-Crawl- -Stone Soup- Release Announcement (yes, Release Announcement) - Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.1
erisdiscordia
wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have been
cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public many new
features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1 alpha, inside of
a game that's actually fun to play.
The setup is simple: Darshan does the actual work, and I kibitz. :-)
That is, I write analyses of various mechanisms that exist in 4.0, that
exist in 4.1, that could exist in Stone Soup, and that I've had the
chance to try out within Stone Soup, and I propose new ones as well.
And I playtest. Darshan does all this as well, but he's distracted a
lot by doing the actual work. This dichotomy is the inspiration for the
mildly self-mocking name I picked for the project; see
http://tinyurl.com/kctvr.
Darshan prefers other tasks to making release announcements, whereas
for me this task is one big party; that's why I'm writing in the name
of us both.
Our initial wave of efforts centered on hammering 4.1 into something
fun to play, but there's so much going on there, and the balance of the
existing public alphas makes the game so *difficult*, that we just kept
running into a brick wall. Fortunately, Darshan took Martin Read's
inadvertent advice -- much more useful advice than I'll bet he ever
thought! -- and suggested scrapping the 4.1-based project and working
on the basis of 4.0.0 b26. I agreed, and the Stone Soup of which you're
about to drink is the result of that second approach.
We got the energy, drive, and inspiration for pulling through on this
project from the fact that Brent's work includes a vast amount of cool
features and desperately-needed rebalances, and that it will be a great
feeling if the player base gets to actually profit from those much
sooner than if we all wait for Brent to get back to working intensively
on Crawl. The chance to put in a number of ideas of our own that we
felt would improve balance excited us too.
Brent does not know of the Stone Soup project. Darshan has tried to
contact him, but Brent's only publicly available e-mail address is one
that he uses as a spam trap. Hopefully the hullabaloo raised by this
release will be broad and loud enough that someone who knows a reliable
way to contact him, will use it. If by any chance he disapproves of the
project, Darshan and I would rather call it off than see factionalism
arise in r.g.r.m. Hopefully such dramatic words will be irrelevant,
however.
Stone Soup will be a *rapidly* evolving project for some time to come.
Future releases will have whole swaths of new features and rebalances,
both from 4.1 and our own. There's a lot to look forward to if things
go well. Expect features to come in topical "waves"; we call these
"feature webs" during our analyses and they're a basis of our work.
Stone Soup is hungry for *you*. Two people, both of them whose Crawling
time and even whose Stone Soup time is also needed for other tasks, are
not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
Enough small talk... Darshan and I are proud to present Dungeon Crawl
Stone Soup v0.1!
* * * * * * * *
Stone Soup would not have been possible without the aid of Nat Lanza
and Peter Berger, who launched the Crawl-ref project, helped with
several technicalities of the Stone Soup project, and enabled us to
start issuing Mac OS binaries from Day 1.
I'd also like to thank Brent Ross for the many great ideas that can be
mined out of version 4.1, as well as for the ideas that went into the
several already-existing versions of Crawl where he did a plurality or
majority of the work. And of course I'd like to thank Linley, and can
only shed a tear that he'll likely never see these lines.
* * * * * * * *
The home of Stone Soup is not Darshan's usual patch page, which will
continue to hold the last released version of the Travel Patch. (It
follows from this that Patch development is frozen for them moment
except for critical fixes.) It is instead the Dungeon Crawl Reference
project.
The home page for Stone Soup development is:
http://www.sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143991
A Windows binary is available at:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/crawl-ref/stone_soup-0.1-win32.zip?download
A Mac binary is available at:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/crawl-ref/stone_soup-0.1-osx.tbz2?download
A source tarball is available at:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/crawl-ref/stone_soup-0.1-src.tbz2?download
A source zip is available at:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/crawl-ref/stone_soup-0.1-src.zip?download
* * * * * * * *
Changelog, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup v0.1 vs. Dungeon Crawl 4.0.0 b26:
Items introduced with a * are verbatim imports from 4.1.
Items introduced with a + are modified imports from 4.1.
Items introduced with a / are original work.
Items introduced with a ! have an especially strong impact on the game.
There are almost certainly items missing from this list. That's part of
why this changelog isn't posted on Sourceforge yet. The other part is
that I'd rather not delay the release for that. :-)
TRAVEL PATCH:
The latest version of the Travel Patch is pre-integrated into Stone
Soup.
MAGIC
!* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
!* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
!/ Monster positions provided by Detect Creatures are inexact,
with accuracy raisable through Divinations skill.
/ Casting Detect Creatures clears previous detected positions.
* New spell: Chain Lightning. Level 8. Book of Annihilations.
* Orb of Electrocution is now but a ghost in the source.
* Borgnjor's Revivification is level 5, was 6.
* Shadow Creatures is level 6, was 5.
!+ Silence is level 5, was 3.
* Simulacrum is level 6, was 7.
!+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
RELIGION
* You no longer lose piety for the death of TSO-summoned Daevas.
* TSO's lightning-bolt invocation has been replaced with Cleansing
Flame (a ranged, targeted ball; unique in that it only hurts
evil beings).
!* Sif Muna: see Magic above.
!* The 4.0.0 piety gain/loss functions have been replaced with those
from 4.1. The intended behavior for piety gain/loss is as before
except where otherwise noted, but such a drastic technical change
means that, despite the testing we've done before this release,
there may still be bugs. Keep an eye on piety behavior as you play
this release, and try to use a variety of gods to maximize the
testing ground we can cover.
COMBAT -- DEFENSE
+ Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
than before.
+ Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
+ Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
COMBAT -- MISSILE OFFENSE
* "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
(If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
!+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
!+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
+ General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
ITEMS -- MISSILE
!/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
!* New bow type -- longbow.
!* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
(Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
* Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
ITEMS -- DEFENSIVE MELEE
+ Armour properties brought over from itemprop.cc
(except for studded leather armours --
they were less work to abandon for now than to import).
Pay close attention, especially on the low end.
+ Shields -- see COMBAT -- DEFENSE
ITEMS -- OFFENSIVE MELEE
!+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
in every feasible way.
(It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
"Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
+ The new weapons introduced in 4.1's itemprop.cc are, uh, introduced.
"Double" handedness was converted to ordinary 2-handedness
during the import.
ITEMS -- EVOCATIONS
!+ Rods have been completely reworked. Rods (except Striking) now
have what are called "charges." Each use of a rod spell
costs a number of charges equal to its spell level. Rods
auto-recharge, both when wielded and when in your backpack,
although the rate is dramatically faster when the rod is
wielded. Charging costs 1 MP on any turn when it occurs.
Charges are shown when a rod is wield-insta-ID'd. Max charges
are 17; this may be too kind to the player, so try to take an
honest look at this as you go about using rods.
Max charges in the wild are 14.
A scroll of recharging can raise a rod's max charges.
!* Evocations skill no longer can be the determiner for your
max MP.
/ Trying to use a rod of striking without any mana no longer
confuses you.
MONSTERS
+ Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
but doesn't make you immune.
* * * * * * *
KNOWN BUGS:
* Spell orders in spellbooks don't yet reflect new costs.
* Monster orcs not reliably getting orcish weapons.
Darshan Shaligram
[...]
> The home page for Stone Soup development is:
> http://www.sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143991
And the project page (stock Sourceforge at the moment) is
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crawl-ref/
I'd also like to clarify the relation of Stone Soup to
crawl-ref. crawl-ref trunk is official 4.0.0 beta 26 + code & makefile
cleanup by Nat Lanza + the travel patch. Stone Soup is a branch of the
crawl-ref project.
Stone Soup currently lacks the Inscriptions patch, but we're working
on that (and Haran has agreed to join us in working on crawl-ref and
Stone Soup, hurray!).
--
Darshan Shaligram <scin...@gmail.com> Deus vult
erisdiscordia
> Changelog, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup v0.1 vs. Dungeon Crawl 4.0.0 b26:
v0.1 Changelog Errata 1
- means "change reversed." :-)
* means 4.1 change imported verbatim.
MAGIC
- Darshan ultimately decided to leave the cost of Shadow Creatures
unchanged (at 5).
RELIGION
* Once per game, TSO will convert a wielded demon blade into a
Blessed Blade if you pray on an altar.
* Once per game, Zin will convert a wielded mace or great mace
into a [null | great] mace of disruption if you pray on an altar.
e.
Jukka Kuusisto
>In the past months, in secret so as not to risk raising any ruckus that
>wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have been
>cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public many new
>features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1 alpha, inside of
>a game that's actually fun to play.
Awesome. I haven't tried it yet, as I'm currently working on another
ADOM ultra ending, but this sounds great.
-Jukka
--
Jukka Kuusisto
Rubinstein
> "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> writes:
> [...]
>> The home page for Stone Soup development is:
>> http://www.sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143991
>
> And the project page (stock Sourceforge at the moment) is
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/crawl-ref/
Yum, this soup looks extremely tasty! :-)
Can't await killing off my current Centaur and get some fresh meal!
Currently on Vault:8, I suppose either to die or escape tonight...
--
Rubinstein
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
> In the past months, in secret so as not to risk raising any ruckus that
> wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have been
> cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public many new
> features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1 alpha, inside of
> a game that's actually fun to play.
I'm the first to say thanks!
Thank you Darshan, thank you Erik!
[Minor snipe: 4.1 can be fun to play. I mean, also handcuffs can be fun
:]
> We got the energy, drive, and inspiration for pulling through on this
> project from the fact that Brent's work includes a vast amount of cool
> features and desperately-needed rebalances, and that it will be a great
> feeling if the player base gets to actually profit from those much
> sooner than if we all wait for Brent to get back to working intensively
> on Crawl. The chance to put in a number of ideas of our own that we
> felt would improve balance excited us too.
Good ideas, I hope :)
> Stone Soup is hungry for *you*. Two people, both of them whose Crawling
> time and even whose Stone Soup time is also needed for other tasks, are
> not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
> Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
> before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
> the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
> the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
In case I spot here glimpses of exchanging Brent's dictatorial approach
with a more democratic one - my bias is somewhat on Brent's side. Let
me explain: There will be many nifty, not-so-nifty, cool or important
ideas to come, many of them incompatible to other (or your) ideas. So
it is urgent that you value design choices higher than features. (IMO,
the Nethack devteam failed precisely at this, perhaps because they are
a _team_, so that lowest common denominator YANIs pass the check, but
radical changes won't.) Of course, it would have helped if Brent had
explain the overall design he had in mind.
> And of course I'd like to thank Linley, and can only shed a tear that he'll likely never see these
lines.
Why is this?
> Changelog, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup v0.1 vs. Dungeon Crawl 4.0.0 b26:
>
> Items introduced with a * are verbatim imports from 4.1.
> Items introduced with a + are modified imports from 4.1.
> Items introduced with a / are original work.
>
> Items introduced with a ! have an especially strong impact on the game.
> The latest version of the Travel Patch is pre-integrated into Stone
> Soup.
Hurray! I honestly think that there might be need of an 'annotated
crawl options file'. Maybe I'll make one.
> !* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
> !* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
> !/ Monster positions provided by Detect Creatures are inexact,
> with accuracy raisable through Divinations skill.
Triple hurray!
> !+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
Very good. What was the 4.1 level? (Not that I could get a Warper going
in 4.1 :)
> !* The 4.0.0 piety gain/loss functions have been replaced with those
> from 4.1. The intended behavior for piety gain/loss is as before
> except where otherwise noted, but such a drastic technical change
> means that, despite the testing we've done before this release,
> there may still be bugs. Keep an eye on piety behavior as you play
> this release, and try to use a variety of gods to maximize the
> testing ground we can cover.
Is this one of the places where complex code created it's own gameplay?
> + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
> than before.
> + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
> + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
This reflects what I've grown to love from 4.1. I presume you
down-pitched the effects a bit?
> * "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
> (If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
Very good.
> !+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
> !+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
> + General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
> much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
Actually, in 4.1 I saw much more ammunition and it also came in many
flavors (tons of runed arrows, glowing stones etc.) Do you keep this?
It should make rangers a non-masochist option.
BTW, another thing I noticed was that quite a few 'glowing' items were
actually cursed. Superstition or science put into code?
> !/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
This is the new 'poison needle'?
> !+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> in every feasible way.
> (It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
> "Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
> source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
> as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
> EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
Cool! I really like the handedness system. Also the strenth requirement
do add to the game, I think. Even more important, the poor accuracy
keeps you on track (so no switching to the very first great sword).
Another useful change.
> + Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
> Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
> but doesn't make you immune.
Absolutely necessary. I take it that you remove the triple resistance
from 4.1?
Did you keep the interface additions of 4.1?
Tons of thanks again. Every one of you gets an Orb for free!
David
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>In the past months, in secret so as not to risk raising any ruckus that
>wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have been
>cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public many new
>features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1 alpha, inside of
>a game that's actually fun to play.
>
>The setup is simple: Darshan does the actual work, and I kibitz. :-)
>That is, I write analyses of various mechanisms that exist in 4.0, that
>exist in 4.1, that could exist in Stone Soup, and that I've had the
>chance to try out within Stone Soup, and I propose new ones as well.
>And I playtest. Darshan does all this as well, but he's distracted a
>lot by doing the actual work. This dichotomy is the inspiration for the
>mildly self-mocking name I picked for the project; see
>http://tinyurl.com/kctvr.
In Russia this tale is called Axe Porridge. Interesting that Crawl
features both axes and porridge!
As for the game, in the first attempt I found Gold Dragon Armor at D:1,
but then died on D:2, stuck between jackal pack and giant cockroach (PC
was an Elf Summoner). I hope that such drops are much rarer than I think
they are :)
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Rubinstein
>
> Actually, in 4.1 I saw much more ammunition and it also came in many
> flavors (tons of runed arrows, glowing stones etc.) Do you keep this?
> It should make rangers a non-masochist option.
That's one of the very few things I don't like at all in 4.0.1.
Flavoured ammo would be great if it wouldn't include the possibility of
e.g. cursed ammo with negative enchantments (in case you didn't notice).
High enchanted ammo (except stones) are already available in b26 and
pretty easy to detect without using a ?oID. With "detection" I mean you
can determine whether the ammo is enchanted or not (but not how much it
is enchanted). In 4.0.1, since negative enchantments are possible now,
there's suddenly a need for IDing your ammo. In my eyes that feels like
one step into the right direction (flavoured ammo in general) and then 2
steps back again. Negative enchantments for ammo I could only accept if
?oID really would grow on trees or if there would be some sort of
bandish pseudo-ID mechanism (e.g. dependent on Throwing skill).
--
Rubinstein
Darshan Shaligram
> erisdiscordia schrieb:
>> In the past months, in secret so as not to risk raising any ruckus
>> that wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have
>> been cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public
>> many new features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1
>> alpha, inside of a game that's actually fun to play.
> I'm the first to say thanks!
> Thank you Darshan, thank you Erik!
This release is mostly a case of "Thank you, Brent". We've ripped off
his ideas and shamelessly bastardised them as we saw fit. :-)
(Oh, and the use of "we" in the paragraphs below is not the royal
We. Except in some cases. Only one or two, honest. :-))
> [Minor snipe: 4.1 can be fun to play. I mean, also handcuffs can be fun
> :]
Yes, if you've done a lot of 4.1, stone soup won't feel quite so new
and exciting, because it's genetically much closer to Crawl 4.0 than
4.1. The closeness to 4.0 should make it more fun, though.
>> The chance to put in a number of ideas of our own that we felt
>> would improve balance excited us too.
> Good ideas, I hope :)
All our ideas are good, even if we have to redefine "good" in the
process. :-)
> In case I spot here glimpses of exchanging Brent's dictatorial
> approach with a more democratic one - my bias is somewhat on Brent's
> side. Let me explain: There will be many nifty, not-so-nifty, cool
> or important ideas to come, many of them incompatible to other (or
> your) ideas.
Oh, definitely. This isn't a free-for-all. We choose ideas we think
make sense, but we're ready to be convinced into liking new ideas, and
Erik is always ready to justify existing ideas. :-)
> Of course, it would have helped if Brent had explain the overall
> design he had in mind.
I think the 4.1 code explains his overall design pretty well... The
only reason we didn't base Stone Soup directly on 4.1 is that getting
a balanced, playable game out of 4.1 would require a lot of effort. A
Brent-Rossesque effort, even. I've tried, and I don't have the time or
energy to do that.
Using 4.0 as the baseline means it's relatively easy to quantify the
changes we're making to the game balance as we go, and prevent the
balance from going utterly kablooey, AND we can do it without spending
more than 6-8 hours of effort a week on Crawl.
>> And of course I'd like to thank Linley, and can only shed a tear
>> that he'll likely never see these lines.
> Why is this?
Linley no longer follows Crawl development. Maybe he still reads
rgrmisc, though; who knows?
>> !+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
> Very good. What was the 4.1 level? (Not that I could get a Warper
> going in 4.1 :)
6. But 4.1's Controlled Blink is a weakened version of 4.0's. Stone
Soup's controlled blink is 4.0's controlled blink priced more
(un)reasonably.
>> !* The 4.0.0 piety gain/loss functions have been replaced with those
>> from 4.1. The intended behavior for piety gain/loss is as before
>> except where otherwise noted, but such a drastic technical change
>> means that, despite the testing we've done before this release,
>> there may still be bugs.
> Is this one of the places where complex code created it's own
> gameplay?
Not in this case, but the 4.1 religion code is so much cleaner (and
not damaging to balance) that it seemed like a good import.
>> + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
>> than before.
>> + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
>> + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
> This reflects what I've grown to love from 4.1. I presume you
> down-pitched the effects a bit?
Stone Soup shields are only analogous to 4.1's. We've tried to achieve
a similar effect, but there's no common code. We've been VERY wary of
importing 4.1 combat code directly because Brent rewrote/reworked
pretty much every combat mechanic in 4.1 - spellcasting, shields,
melee combat, unarmed combat, auxiliary unarmed, ranged combat, armour
calculations.
It's really difficult to maintain game balance when the underlying
code is all-new. (Mind you, the 4.1 code is very clean and modular,
but it's still nigh impossible to rebalance the whole works.)
Back on shields - note also that monsters cannot use shields (yet) in
Stone Soup.
>> !+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
>> !+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
>> + General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
>> much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
> Actually, in 4.1 I saw much more ammunition and it also came in many
> flavors (tons of runed arrows, glowing stones etc.) Do you keep
> this? It should make rangers a non-masochist option.
Part of the flavour was from 4.1 being very happy to apply the
runed/glowing description to stuff that isn't very special. :-) But
no, no runed/glowing ammo in Stone Soup yet. Cosmetics weren't a
priority...
Missile combat is strengthened quite a bit in Stone Soup, but again,
there's little common code with 4.1 here.
> BTW, another thing I noticed was that quite a few 'glowing' items
> were actually cursed. Superstition or science put into code?
That's always been the case. The glowing/runed description is to clue
you into the fact that an item is unusual in some way. It may be
unusually nasty. :-)
>> !+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
>> in every feasible way.
>> (It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
>> "Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
>> source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
>> as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
>> EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
> Cool! I really like the handedness system. Also the strenth
> requirement do add to the game, I think. Even more important, the
> poor accuracy keeps you on track (so no switching to the very first
> great sword). Another useful change.
The handedness/strength systems have not been imported. The visible
numbers of weapons have changed to match 4.1 (most of the changes
seemed very reasonable), in that some of them have different base
accuracy and damage numbers, but it's still 4.0's combat code under
the hood.
>> + Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
>> Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
>> but doesn't make you immune.
> Absolutely necessary. I take it that you remove the triple resistance
> from 4.1?
Right, we've not imported multilevel poison resistance into SS.
> Did you keep the interface additions of 4.1?
Which ones are these? We've not imported anything in the way of 4.1
interface, although the Inscriptions patch has some 4.1-isms, and
we're going to include it in SS...
> Tons of thanks again. Every one of you gets an Orb for free!
Thank you!
Darshan Shaligram
Centaur VPs are still too rare, go ahead and win. :-)
Darshan Shaligram
> "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> writes:
[Stone Soup]
> Awesome. I haven't tried it yet, as I'm currently working on another
> ADOM ultra ending, but this sounds great.
Give my regards to Gaab'Baay while you're out there. :-)
erisdiscordia
> On 19 Sep 2006 04:02:32 -0700, "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> tried to
> confuse everyone with this message:
:-)
> >[I foo...]
> >[...]And I playtest. Darshan does all this as well, but he's distracted a
> >lot by doing the actual work. This dichotomy is the inspiration for the
> >mildly self-mocking name I picked for the project; see
> >http://tinyurl.com/kctvr.
>
> In Russia this tale is called Axe Porridge. Interesting that Crawl
> features both axes and porridge!
But no potions of axe porridge! Nor bowls of soup. Yet? (Erm... CINNH.)
I actually didn't look up the example link for the Stone Soup story
that I used today, until today. (I had a different one in an old
"alpha" of the release announcement, but it was more work to look up
that old alpha than to re-Google Stone Soup.) I'd thought that the
story *was* Russian, and was surprised to learn that it's Swedish.
