Shadow Traps

[celem]

Just noted over in Crazy Yiuf's Corner - the 'I don't love it when...' thread. Xom altar with a shadow trap and a butterfly, said insect spams the trap so fast it starts to fill the map.

Given this and ManMan's experience above with the death scarabs....

Anything with batty movement probably ought not be able to trigger the traps at all. Or at the very least, butterflies shouldnt, this is even logical, they are airborne.

[PleasingFungus]

Just make them one-shot and summon actual monsters instead of actual monsters that don't give actual experience points.

It should very rarely be a good thing to step on a trap.

Just noted over in Crazy Yiuf's Corner - the 'I don't love it when...' thread. Xom altar with a shadow trap and a butterfly, said insect spams the trap so fast it starts to fill the map.

Given this and ManMan's experience above with the death scarabs....

Anything with batty movement probably ought not be able to trigger the traps at all. Or at the very least, butterflies shouldnt, this is even logical, they are airborne.

That sounds like a godawful set of special cases.

One idea I was playing around with was making the summons dismissed when you kill the creature that triggered the trap; not super easy to communicate, but it does solve the issue with batty creatures quite tidily.

[ion_frigate]

That sounds like a godawful set of special cases.

Well, there a lot of different monster types/movement patterns that can in fact make these traps much more dangerous.

How about a depth-dependent summon cap for shadow traps? That wouldn't entirely get around the issue of early bats but it'd help a lot, while still keeping the traps plenty dangerous for later areas like Depths or Tomb, where the player is generally expected to be able to handle summoning storms.

[xentronium]

What if the trap cloned whatever stepped on it (rename to mirror trap?) Bats and butterflies cloning themselves would be a non-issue.

[duvessa]

What if the trap cloned whatever stepped on it (rename to mirror trap?) Bats and butterflies cloning themselves would be a non-issue.

What would it do when the player steps on it?

[xentronium]

What would it do when the player steps on it?

Create a hostile clone of the player like Mara's illusion. Crap...this would mean that optimal play would be to travel while wielding bread.

[qwesdf]

I think it would solve a lot of problems if monsters just didn't trigger shadow traps.

[Siegurt]

Although that would be roughly equal to a one time only firing of it.

Also aren't most creatures who are batty also flying? Would it make sense to have this be one of the traps not set of by flying creatures?

[PleasingFungus]

Also aren't most creatures who are batty also flying? Would it make sense to have this be one of the traps not set of by flying creatures?

There are no such traps.

Also:
- Bat
- Harpy
- Shard Shrike
(flying)

- Unseen Horror
- Thrashing Horror
- Death Scarab
(not flying)

I think that's all the batty monsters?

[Siegurt]

See that's what I get for not reading all commits every day

In any case, if it involves putting back *in* a special case that was removed, nevermind, flying sounds like an awful criteria.

FWIW:

  Code:

//Flying
MONS_BAT
MONS_VAMPIRE_BAT
MONS_FIRE_BAT
MONS_SHARD_SHRIKE
MONS_SPATIAL_MAELSTROM
MONS_TWISTER
MONS_GOLDEN_EYE
MONS_HARPY
//Not Flying
MONS_THRASHING_HORROR
MONS_UNSEEN_HORROR
MONS_DEATH_SCARAB


[PleasingFungus]

feh. too many bats!

[tasonir]

I believe I started my game after shadow traps already were moved below d:1, so I didn't have any bats trigger them, and for the first 4-5 ones I came across, I was high enough of a level to detect them before stepping on them, so they did nothing. Eventually in shoals this was no longer the case, and had a large pack of merfolk, including Ilsuiw, who stepped on one for me several times. I fled successfully, but there is no way that I could have possibly fought through the entire battle. I'm not sure I want a fairly common trap to be able to so quickly make unwinnable fights. I'd suggest the clearest, cleanest change would be to limit them to one activation, as some people have suggested. +1 for that, go team, etc etc.

[damiac]

I just lost a promising Octopode to a D11 shadow trap.

