turning rods into snakes

[Amnesiac]

I have accidentely turned a rod of destruction into an adder, I don't think that adder was as useful, so I think there should be a prompt given when doing this... Damn that was frustrating.

[jejorda2]

Add this to your options file, and you will be prompted before using a rod for melee attack, sacrificing it to Nemelex or Evylion, or turning it into a snake:

autoinscribe += rod:!a!D

Or use } to inscribe individual rods that you want to be careful about. The !D is the anti-destruction part. The command might be {; I get display runes and inscribe mixed up.

[Amnesiac]

thanks

[Sporkman]

Considering how rare rods are, this might make sense as a default. Just my two cents.

[Kalma]

The spell working on rods is pointless and only ever happens by mistake. Unfun.

Either get rid of it (let rods be metallic and therefore not sticks to snake-able) or have it give a really strong S, so that it might be a useful resource.

[and into]

The spell working on rods is pointless and only ever happens by mistake. Unfun.

Either get rid of it (let rods be metallic and therefore not sticks to snake-able) or have it give a really strong S, so that it might be a useful resource.

Should probably be removed. I don't think it should give really strong S, because carting around rods for possible late-game super-summons powerful enough to be worth the cost of a rod, wouldn't be fun either. It also wouldn't address the actual problem, which is accidentally casting while wielding.

I'd lobby removal for this, s2s just shouldn't work on rods. Of course there is some inscription to correct it, but it is annoying to do this, if it adds nothing and only makes interface-related accidents more likely to happen, then removal is best solution IMO. And I imagine it would be very easy to implement.

[njvack]

Rods and enhancer staves both. There is literally no time I've wanted to turn a rod or staff into a snake, and I like the spell.

[Volteccer_Jack]

The same 'accident' can happen with a longbow or quarterstaff or bardiche or giant spiked club. I think maybe people should just pay attention, and use inscriptions if they are unwilling or unable to do so.

It might be nice if rods were treated like giant clubs (i.e. free upgrade to water moccasin), but that is tangential to the complaint in this thread.

Rods and enhancer staves both. There is literally no time I've wanted to turn a rod or staff into a snake, and I like the spell.

How about "every time you find one", since you don't even want them anyway most of the time?

[and into]

The same 'accident' can happen with a longbow or quarterstaff or bardiche or giant spiked club. I think maybe people should just pay attention, and use inscriptions if they are unwilling or unable to do so.

It might be nice if rods were treated like giant clubs (i.e. free upgrade to water moccasin), but that is tangential to the complaint in this thread.

Rods and enhancer staves both. There is literally no time I've wanted to turn a rod or staff into a snake, and I like the spell.

How about "every time you find one", since you don't even want them anyway most of the time?

People should pay attention, people can use inscriptions, and neither of those change the fact that, if there is no purpose for sticks to snakes to accept and consume rods, that feature should be removed. You might as well say, remove the programmed-in auto-inscription on weapons of distortion, which gives the "Are you sure?" prompt for wielding. After all, people should just pay attention.

Alternately rods can auto-inscribe so they will prompt if you cast sticks to snakes while wielding it. In any case it should be automated, either removal of the feature or auto-inscription.

[Amnesiac]

Um... What's the point to tell me to pay attention after I have already had such a bad accident. People might forget to inscribe something and then press the wrong button and I think the chance of it happening is quite high for those who have this spell. I think something really should be done about it.

[jejorda2]

Maybe the spell should always prompt if the reagent can not be thrown or launched?

[Volteccer_Jack]

if there is no purpose for sticks to snakes to accept and consume rods

The same purpose for it to accept and consume weapons and ammunition: making snakes. Maybe i don't want to turn my elec quarterstaff into a snake. Unless you want it to ask for confirmation every time you cast the spell with anything other than arrows, and that would be--

Maybe the spell should always prompt if the reagent can not be thrown or launched?

Weapons produce better snakes than ammunition, especially at high spellpower, when you can get anacondas. So please don't make life miserable for the five people on earth who actually appreciate how good this spell is.