> As for the game, in the first attempt I found Gold Dragon Armor at D:1,
> but then died on D:2, stuck between jackal pack and giant cockroach (PC
> was an Elf Summoner). I hope that such drops are much rarer than I think
> they are :)
Unless Darshan pulled something that he didn't tell me about (highly
doubtful), that's just traditional, "beetwuntysix" item-generation
rearing its wacky head on you -- the only change to item generation
that really strikes me is the dividing of poisoned-needle drops into
poison needles and curare-tipped needles.
Brent warned emphatically against toying lightly with the broad lines
of item generation (the dividing up of an existing category like the
above is a different matter), as it can get things very out of whack
and make it very hard to put them back in order. So if such toying ever
happens during Stone Soup development, it'll be a "web" of its own and
a major project all its own.
e.
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
Darshan Shaligram schrieb:
> pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
> > erisdiscordia schrieb:
> >> + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
> >> than before.
> >> + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
> >> + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
>
> > This reflects what I've grown to love from 4.1. I presume you
> > down-pitched the effects a bit?
>
> Stone Soup shields are only analogous to 4.1's. We've tried to achieve
> a similar effect, but there's no common code. We've been VERY wary of
> importing 4.1 combat code directly because Brent rewrote/reworked
> pretty much every combat mechanic in 4.1 - spellcasting, shields,
> melee combat, unarmed combat, auxiliary unarmed, ranged combat, armour
> calculations.
Dear Jesus! All this work to (probably) to finish. What a pity. If it's
well written as you say one can probably learn from it, still?
> >> !+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
> >> !+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
> >> + General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
> >> much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
>
> > Actually, in 4.1 I saw much more ammunition and it also came in many
> > flavors (tons of runed arrows, glowing stones etc.) Do you keep
> > this? It should make rangers a non-masochist option.
>
> Part of the flavour was from 4.1 being very happy to apply the
> runed/glowing description to stuff that isn't very special. :-) But
> no, no runed/glowing ammo in Stone Soup yet. Cosmetics weren't a
> priority...
I didn't primarirly that ammunition is enchanted. There seems to be
much more of it around.
> > BTW, another thing I noticed was that quite a few 'glowing' items
> > were actually cursed. Superstition or science put into code?
>
> That's always been the case. The glowing/runed description is to clue
> you into the fact that an item is unusual in some way. It may be
> unusually nasty. :-)
While I know this, I could swear it happened more often in 4.1 :)
> >> !+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> >> in every feasible way.
> >> (It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
> >> "Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
> >> source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
> >> as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
> >> EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
>
> > Cool! I really like the handedness system. Also the strenth
> > requirement do add to the game, I think. Even more important, the
> > poor accuracy keeps you on track (so no switching to the very first
> > great sword). Another useful change.
>
> The handedness/strength systems have not been imported.
Do you think they spoil the fun?
> The visible
> numbers of weapons have changed to match 4.1 (most of the changes
> seemed very reasonable), in that some of them have different base
> accuracy and damage numbers, but it's still 4.0's combat code under
> the hood.
> >> + Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
> >> Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
> >> but doesn't make you immune.
>
> > Absolutely necessary. I take it that you remove the triple resistance
> > from 4.1?
>
> Right, we've not imported multilevel poison resistance into SS.
It seemed to me that a ring of poison resistance gives triple
resistance anyway.
> > Did you keep the interface additions of 4.1?
>
> Which ones are these? We've not imported anything in the way of 4.1
> interface, although the Inscriptions patch has some 4.1-isms, and
> we're going to include it in SS...
I mean the following:
1. The really cool messages upon self-inspection ("You feel very
comfortable.." etc.)
2. The m-screen.
3. Dissection/changing armor takes turns and is displayed as such.
4. Gaining a skill level shows the level number.
These seem trivial but I think all of them make the interface more
intuitive.
David
Darshan Shaligram
> Darshan Shaligram schrieb:
>> Stone Soup shields are only analogous to 4.1's. We've tried to
>> achieve a similar effect, but there's no common code. We've been
>> VERY wary of importing 4.1 combat code directly because Brent
>> rewrote/reworked pretty much every combat mechanic in 4.1 -
>> spellcasting, shields, melee combat, unarmed combat, auxiliary
>> unarmed, ranged combat, armour calculations.
> Dear Jesus! All this work to (probably) to finish. What a pity. If
> it's well written as you say one can probably learn from it, still?
Ah, but it's not our intention that Stone Soup be everything that 4.1
is. 4.1 is just a convenient larder of ideas that we raided. Stone
Soup is its own beast (although it looks a lot like the offspring of
4.0 and 4.1 at the moment). In particular, I've no plans of doing
*all* the combat refactoring that 4.1 did. We're cherry-picking from
4.1, not reinventing it.
This is also why we changed the version. Stone Soup is at 0.1, not
4.XX (and does not attempt to be save-compatible with 4.0 or 4.1,
although the save format is - at the moment - the same).
[runed/glowing ammo]
> I didn't primarirly that ammunition is enchanted. There seems to be
> much more of it around.
SS has better ammo-preservation rates than 4.0, which should greatly
mitigate the ran-out-of-ammo problem. In addition (this is another
idea from 4.1) Okawaru gives gifts of ammunition to missile-users,
which will also help. If you're not an Okawarite you might still have
to scrounge around a bit, but the scene is a lot better than 4.0.
[4.1 weapon properties imported into SS]
>> The handedness/strength systems have not been imported.
> Do you think they spoil the fun?
No, we just haven't gotten the needed tuits yet. I'm not a great fan
of the minimum-strength concept, but the handedness and body size
systems in 4.1 are good. It'll come in gradually, that's all.
>> Right, we've not imported multilevel poison resistance into SS.
> It seemed to me that a ring of poison resistance gives triple
> resistance anyway.
Yes, it does (in 4.1).
Multilevel poison resistance will help to make poison more relevant;
we've just not yet analysed and decided where we're going in that
regard.
[4.1 interface changes]
> I mean the following:
> 1. The really cool messages upon self-inspection ("You feel very
> comfortable.." etc.)
> 2. The m-screen.
> 3. Dissection/changing armor takes turns and is displayed as such.
> 4. Gaining a skill level shows the level number.
> These seem trivial but I think all of them make the interface more
> intuitive.
Ah, I see. They'll get in. :-)
erisdiscordia
> Darshan Shaligram schrieb:
>
> > pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
> > > erisdiscordia schrieb:
>
> > >> + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
> > >> than before.
> > >> + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
> > >> + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
> >
> > > This reflects what I've grown to love from 4.1. I presume you
> > > down-pitched the effects a bit?
> >
> > Stone Soup shields are only analogous to 4.1's. We've tried to achieve
> > a similar effect, but there's no common code. We've been VERY wary of
> > importing 4.1 combat code directly because Brent rewrote/reworked
> > pretty much every combat mechanic in 4.1 - spellcasting, shields,
> > melee combat, unarmed combat, auxiliary unarmed, ranged combat, armour
> > calculations.
>
> Dear Jesus! All this work to (probably) to finish.
We'll be picking and choosing. For example, it's still unsure that
analogs of the heavy-armour buffs will be imported at all. (Despite my
recent arguing with Denis, we (Our Royal Highness, y'know) actually
think that b26 heavy armour is quite good already... we just don't see
the point of those particular changes.) And there are plenty of other
things like that.
Still a hell of a lot to do, though.
> What a pity. If it's
> well written as you say one can probably learn from it, still?
I can't learn much from it without learning slightly more fundamental
things like "how to program at all in the first place" first. And
Darshan -- Darshan can speak for himself on this one.
Still, 4.1's increase in cleanliness and modularity is certainly
beautiful -- so beautiful that even I as a near-layman can honestly say
that I perceive and appreciate it.
> > >> !+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
> > >> !+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
> > >> + General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
> > >> much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
> >
> > > Actually, in 4.1 I saw much more ammunition and it also came in many
> > > flavors (tons of runed arrows, glowing stones etc.) Do you keep
> > > this? It should make rangers a non-masochist option.
> >
> > Part of the flavour was from 4.1 being very happy to apply the
> > runed/glowing description to stuff that isn't very special. :-) But
> > no, no runed/glowing ammo in Stone Soup yet. Cosmetics weren't a
> > priority...
>
> I didn't primarirly that ammunition is enchanted. There seems to be
> much more of it around.
4.1 *does* have more ammo. However, Brent's warned against toying with
item generation convinced us *not* to open that can of worms in the
course of preparing version 0.1 just for the sake of greater ammo
generation. And in any case meanwhile, since the time of my whinings
that ammo was in too short supply -- the inspiration for Brent's change
-- I've come to the conclusion that that's an early-game problem only.
However (yep, more changelog errata -- crap), Okie now gifts you ammo
if your highest skill if a missile skill. So if you're *really* worried
you'll run out of ammo, Okie's the way to go.
> > > BTW, another thing I noticed was that quite a few 'glowing' items
> > > were actually cursed. Superstition or science put into code?
> >
> > That's always been the case. The glowing/runed description is to clue
> > you into the fact that an item is unusual in some way. It may be
> > unusually nasty. :-)
>
> While I know this, I could swear it happened more often in 4.1 :)
It does: in 4.1, it happens not only for weapons and armor, but also
for ammo, which can also have minuses instead of just pluses. We don't
see that change as something that enriches Crawl, and we won't be
importing it.
> > >> !+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> > >> in every feasible way.
> > >> (It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
> > >> "Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
> > >> source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
> > >> as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
> > >> EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
> >
> > > Cool! I really like the handedness system. Also the strenth
> > > requirement do add to the game, I think. Even more important, the
> > > poor accuracy keeps you on track (so no switching to the very first
> > > great sword). Another useful change.
> >
> > The handedness/strength systems have not been imported.
>
> Do you think they spoil the fun?
No. We [1] don't have an opinion (or more precisely, a set of opinion
on the set of them) yet. We had to find a balance between having enough
changes to justify a first public release, and granting ourselves the
pleasure of making said release. Forming our opinions takes time and
energy, :-) and the handedness/strength systems haven't received that
investment yet, although I do have plenty of "proto-opinions" swimming
in my head, and doubtlessly Darshan does too.
[1] (Darshan and I actually can speak somewhat as a hivemind, as we've
been in pretty intense communication regarding what features/ideas we
do/don't like, and each of us has convinced the other of quite a few
things with which we didn't originally agree; in fact, none of the
changes or lacks of changes have occurred, as far as I recall, without
us having reached a consensus.)
> > The visible
> > numbers of weapons have changed to match 4.1 (most of the changes
> > seemed very reasonable),
I concur, by the way.
> > in that some of them have different base
> > accuracy and damage numbers, but it's still 4.0's combat code under
> > the hood.
Incremental implementation is very important, as if we make a mistake,
it makes it much easier to narrow down where it was. The sheer vastness
of the changes to the combat, spellcasting, and hurt-the-PC code and
the tokens (weapons, etc.) that got plugged into them were what made it
such a brick wall to figure why it was so broken.
> > >> + Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
> > >> Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
> > >> but doesn't make you immune.
> >
> > > Absolutely necessary. I take it that you remove the triple resistance
> > > from 4.1?
> >
> > Right, we've not imported multilevel poison resistance into SS.
There are no plans to do so for the moment, either -- at least not to
the degree seen in 4.1. Although the basic idea of making resistance
more important and ideally making the number of levels more important
is nice, the conception there is in our opinion so uselessly
player-hostile as to be almost unrecyclable, and in order to build
something from the ground up, we'd have to be more passionate about it
than we are about creating relevance for multilevel poison resistance
and increasing relevance for poison resistance, beneficial though those
things would be.
> > > Did you keep the interface additions of 4.1?
> >
> > Which ones are these? We've not imported anything in the way of 4.1
> > interface, although the Inscriptions patch has some 4.1-isms, and
> > we're going to include it in SS...
>
> I mean the following:
> 1. The really cool messages upon self-inspection ("You feel very
> comfortable.." etc.)
Not in, as you'll immediately notice. I *adore* the 4.1 messages for @,
but I don't know Darshan's opinion; we haven't discussed them yet. And
remember, we both adore a lot of stuff, and the time of both of us is
finite. :-)
> 2. The m-screen.
I mildly like it; I don't know Darshan's opinion. It does follow a
principle (out of a whole set of principles) that we've come to
consensus on -- avoid artificial advantages for old hands over newbies.
Phrased differently and from a different angle: promote unspoiled
discoverability.
> 3. Dissection/changing armor takes turns and is displayed as such.
Yuck. Darshan?
> 4. Gaining a skill level shows the level number.
I mildly like it, but it doesn't help any Big Principles or fix any
balance problem, just a bell and whistle.
> These seem trivial but I think all of them make the interface more
> intuitive.
Strangely, I find it hard to decide whether an interface feature is
"intuitive" or not. Again, I *am* big on the "unspoiled
discoverability" thing, though. (I'll probably prod Darshan on better
exposing armour's membership in Heavy or Light again soon. Separately
from these lines here, as I can't expect him to pore over my every word
in rgrm.)
e.
Denis
That's great, thanks guys.
> not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
> Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
> before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
> the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
> the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
Have you thought about improving Zin's angels somehow? Maybe make them
heal the player sometimes?
erisdiscordia
> [4.1 weapon properties imported into SS]
> >> The handedness/strength systems have not been imported.
>
> > Do you think they spoil the fun?
>
> No, we just haven't gotten the needed tuits yet. I'm not a great fan
> of the minimum-strength concept, [...]
I'm a minor fan, by the way. But the whole situation is ironic. I
*personally* feel that strength is not important enough in b26. AFAICS,
Brent *personally* felt the same way, thus the minimum strength
concept. Meanwhile, the player community has, errr, strongly encouraged
newbies to stress strength over dexterity all the while, despite my
occasional whining that they're wrong, wrong, wrong! :-) So... who's
right, the dynasty of benevolent dictators, or the masses? :-D
> Multilevel poison resistance will help to make poison more relevant;
> we've just not yet analysed and decided where we're going in that
> regard.
Hmm, split personality disorder in the hivemind! :-D
At this rate, we're gonna have to start ICQing or something. (Yuck,
though -- *kidding* on that one. I love ICQ, but it's not the way to go
for our discussions; they need the superior average quality of
archiving provided by e-mail clients.)
e.
erisdiscordia
> > not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
> > Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
> > before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
> > the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
> > the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
>
> Have you thought about improving Zin's angels somehow? Maybe make them
> heal the player sometimes?
We haven't. Historically, the level of complaints regarding the Good
Gods has been:
Ely -- none, or if anything he's been called overpowered;
Zin -- very few;
TSO -- countless.
Brent's changes reflected that history, and since we essentially agreed
with his decisions, we stole them almost feature for feature.
So, what *is* in for Zin? I think he's unbothered by the death of
creatures summoned by his invocations -- I'll have to check, and
that'll be more errata :-/. He disruptifies maces. And that's it. Do
you think he'll be left in the lurch in the current state?
Would you like to volunteer to play a few Stone Soup priests? :-)
e.
erisdiscordia
Fortunately, Darshan's answered most of the hard questions already for
me. :-)
> > The chance to put in a number of ideas of our own that we
> > felt would improve balance excited us too.
>
> Good ideas, I hope :)
So do I. :-)
> > Stone Soup is hungry for *you*. Two people, both of them whose Crawling
> > time and even whose Stone Soup time is also needed for other tasks, are
> > not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
> > Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
> > before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
> > the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
> > the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
>
> In case I spot here glimpses of exchanging Brent's dictatorial approach
> with a more democratic one - my bias is somewhat on Brent's side. Let
> me explain: There will be many nifty, not-so-nifty, cool or important
> ideas to come, many of them incompatible to other (or your) ideas. So
> it is urgent that you value design choices higher than features. (IMO,
> the Nethack devteam failed precisely at this, perhaps because they are
> a _team_, so that lowest common denominator YANIs pass the check, but
> radical changes won't.) Of course, it would have helped if Brent had
> explain the overall design he had in mind.
Darshan and I have discussed the same issue in depth, and (hope you
don't mind my noting this, Darshan) Darshan strongly pushed for us to
go the benevolent-dictator route. I was originally very against it and
still am somewhat against it, but I saw and see his point, one which
you expressed very well in the above paragraph, and we basically
settled on it. I do however still refuse to completely ignore the need
to solicit input and the need to listen to all inputs. The main meaning
of the benevolent-dictator principle for me is that in the end,
Darshan, Haran, and I, like and implement what we like and implement,
even if they conflict with zee masses, *provided* that there's been
enough opportunity for zee masses to present their arguments.
> > The latest version of the Travel Patch is pre-integrated into Stone
> > Soup.
>
> Hurray! I honestly think that there might be need of an 'annotated
> crawl options file'. Maybe I'll make one.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I'm liking it already. :-)
> Very good. What was the 4.1 level? (Not that I could get a Warper going
> in 4.1 :)
Warpers may well become quite popular in Stone Soup -- so far, SS's
archers are at a risk of, if anything, being overpowered, and
non-Spriggan warpers have always essentially been an archery class (but
were crippled in b26 by comprising nothing but skills that were
nigh-useless for Killing Things, unlike hunters, who at least had some
melee skill to fall back on.)
> > !/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> > Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> > In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> > Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
>
> This is the new 'poison needle'?
Nope, they exist alongside poison needles. Note that, as a natural
result of starting from the "miasma" (Corpse Rot) mechanic, they're
much more broadly usable than poisoned needles.
The principle behind introducing them is to keep Darts skill relevant
until later in the game -- Darts skill in Stone Soup should peter out
around the same time as Venom Magic Skill at the *earliest*.
> > !+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> > in every feasible way.
> > (It was easier to keep them verbatim than to twiddle them.)
> > "Every feasible way" refers to our inability to handle that
> > source file's Size and Handedness information as intended,
> > as the 4.1 size and handedness systems aren't implemented.
> > EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
>
> Cool! I really like the handedness system. Also the strenth requirement
> do add to the game, I think. Even more important, the poor accuracy
> keeps you on track (so no switching to the very first great sword).
> Another useful change.
That's precisely why I like them. I should have noted them in the first
place, but I wasn't sure that was a hivemind opinion and I didn't feel
like expressing anything less. :-)
> Tons of thanks again. Every one of you gets an Orb for free!
Free orbs are no fun. Wish me instead an earned one in the next few
days -- I have an ersatz Paladin who'll need all the best wishes he can
get. Not for any special reason, mind you; the mere fact that this is
Crawl we're talking about it enough. (Keep in mind that all my
incredible wins are vastly more a product of dying and retrying than
they are of some Marvin-like skill. :-D)
e.
Denis
erisdiscordia wrote:
> Denis wrote:
>
> > > not at all enough to do sufficient playtesting. In return, we offer a
> > > Crawl different from and, we hope, better than any you've played
> > > before. And wherever it's *not* better -- criticize, please. Remember,
> > > the end result may well not be some "Super Stone Soup," but impact on
> > > the shape of an eventual 4.1-final. That's just fine too.
> >
> > Have you thought about improving Zin's angels somehow? Maybe make them
> > heal the player sometimes?
>
> We haven't. Historically, the level of complaints regarding the Good
> Gods has been:
>
> Ely -- none, or if anything he's been called overpowered;
> Zin -- very few;
> TSO -- countless.
:) I have no complaints about TSO, but Zin is uneven, holy word is
great, angels are poor. Maybe its fine that way though.
>
> Would you like to volunteer to play a few Stone Soup priests? :-)
Was looking forward to trying the cleansing flame, but I'll see what I
can do :)
roy axenov
erisdiscordia wrote:
> [Stone Soup]
*WOW!* You're the best. ('You' being you and Darshan, and,
I 'spose, Haran and Brent. And, well, Linley.)
Too bad I don't have any time to playtest SS - heck, I
don't have time to deal one way or another with my Hu Mo,
who's been twiddling his thumbs on Vault:7 for a week or
two now.
Anyway, all of that sounds great, BUT. (You saw that but,
right? If there wasn't a but, I'd probably just crawl
under my bed to die in peace there instead of whining
about Things Gone Wrong With Stone Soup. :-)
> !* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere
> spellcasting.
This sounds like an *awfully* bad idea to me. As I said, I
haven't played SS yet, but given my - admittedly limited -
experience with Sif in b26 I don't like this one at all,
at all. I mean, I've always had problems with Sif piety,
unless I was either casting half a dozen lvl 1 spells
every now and then just to keep her happy (and that goes
against the grain) OR I was playing straight Conjurer (and
we already have a Conjurer deity). Now, with these latest
changes, it would seem to me that Sif went even further
down the 'part-time spellcasters need not apply' path.
And, let's face it, that sucks.
Moreover, if I got that right, even full-time time
Conjurers would start having piety problems, simply
because there are only so many spell skills to train, and
as they near the cap, maintaining piety would get
progressively harder and harder.
And I don't even mention races with poor spellcasting
aptitudes, who would suddenly find Sif a much less
attractive proposition.
Seriously, what were you thinking? (Scratch that -
seriously, what am I missing? :-)
--
roy axenov
erisdiscordia
> erisdiscordia wrote:
> > !* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere
> > spellcasting.
>
> This sounds like an *awfully* bad idea to me. As I said, I
> haven't played SS yet, but given my - admittedly limited -
> experience with Sif in b26 I don't like this one at all,
> at all. I mean, I've always had problems with Sif piety,
> unless I was either casting half a dozen lvl 1 spells
> every now and then just to keep her happy (and that goes
> against the grain) OR I was playing straight Conjurer (and
> we already have a Conjurer deity). Now, with these latest
> changes, it would seem to me that Sif went even further
> down the 'part-time spellcasters need not apply' path.
