Monster weapons in console

[Siegurt]

The interface problem about monster weapon extends beyond polearms. We would also like to see presence of egos. I thought that unicode accents on monster glyphs should work, but it seems this is impossible or hard to do.

As someone who has dealt with unicode accents and software rendering for many years, I can tell you that one of the problems this sort of thing would have is that most consoles (indeed most programs, actually) don't properly implement multi-character (e.x. 'a symbol followed by a joining accent mark') unicode characters, usually they leave it at "transpose the pair of characters it to a pre-rendered glyph which has the accent already with the character" if they don't simply ignore the joining aspect of the accent mark (And of course the half-assed solution only works if there *is* such a character in the font you're using, which is only true for a small handful of characters used in several languages)

Even if you could add all the code properly, it'd only work in limited circumstances, and with only certain fonts (The lack of a plethora of monospaced unicode fonts for all platforms is also an issue) Sounds horrible to me, unfortunately (because otherwise it'd be a great way to implement indicators for all sorts of things in console)

[twelwe]

In cast Volteccer_Jack's explanation was too hyperbolic for you guys: reaching is a poor weapon ability by these criteria. It fails to be passive. If there is more than one monster on the screen it is very likely that you will need to use 'v' to attack. In addition (and this part makes me rather upset) it greatly lowers the quality of console Crawl games because you have to constantly examine monsters to see whether they are wielding a reaching weapon or not.

I actually think cleave is okay although I object to some parts of its implementation (specifically: being blocked by walls, hitting 7 squares instead of 8, having a spoilery damage cut). It is true that it rarely actually changes your tactics, though.

In practice as a console player myself, the polearm buff just made more paranoid around monsters who typically spawn with weapons that are likely to be polearms (gnolls, orcs, merfolk, guards). And yes, it does violate that criteria.

[njvack]

The interface problem about monster weapon extends beyond polearms. We would also like to see presence of egos. I thought that unicode accents on monster glyphs should work, but it seems this is impossible or hard to do.

You could alternate the monster and weapon glyph's display on the same square, maybe. So an orc wielding a trident would flash the orc and trident symbol. If you want to get all crazy, add a set of glyphs for egos (I don't even know if there are enough glyphs left for it to be sane) and flash those, too.

I suspect Orc would cause epilepsy, though.

[johlstei]

Invert the background and foreground colors for monsters with polearms. It would have to be in some way that doesn't conflict with wandering/sleeping. Maybe a nice red background conveying danger. It definitely isn't ideal but it's something.

[Roderic]

The interface problem about monster weapon extends beyond polearms. We would also like to see presence of egos. I thought that unicode accents on monster glyphs should work, but it seems this is impossible or hard to do.
.

For the egos I suggested a new display-mode like that one which shows the monsters coloured by health instead of their natural colour, but with ego-related colour.

Second option -just for polearms in the default display- could be having a underlined letter -is that thing possible in console?-:

orc with a club: o
orc with poleweapon: o

[Siegurt]

Flashing icons are crazy-making. I would want that to be a non-default option, myself

I have gotten in the habit of paying attention when weapon-wielding critters come on screen for the "It is wielding glowing trident." type messages, along with paying attention to the monster list on the right, it's too bad when multiple critters come on screen at once I have to use x to figure out which one has the polearm or ego weapon, but at least there is some indicator.

[Siegurt]

The interface problem about monster weapon extends beyond polearms. We would also like to see presence of egos. I thought that unicode accents on monster glyphs should work, but it seems this is impossible or hard to do.
.

For the egos I suggested a new display-mode like that one which shows the monsters coloured by health instead of their natural colour.

Second option -just for polearms in the default display- could be having a underlined letter -is that thing possible in console?-:

orc with a club: o
orc with poleweapon: o

Underlining is a console-specific feature (not every console supports it, and the ones that do so, do so in a non-standardized way.)

[Roderic]

Ok, simply make a colour-change display with Ctrl+something and you can switch between normal view and ego-based view.

