Time stop

[giovform]

Anyone here played Baldurs Gate? I remember a cool spell, time stop I think. Wouldn't it be a nice high level spell? Using it would stop turn progression but alowing just you to act... for just a few turns, e and some drawbacks probably..

[giovform]

They are still different spells. Why slow a creature, when you can haste... take out slow.

[Davion Fuxa]

Slow is a lower level spell, and it doesn't cause Contamination on you. You can also cast Slow on a Target an Haste yourself which basically means you have the effect of a Double Haste.

Anyhow, this might not be a bad concept - This could be used for an idea of a Level 9 Hexes spell which basically results in Mass Paralysis and/or Mass Slow.

[giovform]

All you said applies to Haste vs Time stop. Haste is a lower level spell, and it cause "less contamination" (i prefer another drawback). You can also slow, haste and time stop. Anyway... dont be so conservative.
==
No, it doesnt make sense what i said

But, it is still different from haste.. You could make some funny things like maybe pushing creatures from one place to the other, push them into the water, steal their weapons..

[rebthor]

How does one push a creature?

[osuadh]

This could be used for an idea of a Level 9 Hexes spell which basically results in Mass Paralysis and/or Mass Slow.

Does Metabolic englaciation already result in mass slowing? I thought it was changed from mass EH to mass slow? I've never bothered to memorize it, so I'm not sure, though.

[BlackSheep]

Yes, it does.

[Davion Fuxa]

I was thinking more of it causes Mass Paralysis and then Slow on Targets, or Slows Targets if they fail to get Paralyzed - so your basically casting Mass Paralyze and Mass Slow at the sometime on enemies. I was debating whether to suggest it also doing Mass Confuse to boot but that wouldn't thematically fit with Time.

[cerebovssquire]

All you said applies to Haste vs Time stop. Haste is a lower level spell, and it cause "less contamination" (i prefer another drawback). You can also slow, haste and time stop. Anyway... dont be so conservative.
==
No, it doesnt make sense what i said

But, it is still different from haste.. You could make some funny things like maybe pushing creatures from one place to the other, push them into the water, steal their weapons..

ok so the line of reasoning is... "haste and slow are redundant. so it doesn't make much of a difference if we add a third redundant spell." (ok, if you think what you said didn't make sense... then why did you make the proposal?)

[Davion Fuxa]

...but at least it only works for monsters already in LOS. Time Stop doesn't really have space for any restrictions of that kind. If you come up with an interesting drawback for it...why not just give it to haste instead?

If the spell is too similar to the concept of what Haste revolves around, then I guess one reason for implementing it might be because the drawbacks thought of might not be applicable to Haste; and thus it could warrant replacing Haste. For example, you made mention of LoS where Bend Time and Metabolic Englaciation are restricted and Haste isn't - and it would be impossible to add a drawback to Haste so that it only works on enemies in your LoS since the spell's concept doesn't work like that; but Time Stop wouldn't be targeting your character, and could be designed around the point of only effecting an area around your character.

It could also have other drawbacks as well like certain monsters being immune to the effects or what not.

[varsovie]

This "new" could simply replacing haste, since haste IS broken by the lack of drawback .

[giovform]

All you said applies to Haste vs Time stop. Haste is a lower level spell, and it cause "less contamination" (i prefer another drawback). You can also slow, haste and time stop. Anyway... dont be so conservative.
==
No, it doesnt make sense what i said

But, it is still different from haste.. You could make some funny things like maybe pushing creatures from one place to the other, push them into the water, steal their weapons..

ok so the line of reasoning is... "haste and slow are redundant. so it doesn't make much of a difference if we add a third redundant spell." (ok, if you think what you said didn't make sense... then why did you make the proposal?)

This doesn't make sense: "You can also slow, haste and time stop. Anyway... dont be so conservative."

It doesn't make sense because since you have stoped time, whats the difference if you are hasted and/or creatures slowed? Time stoped anyway...

[giovform]

How does one push a creature?