> And, let's face it, that sucks.
It *will* suck if it's mistuned.
The second-to-last "major" character I playtested before DCSS 0.1 was
Moonie, who was a "Firehunter," or "Warver," or "Conjunter," or
whatever you want to call it -- his two means of destruction were Fire
Magic (he left his Earth spells unlearned) and Crossbows, which he
started training ASAP. He took up SM, as she obviously needed testing
after the change. The test was cut short by a single-turn kill of
Moonie via a 86-damage poison arrow, which is part of the reason why
poison arrows in DCSS 0.1 do 4-d-19 damage instead of the original
4-d-ungodly damage. :-)
But anyway. Moonie become a mild version of a part-time spellcaster,
and he did indeed have some trouble maintaining book-gift piety. So
piety leak may get slowed down by another 20-30 percent in addition to
the slowing Darshan already applied somewhat before the release.
(However, see below -- the things hinted at below may "replace" slowed
piety leak.) Uncle Sam needs *you* to give your opinion on the prudence
of such a more!
Note that we may have some surprises in store for you with Sif -- just
like with Stone Soup as a whole, we'd rather not say too much until we
can back our words with nuclear weapons, but... we might have some
surprises in store. :-)
> Moreover, if I got that right, even full-time time
> Conjurers would start having piety problems, simply
> because there are only so many spell skills to train, and
> as they near the cap, maintaining piety would get
> progressively harder and harder.
Nah, you'll always be training *something* spellish with a full-time
conjurer. They'll be fine. But the part-time conjurer issue you mention
is one that needs real consideration.
> And I don't even mention races with poor spellcasting
> aptitudes, who would suddenly find Sif a much less
> attractive proposition.
I think the design avoids distortion from that by judging based on
input into spell skills, not output. But diving to know for sure would
really slow down this response. Darshan?
e.
erisdiscordia
> erisdiscordia wrote:
> > Denis wrote:
> > > Have you thought about improving Zin's angels somehow? Maybe make them
> > > heal the player sometimes?
> >
> > We haven't. Historically, the level of complaints regarding the Good
> > Gods has been:
> >
> > Ely -- none, or if anything he's been called overpowered;
> > Zin -- very few;
> > TSO -- countless.
>
> :) I have no complaints about TSO, but Zin is uneven, holy word is
> great, angels are poor. Maybe its fine that way though.
Well, Zin at least doesn't care if they die anymore.
> Was looking forward to trying the cleansing flame, but I'll see what I
> can do :)
Crap, that reminds me -- Cleansing Flame isn't the only thing that hits
undead/demonic only; Holy Word does too. I missed it because Cleansing
Flame (rightly IMO) resolves it using the special-purpose damage type
called beam_holy (OK, it's a ball not a beam, but knowing the context I
can squint at that), whereas Holy Word manually handles the same issue
that beam_holy handles.
When people say that, from the technical standpoint, Crawl code is
crap, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. :-D
e.
Haran Pilpel
>> And I don't even mention races with poor spellcasting
>> aptitudes, who would suddenly find Sif a much less
>> attractive proposition.
>
> I think the design avoids distortion from that by judging based on
> input into spell skills, not output. But diving to know for sure would
> really slow down this response. Darshan?
I just checked - I think it currently judges based on how many points
were actually trained, i.e., output.
This is trivial to change, though, if we (this is my first posting as part
of 'we'...) decide to.
Haran
enurmi
erisdiscordia wrote:
> Enough small talk... Darshan and I are proud to present Dungeon Crawl
> Stone Soup v0.1!
WOW! Weehee!!! That's hilariously awesome! A huge thank you to all who
made this possible. You know, I had a feeling that you were up to
something, since I thought you (Erik) were unusually quiet for quite
some time :D. I'll test this right away. I could almost quote on the
famous nethack quote (errr..) that said something like "Thanks for the
new version! My thesis just crawled to corner and shot himself" but NO
I'M NOT, I'll just play a bit this evening and work again tomorrow :D
> !/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
Could you explain this a bit more, I'm all for making poison needles
more effective in midgame, but I don't know what this Corpse Rot things
do. So how does this differ from poisoned needles?
Erkki Nurmi
P.S. Thank you!!!
plague
the tile version into stone soup would be?
erisdiscordia
> erisdiscordia wrote:
> [you were suspiciously quiet]
Well, also I failed my saving throw against Civilization III several
weeks back. Fortunately, we had a priest in the party. :-)
> > !/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> > Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> > In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> > Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
>
> Could you explain this a bit more, I'm all for making poison needles
> more effective in midgame, but I don't know what this Corpse Rot things
> do. So how does this differ from poisoned needles?
Curare is a poison that no living thing can resist. When a being (i.e.
including you) is hit with a curare-tipped needle, first a check is
made to see if they're immune to asphyxiation. At the moment, they only
pass that check if they're undead, nonliving, or demonic. [1] If they
fail that check, ***they get the Slow condition*** and a poisoning
attempt is made on them (poison resistance lets them pass this) and
take a nice hunk of damage, which is halved if they're poison
resistant.
[1] Yes, demons can probably suffocate, but since making demons
susceptible would likely be bad for balance, we'll assume that the
acidic ichor in their veins dissolves the curare, y'know. :-)
> P.S. Thank you!!!
You're welcome, and also -- it's my pleasure!
e.
erisdiscordia
> enurmi wrote:
> > erisdiscordia wrote:
> > > Enough small talk... Darshan and I are proud to present Dungeon Crawl
> > > Stone Soup v0.1!
[...]
[top-posting corrected]
> Would everyone throw things at me if I asked how possible integrating
> the tile version into stone soup would be?
Not only have you top-posted and quoted irrelevant material, you also
play graphical roguelikes. This makes you a sinner. As penitence, you
must visit http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html, figure out how in
the hell to use the e-mail link there, and contact the Null Po Doh,
whom we have to thank for the already-existing (wonderful) Tile
version.
Return to me when you are ready. :-P
Darshan Shaligram
[...]
> Curare is a poison that no living thing can resist. When a being
> (i.e. including you) is hit with a curare-tipped needle, first a
> check is made to see if they're immune to asphyxiation. At the
> moment, they only pass that check if they're undead, nonliving, or
> demonic.
This list will have to be expanded to include critters like ice
beasts; we'll probably have to add a new MR_ flag to account for
curare.
Also, the classic curare effect would be paralysis, not slowing, but
that would be murderously hard to balance.
erisdiscordia
For *living* things, we should err on the side of kindness, though. The
whole **point** of the suckers is to extend darts' lifetime. But OK,
for ice beasts, it's hard to justify them having blood. OK.
e.
Darshan Shaligram
[...]
> Not only have you top-posted and quoted irrelevant material, you
> also play graphical roguelikes. This makes you a sinner.
You are the Shining One, and I claim my five pounds.
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
> Darshan Shaligram wrote:
> > pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
> > > Darshan Shaligram schrieb:
>
> > [4.1 weapon properties imported into SS]
> > >> The handedness/strength systems have not been imported.
> >
> > > Do you think they spoil the fun?
> >
> > No, we just haven't gotten the needed tuits yet. I'm not a great fan
> > of the minimum-strength concept, [...]
>
> I'm a minor fan, by the way. But the whole situation is ironic. I
> *personally* feel that strength is not important enough in b26. AFAICS,
> Brent *personally* felt the same way, thus the minimum strength
> concept. Meanwhile, the player community has, errr, strongly encouraged
> newbies to stress strength over dexterity all the while, despite my
> occasional whining that they're wrong, wrong, wrong! :-) So... who's
> right, the dynasty of benevolent dictators, or the masses? :-D
You see only the most hypocritical (sp?) dictators ask their sheep
"Who's right". But okay, here we are: "You, Erik and Darshan, holders
of titles and wisdom, are right. Now and forever." Good enough?
There are two further arguments in favor of strenght requirements:
1. another factor to take into account when contemplating armors/rings.
(Here I take it that strength from such sources counts... or does it
have to be natural?)
2. Even if going that way (including spending points on Str), it might
be some time until enough Str is available. This goes nicely with the
fact that early on, no-one will hit with the big things anyway.
On the negative side, it's less choice, of course. And it somehow
forces even more to follow the chosen path. So strategic mistakes in
the beginning might see harder punishment.
> > Multilevel poison resistance will help to make poison more relevant;
> > we've just not yet analysed and decided where we're going in that
> > regard.
I think it's enough to create poison attacks that are not countered
useless by poison resistance. You have done this, right?
Another 4.1 innovation I don't like: making amulets of resist slowing
not work with post-berserk slowdown anymore. While I might see where
that's coming from, it is unununintuitive. So I'd propose again that
post-berserk slowing takes place always, but is shortened with amulet.
David
erisdiscordia
> erisdiscordia schrieb:
> > Darshan Shaligram wrote:
> > > pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
> > > > Darshan Shaligram schrieb:
> > I'm a minor fan [of equipment STR requirements], by the way.
> > But the whole situation is ironic.
> > I *personally* feel that strength is not important enough in b26. AFAICS,
> > Brent *personally* felt the same way, thus the minimum strength
> > concept. Meanwhile, the player community has, errr, strongly encouraged
> > newbies to stress strength over dexterity all the while, despite my
> > occasional whining that they're wrong, wrong, wrong! :-) So... who's
> > right, the dynasty of benevolent dictators, or the masses? :-D
>
> You see only the most hypocritical (sp?) dictators ask their sheep
> "Who's right". But okay, here we are: "You, Erik and Darshan, holders
> of titles and wisdom, are right. Now and forever." Good enough?
Yuck. :-)
All I really wanted to say is, Brent saw a problem and I saw a problem
in the game design, but for what seems like purely psychological it's
not really reflected in the actual behavior of players.
On the other hand, at least people would get rewarded for what they
typically already do. And I do have a soft spot for making Crawl
easier. :-) (Though I doubt you'll continue to believe me once you run
into draconians and ponder the fact that I've also had the honor.)
> There are two further arguments in favor of strenght requirements:
> 1. another factor to take into account when contemplating armors/rings.
> (Here I take it that strength from such sources counts... or does it
> have to be natural?)
AFAIR, 4.1 doesn't distinguish. As for Stone Soup... since we don't
have consensus yet on having STR requirements at all, we're even
farther from having opinions on the details... :-)
> 2. Even if going that way (including spending points on Str), it might
> be some time until enough Str is available.
If implemented, this will need to be fine-tuned. E.g. the strength
requirements on GSC's are so high in 4.1 that I don't think even an
ogre could hope to reach them in reasonable time. Healers of several
races were frequently, or even invariably, starting without enough
strength to wield their starting quarterstaves. Etc.
> This goes nicely with the
> fact that early on, no-one will hit with the big things anyway.
Quarterstaves have a strength requirement in 4.1, yet hit pretty well
(at least in Stone Soup). There may be other examples. But I understand
what you mean.
> On the negative side, it's less choice, of course. And it somehow
> forces even more to follow the chosen path. So strategic mistakes in
> the beginning might see harder punishment.
Not if it's possilbe and feasible to juggle your stats using boosters
to meet the requirement -- you'll have to squeeze your way up to them,
but except for ones that are meant to be quite hard to reach (e.g.
GSC), I don't think your statup decisions away from STR would necessary
be crippling in that respect.
> > > Multilevel poison resistance will help to make poison more relevant;
> > > we've just not yet analysed and decided where we're going in that
> > > regard.
>
> I think it's enough to create poison attacks that are not countered
> useless by poison resistance. You have done this, right?
Nothing but Poison Arrow. I'm really lukewarm myself on adding any
further ones. But then, Poison Arrow is hardly something to be ignored.
> Another 4.1 innovation I don't like: making amulets of resist slowing
> not work with post-berserk slowdown anymore. While I might see where
> that's coming from, it is unununintuitive. So I'd propose again that
> post-berserk slowing takes place always, but is shortened with amulet.
I don't like that one either. (No discussion in the Triumvirate on it
yet.) I was planning to ignore it completely. I might propose (merely)
eliminating "post-berserk hasting," however.
What do you think of 4.1's "heal to current HP cap only" model? I'm
quite fond of it because it makes the munchkiny thing to do match the
flavorful thing to do (i.e. berserk when wounded), though I'd probably
propose that it be combined with something else (not yet imagined) that
makes berserking-users' lives easier in return.
e.
amri.s...@gmail.com
Firstly I think Stone Soup is something that has to happen for the
future of this game, but I do have a few concerns - I have a feeling
that some things are being nerfed, just because they work, and not
because they're overpowered. I haven't tried the new version yet, but
here are my ill-informed observations anyway. :)
!* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
I'm not sure this is a great idea - stepdown functions for spell power
make increasing spell power nearly useless. I agree with decreasing the
benefit to cast chance that they offer, but not removing it entirely.
Perhaps increase power by 1.8 and success rate by 1.2 for each level?
!* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
Not keen on this either, as Vehumet > Sif Muna by a long way anyway
(more on that later).
!/ Monster positions provided by Detect Creatures are inexact,
with accuracy raisable through Divinations skill.
/ Casting Detect Creatures clears previous detected positions.
Good changes.
* New spell: Chain Lightning. Level 8. Book of Annihilations.
* Orb of Electrocution is now but a ghost in the source.
Cool, I'm eager to see it.
* Borgnjor's Revivification is level 5, was 6.
Can't comment as I've never used it.
* Shadow Creatures is level 6, was 5.
Fair enough. Maybe make the shadows turn on you if your skill isn't
high enough? >:)
!+ Silence is level 5, was 3.
Okay, but Silence (whilst amazing in the Elven Halls) does remove a lot
of offensive and escape options from the player (spells and scrolls of
blink, teleport)
* Simulacrum is level 6, was 7.
Once again, I've never used it.
!+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
Too far? Whilst an awesome spell it's not at all common IME. You could
play a Warper but then you may have trouble living long enough to get
it. ;)
RELIGION
* You no longer lose piety for the death of TSO-summoned Daevas.
* TSO's lightning-bolt invocation has been replaced with Cleansing
Flame (a ranged, targeted ball; unique in that it only hurts
evil beings).
Cool.
COMBAT -- DEFENSE
+ Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
than before.
+ Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
+ Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
Very cool, I always wanted to use shields effectively but just
couldn't.
COMBAT -- MISSILE OFFENSE
* "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
(If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
!+ Missile weapon speeds much more variable, in missile experts' favor.
!+ Missile skill bonuses now multipliers, not additives.
+ General (and painful, and probably still buggy) import of as
much 4.1 missile mechanics as feasible
Can't comment too much on missiles - I have used them to some effect
but always ended up falling back on melee. What about large rocks -
source diving indicates that these would be as deadly when you throw
them as when a stone giant does.
ITEMS -- MISSILE
!/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
Sounds evil. >:)
!* New bow type -- longbow.
!* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
(Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
* Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
Sounds good, although I've only seen a bow of speed once (the artifact
golden bow, received too late to be of much use)
ITEMS -- EVOCATIONS
!+ Rods have been completely reworked. Rods (except Striking) now
have what are called "charges." Each use of a rod spell
costs a number of charges equal to its spell level. Rods
auto-recharge, both when wielded and when in your backpack,
although the rate is dramatically faster when the rod is
wielded. Charging costs 1 MP on any turn when it occurs.
Charges are shown when a rod is wield-insta-ID'd. Max charges
are 17; this may be too kind to the player, so try to take an
honest look at this as you go about using rods.
Max charges in the wild are 14.
A scroll of recharging can raise a rod's max charges.
!* Evocations skill no longer can be the determiner for your
max MP.
/ Trying to use a rod of striking without any mana no longer
confuses you.
Sounds fair as they were one of the only things that really was
overpowered, though more for Deflect Missiles than for offensive spells
IMO.
MONSTERS
+ Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
but doesn't make you immune.
I haven't seen PA in action yet but have heard good things (with my
current character, a V worshipping KeAE, I'll check it out)
A few of my own suggestions:
- Vehumet is far too good currently. He's the only guaranteed way of
getting the best offensive spells, and allows you to use them with
impunity through gaining MP from killing and invocations, and making it
difficult to fail casting even high level conjuration spells. I'm not
sure what should be changed, but something has to go.
- Nemelex isn't as broken IMO. It takes a lot of work to get Evocations
up enough to use cards for obscene stat gain effectively, and he does
nothing for you until that point.
- Berserking should probably be nerfed somewhat. Maybe increase the
chance of passing out, and reduce the HP bonus.
- I'd like to see all races have some sort of body armor for all parts
of their body, even if they have no AC bonus - i.e. Ogres can have
giant boots, Spriggans get tiny shoes, etc. There could even be a (very
rare) scroll or spell to transform armor into a type that would fit
you.
- Put Bolt of Inaccuracy in a spellbook somewhere, I love that spell.
>:)
- Make potions of gain stat increase the base stat rather than add a
mutation. It's quite annoying to drink one and realise you were wearing
a AoRM.
- Perhaps make disease more dangerous. Right now it can virtually be
ignored - the stat loss could be made a lot quicker with higher levels
of disease. This could make people more careful about what they eat,
and make Komodo Dragons or Gila monsters more deadly.
I'm sure I'll think of more later. I hope you all appreciate my
suggestions.
erisdiscordia
> Hello, long time Crawler, first time caller here.
>
> Firstly I think Stone Soup is something that has to happen for the
> future of this game, but I do have a few concerns - I have a feeling
> that some things are being nerfed, just because they work, and not
> because they're overpowered.
At worst we'll be wrongly nerfing things that we wrongly think are
overpowered. Certainly to date no-one on the team has ever tried to
justify a change to anyone else with the argumentation "This *works*.
That's absolutely impermissible!" :-)
> I haven't tried the new version yet, but
> here are my ill-informed observations anyway. :)
>
>
> !* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
>
> I'm not sure this is a great idea - stepdown functions for spell power
> make increasing spell power nearly useless. I agree with decreasing the
> benefit to cast chance that they offer, but not removing it entirely.
> Perhaps increase power by 1.8 and success rate by 1.2 for each level?
So far in testing it's been working out well. I haven't done any math,
but I certainly still feel like I'm getting better outputs with
enhancers than without. They're just not such no-brainers (as opposed
to items of wizardry, etc.) as they were before.
However, more eyes see better. However-however, I'll listen harder once
you've actually seen the new mechanic in practice. :-)
> !* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
>
> Not keen on this either, as Vehumet > Sif Muna by a long way anyway
> (more on that later).
Ah, but appreciating training instead of casting != giving you less
piety. It means giving you piety for a *different reason.* In fact,
players who prefer to focus on playing rather than gaming up their
piety will now have a lot more fun with Sif than they did before, as
they aren't placed at an artificial disadvantage against the munchkins.
That said, we need to make sure we get the rate of reward and the rate
of piety leak tuned well, so comments on the current balance will be
highly appreciated.
> * Shadow Creatures is level 6, was 5.
>
> Fair enough. Maybe make the shadows turn on you if your skill isn't
> high enough? >:)
Actually, this wasn't implemented. I'm glad, as I didn't really like it
anyway. (I hardly used it even when I played a pacifist challenge...
just doesn't have enough bang for the buck, unless you count some
exploitable bugs that ISTR existed before the Travel Patch fixed them.)
> !+ Silence is level 5, was 3.
>
> Okay, but Silence (whilst amazing in the Elven Halls) does remove a lot
> of offensive and escape options from the player (spells and scrolls of
> blink, teleport)
The move to level 5 is nothing compared to Brent's rape of Silence in
4.1, actually. It was a compromise that gave The Invisible Brent in the
Sky the benefit of the doubt. Open to discussion.
> * Simulacrum is level 6, was 7.
>
> Once again, I've never used it.
Neither have I. :-D Another case of giving Brent the benefit of the
doubt.
> !+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
>
> Too far? Whilst an awesome spell it's not at all common IME. You could
> play a Warper but then you may have trouble living long enough to get
> it. ;)
Controlled Blink is a game-changing spell. Historically, game-changing
spells -- either originally intended as such or discovered over time to
be such -- have gone into levels 7-9. (Selective Amnesia is an
exception in this regard because, though it's game-changing, it needs
to be low-level to be worth learning.) CB is about middle of the road
as game-changing spells go, so it goes to 8.
(Brent's changes here were actually far more player-hostile, BTW.)
BTW since warpers are in some sense an archer class, you may want to
think twice before assuming they'll remain underpowered in Stone Soup
-- we've already got the first report rolled in about archery having
become overpowered. Although actually, I'm secretly (well, until now)
convinced (nicht boese gemeint) that Rubinstein is really just saying
that because it now works. :-)
> Can't comment too much on missiles - I have used them to some effect
> but always ended up falling back on melee. What about large rocks -
> source diving indicates that these would be as deadly when you throw
> them as when a stone giant does.
I personally didn't recommend any changes to large rocks, though some
of the changes not directly surrounding them may have made them a
better or worse deal. Darshan?
> !* New bow type -- longbow.
