Include a "drop and never pick up again" command

[Robotron]

In every game there comes a point where I don't want to auto-pick up certain items anymore, for example wands of flame/frost because they don't do enough damage or wands of enslavement/confusion which become near useless because of rising monster MR. Another case would be scrolls of enchant weapon in games where I play an unarmed fighting character.

I find it tedious to manually delete these items from the autopickup list every time I play, so I propose to include a modification to the "drop" command (maybe ALT+d) to ensure that the dropped kind of item will not be auto-picked up anymore for the rest of the game.

How about it?

[birdoprey]

This doesn't seem very important, but for what it's worth, I would use this shortcut.

[damiac]

I'd use it. It's not too hard to modify the auto-pickup menu, but it's even not-too-harder to just press alt+d.

[Moose]

Huge +1 here. Something simple without too many extra keystrokes would be awesome. I hate managing my pickup exceptions at play-time.

[jejorda2]

For items that stack, can dropping everything in a stack be interpreted as a command to stop picking that item up? If I drop all my potions of brilliance, I don't want to pick up the next one I encounter.

If I'm not currently autopicking stones, but I pick up stones, go ahead and put stones in the autopickup list. There is no advantage to leaving them on the floor instead of my inventory if I'm using a slot for them. Autoexploring towards stones instead of towards the nearest empty space won't hurt much.

[johlstei]

How many times do you think this happens per game? I think 10 is a generous estimate, and with my settings is higher than I ever do. It takes 3 keystrokes to disable an item, and to me that sounds like 30 keystrokes in a game that involves tens or hundreds of thousands of keystrokes to win. Maybe I'm biased somewhat since there are items that I set to not autopickup, but do actually want the first one I see which will generally be unid, like wands of flame. I'm not opposed to the change at all, I just think it's pretty low in terms of the <keystrokes saved>/<development time> department.

I agree with turning on autopickup for anything that will go in a stack, since that covers the tedious thing of toggling various ammo on and off throughout the game, a pretty far cry from the couple instances you toggle off once, like ?ew scrolls on an unarmed guy.

[artinuis]

I have wished for this exact feature at some point during just about every game I play. There's no reason not to add this.

[moocowmoocow]

How many times do you think this happens per game? I think 10 is a generous estimate, and with my settings is higher than I ever do. It takes 3 keystrokes to disable an item, and to me that sounds like 30 keystrokes in a game that involves tens or hundreds of thousands of keystrokes to win.

Squinting at the huge list of identified items to find the one you want is the annoying part for me, not so much the key presses. Would be nice if there was a "goto" button like vim's "/". So instead of looking for wand of frost just type / frost, enter enter done. I like the OPs idea though, very simple.

[damiac]

Yeah, it's not like it would do any harm, or be an extra interface hassle. "But this only makes the game a little bit better" isn't really a good reason not to do something, if there's no way that it makes the game worse.

[Wahaha]

I would use this a lot.

[PleasingFungus]

Yeah, it's not like it would do any harm, or be an extra interface hassle. "But this only makes the game a little bit better" isn't really a good reason not to do something, if there's no way that it makes the game worse.

Added complexity? More time wasted when people try to hunt through the ? menu for the command they're actually looking for? Confusion when people accidentally hit this hotkey while just trying to drop items, and then suddenly autopickup is disabled for no apparent reason? Bugs introduced by adding a new feature, or by maintaining it?

I'm not sure which side of the line this suggestion falls on, but there are certainly plenty of reasons not to implement it, even if you think the benefits outweigh those costs overall.

[Robotron]

Maybe I'm overlooking some details but now that item destruction and item weight are no longer an issue, wouldn't it be reasonable to just replace the shift+d command with the one i proposed?

[Kate]

This doesn't really sound like something that's worth having an entire command dedicated to when you can just use the existing autopickup menu.

Squinting at the huge list of identified items to find the one you want is the annoying part for me, not so much the key presses. Would be nice if there was a "goto" button like vim's "/". So instead of looking for wand of frost just type / frost, enter enter done. I like the OPs idea though, very simple.

This exists: \ ctrl-f frost

[Robotron]

I beg to differ, for one the existing command shift+d (drop all items of a stack) serves no purpose anymore, and second: you have to use the autopickup menu in every single new game to define the items you don't want to autopickup anymore AND you have to acces this menue quite a few times until all the undesired items have been generated to be listed in the menue OR after the listed items have become undesired after a certain point in the game.

