit of holding onto your weapon. If your weapon is some artifact or maybe even a staff for the resists, that can be significant stats/resists that you consciously put away to use chunks (or arrows, but StS isn't as useful later on).

The original complaint regarding "I accidentally bare-fist attack" is valid. Galehar's proposal makes the most sense to me to solving that. Crate gives the solution to "but I don't like having to press w then find the letter for my chunk stack", i.e. the 'awkward interface' complaint.

[BlackSheep]

What about a toggle along the lines of ctrl-a for autopickup?
Press ctrl-foo and it cycles between:
Warn on attacks: Always | Unarmed | Never

[Lasty]

I was about to post the same thing as BlackSheep, give or take. Instead, I'll just agree with him.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Having to wield chunks to cast Sub.Blood/Simulacrum is not merely an interface annoyance - it's a tactical decision. While using those spells you do not get the benefit of holding onto your weapon. If your weapon is some artifact or maybe even a staff for the resists, that can be significant stats/resists that you consciously put away to use chunks (or arrows, but StS isn't as useful later on).

It's a very minor tactical decision and not worth keeping if the interface fuss could be fixed. Casting Sticks to Snakes? There's an extremely high chance you're a Transmuter, so you're going unarmed anyway and don't benefit from wielding weapons.

If you're casting Sub of Blood, odds are you are low on mana. And, generally, being low on mana is generally a more dangerous issue than having to unwield whatever weapon you're holding, assuming you even have a weapon that has any benefits while equipped to begin with. And also, if you're needing to swap to cast it, you're probably not cursing your weapon with Ash or using the Distortion brand. Also, if you don't have the chunks to begin with, chances are you're not going to be unwielding to cast in that combat situation because to get the chunks, you'd have to either butcher a corpse in mid-fight or blow something up and chase down the chunks.

Simulacrum has a lot of the same technicalities as Sub, but the tactical decision of wielding/unwielding is even less likely to matter since you can simply wield, spam at the start of combat, or before combat even begins, and then swap back until the end of the fight.

Seriously, it's just an annoying inventory hassle with little to no gain. I use Sub quite often and StS on just about every Transmuter (don't use Simulacrum much, but that's mostly because I don't like managing allies) and I honestly cannot think of a time where I have ever thought "should I unwield to cast this spell or not?" If I need to cast them, I jump through the annoying hoops and cast them. If not, then I don't cast them. No decisions made beyond the choice of "do I need to cast this spell?". Which is the same decision as every other spell. Except without the interface annoyance.

[Psieye]

Then we are at a fundamental divide in opinion on "wielding stacks is annoying" as well as "what is the benefit of choosing which stack to wield?". That's for both chunks and arrows. I barely register the extra interface hurdle as a nuisance (compared to certain other parts of the game) and I see concrete benefit in choosing to wield stack A over stack B (sometimes without regard for which is the older chunk stack). I do agree that there are many situations where it won't make any difference but I'm not convinced it's necessary to do elaborate condition checking to scratch this itch compared to the 'hot swap wield' option already suggested in the thread.

[sanka]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just prompt for confirmation whenever attacking unarmed if skill(slot_a weapon) > skill(unarmed)? Currently, this only happen if you have been interrupted while butchering and didn't swap back to your main weapon.

It's the monst annoying - as the OP said - when you want to stab. Stabbing needs no weapon skill. Of course you may add some condition involving stabbing situations.

While improving the interface for some spells can be good, it does not address some other situations like when butchering is interrupted etc. and you forgot to re-equip your main weapon. Using those spells comfortably can be achieved with macros currently quite easily.

What I like to do is to set up the autoexplore macro to equip my 'a' slot before I start to explore - then I only need to assign my main weapon to that slot. It's far from perfect but it helps. I guess it would work even more flexibly with @w1 inscription.

+1 to be able to "inscribe" bare hands with !a.