[and into]

if there is no purpose for sticks to snakes to accept and consume rods

The same purpose for it to accept and consume weapons and ammunition: making snakes. Maybe i don't want to turn my elec quarterstaff into a snake. Unless you want it to ask for confirmation every time you cast the spell with anything other than arrows, and that would be--

Maybe the spell should always prompt if the reagent can not be thrown or launched?

Weapons produce better snakes than ammunition, especially at high spellpower, when you can get anacondas. So please don't make life miserable for the five people on earth who actually appreciate how good this spell is.

Believe me, I appreciate how good the spell is. (I love transmuters and my only criticism of Elynae's otherwise excellent guide on the wiki is that, IMO, he undersells sticks to snakes.) For quarterstaves and the like no prompt is needed. Rods, it makes sense to prompt, because it is MUCH more likely that someone is only going to turn a rod into a snake by mistake, compared to that actually being a good idea. I'm sure either of us could construct a hypothetical where you would want to do this, but it is nonetheless extremely unlikely that you'd ever find yourself in such a position that you'd want to destroy a rod for a temporary summon that can be produced from much less valuable and far more common sources. How often is it that you find a rod you don't want (or any rod for that matter) before finding at least one quarterstaff? Extremely rare. Thus almost anyone trying for better snake allies will be using either (branded) arrows or unneeded weapons that count as sticks for the purpose of the spell. Not rods. Ergo, in keeping with the philosophy of Crawl, which tries to minimize grief that results from the interface and mis-types, a prompt should be added. Very easy to implement, and no compelling reason not to. However, prompt is better than having it not work on rods at all, now that I think about it.

[Amnesiac]

so please don't make life miserable for the five people on earth who actually appreciate how good this spell is.

so we should make life of all other people miserable? I do appreciate how good this spell is, though, but... here I am, complaining.

[Siegurt]

Why not simply have rods auto-inscribed with !D by default, with an option not do so available in the init.txt, that way everybody gets to have things the way they'd like it, and inexperienced users are protected from accidental destruction of a valuable item, and experienced players can just turn it off the auto-warning if they want to.

[Kalma]

Default !D would work, but I think it would be more elegant game design to simply prevent the destruction. Practically nothing is lost by not being able to use rods to snake.

If it is considered good design, then sandblast should work with stone of tremors, stone of earth elementals and crystal ball of energy just in case someone wants to use them for that.

[Arrhythmia]

Just have rods turn into high level dragons, simple. Problem solved, next one.

[Volteccer_Jack]

so please don't make life miserable for the five people on earth who actually appreciate how good this spell is.

so we should make life of all other people miserable? I do appreciate how good this spell is, though, but... here I am, complaining.

I think whinging would be more accurate given the circumstances. Only people who don't pay attention are made 'miserable' by this 'problem'. And they're miserable anyway because they do things like melee Mennas while wielding a rod, or fight a swarm of killer bees without their rPois ring on, for the exact same reason as your complaint in this thread.

Anyway, you clearly don't know how good this spell is if you think prompting every time it is cast with non-arrows is sane. You're talking about getting prompted hundreds of times, and that's just using an example from a game that died before getting a second rune. As opposed to, you know, inscribing one or two rods, once, and being done. If you look at an ogre transmuter it's even worse because every giant club is getting transmuted at some point, except possibly one if I decide to use it to hit people.

s - a rod of destruction[fire] you create a lava snake!

[Amnesiac]

Everyone make mistakes the question is what price they pay. Btw, I didn't say anything about non-arrows, just rods and you don't get a lot of those. Thanks to jejorda2 I have "autoinscribe += rod:!a!D" in my init.txt so the problem is solved for me at least.

[dpeg]

I just brought this up on ##crawl-dev, and there wasn't much support for a change. Myself, I think this is a place where we can improve the interface, and should, but I am not sure which is best:

1) Always prompt for non-stackable sticks.
2) Auto-inscription for rods and staves.
3) Only allow stackables as S2S fodder.