> !* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
> (Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
> * Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
>
> Sounds good, although I've only seen a bow of speed once (the artifact
> golden bow, received too late to be of much use)
Indeed. I'd say that only people (like me) who are fanatical about
checking for Speed egos on launchers find them more than once in a blue
moon. This (alongside the SM change) is another change implemented to
avoid advantaging munchkiny players like myself over less deformed
players. :-)
> ITEMS -- EVOCATIONS
>
> !+ Rods have been completely reworked. Rods (except Striking) now
> have what are called "charges." Each use of a rod spell
> costs a number of charges equal to its spell level. Rods
> auto-recharge, both when wielded and when in your backpack,
> although the rate is dramatically faster when the rod is
> wielded. Charging costs 1 MP on any turn when it occurs.
> Charges are shown when a rod is wield-insta-ID'd. Max charges
> are 17; this may be too kind to the player, so try to take an
> honest look at this as you go about using rods.
> Max charges in the wild are 14.
> A scroll of recharging can raise a rod's max charges.
> !* Evocations skill no longer can be the determiner for your
> max MP.
> / Trying to use a rod of striking without any mana no longer
> confuses you.
>
> Sounds fair as they were one of the only things that really was
> overpowered, though more for Deflect Missiles than for offensive spells
> IMO.
Berserker + offensive Evocations, at the very least, was brokenly
powerful. If you don't mind using Google Groups, look up "bevoker" in
the archives.
> A few of my own suggestions:
>
> - Vehumet is far too good currently. He's the only guaranteed way of
> getting the best offensive spells, and allows you to use them with
> impunity through gaining MP from killing and invocations, and making it
> difficult to fail casting even high level conjuration spells. I'm not
> sure what should be changed, but something has to go.
4.1 eliminates piety gain from undead/demons and charges piety for
Channel Energy, and allegedly (haven't confirmed myself) eliminates
Vehumet's boost to casting success rate. Darshan and I have reached
consensus about NOT eliminating piety gain from undead/demons and YES,
charging piety for Channel Energy, and no discussion has taken place
btx us on the effects on casting rate. The piety charge is only missing
because it didn't make the first release, not because we don't like it.
> - Nemelex isn't as broken IMO. [...]
I think he's very broken indeed -- useless except when he's
overpowered.
We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex. (Subject to
evaluation by the community once we've done it.) You've been warned.
> - Berserking should probably be nerfed somewhat. Maybe increase the
> chance of passing out, and reduce the HP bonus.
4.1 **zeroes** it, which I like, but it hasn't been discussed in the
team. I don't like the idea of increasing the chance of passing out.
> [neato stuff]
Neato stuff is bottom priority.
e.
Mark Mackey
erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>
>On the other hand, at least people would get rewarded for what they
>typically already do. And I do have a soft spot for making Crawl
>easier. :-) (Though I doubt you'll continue to believe me once you run
>into draconians and ponder the fact that I've also had the honor.)
Have you nerfed green draconians somewhat? In 4.1 they were almost
instantly lethal if you weren't poison resistant.
--
Mark Mackey
The Association for the Advancement of Dungeon Crawling
Hints, tips and spoilers
http://www.swallowtail.org/crawl/
Mark Mackey
<amri.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>!* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
>
>I'm not sure this is a great idea - stepdown functions for spell power
>make increasing spell power nearly useless. I agree with decreasing the
>benefit to cast chance that they offer, but not removing it entirely.
>Perhaps increase power by 1.8 and success rate by 1.2 for each level?
I disagree: this is a great idea. There are a couple of big problems
with spellcasters in pr26 which this solves at a single blow:
- every conjuring-type spellcaster ends up with Crystal Spear. When your
staff of Conjurations doesn't help you cast it it's much harder for
the non-Earth elementalist to get that failure rate down
- fire/ice elementalists can get the really twinky spells rather too
early: if you're lucky and get hold of three enhancers you can be
tossing Fire Storms about by the middle of the Lair.
- rings of wizardry are fairly useless (let's face it: the choice
between wizardry and fire/ice is a no-brainer for a conjurer)
- staves of wizardry are completely useless: maybe if you want to cast
Alter Self or Identify they were useful, but when was the last time
you found a conjurer wielding one to get the failure rate down on
Fireball? With this change, you will often have a choice: a nicely
enhanced Bolt of Fire, or Fireball with much less power but a decent
failure rate. You can't have both...
One note to the SS team: while I (in theory) liked this change in 4.1,
it does introduce some balance issues which may need toying with. The
spell power caps and/or stepdown can probably be increased, as
triple-enhanced Fire Storm is now reliably castable only by really
highly-skilled fire mages, as opposed to any midlevel conjurer as in
pr26.
The other thing that's worth noting from my experience with 4.1 is that
this change should make Foo of Wizardry much more important, but it
doesn't really because they don't help enough, especially rings.
erisdiscordia
> In article <1158756664.8...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
> >
> >On the other hand, at least people would get rewarded for what they
> >typically already do. And I do have a soft spot for making Crawl
> >easier. :-) (Though I doubt you'll continue to believe me once you run
> >into draconians and ponder the fact that I've also had the honor.)
>
> Have you nerfed green draconians somewhat? In 4.1 they were almost
> instantly lethal if you weren't poison resistant.
Last night I said these words to maaaah gi --
Erm, last night I hit the Vaults for the first time in Stone Soup.
That's where draconian bands started showing up. Were they showing up
earlier than that in 4.1? I never got that far. :-D
So far, my call on Draconian bands in Stone Soup is that they're hell,
but green draconians are not a particularly hellish part of that hell.
Personally I hate the yellows the most, with zealots and mottleds in a
tight race for second place.
(I've also taken note of your other reply, just nothing occurs to me to
say in reply to it.)
e.
Tina Hall
<snip much as I can't say much to a lot of things because I forgot too
much>
>> * Shadow Creatures is level 6, was 5.
>>
>> Fair enough. Maybe make the shadows turn on you if your skill
>> isn't high enough? >:)
> Actually, this wasn't implemented.
Shame. I thought it a good idea. From my (faulty) memory, lots of
friends make the game lots of easier. (Grammar error intended.)
Shadow Creatures was only the step on the way up to all those cute
tentacled monstrosities, but it did make things easier.
Ok, perhaps it's just the Summoner version of other chars' nasty spells
or huge weapons. But IIRC, other of my characters cast it, too, just to
make things more comfortable.
Something I remember from this: Could you lower the chance of the
monsters (Shadow Creatures as well as inhabitants) leaving so much junk
around without lowering the overall chance of the rare useful object?
Someone with a Compulsory Check Everything Disorder gets held up a lot
with all that garbage. :)
(IIRC, Shadow Creatures weren't supposed to leave anything, but they
did. Is that fixed? I don't remember.)
> I'm glad, as I didn't really like it anyway. (I hardly used it even
> when I played a pacifist challenge... just doesn't have enough bang
> for the buck, unless you count some exploitable bugs that ISTR existed
> before the Travel Patch fixed them.)
What was that?
Btw, the Travel Patch and the Stash Dump patch are both in your new
version, yes?
>> Can't comment too much on missiles - I have used them to some
>> effect but always ended up falling back on melee. What about
>> large rocks - source diving indicates that these would be as
>> deadly when you throw them as when a stone giant does.
> I personally didn't recommend any changes to large rocks, though
> some of the changes not directly surrounding them may have made
> them a better or worse deal. Darshan?
I'd like large rocks doing large damage. A character who can pick them
up and lug around (Compulsory Sorting Disorder) should be able to throw
them, too. :)
>> A few of my own suggestions:
>>
>> - Vehumet is far too good currently. He's the only guaranteed
>> way of getting the best offensive spells, and allows you to use
>> them with impunity through gaining MP from killing and
>> invocations, and making it difficult to fail casting even high
>> level conjuration spells. I'm not sure what should be changed,
>> but something has to go.
> 4.1 eliminates piety gain from undead/demons and charges piety
> for Channel Energy, and allegedly (haven't confirmed myself)
> eliminates Vehumet's boost to casting success rate.
Isn't that a bit much at once?
> Darshan and I have reached consensus about NOT eliminating piety gain
> from undead/demons and YES, charging piety for Channel Energy, and no
> discussion has taken place btx us on the effects on casting rate.
That's a relief. Perhaps try one thing after another.
>> - Nemelex isn't as broken IMO. [...]
> I think he's very broken indeed -- useless except when he's
> overpowered.
> We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex.
> (Subject to evaluation by the community once we've done it.)
> You've been warned.
What's broken about him? That he's not good for much?
--
Tina the Petrodigitator - a Follower of the Refreshing Native Gallows
Darshan Shaligram
[enhancers increase only power, not success rates]
> One note to the SS team: while I (in theory) liked this change in
> 4.1, it does introduce some balance issues which may need toying
> with. The spell power caps and/or stepdown can probably be
> increased, as triple-enhanced Fire Storm is now reliably castable
> only by really highly-skilled fire mages, as opposed to any midlevel
> conjurer as in pr26.
The underlying code is still 4.0's. The enhancer change was one of
those where we mimicked the 4.1 effect by tweaking 4.0's code instead
of importing 4.1's new spellcasting mechanics wholesale.
In particular, the power caps and stepdown are unchanged from
4.0. This may still be too kind to the player, especially combined
with Vehumet. We're still working on it. :-)
> The other thing that's worth noting from my experience with 4.1 is
> that this change should make Foo of Wizardry much more important,
> but it doesn't really because they don't help enough, especially
> rings.
Things should be better in 4.0 since we haven't adopted the
more-hostile 4.1 spell failure calculations, but we'll certainly keep
an eye on wizardry.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions.
Darshan Shaligram
> In article <1158756664.8...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>> I do have a soft spot for making Crawl easier. :-) (Though I doubt
>> you'll continue to believe me once you run into draconians and
>> ponder the fact that I've also had the honor.)
> Have you nerfed green draconians somewhat? In 4.1 they were almost
> instantly lethal if you weren't poison resistant.
They're considerably nerfed by not importing 4.1's poison resistance
system, but any kind of draconian is still Big Trouble.
Can you confirm that draconians were made considerably nastier by
Brent than they were in the Imps patch? I certainly don't remember
them conveying the Angel of FLAMING Death vibe quite so strongly in
the Imps patch, but I'm not sure I had the latest version of Imps.
A full rebalancing of draconians is also on the cards for the next
release.
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> screamed:
>
> <snip much as I can't say much to a lot of things because I forgot too
> much>
>
> >> * Shadow Creatures is level 6, was 5.
> >>
> >> Fair enough. Maybe make the shadows turn on you if your skill
> >> isn't high enough? >:)
>
> > Actually, this wasn't implemented.
>
> Shame. I thought it a good idea. From my (faulty) memory, lots of
> friends make the game lots of easier. (Grammar error intended.)
Shadow Creatures is actually one of the less efficient ways to get lots
of friends, though. (To see my qualifications to say that, search
Google Groups for [pacifist YAVP]. The funny thing? I swore for the
longest time that I'd never play a summoner.)
> Something I remember from this: Could you lower the chance of the
> monsters (Shadow Creatures as well as inhabitants) leaving so much junk
> around without lowering the overall chance of the rare useful object?
> Someone with a Compulsory Check Everything Disorder gets held up a lot
> with all that garbage. :)
I'll wait a bit on that one until you get used to the new multidrop and
multipickup features that were added to The Patch "after your time." I
suffer from the same disease, but thanks to those two features, it
hardly slows me down one bit.
> (IIRC, Shadow Creatures weren't supposed to leave anything, but they
> did. Is that fixed? I don't remember.)
I fear that it isn't. Added to my to-do.
[still on non-upping of Shadow Creatures cost]
> > I'm glad, as I didn't really like it anyway. (I hardly used it even
> > when I played a pacifist challenge... just doesn't have enough bang
> > for the buck, unless you count some exploitable bugs that ISTR existed
> > before the Travel Patch fixed them.)
>
> What was that?
As noted above, maybe the Patch *didn't* fix them. You'd think after
that pacifist game I'd know... :-[ I blame my cold.
Above all (or solely?) -- Shadow Creatures + the Hall of Blades...
> Btw, the Travel Patch and the Stash Dump patch are both in your new
> version, yes?
Yes. The whole package just gets termed "the Patch" or "the Travel
Patch" or "the Darshan Patch" nowadays, since all of the features are
provided in one big package (even outside of Stone Soup).
New to the last few months is Haran Pilpel's "Inscriptions Patch",
which, in the finest Crawl patching tradition, has long since stopped
being merely about inscriptions. :-)
> >> Can't comment too much on missiles - I have used them to some
> >> effect but always ended up falling back on melee. What about
> >> large rocks - source diving indicates that these would be as
> >> deadly when you throw them as when a stone giant does.
>
> > I personally didn't recommend any changes to large rocks, though
> > some of the changes not directly surrounding them may have made
> > them a better or worse deal. Darshan?
>
> I'd like large rocks doing large damage. A character who can pick them
> up and lug around (Compulsory Sorting Disorder) should be able to throw
> them, too. :)
Oh god, you're that extreme too? Mind you, I do *sometimes* give up
when faced with a big pile of huge rocks and move Mohammed to the
mountain instead of the other way around...
But to go back to the issue at hand -- changes to mechanics for
huge-rocks tricks -- listed, but I'd prefer to put them on the back
burner. Would you be offended?
> >> - Nemelex isn't as broken IMO. [...]
>
> > I think he's very broken indeed -- useless except when he's
> > overpowered.
>
> > We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex.
> > (Subject to evaluation by the community once we've done it.)
> > You've been warned.
>
> What's broken about him? That he's not good for much?
My experience (pacifist YAVP again) was that before it's safe to use
his cards (not counting decks of tricks, because they're not worth
counting), he really doesn't benefit you. After it's safe, he benefits
you too much... at least if you're willing to really invest heavily in
it. I actually wasn't, so my character didn't get too far out of hand,
but I've read Mark Mackey's classic... should I dig it up for you?
e.
Tina Hall
>> Shame. I thought it a good idea. From my (faulty) memory, lots
>> of friends make the game lots of easier. (Grammar error
>> intended.)
> Shadow Creatures is actually one of the less efficient ways to
> get lots of friends, though. (To see my qualifications to say
> that, search Google Groups for [pacifist YAVP]. The funny thing?
> I swore for the longest time that I'd never play a summoner.)
I thought pacifist was impossible in Crawl. :)
(Rebooting to do internet is a bit much just for that, though.)
It's not just pacifists that summon critters. Others can get some good
assistance that way, too. My KoVM (the one that stopped playing) did
summoning (and Lich form, and that spell that does mutations,...).
>> Something I remember from this: Could you lower the chance of
>> the monsters (Shadow Creatures as well as inhabitants) leaving
>> so much junk around without lowering the overall chance of the
>> rare useful object? Someone with a Compulsory Check Everything
>> Disorder gets held up a lot with all that garbage. :)
> I'll wait a bit on that one until you get used to the new
> multidrop and multipickup features that were added to The Patch
> "after your time."
Doesn't help with the amount, though.
> I suffer from the same disease, but thanks to those two features,
> it hardly slows me down one bit.
I suppose you aren't lugging the junk around half the dungeon. <g>
> [still on non-upping of Shadow Creatures cost]
[exploitable bug]
>> What was that?
> As noted above, maybe the Patch *didn't* fix them. You'd think
> after that pacifist game I'd know... :-[ I blame my cold.
> Above all (or solely?) -- Shadow Creatures + the Hall of
> Blades...
Never thought that of any use. By the time I reached the Hall of Blades,
it didn't have anything to offer for my characters outside Exp.
Shadow Creatures, as I just now remember, was much better cast somewhere
with living monsters (Vaults for example), to get food! :)
Or Exp, down in the thing with the frogs and three branches... Lair!
(Oh, dear, my memory is just awful.)
>> Btw, the Travel Patch and the Stash Dump patch are both in your
>> new version, yes?
> Yes. The whole package just gets termed "the Patch" or "the
> Travel Patch" or "the Darshan Patch" nowadays, since all of the
> features are provided in one big package (even outside of Stone
> Soup).
Great. Now if I knew how to mark a place (my old files didn't help,
though wonderously I found the right one; the command does something
else now).
> New to the last few months is Haran Pilpel's "Inscriptions
> Patch", which, in the finest Crawl patching tradition, has long
> since stopped being merely about inscriptions. :-)
Has that anything to do with the 'make note' command?
I read inscription doesn't work in the current version.
What's it about instead?
>> I'd like large rocks doing large damage. A character who can
>> pick them up and lug around (Compulsory Sorting Disorder) should
>> be able to throw them, too. :)
> Oh god, you're that extreme too?
Yeah. Want to see my treasure I had at the Temple? (In the KoVM game.)
> Mind you, I do *sometimes* give up when faced with a big pile of huge
> rocks and move Mohammed to the mountain instead of the other way
> around...
Yeah. Sometimes.
> But to go back to the issue at hand -- changes to mechanics for
> huge-rocks tricks -- listed, but I'd prefer to put them on the
> back burner. Would you be offended?
No.
>>> We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex.
>>> (Subject to evaluation by the community once we've done it.)
>>> You've been warned.
Would you take suggestions on a replacement/improvement? (Once I knew
what that could be, I'd like to do that.)
>> What's broken about him? That he's not good for much?
> My experience (pacifist YAVP again) was that before it's safe to
> use his cards (not counting decks of tricks, because they're not
> worth counting), he really doesn't benefit you. After it's safe,
> he benefits you too much... at least if you're willing to really
> invest heavily in it. I actually wasn't, so my character didn't
> get too far out of hand, but I've read Mark Mackey's classic...
> should I dig it up for you?
The stats would be interesting. And the number of decks (at least
roughly) that were used.
--
Tina the Bewitcher - an Initiate of the Rewarding Numeric Gargoyle
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> barked:
> > Release Announcemen Tina Hall wrote:
> >> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> screamed:
>
> >> Shame. I thought it a good idea. From my (faulty) memory, lots
> >> of friends make the game lots of easier. (Grammar error
> >> intended.)
>
> > Shadow Creatures is actually one of the less efficient ways to
> > get lots of friends, though. (To see my qualifications to say
> > that, search Google Groups for [pacifist YAVP]. The funny thing?
> > I swore for the longest time that I'd never play a summoner.)
>
> I thought pacifist was impossible in Crawl. :)
So did some other people, and I wasn't too sure myself. That's why I
did it.
> It's not just pacifists that summon critters. Others can get some good
> assistance that way, too. My KoVM (the one that stopped playing) did
> summoning (and Lich form, and that spell that does mutations,...).
>
> >> Something I remember from this: Could you lower the chance of
> >> the monsters (Shadow Creatures as well as inhabitants) leaving
> >> so much junk around without lowering the overall chance of the
> >> rare useful object? Someone with a Compulsory Check Everything
> >> Disorder gets held up a lot with all that garbage. :)
>
> > I'll wait a bit on that one until you get used to the new
> > multidrop and multipickup features that were added to The Patch
> > "after your time."
>
> Doesn't help with the amount, though.
It does help with the amount per pile. You're right that it doesn't
help with the amount of piles that consist solely of junk.
OK. Comment's like the > and the > > > above are the sort of comment
that are why I wanted you here.
IMO there are basically three things that can be done with junk items:
* they can be eliminated;
* they can be made non-junk.
* they can be made easier to ignore (e.g. Angband's autonuke or
whatever it's called)
The third option can be dangerous IMO as it can mask the symptoms
without curing the disease, but I dont' think it's *inherently* bad.
I believe that junk items can be divided into "junk classes" and
"things that aren't inherently junk, but that there are too much of.
Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the Triumvirate
to make junk their baby.
OK, your turn to talk... :-)
> > I suffer from the same disease, but thanks to those two features,
> > it hardly slows me down one bit.
>
> I suppose you aren't lugging the junk around half the dungeon. <g>
"Shift-X", ">" or "<" (probably ">" 75% of the time, dunno why),
"Enter". :-)
> Shadow Creatures, as I just now remember, was much better cast somewhere
> with living monsters (Vaults for example), to get food! :)
That may be an *ancient* bug. Shadow Creatures don't leave corpses in
b26+the Spring 2006 release of the Patch, at the very least.
> > New to the last few months is Haran Pilpel's "Inscriptions
> > Patch", which, in the finest Crawl patching tradition, has long
> > since stopped being merely about inscriptions. :-)
>
> Has that anything to do with the 'make note' command?
Yes. You can also thank rgrm visitor B0rsuk for it. I've made a note to
credit B0rsuk for notes. :-)
> > Oh god, you're that extreme too?
>
> Yeah. Want to see my treasure I had at the Temple? (In the KoVM game.)
Did you e.g. conserve every single box of beasts, even though you know
that in reality, you'd never use them?
> >>> We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex.
> >>> (Subject to evaluation by the community once we've done it.)
> >>> You've been warned.
>
> Would you take suggestions on a replacement/improvement? (Once I knew
> what that could be, I'd like to do that.)
Maybe. We need to discuss strategy on that in the team.
> >> What's broken about him? That he's not good for much?
>
> > My experience (pacifist YAVP again) was that before it's safe to
> > use his cards (not counting decks of tricks, because they're not
> > worth counting), he really doesn't benefit you. After it's safe,
> > he benefits you too much... at least if you're willing to really
> > invest heavily in it. I actually wasn't, so my character didn't
> > get too far out of hand, but I've read Mark Mackey's classic...
> > should I dig it up for you?
>
> The stats would be interesting. And the number of decks (at least
> roughly) that were used.
Str : 17
Int : 21
Dex : 24
It's been too long to remember the number decks of wonder/power very
well. Sevenish?
