Inventory expansion feature for the dcss-ca fork
Posted: Monday, 22nd February 2016, 13:33
This idea has probably been discussed and rejected many times, so I apologize if I'm repeating anything here.
Probably the most tedious thing for me right now when playing this game is constantly having to figure out what to drop so I can pick up another item. What I'm forced to drop would usually be strategically valuable in some circumstances, but I'm forced to cut off that possibility because of limitations in how the inventory system is designed.
The modification I'm considering making in the DCSS Circus Animals fork (see https://github.com/jeremygurr/dcssca), is to divide the inventory into sections based on how they are used: wearables, wieldables, evokables, etc. Each category would have 26 slots (a-z). Many commands would be the same two key strokes: Eat item a: ea, Quaff item c: qc. General inventory commands would require one more keystroke: inventory wearable d: iWd, drop readable x: drx. The adjust command could be the same, instead of adjust inventory item c to d (=icd) it would be adjust wieldable item c to d (=wcd), same number of key strokes.
Of course there is the strange situation of items that fit more than one category (rods). In this implementation, they would be present in BOTH categories, possibly with different letters. Yes, that is lame. To me the right place to fix it is by removing / altering the items that have more than one usage profile. It just seems like needless complexity to me, and contrary to the brilliant combination of simplicity and depth that crawl has otherwise achieved. This same advancement happened when the ability to throw wieldable items was removed, and dedicated throwable items were added. I think that moved crawl in a good direction, simplifying yet not losing anything important in the process.
I'm sure some people will think that you should never have more than 52 items, and that I'm just carrying too much stuff. I've played this game for hundreds of hours, and though I'm certainly nowhere near the skill level of many of you, I still run into this tedious scenario far too often (most games). Is it really worth whatever we are gaining by forcing it into the current inventory tracking model?
Thoughts?
Probably the most tedious thing for me right now when playing this game is constantly having to figure out what to drop so I can pick up another item. What I'm forced to drop would usually be strategically valuable in some circumstances, but I'm forced to cut off that possibility because of limitations in how the inventory system is designed.
The modification I'm considering making in the DCSS Circus Animals fork (see https://github.com/jeremygurr/dcssca), is to divide the inventory into sections based on how they are used: wearables, wieldables, evokables, etc. Each category would have 26 slots (a-z). Many commands would be the same two key strokes: Eat item a: ea, Quaff item c: qc. General inventory commands would require one more keystroke: inventory wearable d: iWd, drop readable x: drx. The adjust command could be the same, instead of adjust inventory item c to d (=icd) it would be adjust wieldable item c to d (=wcd), same number of key strokes.
Of course there is the strange situation of items that fit more than one category (rods). In this implementation, they would be present in BOTH categories, possibly with different letters. Yes, that is lame. To me the right place to fix it is by removing / altering the items that have more than one usage profile. It just seems like needless complexity to me, and contrary to the brilliant combination of simplicity and depth that crawl has otherwise achieved. This same advancement happened when the ability to throw wieldable items was removed, and dedicated throwable items were added. I think that moved crawl in a good direction, simplifying yet not losing anything important in the process.
I'm sure some people will think that you should never have more than 52 items, and that I'm just carrying too much stuff. I've played this game for hundreds of hours, and though I'm certainly nowhere near the skill level of many of you, I still run into this tedious scenario far too often (most games). Is it really worth whatever we are gaining by forcing it into the current inventory tracking model?
Thoughts?