Random ideas

[Tiber]

Here are a few small ideas I've developed while playing, but none were big enough to make a topic for, so I'm just compiling them here. Heck, it might be nice to have a thread like this, and anything that turns into a major discussion can be spun off.

1. Viewing shops: Right now, if you want to see what all shops have to offer, the only way I know how to do it is Ctrl-F, type shop, change action to examine, then look at each shop individually. I propose that if you hit Ctrl-O then do something like right click, you get a list of all things available to buy in one list, and can auto-travel from there.

2. Continuing on from #1, why not just merge Ctrl-G's functionality into Ctrl-O? That way, you can see which branches you have yet to clear and decide from there where to go.

3. Curing Rotting: Right now, if you get hit with rotting and can't cure it right away, or just get swarmed by something like vampire mosquitoes *grumble*, it can mean chugging potion after potion of healing. I think potions of restore abilities should also restore rotted hit points. I would suggest 2d4 or 3d3. It would allow a simple way to get back to full status, it fits with what those potions are supposed to do, and those potions are sufficiently rare that I don't think it would make a huge difference on balance.

4. Randart rods: Rods are an interesting gameplay mechanic, but they're somewhat rare. I was thinking, if spellbooks can be artifacts, why not rods? And like spellbooks, they would would have random, but somewhat thematic sets of spells. Maybe they could even have spells you don't normally see on rods.

5. Sticky flame and you: I got hit with sticky flame in a waterless level, and I thought, why couldn't I put it out myself? I say if you use potions of water while on fire, you get no nutrition (since you're not actually drinking it), but sticky flame is canceled. It creates an interesting tactical use, plus sticky flame is more of a threat to scrolls than it is to you 90% of the time.

6. Auto-eat: Add an option which is toggled on and off. While traveling, if you're carrying chunks, you eat the oldest edible one until you can no longer eat, and go right back on your way with no interruption.

[seth]

Do you know that both potions of heal wounds and wands of healing will restore a lot of rotted health? It's never been a problem for me because the end game these items aren't very useful, anyway (typically by then if you run into trouble you're better off teleporting or something)

[roguelikedev]

1. Viewing shops: Right now, if you want to see what all shops have to offer, the only way I know how to do it is Ctrl-F, type shop, change action to examine, then look at each shop individually. I propose that if you hit Ctrl-O then do something like right click, you get a list of all things available to buy in one list, and can auto-travel from there.

+1 for this idea, -1 for condoning use of the mouse as a user interface element... Lists as a whole (with regards to UI) have significant room for improvement. The C++ programmer in me suspects that they're all hacked together out of 27 element arrays and changing anything involves loading an entire 1200 line source file into programmer memory and carries a 60% chance of replacing all yaktaur ammunition with duplicate references to a choko, which is why you can't (d)rop things from the (i)nventory.

... potions of restore abilities should also restore rotted hit points. ... It would allow a simple way to get back to full status ...

It sounds screwy, but a lot of the most fun games I've had in Crawl have been characterized by persistent inability to return to return to full status. There was Rhabdomyolysis Bequeather the dwarf, who fell in Pandemonium without ever finding a source of resist mutation; he'd sworn an oath to return to his family clean of chaos-taint or not at all. Beyond The Permafrost the mummy, who was forced to wander the Abyss, half-crippled from the death-curses of his estranged family in the Tomb, to maintain the favor of Vehumet. Most recent is Big Scars the orc, who has spent roughly half of his career under varying degrees of rot; having favored melee combat since Dungeon:7, he's tough enough not to need his entire HP score, and as a dedicated saprovore he really doesn't mind the smell.

Do you know that both potions of heal wounds and wands of healing will restore a lot of rotted health?

Although I've never tried wand of healing with evocations > 15, in my experience neither of those options ever restore more than about half a dozen rotted HP (often only 2.) Ghouls (in 0.8) and necro miscasts (usually via mummy curses or Hell effects) can easily bump rot into the low double digits, e.g. after full clearing Tomb and Hells, Big Scars had burnt off all excess healing items, used all the game's recharge scrolls on a heal wand, and was still rotted for over 30.

... end game these items aren't very useful, anyway (typically by then if you run into trouble you're better off teleporting or something)

Heal Wounds effects will never independently get you out of trouble. You use them while you're waiting for the teleport to fire, or when you're already standing behind a summon, etc.. The only exceptions I can think of apply to pre-Lair characters, and they're very corner. That said, I'm not sure how you can discount their value. On your next few end-game characters, please leave all means of rapid HP restoration at the stash and pay close attention to your ratio of white knuckle escape vs. high score screen.