[crate]

existing command shift+d (drop all items of a stack)

This isn't what D does. D drops the previous item you picked up.

[damiac]

Eh, it's a minor annoyance, but as I said, I'd use the crap out of that hotkey. And going by the replies to the thread, I know at least I'm not the only one.

[johlstei]

I beg to differ, for one the existing command shift+d (drop all items of a stack) serves no purpose anymore, and second: you have to use the autopickup menu in every single new game to define the items you don't want to autopickup anymore AND you have to acces this menue quite a few times until all the undesired items have been generated to be listed in the menue OR after the listed items have become undesired after a certain point in the game.

You don't have to use it in every new game if you set up your rcfile to have the defaults you want. You only have to use it on an autopickup transition which I think are less frequent by an order of magnitude.

[jejorda2]

existing command shift+d (drop all items of a stack)

This isn't what D does. D drops the previous item you picked up.

It would be great if D dropped the last item you picked up *or identified.* I'd put "uncursed" on that list if remove curse was a single target thing.

I often identify a wand, potion stack, or scroll stack and then want to drop it, and finding the letter again is a minor chore. Changing the message when something gets identified to include the inventory slot would be another helpful change.

[Siegurt]

This sounds like something that could be implemented as LUA code and turned into a macro.

[jejorda2]

But then when you play a different server or drop to a different branch you have to implement it all over again.

Still might not be worth a dev's time, but I figure it doesn't hurt to throw quick ideas out.

[Siegurt]

Um, or you could just.. make a copy of the file or copy/paste it into the server?

[Patashu]

This sounds like something that could be implemented as LUA code and turned into a macro.

That's like saying 'you can implement autoexplore in LUA, why should we make it a feature of the game'. The whole point of useful, time saving, mental energy saving shortcuts is that they should be built into the game.

[Deimos]

Yes. My heart flutters merely thinking about how convenient this would be. I know there are some of you (particularly those who know their way around the interface+rc file) who'd get limited use in comparison to what you're already capable of doing, but for players like me who simply memorize a few easy and convenient shortcuts and do the rest manually, a quick keypress to both drop an item and remove it from auto pick up is a godsend. Even the denizens of the abyss will feel my disappointment if this isn't at least considered.

[Arrhythmia]

Holy shit this is the one thing that I want that I never knew I wanted.

[archaeo]

I, too, would love to use this proposed feature. The autopickup exceptions menu is often too much to want to deal with as often as I really should, and I guess I don't really see it as adding undue complexity to the game.

[and into]

Mod note:

Off-topic bickering deleted, relevant stuff kept.

________________


My two cents: I don't feel strongly either way. I'll just point out that if someone accidentally "super-dropped" an item and didn't realize, they might miss a bunch of stuff while auto-exploring that they actually want/need and it might take them a while to figure out that this has happened. That could be largely if not entirely avoided by having a force_more message "You will not automatically pick up <foo> any longer. (You can customize your autopickup settings by hitting \)" after doing the joint drop/autopickup exclusion command.

[Leafsnail]

I don't really think that's a major concern, to be honest. The chance of accidentally holding down a key while pressing d seem a lot lower than the chances of messing up your autopickup in other ways (eg invisibility, that one key that reverses your autopickup settings)

[PleasingFungus]

I don't really think that's a major concern, to be honest. The chance of accidentally holding down a key while pressing d seem a lot lower than the chances of messing up your autopickup in other ways (eg invisibility, that one key that reverses your autopickup settings)

Those are quite bad enough without adding more ways to fatfinger & fuck up your autopickup settings, yes!

[patheticliltramp]

Ha, it should break autopickup if you throw an item into lava though. Throw a wand of frost into lava, the game says "fuck, I guess you really don't like those".

[Leafsnail]

Well it's both
a) unlikely to happen: it's a lot easier to accidentally hit a key than it is to hold down a key while pressing another one. I've never for example opened the "are you sure you want to quit the game" prompt while attempting to drink a potion, even though I make clumsy mispresses fairly often.
b) minor in effect: it's only one item you stop picking up. What's more, that one item will be an item you dropped anyway, and therefore usually something you don't want. Even if it's something you may want to use at some point later it's highly probable that the player will just run a search on that item next time they need one of them. The only case where I can see it being a problem is if the player obsessively stashes stuff in one pile and never checks anywhere else. e: I'll note that with the removal of monster pickup, item weights and item destruction there's even less reason than ever to do this.

