--more-- prompts while autoattacking


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Spider Stomper

Posts: 195

Joined: Monday, 25th April 2011, 20:48

Post Thursday, 14th July 2011, 09:24

--more-- prompts while autoattacking

Specifically, if the autoattack key is the key most recently pressed, conditions such as the following should pop up a --more-- prompt:

    A new monster moves into the field of view,
    Player has low health,
    One of the player's buffs are fading, or have run out, or
    Player has received some debuff.

(Feel free to discuss the above list; I'm not so sure about the last two.)

The autoattack key tends to be mashed or even held down by players, leading to situations such as the player chasing a gray rat into a hydra's face in Lair, Sigmund showing up as the player is wiping out some kobolds, or the player running low on health while autoattacking. The player often releases the autoattack key too late, and finds himself in danger or already dead. This suggestion will make repeated autoattacking work somewhat like auto-explore, in that there will be a forced pause whenever a new danger appears.

Ultimately, this suggestion will lower the tedium of early dungeon levels by making autoattack more safe to use for wiping out weak enemies.

For this message the author ElectricAlbatross has received thanks:
dolphin
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Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Thursday, 14th July 2011, 11:31

Re: --more-- prompts while autoattacking

You should never hold down a key. Any key. Period. As MarvinPA said in another thread, if we've got too many trivial fights that you have to spam autofight all the time, it's better to address this by removing weak monsters at deep levels or making those fights more interesting somehow. Autofight can be convenient sometimes, but we're not upgrading it into autobattle, autowar or autoplay. If you're into that, write a bot.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Dungeon Master

Posts: 1613

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 21:54

Post Thursday, 14th July 2011, 13:16

Re: --more-- prompts while autoattacking

And if you do insist on mashing autofight, it's quite easy to set up a prompt for low health by adding a force_more_message and adjusting your hp_warning setting as desired (likewise for buffs expiring: "force_more_message = You feel yourself slow down", and so on). I think this is probably a case where the existing customisation options provide almost all of these possibilities already.
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Halls Hopper

Posts: 55

Joined: Saturday, 2nd July 2011, 14:45

Post Thursday, 14th July 2011, 13:52

Re: --more-- prompts while autoattacking

Also, you may already know this, but Shift-tab = autoattack_nomove. Doesn't chase fleeing enemies, generally safer.

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