[galehar]

1. Viewing shops: Right now, if you want to see what all shops have to offer, the only way I know how to do it is Ctrl-F, type shop, change action to examine, then look at each shop individually. I propose that if you hit Ctrl-O then do something like right click, you get a list of all things available to buy in one list, and can auto-travel from there.

+1 for this idea, -1 for condoning use of the mouse as a user interface element... Lists as a whole (with regards to UI) have significant room for improvement. The C++ programmer in me suspects that they're all hacked together out of 27 element arrays and changing anything involves loading an entire 1200 line source file into programmer memory and carries a 60% chance of replacing all yaktaur ammunition with duplicate references to a choko, which is why you can't (d)rop things from the (i)nventory.

I don't know what makes you think that. Have you tried searching? Result list can be quite long. And I don't understand how it's related to dropping from the inventory, which is possible by the way.

[pratamawirya]

5. Sticky flame and you: I got hit with sticky flame in a waterless level, and I thought, why couldn't I put it out myself? I say if you use potions of water while on fire, you get no nutrition (since you're not actually drinking it), but sticky flame is canceled. It creates an interesting tactical use, plus sticky flame is more of a threat to scrolls than it is to you 90% of the time.

I kind of like this.

[roguelikedev]

I don't know what makes you think that. Have you tried searching? Result list can be quite long. And I don't understand how it's related to dropping from the inventory, which is possible by the way.

I was being facetious about the 27 element arrays; if Linley Henzell had for some inscrutable reason not used stdlib collections, a dev would certainly have made that happen by now. Although I'd personally like to reserve slot 'd' in the inventory to change to a drop prompt, that's neither here nor there. I'll write a feature request for a bunch of changes to list management some day, but it's 3 am right now so forget I said anything.

[galehar]

I don't know what makes you think that. Have you tried searching? Result list can be quite long. And I don't understand how it's related to dropping from the inventory, which is possible by the way.

I was being facetious about the 27 element arrays; if Linley Henzell had for some inscrutable reason not used stdlib collections, a dev would certainly have made that happen by now. Although I'd personally like to reserve slot 'd' in the inventory to change to a drop prompt, that's neither here nor there. I'll write a feature request for a bunch of changes to list management some day, but it's 3 am right now so forget I said anything.

Yes' we use stdlib extensively. You already drop x by typing dx or ixd. I don't think it's worth sacrificing the d slot to allow idx.

[dpeg]

Not sure what this drop-thing is you're talking about, but it reminded me of an old idea.
Older version: for many actions (including drop, read, quaff...), ^ is a shortcut to "feasible item last picked up".
Newer version: just have D drop the item(s) you've picked up most recently.

For both, the essential point is that you can drop something without referring to its arbitrary letter key. I believe the complications of the older version are not worth it.


Re: travelling from Ctrl-O. You're not the first with this idea. Indicate a good console interface and we can talk!

Re: restore ability to cure rotted HP. Won't happen! !RA recently got a boost in that it removes the breath timeout.

[roguelikedev]

You already drop x by typing dx or ixd. I don't think it's worth sacrificing the d slot to allow idx.

Disclaimer: I prefer Mac to Windows, and grew up in a web design studio.

I often find myself in the 'i'nventory, reading descriptions, then see several junk items and exit the menu, open the 'd'rop menu, drop them, reopen the inventory and pick up where I left off. The method you pointed out is good for single items, but every time a scatterbrained user (e.g. myself) leaves the list view and enters the detail view, he loses his place and has to scan down most of the list again. It'd be very nice to have '!' switch to multidrop mode.

Older version: for many actions (including drop, read, quaff...), ^ is a shortcut to "feasible item last picked up".
Newer version: just have D drop the item(s) you've picked up most recently.

For both, the essential point is that you can drop something without referring to its arbitrary letter key. I believe the complications of the older version are not worth it.

I like this. I agree with the special case; I seldom want to zap my freshest wand, but continually want to drop the freshest piece of crap +1 jewelry or whatever. I'd request adding multi-drop capability, so 250 au of chunks which were all obtained in the same c a over an orcish mass grave could be dropped in a single transaction.

For what it's worth, here's the inventory interface FR. Consider the case of picking up an enchant weapon scroll on a character with a +9 weapon.

1. Open drop menu.
2. Visually scan inventory for scrolls section.
3. Visually scan scrolls to find offender.
4. Check to left of offender for its letter.
5. Drop the damn thing.

My ideal system would go something like:

1. Open universal item menu.
2. Hit '?'. The scrolls section expands.
3. The most recent pickup is always the last entry, so I only look at the last entry. Items in category lists (scrolls, weapons, etc.) are always in alphabetical order, starting at a and without missing entries. In this case I have five types of scroll, so it's keyed to letter e.
4. Drop the damn thing.

