> to enter hell, < to leave

[xentronium]

I guess this applies to other portals as well...
You can enter and leave the atrium of hell using either of the < or > keys. While it kind of makes sense from the perspective that hell is neither up not down, it can get you killed if you press < twice by accident. This can be avoided by using > as the key to enter hell, and < to leave hell. I believe the depths work like this already.

[twelwe]

actually you step into a portal sideways not up or down so it should be -

[damiac]

I agree with the original proposal. But I was thinking, we should really go a little further:

Spoiler: show

Well < and > are both pointing sideways anyway. Really it's going up and down that are wrong. I propose ^ to go upstairs, and alt+\+/ to go down (Because it's \/, alt is so the game knows that you're drawing a picture of where you want to go).

Although... stairways aren't truly up or down, they're more diagonal. So really it should be:
\
_\|
and
_
|\
\
Of course, the spatially proficient crawlers out there are probably thinking "But how could the game know I meant that to be in X/Z space, and not X/Y space! I don't want to move southeast, I want to move down/east!

So obviously the reasonable solution to that issue is to add a Y/Z axis switch key, so the game knows whether you're using the vertical axis of your monitor to represent the Y or Z dimension. A small side effect is that (of course) everything will need to be modeled in 3d, so as to look right when viewing the X/Z space. I'm confident the devs could do that in a matter of minutes.

Please implement these more realistic controls ASAP.

[crate]

I am pretty sure that in the past you actually had to use specifically either < or > (I forget which) to use portals, and this was changed at some point.

[njvack]

If my very old memory is correct, this was back when you used to use a turn taking the stairs/portal in the wrong direction, and people getting murdered trying to escape Hell that way. IIRC that doesn't use a turn now so the portals could go back to being up/down stairs.

[xentronium]

It still takes the same number of turns as a staircase to go through the hell portal and back, I just confirmed by watching my last game.

[Quazifuji]

It still takes the same number of turns as a staircase to go through the hell portal and back, I just confirmed by watching my last game.

I think they're saying it took a turn to, for example, press '>' on the hell portal, even though only '<' would actually use it. So pressing the wrong button would result in you wasting a turn doing nothing.

Since that's no longer an issue, it makes sense to make the hell portal one direction only so you can't accidentally take it twice by pressing the button twice during, say, a lag spike. It doesn't matter as much for other portals since most one-time portals don't start you out on the exit, and Pan and Abyss ask for confirmation before entering.

[wheals]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... dd98c9b5a6