Of these, 3) is a rule change which loses some fun and power. 2) makes the items more busy for everyone whereas only few characters use S2S. 1) has the advantage of also taking care of your +8 GSC of Freezing. Perhaps 2) is best. Opinions?

[Amnesiac]

by 2) you mean enhancer staves? I'd go for 2), but I think that turning your +9 gsc of holy wrath or a +9 vampiric bardiche into a snake would be painful, so.. I'm not really sure what to do with this. I don't think that a prompt for weapons is a good idea if you use a lot of clubs and such, but still, someone who is not experienced with this spell might pay a big price for this first experience...
Anyway, at least 2) alone makes a lot of sense and inventing some additional exeptions might by a good idea, too. Like prompting if the item has a higher than +1 enchantment or at least if it's branded weapon(not ammunition).

[njvack]

1) Always prompt for non-stackable sticks.
2) Auto-inscription for rods and staves.
3) Only allow stackables as S2S fodder.

I vote either 1 or 3 with some other power boost to the spell (eg, a chance to generate anacondas from arrows at high enough power -- maybe multiple arrows consumed per higher-power snake). Right now, s2s gives some pretty good spell power at the cost of a whole bunch of inventory management annoyance.

1 is certainly simpler; you're gonna snake a whole lot more arrows than clubs.

FR: snaking Olgreb generates Lamia

[Siegurt]

Why not simply add:

autoinscribe += rod:!a!D

to the default init.txt, that way people who don't want it, can simply remove it and they won't get the prompt any more.

[dpeg]

Siegurt: because the vast majority of player does not fiddle with options, so they'll have to stare at the inscriptions on all their rods, even when they're never using S2S. I think the inscription improves matters, but it does not feel like the best solution.

[Siegurt]

Well, yes, but the vast majority of the people who wouldn't want to have the inscription there are the more experienced players who would be more likely to fiddle with their options. Inexperienced players who are more likely to make that sort of mistake (and be put off by it) are also more likely to not fiddle with their options.

Besides, more auto inscriptions provoke players who don't know what they are to research them and learn more about the game

[and into]

I've run some OgTm's before simply because (ab)using giant clubs for super-snakes is such good fun, so I actually agree with volteccer_Jack about not making the spell interface too awkward for people who like to make the most of the spell.

For rods I think it is fine to prompt, as again it is going to be very very rare that you'll want to make snakes from rods, and even if you DO want to do it, you're talking (at most) doing this a few times in the course of an entire game, so an extra keystroke there seems very rational. I think prompting for *enhancer* staves is fine too, by the same reasoning.

The problem (only) comes in with using WEAPONS that can be turned into snakes, like giant clubs, GSC, quarterstaves, etc., while also using the spell.

Is there any simple way to make the game recognize whether or not the weapon that is currently in your hand is one that you are regularly using as a weapon? If so, and the game recognizes it as your primary weapon, it prompts. Otherwise not. You can always inscribe your primary weapon against destruction, but using inscriptions in this way is not obvious to new players who would be most prone to messing this up (though of course anyone can press the wrong key). So if there is some way to automate it, that would be better. I would hate to see the spell changed though.

Prompting for enhancer staves and rods (as well as cursed weapons, which I think the game already does, because it produces hostile snakes) seems to me a blatantly obvious improvement of interface though, without affecting those who like the spell and use it well.

[Amnesiac]

Is there any simple way to make the game recognize whether or not the weapon that is currently in your hand is one that you are regularly using as a weapon?

Like prompting if the item has a higher than +1 enchantment or at least if it's branded weapon(not ammunition).

Wouldn't this one take care of it, mostly? One can still accidentally turn a rare weapon like a bardiche into a snake before enchanting it, though.

[dpeg]

While we were talking, Neil took the matter into his own hands:

  Code:

commit 8567ab080503532b51c3c45b76596561b3f46b8d
Author: Neil Moore <neil@s-z.org>
Date:   Sun Sep 15 18:07:47 2013 -0400

    Don't spend time casting S2S on an unsnakable or no weapon.