I can email you the fellow if you're really curious about him.
e.
johan.s...@gmail.com
> In the past months, in secret so as not to risk raising any ruckus that
> wouldn't be followed by actual results, Darshan and I have been
> cooperating on a project to bring the Crawl-playing public many new
> features, and especially our favorite features of 4.1 alpha, inside of
> a game that's actually fun to play.
*Standing ovation*
Some random comments:
The OS X version seems to be a bit buggy. It exits immediatly if you
try to load a saved game or if you use a previously used name. The
colours are a bit strange too, but I haven't looked into what can be
done in init.txt.
Religion:
Vehumet/Sif Muna: the Channel Energy ability would be a better fit with
Sif Muna IMO. You already get mana for kills with Vehumet, and
channeling ambient magic feels more Sif Muna-ish, and that way Sif Muna
would be an option even for a conjurer. It would also remove the
cheesiest part of Vehumet, the combination of Firestorm+get energy
back+1-2 channel energy = a Vehumet conjurer back to full mana.
Nemelex: I agree with you. He doesn't do anything useful unless you
build a character explicitly to exploit cards, and it that case he's
broken. However I like the trickster flavour, so I hope you replace him
with something similar. I think the problem is that the decks of tricks
and decks of power are too random to be useful in tactical situations,
which means cards will only be used in farming sessions.
Xom: Once you hit the midgame his punishments tend to be harmless, and
his gifts tend to be useful much of the time if you're playing a melee
character. I'd like to see bigger diversity in punishments and rewards,
and also something that could be challenging for a high-level
character. Right now you can sit around and do nothing for long
stretches of time, and Xom will still hand you nice things. His
punishments aren't that bad either - type 3 demons are no challenge for
level 20+ characters.
Some suggestions: transformations of the player into different
creatures, "hide and seek" - summon a bunch of monsters around the
player but make you invisible, "scavenger hunt": scatter things over
the level, including some of the player's equipment, "the Xom
exchange": exchange some of his gifts with something else; that nice
piece of armour could be replaced with a banana, but a scroll of random
uselessness might turn into a vorpal axe, whims: Xom decides he
likes/dislikes certain things/behaviours for a while, and gets
happy/mad if the player does/doesn't do them.
Many of the changes sound very promising, so I'll dig in a bit more
once I've finished my current vanilla character.
--
Johan
johan.s...@gmail.com
> Some random comments:
Another thing (more of a bugfix than anything else): it would be nice
if you got the glow message when your magic contamination is high
enough to mutate you. When I played a Xom DSCK I got quite a lot of
mutations from contamination without reaching glowing status, thanks to
random and nonrandom hastings, berserking, invisibility, etc.
--
Johan
Haran Pilpel
> Some random comments:
>
> The OS X version seems to be a bit buggy. It exits immediately if you
> try to load a saved game or if you use a previously used name. The
> colours are a bit strange too, but I haven't looked into what can be
> done in init.txt.
I think I've fixed this one for 0.1.1.
Haran Pilpel
At the moment magic contamination of exactly 5 does not show up as a
glow but does cause shudder effects.
I'm wondering whether this is intentional.
Haran
erisdiscordia
So am I. I've always liked this fact (which I knew informally even
before I knew it "scientifically".) But then, sometimes, I enjoy pain.
e.
Tina Hall
>>>> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> screamed:
>> I thought pacifist was impossible in Crawl. :)
> So did some other people, and I wasn't too sure myself. That's
> why I did it.
Cool.
>>>> Something I remember from this: Could you lower the chance of
>>>> the monsters (Shadow Creatures as well as inhabitants) leaving
>>>> so much junk around without lowering the overall chance of the
>>>> rare useful object? Someone with a Compulsory Check Everything
>>>> Disorder gets held up a lot with all that garbage. :)
>>
>>> I'll wait a bit on that one until you get used to the new
>>> multidrop and multipickup features that were added to The Patch
>>> "after your time."
How does multidrop/pickup work, anyway? I checked '?', but unless I'm
just not seeing it (not impossible), it doesn't tell me.
I'm very happy to set waypoints now, though. :)
>> Doesn't help with the amount, though.
> It does help with the amount per pile. You're right that it
> doesn't help with the amount of piles that consist solely of
> junk.
Btw. Some way to break ';' (look at what's here) lists would be nice.
(So far, all I get to do is scroll through with space. If I forgot a
better method, please tell me.)
And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat, drink,
whatever) but also the prompt, would be nice. I always have to press it
twice when I change my mind (which I sometimes forget, and it tells me
"you can't eat that", lucky me it was a boot or something).
> OK. Comment's like the > and the > > > above are the sort of
> comment that are why I wanted you here.
Cool.
> IMO there are basically three things that can be done with junk
> items:
> * they can be eliminated;
> * they can be made non-junk.
Non-junk would be too kind on the player, flooding him.
> * they can be made easier to ignore (e.g. Angband's autonuke or
> whatever it's called)
Ignore pile works fine to ignore what I know I don't want. It's before
that (and the stuff I keep that I might want, but in fact rarely to
never do), that makes things lengthy.
From my point of view (using random, made up numbers) there might be:
100 orcish leather armour. 20 of them are +1, 10 are +2, 5 have a
resistance tagged on.
Now, if you just throw out 50 [*] and double the chance of good ones,
you might lose something nifty, even if you never see it. I'd not like
that.
If you throw out 50 of the junk ones, you get to save scrolls on detect
curse. Rather than messing with them as well, you could remove the
majority of the +0 ones but keep all cursed, negative, as well as
interesting items. (And perhaps slightly lower the chance of them
appearing?)
I don't know. Maybe after some more thinking about it.
[*] Disappearing after the orc used them - because they got destroyed
beyond recovery in the fight would be a reasonable explanation on why.
Doing that realistically (calculating how shredded/burned/whatever they
are) might do more harm than good. Crawl is cool because it focusses on
the interesting things instead of getting distracted with what happens
if you dip your left thumb in a yellow potion. ;) (In other words,
people who want the latter level of detail can play Nethack.)
A prime example for simplicity in the right place is the lack of a
needed light source, and complexity in the right place is the skill
system.
> The third option can be dangerous IMO as it can mask the symptoms
> without curing the disease, but I dont' think it's *inherently*
> bad.
Don't know Angband's autonuke.
> I believe that junk items can be divided into "junk classes" and
> "things that aren't inherently junk, but that there are too much
> of.
Like more orcish foo mail than ';' can look at. <g>
> Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
> Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
?
> OK, your turn to talk... :-)
Oops. I already went rambling above.
>>> I suffer from the same disease, but thanks to those two
>>> features, it hardly slows me down one bit.
>>
>> I suppose you aren't lugging the junk around half the dungeon.
>> <g>
> "Shift-X", ">" or "<" (probably ">" 75% of the time, dunno why),
> "Enter". :-)
Try Waypoints and let it run to your stash and back. :)
>> Shadow Creatures, as I just now remember, was much better cast
>> somewhere with living monsters (Vaults for example), to get
>> food! :)
> That may be an *ancient* bug. Shadow Creatures don't leave
> corpses in b26+the Spring 2006 release of the Patch, at the very
> least.
Ah. I ate them still, with the KoVM.
>>> New to the last few months is Haran Pilpel's "Inscriptions
>>> Patch", which, in the finest Crawl patching tradition, has long
>>> since stopped being merely about inscriptions. :-)
>>
>> Has that anything to do with the 'make note' command?
> Yes. You can also thank rgrm visitor B0rsuk for it. I've made a
> note to credit B0rsuk for notes. :-)
So what does the 'make note' thing do?
>>> Oh god, you're that extreme too?
>>
>> Yeah. Want to see my treasure I had at the Temple? (In the KoVM
>> game.)
> Did you e.g. conserve every single box of beasts, even though you
> know that in reality, you'd never use them?
10 of them, plus 3 bottled efreets. :)
I only kept one of each of: a stone of earth elementals, an air
elemental fan, a lamp of fire, a lantern of shadows, a disc of storms, a
crystal ball of seeing, a crystal ball of fixation, a crystal ball of
energy.
Still, I had the game refuse to drop items because something was full
(variable? I vaguely remember something getting lost that way, too).
>>>>> We are most likely going to eliminate the current Nemelex.
>>>>> (Subject to evaluation by the community once we've done it.)
>>>>> You've been warned.
>>
>> Would you take suggestions on a replacement/improvement? (Once I
>> knew what that could be, I'd like to do that.)
> Maybe. We need to discuss strategy on that in the team.
I'm sure you'll let us know the result of that discussion.
>>>> What's broken about him? That he's not good for much?
>>
>>> My experience (pacifist YAVP again) was that before it's safe
>>> to use his cards (not counting decks of tricks, because they're
>>> not worth counting), he really doesn't benefit you. After it's
>>> safe, he benefits you too much... at least if you're willing to
>>> really invest heavily in it. I actually wasn't, so my character
>>> didn't get too far out of hand, but I've read Mark Mackey's
>>> classic... should I dig it up for you?
>>
>> The stats would be interesting. And the number of decks (at
>> least roughly) that were used.
> Str : 17
> Int : 21
> Dex : 24
Hm. Looks meagre compared to my KoVM, and he still had three decks of
wonders lying in his stash, too.
(Is that your pacifist, or Mark Mackey's classic?)
> It's been too long to remember the number decks of wonder/power
> very well. Sevenish?
> I can email you the fellow if you're really curious about him.
Yep. (No html, please.)
--
Tina the Smasher - a Follower of the Ruby Neon Generation
enurmi
Tina Hall wrote:
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> buzzed:
> > Tina Hall wrote:
> >> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> barked:
> >>> Tina Hall wrote:
> >>>> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> screamed:
> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat, drink,
> whatever) but also the prompt, would be nice. I always have to press it
> twice when I change my mind (which I sometimes forget, and it tells me
> "you can't eat that", lucky me it was a boot or something).
I'm all for this change! At least, if you don't lose a turn on the
aborted action.
> [How to reduce the amount of junk, for example +0 orc leather armours]
> [*] Disappearing after the orc used them - because they got destroyed
> beyond recovery in the fight would be a reasonable explanation on why.
This could perhaps be done by using the same kind of code that
determines how armour reacts to acid - enchanted and magical ones have
lower chance of being damaged (in this case, of vanishing) than vanilla
ones, while randarts don't vanish. If 50% of the armour drops would go
through this "damage-test", that would perhaps reduce the amount of
junk to half, while still retaining most of the ego ones and all
artifacts. Actully I'm not sure if +3 orc leather armour is more
durable than +0, but I believe that "of fire resistance" is.
Erkki Nurmi, HDFi currently in vaults, cl18, my first SS character :D
plague
> play graphical roguelikes. This makes you a sinner. As penitence, you
> must visit http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html, figure out how in
> the hell to use the e-mail link there, and contact the Null Po Doh,
> whom we have to thank for the already-existing (wonderful) Tile
> version.
>
> Return to me when you are ready. :-P
I apologize for disturbing the lord of the obscure irrelevant ascii
game newsgroup.
Anyway, I don't exclusively play graphical roguelikes, but being an
artist I do find it pleasing to play some RL's with tiles and Crawl is
certainly one of my favorites.
As for how the hell to use the email link there... the link is:
"xppm(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)jp"
Which seems to translate rather easily into xp...@users.sourceforge.jp
Mark Mackey
That's Erik's pacifist. My long-ago YAVP had Strength 39, Dexterity
23, Intelligence 29. Oh, wait, there was another one, a spriggan with
Strength 37, Dexterity 44, Intelligence 43 :).
That pales into insignificance against Haran's Skeptic the GhFi
(Omnipotent), who had Strength 135, Intelligence 144 and Dexterity 113.
Mind you, he had to recompile the game to remove the 72 cap on stats!
erisdiscordia
> > Not only have you top-posted and quoted irrelevant material, you also
> > play graphical roguelikes. This makes you a sinner. As penitence, you
> > must visit http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html, figure out how in
> > the hell to use the e-mail link there, and contact the Null Po Doh,
> > whom we have to thank for the already-existing (wonderful) Tile
> > version.
> >
> > Return to me when you are ready. :-P
>
> I apologize for disturbing the lord of the obscure irrelevant ascii
> game newsgroup.
>
> Anyway, I don't exclusively play graphical roguelikes, but being an
> artist I do find it pleasing to play some RL's with tiles and Crawl is
> certainly one of my favorites.
I was trying to be lighthearted and not in any way offensive. That's
why I used the larger-than-life approach. I'm sad to hear that I
failed. BTW I think that graphical roguelikes are just fine and look
forward to seeing graphical crawl catch up with ASCII Crawl
technology-wise.
I was really trying to unload the job of contacting Null Po Doh onto
you because of my being strapped for Stone Soup related time. Yes, it's
naughty of me.
e.
erisdiscordia
> just not seeing it (not impossible), it doesn't tell me.
I believe it's #'d off by default, and that you have to go and change
# To be able to drop multiple items from the drop menu in one go,
enable
# multidrop (you can also switch to multidrop from the classic drop
menu using
# the @ key).
#
#drop_mode = multi
to
# To be able to drop multiple items from the drop menu in one go,
enable
# multidrop (you can also switch to multidrop from the classic drop
menu using
# the @ key).
#
drop_mode = multi
within the init.txt file to turn it on.
I have done absolutely nothing to verify this belief, however.
(If the second version above is already what you see, then it'll be
harder to figure out the problem.) That's for multidrop. Multipickup --
is that really not on by default for you?! There isn't any init.txt
switch for multipickup.
> Btw. Some way to break ';' (look at what's here) lists would be nice.
Multipickup makes them irrelevant, though -- you can see ; lists with
*very* nice formatting just by pretending that you want to pick
something up.
> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat, drink,
> whatever) but also the prompt, would be nice. I always have to press it
> twice when I change my mind (which I sometimes forget, and it tells me
> "you can't eat that", lucky me it was a boot or something).
I don't have those interface screens very well integrated into my head
:-). I think what it is is that I've got the option set for skipping
the prompt entirely, as I find it to be absolutely useless for my own
play. The seem to be a lot of people who use it, considering how
quickly enurmi spoke up after your message. OK, I've put the following
on my List:
ESC escaping that eat/drink/etc. prompt I always skip
Hopefully I'll remember what that means when we go to discuss it.
> > * they can be eliminated;
> > * they can be made non-junk.
>
> Non-junk would be too kind on the player, flooding him.
Only if the item is hyper-common. For example, making non-poisoned
needles non-junk, is something that I believe could benefit the game --
though if I turn out to be wrong, I'm for dumping both them and
blowguns of venom.
I don't think I'll *ever* get the point of scrolls of paper, but I'm
almost afraid to bring them up. They're such a flagrant violation of
what I see to be common design sense that I figure they must have some
powerful friends out there somewhere.
> [idea]
Cool idea. Will obviously need some hammering, glue, and duct tape, but
then, so does every idea.
> > The third option can be dangerous IMO as it can mask the symptoms
> > without curing the disease, but I dont' think it's *inherently*
> > bad.
>
> Don't know Angband's autonuke.
I don't think anybody actually calls it that, but I couldn't remember
any of the various names it's given in the games of the Angband family
(none of which I play very frequently anymore). Now I remember
autosquelch as one of them. Basically, an "autosquelch" compares
various item properties to a set of rulesets, and if one of the
rulesets is met, the item is destroyed. (More advanced systems also let
you do other things, like automatically add an inscription to the
item.) Here's an example of how a ruleset:
If the item's quality is merely "good" or lower ("good" having a
certain digitally definable meaning) instead of "excellent" or higher,
and I am level 10 or higher, destroy it.
The destruction normally happens automatically, without asking the
player. (After all, the player's the one who set up the rule.)
*bands that have autosquelch will also have a manual-squelch key.
Note that part of what makes autosquelch make sense is the auto-ID
system in Angband, where your character can determine that item quality
is e.g. "good" just by carrying it for a while.
I'm not proposing any of this for Crawl, but I just don't want to leave
you not knowing what I was talking about.
> > I believe that junk items can be divided into "junk classes" and
> > "things that aren't inherently junk, but that there are too much
> > of.
>
> Like more orcish foo mail than ';' can look at. <g>
Again -- I can't even *remember* the last time I touched ';'. The
autopickup interface makes it irrelevant. So the important thing for
you, for now is to get autopickup working for you.
> > Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
> > Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
"Junk Is An Important Topic."
> > "Shift-X", ">" or "<" (probably ">" 75% of the time, dunno why),
> > "Enter". :-)
>
> Try Waypoints and let it run to your stash and back. :)
Why go so far, when the nearest stairs are much nearer?
I'm talking about junkpiles here, mind you -- to go to my stash, I hit
Ctrl-G, t or Ctrl-G, l, Enter. :-)
> >> Has that anything to do with the 'make note' command?
>
> > Yes. You can also thank rgrm visitor B0rsuk for it. I've made a
> > note to credit B0rsuk for notes. :-)
>
> So what does the 'make note' thing do?
I don't know in detail yet, because I haven't yet had a chance to use
it -- I've been too lazy to install Haran's patch! :-) I'm hoping it'll
be in the 0.1.1 release of Stone Soup.
[pacifist - Nemelexite]
> > Str : 17
> > Int : 21
> > Dex : 24
>
> Hm. Looks meagre compared to my KoVM, and he still had three decks of
> wonders lying in his stash, too.
That character didn't get a chance to visit *any* of the extra-rune
areas except the Slime Pits, so he was perhaps a bit lacking in chances
to earn more cards. Plus, he sucked up new treasure pretty slowly,
because unlike summons as a supplement, summons as your sole way of
doing damage makes things a bit slow sometimes. So he earned piety
unusually slowly and thus earned decks unusually slowly.
e.
smiley
> The OS X version seems to be a bit buggy. It exits immediatly if you
> try to load a saved game or if you use a previously used name. The
> colours are a bit strange too, but I haven't looked into what can be
> done in init.txt.
The colours can be fixed in init.txt.
I believe you can fix the saving problem in the following manner (if you
don't wish to wait for the next release, and can compile from source):
- edit the file AppHdr.h
- jump to line 323, which reads
#define SAVE_DIR_PATH ""
- comment it out, so it reads
// #define SAVE_DIR_PATH ""
- recompile.
This is because if SAVE_DIR_PATH is defined (even if defined as nothing)
the game adds a number suffix to the save file path... sometimes.
This 'sometimes' is a problem, and I didn't look far enough into it to
see where the inconsistency is, but removing the definition seems to
work (on linux, which shares the UNIX and hence MULTIUSER sections of
AppHdr.h with OSX).
--
--jude hungerford.
Tina Hall
> Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> wrote:
>> (Is that your pacifist, or Mark Mackey's classic?)
> That's Erik's pacifist. My long-ago YAVP had Strength 39,
> Dexterity 23, Intelligence 29. Oh, wait, there was another one, a
> spriggan with Strength 37, Dexterity 44, Intelligence 43 :).
The latter looks more like my KoVM. :) (Strength 40, Dexterity 54,
Intelligence 40, but one ring had Str +3 as well.)
> That pales into insignificance against Haran's Skeptic the GhFi
> (Omnipotent), who had Strength 135, Intelligence 144 and
> Dexterity 113. Mind you, he had to recompile the game to remove
> the 72 cap on stats!
Heh. Cool, though. (If you spend that much time on getting the stats,
you have all rights to use them. :) )
How long did he take?
--
Tina the Crawler of Death - an Elder of the Revelling National Gobbler
Tina Hall
<Tina wrote:>
What's it with you and attributions? Set out to exterminate them? :) If
you leave them out, your reply to me won't be highlighted!
>> How does multidrop/pickup work, anyway? I checked '?', but
>> unless I'm just not seeing it (not impossible), it doesn't tell
>> me.
> I believe it's #'d off by default, and that you have to go and
> change
[...]
Thanks. :) I've also done some reading (and getting the spoilers
mentioned in the meantime). Will try it out in a bit.
> I have done absolutely nothing to verify this belief, however.
:)
> (If the second version above is already what you see, then it'll
> be harder to figure out the problem.)
Wasn't.
> That's for multidrop. Multipickup -- is that really not on by default
> for you?! There isn't any init.txt switch for multipickup.
Hm. Perhaps I expected a menue-like list rather than the old "pick up
foo y/n - pick up next foo y/n - ..." :)
>> Btw. Some way to break ';' (look at what's here) lists would be
>> nice.
> Multipickup makes them irrelevant, though -- you can see ; lists
> with *very* nice formatting just by pretending that you want to
> pick something up.
Hm. See above. Am I pressing the wrong key? I'm using 'g', and a look at
my macro.txt tells me that isn't just my own customized key. I'll try
'*' next time.
>> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat,
>> drink, whatever) but also the prompt, would be nice. I always
>> have to press it twice when I change my mind (which I sometimes
>> forget, and it tells me "you can't eat that", lucky me it was a
>> boot or something).
> I don't have those interface screens very well integrated into my
> head :-). I think what it is is that I've got the option set for
> skipping the prompt entirely, as I find it to be absolutely
> useless for my own play.
So how do I do that? (Refresh my memory please if I should know.)
>>> * they can be eliminated;
>>> * they can be made non-junk.
>>
>> Non-junk would be too kind on the player, flooding him.
> Only if the item is hyper-common.