[Tiber]

Even if no other issues get addressed here, I think the is a simple improvement that could be made to this behavior. Have the game remember your last wielded weapon when wielding chunks, stones, or arrows, like with butchering. Upon using your last wielded one, either automatically switch back to that weapon or have an config option to do so, if there are no enemies in sight. If there are enemies in sight, ask first.

[njvack]

Of everything I've read in this thread, I like the OP's suggestion most. All the "prompt in these cases but not others" things seem like they'd have edge cases they miss (without a lot of work) and something that'll change per-character doesn't really belong in init.

I know your hands aren't an item and most inscriptions would be stupid on them; at the same time, for the purposes of this case, your hands are a weapon and making it work like one makes the most sense to me. This kind of stuff is what inscriptions are for.

[mumra]

Then we are at a fundamental divide in opinion on "wielding stacks is annoying" as well as "what is the benefit of choosing which stack to wield?".

I don't think anyone (certainly not me) is suggesting that it isn't frequently beneficial to choose which stack to wield. That's why I suggested something like how the Eat key currently works - it picks a stack according to some simple rules and offers you that; if you select N then the inventory pops open. Simple, and minimal keypresses, allowing the same flexibility as currently.

Note: With Sublimation you will always want your oldest chunk (or self-sublimation, on the S key) - I can't think of a single reason why there would be an exception. With S2S you will probably want the last stack you wielded (also note: sometimes with S2S I sometimes carry around some spears/javelins/clubs/staves for bigger snakes, but that stack of 20 arrows would still be my default choice unless I'm facing something nasty). For Simulacra it's perhaps a more complicated decision - are you more likely to want the oldest chunks, or that stack of hydra chunks you just butchered? Still I think oldest chunk would be a reasonable default.

I know your hands aren't an item and most inscriptions would be stupid on them; at the same time, for the purposes of this case, your hands are a weapon and making it work like one makes the most sense to me. This kind of stuff is what inscriptions are for.

The problem is, how would this interface work? We'd have to introduce an entirely new key to the interface for "inscribe hands" just to cover this single case, because there's no actual inventory item for "hands" to inscribe. It's actually far more complicated than it sounds from an implementation point of view. Which is why I'm arguing for fixing the broken interface of these three spells that is causing the problem, rather than introduce yet another awkward interface to cover it up.

Inscriptions are for making notes about items, and that system has been used to provide a few other convenience methods around items, for instance to stop you accidentally destroying them. They were never designed with this type of thing in mind. They're also a very unfriendly system from a new player perspective because you have to dig fairly deep to even discover what inscriptions do stuff.

[rebthor]

Then we are at a fundamental divide in opinion on "wielding stacks is annoying" as well as "what is the benefit of choosing which stack to wield?".

I don't think anyone (certainly not me) is suggesting that it isn't frequently beneficial to choose which stack to wield. That's why I suggested something like how the Eat key currently works - it picks a stack according to some simple rules and offers you that; if you select N then the inventory pops open. Simple, and minimal keypresses, allowing the same flexibility as currently.

Note: With Sublimation you will always want your oldest chunk (or self-sublimation, on the S key) - I can't think of a single reason why there would be an exception. With S2S you will probably want the last stack you wielded (also note: sometimes with S2S I sometimes carry around some spears/javelins/clubs/staves for bigger snakes, but that stack of 20 arrows would still be my default choice unless I'm facing something nasty). For Simulacra it's perhaps a more complicated decision - are you more likely to want the oldest chunks, or that stack of hydra chunks you just butchered? Still I think oldest chunk would be a reasonable default.

I know your hands aren't an item and most inscriptions would be stupid on them; at the same time, for the purposes of this case, your hands are a weapon and making it work like one makes the most sense to me. This kind of stuff is what inscriptions are for.

The problem is, how would this interface work? We'd have to introduce an entirely new key to the interface for "inscribe hands" just to cover this single case, because there's no actual inventory item for "hands" to inscribe. It's actually far more complicated than it sounds from an implementation point of view. Which is why I'm arguing for fixing the broken interface of these three spells that is causing the problem, rather than introduce yet another awkward interface to cover it up.