  Code:

10818 A doomed Octopus the Carver (level 11, -36/74 HPs)
             Began as an Octopode Berserker on Jan 8, 2015.
             Was a High Priest of Trog.
             Hit by a large rock thrown by a cyclops (43 damage)
             ... summoned by a shadow trap
             ... triggered by an orc priest
             ... on level 11 of the Dungeon.
             The game lasted 00:59:46 (16423 turns).

The worker ant barely misses your shadow.
Your shadow slips into darkness.
Your shadow flickers and vanishes for a moment.
The cyclops throws a large rock. The large rock closely misses you.
The large rock disappears in a puff of smoke!
You feel much better.
The centaur skeleton closely misses your shadow.
The worker ant bites your shadow but does no damage.
The troll bites you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
The troll claws you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
The troll claws you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
Your shadow strikes at the troll from the darkness!
The troll dies!
The troll's corpse disappears in a puff of smoke!
The cyclops throws a large rock. The large rock hits you!!!
Ouch! That really hurt!
You die...

These traps are basically mini god wraths, they're just way too powerful, and the fact that they can be triggered multiple times, and by enemies, just makes them even more ridiculous. I'd say they were too powerful even if they were just 1 shot, and player triggered only.

These traps allow you to autoexplore into a situation where you're surrounded by enemies. That's a bit absurd.

If nothing else, these traps should automatically create an autotravel exclusion, because it's a bad idea to ever fight in LOS of one.

[johlstei]

Hey it's a buff to axes.

[damiac]

1 shot shadow traps triggered only by players would be a decent addition to crawl, although even then I think they're a bit overpowered. At least then warding gets a little buff.

Right now shadow traps are another chance to get randomly screwed while exploring, then on top of that, additional chances to get extra screwed if you make the mistake of being near one while a monster is around.

[duvessa]

Right now shadow traps are another chance to get randomly screwed while exploring

so...exactly like all other traps?

[Sprucery]

I really miss huge blade traps.

[dynast]

So i just noticed i have been stepping on a lot of shadow traps on my current run... can you guess why?

So, not only this is a major annoyance but i also noticed the trap detection is based of Dex, like pretty much anything else in this game.

[Siegurt]

Clustering illusion, all trap detection is based strictly on XL and distance from the trap (And ash users get a bonus)

  Code:

void search_around()
{
    ASSERT(!crawl_state.game_is_arena());

    int base_skill = you.experience_level * 100 / 3;
    int skill = (2/(1+exp(-(base_skill+120)/325.0))-1) * 225
    + (base_skill/200.0) + 15;

    if (in_good_standing(GOD_ASHENZARI))
        skill += you.piety * 2;

    int max_dist = div_rand_round(skill, 32);
    if (max_dist > 5)
        max_dist = 5;
    if (max_dist < 1)
        max_dist = 1;

    for (radius_iterator ri(you.pos(), max_dist, C_ROUND, LOS_NO_TRANS); ri; ++ri)
    {
        if (grd(*ri) != DNGN_UNDISCOVERED_TRAP)
            continue;

        int dist = ri->range(you.pos());

        // Own square is not excluded; may be flying.
        // XXX: Currently, flying over a trap will always detect it.

        int effective = (dist <= 1) ? skill : skill / (dist * 2 - 1);

        trap_def* ptrap = find_trap(*ri);
        if (!ptrap)
        {
            // Maybe we shouldn't kill the trap for debugging
            // purposes - oh well.
            grd(*ri) = DNGN_FLOOR;
            dprf("You found a buggy trap! It vanishes!");
            continue;
        }

        if (effective > ptrap->skill_rnd)
        {
            ptrap->reveal();
            mprf("You found %s!",
                 ptrap->name(DESC_A).c_str());
            learned_something_new(HINT_SEEN_TRAP, *ri);
        }
    }
}


[dynast]

so its completely random. Its like the single player russian roulette.

[eeviac]

FR shadow traps don't appear in one tile hallways.

[Greyr]

Shadow traps are bad and need to be removed.