Example: no ego: dark grey, reaching: white, holy: yellow, fire: red, ice: blue, chaos: purple, venom: green, etc. This way you enhance the ego-bearer monsters from those that not. And you revert once you want to know the type of monster instead.

[Siegurt]

That would probably be a good way to go, some command to swap between normal view and "equipment view" or something.

[galehar]

I think it would be better to show it in the monster list. By default, show full description of the wielded weapon. Then decrease the level of description until they group together and fit in the window. Example:

An orc wielding a spear
An orc wielding a runed spear
An orc wielding a glaive

Becomes:
2 orcs wielding spears
An orc wielding a glaive

or:
3 orcs wielding polearms

Depending on the number of available lines. This could also be applied to monsters coming into view, or any other place which uses description of group of monsters.

[dpeg]

But the monster list has so few lines on a standard terminal. (Yes, this is playing straight out of a cave!)

Particularly with orcs you'd think that the umlauts, öóòôǒ, are available for a number of fonts. (I don't mind that the player has to select a font that has o umlaut.) I'd like that as a non-intrusive way of extending information. In other words, is it possible to get ö without unicode diacritic tomfoolery?

[johlstei]

The monster list is pretty short, but is it crunched for horizontal space? If not, another option would be a list of weapon types at the end of the monster type, so:
3 orcs, %,),)

You'd have to make up glyphs for the weapon types, and draw them in a different color for glowing, but I think that would be enough to know at a glance if there was a polearm present, or a glowing weapon.

[dpeg]

johlstei: there is quite some horizontal space, using that would be good. What I sometimes do is Ctrl-X. This is sort-of convenient, but it results in the presence of an ego weapon, I still have to find it.

[galehar]

But the monster list has so few lines on a standard terminal. (Yes, this is playing straight out of a cave!)

Yes, only 4 lines in 80x24. But it's enough to show at least the weapon type most of the time, and you get even more info with small groups. It's adaptable and improve itself if you can increase your window even just a bit. You could also have a menu (like in targeting mode) to expand a group persistently.

[johlstei]

Yeah ctrl+X is what I end up using also. I got used to it from when I tried out Beogh and wanted to gaze over my regiment. It's weird, with some monsters I think "oh no its a hell knight, who cares what weapon it has" and some other monsters I think "oh its a big kobold, who cares....wait that whip is electrocution!". There's no clear winner as to which information is more relevant.

[dpeg]

galehar: True. Since different kinds of orcs get different lines anyway, I'd settle for this:

  Code:

3 orc (ego dagger)
orc warrior (bardiche)


In words: list relevant weapons in brackets, but don't break up lines for this (which wouldn't yield more information anyway). That would be a big improvement since you'd only have to check monsters individually when you know a potentially dangerous weapon is around. The umlauts would be a bit better, though

[johlstei]

Is there any sort of unicode frontend in the codebase? It sounds like a huge project if there isn't but I would happily use a unicode-friendly terminal if it meant better information could be displayed. Maybe they even have 'K's with umlauts.

[duvessa]

The monster list is pretty short, but is it crunched for horizontal space? If not, another option would be a list of weapon types at the end of the monster type, so:
3 orcs, %,),)

You'd have to make up glyphs for the weapon types, and draw them in a different color for glowing, but I think that would be enough to know at a glance if there was a polearm present, or a glowing weapon.

How about using the regular colour for the weapon type, and highlighting the background if it's glowing? That seems a lot better than having glyphs/colours mean something completely different from what they mean everywhere else.

Is there any sort of unicode frontend in the codebase? It sounds like a huge project if there isn't but I would happily use a unicode-friendly terminal if it meant better information could be displayed. Maybe they even have 'K's with umlauts.

Crawl uses Unicode by default since 0.8 (something I've probably complained about a few times). As someone who connects to Crawl servers from lots of different devices, please don't ignore ASCII.

[galehar]

Is there any sort of unicode frontend in the codebase?

Unicode is supported, the issue is with terminal and font support.