    Do continue to waste the turn if the item was snakable but the spell had
    no effect (e.g. the snake could not be placed).

    Maybe the messaging could be improved to make more clear why it
    failed, or at least to distinguish between an abort and a successful
    cast with no snakes.

commit 051f3a5c15f436f1d3b5f7b2666ae4b8bbd7504c
Author: Neil Moore <neil@s-z.org>
Date:   Sun Sep 15 18:03:29 2013 -0400

    Prompt for snaking stick weapons.

    The prompt can be avoided by inscribing the weapon with "+S".  !D is
    checked first.

Many thanks!

[Volteccer_Jack]

Agressive whining removed by moderator

[and into]

I don't think all weapons should have it, I think that's way too much. Rods and enhancer staves: Yes. Weapons, probably not, unless there is some way for the game to KNOW that it is your primary weapon and sacrificing it is either a mistake or else an intentional desperation move (which won't happen too much). If it were implemented that way, I think everyone would be happy: No interface accidents giving people grief, and it won't gum up transmuters who want to sacrifice a lot of weapons for snakes.

So thanks for making Crawl harder for me to look at. Give yourselves a big pat on the back for that, and pretend it was something worthwhile; maybe that will distract your from your own idiocy.

Don't sweat it, I'm sure your level-headed arguments and irresistible charm will convince the developers to revert this change you didn't like.

[Galefury]

A bunch of whining

You can probably get around most of your troubles by just inscribing clubs and spears. No need to inscribe all weapons in the game, most aren't snakeable anyway.

[galehar]

Agressive whining removed by moderator

Why do you always have to be so aggressive? Do you have a bug in your pants, or maybe mommy has been mean to you? I don't know what you're trying to achieve with this attitude, but I'm telling you, it doesn't help you make your point and it doesn't make anyone want to address the issues your whining about.

[dpeg]

galehar: No need to talk to this man. It's futile, and whatever point he has will rediscovered by other, more sane people soon enough who will be able to communicate. As I see it, the tavern would be a better place without him: less noise, better attitude.

[galehar]

Yeah, you're right of course. I think his aggressive posts has already been called out by moderators, doesn't seem like it did anything. I just deleted his post, we don't have to put up with this crap.

[njvack]

Yes, he's been warned before and I've put a temp ban in place and PM'd him.

@devs: In a very real way, forum this is your house; feel free to delete messages you find abusive. If you'd like me (or another mod; I can't read Tavern as often as I used to) to take action against the person, please copy the message somewhere beforehand so we can reference it in our communications. Grimm's trick of putting obnoxious stuff in [spoiler] tags works pretty well.

Now back to our regularly scheduled thread.

[MoogleDan]

nvjack: Up until this post I was fairly certain that VoltJack was just your evil Mr. Hyde identity I will now assume the "n" stands for "Not."

That being said, I DO think he had a point somewhere in all the anger about it being a bit much prompting you for every weapon. That's a standard use for the spell, and it's not like Crawl doesn't have a history of punishing careless play. I second (or third? Fourth? I've lost count) the idea of having it only prompt on rods and magical staves.

EDIT: Oh, it's njvack, not nvjack... Weird how I misread that all this time.

[Mankeli]

Agressive whining removed by moderator

Why do you always have to be so aggressive? Do you have a bug in your pants, or maybe mommy has been mean to you? I don't know what you're trying to achieve with this attitude, but I'm telling you, it doesn't help you make your point and it doesn't make anyone want to address the issues your whining about.

I'm not sure that the best way to react to this kind of insults is to aggravate the situation further. If somebody acts disrespectfully and against the commonly agreed upon rules of forum etiquette you don't have to do the same. It's not a competition.

Yes, he's been warned before and I've put a temp ban in place and PM'd him.
@devs: In a very real way, forum this is your house; feel free to delete messages you find abusive. If you'd like me (or another mod; I can't read Tavern as often as I used to) to take action against the person, please copy the message somewhere beforehand so we can reference it in our communications. Grimm's trick of putting obnoxious stuff in [spoiler] tags works pretty well. Now back to our regularly scheduled thread.