Like +0 orcish leather/foo mail? :)
> For example, making non-poisoned needles non-junk, is something
> that I believe could benefit the game -- though if I turn out to
> be wrong, I'm for dumping both them and blowguns of venom.
I think I'd be with dumping them entirely. What would you do to them to
make them non-junk, though?
> I don't think I'll *ever* get the point of scrolls of paper, but
> I'm almost afraid to bring them up. They're such a flagrant
> violation of what I see to be common design sense that I figure
> they must have some powerful friends out there somewhere.
:)
>> Don't know Angband's autonuke.
[...]
> The destruction normally happens automatically, without asking
> the player. (After all, the player's the one who set up the
> rule.)
That does circumvent the need to identify it, which uses resources.
Maybe it works for Angband, but I don't think it would be right for
Crawl.
> I'm not proposing any of this for Crawl, but I just don't want to
> leave you not knowing what I was talking about.
Thanks.
>>> I believe that junk items can be divided into "junk classes"
>>> and "things that aren't inherently junk, but that there are too
>>> much of.
>>
>> Like more orcish foo mail than ';' can look at. <g>
> Again -- I can't even *remember* the last time I touched ';'. The
> autopickup interface makes it irrelevant. So the important thing
> for you, for now is to get autopickup working for you.
Yep. Will try to find out what I'm doing wrong.
>>> Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
>>> Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
> "Junk Is An Important Topic."
?
>>> "Shift-X", ">" or "<" (probably ">" 75% of the time, dunno
>>> why), "Enter". :-)
>>
>> Try Waypoints and let it run to your stash and back. :)
> Why go so far, when the nearest stairs are much nearer?
Because I want to go to my stash, not just the nearest stairs. From the
stairs I would just have to repeat it and go to the next stairs again.
> I'm talking about junkpiles here, mind you -- to go to my stash,
> I hit Ctrl-G, t or Ctrl-G, l, Enter. :-)
:) And when you want to go back down to where you were? All done
manually, rather than just marking the point before you leave?
Junkpiles are near down-stairs, but not on them, and usually not one on
each level. (They're sorted, too, and if you drop junk next to stairs, a
monster you take with you will pick it up.)
--
Tina the Bludgeoner - the Champion of the Ruinous New General
Haran Pilpel
>> That pales into insignificance against Haran's Skeptic the GhFi
>> (Omnipotent), who had Strength 135, Intelligence 144 and
>> Dexterity 113. Mind you, he had to recompile the game to remove
>> the 72 cap on stats!
>
> Heh. Cool, though. (If you spend that much time on getting the stats,
> you have all rights to use them. :) )
>
> How long did he take?
Exactly three days of game time. Around a year of off-and-on playing.
Haran
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> moaned:
> <Tina wrote:>
>
> What's it with you and attributions? Set out to exterminate them? :) If
> you leave them out, your reply to me won't be highlighted!
What's it with the designers of the standards for Usenet communication
back in the day and the inclusion of semi-technical data in the
human-readable data?!
I take out as many levels of that fluff as I can get away with whenever
I can get away with it, yes. :-) OK, I'll do my best to leave them in
when replying to you.
> > That's for multidrop. Multipickup -- is that really not on by default
> > for you?! There isn't any init.txt switch for multipickup.
>
> Hm. Perhaps I expected a menue-like list rather than the old "pick up
> foo y/n - pick up next foo y/n - ..." :)
Your ' * ' guess below was the right one.
I secretly hope that you'll join me in begging Darshan to allow at
least optional activation of multipickup when you're only standing over
a stack instead of a pile. My slingers will be soooo grateful.
(Rocks form a single stack unless one has done funny enchanting
business, so when I keep all my nothing but rocks on the square with my
rocks, then my attempt to pick up rocks go like this:
pick up rocks -- no way not to pick up whole pile AFAIK
OOOF ARRRGH HELP I'M OVERLOADED
use multidrop to drop a few hundred rocks
I whined about this a year or two back, but Darshan didn't see my
plight as worth the big effort it would apparently take to fix. :-) )
> >> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat,
> >> drink, whatever) [...]
>
> > I don't have those interface screens very well integrated into my
> > head :-). I think what it is is that I've got the option set for
> > skipping the prompt entirely, as I find it to be absolutely
> > useless for my own play.
>
> So how do I do that? (Refresh my memory please if I should know.)
auto_list = true
Again, I'm too lazy to look at a "virgin" init.txt, but I suspect
you'll find it in there #'d.
> >>> * they can be eliminated;
> >>> * they can be made non-junk.
> >>
> >> Non-junk would be too kind on the player, flooding him.
>
> > Only if the item is hyper-common.
>
> Like +0 orcish leather/foo mail? :)
Yeah, that would do. :-)
> > For example, making non-poisoned needles non-junk, is something
> > that I believe could benefit the game -- though if I turn out to
> > be wrong, I'm for dumping both them and blowguns of venom.
>
> I think I'd be with dumping them entirely. What would you do to them to
> make them non-junk, though?
For example, we could make them do enough damage to be useful for at
least a small portion of the game and at least in the hands of true
Darts experts, for example. Blowguns of venom would become different
for another reason... but that would be telling. (Both ideas are part
of ongoing discussion.)
[autosquelch/autonuke/autowhatever]
> > The destruction normally happens automatically, without asking
> > the player. (After all, the player's the one who set up the
> > rule.)
>
> That does circumvent the need to identify it, which uses resources.
Oh! No! It doesn't! In all the existing autosquelch systems that I
know, items that match autosquelch criteria are only recognized as
matching them if they've been identified to a strong enough degree that
*you* would know that they match if you looked yourself.
> >>> Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
> >>> Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
>
> > "Junk Is An Important Topic."
>
> ?
That I believe that it's important for someone, on the team or off, to
spend a good chunk of time judging which item types are
always/sometimes junk, and proposing solutions.
[Why Erik doesn't -- gasp! :-) -- use waypoints]
> :) And when you want to go back down to where you were? All done
> manually, rather than just marking the point before you leave?
ctrl-g, branchletter, [nothing | 11 | 22 | 33]. Granted, this gets me
in a hell of a lot of trouble sometimes, but where would the fun be
without trouble? And meanwhile, it's zero-thought and almost
zero-finger-movement. :-)
Sometimes I actually remember the levelnumber where I was, so if it's
not too hard for my fingers to reach from their home positions, I type
it in directly instead of 11, 22, or 33.
> Junkpiles are near down-stairs, but not on them, and usually not one on
> each level.
Hmm. I usually have *several* per level. Basically my mantra is "if I'm
asking myself what to do now, there's no harm in answering "junkpile!"
Always at diagonals from the given staircase, for mere aesthetic
reasons. Depending on the character type, I may have multiples for most
staircases -- e.g. Ely-chow separate from other stuff. For all
characters, I'll have occasional multiples anyway for things like "this
is only *kind of* junk."
(I've actually won twice without hoovering -- the speedrunner and the
vegetarian. The extra turns spent hoovering would have kept the
speedrunner from breaking any speed records, and would have made the
vegetarian starve.)
[From another post:]
> Vegetarian?
Why not? Originally I wanted to go foodless, but I couldn't keep myself
fed by converting corpses into potions via Fulsome Distillation, I
couldn't maintain Zin piety fast enough to go the satiation-prayers
route, and I couldn't combine the two because Fulsome Distillation is a
Necromancy spell. So I downgraded to vegetarian.
It was hard, but not the hardest. (I guess that was the Ogre
"Conjurer".) Monks kick butt pretty fast once they get going, so once I
finally got a character past the opening -- which *is* really hard with
a vegetarian -- it eventually became easy to find vegetarian-friendly
rations faster than I ate them. Meanwhile, on the upside, you wouldn't
buh-*lieve* what an easy time I had keeping Okawaru happy. :-D
> (They're sorted, too,
?
> and if you drop junk next to stairs, a
> monster you take with you will pick it up.)
?
e.
Tina Hall
Wow. How many turns?
--
Tina the Petrodigitator - an Elder of the Recent Native Gas
Tina Hall
>> What's it with you and attributions? Set out to exterminate
>> them? :) If you leave them out, your reply to me won't be
>> highlighted!
> What's it with the designers of the standards for Usenet
> communication back in the day and the inclusion of semi-technical
> data in the human-readable data?!
Well, if this were Fido, I wouldn't need the attributions; proper
software had a 'to user' in the header thing and XP would hightlight
those that have 'Tina Hall' there.
> I take out as many levels of that fluff as I can get away with
> whenever I can get away with it, yes. :-) OK, I'll do my best to
> leave them in when replying to you.
:) Thank you.
I don't like too many quotes, either.
>> Hm. Perhaps I expected a menue-like list rather than the old
>> "pick up foo y/n - pick up next foo y/n - ..." :)
> Your ' * ' guess below was the right one.
Yep! Neat!
> I secretly hope that you'll join me in begging Darshan to allow
> at least optional activation of multipickup when you're only
> standing over a stack instead of a pile. My slingers will be
> soooo grateful.
Can't you just enter a number first, with some other letter, or am I
confusing things, or didn't that work even here? (I am confused.)
> (Rocks form a single stack unless one has done funny enchanting
> business, so when I keep all my nothing but rocks on the square
> with my rocks, then my attempt to pick up rocks go like this:
> pick up rocks -- no way not to pick up whole pile AFAIK
> OOOF ARRRGH HELP I'M OVERLOADED
I can imagine that. :)
> use multidrop to drop a few hundred rocks
> I whined about this a year or two back, but Darshan didn't see my
> plight as worth the big effort it would apparently take to fix.
> :-) )
Ow.
You could put something else on the pile, a blank scroll for example.
Finally a use! :) (All your rocks are just paperweight, heh.)
They don't get dirty that way, either.
>>>> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat,
>>>> drink, whatever) [...]
>>
>>> I don't have those interface screens very well integrated into
>>> my head :-). I think what it is is that I've got the option set
>>> for skipping the prompt entirely, as I find it to be absolutely
>>> useless for my own play.
>>
>> So how do I do that? (Refresh my memory please if I should
>> know.)
> auto_list = true
Have that already. That is the list I'm talking about (where I'd prefer
it quittable with one ESC instead of two). There is a prompt.
>>>>> * they can be eliminated;
>>>>> * they can be made non-junk.
>>>>
>>>> Non-junk would be too kind on the player, flooding him.
>>
>>> Only if the item is hyper-common.
>>
>> Like +0 orcish leather/foo mail? :)
> Yeah, that would do. :-)
I just dumped some on Sif Muna. But that char got killed, too. Am
wondering what to play at the moment. (Again. I spend much time that
way. I don't like elves anymore. Frail buggers.)
[non-poisoned needles, blowguns of venom]
>> I think I'd be with dumping them entirely. What would you do to
>> them to make them non-junk, though?
> For example, we could make them do enough damage to be useful for
> at least a small portion of the game and at least in the hands of
> true Darts experts, for example. Blowguns of venom would become
> different for another reason... but that would be telling. (Both
> ideas are part of ongoing discussion.)
I wouldn't want a mere "I don't want to dig through too much junk"
turned into a player advantage. Nor a disadvantage. I just want to have
to check less junk to find the good bits. :) (Costing the same amount of
recourses, preferably.)
> [autosquelch/autonuke/autowhatever]
>>> The destruction normally happens automatically, without asking
>>> the player. (After all, the player's the one who set up the
>>> rule.)
>>
>> That does circumvent the need to identify it, which uses
>> resources.
> Oh! No! It doesn't! In all the existing autosquelch systems that
> I know, items that match autosquelch criteria are only recognized
> as matching them if they've been identified to a strong enough
> degree that *you* would know that they match if you looked
> yourself.
But in Crawl, we don't have that.
>>>>> Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
>>>>> Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
>>
>>> "Junk Is An Important Topic."
>>
>> ?
> That I believe that it's important for someone, on the team or
> off, to spend a good chunk of time judging which item types are
> always/sometimes junk, and proposing solutions.
You want someone to think about it and present you with a suggestion? Or
someone who could program that?
> [Why Erik doesn't -- gasp! :-) -- use waypoints]
>> :) And when you want to go back down to where you were? All done
>> manually, rather than just marking the point before you leave?
> ctrl-g, branchletter, [nothing | 11 | 22 | 33].
And walk the rest from there?
> Granted, this gets me in a hell of a lot of trouble sometimes, but
> where would the fun be without trouble? And meanwhile, it's zero
> -thought and almost zero-finger-movement. :-)
Waypoints, too. :)
(Just always use the same numbers for your active return-to waypoint.
Others for interesting stashes. I've got 0 for my god's altar in the
temple, because going through them is too tedious. I'm lazy. :) )
> Sometimes I actually remember the levelnumber where I was,
We are twins. <g>
(I rarely remember them, either.)
> so if it's not too hard for my fingers to reach from their home
> positions, I type it in directly instead of 11, 22, or 33.
If you're happy that way... :)
>> Junkpiles are near down-stairs, but not on them, and usually not
>> one on each level.
> Hmm. I usually have *several* per level.
Eek! :)
> Basically my mantra is "if I'm asking myself what to do now, there's
> no harm in answering "junkpile!" Always at diagonals from the given
> staircase, for mere aesthetic reasons.
Oh, yes. I just want a proper corner, too, and properly sorted. (Right
now, I'm wondering about a new system, because the corners get too
crowded, and the temple, too, even after just reaching it. <sigh>)
> Depending on the character
> type, I may have multiples for most staircases -- e.g. Ely-chow
> separate from other stuff.
Ely-chow?
> For all characters, I'll have occasional multiples anyway for things
> like "this is only *kind of* junk."
Yep. And different sorts of junk. Junk uncursed <useless weapon> is not
the same as junk foo mail. :)
> (I've actually won twice without hoovering -- the speedrunner and
> the vegetarian. The extra turns spent hoovering would have kept
> the speedrunner from breaking any speed records, and would have
> made the vegetarian starve.)
I can imagine that very well.
> [From another post:]
>> Vegetarian?
> Why not? Originally I wanted to go foodless, but I couldn't keep
> myself fed by converting corpses into potions via Fulsome
> Distillation, I couldn't maintain Zin piety fast enough to go the
> satiation-prayers route, and I couldn't combine the two because
> Fulsome Distillation is a Necromancy spell. So I downgraded to
> vegetarian.
<shaking head> You're crazy, you know that, don't you? :)
> It was hard, but not the hardest. (I guess that was the Ogre
> "Conjurer".) Monks kick butt pretty fast once they get going, so
> once I finally got a character past the opening -- which *is*
> really hard with a vegetarian -- it eventually became easy to
> find vegetarian-friendly rations faster than I ate them.
> Meanwhile, on the upside, you wouldn't buh-*lieve* what an easy
> time I had keeping Okawaru happy. :-D
Heh. :)
>> (They're sorted, too,
> ?
The junkpiles are sorted according to what junk it is.
>> and if you drop junk next to stairs, a monster you take with you will
>> pick it up.)
> ?
If I have a mace I don't like in the junkpile, and I take a group of
orcs up with me to fight them alone rather than all orcs in the mines at
once, one of them will pick it up if he lands on top of it. Then he'll
use that mace against me.
Therefore, I put my junk at some distance to the stairs, in a convenient
corner. (And if there isn't one, and I can dig cheaply, I'll dig one.
Hah! Stones of earth elementals are good for that, afair. The elementals
are slow and vanish after a while, and you can run from those that don't
like you.)
Yeah, I'm crazy, too. :)
--
Tina the Cudgeler - a Follower of the Roguelike Neglectful Gallows
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> croaked:
> > Tina Hall wrote:
> >> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> moaned:
[single-stack nature of rockpiles prevent y, a, *, esc prompt from
appearing]
[Tina: some little key sequence?]
Maybe. I haven't found any.
> You could put something else on the pile, a blank scroll for example.
> Finally a use! :)
:-D
> They don't get dirty that way, either.
>
> >>>> And ESC not only breaking showing the list of (what to eat,
> >>>> drink, whatever) [...]
> >>
> >>> I don't have those interface screens very well integrated into
> >>> my head :-). I think what it is is that I've got the option set
> >>> for skipping the prompt entirely, as I find it to be absolutely
> >>> useless for my own play.
> >>
> >> So how do I do that? (Refresh my memory please if I should
> >> know.)
>
> > auto_list = true
>
> Have that already. That is the list I'm talking about (where I'd prefer
> it quittable with one ESC instead of two). There is a prompt.
On the way *into* the list, there shouldn't be a prompt if you've
turned on auto_list (I certainly don't get one). There should only be
the prompt that you reach (and don't like reaching) when you jump *out*
of the list.
> I wouldn't want a mere "I don't want to dig through too much junk"
> turned into a player advantage.
...and I don't want entire classes of items that are junk. Some are
best eliminated; some, there's no harm in making useful, I think.
Balance is going to be shifting like a tennis ball over a court for
many Stone-Soup versions to come, so "b-b-but it'll make the balance
easier!" is hardly a reason to oppose converting some of the junk
classes to useful classes. :-)
> > [autosquelch/autonuke/autowhatever]
> >>> The destruction normally happens automatically, without asking
> >>> the player. (After all, the player's the one who set up the
> >>> rule.)
> >>
> >> That does circumvent the need to identify it, which uses
> >> resources.
>
> > Oh! No! It doesn't! In all the existing autosquelch systems that
> > I know, items that match autosquelch criteria are only recognized
> > as matching them if they've been identified to a strong enough
> > degree that *you* would know that they match if you looked
> > yourself.
>
> But in Crawl, we don't have that.
Erm, only because we don't autosquelch as such; if we were to happen to
implement it, we could implement however we bloody pleased, erm...
> >>>>> Maybe we either need an Junk Czar, or for somebody in the
> >>>>> Triumvirate to make junk their baby.
> >>
> >>> "Junk Is An Important Topic."
> >>
> >> ?
>
> > That I believe that it's important for someone, on the team or
> > off, to spend a good chunk of time judging which item types are
> > always/sometimes junk, and proposing solutions.
>
> You want someone to think about it and present you with a suggestion?
If you want to put it that way, sure.
> Or someone who could program that?
This is an issue that needs designer long before it needs programmers.
> > [Why Erik doesn't -- gasp! :-) -- use waypoints]
> >> :) And when you want to go back down to where you were? All done
> >> manually, rather than just marking the point before you leave?
>
> > ctrl-g, branchletter, [nothing | 11 | 22 | 33].
>
> And walk the rest from there?
Why not? It's not like returning to the particular spot on the level
where I left off has any advantage.
> > Granted, this gets me in a hell of a lot of trouble sometimes, but
> > where would the fun be without trouble? And meanwhile, it's zero
> > -thought and almost zero-finger-movement. :-)
>
> Waypoints, too. :)
True. But then I'd have to learn to use them. :-D Although... now I'm
already halfway there, thanks to you, dirty dog. Ctrl-W, wasn't it?
> >> Junkpiles are near down-stairs, but not on them, and usually not
> >> one on each level.
>
> > Hmm. I usually have *several* per level.
>
> Eek! :)
I often have weight problems if I don't. I mean, *everything* on each
level is *everything* on each level!
BTW, I even go around in later visits, after the initial "cleanup" of
the level, clearing trap-fired ammo off of traps if I'm in the mood.
All so I know that I don't have to think in order to know there's not
really anything useful there. I really put a lot of thought into not
having to think.
> Oh, yes. I just want a proper corner, too, and properly sorted.
I like stairs because there are intralevel travel shortcuts for them.
> > Depending on the character
> > type, I may have multiples for most staircases -- e.g. Ely-chow
> > separate from other stuff.
>
> Ely-chow?
Food (chow) for Elyvilon -- junk weapons and ammo.
> > For all characters, I'll have occasional multiples anyway for things
> > like "this is only *kind of* junk."
>
> Yep. And different sorts of junk. Junk uncursed <useless weapon> is not
> the same as junk foo mail. :)
Multipickup makes that kind of sorting *much* less important, because,
like multidrop, it supports the selection of all items of a certain
"autopickup class" at once. That is, pressing + (de)selects all books,
pressing [ (de)selects all armour, pressing % (de)selects all food, and
so on. * means "everything." There's also a nifty init.txt setting that
lets you set (at least) the * to be filtered against a certain bit of
text. For example, I've got mine set to "chunk", so in my copy of
Crawl, pressing * (and maybe other shortcuts too, never checked) will
(de)select all chunks, nothing more, nothing less.
> >> Vegetarian?
>
> > Why not? Originally I wanted to go foodless, but I couldn't keep
> > myself fed by converting corpses into potions via Fulsome
> > Distillation, I couldn't maintain Zin piety fast enough to go the
> > satiation-prayers route, and I couldn't combine the two because
> > Fulsome Distillation is a Necromancy spell. So I downgraded to
> > vegetarian.
>
> <shaking head> You're crazy, you know that, don't you? :)
DAMMIT! You made me laugh so hard that I started coughing like crazy
again! (It's only about three weeks since I quit an 8-year-long
pack-a-day smoking habit, plus I've got this cold.)
[Discussion of Tina's junkpile habits, including her not putting
junkpiles by stairs]
> >> and if you drop junk next to stairs, a monster you take with you will
> >> pick it up.)
>
> > ?