[Siegurt]

While listing the weapon in the monster list on the right would help some, personally, my issue is figuring out *which* orc that just came into view is the one with the polearm/ego weapon. Listing them on the right would help in that it'd be a reminder (in case I missed the 'comes into view' message) but wouldn't help with the 'Which critter has the nasty weapon' selection.

[dpeg]

Siegurt: Indeed, hence my chase for the umlaut. We already use unicode to display fancy runes and trees. What's missing? I want state-of-the-art console, after all

[Siegurt]

Mostly it's the ability to put arbitrary diacritics of any letter. You can use many vowels with diacritics, but stuff like a "upper cased M with a circumflex" just isn't available in many terminals, because while arbitrary combining diacritics exist, they aren't properly implemented in most circumstances (And certainly aren't implemented in many older consoles)

You're forced to make do with the "pre combined" letters, which are limited in number, so you could certainly get diacritic orcs, and to some degree gnolls, but you couldn't get diacritics on every weapon-wielding creature.

[galehar]

While listing the weapon in the monster list on the right would help some, personally, my issue is figuring out *which* orc that just came into view is the one with the polearm/ego weapon.

Well, to do that, you do x, ctrl+l, then the letter of the monster wielding the polearm. Not ideal, but still a net improvement over status quo. How about a toggle, similar to | and ^V? It would toggle the monster glyph to the wielded weapon glyph and use inverted background for ego.

[DracheReborn]

I'd like to propose again that not everyone get special weapon effects automatically, i.e. that not all axe wielders can cleave, and not every polearm user gets reaching. Instead, there should be an additional requirement - maybe it's a minimum skill requirement, or a new weapon proficiency ability, or whatever. So for example you need both cleave ability + axe to actually cleave enemies.

In terms of logic, it does make sense that a novice user shouldn't be able to do advanced weapon moves. In terms of gameplay, IMO the most useful effect of this change is that enemies won't automatically get the weapon effects (which are supposedly for the benefit of players anyway). So for example, maybe orc warriors or gnoll sergeants can reach if they have a polearm, but not common orcs or gnolls.

Of the weapon effects currently in the game, stabbing and cleaving probably aren't affected much, because they are already asymmetric (more useful for players to use against monsters than the other way around). Polearms in the hands of common pack enemies like gnolls become less dangerous. And future weapon effects can be proposed without worrying about that effect being used against players, e.g. some kind of decapitating 1-hit KO effect for swords, for example.

[duvessa]

Or you could just...not give the abilities to monsters. Sure it's asymmetrical, but unlike some asymmetries, it's not exactly spoilery: the player will know about it the very first time they encounter a monster with a polearm.

Additional requirements to use weapon abilities sounds really bad to me, it means they won't do anything during at least the first few dungeon levels - by far the most important part of the game.

[sanka]

Sometimes having an enemy with a polearm is interesting I think. (Although maybe better players disagree.) Instead what if one type of monster only uses one type of weapon for whatever reason. For example name polearm using gnolls as "gnoll impaler" and give them different color. At least for the very common pack monsters.

That said, even if they occasionally change weapons for whatever reason (I think it would be best to remove), they simply can change name/color as well then.

[Siegurt]

Yes, x and control-l is what I use now, and I was making a point that it's slightly inconvenient, that's why we were suggesting just such a toggle (that's in fact exactly what was suggested earlier

I was making the point that weapons in the monster list on the right helps, but doesn't solve the problem I personally have, and an overlay toggle would, glad you agree

[njvack]

Mod note: merged posts into monster weapons thread.

[njvack]

Sometimes having an enemy with a polearm is interesting I think. (Although maybe better players disagree.) Instead what if one type of monster only uses one type of weapon for whatever reason. For example name polearm using gnolls as "gnoll impaler" and give them different color.

Better, I think, would be to give the reaching intrinsic to some monster types, like snapping turtles have now. So your gnollish impaler could reach to punch you or hit you with a dagger; it'd be no stranger than blademasters or Nessos or such.