Unify commands for picking up items


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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 14:54

Unify commands for picking up items

Right now most items are picked up with "," but some items, namely corpses, are picked up with "c" instead. I think it would be good if the same command were used to pick up all types of items - it's more intuitive for new players and just overall feels better to play if there is consistency.

edit: vvv okay that was a bad typo
Last edited by johlstei on Thursday, 20th April 2017, 22:12, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 15:42

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

johlstei wrote:Right now most items are picked up with "." but some items, namely corpses, are picked up with "c" instead. I think it would be good if the same command were used to pick up all types of items - it's more intuitive for new players and just overall feels better to play if there is consistency.

You don't pick up corpses, you make chunks out of them and possibly pick those up (sometimes, or in my case almost never), also . rests , picks stuff up
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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 18:45

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

That's the point, why not let the "pick up" button be what makes corpses into chunks and picks those up? There's no need for a separate key just for butchering.

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 19:44

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Shard1697 wrote:That's the point, why not let the "pick up" button be what makes corpses into chunks and picks those up? There's no need for a separate key just for butchering.

Because sometimes i want to pick stuff up but not butcher the corpse, or butcher a corpse and not pick items up that happen to be on the same square?
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Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 20:00

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

If there's more than one item on your square, you already get a pickup prompt, chopping a creature could be part of it.

I'm used to things the way they are now and I think they're fine, but it's not ridiculous to think of butchering and pickup as the same thing...

but the more I think about it... the more it's complicated. Chopping takes longer than getting items (I think?) and if you're berserk you don't do item management but you can butcher (though maybe those things are bad?)
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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 20:10

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

njvack wrote:If there's more than one item on your square, you already get a pickup prompt, chopping a creature could be part of it.

I'm used to things the way they are now and I think they're fine, but it's not ridiculous to think of butchering and pickup as the same thing...

but the more I think about it... the more it's complicated. Chopping takes longer than getting items (I think?) and if you're berserk you don't do item management but you can butcher (though maybe those things are bad?)

Personally, i mostly chop up corpses, eat chunks from the floor, and leave the rest there.

The two have almost nothing in common for me other than "you are interacting with something in the dungeon"

They have different motivations and available circumstances, and conflating the two would make both actions more tedious, and make nothing easier.
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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 21:31

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

You don't pick them up to preserve a single inventory slot? The fact that the actions are distinct seems like the problem there - thinking of whether or not to pick up a given chunk strikes me as the epitome of optimal + tedious.

I mean, surely you'd oppose a class on consumables that are kinda like scrolls but you gotta type a semicolon to rip them off the toilet paper roll and then pick them up as separate actions, why should this class of consumables be different?

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 21:59

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Not to beat a dead tavern horse, but this problem is also solved if you remove food or at least remove chunk eating. The suggestion here is ok as a band-aid fix but the long term solution to chunk management is to remove chunks.

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 22:14

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Siegurt you could also make "e" eat the chunks off the ground, just like "r" reads scrolls off the ground, instead of needing to type "ce" to eat the chunks. That way the proposal helps your use case, as well. Are there any spells that still use chunks in a way that doesn't involve eating them or picking them up? Pretty much any interaction you have while standing on a corpse is one of those two things, may as well make a single command for doing each one instead of a prefix required for both.

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Post Thursday, 20th April 2017, 22:34

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

johlstei wrote:Siegurt you could also make "e" eat the chunks off the ground, just like "r" reads scrolls off the ground, instead of needing to type "ce" to eat the chunks. That way the proposal helps your use case, as well. Are there any spells that still use chunks in a way that doesn't involve eating them or picking them up? Pretty much any interaction you have while standing on a corpse is one of those two things, may as well make a single command for doing each one instead of a prefix required for both.


'e' already eats chunks off the ground.

'c' turns corpses *into* chunks, it doesn't pick them up, autopickup picks them up after you've buchered them.

The proposal adds corpses to the list of things that I have to ignore while picking things up, when I *never want to pick them up* (and in fact can't physically do so)

The things that you do with corpses other than turn them into chunks include:
Animating them (With either of the spells or the god ability) and turning them into armour (with cig's embrace) and turning them into miasma.

