Interrupted Activities Reform

I propose consistency across time-consuming activities interrupted by encounters.

Activities which consume time include

1. Resting
2. Memorizing Spells
3. Eating Food
4. Applying Armor
5. Reading a Scroll while having Blurry Vision mutation

At the time this is created, Resting and Memorizing Spells can be interrupted by monsters which come into view or otherwise encounter the player. This stops further continuation on these activities.

Resting: Resting can be interrupted by a monster encounter, but artificially continued on a per-turn basis by hitting SPACE. No change is requested.

Situation: Spell Memorization can be interrupted by a monster encounter and cannot(?) be continued until privacy is re-instated. Need clarification whether memorization restarts from the beginning or continues from interrupted attempt.

Question: Is memorization really interrupted? Is the player actually distracted by noticing a roaming monster (if the monster does not notice him), or is it just an artificial interruption because the monster came into view? We are able to continue memorizing if the monster stays in view as long as the monster does not attack. This behavior is inconsistent. Obviously if attacked, he cannot memorize, but is it situational or not? What is the rule that governs the concept of memorization?

Problem: If a monster enters view, but does not notice the player, with the changes proposed below, a yes/no option to continue memorizing (if not “actually” interrupted) could be applied. At the moment, no change is necessary.

Situation: Eating a large item (bread, for example) takes multiple turns which are currently not interrupted by an encounter. A monster is free to approach and attack a player who is eating.

Notes According to the game wiki, Meat Ration and Bread Ration take 3 turns to eat, Chunks take 2 turns to eat, and all other food and potions take 1 turn to eat.

Problem: Multiple turns of the eating process should be able to be interrupted by an encounter and an attack. The problem as observed from outside is food is a consumable with a hard-coded nutritional value. The player either eats all of it or not at all, and the eating process understandably completely removes the food item. The turns applied to consumption are an artificial patch to represent this.

Solution: The fix would be to have each food item applied an individual nutritional value which is reduced by a % (applied to player nutrition) per turn of consumption. This would allow a bread taking an arbitrary 3 turns to eat (at 33% nutrition reduction per turn) instead be interrupted and maintain some nutrition while some is still applied, as players do need to eat during combat at times. Eating should be interrupted with “X enters view, continue eating? (y/n)” and “X attacks you, you have stopped eating.” which will allow the player to click the food and consume an additional % of the food next turn, or retaliate with combat.

Additional Notes: If eating took a percentage of consumption, the time to eat different foods can vary even more, which would allow for different speeds of eating. Racial bonuses to eating speed (trolls and ogres eat super fast, dwarves and kobolds eat fast, humans eat normal, elves eat slow spriggans eat super slow) to decrease the nutrition % consumed per bite and special mutations (small mouth/beak, large mouth) could be added to enhance the food minigame.

Discuss This is being discussed on a Tavern Thread.

Situation: Putting on armor takes multiple turns which are currently not interrupted by an encounter.

Problem: A monster is free to approach and attack a player who is armoring up.

Solution: Putting on armor should be able to be interrupted by a monster coming into view with a “X enters view, continue armoring up? (y/n)” and “X attacks you, you have stopped putting on armor.” As opposed to eating, being attacked should stop someone from being able to put on armor at all, as this is a different process. Granted there might be argument for a % of state of putting on armor (akin to the food consumption % proposed above), but for simplicity, armoring should start over from the beginning of the process if interrupted by combat and we should allow the character to retaliate combat with combat.

Fixed: This is fixed in v.11 per 4Commit / Tavern Thread.

Situation: Reading a scroll while hindered by Blurry Vision mutation takes longer.

Fixed: : This is fixed per Commit / Tavern Thread.

Discuss here.

The entire point of food taking multiple turns to eat is to make it so you can't just get rid of hunger in a fight. The restrictions on berserking and casting while hungry or starving could already stand to be made a lot more significant, and your proposal to make eating interruptable would pretty much make them useless dead weight. I would like it if armour changing could be interrupted, though, as nobody can do that in combat anyway so only leads to stupid deaths. — minmay 2011-05-13 16:48

Your hunger point can be argued against when one considers the logic of popping a sultana/strawberry/honeycomb into one's mouth mid-battle. — XuaXua 2011-05-15 03:24

I think having to carry a small food source for clearing mid-battle hunger is a good mechanic. — timbermaw 2011-07-12 20:43

I think this is done well in ADOM. If you try to eat/wear armor in combat, the game asks the player every turn, whether he wants to continue doing that. This prevents both irritating deaths due to eating/wearing armor, and also makes it possible to do those things. Wearing armor could of course be forbidden, as it's is pretty hard to imagine anyone doing that. (Eating too, but that's at least plausible.) — Thiregan 2012-02-02 21:14

As a comment, you might very well switch armour in the middle of a fight - changing from your normal +2 helmet of see invisible to the Crown of Dyrovepreva {rElec SInv Int+2 Hunger+} if you get jumped by an electric golem, for example. -IonFrigate

At worst, there should at least be a warning when you try to eat a multi-aut item during combat. — XuaXua 2014-06-17 23:11