Run in the direction of the creature while Time stop is active. You will occupy the create position and the creature will be pushed to the next square in the line of action, if it is available. It could be made a str check vs creature size to decide the success... I just dont know the mechanism involved to decide if you want to attack or push the creature... The pushed creature, when time stop ends, would be actless for some 2,3 turns (since it is getting up, or whatever the reason).

Maybe conjuration spells cast with time stop would be frozen in time too, as soon as they leave the casters hands (ie they would be frozen right in front of the char for missile spells) and only activate (follow their path) after time stop ended. Time stop, launch some 2, 3 firestorms right next to you, blink away and see messages of dead creatures.

[giovform]

In Baldurs, Time stop would cause screen to go grayscale. Here in it could be done something like that too, as with beserk that goes redish.

[KoboldLord]

because the problem with haste is that monsters still do occasionally get to have turns while the player is still killing them. the problem is totally that haste is too weak and needs to do more, and not that it already does far too much.

[giovform]

Haste is too simple, lack of strategy. Good for those who dont like to think too much.

[the great gig]

if time stop was actually stopping time then all attacks would be against defenseless creatures (aka a stab); which makes things even more broken.

[giovform]

The stab idea is nice too. Time stop would allow for just a very few turns. Dont expect to be stabing all the floor after a single cast.. its a matter of balance. Some creatures as was said here wouldnt be affected (Ancient liches).. One thing to notice is that you wouldnt know if you killed a creature after any number of hits, since they are frozen in time. You would only see they turning in corpses or not after time stop ended. There are so many options for this spell, and this yes could turn it difficult to balance..

[cerebovssquire]

Ask yourself "what is the game lacking that this spell gives it". You need to have a good reason for it to be implemented, not only convince us that it's sufficiently different than Haste. It's true that Haste is a straight buff that doesn't require much thought, but it doesn't remove the need for tactics once it's up, it only changes them and makes them more effective.
The tactically interesting part of your spell is the idea of you having a few turns to do some really strong stuff and making the most out of these few turns. But you'll notice that this is true for pretty much any other buff, including Haste, and in particular for these buffs that you only get from consumables and therefore can't be cast over and over again.

One thing to notice is that you wouldnt know if you killed a creature after any number of hits

Instead, we are supposed to look up how much damage we could have done at minimum on the knowledge bots, using the symbols !, !! and !!!, look up a monster's maximum HP, add everything up, and be sure that we killed them anyway while spending 30 seconds extra on each remotely theatening monster we Time-Stopped. Brilliant. Consider when designing spells that gameplay always trumps tedious "reality".

[nago]

Your spell pretty much exists in the game and it's called Death's Door.
It has some nice drawback too.

[giovform]

Ask yourself "what is the game lacking that this spell gives it". You need to have a good reason for it to be implemented, not only convince us that it's sufficiently different than Haste. It's true that Haste is a straight buff that doesn't require much thought, but it doesn't remove the need for tactics once it's up, it only changes them and makes them more effective.
The tactically interesting part of your spell is the idea of you having a few turns to do some really strong stuff and making the most out of these few turns. But you'll notice that this is true for pretty much any other buff, including Haste, and in particular for these buffs that you only get from consumables and therefore can't be cast over and over again.

The combinations with other spells, the strategies involved, is what turns a spell more interesting IMHO, and this spell certainly has this appeal. Haste could be made weaker, and this could be tested.

One thing to notice is that you wouldnt know if you killed a creature after any number of hits

Instead, we are supposed to look up how much damage we could have done at minimum on the knowledge bots, using the symbols !, !! and !!!, look up a monster's maximum HP, add everything up, and be sure that we killed them anyway while spending 30 seconds extra on each remotely theatening monster we Time-Stopped. Brilliant. Consider when designing spells that gameplay always trumps tedious "reality".

Well, cheating is not supposed to be in discussion right now, in my opinion. But since I though it could work about only 5-8 turns, cast once in the level, maybe it is more useful if used in another situation, other than killing 2 or 3 ordinary monsters.

