Early game speed-up

[verily]

DCSS is awesome but the early game hampers things by being tedious. Since Crawl has extreme difficulty, permadeath, etc (like every self-respecting roguelike), I think a few tweaks to reduce the length of the very very early game would be a large improvement. So here is a list of various ideas that could help shore that up, hopefully without being gigantic refactoring efforts:

Major change idea:

• Combine D1-D3 into one big level and reduce across the board exp/skill costs of about experience levels 1 - 4. In general, this special level one dungeon could be generated in a regional pattern so that the harder D3 spawns are farther from the player's starting point. This could have a couple of nice side effects: one, the exit stairs placed farther from the stairs to D2 so that it is that much slightly harder to bring the orb to the exit. In addition, the Temple could be moved down about 2 dungeon levels so that it is not quite as easy to rush to it due to D2 and D3 being compressed into D1

Minor change ideas:
These minor changes more or less involve making tab attacks and o travel a little more convenient to smooth over the early game:

1. "Configurable Y/N tab fighting prompt" A configurable HP % which, when reached, disables tabbed fighting unless yes is answered on a Y/N prompt. Default would be nothing configured, so that the default behavior would be identical to the current option which totally disables tab fighting when the critical HP level is reached
2. "Designate a target" The player interface provides a way to designate a target which is somehow indicated on the UI, such as colored outline around the monster. Tab fighting would retain the same lack of AI and make "dumb moves" to reach and attack the designated target, just as the current tab functionality. However, this would just give the player a way to focus a critical enemy within a large group and still retain some convenience while not doing anything to help the player beyond their own tactical skills. If no target is designated, then tab retains its normal functionality. The advantage of this type of change is that it could possibly be factored into the code fairly easily by utilizing whatever logic tab fighting already uses to choose the next target - simply change the code to check if a target is designated, and if so, use the existing tab fighting logic on that target, otherwise choose the target as is done currently. Once a target is designated, the designation is nullified if the target dies, goes out of view, or any other such means that make it untargettable.
3. "Priority auto-travel points-of-interest" Provide the player the means of designating points on explored (or magic-mapped areas) of the dungeon map to a priority list. The idea would be that the player must at least designate a first point which is the starting point. Optionally, the player may designate a number of sub-points and a final end point. The auto-travel algorithm would then travel to the start point until reached (or unreachable) and proceed onto each of the next points. This would provide the obvious convenience (i.e. the player is auto-traveling, gets sidetracked by a large battle, but is easily able to get back to their path with good ol' convenient o). It would also increase the value of scrolls of mapping by letting the player map a new level and immediately set points-of-interest. Of course, this feature would not work in the Labyrinth and any other areas that auto-travel is banned.
4. Edit - forgot to add this one: Provide a HP warning based on HP rate-of-change instead of static threshold levels. For example, if over the course of the past 3 turns the player's HP ROC is -30% or less, print a warning message like "This isn't going too well..." Three turns might be a good window because that is about the time it takes to, say, change a ring out and evoke a new ring, or read a teleport scroll and be on the verge of Tele activating. Note: this last item I'm not too fond of though because this goes into the realm of taking responsibility away from the player and creating braindead tab spammers.
5. One more edit: On the right hand side UI and under the player stats, show a list of item piles that are in the player's view (probably a limited list of say 5 of the closest piles). That way, it would be easier to auto-travel and scan the list to make sure you aren't skipping a nice piece of armor that's not on the autopickup list

I hope this list is cohesive enough to be in one thread. I feel like these all belong under convenience items to help with the game in general, especially the early game which can be frustrating to start in over and over after every YASD. I'm a developer myself, so I wouldn't mind someday dipping into the code and helping out with these issues or whatever else. One of my fortes is refactoring code, so maybe I could be of use on some of these issues once I'm not a DCSS code nub.

Thanks for listening!

