Show summoner of summoned creature

[milo]

In the 'xv' screen of a summoned creature it would say something like:

"This creature has been been summoned...blah blah. It has been summoned by a giant orange brain."

It's kinda handy to know who I have to kill to get rid of summoned creatures when there are more than one summoning creature in the mix.


[Apologies if this has been brought up before; and I don't know the first thing about coding, otw I'd be happy to submit a patch.]

[Pollen_Golem]

I don't know about this... for me it can be fun figuring out who must be summoning what. It's better not to automatically know it like that, in my opinion. Thankfully you can look at monsters to see what spells they might have.

The bigger issue can be illustrated with an example: if you have two elf summoners in view, and the text log says "the elf summoner mumbles some words", you have no idea which elf summoner did that. Unless, maybe, you saw one of the elves flicker and vanish for a split second, in tiles mode.

[PleasingFungus]

It's true that you don't always currently know who's summoning what, but it's okay for the game to give away information sometimes; consider the status of invisible monster indicators, for example. I don't think there's anything particularly fun about matching monster to summoner for most players. The basic premise of this suggestion seems fine - I've thought about it before.

The problem here is that you'll encourage players to xv monsters constantly so that they have the full picture of the tactical situation, which seems like it'd be pretty clunky & unfun.

Something that displayed it when you just x'd over monsters ("Here: a hell rat, summoned by a deep elf summoner") would be less bad, but it'd clutter up the display & would still not eliminate all ambiguity (as in cases where there are multiples of a summoner type around). And it'd still encourage xing over monsters constantly, which is an inconvenience that tiles players are mostly spared at present.

[Sandman25]

For tiles it can be solved by using different colors of indicator for different "summoner and its summons" groups.

[duvessa]

Something that displayed it when you just x'd over monsters ("Here: a hell rat, summoned by a deep elf summoner") would be less bad, but it'd clutter up the display & would still not eliminate all ambiguity (as in cases where there are multiples of a summoner type around).

if the summoner is onscreen, highlight it while x is over the summoned monster?

And it'd still encourage xing over monsters constantly, which is an inconvenience that tiles players are mostly spared at present.

um...don't summoned monsters do exactly this already in console? and in tiles you can always add more icons

[PleasingFungus]

if the summoner is onscreen, highlight it while x is over the summoned monster?

This is a good idea and I like it a lot.

um...don't summoned monsters do exactly this already in console? and in tiles you can always add more icons

What kind of icon could you add?

(console players are used to bad UI; they're a lost cause.)

[duvessa]

Good to know that me and the other 40% of your online players are a lost cause. Too bad there's no procedure for retracting my tiles and patches.

[savageorange]

(console players are used to bad UI; they're a lost cause.)

How so?

(honestly, as a mostly-tiles player, I was like, hahaha no. I like how tiles looks, and certain features (minimap, monster status icons), but it has a number of UI misfeatures -- hover over [monster/item/spell] for details, icon-inventory, icon-monsterlist, maybe icon-spelllist, that console just plain isn't inflicted with.)

[Sandman25]

It is possible to remove icon-inventory, icon-monsterlist, icon-spelllist by changing init.txt and this is what I did after I had stopped using mouse.

Edit. Oops, I am wrong. It is impossible to remove inventory tab, I just don't use it so I forgot it is displayed.

[savageorange]

It is possible to remove icon-inventory, icon-monsterlist, icon-spelllist by changing init.txt and this is what I did after I had stopped using mouse.

Edit. Oops, I am wrong. It is impossible to remove inventory tab, I just don't use it so I forgot it is displayed.

Oh, thanks. I was just about to ask about inventory, since options-guide states it is always added. I successfully removed the others.

(for anyone else's reference: the relevant option is "tile_layout_priority", and you can remove items from the display by removing them from the list.)

[Lasty]

I'm pretty sure PF was trying to make a joke. The devteam overall does not consider console to be a lost cause.

[bel]

Offtopic, but what is better about tiles UI? (I play console mostly. I try tiles now and then)

[Sar]

You can instantly see which monsters carry a weapon of reaching. There are more status icons.

[bel]

What are status icons? (Stuff like wandering, confused etc.?)

[Sar]

Rage, might, summoned, durably summoned, probably some others I am forgetting. Note that rage is reflected in console via monster glyph turning bright-red.

[savageorange]

Offtopic, but what is better about tiles UI? (I play console mostly. I try tiles now and then)

The ones I listed (always-visible minimap (shows entire level), monster status icons (covered by Sar)) are IMO the most uncontroversially good. Tiles also has simpler behaviour for larger windows (it automatically fills the area, whereas in console, you must edit your init.txt to achieve the same effect)

Tiles supports mouse (eg: Lclick to move to a cell or pickup an item, Rclick to describe a feature or monster, hover to get the first few lines of description in the message area) which is generally considered good UI practice. However, in practice, rather few good players use the mouse, which makes the issue of whether it's good in this case more questionable. (personally I think it's not good UI, because my hands are otherwise glued to the keyboard; switching to mouse induces brief confusion, and so does switching back from mouse to keyboard.)

[Arrhythmia]

I'm pretty sure PF was trying to make a joke. The devteam overall does not consider console to be a lost cause.

PF was being completely earnest.

(and he's right, too)

[PleasingFungus]

I'm the only even semi-active dev who doesn't play in console, IIRC. Seems safe to say console players have nothing to worry about. (Beside the tragic life choices that led them to become console players in the first place, of course.)

Apologies for the derail.