Remove Corpses


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Tuesday, 14th February 2023, 23:39

Remove Corpses

If there's no longer any way to interact with corpses, then they probably shouldn't even exist anymore. I can imagine new players seeing them and spending a lot of time looking for something to do with them, thinking something along the lines of, "Surely, they must serve some purpose. Otherwise, why would the developers go to the trouble of implementing them?" Then, when they can't find anything themselves, they would turn to spoilers to try to find what they'd been missing, possibly leading them to incidentally learn other things about the game that they might have preferred to discover for themselves.

For this message the author Nekoatl has received thanks:
andrew

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Wednesday, 15th February 2023, 13:48

Re: Remove Corpses

Well, they are always shown as useless (grey), so I doubt this is big danger.

Besides, I think that some effect may interact with them in the future -- the problem was not "interacting with corpses", but rather than the actual effects were not very well designed.

Blood is also a mostly flavour element and I do not think anybody complains she can not ineract with it, rather than being surprised when plays a demonspawn and finally see some interaction (if it is still in the game this way).

Slime Squisher

Posts: 377

Joined: Thursday, 12th June 2014, 06:56

Post Thursday, 16th February 2023, 08:32

Re: Remove Corpses

Ah, the travails of a game that started off as a NetHack clone and got rewritten into, well, what it is now. Reminds me of how remnants the pre-DCSS Holy spell school (healing) survived until 0.5 in the code.

FWIW, I've seen roguelikes (some 7DRLs, and I think Infra Arcana) that implement corpses the way DCSS implements blood: dead monsters leave a % (or corresponding corpse tile) on the floor, but it's not actually an item, just a cosmetic effect. IMO that's a good way to very much get across that corpses aren't something you actually interact with. As for the notion that the devs might implement something in the future with corpses: they can re-implement them if they decide to do that, it's not like the code to generate corpses goes away if it's removed or commented out.

For this message the author ion_frigate has received thanks: 2
Nekoatl, rigrig

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Monday, 20th February 2023, 10:53

Re: Remove Corpses

Nevermind, I see that there is a new unrandart ("Cigotuvi's embrace") that makes use of corpses.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Thursday, 23rd March 2023, 12:40

Re: Remove Corpses

Nekoatl wrote:Nevermind, I see that there is a new unrandart ("Cigotuvi's embrace") that makes use of corpses.


And, ah, did vanilla get rid of necromancy when I wasn't looking?
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Saturday, 25th March 2023, 10:46

Re: Remove Corpses

The necromantcy spells were changed such they do not use corpses anymore. Usually you cast the spells on the living monsters, who will turn into friendly undead upon death, without generating corpses.

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 37 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.