Concise skill progression table in morgue file

[Roy]

I really like the "Action" table in the morgue file - it very quickly shows how a player's tactics changed over the course of the game. Any thoughts on adding an equivalent for skill advancement?

Here's one possible way to show it:

  Code:

Skill       XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unarmed Combat  |     1  2  3  4     5  7  8     9 10 11    12       13 14 15 16    17          24
Bows            |     6     7     8  9 11    12 13 14 15 16 17 19 20    21 22          23 24 25   
Fighting        |                 2  3  5  7     8  9    10 11    12 13 14 15    16 17 18 19 20 27
Armour          |                          1  2     3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11    12       13 14 20
Dodging         |                          2     4           5  8  9    10 11    12 13       14 20
Invocations     |                          1  2  4  6  7  8  9                                   
Translocations  |                             5  6  7  8                 9    12 13 14 15 18    20
Spellcasting    |                             1  3  4  5  6  7                    8  9          12
Evocations      |                                2                 6           7                18
Charms          |                                         2  4                                  13
Summonings      |                                                  2              3               
Poison Magic    |                                                              1                 4
Transmutations  |                                                                               11
Air Magic       |                                                                                4
Necromancy      |                                                                               13
Earth Magic     |                                                                                2


Hopefully this is self explanatory, but each column is the XL and each value is the skill level reached during that XL. If multiple levels were reached, the highest is printed. For example, Bows gained two levels (9 -> 11) while the player was at XL 8. (I created this table using a script, if anyone is interested.)

[ion_frigate]

My only (fairly minor) suggestion would be to repeat unchanged nonzero skill levels. That way, by reading down a column, you can get a nice snapshot of what the character looked like at that XL.

[Sar]

Probably also add the last column for skills on the last turn, for all the zigrunners.

[Lasty]

Sounds good to me. Patches welcome.

[Moose]

Sounds good to me. Patches welcome.

Wait... you're a dev, just do it! What do we pay you for anyway?

[Roy]

Awesome! I'll send a patch shortly.

Any feedback on how it looks? Is it easily understandable? For example, is it clear in the following (real) example that M&F raised to skill level 4 during XL 1 then to skill level 5 during XL 3?

  Code:

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5
---------------+---------------
Maces & Flails |  4     5     6
Fighting       |        4     5
Armour         |           3   


My implementation reads everything from the notes without storing anything extra in the save file, so we can easily change the format in the future without invaliding save files.

My only (fairly minor) suggestion would be to repeat unchanged nonzero skill levels. That way, by reading down a column, you can get a nice snapshot of what the character looked like at that XL.

My concern here is that the table will be too busy and hard to read. My intention for this table is to see what the player trained when. By having lots of blanks, it really highlights skill gains without having to manually scan for changes. Compare:

  Code:

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5
---------------+---------------
Maces & Flails |  4  4  5  5  6
Fighting       |        4  4  5
Armour         |           3  3


It's not a huge deal either way, but I'd lean toward more whitespace. Any other thoughts?

Probably also add the last column for skills on the last turn, for all the zigrunners.

Sorry, I don't understand. The last column is all the skills gained during XL 27, and if you want a list of all the skills during the last turn, isn't there already a listing of that higher up in the chardump?

[savageorange]

I think the repeating idea is really problematic too. it's extremely busy, even when switched to base 28 so that each item is of a uniform size (1 character) :

  Code:

Skill       XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unarmed Combat  |     1  2  3  4  4  5  7  8  8  9  a  b  b  c  c  c  d  e  f  g  g  h  h  h  h  o
Bows            |     6  6  7  7  8  9  b  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  j  k  k  l  m  m  m  m  n  o  p  p


This is traditionally solved by pivoting the table, as I understand (XL becomes vertical axis, skill becomes horizontal axis)
. When you look at the aptitudes table (?%), and consider that many columns would not need to be included (completely untrained skills), that might be workable as an alternate option (but still IMO less readable than the layout proposed in OP; even if duplicates are not included).

