Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?


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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 10th April 2012, 18:29

Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

I really enjoy the metagame concept of achievements and achievement-tracking. It tempts me into more ways of challenging myself in the game or playing for variety -- with the game itself determining whether I've met the criteria and remembering for me what I've accomplished so far.

The multi-tier Banners implemented for the recent Crawl Tournament would be very appealing to me as a perma-feature of Crawl, hopefully including offline versions. ("Why care about banners for offline play" has the same answer as "why care about how many runes you escaped with for offline play".)

Anyone else keen on that idea?
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Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 11th April 2012, 13:05

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

I am up for it, although some thought would have to go into making intelligent achievements that don't promote scumming or otherwise decreasing gameplay value.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 11th April 2012, 14:49

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

Tome 4 has something kind of like this and I absolutely love it. I am not a very good player and so it is very unlikely that I will be able to play good enough to actually win. However if there was some sort of "banner" that functioned as lower hanging fruit then it would serve as a goal that I could reasonably expect to be able to reach if I played my best. There are very strong feelings about these things and so I expect that this will not happen though.

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 11th April 2012, 16:20

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

That's a good point. As someone who's escaped with a few orbs and seen some of the extended endgame, I was thinking more along the lines of ways to enrich the "I can win, now what" chapter of the game. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who die a lot and walk away who might be enticed to stick with it if there were more acknowledgment in-game of milestones they've reached.
Won with: KeAE^Sif, NaWz^Sif, NaTm^Chei, SpEn^Nmlx, GrEE^Qaz, HOFE^Veh, MiBe^Trog, DrFE^Hep, FoFi^Zin, CeHu^Oka, DjFE^Ash, DrIE^Ru, FeSu^Jiy, GnCA^Usk.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 11th April 2012, 16:52

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

mattlistener wrote:That's a good point. As someone who's escaped with a few orbs and seen some of the extended endgame, I was thinking more along the lines of ways to enrich the "I can win, now what" chapter of the game. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who die a lot and walk away who might be enticed to stick with it if there were more acknowledgment in-game of milestones they've reached.


I think if someone's going to walk away just because the game doesn't literally pat them on the back every time they beat a little part of it ... then Crawl probably isn't the game for them in the first place ;)

Normally I'm dead against any kind of achievements system in games, however Crawl's banners are a very good example of the "right way" to do them; a little reward or bragging rights for playing the game in an interesting way you might not have tried before. It's a great way to get extra replay value out of the thing. I can see this adding value in local versions.

There's a really good discussion in this Extra Credits video: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/achievements talking about different kinds of achievements and how "unavoidable" achievements (i.e. things that will automatically happen just through normal game play) aren't really that interesting ... and the inherent reward of reaching a new area of the game and seeing new content is quite enough IMO. Crawl banners generally fall into the third category they talk about - the "inspiring"!

One of my favourite achievements in games I have played was the Half-Life "Little Rocketman" achievement where you had to carry this little gnome through almost the entire game (using your gravity gun and often having to go to extreme lengths to do so) and put in on board this rocket you launch towards the end. It's the only one that ever actually inspired me to go out of my way to earn it!

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 11th April 2012, 17:52

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

I'm cool with that. There are a lot of banners that are accessible to players who aren't yet able to escape with the orb. I'm not suggesting that banners be different than they are, just that that feature be extended to the base game.
Won with: KeAE^Sif, NaWz^Sif, NaTm^Chei, SpEn^Nmlx, GrEE^Qaz, HOFE^Veh, MiBe^Trog, DrFE^Hep, FoFi^Zin, CeHu^Oka, DjFE^Ash, DrIE^Ru, FeSu^Jiy, GnCA^Usk.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 03:32

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

mumra wrote:Normally I'm dead against any kind of achievements system in games, however Crawl's banners are a very good example of the "right way" to do them; a little reward or bragging rights for playing the game in an interesting way you might not have tried before. It's a great way to get extra replay value out of the thing. I can see this adding value in local versions.


not to be a baby bitch nancy nitpicker, but crawl's banners aren't anything unique or special as far as an achievement system goes, most of the achievements are about as full of depth as the "Win with Tina!" achievement in Barbie Racing 3
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 07:43

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

It would be nice, but it requires significant coding and there's a million things more important than that. I don't think any of the current developers are interested in implementing it, so unless we receive a patch, I doubt it will ever be added.
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mattlistener

Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 14:06

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

Okay, thanks for the update.
Won with: KeAE^Sif, NaWz^Sif, NaTm^Chei, SpEn^Nmlx, GrEE^Qaz, HOFE^Veh, MiBe^Trog, DrFE^Hep, FoFi^Zin, CeHu^Oka, DjFE^Ash, DrIE^Ru, FeSu^Jiy, GnCA^Usk.
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hxy

Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 14:46

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

How was the banner system for the competition implemented?
I'm thinking it might be possible to have a file to define the conditions for the banners, and a separate script to read the conditions and then trawl through the morgue files to figure out if the conditions were met.
This could work if all the conditions can be found in the morgue files of course.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 20:11

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

Have a look at the wiki page on achievements. Feel free to comment/add ideas of your own!
Please report bugs to Crawl's bug tracker, and leave feedback on the development wiki. Thank you!
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 12th April 2012, 22:39

Re: Banners as a permafeature? For offline play as well?

Dpeg's achievements look really nice. ;)

The only complaint I have about them is that
the big descriptions for them are TOO sarcastic. If I were a novice, they'd have scared me away at once.
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