This has nothing to do with my most recent death.

[XuaXua]

FR shadow traps don't appear in one tile hallways.

One-tile length or width? I ask because I just got one at the end of a 4-length, 1-width hallway, in trunk.

Untitled.gif (42.52 KiB) Viewed 11615 times

[Siegurt]

"FR" == "Feature Request" (They do appear in hallways currently and there's no restriction on them doing so)

[xentronium]

FR shadow traps don't appear in one tile hallways.

Remember, we need make sure it's possible for traps to block both hallways in Zot 5 properly.

[Sprucery]

Well, that can be accomplished by placing multiple traps right after the hallway :)

[Galefury]

It's pretty silly that these are infinitely triggerable, especially by monsters. They are basically like Zot traps. And the effect from shadow traps is like some of the more powerful Zot trap effects, so shadow traps are arguably even stronger. Zot traps are restricted to the late game for a reason.

Even if they were single use shadow traps would be pretty strong.

Whether the effect (and traps in general) is good at all is a different matter, I currently don't have an opinion on that.

[damiac]

It's pretty silly that these are infinitely triggerable, especially by monsters. They are basically like Zot traps. And the effect from shadow traps is like some of the more powerful Zot trap effects, so shadow traps are arguably even stronger. Zot traps are restricted to the late game for a reason.

Even if they were single use shadow traps would be pretty strong.

Whether the effect (and traps in general) is good at all is a different matter, I currently don't have an opinion on that.

Not only are shadow traps often more dangerous than zot traps, they're sometimes as dangerous as the more dangerous god wraths. Being surrounded with no warning isn't something all characters can deal with on d3. Having a single monster able to summon a gang of the most dangerous monster types on the level is also quite overpowered, there's a reason ironbrand convokers don't normally appear on d3.

On top of all that, since shadow traps now exist in trunk, and can potentially be dangerous even on cleared floors, a careful player should keep track of which floor tiles are known to be safe, and make exclusions to force them to auto travel on the safe path, which is extremely tedious, but clearly optimal. Obviously all traps are guilty of that, but shadow traps are much more dangerous than the rest.

[and into]

Aside from some bug fixing and specific re-balancing (how early they can appear, maximum number of enemies they can summon at once, can only be triggered one time, etc.) it seems like the things that are frustrating about shadow traps are the things that are frustrating about traps in general. Putting that aside, however, and thinking specifically about shadow traps, I think it is a good thing that they (like alarm traps and shafts) tend to create a tense situation, compared to other traps which have a smaller chance of doing anything legitimately worrisome, and a higher likelihood of just annoying you.

duvessa's suggestion that traps trigger upon entering the player's LOS would be an improvement in trap design, but would require a lot of changes in how traps generate, and would still have some issues (there would be more incentive to limit LOS with lantern of shadows and/or Darkness while exploring, for instance). Nonetheless I would like to see traps reformed along those lines.

[duvessa]

and would still have some issues (there would be more incentive to limit LOS with lantern of shadows and/or Darkness while exploring, for instance).

all these LOS-related issues are the same as the LOS-related issues with monsters, and I don't think crawl is getting rid of monsters any time soon

[Quazifuji]

(there would be more incentive to limit LOS with lantern of shadows and/or Darkness while exploring, for instance).

Is this actually true? If you explore the whole floor, you'll either reveal or trigger every trap in the floor, whether you have full LOS or a limited one. You could use a limited LOS to try to explore enough of the floor to see the structure and fight any monsters you want to fight for XP and loot while trying to avoid revealing the corners of rooms to avoid risking triggering any traps that might be sitting there, but I'm not even sure if that is optimal and even if it is it sounds so unreasonable mind-numbingly tedious that I can't imagine anyone ever actually doing it.

Making traps trigger on LOS instead of on step does having interesting effects on LOS dynamics in combat, since revealing more tiles per step increases the likelihood of triggering a trap each step, but limited your LOS if you're for some reason revealing new tiles during combat is already a good idea.