[giovform]

Your spell pretty much exists in the game and it's called Death's Door.
It has some nice drawback too.

It was already called Haste, now it is called Death's Door.

It is such a powerfull spell that it could be for example only cast once in a dungeon level. The excuse would be that it makes the space-time fragile, and another cast would destroy the dungeon

I think it could give between 5-8 free turns to the caster.

If you want me to stop pursuing this, I stop, no problem... I dont bother in discussing it here, despite the negative reaction, it seems that there is always a workaround for a problem. We eventually could get to a version where it isnt overpowered, and try to test the idea.

Funny and strategical situations would arise if you are encounter a bunch of enemies and a creature that is immune to time stop, an ancient lich for example. Both of you casting conjuration spells, that wouldnt immediatly take off until time stop ends, while all other creatures are just there. When time stop ends, what will happen to the scene?

[Lasty]

Funny and strategical situations would arise

What you're proposing would mostly result in the same thing as existing spells (Haste, Slow and MB reduce the number of turns enemies take relative to you, Death's Door lets you take a bunch of turns without caring what the enemies do). In order to differentiate your spell, you're adding a lot of imaginative details about what it would be like if time were frozen, but these are a) mostly hard to implement, since they're all special cases that change how controls and the fundamental turn structure of the game work, and b) bad gameplay.

This is the sort of idea that seems really fun when you're in the "what if?" stage, but which falls apart once you start thinking about it.

[Psieye]

This boils down to "This would be cool and I think that alone is reason enough to do it". That's fine if you were doing something yourself and then showing it off to others on how cool it is. It's nowhere near enough if you want someone else to do that work for you (for free). Even more so if you can already see that it'll take a lot of work to do.

[giovform]

This boils down to "This would be cool and I think that alone is reason enough to do it". That's fine if you were doing something yourself and then showing it off to others on how cool it is. It's nowhere near enough if you want someone else to do that work for you (for free). Even more so if you can already see that it'll take a lot of work to do.

Isnt about fun that you play the game? Or you play because you are forced to, or earn money doing it? What Im proposing is not a super ubber spell, or to show off, just a different one, and it really doesnt seem hard to implement this, unless theres a serious limitation in the framework.

I was just thinking about letting out a test version to be polished by you.. Im on vacation.

[giovform]

Funny and strategical situations would arise

What you're proposing would mostly result in the same thing as existing spells (Haste, Slow and MB reduce the number of turns enemies take relative to you, Death's Door lets you take a bunch of turns without caring what the enemies do). In order to differentiate your spell, you're adding a lot of imaginative details about what it would be like if time were frozen, but these are a) mostly hard to implement, since they're all special cases that change how controls and the fundamental turn structure of the game work, and b) bad gameplay.

This is the sort of idea that seems really fun when you're in the "what if?" stage, but which falls apart once you start thinking about it.

I agree a similar functionality could be achieved with this sequence of spells you proposed, yet, time stop still has differences in mechanics. Maybe recycle spells?

I am time stopping here lol, I think I've already made my ideas clear. I probably wont implment this myself due to laziness, but in the end, taking your comments in consideration, I arrived into this:

Time stop - High level translocation spell, castable once in a level
"Duration": 5-8 outofthisworld turns
Unscastable spells: tornado, ... ?
Effect: stops everything for the duration, except the player and unaffected creatures (screen goes on a bluish shade), details of the dungeon stop changing (torchs,etc), Time stopped indication appears. Missiles only "travel" after this spell ends. If you cast a fireball for instance, and move, the location of take off will be from the cast location; fired arrows, the same. You could fire or cast as many missiles from the same location as you wanted, for the duration of the spell. They would inflict a combined damge of all, at the same time. Doing this with OOD would case an explosion right in the place at the end of the spell.
Unaffected creatures: High level casters (ancient lich, many bosses)
Drawbacks: contamination
*Not sure about this one* What wont apply: any action rate changing buff
====

Sorry about my english, not my native language.

