FR: Confirm animate dead without corpses

[rigrig]

Instead of (waste a turn+MP)

You call on the dead to rise... Nothing appears to happen.

There are no suitable remains in the vicinity!

I suppose this would be a small information leak, but for me at least "Whoops, didn't mean to cast animate dead twice in a row" is much more common than "Hmm, I wonder if that pile of loot has a corpse underneath it. Let's gamble a turn and some MP on the chance it does."

Edit:
Whoopsie, I should've realized I was poking the piled loot nest
This was meant (mostly) about fat-fingering Animate Dead twice in a row, so I would already be happy if it were to just check for known corpses before letting you cast it:

You can't see (don't know of?) any susceptible corpses within range! (Uze Z to cast anyway.)

(Casting it on unsuitable corpses is my #2 cause of frustration with AD)

[VeryAngryFelid]

It will be a quality of life improvement when you have several corpses one above another in a narrow place (fighting in corridor etc.) and then you tell your zombies to move away and cast the spell again to get more zombies on the same tiles.
Also I would very welcome the change as a person who drown a character after casting Animate Dead instead of Flight (no longer possible, I know).

[amaril]

"Hmm, I wonder if that pile of loot has a corpse underneath it. Let's gamble a turn and some MP on the chance it does."

This is one of the most infuriating interface issues in the game. Before venturing into unexplored territory, it is optimal to drag every single item onto a single tile out of the way (with apportation) so that you don't waste turns midcombat casting ad and so that you actually know which corpses kiku has gifted you for simulacrum purposes.

[watertreatmentRL]

Maybe someone more familiar with dev irc can speak to this, but I believe this issue of items hidden in piles has been discussed there and the consensus was that hidden items are actually good because without them the "optimal" thing to do is use x/ctrl-x to check piles, which would be bad. I think this is correct as far as it goes, but it's an unimaginative take on the issue. If you insist on current mechanisms being the only way to check piles, then splashing offers a reasonable alternative as I've written here before. It would also be completely possible to have an interface that lists items in field of view without having to press additional keys, along the lines of the way monsters are listed. In any case, I agree that the current hidden items situation is unsatisfactory.

[amaril]

By splashing do you mean "piles of items spread out across the floor until every pile has 1 item?" I have heard this suggested before by duvessa iirc and I think it is a better solution than the status quo, even though it would require some sort of 'corpses remain where they are' clause to prevent it from messing w/ necromancy. Floor item spreading + far fewer items dropped by enemies would resolve this issue, imo, and it would even be okay to let the player xv piles (for example stacks of corpses or in situations where the room is too small for items to fully disperse) because piles would be so uncommon.

Ofc as you've (watertreatmentrl) mentioned, corpse-based necromancy is pretty bad in general and should probably be replaced with some other system; even though corpse concealing is my least favorite part about item piles, the core problems with item piles would persist even if corpses were removed.

edit. the problem with the interface that lists all items in view is that you would still want to know where the items are

[watertreatmentRL]

I agree with what you say here. I would say further, though, that the poverty of the console interface in terms of representing different kinds of items by distinct glyphs is obscured by the item stacking behavior. With splashing, it would become more urgent to resolve that situation, which I think is easily addressable and also important. This would go a long way toward addressing the question of which item is where in the item listing interface.

edit: Also, yes, that is what I mean by "splashing."