[TeshiAlair]

0. So make it Sprint? Also, the Temple spawning on 4 makes the early game so much better that I shudder to put it lower.

1. Or just pay attention to what you're doing. It's not that hard early game.

2. I actually really like this.

3. Sounds like a lot of work for little benefit, particularly if you just set up smart waypoints. Or are you proposing easier-to-place waypoints?

4. Agree with your last comment.

[verily]

I edited to add a couple more items at the end that you might have missed.

My responses in bold/italics:

0. So make it Sprint? Also, the Temple spawning on 4 makes the early game so much better that I shudder to put it lower.
With regards to temple placement, I was suggesting moving it down to offset having the first few levels combined so that in effect, it would be at about the same vertical level. I haven't tried Sprint, so sorry if I'm pushing into that territory with these ideas.

1. Or just pay attention to what you're doing. It's not that hard early game.
Yeah I can definitely see what you mean by this. However, the caveat is that it would be player-configurable. And the idea would be that it would mainly help in the early game when the statistics are much more wild (due to less HP, AC, etc and higher chance for outliers like a hobgoblin getting 3 lucky hits to take you down to 1 HP when you tabbed too fast). Sure, I agree the player should know not to tab too much, but my thought is that the early game is so tedious that it's annoying to choose between a slow start and tabbing with hope to get luck. Especially considering that some race/class combos like a minotaur fighter can easily tab through the first few levels, I think it's worth considering to give some convenience to the races that are weak early.

2. I actually really like this.

3. Sounds like a lot of work for little benefit, particularly if you just set up smart waypoints. Or are you proposing easier-to-place waypoints?
These would not be waypoints for auto-travel with Ctrl-G, but rather a way to constrain the auto travel algorithm itself to have segments that it must reach. So, as I said before, you could map a floor with a scroll, then set points-of-interest to make sure the travel algorithm doesn't do too many silly things like leave one last black square in a corner for the end and cause the player to waste 100 turns just to uncover it at the very last.
Or I could very easily have a total lack of understanding of how waypoints currently work - I'll go experiment with them.

4. Agree with your last comment.

[crate]

um early game is about as far from tedious as you can get, other than the part where you play it more often than the rest of the game

[indspenceable]

um early game is about as far from tedious as you can get, other than the part where you play it more often than the rest of the game

Yes, I believe that is the tedious part.

[duvessa]

can we shorten the bad parts of the game before shortening the best part

thanks

[verily]

um early game is about as far from tedious as you can get, other than the part where you play it more often than the rest of the game

Yes, I believe that is the tedious part.

Yes, exactly. Although the later game might get tedious managing the stash and collecting various quest objects, in real life it's tedious to run through the slow gauntlet at the start. Before you've built your character, found interesting gear, and generally got settled.

[crate]

no, you missed my point entirely
early crawl is very good, it is probably the best-designed part of crawl (d:1 in particular could possibly be a bit harder, but d:2-4 or so are very very good)

the tedious part is what happens later

thankfully! there is already a way to avoid playing the early game so often! you can get better at it!
(or, if you really want, you could write a bot to play it for you, though this has had very limited success outside of fighter-type starts)

the interface stuff has a possibility of getting into crawl, perhaps, if you code it up, but I'm pretty confident in saying the current devteam is not going to bother coding it for you
your major suggestion is something that at first glace to me looks actively harmful to crawl, though without actually trying it I guess I can't say for sure

[verily]

the interface stuff has a possibility of getting into crawl, perhaps, if you code it up, but I'm pretty confident in saying the current devteam is not going to bother coding it for you
your major suggestion is something that at first glace to me looks actively harmful to crawl, though without actually trying it I guess I can't say for sure

Yeah, the major suggestion I figured is far fetched, and same for the minors except the UI suggestions.

If I'm not bored and just tabbing through, I can get through the early game with no problem. But that's the issue I'm pointing to - it's easy to survive the early game by playing it extra slowly, which can be a drag. Especially with a few UI additions, this could be mitigated.

[duvessa]

But that's the issue I'm pointing to - it's easy to survive the early game by playing it extra slowly, which can be a drag.