[nicolae]

Isnt about fun that you play the game? Or you play because you are forced to, or earn money doing it?

Adding things just because they seem cool, with no regard for whether they're balanced or otherwise interesting, is not Crawl's design philosophy. (It is part of SLASH'EM design philosophy, and look how that turned out.)

Time Stop, as proposed, doesn't do anything that's not done better by a handful of other spells and god abilities. What point is there to adding it besides getting a suggestion you made into the game?

[giovform]

Isnt about fun that you play the game? Or you play because you are forced to, or earn money doing it?

Adding things just because they seem cool, with no regard for whether they're balanced or otherwise interesting, is not Crawl's design philosophy. (It is part of SLASH'EM design philosophy, and look how that turned out.)

Time Stop, as proposed, doesn't do anything that's not done better by a handful of other spells and god abilities. What point is there to adding it besides getting a suggestion you made into the game?

Being balanced is implicit, the idea is being polished, thats why we post here in first place... as I said before, I am not suggesting an ubber spell, Im not a child... damn.

[Psieye]

it really doesnt seem hard to implement this

I was just thinking about letting out a test version to be polished by you

I probably wont implment this myself due to laziness

the idea is being polished, thats why we post here in first place

4chan has a very fitting (but not appropriate to post here) image for this situation. Its caption: "shit is still shit even when polished (with photoshop)".

Where to start... software development on a mature program like crawl isn't so easy that developers can try out every little 'this would be cool' whim. What you proposed would take significant (unpaid) time to do and the result would... at best: not change the situation much, because once you look beyond the 'cool' detail it's just doing the same thing but worse; and at worst: make the situation worse as you've introduced tedium into standard gameplay. Is it incomprehensible that something 'cool' can actually make a game 'not fun'?

You yourself are feeling lazy about actually implementing this yourself. You are the most motivated for this idea and you couldn't convince yourself to do it. That means you had some hope that somebody else would become even more motivated by this idea to go do it for you. This wish did not get granted.

We post here to see whether an idea is good or not. Only after it's determined to be something the game needs, do we think about polishing it.

[giovform]

it really doesnt seem hard to implement this

I was just thinking about letting out a test version to be polished by you

I probably wont implment this myself due to laziness

the idea is being polished, thats why we post here in first place

4chan has a very fitting (but not appropriate to post here) image for this situation. Its caption: "shit is still shit even when polished (with photoshop)".

Where to start... software development on a mature program like crawl isn't so easy that developers can try out every little 'this would be cool' whim. What you proposed would take significant (unpaid) time to do and the result would... at best: not change the situation much, because once you look beyond the 'cool' detail it's just doing the same thing but worse; and at worst: make the situation worse as you've introduced tedium into standard gameplay. Is it incomprehensible that something 'cool' can actually make a game 'not fun'?

You yourself are feeling lazy about actually implementing this yourself. You are the most motivated for this idea and you couldn't convince yourself to do it. That means you had some hope that somebody else would become even more motivated by this idea to go do it for you. This wish did not get granted.

We post here to see whether an idea is good or not. Only after it's determined to be something the game needs, do we think about polishing it.

Sorry, but tell that to other sucessfull games developers that use this spell, so no this image is not apropriate to this idea; this image may be apropriate to your comment, polish it a little more. It may be difficult to implement, but its a suggestion, thats all. Its good that tedium is just your opinion, as I see many strategical possibilities here. Cool funny, rewarding, is just a consequence. The reason Im lazy is beacuse I know nothing about the crawl code.. I would need to learn a lot before starting. The idea is for benefit of all, stoping telling that is just for me. If it is not accepted, I understand.

[nicolae]

Sorry, but tell that to other sucessfull games developers that use this spell, so no this image is not apropriate to this idea;

Other games with Time Stop abilities also have other design considerations and game mechanics than Crawl does.

[giovform]

Sorry, but tell that to other sucessfull games developers that use this spell, so no this image is not apropriate to this idea;

Other games with Time Stop abilities also have other design considerations and game mechanics than Crawl does.