>
> If I have a mace I don't like in the junkpile, and I take a group of
> orcs up with me to fight them alone rather than all orcs in the mines at
> once, one of them will pick it up if he lands on top of it. Then he'll
> use that mace against me.
Oh. I'm never scared enough of the extra damage from a mace etc. to
ever worry about that (maybe I should be), except in the case of
weapons with nasty egos, in which case if I'm really worried, I just
place something silly on top of them, since they're only interested in
the top thing on a pile.
> Therefore, I put my junk at some distance to the stairs, in a convenient
> corner. (And if there isn't one, and I can dig cheaply, I'll dig one.
Hm... the only digging I tend to do in the name of my deformations is
a) digging out enough space to reasonably center a reasonable number of
stashpiles around the Lair:1 stairs, in cases where the area around
those stairs is initially really cramped, and
b) digging a home for my one-book-per-square Great Library of Zot, in
those games where I make one. :-)
e.
Haran Pilpel
> Wow. How many turns?
751,477. If you have access to Google Groups, search for Skeptic,
Omniscient GhFi - the dump should be there.
Haran
erisdiscordia
Tina does not have easy access to Google Groups. For some large portion
of what she does, she uses FidoNet... but, I think it'd best if she
explains it in detail than if anyone else does, as that will avoid
errors.
e.
David Damerell
>Tina Hall wrote:
>>What's it with you and attributions? Set out to exterminate them? :) If
>>you leave them out, your reply to me won't be highlighted!
>I can get away with it, yes. :-) OK, I'll do my best to leave them in
>when replying to you.
Please leave them in whenever you are replying to anyone. I have no desire
to chase around the thread tree to find that out.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Wednesday, September.
erisdiscordia
> Quoting erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz>:
> >Tina Hall wrote:
> >>What's it with you and attributions? Set out to exterminate them? :) If
> >>you leave them out, your reply to me won't be highlighted!
> >I take out as many levels of that fluff as I can get away with whenever
> >I can get away with it, yes. :-) OK, I'll do my best to leave them in
> >when replying to you.
>
> Please leave them in whenever you are replying to anyone. I have no desire
> to chase around the thread tree to find that out.
I have no desire to bend my entire posting habits to your particular
will.
Cheers,
Erik
Darshan Shaligram
> David Damerell wrote:
[attributions]
>> Please leave them in whenever you are replying to anyone. I have no
>> desire to chase around the thread tree to find that out.
> I have no desire to bend my entire posting habits to your particular
> will.
Erik - David's right, you're wrong. Feel free to snip attributions if
you've snipped *all* quoted text written by the attributee, but it's
bad Usenet form to snip attributions if you're quoting text written by
that person.
--
Darshan Shaligram <scin...@gmail.com> Deus vult
Tina Hall
>> Have that already. That is the list I'm talking about (where I'd
>> prefer it quittable with one ESC instead of two). There is a
>> prompt.
> On the way *into* the list, there shouldn't be a prompt if you've
> turned on auto_list (I certainly don't get one). There should
> only be the prompt that you reach (and don't like reaching) when
> you jump *out* of the list.
The point is to _quit_ the list when I change my mind, but I just get a
prompt then and have to press ESC again.
>> I wouldn't want a mere "I don't want to dig through too much
>> junk" turned into a player advantage.
> ...and I don't want entire classes of items that are junk. Some
> are best eliminated; some, there's no harm in making useful, I
> think.
I don't want to remove them from the game, I want to have a smaller
number of junk that I will have to check for the rare gem when large
hordes of monsters were killed; orc hordes, nagas, elves...
> Balance is going to be shifting like a tennis ball over a court
> for many Stone-Soup versions to come, so "b-b-but it'll make the
> balance easier!" is hardly a reason to oppose converting some of
> the junk classes to useful classes. :-)
I'm not talking about converting classes, but decreasing numbers. :)
>>> That I believe that it's important for someone, on the team or
>>> off, to spend a good chunk of time judging which item types are
>>> always/sometimes junk, and proposing solutions.
>>
>> You want someone to think about it and present you with a
>> suggestion?
> If you want to put it that way, sure.
I put it in two ways because I didn't exactly understand what you mean.
If you like, I'll try to put some thought into it. There's no hurry,
after all.
>> Or someone who could program that?
> This is an issue that needs designer long before it needs
> programmers.
But non-programmers just have a player perspective and don't know all
that's involved, or doable.
>>> [Why Erik doesn't -- gasp! :-) -- use waypoints]
>>> ctrl-g, branchletter, [nothing | 11 | 22 | 33].
>>
>> And walk the rest from there?
> Why not?
More keypresses. :)
> It's not like returning to the particular spot on the level where I
> left off has any advantage.
Continue exploring, grab the loot you couldn't carry,...
> True. But then I'd have to learn to use them. :-D Although... now
> I'm already halfway there, thanks to you, dirty dog. Ctrl-W,
> wasn't it?
:) Yes.
I'm not trying to convert anyone to the Way Of Waypoints. Just saying
that it's really nifty for lazy people. :)
>>>> Junkpiles are near down-stairs, but not on them, and usually
>>>> not one on each level.
>>
>>> Hmm. I usually have *several* per level.
>>
>> Eek! :)
> I often have weight problems if I don't. I mean, *everything* on
> each level is *everything* on each level!
Yep. I drag off stuff more than once.
> BTW, I even go around in later visits, after the initial
> "cleanup" of the level, clearing trap-fired ammo off of traps if
> I'm in the mood.
Oh, yes, when I see them I grab them. Better yet, go round to train
disarming traps (very handy later for some characters).
> All so I know that I don't have to think in order to know there's not
> really anything useful there. I really put a lot of thought into not
> having to think.
:) Trying to think up a new character is hard enough. (Still didn't get
round to it; got hungry and had to crawl to the shop, with cold and all,
because I had hardly anything left.)
>> Oh, yes. I just want a proper corner, too, and properly sorted.
> I like stairs because there are intralevel travel shortcuts for
> them.
Yes, but I'm lazy. There are usually at least three of one sort, so I
have to press '>' or '<' more than once, after the key for the level
map. And then repeat it.
My corners have to be near a stair, of course, but I Waypoint that spot.
>>> Depending on the character type, I may have multiples for most
>>> staircases -- e.g. Ely-chow separate from other stuff.
>>
>> Ely-chow?
> Food (chow) for Elyvilon -- junk weapons and ammo.
Ah, yes. All finely sorted here. :) Each type of junk gets its own pile.
>>> For all characters, I'll have occasional multiples anyway for
>>> things like "this is only *kind of* junk."
>>
>> Yep. And different sorts of junk. Junk uncursed <useless weapon>
>> is not the same as junk foo mail. :)
> Multipickup makes that kind of sorting *much* less important,
You say something that sounds very true there.
I wouldn't like to page through 10 pages of junk weapons to get to the
junk potions that I need after all, but I'll reconsider about some other
categories.
> because, like multidrop, it supports the selection of all items
> of a certain "autopickup class" at once. That is, pressing +
> (de)selects all books, pressing [ (de)selects all armour,
> pressing % (de)selects all food, and so on. * means "everything."
> There's also a nifty init.txt setting that lets you set (at
> least) the * to be filtered against a certain bit of text.
Yes, I've seen that.
> For example, I've got mine set to "chunk", so in my copy of Crawl,
> pressing * (and maybe other shortcuts too, never checked) will
> (de)select all chunks, nothing more, nothing less.
I will keep this in mind.
>>>> Vegetarian?
>>
>>> Why not? Originally I wanted to go foodless, but I couldn't
>>> keep myself fed by converting corpses into potions via Fulsome
>>> Distillation, I couldn't maintain Zin piety fast enough to go
>>> the satiation-prayers route, and I couldn't combine the two
>>> because Fulsome Distillation is a Necromancy spell. So I
>>> downgraded to vegetarian.
>>
>> <shaking head> You're crazy, you know that, don't you? :)
> DAMMIT! You made me laugh so hard that I started coughing like
> crazy again! (It's only about three weeks since I quit an
> 8-year-long pack-a-day smoking habit, plus I've got this cold.)
Sorry.
> [Discussion of Tina's junkpile habits, including her not putting
> junkpiles by stairs]
I do, just not adjacent to them. There's some room for the monsters.
>> Therefore, I put my junk at some distance to the stairs, in a
>> convenient corner. (And if there isn't one, and I can dig
>> cheaply, I'll dig one.
> Hm... the only digging I tend to do in the name of my
> deformations is
> a) digging out enough space to reasonably center a reasonable
> number of stashpiles around the Lair:1 stairs, in cases where the
> area around those stairs is initially really cramped, and
Heh.
> b) digging a home for my one-book-per-square Great Library of
> Zot, in those games where I make one. :-)
<chuckle>
I drag all books to the Temple (not duplicates). (It remains my main
treasury even for stuff dragged back from Zot.)
--
Tina the Crawling Barricade - the Favourite Plaything of the Raking Nocturnal
Gibbet
lemuel...@gmail.com
erisdiscordia wrote:
> * Once per game, Zin will convert a wielded mace or great mace
> into a [null | great] mace of disruption if you pray on an altar.
Would it be terribly unbalancing if this worked for any blunt weapon,
including giant (spiked) clubs? They can already be vorpalized...
Lemuel
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> moaned:
> > Tina Hall wrote:
> >> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> croaked:
> >>> Tina Hall wrote:
>
> >> Have that already. That is the list I'm talking about (where I'd
> >> prefer it quittable with one ESC instead of two). There is a
> >> prompt.
>
> > On the way *into* the list, there shouldn't be a prompt if you've
> > turned on auto_list (I certainly don't get one). There should
> > only be the prompt that you reach (and don't like reaching) when
> > you jump *out* of the list.
>
> The point is to _quit_ the list when I change my mind, but I just get a
> prompt then and have to press ESC again.
Right, and I've filed a request for that. But your "there is a prompt"
statement was ambiguous, so I was just describing in which places there
normally is a prompt, the way it's programmed right now.
> > Balance is going to be shifting like a tennis ball over a court
> > for many Stone-Soup versions to come, so "b-b-but it'll make the
> > balance easier!" is hardly a reason to oppose converting some of
> > the junk classes to useful classes. :-)
>
> I'm not talking about converting classes, but decreasing numbers. :)
Those things are a whole different category of junk. Don't worry; I've
got your original long discussion of "junk through numbers" filed away
on my own computer as a sort of "pre-feature-request". :-)
> >> Or someone who could program that?
>
> > This is an issue that needs designer long before it needs
> > programmers.
>
> But non-programmers just have a player perspective and don't know all
> that's involved, or doable.
But non-programmers can still go in steps -- provide a grand design,
ask a programmer "can this work even in principle?" and if the answer
is yes, then start working on details. It's something I do with Darshan
all the time. :-)
> >>> [Why Erik doesn't -- gasp! :-) -- use waypoints]
> >>> ctrl-g, branchletter, [nothing | 11 | 22 | 33].
> >>
> >> And walk the rest from there?
>
> > Why not?
>
> More keypresses. :)
>
> > It's not like returning to the particular spot on the level where I
> > left off has any advantage.
>
> Continue exploring, grab the loot you couldn't carry,...
Continuing exploring, I can do from anywhere. Grabbing the loot I
couldn't carry is theoretically a problem, but in practice it doesn't
make trouble for me; not sure why.
> I'm not trying to convert anyone to the Way Of Waypoints. Just saying
> that it's really nifty for lazy people. :)
:-D
> > BTW, I even go around in later visits, after the initial
> > "cleanup" of the level, clearing trap-fired ammo off of traps if
> > I'm in the mood.
>
> Oh, yes, when I see them I grab them. Better yet, go round to train
> disarming traps (very handy later for some characters).
Yep, I did a "little" of that on the way to the 5 missile titles :-D
(*Gawd*, is seriously training T&D ever boring work. And then some
stupid hobgoblin always comes and drains your pool into Dodging or
something instead. :-) )
> >> Oh, yes. I just want a proper corner, too, and properly sorted.
>
> > I like stairs because there are intralevel travel shortcuts for
> > them.
>
> Yes, but I'm lazy. There are usually at least three of one sort, so I
> have to press '>' or '<' more than once, after the key for the level
> map. And then repeat it.
And that's precisely why I have a randomish, often-multiple number of
junkpiles per level. :-)
> > Multipickup makes that kind of sorting *much* less important,
>
> You say something that sounds very true there.
>
> I wouldn't like to page through 10 pages of junk weapons to get to the
> junk potions that I need after all, but I'll reconsider about some other
> categories.
Well, if I have the slightest feeling that I might be learning
Evaporate, then I separate bad potions out, and I *never* junkpile good
potions in *any* game. But even if I did turn out to need junkpiled
potions, it would be enough just to hit '!' in autopickup, thus
selecting all potions in the pile even though they're under three pages
of weapons...
By the way, you know the old problem of accidentally junkpiling your
Sword of Awesomeness +9,+9? Nowadays when you do that, you can just hit
Ctrl-F, then type e.g. 'Awesomeness' into the "Find Stuff" interface...
> I drag all books to the Temple (not duplicates). (It remains my main
> treasury even for stuff dragged back from Zot.)
I only keep a treasury in the Temple until Moving Day -- the day when
it all gets moved to Lair:1. (I'm strictly opposed to having my stash
permanently in the Temple because it offends my aesthetic taste. :-) )
If I have a really strong character whose definition of non-junk is
really narrow, I sometimes even try to avoid keeping a treasury in the
Temple at all, so that I never have to perform Moving Day. I usually
fail at this endeavour. :-)
e.
Tina Hall
> Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) writes:
>> Wow. How many turns?
Thanks. I will (sooner or later :) ).
--
Tina the Archer - a High Priest of the Retarded Noiseless Gnome
Tina Hall
>> The point is to _quit_ the list when I change my mind, but I
>> just get a prompt then and have to press ESC again.
> Right, and I've filed a request for that.
Thanks.
> But your "there is a prompt" statement was ambiguous,
I've got a cold, and a bad memory. What do I know what something is
called outside the words I use? :)
>> But non-programmers just have a player perspective and don't
>> know all that's involved, or doable.
> But non-programmers can still go in steps -- provide a grand
> design, ask a programmer "can this work even in principle?" and
> if the answer is yes, then start working on details. It's
> something I do with Darshan all the time. :-)
:) Sounds a lot more reasonable than my pestering about "Can you add
<that> feature?"
>>> BTW, I even go around in later visits, after the initial
>>> "cleanup" of the level, clearing trap-fired ammo off of traps
>>> if I'm in the mood.
>>
>> Oh, yes, when I see them I grab them. Better yet, go round to
>> train disarming traps (very handy later for some characters).
> Yep, I did a "little" of that on the way to the 5 missile titles
> :-D
With one I went overboard and did 'detect traps' from the first level. I
think that was the KoVM, too.
> (*Gawd*, is seriously training T&D ever boring work. And then
> some stupid hobgoblin always comes and drains your pool into
> Dodging or something instead. :-) )
Yeah.
>> Yes, but I'm lazy. There are usually at least three of one sort,
>> so I have to press '>' or '<' more than once, after the key for
>> the level map. And then repeat it.
> And that's precisely why I have a randomish, often-multiple
> number of junkpiles per level. :-)
That won't work with my Compulsive Cart Everything Into One Neat
Collection Of Piles Disorder. :) (Preferably one every few levels,
rather than one on each.)
If I want something, I don't want to run to 10 different places, after
all. I want it all in one to grab and go.
>>> Multipickup makes that kind of sorting *much* less important,
>>
>> You say something that sounds very true there.
>>
>> I wouldn't like to page through 10 pages of junk weapons to get
>> to the junk potions that I need after all, but I'll reconsider
>> about some other categories.
> Well, if I have the slightest feeling that I might be learning
> Evaporate, then I separate bad potions out, and I *never*
> junkpile good potions in *any* game.
Yeah, I meant the bad potions. But I sort them out right away, just as
wood for that wood-to-snake spell, just incase... Well, maybe not with a
Troll, but with every character who might learn it.
> But even if I did turn out to need junkpiled potions, it would be
> enough just to hit '!' in autopickup, thus selecting all potions in
> the pile even though they're under three pages of weapons...
True.
> By the way, you know the old problem of accidentally junkpiling
> your Sword of Awesomeness +9,+9? Nowadays when you do that, you
> can just hit Ctrl-F, then type e.g. 'Awesomeness' into the "Find
> Stuff" interface...
If I remember what it's called. :)
>> I drag all books to the Temple (not duplicates). (It remains my
>> main treasury even for stuff dragged back from Zot.)
> I only keep a treasury in the Temple until Moving Day -- the day
> when it all gets moved to Lair:1. (I'm strictly opposed to having
> my stash permanently in the Temple because it offends my
> aesthetic taste. :-) )
How does it offend your aesthetic taste?
I wouldn't like the Lair:1 because there monsters can come and mess it
all up.
> If I have a really strong character whose definition of non-junk is
> really narrow, I sometimes even try to avoid keeping a treasury in the
> Temple at all, so that I never have to perform Moving Day. I usually
> fail at this endeavour. :-)
:)
I have Moving Day when I decide to sacrifice those giant clubs I
collected somewhere below/in the Vaults. ;)
--
Tina the Caller - a Follower of the Rebuffing Notorious Garlic
erisdiscordia
> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> whined:
> > Tina Hall wrote:
> >> Erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> moaned:
[Erik: Why don't you make junkpiles at staircases, Tina?]
> >> Yes, but I'm lazy. There are usually at least three of one sort,
> >> so I have to press '>' or '<' more than once, after the key for
> >> the level map. And then repeat it.
>
> > And that's precisely why I have a randomish, often-multiple
> > number of junkpiles per level. :-)
>
> That won't work with my Compulsive Cart Everything Into One Neat
> Collection Of Piles Disorder. :) (Preferably one every few levels,
> rather than one on each.)
>
> If I want something, I don't want to run to 10 different places, after
> all. I want it all in one to grab and go.
Hmm... if I think I might reasonably want something, I put it in the
Big Central Stash. If I "unreasonably" want something, then I only very
rarely want it from 10 different places... too rarely for me to want to
bother with One Neat Collection of Piles That Isn't the Big Central
Stash. :-)
Nowadays, if I "unreasonably" want something from 10 different places,
Ctrl-F helps a lot, too, because Ctrl-F remembers the last search
string you used.
(In fact, Ctrl-F makes hoovering even more of a crime against reason
than it ever was. But old habits die hard... and when I don't hoover, I
just feel *such* agony at the thought that maybe I've missed something
awesome. :-) )
> > By the way, you know the old problem of accidentally junkpiling
> > your Sword of Awesomeness +9,+9? Nowadays when you do that, you
> > can just hit Ctrl-F, then type e.g. 'Awesomeness' into the "Find
> > Stuff" interface...
>
> If I remember what it's called. :)
Use it a couple times and you won't forget it any more than you forget
the far-less-mnemonic Shift-X -- it's that awesome.
> >> I drag all books to the Temple (not duplicates). (It remains my
> >> main treasury even for stuff dragged back from Zot.)
>
> > I only keep a treasury in the Temple until Moving Day -- the day
> > when it all gets moved to Lair:1. (I'm strictly opposed to having
> > my stash permanently in the Temple because it offends my
> > aesthetic taste. :-) )
>
> How does it offend your aesthetic taste?
I would be travelling back to the Stash unaesthetically far during all
my visits back to the stash. As in, farther than I have to. Granted, I
could have a stash even farther down and be even more aesthetic by that
criterion, but Lair:1 makes the "ctrl-g l <enter>" trick possible, so
lower than lair:1 would also be unaesthetic. :-)
> I wouldn't like the Lair:1 because there monsters can come and mess it
> all up.
Only things with hands can mess it all up. Animals have no hands. Only
animals can be generated during *at least* restocking, and maybe
initial generation, in Lair:1. Take my word as someone who's spent
thousands of turns in there casting Alter Self. :-)
e.
Tina Hall
> [Erik: Why don't you make junkpiles at staircases, Tina?]
I do. Just not adjacent to them.
>> That won't work with my Compulsive Cart Everything Into One Neat
>> Collection Of Piles Disorder. :) (Preferably one every few
>> levels, rather than one on each.)
>>
>> If I want something, I don't want to run to 10 different places,
>> after all. I want it all in one to grab and go.
> Hmm... if I think I might reasonably want something, I put it in
> the Big Central Stash.
While just dropping off stuff so you can carry off more loot?
Say I'm at the Orcish Mines. The stair in the dungeon looks like this:
......)(#
.....+[]#
.....!()#
.>.######
...#
####
I had something like that once. (I can't remember which is armour and
which is weapons when I don't see it, so just imagine all those () and
[] are weapons, armour, and ranged weapons, starting from the corner.)
So I kill a horde of orcs, drag everything up to the yellow stair, dump
checked stuff right next to the wall, unchecked in the second row,
interesting stuff in the third, then dive back in to get more. It
usually starts with the second row until I've got enough scrolls of
detect curse, or a spell, or whatever.
When I go down to the Elven Halls, I've got this handy stash up there,
so there my load gets carted. ... Until the game tells me that I can't
drop something (because some variable is full or something). :)
Same for the Vaults.
Once I'm done with that branch, or just want to go elsewhere, or want
something at the temple, or want to take something there now, or just
want to do that right then, I start carting the interesting stuff back
home.
