Replace inedible corpses with plain corpses

[bel]

This is related to this old thread and this recent Vp thread. Let's leave aside Vp for now, since it is just one species.

I never got a logical reason as to why different corpse types should exist. The reason given in the original commit, which made "poisonous" corpses inedible, was that it was too much of a hassle to swap in rPois to eat poisonous corpses. If so, the logical step would have been to make the corpse plain.

There were some secondary reasons given, including testing out "chunkless" crawl. It made no sense at all even back then, but it's been a year and a half of testing and food and chunks are still in the game. So the reduced chunks in some branches make no difference (in which case replace inedible corpses with plain corpses), or it does make a difference (no it doesn't, so I'm not considering this option). Also, if you one wants to play foodless crawl, there is hellcrawl now.

So, replace inedible corpses with plain corpses. While we're at it, allow Vp to drain blood from all corpses, but at least do the former. All this does is to add tedium.

[Rast]

FR: If a corpse is supposedly poisonous or inedible, butchering it should give less chunks. But not zero. There is always a little bit of good meat you can get to.

[duvessa]

if a monster needs to be inedible for some reason it should just leave no corpse at all
i always hear "but that's a nerf to animate X and simulacrum" but animate X and simulacrum are ludicrously overpowered so i don't see how that's an argument against it

[Airwolf]

Plus, fire crabs must obviously be tasty, not inedible!

[bel]

Bump. Nothing has changed from the OP.

[njvack]

Tavern isn't, like, some kind of ticket tracking system. Mantis is over here.

[duvessa]

You're not supposed to make Mantis tickets for feature requests.

[Shtopit]

I actually prefer the current system. It would be even better, if it could be simplified.
E.g. substitute corpses with skeletons (and exoskeletons). If a skeleton is dropped, there is a chance of chunks also being dropped (no butchering!). Chunks should always be edible/mutagenic. Undead type is then only determined by the spell used, not by the status of the corpse. If this makes necromancy too strong, make dead skeletons disappear as fast as decomposition now works.
If it's weird that a skeleton is immediately generated, call it carcass instead.

[Shard1697]

It would definitely be an improvement to kill the butcher button(see: questions like this which you won't get in games like Qud where you can just eat corpses), but it would be a bigger improvement to kill food altogether

[watertreatmentRL]

Legendary pro-mod hellcrawl has of course removed food, but some may not know that it has also removed monster corpses. The correct model for ally-producing necromancy spells is death channel, where the undead are spawned on kill rather than as part of a secondary corpse interaction. I realize some people like to interact with corpses, but confining interaction to the living really is best.

I mention this because in some hypothetical version of crawl with food, but no corpses, necromancy effects on this model would work fine with monsters that drop chunks instead of corpses, eliminating the need for skeletons, cadavers, carcasses, etc.

[njvack]

I realize some people like to interact with corpses

boy howdy do I ever

[bel]

Bump. Nothing has changed from the OP. It's been two and a half years. This "feature" makes no sense at all, and it wasn't even supposed to be implemented the way it was.

[svendre]

Necromancy is very appropriately referenced in this Necro thread. What the heck!

[petercordia]

I actually like the flavour of having inedible corpses - and especially that playing with Vampire/ghoul/TSO changes which corpses are edible.
The gameplay effect is minor because it's mostly restricted to the S branches, but I like the storytelling it does.

[Implojin]

Necromancy is very appropriately referenced in this Necro thread. What the heck!

I see nothing wrong with retabling an old topic for further discussion, if the problem it references still exists. Creating a new thread would divorce further discussion from the context previously contributed by other posters.

Highlighting that this problem still exists might give someone on the devteam pause, to find interest/time to address this now where none existed before. It is also possible that common opinion may have shifted toward viewing this feature less favourably since the topic was originally posted.


My opinion:

Remove chunks. Chop tedium is so pointless that there's an rcfile setting to automate it out now, ffs. Chunks originally existed as a way to smooth over irregularities in food generation at floorgen -- a better approach to evening this out would be to get rid of chunks, decrease ration nutrition, and increase the rate of ration generation. This would condense the sources of nutrition into one manageable knob that could allow someone to meaningfully tweak the hunger clock in the future, instead of leaving the hunger clock in this ineffectual limbo state where it really only affects new players who might want to L9 spam.

We've gotten rid of nonsense like rings of sustenance, potions of porridge, potion quaff nutrition*, fountain quaff nutrition*, sultanas, pizza, snozzcumbers, etc., but chunks still exist. What compelling reason is there for this, save as a method to provide the player an option for extra nutrition in the case of a hostile floorgen? More importantly, if food is your primary gameplay clock, why the fuck should the player get the option to lengthen the clock? This obviates the clock.

*(I think? I'm not interested enough to go grep when/if these were finally removed.)

Either admit that hunger does nothing and you're giving up on it, so that you can pivot development into making piety more important (or seriously explore alternative clocks in trunk), or fixup hunger to provide a meaningful clock. If you wish to fixup hunger, removing chunks and moving on from there to balance the proper rate of nutrition generation would be a great start.


DCSS clocks aren't meaningful. They can be better.

[svendre]

Necromancy is very appropriately referenced in this Necro thread. What the heck!

I see nothing wrong with retabling an old topic for further discussion, if the problem it references still exists. Creating a new thread would divorce further discussion from the context previously contributed by other posters.

Highlighting that this problem still exists might give someone on the devteam pause, to find interest/time to address this now where none existed before. It is also possible that common opinion may have shifted toward viewing this feature less favourably since the topic was originally posted.

I never said I had a problem with it. You're taking my response far too seriously!

[VeryAngryFelid]

Food clock does nothing as long as Mu exists . Those players who want to abuse "wait monsters to wonder into view" "tactics" still can do it, devs even added a special god aka Gozag for it.

[bel]

I would not be opposed to removing chunks (or indeed, removing food altogether), but that's a larger discussion.

All I want here is the revert of a commit that made little sense 4 years ago, and makes even less sense now. Ironically, that commit was supposed to be an experiment which would move us towards "chunkless" DCSS. Chunkless crawl didn't happen, but the experiment is still in place.

Also, see this comment by duvessa.

[Siegurt]

All I want here is the revert of a commit that made little sense 4 years ago, and makes even less sense now. Ironically, that commit was supposed to be an experiment which would move us towards "chunkless" DCSS. Chunkless crawl didn't happen, but the experiment is still in place.

Well, technically reverting that change would change us back to having 'poisonous' chunks/corpses (which could only be consumed with rPois), which isn't quite what you are suggesting.

[bel]

No, I'm talking about this commit.

Notice the commit message:

After long discussion, we came to the conclusion that inedible
chunks are an experiment worth trying, at least for a week or so.

That was 4 years ago.

To put it another way, I want the situation after this commit.