Yes, thats why I am not posting, look, implement here exactly how it works on that game..

Second ending of my participation on this topic , nothing new to add.. no regrets. Thanks for the constructive comments.

[ElectricAlbatross]

Missiles only "travel" after this spell ends. If you cast a fireball for instance, and move, the location of take off will be from the cast location; fired arrows, the same. You could fire or cast as many missiles from the same location as you wanted, for the duration of the spell. They would inflict a combined damge of all, at the same time. Doing this with OOD would case an explosion right in the place at the end of the spell.

Your spell is not even good, not even just not good, but is in fact the enemy of all that is good in Crawl design; the reason why is that it requires you to define arbitrary interactions like the above.

Let's say developers were to implement your idea: they would need to look at every single existing spell or mechanic in the game and ask themselves, "How should this spell/mechanic interact with Time Stop?" and answer with code.

Let's say that you answered all these questions with code and implemented Time Stop perfectly: all future developers who want to add a new spell or mechanic would need to ask themselves, "How would this new spell/mechanic interact with Time Stop?" and answer with code. I imagine that would put quite a Time Stop on Crawl development.

So as you can see, this idea is not worth the effort even if you did all the work of putting it in the game.

[Lasty]

Sorry, but tell that to other sucessfull games developers that use this spell

Lots of successful games developers use rocket launchers. Why doesn't crawl have rocket launchers. Lots of successful games developers use cart racing, 3d models, or fake guitars. Why doesn't crawl have cart racing, 3d models, and fake guitars?

The reason Im lazy is beacuse I know nothing about the crawl code.. I would need to learn a lot before starting. The idea is for benefit of all, stoping telling that is just for me. If it is not accepted, I understand.

This is fair to say, but it makes the points already raised about you wanting other people to do a lot of work on your super-cool idea even more salient. It also would be more reasonable if it seemed like you actually did understand that it really is not accepted, and that people went out of their way to give you polite, reasonable explanations why (along with some less polite ones).

[ebarrett]

Heya, it's me, ebarrett! Yer idea is all buffleheaded; so they kicked it in the head, til it was dead.

[Grimm]

All right, he's stopped, let it go.

[kuniqs]

Game needs a killer hex spell so people would have purpose to specialize in this school. Why not make time stop as "screen turns blue, all enemies in fov get paralyzed (but enemies outside fov can move, so it won't be a vault-solver), certain powerful enemies are only slowed (surefire slow spell for 8mp is not too cheap), on the end player gets confused + some flavour text explaining all of this.

[mumra]

What about some kind of "Mass Hallucination" that makes all enemies in LOS think the nearest thing to them is hostile, so they all start attacking each other. Sort of like a Mass Charm except they're all still technically hostile. Kills made this way would work the same as allies in terms of XP gain.

[kuniqs]

Isn't that mass charm?

[mumra]

Isn't that mass charm?

Yeah, except that if everything was charmed they wouldn't attack each other and you couldn't attack them. So just like charm, except for all the things that would make it like charm.

Edit: Also the other point to note is that everything sees the nearest thing as a threat - so if you're the nearest thing then it will attack you anyway.

[Mankeli]

Game needs a killer hex spell so people would have purpose to specialize in this school. Why not make time stop as "screen turns blue, all enemies in fov get paralyzed (but enemies outside fov can move, so it won't be a vault-solver), certain powerful enemies are only slowed (surefire slow spell for 8mp is not too cheap), on the end player gets confused + some flavour text explaining all of this.

This is basically the OP's idea but "time stop" is replaced with "paralyze".

Also there is invisibility and darkness is not bad either.

[kuniqs]

Isn't that mass charm?

Yeah, except that if everything was charmed they wouldn't attack each other and you couldn't attack them. So just like charm, except for all the things that would make it like charm.

Heh, my point was that magic resistance always screws things up and no more than 75% get charmed, so you get the same thing.

This is basically the OP's idea but "time stop" is replaced with "paralyze".

Also there is invisibility and darkness is not bad either.