So I guess it's just about a consideration, but if it is one then it's so minor that it's likely to be blown away by any added convenience at all.

[Arrhythmia]

I don't really think that's a major concern, to be honest. The chance of accidentally holding down a key while pressing d seem a lot lower than the chances of messing up your autopickup in other ways (eg invisibility, that one key that reverses your autopickup settings)

Those are quite bad enough without adding more ways to fatfinger & fuck up your autopickup settings, yes!

How fat are your fingers if you're accidentally holding down ctrl while hitting keys?

[and into]

I'll simply note the obvious, that if the other key is shift, it is pretty easy to accidentally enter the wrong command due to caps lock. But yes, if the command were Alt+d or CTRL+d or something, it would be very unlikely to input the command accidentally.

[duvessa]

better remove the in-game autopickup menu in case people fatfinger and accidentally use it

[Siegurt]

This sounds like something that could be implemented as LUA code and turned into a macro.

That's like saying 'you can implement autoexplore in LUA, why should we make it a feature of the game'. The whole point of useful, time saving, mental energy saving shortcuts is that they should be built into the game.

Actually I was trying to say "If you really want this feature, you can probably make it yourself without waiting for a dev to have the time/interest" not "it shouldn't be added to the game"

[neil]

This sounds like something that could be implemented as LUA code and turned into a macro.

That's like saying 'you can implement autoexplore in LUA, why should we make it a feature of the game'. The whole point of useful, time saving, mental energy saving shortcuts is that they should be built into the game.

Autofight is both implemented in Lua and part of the game.

As for the proposed command: I would probably use it (for items I want to autopickup early game but not later), but I can see the argument for not giving it a top-level keybinding by default. What about making it a flag in the drop menu instead?

Edit:

It's not that far a stretch from the normal drop behaviour, anyway: that already means "and don't autopickup this item", a toggle would just add "or its kin".

However, the command would be problematic for some object types. What does it mean when you use this command on a weapon? How would you turn autopickup back on? What if you use it on a bread ration? Should it affect pizza too? (they share an entry in the \ menu)

[Siegurt]

I would mostly use this on wands and potions, myself
I'd say you should be able to turn on/off autopickup from the existing menu, I'd say the command should just toggle that category (so if you "drop and never pick up again" bread, you mean pizza too)
for weapons, I'd say it should be by weapon training category (i.e. "Long blades" or "Polearms") and I think those categories should show up on the autopickup menu. I think 'every specific type of weapon' is too awful interface wise (although I can almost see it being desireable, but not.) This would make it more similar to missiles.
Speaking of missiles, some part of my brain always wants to be able to toggle needles by brand, although not any of the other missile types. Of course that also sounds awful interface-wise.
I would also like 'manuals' as a category (or perhaps each of the manuals could be listed under 'books')

There might be some categories which this wouldn't work on, (Miscellaneous and 'other food' immediately come to mind) as they're too broad and it wouldn't make any sense to super-drop(I just made that name up just now) a crystal ball and not auto-pickup elemental invokers as a result.

[Aule]

Speaking of missiles, some part of my brain always wants to be able to toggle needles by brand, although not any of the other missile types. Of course that also sounds awful interface-wise.

I have always wished that the autopickup menu would offer submenus for item subtypes, since I have had times when I wanted only to collect certain kinds of needles or darts, like dispersal or curare, for example. I don't think it would be bad, interface-wise, if each item on the main menu brought up a submenu of known brands, if such divisions are available.

[partial]

I would use the **** out of this command

excellent idea

[partial]

This doesn't really sound like something that's worth having an entire command dedicated to when you can just use the existing autopickup menu.

Squinting at the huge list of identified items to find the one you want is the annoying part for me, not so much the key presses. Would be nice if there was a "goto" button like vim's "/". So instead of looking for wand of frost just type / frost, enter enter done. I like the OPs idea though, very simple.

This exists: \ ctrl-f frost

"an entire command"

I'm not a programmer but this really doesn't seem like a difficult thing to implement (is it?). As was mentioned previously, not implementing it because it is a small benefit is a bad reason not to implement it (especially when there are few downsides)