I like what Grimm does as well. It sends a clear enough message. However, I fail to see how the tavern is just "a devs house". Maybe we need another thread about forum etiquette? I know there is the forum rules thread and the "read this before posting in GDD" but 1) they are locked and 2) people don't seem to get what's in them. And if you are having trouble finding the time to moderate Tavern then try to find some new mods to share the burden.

[Galefury]

The forum etiquette is basically "don't be a huge jackass". I don't think making another thread about this would help.

[Amnesiac]

Don't sweat it, I'm sure your level-headed arguments and irresistible charm will convince the developers to revert this change you didn't like.

[galehar]

That being said, I DO think he had a point somewhere in all the anger about it being a bit much prompting you for every weapon. That's a standard use for the spell, and it's not like Crawl doesn't have a history of punishing careless play. I second (or third? Fourth? I've lost count) the idea of having it only prompt on rods and magical staves.

The problem with this proposal is that the line drawn is arbitrary and unobvious. If we prompt for magical staff, why not for GSC? What about a halberd of freezing? At some point, it seems saner to go with a simple rule, it prompts for weapons, it doesn't for missiles. Use +S autoinscription to avoid the prompt if you want (which can be in a lua condition which checks for background or known spell). This is better than having +D as default as there are much less characters with S2S than without.

[Lasty]

I like the idea of prompting only when trying to transmute a rod, enhancer staff, or weapon w/ a brand or ID'd enchantment > +0.

[galehar]

I like the idea of prompting only when trying to transmute a rod, enhancer staff, or weapon w/ a brand or ID'd enchantment > +0.

Until someones come whining that they accidentally snaked their +0 GSC or other good and rare base type. Really, simple rules are better.

[and into]

I like what Grimm does as well. It sends a clear enough message. However, I fail to see how the tavern is just "a devs house". Maybe we need another thread about forum etiquette? I know there is the forum rules thread and the "read this before posting in GDD" but 1) they are locked and 2) people don't seem to get what's in them. And if you are having trouble finding the time to moderate Tavern then try to find some new mods to share the burden.

I think njvack was referring to Game Design Discussion, specifically. Makes sense for that particular room in the tavern to be primarily geared toward development. Doesn't mean people can't criticize the game, but it is in the interest of EVERYONE that the dev team WANTS to read GDD, and unproductive ad homs threaten that.


MoogleDan: In a certain sense, it is WORSE that v_Jack actually had a point—because that point is now (partially) discredited. It puts people on the defensive in a really unproductive way when you may have a legit point, but then go about arguing it in an unnecessarily aggressive manner. So in a way, it is worse that there was a legit point there rather than just nonsense. (Cause if nonsense is discredited, even if for somewhat the wrong reasons, it is not so bad.)

I'll continue lobbying for the +S auto-inscription on only staves and rods, *unless* there is a better way for the game to recognize what your intended primary/secondary weapons are, rather than stuff you just picked up off the floor. If the latter isn't possible I do actually agree with volteccer_Jack's point (buried though it was under 10 tons of misguided rage) that the lesser of two evils is probably NOT to auto-inscribe *every* snake-able weapon, just enhancer staves and rods. I'll continue arguing for that; difference is that I won't unnecessarily alienate those whom I am trying to convince.

In general people need to LIGHTEN UP about changes to Trunk. It is *experimental*. I remember back in 0.6 I played a particular version of Trunk shortly after they'd introduced elephants, and Lair was miserable for a lot of characters, because there were SOOOOOOOO many elephants. Like, to compare it to now, you'd have to add an Elephant for every Yak, AND add two Elephants for every Elephant in lair now, to really get the picture. This was noted (it may have actually been partly a bug), and it was changed pretty quickly. I'm now glad that elephants are in the game, but at the time my kneejerk reaction was probably "OMG these f****** elephants! Worst decision ever!" The thing is, when adding new things, they aren't often going to be balanced or work out exactly as expected. But the alternative is simply never to change the game at all. Trunk is a very good solution to this problem, and people need to stop being so reactionary about every change to it. A lot of the energy people are wasting on being angry would be better spent frankly (but rationally) discussing any problems you have with the devs.