...and you think the rest of the game is better in this regard?

[verily]

But that's the issue I'm pointing to - it's easy to survive the early game by playing it extra slowly, which can be a drag.

...and you think the rest of the game is better in this regard?

Yes, it is much more interesting once your character is built up beyond being able to do basic melee, basic spells, or basic ranged with basic equipment.

You're taking my point and changing the topic. I'm focusing just on the early game and making suggestions which would mainly be relevant to the early game, I didn't post this in order to dissect the complexities of the whole large later game. Please stay on topic.

[crate]

i'm not sure how your suggestions actually improve the early game though

if you make it easier to survive with crappy play, then you're making the game not care about playing well or punish you for playing badly
i hope it is not too much of a stretch to say that that is not a desirable outcome

if you want to speed up playing well, your suggestions don't really do so:
even if autofight_stop were changed to prompt you instead of disabling autofight outright, that doesn't matter--it is still better to read messages and check your HP after every turn of combat (though I might actually use autofight_stop if it didn't shut down autofight entirely, so this is a good proposal for a different reason)
autofight targeting is basically already in crawl: if you injure a monster, then autofight prioritises that monster since it is already damaged. I understand that perhaps this is not obvious, but autofight is 100% predictable already. (You never want to use autofight to move toward a monster to begin with ideally (though I do sometimes out of laziness), so for melee autofight this is never an improvement for good play. It is possibly an improvement for ranged autofight, but f remembers your previous target anyway.)
autotravel improvements are good ideas but I don't really see how they're relevant to this topic (after all, unless you're a DD or very lucky you almost never have mapping this early anyway). G already remembers previous destinations if you are using that to travel to specific areas, so you just need to use G<enter> instead of o to resume
the show items thing doesn't work in console so I'm going to ignore it (there's not really any room since the monster list is right there already); there's already ^x for a list of all items (and monsters!) in view

Yes, it is much more interesting once your character is built up beyond being able to do basic melee, basic spells, or basic ranged with basic equipment.

I simply do not agree (in fact it is precisely these limits which I find makes early game more interesting, personally). What you want is not in fact to improve the early game; you want to remove it entirely.

[verily]

i'm not sure how your suggestions actually improve the early game though

if you make it easier to survive with crappy play, then you're making the game not care about playing well or punish you for playing badly
i hope it is not too much of a stretch to say that that is not a desirable outcome

if you want to speed up playing well, your suggestions don't really do so:
even if autofight_stop were changed to prompt you instead of disabling autofight outright, that doesn't matter--it is still better to read messages and check your HP after every turn of combat (though I might actually use autofight_stop if it didn't shut down autofight entirely, so this is a good proposal for a different reason)
autofight targeting is basically already in crawl: if you injure a monster, then autofight prioritises that monster since it is already damaged. I understand that perhaps this is not obvious, but autofight is 100% predictable already. (You never want to use autofight to move toward a monster to begin with ideally (though I do sometimes out of laziness), so for melee autofight this is never an improvement for good play. It is possibly an improvement for ranged autofight, but f remembers your previous target anyway.)
autotravel improvements are good ideas but I don't really see how they're relevant to this topic (after all, unless you're a DD or very lucky you almost never have mapping this early anyway). G already remembers previous destinations if you are using that to travel to specific areas, so you just need to use G<enter> instead of o to resume
the show items thing doesn't work in console so I'm going to ignore it (there's not really any room since the monster list is right there already); there's already ^x for a list of all items (and monsters!) in view

Yes, it is much more interesting once your character is built up beyond being able to do basic melee, basic spells, or basic ranged with basic equipment.

I simply do not agree (in fact it is precisely these limits which I find makes early game more interesting, personally). What you want is not in fact to improve the early game; you want to remove it entirely.

Exactly - I'm not saying to take all the ideas or none of them. That's why I gave a variety of them for discussion.

To say the early game is the only interesting part seems to me to be saying that the whole game sucks, which it obviously doesn't (it's awesome).