There are other logistical issues that would need to be solved (the danger of triggering multiple traps at once (getting killed by opening a door in an Ostuary does not sound fun), Vaults designed around a trap blocking a hallway, how monsters triggering traps works), but I think those are solvable. The only interesting thing that I think would go away is the case where a monster steps on an undetected trap near you mid-combat and something interesting happens, but that's not super common and I think it's worth sacrificing to remove the issue of there being a difference between tiles you have stepped on an ones you haven't.

[crate]

1) If we assume that a player will never want to step on a known trap (this isn't true, I'll get to that later, play along for a bit), then any player-only traps are exactly the same as just occasionally creating the trap effect while exploring*: you might step on the trap while autoexploring, or you might not, and there's very little you can do to adjust the chance of this happening. In the specific case of shadow traps, there's even a mechanism already in crawl that does this: it's monster generation. So player-only shadow traps are pretty much just changing monster generation to sometimes generate a bunch of summoned monsters at once. I will suggest that there is probably a reason that monster generation does not do that, though I will not attempt to argue such.

2) Monsters triggering an unknown shadow trap is pretty much the same as case 1). I hope it's pretty clear why this is so.

3) The only reason a player would choose to step on a known trap is to reach the other side, and would only logically choose to do so if the consequences for stepping on said trap are less bad than the consequences for circumventing the trap in some way. Unfortunately this is basically never going to be interesting when talking about random trap placement outside of vaults; in almost all cases the player can just take a different route to his destination without expending any resources except a few more steps.

4) In theory these traps could be placed (already-known, to reduce spoilers) in vaults to create areas where the player must use some other resource to avoid triggering the trap. There are currently no vaults that do this, unless you want to count hall_of_zot. There are a couple vaults that place items on teleport traps that could use shadow traps instead.

5) The one remaining situation, then, is the one where the player has already found the trap and a monster triggers the trap. Anyone suggesting that this should be eliminated (which I've seen several times in this thread) while keeping the trap a thing that can exist should probably describe why it is desirable from a game design standpoint to have the trap exist at all.

If you think I have missed something then you can bring it up.

Personally I do not think having trap effects happen to me during autoexplore is a good design decision (if you want that, there's always Xom), so I think unknown traps are bad design. I further suggest that the actual effect of the traps that are in crawl are not interesting in the case where the traps are known (you'd never intentionally fight near a zot or shadow trap (or alarm trap, I guess), and you would preferentially fight near a teleport trap (or shaft) since both self-teleport and monster teleport are beneficial), so I think traps should be removed altogether. But it's important to look at this from the design standpoint that I outlined above.

I do think case 4--e.g. "trigger the trap for some loot" could be interesting and is not necessarily bad design (though I have a strong personal dislike for vaults in general). But I don't think that's what is upsetting the people here, and you can keep that in the game without also having randomly-generated traps.

*this isn't actually quite true; traps existing encourages the player to track which spaces he has already stepped on and use those spaces for repeat travel to avoid potentially unseen traps. I'm going to ignore that here, and I don't think anyone would suggest this is actually a good thing to encourage anyway.

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

I have to admit I've actually gotten some enjoyment out of that one Ossuary layout filled with alternating rooms of traps and rooms of zombies / scorpions. Knowing that a certain stretch of terrain may or may not have traps in it and having to retreat over it while escaping from opponents led to some interesting positioning choices and actually gave me good opportunities for luring opponents into effective traps. This is a pretty unique situation, admittedly, since only mindless opponents can be lured into traps that easily, and only early game characters can really benefit from the firepower they provide. Also, if I hadn't seen that layout before, there would have been no real way for me to know what was coming. Would unknown traps be less onerous if they only occurred on a specific kind of visible flooring? I think fighting in an area where there's a 50% chance of there being a blade trap in any given space is much more tactically interesting than fighting in a game where any given tile has a 0.01% chance of holding a blade trap, and while this does still incentivise mapping out safe squares, it would be for small patches rather than entire levels.