(here's a version of my sample above, without the duplication, in base 28, for comparison's sake:

  Code:

Skill       XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unarmed Combat  |     1  2  3  4     5  7  8     9  a  b     c        d  e  f  g     h           o
Bows            |     6     7     8  9  b     c  d  e  f  g  h  j  k     l  m           n  o  p   


IMO this is less busy than OP's layout as a result of using exactly one character for each item.
)

[Sprucery]

But base 28 would make the table extremely tedious to read, because you would have to count letters in order to get the skill level.

[savageorange]

A similar statement could be made about base 10

[Sprucery]

A similar statement could be made about base 10 ;)

But... it is obvious that 20 is 20. It is not obvious that k is 20.

[savageorange]

A similar statement could be made about base 10

But... it is obvious that 20 is 20. It is not obvious that k is 20.

So, your real argument is that employing more than one way to represent the same value is confusing? That's a much stronger argument.

(it's obvious that "20" is "20". It's not obvious whether "20"'s value is 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, or 70, although I'd agree that base 10 is the default assumption.)

[Siegurt]

A similar statement could be made about base 10

But... it is obvious that 20 is 20. It is not obvious that k is 20.

So, your real argument is that employing more than one way to represent the same value is confusing? That's a much stronger argument.

(it's obvious that "20" is "20". It's not obvious whether "20"'s value is 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, or 70, although I'd agree that base 10 is the default assumption.)

Well it is obvious in the sense that it is generally accepted that numbers are base 10 unless otherwise noted, because that is how humans learn to communicate about numbers. In the abstract it is possible for any number to be represented in any base, but base 10 is the accepted generally used "language" for numbers. It is also how all the other numbers in the game are communicated.

[savageorange]

It is also how all the other numbers in the game are communicated.

Yes, that's why I said consistency was a far better argument than obviousness.

[Lasty]

I'd vote for the high-whitespace version, maybe dropping any XLs where your skill levels don't change to slightly improve the horizontal space used. In general, trimming noise from the chart is good.

[Siegurt]

I might also like a single 'current levels' column at the end, listing the skill levels of all the skills, yes its redundant with the skill lists above, but having it all in one chart would be nice for reference.

[Roy]

Patch: https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=10255

I added a 'current levels' column at the end, but I opted not to drop empty XL columns. I think it is very rare to have an XL with no skill gains, so it is probably not worth special casing, and when it when it does randomly happen, I think it would not be clear why the column was omitted. Here's an example where it happened, and I don't see the blank column being a problem.

  Code:

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 |
---------------+-------------------------------+-----
Maces & Flails |  4  5     6     8  9 11 14    | 14.5
Fighting       |           5  6           7  9 |  9.7
Stealth        |                    1          |  1.2
Armour         |                    3  6       |  6.0
Dodging        |                               |  2.1


[Roy]

Should this thread be moved to the Contributions forum to get picked up?

[archaeo]

Nah Roy, I recommend logging into ##crawl-dev and asking the devs about the patch directly. I imagine it just got lost in the shuffle, or maybe somebody had some reservations that never made their way to Tavern.

Either way, Contributions is a ghost town subforum, and moving the thread there probably won't help much.

[Lasty]

Hey Roy, I intend to look over your patch and hopefully include it; I confess I forgot about it for a while there. I'll make a note, but feel free to bug me about it on IRC if I don't get to it over the weekend.

[Roy]

Cool, thanks!

[Lasty]

Pushed! Thanks for this patch, Roy. I think this is a great addition.

[Roy]

Great - thanks for reviewing it!

[Blade]

Will this be included by default in logs from here on out, or will we need to enable a setting?

[Roy]

It's included by default, but if you have set a custom dump_order in your crawlrc, you'll need to add skill_gains to the list.

Also, it will work as described for all new savegames. For existing savegames created before the patch, the table will have reduced fidelity (e.g. only show every 3rd gain) unless you had note_all_skill_levels = true in your crawlrc.

[duvessa]

Finally, we have a way to stop people from cheating on skillrobin