Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 17:16

Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

I propose to give a visual effect to signify when a Ghost Moth drains you. I suggest flashing the screen pink (similar to Ozocubu's and Ignite Poison).

The rationale is that the more information that can be conveyed visually without obscuring anything, the better. In the ideal world, one wouldn't have to pay attention to the message box at all to play crawl. Yes, a power user could make a Force_More message to highlight when the Ghost Moth is draining you: a visual display is still a better option.

For newer players, it would accelerate the learning curve by giving a big hint that Ghost Moths are doing something rather significant.

I suggest this particular kind of effect because Ghost Moths are invisible, and so it would be a bad idea to give them a visual effect that gave away their position. The flash is the only visual effect I could think of.

dck

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 17:27

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Uh what.
Why would an ideal world mean one wouldn't have to look at the message log to play a game where all action is displayed first and foremost through the message log?

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Moanerette, nago, zardo

Sar

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 17:39

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

  Code:
YOU ARE BEING DRAINED! GET INTO COVER!

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dck, nago

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 18:11

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Yes, some sort of visual effect would be nice. It's sometimes easy to miss that you just got your MP stolen while you were tabbing some weak spiders. For the mere mortals among us who sometimes fail to notice things, even in the all important message box.

dck

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 18:17

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Imo look at one of the two bars that display your mp.

Barkeep

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 18:27

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Not sure if this is possible, but perhaps having this as default would make sense:

If you cannot Sinv, you get a force_more for the first time a ghost moth MP drains you upon entering your LOS. If you are out of its LOS for more than 5 turns or whatever, the counter resets, and you would get another force_more if the ghost moth reentered LOS and drained you again.

This would not give you any information you didn't already have, but would be much better at alerting you to the presence of a new ghost moth, without making the interface and visuals annoying when you are trying to take out a ghost moth you already know about.

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Arrhythmia, Hurkyl, Sandman25, Viashino_wizard

Swamp Slogger

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Post Monday, 12th May 2014, 18:41

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Now I actually think this is a fine idea, because it's not terribly obtrusive and probably not that hard to implement, but I also have to second that this isn't going to be more intuitive than a plain English log of what happened and you should always look at messages, because they'll always be the canonical version of events, because console exists

Dungeon Master

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Post Tuesday, 13th May 2014, 12:55

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

The default and_into is suggesting seems reasonable, but anyone who doesn't want to wait can add force_mores ghost moths to their rcfile right now. The phrase to look for is for "watched by something".

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 14th May 2014, 11:52

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

I don't see any need for this. As noted above, messages already inform you there is a ghost moth in the vicinity even if you don't have SInv. I find the flashing screen associated with slime creatures distracting and unnecessary. I am actually more likely to miss the messages associated with unseen horrors than with ghost moths, and as Lasty points out force_more messages exist.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Wednesday, 14th May 2014, 14:00

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Moanerette wrote:I don't see any need for this. As noted above, messages already inform you there is a ghost moth in the vicinity even if you don't have SInv. I find the flashing screen associated with slime creatures distracting and unnecessary. I am actually more likely to miss the messages associated with unseen horrors than with ghost moths, and as Lasty points out force_more messages exist.

I, the OP, point out that force_more messages exist as well. :P I would have made a suggestion that included unseen horrors too, but after some brief thought, I failed to come up with anything reasonable: flashing when an unseen creature takes any action would probably be a bad idea.

The problem with messages is twofold:

  • There are a lot of unimportant messages, so it's a terrible waste to read them all the time. (This is mitigated by force_more, or by and into's suggestion)
  • In tiles, your eye is generally trained on the map, because that shows most of what you need to know and is pretty. It breaks the flow of the game to have to look away to the messages, especially when there isn't a visual cue that you should go look. A more message still interrupts the flow of the game

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 14th May 2014, 15:13

Re: Proposal: visual effect for Ghost Moth's drain

Ah, apologies for my reading comprehension fail. I'd dispute that force_more messages are for 'power users' though. I certainly wouldn't describe myself as such but I'm happy to edit my rc file as I find helpful. That I haven't felt the need to do that regarding ghost moths or unseen horrors indicates that I've never found their elusiveness an issue, though I accept this is purely my experience.

I would accept your proposal more readily than changing ghost moths, which in conjunction with the other Spider 5 monsters I find interesting and challenging opponents. Their biggest problem is that SInv trivialises them, but this is obviously the case with most invisible monsters.

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