It seems to me as though the last "recent" trap idea that's been tolerated by the majority of players are the webs in Spider, and that's one that mostly just gives flavor to Spider, kind of like how Shoals has its tide and Slime has its acid walls. Is there any branch or mini-branch where these things would make more sense?

[XuaXua]

Is there any branch or mini-branch where these things would make more sense?

Abyss? Elf?

[crate]

It seems to me as though the last "recent" trap idea that's been tolerated by the majority of players are the webs in Spider

web traps are awful
thankfully you get like 10% as many of them now as you did in the past, but they're still awful
since there are still a lot of them and since web sense is a thing they actually very strongly encourage you to only travel over already-used spaces, though I suspect people don't actually do that

[Quazifuji]

There's also the fact that the web sense thing is ridiculously spoilery since, last I checked, the game gives you no indication that it exists.

[nilsbloodaxe]

Personally, I hate traps from a design perspective, but I find them silliest in Shoals. Hmmm, I wonder what is going on with that one tile that just will not flood?

[duvessa]

Personally, I hate traps from a design perspective, but I find them silliest in Shoals. Hmmm, I wonder what is going on with that one tile that just will not flood?

IT'S A FLOOR MIMIC

[Sandman25]

Personally I do not think having trap effects happen to me during autoexplore is a good design decision (if you want that, there's always Xom), so I think unknown traps are bad design. I further suggest that the actual effect of the traps that are in crawl are not interesting in the case where the traps are known (you'd never intentionally fight near a zot or shadow trap (or alarm trap, I guess), and you would preferentially fight near a teleport trap (or shaft) since both self-teleport and monster teleport are beneficial), so I think traps should be removed altogether. But it's important to look at this from the design standpoint that I outlined above.

Another option is to make traps trigger special effect on player AND all monsters in player's LoS for N turns, something like !might, -tele, ?silence, inner flame. Of course it should be a single use trap (triggered immediately either by stepping into unknown trap, spotting a hidden trap while exploring or getting "always visible vault trap" into LoS). It is somewhat similar to Xom effects indeed, but probably could create more varied/interesting situations, especially by vault designers.

Edit. Old traps were uninteresting when there were no monsters in LoS because player would just press 5 but here even without monsters player can choose to shout for attracting attention when the trap gives !might, for example.

[Tannedbear]

even pacified mobs can trigger trap.. and it could be very lethal in certain levels. imagine you've encountered a pack of nagas(ofc including shrpshooters n mages ) in opened place....

[neil]

This thread inspired me to make a branch "city-connection", where you paint the floor tiles you step on. Travel/explore doesn't prefer painted tiles but should---that probably wouldn't be terrible to implement.

No builds or online experimental branch because it's silly, but you can compile locally if you want to see how it might feel.

[xentronium]

This thread inspired me to make a branch "city-connection", where you paint the floor tiles you step on. Travel/explore doesn't prefer painted tiles but should---that probably wouldn't be terrible to implement.

No builds or online experimental branch because it's silly, but you can compile locally if you want to see how it might feel.

This sounds like a cool wiz-lab or pan level concept! There could be one right path, and all other tiles are shadow and zot traps. (Or it could be just a cosmetic thing on the level).
"The floor lights up as you step on it."

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

It's already been stated, but I'd just like to reiterate how absolutely horrible it is that shadow traps can surround a character with deadly opponents long before there's any guarantee of finding resources that might help save you. I just lost a hill orc on D:3 to a shadow trap that filled the tiles around me with an ogre, a worker ant, and an adder. As I hadn't found a scroll of blinking or scroll of fear yet, I'm not sure what if anything could have been done to save that character. While I'm not going to say shadow traps don't belong in Crawl at all (though I'd kind of like to), I think it's clear that they don't belong on any floor that we've deemed too early for Zot traps. I find it really hard to enjoy the game when random instant death is a feature. Can we please have these pushed back to D:10 or so? What are the devs waiting for?