Inscriptions are for making notes about items, and that system has been used to provide a few other convenience methods around items, for instance to stop you accidentally destroying them. They were never designed with this type of thing in mind. They're also a very unfriendly system from a new player perspective because you have to dig fairly deep to even discover what inscriptions do stuff.

I envisioned the interface as
i for inventory
- for nothing aka the same thing you do when you wield nothing. So there is a notional hand weapon.
then inscribe.

As for being an obscure thing for new players, then teach them in the tutorial if you think it's that important. How is it any different than inscribing that staff of channeling or blinking spear with !a or ammo with !p? There are tons of things that are obscure for new players. That's what this forum, the knowledgebots, IRC and the wiki are for!

[BlackSheep]

Note: With Sublimation you will always want your oldest chunk (or self-sublimation, on the S key) - I can't think of a single reason why there would be an exception.

I would use mutating, acidic or poisonous chunks before any non-rotten clean/contaminated ones, but that could be rolled into the check pretty easily.

For Simulacra it's perhaps a more complicated decision - are you more likely to want the oldest chunks, or that stack of hydra chunks you just butchered? Still I think oldest chunk would be a reasonable default.

I would vastly prefer to go straight to a listing of available chunks over getting asked if I want to use my oldest chunk when casting Simulacrum. The primary factor when casting that spell is the type of creatures you're going to get, not the freshness of the chunks.

The problem is, how would this interface work? We'd have to introduce an entirely new key to the interface for "inscribe hands"

While you're right about needing to introduce special code to handle the case of inscribing hands, there's already a key dedicated to inscribing stuff: "{"
It would need a custom menu that adds "Hands/Tentacles/Claws" to the list.

[mumra]

As for being an obscure thing for new players, then teach them in the tutorial if you think it's that important. How is it any different than inscribing that staff of channeling or blinking spear with !a or ammo with !p? There are tons of things that are obscure for new players. That's what this forum, the knowledgebots, IRC and the wiki are for!

I just see such things as bad - there's a continual effort to make the game more accessible and transparent for players - and not just new players; I recently got back into Crawl after a long hiatus and if such a feature had been added I would have no idea it was there to even look for it. The inscription mechanics are already incredibly obscure and I played Crawl for a long time without being aware of them (I still never use them). This would admittedly apply also to an interface change on these spells (unless the wielding mechanic was removed completely), but sooner or later I would notice by accidentally casting one with nothing wielded, or spot an updated spell description.

[jejorda2]

{- seems like the way to go, but I don't see why you need to type "!a" for the inscription, since there is no other inscription that makes sense. !* might prompt you before dropping things or picking things up? Or casting blade hands/slimifiy/confusing touch?

Picking a key to toggle the option makes more sense to me than trying to have an inscription string that gets interpreted.

[BlackSheep]

!w could be used to prevent you from wielding anything, but that's the only other inscription I could imagine being useful.

[mumra]

Here, I just thought of a much more elegant solution to the inscription: Instead of finding a way to inscribe hands with "do not attack", have a weapon inscription for "only attack with this". So if anything in your inventory has this new inscription, you'd get a warning when attempting to attack with anything else (including your hands). Far simpler to implement, and possibly solves a few cases; although I'd still rather fix the spells in the first place

[galehar]

Note: With Sublimation you will always want your oldest chunk (or self-sublimation, on the S key) - I can't think of a single reason why there would be an exception.

I would use mutating, acidic or poisonous chunks before any non-rotten clean/contaminated ones, but that could be rolled into the check pretty easily.

That, and I sometimes use the smallest stack if I want to free up inventory space, or the biggest one if I'm in a fight and want to optimize the time spent recovering MP. Also, prompts can get quite annoying, they are rarely a good way to improve the interface.

Here, I just thought of a much more elegant solution to the inscription: Instead of finding a way to inscribe hands with "do not attack", have a weapon inscription for "only attack with this".