But my main problem with conflating the two abilities is not that "you might do turn something into chunks when you didn't want to" my problem with it is that *I rarely want to both eat chunks and pick up items in the same action* I would either need food, so be chopping up corpses, and the items in the same square would be so much extra chaff that I had to wade through to get to the corpses I wanted to chop up, or I would be looking for items to loot, in which case the *corpses* become so much extra chaff that I have to wade through to find the items I want to loot.

This is the same problem that exists for trying to merge 'p'ut on and 'W'ear and 'w'ield, I already know what thing I want to interact with before I have hit any keys at all, and presenting me with a shorter list makes it take less time to deal with.

It sounds like there's a prior assumption that all corpses and piles of chunks are identical things, and can/should be treated the same way, when they aren't.

If the proposal is really "corpses and chunks are merged into a single item, and you can pick them/it up, eat it, or animate/cast spells on it it as if it had the properties of both" then there would be no need at all for a 'c' command (since corpses and chunks are the same thing), and you wouldn't be unifying/merging anything, since chunks are already normal items and are already picked up by the same command that picks up everything else. But that's a different proposal than this one.

I wouldn't like *that* proposal very much, because I don't really need more spam when dealing with items/food, (Plus we made corpses un-pick-upable on purpose because it caused all sorts of stupid tedium) but at least it would make some sense.
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Post Friday, 21st April 2017, 00:37

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Hellmonk wrote:Not to beat a dead tavern horse, but this problem is also solved if you remove food or at least remove chunk eating. The suggestion here is ok as a band-aid fix but the long term solution to chunk management is to remove chunks.


There's also always the "goldify food" option that came up recently would remove the inventory management associated with any type of food, including chunks.
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Post Friday, 21st April 2017, 00:57

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

I think that removing butchery and making corpses eatable directly would be a step forward. Even add corpse autoeat with an exception for the various raise dead spells if memorized. Butchery could be left as a ghoul exclusive.
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Post Friday, 21st April 2017, 08:23

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Eating corpses (only) from the ground would be a step backwards: when the player becomes Hungry (or otherwise capable of eating a corpse) he would have to go back to the corpse. (Corpses cannot be picked up and carried and if they could be, it would be even worse inventory clutter than chunks.)
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Post Friday, 21st April 2017, 14:50

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Siegurt wrote:Personally, i mostly chop up corpses, eat chunks from the floor, and leave the rest there.


Huh. I never thought of doing that. That's a good idea.

What if 'c' weren't a thing at all? What if you 'e' standing over a corpse, and you get some nutrition and turn the corpse into a skeleton? It's not like chunks have any other use anymore.
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Post Friday, 21st April 2017, 16:24

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

njvack wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Personally, i mostly chop up corpses, eat chunks from the floor, and leave the rest there.


Huh. I never thought of doing that. That's a good idea.

What if 'c' weren't a thing at all? What if you 'e' standing over a corpse, and you get some nutrition and turn the corpse into a skeleton? It's not like chunks have any other use anymore.

nagdon wrote:Eating corpses (only) from the ground would be a step backwards: when the player becomes Hungry (or otherwise capable of eating a corpse) he would have to go back to the corpse. (Corpses cannot be picked up and carried and if they could be, it would be even worse inventory clutter than chunks.)


Sometimes (rarely but occasionally for me) chunks are good to carry because i don't have a good supply of perma food for whatever reason, having the option is worth having a key bound to 'c' to me.
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Post Sunday, 23rd April 2017, 07:38

Re: Unify commands for picking up items

Siegurt wrote:
njvack wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Personally, i mostly chop up corpses, eat chunks from the floor, and leave the rest there.


Huh. I never thought of doing that. That's a good idea.

What if 'c' weren't a thing at all? What if you 'e' standing over a corpse, and you get some nutrition and turn the corpse into a skeleton? It's not like chunks have any other use anymore.

nagdon wrote:Eating corpses (only) from the ground would be a step backwards: when the player becomes Hungry (or otherwise capable of eating a corpse) he would have to go back to the corpse. (Corpses cannot be picked up and carried and if they could be, it would be even worse inventory clutter than chunks.)


Sometimes (rarely but occasionally for me) chunks are good to carry because i don't have a good supply of perma food for whatever reason, having the option is worth having a key bound to 'c' to me.

I personnally always carry chunks with me when playing magic-wielding characters, because I don't want to go back to my last corpses every time I cast a Fireball with low-ish Spellcasting skill.
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