[damiac]

It's already been stated, but I'd just like to reiterate how absolutely horrible it is that shadow traps can surround a character with deadly opponents long before there's any guarantee of finding resources that might help save you. I just lost a hill orc on D:3 to a shadow trap that filled the tiles around me with an ogre, a worker ant, and an adder. As I hadn't found a scroll of blinking or scroll of fear yet, I'm not sure what if anything could have been done to save that character. While I'm not going to say shadow traps don't belong in Crawl at all (though I'd kind of like to), I think it's clear that they don't belong on any floor that we've deemed too early for Zot traps. I find it really hard to enjoy the game when random instant death is a feature. Can we please have these pushed back to D:10 or so? What are the devs waiting for?

I'll say it then: Shadow traps(and really, all hidden traps) don't belong in crawl at all. But especially shadow traps.

Or, if not, rename them to consumable tax traps, because that's how they usually work. "OOPS, pressed autoexplore! Pay 1 escape consumable to continue playing."

I get the concept behind them, and like unhidden zot traps, they have some value in making the game more interesting by adding positioning challenges. But as they're so deadly, and the only way one can protect themselves from them is to move around in a more tedious manner, they're really taking more away from crawl than they add.

[Sprucery]

Time to bring back Traps & Doors skill.

[damiac]

Even though I'm quite glad they removed the traps and doors skill, they really should pick one or the other. Either hidden traps are a thing, so we should have some degree of control over spotting them, or they're not a thing. This middle ground of hidden traps with no player control over detection is a worst of both worlds approach.

Outside of the occasional random Zot trap screw, this wasn't a very pronounced issue previous to the addition of shadow traps. It's not that shadow traps themselves are fundamentally bad, the problem is they're building off something which is fundamentally bad, and they're making the problem much more noticeable and extreme.

Shadow traps which always revealed themselves when a player or monster was within 1 square of them would still keep the positioning challenges, but the Autoexplore Screw aspect would go away. Alternatively, a time-bomb version of shadow traps might work(When a shadow trap is spotted, a 'timer' starts. When the timer finishes, the creatures are summoned), and that keeps the 'Oh crap I have to get off this level now' challenge that shadow traps sometimes cause.

Despite all this, I'm totally fine with the way teleport traps work. I know that's not consistent, but nevertheless, it is my opinion.

[Siegurt]

Actually a time-bomb version would be really neat and interesting, although fairly similar to an alarm trap,

Or perhaps the trap could summon one critter at a time at short intervals for a period of time, this would let you run away without requiring you fight everything, and allow some positioning. Perhaps if you defeat all the summoned creatures this would disarm the trap, which would be a nice touch.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Actually a time-bomb version would be really neat and interesting, although fairly similar to an alarm trap,

Or perhaps the trap could summon one critter at a time at short intervals for a period of time, this would let you run away without requiring you fight everything, and allow some positioning. Perhaps if you defeat all the summoned creatures this would disarm the trap, which would be a nice touch.

I really like this suggestion.
More so the 1 monster per turn than the critter part, since that only would make you not get surrounded.
It could also summon fast monsters with inner flame on them (suicide bats wohoo), kind of like that Xom sheep vault that everyone loves, but actually dangerous.

[XuaXua]

Chei boost: "Step from Time" works great when a green/river rat pack summons 7 shadow hydra to kill you in Lair: 1.

[Moanerette]

I've just encountered three of these in the first nine floors. Luckily I had the resources to escape. There seems to be no way to avoid them, they are a random hazard; as someone said above, reminiscent of worshipping Xom. Normally I feel a sense of achievement, even exhilaration, at getting out of a tight spot by a mixture of luck and judgement, but these seem so arbitrary I didn't even get that. I know that the odd unavoidable death is a price we pay for the replayability of randomness and I'm happy with that, but these things seem to almost be designed to produce unavoidable deaths - I basically survived because my FE was a gargoyle and had an amulet of warding, not by good play. I fail to see how this fits into Crawl's design philosophy. I feel a bit bad complaining about anything in this free game that gives me so much enjoyment, but it would be great to see them removed or reworked (the 'time bomb' idea sounds like an improvement imo).