Except that paralyze, slow and rest are already in the code and you can assemble this time stop from existing blocks, rather than rewrite half of the source code to make all those special cases possible.
There's just no universally useful spell like Haste in hexes school, so most spellcasters go for enchantments and hexes are pursued only by stabber types.

[Mankeli]

This is basically the OP's idea but "time stop" is replaced with "paralyze".

Also there is invisibility and darkness is not bad either.

Except that paralyze, slow and rest are already in the code and you can assemble this time stop from existing blocks, rather than rewrite half of the source code to make all those special cases possible.
There's just no universally useful spell like Haste in hexes school, so most spellcasters go for enchantments and hexes are pursued only by stabber types.

I don't think crawl needs more universally useful spells and some of the universally useful spells that exist now are considered somewhat problematic. Haste has been probably the number one topic of argument in spells for awhile, so a concept that is based on the idea that we need more hastelike spells will not probably get anywhere. Also, as crate points out in the other hexes thread "Hexes School - Status Targeting Spell"s , hexes are not just for stabbers.

[mumra]

Isn't that mass charm?

Yeah, except that if everything was charmed they wouldn't attack each other and you couldn't attack them. So just like charm, except for all the things that would make it like charm.

Heh, my point was that magic resistance always screws things up and no more than 75% get charmed, so you get the same thing.

Oh, I see what you mean

Well first of all, there isn't a "Mass Charm" (and nor should there be). I think this spell would produce a distinctly different result in any case. Basically everything is very much distracted for some turns, however long the effect last, whilst also softening each other up considerably for you to pick off the survivors. Mass Charm would play very differently - once your charmed mobs had wiped everything else out you'd have a disposable army to string along with you until it ran out, at which point you could kill them (or charm them again). It's a bit too clean and manageable, vs. the chaos of effectively starting a massive on-screen brawl where everything is hitting everything else until *no-one* is left! (Not particularly sure if that's a great idea but it does sound impressive...)

[nicolae]

What about some kind of "Mass Hallucination" that makes all enemies in LOS think the nearest thing to them is hostile, so they all start attacking each other. Sort of like a Mass Charm except they're all still technically hostile. Kills made this way would work the same as allies in terms of XP gain.

Like induced frenzy?


When this thread first got posted I briefly wondered about a time stop effect that would make your next action take only 0.1 aut provided you didn't affect anything outside your square, like a little personal pocket of time, though in the end it would basically mainly be useful to, like, memorize a spell in combat without getting thumped too hard, which nobody wants to do anyway.

[Davion Fuxa]

What about some kind of "Mass Hallucination" that makes all enemies in LOS think the nearest thing to them is hostile, so they all start attacking each other. Sort of like a Mass Charm except they're all still technically hostile. Kills made this way would work the same as allies in terms of XP gain.

Like induced frenzy?


When this thread first got posted I briefly wondered about a time stop effect that would make your next action take only 0.1 aut provided you didn't affect anything outside your square, like a little personal pocket of time, though in the end it would basically mainly be useful to, like, memorize a spell in combat without getting thumped too hard, which nobody wants to do anyway.

That or cast Stoneskin, Swiftness, Haste, Phase Shift, Invisibility, Control Teleport, Regeneration, Freezing Aura, Finesse, Heroism, Quaff a Might Potion, Quaff an Agility Potion, and so on and so forth, into the abyss, of endless buffs, and buff-it-y-buffs, until you are, all buff-buff-buffed....

Comical

[nicolae]

That or cast Stoneskin, Swiftness, Haste, Phase Shift, Invisibility, Control Teleport, Regeneration, Freezing Aura, Finesse, Heroism, Quaff a Might Potion, Quaff an Agility Potion, and so on and so forth, into the abyss, of endless buffs, and buff-it-y-buffs, until you are, all buff-buff-buffed....

Comical

That's like a dozen actions, I said "your next action"

[Davion Fuxa]

Sorry, I tend to lump buffs as one big action - that takes several turns and sometimes get interrupted before your done.