Good idea. Sounds a lot better than the complicated "hand inscription" proposal. You could even put it on several weapons. Implementation can be a bit tricky if we want to avoid looking through the whole inventory at each attack.

[Psieye]

Note: With Sublimation you will always want your oldest chunk (or self-sublimation, on the S key) - I can't think of a single reason why there would be an exception. With S2S you will probably want the last stack you wielded (also note: sometimes with S2S I sometimes carry around some spears/javelins/clubs/staves for bigger snakes, but that stack of 20 arrows would still be my default choice unless I'm facing something nasty). For Simulacra it's perhaps a more complicated decision - are you more likely to want the oldest chunks, or that stack of hydra chunks you just butchered? Still I think oldest chunk would be a reasonable default.

It's been adequately answered by previous posts but to sum up: Kiku + Sub.Blood + Simulacrum (+ Animate Skeleton for utility). You REALLY want to know which creature you're going to pull up when you have 6+ different species' worth of meat to choose from. There is minimal reason to want to cast Simulacrum on a random snake Kiku threw at you when you have 8 chunks of stone giant or something. You do not want to waste an iron dragon chunk on Sub.Blood when you have some random dog meat instead.

Here, I just thought of a much more elegant solution to the inscription: Instead of finding a way to inscribe hands with "do not attack", have a weapon inscription for "only attack with this".

Good idea. Sounds a lot better than the complicated "hand inscription" proposal. You could even put it on several weapons. Implementation can be a bit tricky if we want to avoid looking through the whole inventory at each attack.

Why check the whole inventory on each attack? The way I see it (without knowing the in-depth structure of crawl's source code), some bool can be toggled for "user is making use of this feature". If switched on, you just need to check "is current weapon inscribed with this tag?" on each attack. This would mean checking each item dropped for that inscription and then checking the whole inventory if it returns true to see if that bool flag needs updating.

[XuaXua]

Inventory is sorted by weapoms, evokable staves, decks of cards, ranged weapons...

If inscribed, maintain the turn number for last weilded for each item and go back to the one that has the highest turn number.

[Lasty]

A lot of people are glossing right over the possibility of just having a key to toggle on/off "allow barehanded attacks". It seems like the easiest to implement and most straight-forward way to implement this. Are there are issues with the suggestion that make people prefer inscribing-based options?

[galehar]

Why check the whole inventory on each attack? The way I see it (without knowing the in-depth structure of crawl's source code), some bool can be toggled for "user is making use of this feature". If switched on, you just need to check "is current weapon inscribed with this tag?" on each attack. This would mean checking each item dropped for that inscription and then checking the whole inventory if it returns true to see if that bool flag needs updating.

That's basically what I meant with "tricky implementation". A boolean can be used to avoid going through the inventory, but then you need to update its state each time the inventory change or items are inscribed.

A lot of people are glossing right over the possibility of just having a key to toggle on/off "allow barehanded attacks". It seems like the easiest to implement and most straight-forward way to implement this. Are there are issues with the suggestion that make people prefer inscribing-based options?

There are not many available keys, I don't think we want to dedicate one for such a minor feature.

I still think it's better to have the game automatically prompt for confirmation when it's an obvious mistake. A simple rule like (UC == 0 or UC < max_weapon_skill / 2) should cover 99.9% of cases.

[BlackSheep]

I'm assuming the game will ignore that check if the player is in a different form?

[jejorda2]

If { followed by - toggled a setting instead of allowing text entry, would that be hard to understand or onerous to implement? Maybe it's not too predictable, but inscriptions in general require reading the manual or being tipped off by another user.

[njvack]

Yeah; pressing the keys:

  Code:

{-!a

really sounds like a straightforward user interface for this. Galehar, did you mean you thought the UI of inscribing hands would be complicated, or the implementation?

[Danakh]

I've just YASD by attacking Margery without any rF because i forgot to equip back my rF++ dagger after sublimation of blood

So, for me, it is not only a problem of attacking barehand

I really hope some love for reagent spells !