Search improvements


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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 5th June 2011, 20:35

Search improvements

I've made a couple of improvements to the in-game search.
When viewing the content of a stash from the search result menu, only the items matching the search query will be displayed instead of all the items.
If you search for a single digit, it will now return the content of the stash located at that waypoint. If you use waypoints to mark your stashes (who doesn't?), it makes remotely checking your stash much more convenient. You can also search for * to view all your waypoints' content.
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For this message the author galehar has received thanks: 2
dolphin, Grimm

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Post Sunday, 5th June 2011, 21:30

Re: Search improvements

Great!

Can you make searching for "waypoint" or "waypoints" also search for waypoints? I actually tried searching for "waypoints" once before I found out how to list them. Also, could you mention the waypoint search in the search help?

A further handy search improvement would be allowing to search for magical items. Finding artifacts in this way is already possible (by searching for "artefact", please also allow "artifact"), but I sometimes find myself looking for all magical weapons (runed etc.) on a level for example. Searching for "magical dagger" could list all runed, glowing, etc daggers (just replace "magical" with "(magical || runed || glowing || shiny || etc.)"). I'm naively assuming that this is not that difficult or time consuming to implement, and it would be quite useful.

An extension of this would be allowing to search for interface colors. "blue dagger" would be the same as "magical dagger" in this case. "green dagger" would just search for an uncursed one, "yellow potion" would find all emergency potions, etc. This would be cool, but probably too much work and not useful enough.
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Post Sunday, 5th June 2011, 22:29

Re: Search improvements

I'll update the help, of course. Searching for waypoint is the same as searching for *. If it's properly documented, I don't really see the point of it.
I've allowed the artifact spelling in searches.
You can already search for known ego items with "ego". How about we just extend this so that it also searches for "possible ego" (blue runed/glowing items). I can't think of any reason why you would search for ego items without being also interested in potential ones.
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Post Sunday, 5th June 2011, 22:53

Re: Search improvements

galehar wrote:Searching for waypoint is the same as searching for *. If it's properly documented, I don't really see the point of it.

The point is that I had to check if there even was a search help before asking you to add the new feature to it. I had never read it before, or even considered reading it. Of course "people who don't read the search help don't deserve to be able to find their waypoints" is a valid opinion, but I don't agree with it. There is no way of knowing that searching for * will find waypoints without reading the help, while assuming that searching "waypoints" will find your waypoints is a reasonable assumption. Adding this will let more people find their waypoints and the items on them, and there's no reason not to add it.

Another search thing that annoys me a little: you cant search for portals. This is usually not a problem because you have to immediately take or leave most portals, but in my last two games I found myself searching for "trove", and the trove portal was not found. I had to look up where it is in ^O, then travel to the level and manually look for it. Search finds branch entrances and permanent portals, so it finding single use portals is expected behavior.

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Post Monday, 6th June 2011, 11:58

Re: Search improvements

The search announces its own help, though :) Just pay more attention!

galehar: I had "update Ctrl-F help screen" on my todo after your commit, you can leave that to me if you want.
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Snake Sneak

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Post Monday, 6th June 2011, 12:11

Re: Search improvements

can you also include how to search for stairs up and down. (I use the minimap on tiles, but that is not available on webtiles)
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Post Monday, 6th June 2011, 12:50

Re: Search improvements

RFHolloway wrote:can you also include how to search for stairs up and down. (I use the minimap on tiles, but that is not available on webtiles)

X then > and <
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Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 6th June 2011, 15:50

Re: Search improvements

Also, "magic" is already used a lot in the game: "protection from magic", "book of minor magic", "wand of magic darts", "magic resistance",...
That's one of the reasons why I think it would be better to keep the "ego" keyword and widen the search results to include "potential ego".
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 22:10

Re: Search improvements

Galefury wrote:Another search thing that annoys me a little: you cant search for portals.

I fixed that. I also added "branded" as an alias for "ego". And both also return "potential ego items" too (anything displayed in blue).
The waypoint number of a stash is also displayed in the search result, even if you didn't search for a waypoint. Useful to quickly spot your stash among the results if you did a broad search. And to identify waypoints if you searched for '*'.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

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