[galehar]

It doesn't beat "press D to drop the damn thing"

[roguelikedev]

It sure doesn't. Is there time to fit that into 0.8 final ... ?

[galehar]

No, it's too late. Feature freeze.

[Kate]

I solved myself a whole load of hassle in terms of dropping things straight away by just adding lots more items (most wands, most rings, lots of potions and scrolls) to my autopickup exceptions list. If you have a think about which items you're likely to want to carry around and which you're likely to drop immediately, you can streamline the process quite a lot - you save a lot of keypresses by just manually picking such things up when you *do* want them, as opposed to picking them up and then dropping them straight away.

[roguelikedev]

Same here. I actually have three layers of autopickup exceptions-- when I'm low level, I want almost everything, so I comment out the last two. Later on I'll uncomment the second section to stop picking up things like !Berserk Rage and /Random Effects, and eventually I'll uncomment the third and ignore almost everything... it works fine, but any user interface which involves modifying prefs files has room for improvement. (In the context of a video game, that is. I put more time and love into my login scripts than into my car.) I'll bring up at least dpeg's suggestion again once release candidates start appearing.

[smock]

6. Auto-eat: Add an option which is toggled on and off. While traveling, if you're carrying chunks, you eat the oldest edible one until you can no longer eat, and go right back on your way with no interruption.

+1 for auto-eat. I often lose chunks to rotting because I forget I'm carrying them around.

And back "on topic": Could autopickup exceptions be set in-game? Recall the Nemelex interface discriminates on sacrifice types. Not sure if this is easily extended to ignoring items. Anyway, in addition to "(w)ield, d(rop), (i)nsribe", which are currently implemented, and (=,s)wap letters, which I hope is coming, why not add "(D)rop and don't pick up any more items of this type" and "(G,A)lways get/pick up items of this type." While I think this would be easier for players than editing a text file, I'm can't say if it would be worth the programming time.

[galehar]

6. Auto-eat: Add an option which is toggled on and off. While traveling, if you're carrying chunks, you eat the oldest edible one until you can no longer eat, and go right back on your way with no interruption.

+1 for auto-eat. I often lose chunks to rotting because I forget I'm carrying them around.

And back "on topic": Could autopickup exceptions be set in-game? Recall the Nemelex interface discriminates on sacrifice types. Not sure if this is easily extended to ignoring items. Anyway, in addition to "(w)ield, d(rop), (i)nsribe", which are currently implemented, and (=,s)wap letters, which I hope is coming, why not add "(D)rop and don't pick up any more items of this type" and "(G,A)lways get/pick up items of this type." While I think this would be easier for players than editing a text file, I'm can't say if it would be worth the programming time.

dpeg suggested to change autopickup options from the known items screen (\) and I think it's indeed better.

[XuaXua]

5. Sticky flame and you: I got hit with sticky flame in a waterless level, and I thought, why couldn't I put it out myself? I say if you use potions of water while on fire, you get no nutrition (since you're not actually drinking it), but sticky flame is canceled. It creates an interesting tactical use, plus sticky flame is more of a threat to scrolls than it is to you 90% of the time.

Wand of Frost or Cold. Use on self. Works for me.

Now watch as a developer responds, informing me this is entirely coincidental.

[galehar]

5. Sticky flame and you: I got hit with sticky flame in a waterless level, and I thought, why couldn't I put it out myself? I say if you use potions of water while on fire, you get no nutrition (since you're not actually drinking it), but sticky flame is canceled. It creates an interesting tactical use, plus sticky flame is more of a threat to scrolls than it is to you 90% of the time.

Wand of Frost or Cold. Use on self. Works for me.

Now watch as a developer responds, informing me this is entirely coincidental.

Indeed. I didn't checked the source, but a quick test in wizmode allowed me to confirm that it doesn't work.

[XuaXua]

5. Sticky flame and you: I got hit with sticky flame in a waterless level, and I thought, why couldn't I put it out myself? I say if you use potions of water while on fire, you get no nutrition (since you're not actually drinking it), but sticky flame is canceled. It creates an interesting tactical use, plus sticky flame is more of a threat to scrolls than it is to you 90% of the time.

Wand of Frost or Cold. Use on self. Works for me.

Now watch as a developer responds, informing me this is entirely coincidental.

Indeed. I didn't checked the source, but a quick test in wizmode allowed me to confirm that it doesn't work.

That would make 1/4 of my characters afflicted with borderline personality disorder. Thanks!