[BlackSheep]

A quick test after this change made me start thinking about an init.txt change that checks for knowledge of S2S and autoinscribes clubs with +S. As a Transmuter, I hoover up clubs for the express purpose of conversion.

I don't want that to come across as critical, though. I just think it traded one type of autoinscription for another, so I'm fairly neutral on the outcome. If it's better for novice players this way, then I support the change.

[Sandman25]

If we are concerned with losing GSC to S2S, it could be useful to check character species. So it would default to magical staves and rods for non-Tr/Og avoiding unnecessary confirmations.

[galehar]

I'll continue lobbying for the +S auto-inscription on only staves and rods

I guess you mean !D. The argument against it is that it's confusing and spammy for the characters who don't use S2S.

that the lesser of two evils is probably NOT to auto-inscribe *every* snake-able weapon, just enhancer staves and rods.

They are not auto-inscribe. You are prompted for all weapons, like if they have !D unless they have a +S inscription. Of course, there is no reason to manually inscribe a weapon with +S, it's longer than confirming. It's there only for autoinscription.

A quick test after this change made me start thinking about an init.txt change that checks for knowledge of S2S and autoinscribes clubs with +S. As a Transmuter, I hoover up clubs for the express purpose of conversion.

I agree, although this kind of conditional configuration should be in some sort of advanced_options.txt files as example. It's a bit too complicated to be default. It would be better to have an official advanced configuration file rather than MarvinPA's

If we are concerned with losing GSC to S2S, it could be useful to check character species. So it would default to magical staves and rods for non-Tr/Og avoiding unnecessary confirmations.

Same as above, this is a good advanced configuration but too complicated to be default.

[Lasty]

I like the idea of prompting only when trying to transmute a rod, enhancer staff, or weapon w/ a brand or ID'd enchantment > +0.

Until someones come whining that they accidentally snaked their +0 GSC or other good and rare base type. Really, simple rules are better.

Well, +0 GSCs aren't very rare, but the point stands w/ bardiches, demon tridents, and perhaps even glaives. Still, I think what I'm proposing is a good default that will cut down most accidents w/o adding tedium. Bardiches and demon tridents could be added to the prompt-for-destruction-always list and then the defaults would cover at least 90% of players' preferred behavior.

[DracheReborn]

I just brought this up on ##crawl-dev, and there wasn't much support for a change. Myself, I think this is a place where we can improve the interface, and should, but I am not sure which is best:

1) Always prompt for non-stackable sticks.
2) Auto-inscription for rods and staves.
3) Only allow stackables as S2S fodder.

Of these, 3) is a rule change which loses some fun and power. 2) makes the items more busy for everyone whereas only few characters use S2S. 1) has the advantage of also taking care of your +8 GSC of Freezing. Perhaps 2) is best. Opinions?

Is option 3 outright dismissed? I'm starting to think it's the least worst option, especially with njvack's amendment (buff to S2S to compensate)

The rationale seems to be that it's fun to turn weapons to snakes, however hoovering up every club/spear/stick isn't very fun to me (weapons can't be autopickup'd right?). Basically S2S is letting you turn junk (weapons you don't intend to use) into fuel, which is rather similar to the Nemelex problem.

And if weapons are changed to be not snakable, then there seems to be no reason to have to wield your arrows for S2S. Not having to wield would definitely be an interface improvement.

Possible buffs: maybe bolts can be allowed, with a better chance for stronger snakes than arrows? Or njvack's suggestion of stronger snakes from arrows (possibly using multiple arrows) could work too.

[dpeg]

DracheReborn: Now that you said it, it looks quite reasonable. When I made that list, I mentally dismissed the option right after it, because I thought (wrongly, it seems) that the other two choices would profit enough leeway to settle the problem.