You're really also just changing the topic like duvessa to discuss the finer points of the early game rather than what I'm trying to point out, which is that DCSS could use some smoothing out at the beginning to accommodate the real world (not in game, but you know, that RL thing) idea that most people find it interesting to have a skilled and well equipped character. Otherwise, there would be no point to the entire game and we should just play some kind of arcade-style variant where the game ends at DL15 and you tally up a score.

[crate]

Otherwise, there would be no point to the entire game and we should just play some kind of arcade-style variant where the game ends at DL15 and you tally up a score.

this is pretty much what I do these days

To say the early game is the only interesting part seems to me to be saying that the whole game sucks

I have never said and will never say that the early game is the only interesting part of crawl. I have said that the early game is the most interesting part of crawl. I find physics more interesting than biology, but that does not mean that biology is not interesting.

that DCSS could use some smoothing out at the beginning to accommodate the real world (not in game, but you know, that RL thing) idea that most people find it interesting to have a skilled and well equipped character

But the entire thing about DCSS's early game that actually makes it different is that you do not have this character. If you want to change that, then you are eliminating the early game entirely. I also, obviously, have no desire to see d:1-4 or so sped up and reduced.

[and into]

Yes, it is much more interesting once your character is built up beyond being able to do basic melee, basic spells, or basic ranged with basic equipment.

You're taking my point and changing the topic. I'm focusing just on the early game and making suggestions which would mainly be relevant to the early game, I didn't post this in order to dissect the complexities of the whole large later game. Please stay on topic.

Hey verily, I'm one of the mods on Tavern.

I received a report on this thread (from a developer, no less), and it has put me in a bit of a tough spot.

It is nice to see a new member of the Tavern who is trying to put some careful thought into how to improve the game, doubly so if you have some ability/experience with coding. On the other hand, although well-written, your original post is a hodgepodge. You address many different things, from UI improvements (some of which might be welcome) to a very radical change to the early game that—to put it bluntly—is just not going to happen, it is a non-starter. (I expect you already read this, but in the "You must read this before posting in GDD" thread, here [https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7178], it does warn against making threads that try to cover multiple topics that are only vaguely related to each other.)

Why is the change to early game that you suggest a non-starter?

For many people, one of the most interesting times in Crawl is precisely that period in the early game in which you do not have a neat answer to every (or nearly every) threat, and you are struggling to make tough decisions between what to keep and how to proceed and where to invest experience. It is that period in which every decision you make feels really significant, and that offers a powerful appeal and interest to many who play this game.

Having a longer D:1 that encompasses D:2/3 would introduce lots of other problems and a whole lot of work, and would detract from some of the other potentially interesting decisions you are confronted with: How would this compression work in terms of vault generation; how do you prevent the spawns from "tough D:1" territory from wandering into "easy" [near the entrance] D:1 territory; why would it be good to detract from the use of staircases early on which are very helpful/important and can also confront you with interesting decisions (e.g., do I dive to D:3 without D:2 being fully explored, in order to avoid Sigmund entirely, or do I try to carefully explore part of D:2 that I haven't seen yet?); why is it good to limit early game variability of layout, since some layouts are more friendly to certain builds than others, and in the early game even subtle differences can be really meaningful precisely because you don't have all of your typical tools available/identified; etc. etc.

Unfortunately threads do tend to stray away from the main topic even when the OP is very narrowly concentrated, but when you try to address a lot of stuff all at once, it just turns into a mess. So, in light of the report, I am going to close this thread, but I hope that doesn't discourage you, verily. I'd recommend posting your ideas about the more radical changes to early game in Crazy Yiuf's Corner (you can request "serious discussion only" and I'll keep an eye on the thread to make sure it doesn't go too far astray, but the standards there are more lax for better and for worse). Your ideas for user interface improvements can get their own threads in GDD.

Thanks, and welcome to the Tavern, verily. Feel free to PM (private message) me with any Qs, concerns, or complaints.