Coincidentally, it should work considering how icy blasts can remove spots of flame from the floor.

[Cybermg]

1. A thought I've had - not sure if its worth making a new topic over, and I'm too lazy to go and check the source code.

Average Fighting skill gain is proportional to damage done, right? I've suspected that it's not, because my two-handed wielding characters have tended to be low on Fighting skill, which characters wielding demon whips, say, have tended to amass a lot of Fighting.

If it's not proportional, it should be, since low damage weapons would otherwise get you more skill for the same limited resource of depleted enemy HP. Technically, average gain should be proportional to damage done, but not counting damage after an enemy is brought to 0 health, since that would bias the bigger weapons more (this is really minor though, and possibly even desirable).

2. How about making cross training bonuses/maluses more continuous, so it's not an all or nothing +-4 to aptitude, but something based on the distance between the schools. A simple scheme would be +-min(distance between schools,4). So the Ice malus for Fire-8, Ice-6 would be -2, Fire 8- Ice<=4, would be -4, and so on. I'm not sure what problem this solves, other than it being a little weird that it's such an abrupt change from no bonus/malus to something (especially for weapon cross training).

[zaimoni]

Average Fighting skill gain is proportional to damage done, right? I've suspected that it's not, because my two-handed wielding characters have tended to be low on Fighting skill, which characters wielding demon whips, say, have tended to amass a lot of Fighting.

This seems right. (I haven't source-dived recently on this, but it was this way back in 0.5.x and 0.6.x).

If it's not proportional, it should be, since low damage weapons would otherwise get you more skill for the same limited resource of depleted enemy HP. Technically, average gain should be proportional to damage done, but not counting damage after an enemy is brought to 0 health, since that would bias the bigger weapons more (this is really minor though, and possibly even desirable).

This, I do not agree with a priori.

As a matter of balance, I'd prefer that taking a strictly larger risk of getting killed give more skill for those who survive. (Crawl does do this currently, and I'm not driven enough to submit patches to do this "better".)

[Roy]

1. Viewing shops: Right now, if you want to see what all shops have to offer, the only way I know how to do it is Ctrl-F, type shop, change action to examine, then look at each shop individually. I propose that if you hit Ctrl-O then do something like right click, you get a list of all things available to buy in one list, and can auto-travel from there.

I would really love this. Right now, when I enter a shop, I manually write down the entire contents of the shop to a text file (no cut and paste, even!) so that I know what each shop sells, in case I want to go back later. If the game did this automatically for me, that would be great.

[hxy]

If you're looking for a particular item, just Ctrl-F to find it. If a shop carries it, it will show up in the search result as well along with its price (xx gold).

[nicolae]

If you're looking for a particular item, just Ctrl-F to find it. If a shop carries it, it will show up in the search result as well along with its price (xx gold).

I think he wants a list of everything he's seen in shops so he can do window browsing from one menu, in case there's something he can't think of but then he goes "Oh, right, I need those!"

[jejorda2]

Does ctrl-F, shop, - work? I don't have a game running with multiple shops to check right now. The hyphen turns off stacking for other searches.

[nicolae]

Does ctrl-F, shop, - work? I don't have a game running with multiple shops to check right now. The hyphen turns off stacking for other searches.

It lists the shops but nothing in them, even if you turn off the stacking.

What if there were a special search prefix for stuff in shops, like "merchandise", that would disappear when you bought the item, so you could simply do ctrl+F, "merch", - . Might be a simpler option than a whole new menu.

[hxy]

Ctrl-F shop (shows list of shops)
! (toggle "examine" mode)
Hit letter for shop to browse contents

You might have to "visit" the shop once first. I've not tried if this works without entering the shop before.

[jejorda2]

Ctrl-F shop (shows list of shops)
! (toggle "examine" mode)
Hit letter for shop to browse contents

This must be iterated for each shop, but the OP wants one list from all shops.

[Pereza0]

Would it be possible to have feedback on resistance when a monster casts a spell on the player?
It is sometimes hard to relate your MR with the spell power of enemies. It could be more or less the same than with monsters. Like "You struggle to resist" "You easily resist".... It might be nice too to have this sort of feedback when the spell affects the player too, but with better phrasing that the following. "You are unaffected" "You are caught off-guard! ""You try to resist but fail", "You struggle to resist but fail", "That was irresistible",

Oh wow this thread is old

[galehar]

Does ctrl-F, shop, - work? I don't have a game running with multiple shops to check right now. The hyphen turns off stacking for other searches.

It lists the shops but nothing in them, even if you turn off the stacking.

Well, it seems the best interface would be to simply fix the turned off stacking on shop search.
Also, no generic thread. Locked.