> If I "unreasonably" want something, then I only very rarely want it
> from 10 different places... too rarely for me to want to bother with
> One Neat Collection of Piles That Isn't the Big Central Stash. :-)
What do you do with 10 scrolls of teleport while you explore? Carry
every one back home, or dump them somewhere until you pick it up later?
> Nowadays, if I "unreasonably" want something from 10 different
> places, Ctrl-F helps a lot, too, because Ctrl-F remembers the
> last search string you used.
I might not remember which search string I need. :)
> (In fact, Ctrl-F makes hoovering even more of a crime against
> reason than it ever was. But old habits die hard... and when I
> don't hoover, I just feel *such* agony at the thought that maybe
> I've missed something awesome. :-) )
Yeah. :)
And it looks so untidy! (Says the one who grows Bermuda Piles in real
life.)
>>> By the way, you know the old problem of accidentally junkpiling
>>> your Sword of Awesomeness +9,+9? Nowadays when you do that, you
>>> can just hit Ctrl-F, then type e.g. 'Awesomeness' into the
>>> "Find Stuff" interface...
>>
>> If I remember what it's called. :)
> Use it a couple times and you won't forget it any more than you
> forget the far-less-mnemonic Shift-X -- it's that awesome.
I'm not talking about the command, but what I'm looking for. :)
(Shift-x? Oh, I've got that mapped to Insert because the other is too
bothersome.)
>> How does it offend your aesthetic taste?
> I would be travelling back to the Stash unaesthetically far
> during all my visits back to the stash. As in, farther than I
> have to. Granted, I could have a stash even farther down and be
> even more aesthetic by that criterion, but Lair:1 makes the
> "ctrl-g l <enter>" trick possible, so lower than lair:1 would
> also be unaesthetic. :-)
:)
>> I wouldn't like the Lair:1 because there monsters can come and
>> mess it all up.
> Only things with hands can mess it all up. Animals have no hands.
> Only animals can be generated during *at least* restocking, and
> maybe initial generation, in Lair:1. Take my word as someone
> who's spent thousands of turns in there casting Alter Self. :-)
Heh. I used Tomb of thingy-whatever-it-was, on some main dungeon level
where you get tasty monsters turning up while you wait, to eat. (My big
pile of rations grew smaller and smaller...)
Doroklohe?
Anyway, one of my favorite spells. :)
--
Tina the Devastator - a Believer of the Reflective Nauseous Grit
R. Dan Henry
>Negative enchantments for ammo I could only accept if
>?oID really would grow on trees
New plant type, the Divination Tree?
--
R. Dan Henry
danh...@inreach.com
R. Dan Henry
>Erm, only because we don't autosquelch as such; if we were to happen to
>implement it, we could implement however we bloody pleased, erm...
I don't want to see autosquelch added to Crawl. However, I'd be pleased
to see a manual squelch added. If I could break weapons I know I'm not
going to use, I'd be far less inclined to hoover in general. As it is,
one really needs to hoover weapons, for fear they'll turn out to be
draining or something and used against you, so why not go ahead and
hoover everything? If I could just destroy things, I could have a safe,
neat, clean dungeon, without the fuss of running it to junkpiles.
R. Dan Henry
>Enough small talk... Darshan and I are proud to present Dungeon Crawl
>Stone Soup v0.1!
Huzzah!
>!* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
If it were transparent (or even translucent -- Crawl's workings are so
randomized as to be completely opaque without spoilage) what spell power
boosts were actually doing for you, this would be better. At least with
success rates, you can see if you've moved up a category. And, of
course, you may want to improve the power boost somewhat as
compensation.
Would it be difficult to display spell power (after all the stepping
down and other complications to get the real spell power) when you view
your spells? That's still not telling you what the spell power is really
doing for you, but at least you'd be able to see if the spells you use a
lot are really gaining from a particular item.
>!* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
I think given this, you could drop piety loss over time completely.
Casting spells is essentially free piety if you care enough about
spell-casting to want to worship Sif Muna to begin with, but now you are
talking about investing experience to gain piety, so it has an inherent
cost (admittedly small) and is limited by available experience.
>!+ Silence is level 5, was 3.
Of all the spell changes, this is the only one I have an opinion on,
since mostly they're too high level non-fire-conjuring spells for me to
have significant experience with, but it seems to me that a
spell-neutralizing spell is not worth 5 levels for a pure spell-caster
and for hybrids, you may be making it too difficult to really use.
Wasn't the main reason Silence was considered overpowered, the fact that
it allowed you to use rods -- which were overpowered? Balancing rods
better may eliminate the need to nerf Silence and I would, in any case,
suggest some nerf other than raising the level, to keep it in range of
hybrids, the natural Silence users.
>!+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
Ouch.
>RELIGION
>
> * You no longer lose piety for the death of TSO-summoned Daevas.
They aren't dead anyway, just banished back to heaven.
> * TSO's lightning-bolt invocation has been replaced with Cleansing
> Flame (a ranged, targeted ball; unique in that it only hurts
> evil beings).
Eh.
>COMBAT -- DEFENSE
>
> + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
> than before.
> + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
> + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
Shields now block missile launchers, knocking off one of the existing
pluses of both shields and missile launchers. When the question came up
before, I said that if this was done, I'd want to see rods become
one-handed so there was a natural ranged option for shields users (and
it was maybe even more of a natural given the number of shield-friendly
+ rod-friendly races). On the whole, buffing shields is good, but if it
means no serious ranged options (well, god-based, I guess, but that's
pretty limiting), they still aren't that appealing.
> * "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
> (If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
Why? Ah, yes, so I can enjoy more early deaths to monsters I can't
otherwise do any real damage to. I guess I'll stick to powerhouse
combos.
>ITEMS -- MISSILE
>
>!/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
Ah, yes, I'll enjoy deaths to the first kobold with a blowgun. Thanks.
:-)
>!* New bow type -- longbow.
Cool.
>!* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
> (Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
"of massive exit wounds"? "of ouchiness"? "of Agincourt"?
> * Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
Why? Are they really that bad? Or do you just expect them to be with
missile weapons beefed up? And how badly, exactly, did you nerf them?
>!+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> in every feasible way.
...
> EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
Oh, great, more "You miss the foo" excitement.
>!+ Rods have been completely reworked. Rods (except Striking) now
> have what are called "charges." Each use of a rod spell
> costs a number of charges equal to its spell level. Rods
> auto-recharge, both when wielded and when in your backpack,
> although the rate is dramatically faster when the rod is
> wielded. Charging costs 1 MP on any turn when it occurs.
> Charges are shown when a rod is wield-insta-ID'd. Max charges
> are 17; this may be too kind to the player, so try to take an
> honest look at this as you go about using rods.
> Max charges in the wild are 14.
> A scroll of recharging can raise a rod's max charges.
Having tried a Spriggan, this isn't visibly true. It seemed to just be
drawing magic points as before. Although the hungering did seem to work
and I was glad to not suffer confusion if I didn't watch my magic
points. Is it just rods of striking for which charges aren't showing? Or
have they not been converted to the new mechanic?
>!* Evocations skill no longer can be the determiner for your
> max MP.
Boo. Bevokers should be kept under some control, but not crippled.
> / Trying to use a rod of striking without any mana no longer
> confuses you.
> + Deep Elf Annihilators and the 2 "red" Naga types can cast
> Poison Arrow -- poison resistance halves damage
> but doesn't make you immune.
That's fair enough, since you can have the spell. I think this is a much
better solution than triple poison resistance mumbo jumbo.
R. Dan Henry
wrote:
>On 19 Sep 2006 04:02:32 -0700, "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>>!* Enhancer staves boost spell power only, not success rates.
>
>If it were transparent (or even translucent -- Crawl's workings are so
>randomized as to be completely opaque without spoilage) what spell power
>boosts were actually doing for you, this would be better. At least with
>success rates, you can see if you've moved up a category. And, of
>course, you may want to improve the power boost somewhat as
>compensation.
Better idea: make magic staves enchantable. It'd mainly make a
staff-wielding Reaver type practical, but it would also give a fair
melee option to "pure" spell-caster who want to occasional save magic
points by physically smacking rats and gives them a place to spend their
weapon enchantment scrolls.
erisdiscordia
> On 19 Sep 2006 04:02:32 -0700, "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
> Would it be difficult to display spell power (after all the stepping
> down and other complications to get the real spell power) when you view
> your spells?
I liked this idea so much that I made it a feature request within
SourceForge, as the probability of one of those getting "lost" is low.
It's #1564899.
> >!* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
>
> I think given this, you could drop piety loss over time completely.
> Casting spells is essentially free piety if you care enough about
> spell-casting to want to worship Sif Muna to begin with, but now you are
> talking about investing experience to gain piety, so it has an inherent
> cost (admittedly small) and is limited by available experience.
If nothing "happens" to Sif Muna within about a month, please remind me
of that suggestion. (As you may imagine, I have a *lot* of balls to
juggle right now, so please forgive my delegating this.) For the
moment, there are ideas of mine that we haven't rejected yet that would
make this not work so well.
> >!+ Silence is level 5, was 3.
>
> Of all the spell changes, this is the only one I have an opinion on,
> since mostly they're too high level non-fire-conjuring spells for me to
> have significant experience with, but it seems to me that a
> spell-neutralizing spell is not worth 5 levels for a pure spell-caster
> and for hybrids, you may be making it too difficult to really use.
> Wasn't the main reason Silence was considered overpowered, the fact that
> it allowed you to use rods -- which were overpowered? Balancing rods
> better may eliminate the need to nerf Silence and I would, in any case,
> suggest some nerf other than raising the level, to keep it in range of
> hybrids, the natural Silence users.
4.1 had a spell called Quiet that could be imported that might help out
here. We didn't import it before because it didn't seem worth the
bother. What would really be nice in this regard is for someone to play
some hybrids and report back. :-)
Note that people who're really hungry for spell levels in the midgame
just may have an easier life coming up. ;-)
Anyway... should I tie a string around my finger, d'y'think?
> >!+ Controlled Blink is level 8, was 4.
>
> Ouch.
This spell was a no-brainer. Now you'll have to decide. And most of the
characters for whom the change makes life harder are ones that
definitely could afford to absorb a little loss of power.
But yeah, ouch. :-)
> >RELIGION
> >
> > * You no longer lose piety for the death of TSO-summoned Daevas.
>
> They aren't dead anyway, just banished back to heaven.
:-) Hmm... feature request? Sounds like a nice flavor message, but
maybe it's too frivolous given the serious problems that also need to
be solved. On the *other* other hand, though, I have the feeling that
at least Haran appreciates a frivolous job every now and then as a
stress reliever.
> > * TSO's lightning-bolt invocation has been replaced with Cleansing
> > Flame (a ranged, targeted ball; unique in that it only hurts
> > evil beings).
>
> Eh.
Actually, it's pretty cool! At the moment, it's even borderline
overpowered. I really should test it in debug mode to see just what's
going on, but it feels like basically, a couple of blasts of cleansing
flame will take out a skeletal warrior pack, if you catch them in the
open (which, with this invocation in your repertoire, you probably
should), while earning back perhaps as much piety as you spent.
A lot cooler than some lightning bolt, if you ask me -- especially
since most demons aren't even hurt by lightning. :-)
> >COMBAT -- DEFENSE
> >
> > + Shields provide somewhat better protection (both melee and missile)
> > than before.
> > + Shield skill's effects are more powerful.
> > + Shields have a wider (and cooler) selection of egos available.
>
> Shields now block missile launchers, knocking off one of the existing
> pluses of both shields and missile launchers. When the question came up
> before, I said that if this was done, I'd want to see rods become
> one-handed so there was a natural ranged option for shields users (and
> it was maybe even more of a natural given the number of shield-friendly
> + rod-friendly races). On the whole, buffing shields is good, but if it
> means no serious ranged options (well, god-based, I guess, but that's
> pretty limiting), they still aren't that appealing.
And, with a struggle and/or some limitation, spells. And wands. And
slings. And darts/blowguns... if hand crossbows aren't in that group
already, I'll probably have them added, as manipulating them, slowly,
while wearing a shield, doesn't break believability.
And that's basically one of the two things here -- a) giving power a
price, and b) while not demanding *realism* (no such thing), at least
not breaking *believability* for a very real, non-ignorable minority of
players.
However, I've also been thinking about 1-handed rods, as I haven't
forgotten that theme, and since rods are magical, there's no
believability to break. :-)
> > * "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
> > (If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
>
> Why? Ah, yes, so I can enjoy more early deaths to monsters I can't
> otherwise do any real damage to. I guess I'll stick to powerhouse
> combos.
Then we solve *those*, not create artificial power gaps between
beginners and the spoiled.
> >ITEMS -- MISSILE
> >
> >!/ New needle type -- curare-tipped needles.
> > Effect same as sticking victim in the cloud from a Corpse Rot.
> > In short, curare-tipped needles kill things dead.
> > Expect a nerf soon; enjoy the current mechanics while they last. :-)
>
> Ah, yes, I'll enjoy deaths to the first kobold with a blowgun. Thanks.
> :-)
Right, because you know we didn't balance-playtest the first levels of
the dungeon at *all* before the 0.1 release. We're *that* stupid. ;-)
> >!* New bow type -- longbow.
>
> Cool.
>
> >!* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
> > (Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
>
> "of massive exit wounds"? "of ouchiness"? "of Agincourt"?
>
> > * Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
>
> Why? Are they really that bad? Or do you just expect them to be with
> missile weapons beefed up? And how badly, exactly, did you nerf them?
Speed egos are really rare. (The ego probabilities are untouched, so
this is true to precisely the same degree in b26 and SS.) The people
who really benefitted from them were maniacs like me who literally went
through dozens of missile weapons to get one -- succeeding only about
once every several *whole games*. That's the maniacs. (Or just
"maniac"? I don't know of anyone else, actually.) The rest didn't get
them at all. They were so good that they worth that kind of fanaticism.
Why reward sick fanaticism? Now they're merely really good.
> >!+ The weapon properties in 4.1's itemprop.cc have been adopted
> > in every feasible way.
> ...
> > EXPECT POORER ACCURACY THAN YOU'D EXPECT. :-)
>
> Oh, great, more "You miss the foo" excitement.
Well, if you're really missing a lot against a given foo, then you
switch to your smaller, more accurate weapon in your weapon class: note
the part that you snipped. ;-)
> >!+ Rods have been completely reworked. Rods (except Striking) now
> > have what are called "charges." [...]
> Having tried a Spriggan, this isn't visibly true.
"Rods (except Striking)..."
> >!* Evocations skill no longer can be the determiner for your
> > max MP.
>
> Boo. Bevokers should be kept under some control, but not crippled.
That's what I first thought when I saw this described (before seeing it
in practice, just like you). It's an understandable viewpoint. Once you
see the system in practice, you'll understand why it isn't that way.
e.
erisdiscordia
R. Dan Henry wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2006 09:59:18 -0700, "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>
> >Erm, only because we don't autosquelch as such; if we were to happen to
> >implement it, we could implement however we bloody pleased, erm...
>
> I don't want to see autosquelch added to Crawl. However, I'd be pleased
OK. Feature request 1564912, with hefty modifications from myself:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1564912&group_id=143991&atid=757516
Tina Hall
> "erisdiscordia" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>> Erm, only because we don't autosquelch as such; if we were to happen
>> to implement it, we could implement however we bloody pleased, erm...
> I don't want to see autosquelch added to Crawl. However, I'd be pleased
> to see a manual squelch added. If I could break weapons I know I'm not
> going to use, I'd be far less inclined to hoover in general.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
> As it is, one really needs to hoover weapons, for fear they'll turn
> out to be draining or something and used against you, so why not go
> ahead and hoover everything? If I could just destroy things, I could
> have a safe, neat, clean dungeon, without the fuss of running it to
> junkpiles.
Or dragging it back to the Temple to sacrifice. <g>
--
Tina the Theurge - a Follower of the Reprieving Naive Garlic
erisdiscordia
In the meantime, I've filed a feature suggestion (proposing a 5 turn
delay once per squelch, any number of items per squelch, squelch from
inventory or floor, artifacts unquelchable.) The 5 turn delay bit is
for balance, though I didn't mention that. Haran replied and noted
(thinking I hadn't realized it) that squelching has balance problems,
as noted in notes in the code.
The balance problems are --
1) Providing a faster way to dispose of corpses reduces the threat of
corpse-reanimating foes.
2) Providing a faster way to dispose of weapons reduces the threat of
foes that can wield weapons.
3) If, as in 4.1, foes that can wield other equipment are implemented
-- not a certainty, but discussable -- then see 2).
He found the balance problems unacceptable period. I didn't really (I
mean you can already carry stuff, relocate it, butcher corpses, etc.),
but I liked the elegance of his solution and the fact that this way,
you can't mess up and destroy something forever, no matter how hard you
"try." ;-)
Thoughts?
e.
johan.s...@gmail.com
> Haran Pilpel wrote:
> > johan.s...@gmail.com writes:
>
> > At the moment magic contamination of exactly 5 does not show up as a
> > glow but does cause shudder effects.
> >
> > I'm wondering whether this is intentional.
>
> So am I. I've always liked this fact (which I knew informally even
> before I knew it "scientifically".) But then, sometimes, I enjoy pain.
I think it's an oversight - including the cutoff point in one case and
missing it in the other. Personally I don't like it: you're hiding
information from the player, and I suspect many newbies are confused
why they suddenly mutate after miscasting a few spells. Explicit is
better than implicit, and in most other cases Crawl show plenty of
information to the player.
--
Johan
erisdiscordia
OK, you've convinced me. Confusing newbies is never a good idea IMO
when I really think about it... or you force me to think about it. I'll
be proposing changes to the code that makes you know you glow. :-)
But *next* time, Johan -- *next* time, watch out!
e.
Tina Hall
>>>Erm, only because we don't autosquelch as such; if we were to happen
>>>to implement it, we could implement however we bloody pleased, erm...
>>
>> I don't want to see autosquelch added to Crawl. However, I'd be
>> pleased to see a manual squelch added. If I could break weapons I know
>> I'm not going to use, I'd be far less inclined to hoover in general.
>> As it is, one really needs to hoover weapons, for fear they'll turn
>> out to be draining or something and used against you, so why not go
>> ahead and hoover everything? If I could just destroy things, I could
>> have a safe, neat, clean dungeon, without the fuss of running it to
>> junkpiles.
> In the meantime, I've filed a feature suggestion (proposing a 5 turn
> delay once per squelch, any number of items per squelch, squelch from
> inventory or floor, artifacts unquelchable.) The 5 turn delay bit is
> for balance,
What balance?
> though I didn't mention that. Haran replied and noted (thinking I
> hadn't realized it) that squelching has balance problems, as noted in
> notes in the code.
> The balance problems are --
> 1) Providing a faster way to dispose of corpses reduces the threat of
> corpse-reanimating foes.
Don't make corpses squelchable then. They decay anyway, and the problem
of junkpiles doesn't apply to them.
> 2) Providing a faster way to dispose of weapons reduces the threat of
> foes that can wield weapons.
Huh?
How about a minimum of 20 items per pile to squelch, so doing it in the
middle of a fight isn't an issue. (That's a wild guess to what you're
talking about, because I don't really understand it.)
Your 5 turn delay doesn't do anything about balance, it's just a
nuisance for no reason that I can see.
> 3) If, as in 4.1, foes that can wield other equipment are implemented
> -- not a certainty, but discussable -- then see 2).
What difference does a 5 turn delay make to that?
> He found the balance problems unacceptable period.
I still don't see where they are.
> I didn't really (I mean you can already carry stuff, relocate it,
> butcher corpses, etc.), but I liked the elegance of his solution and
> the fact that this way, you can't mess up and destroy something
> forever, no matter how hard you "try." ;-)
Huh?
> Thoughts?
I don't see how your solution does anything to the problem of too much
junk to check. Destroying junkpiles would be doing just that; destroy
the already checked piles, not random unknown stuff lying around.
--
Tina the Stinger - an Elder of the Raucous Nostalgic German
Andrew Patrick Schoonmaker
erisdiscordia <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>R. Dan Henry wrote:
>> >!* Sif Muna appreciates spell skill training, not mere spellcasting.
>>
>> I think given this, you could drop piety loss over time completely.
>> Casting spells is essentially free piety if you care enough about
>> spell-casting to want to worship Sif Muna to begin with, but now you are
>> talking about investing experience to gain piety, so it has an inherent
>> cost (admittedly small) and is limited by available experience.
>
>If nothing "happens" to Sif Muna within about a month, please remind me
>of that suggestion. (As you may imagine, I have a *lot* of balls to
>juggle right now, so please forgive my delegating this.) For the
>moment, there are ideas of mine that we haven't rejected yet that would
>make this not work so well.
Dropping piety-loss over time completely is probably too good. Maybe if
Channel Energy gets moved to Sif and costs piety... (otherwise the only
time your piety would drop would be using Selective Amnesia, and I'm
relatively certain that nobody uses it *that* much).
>> > * "Hillbilly Sting" made useless.
>> > (If you don't know, you don't need to know.)
>>
>> Why? Ah, yes, so I can enjoy more early deaths to monsters I can't
>> otherwise do any real damage to. I guess I'll stick to powerhouse
>> combos.
>
>Then we solve *those*, not create artificial power gaps between
>beginners and the spoiled.
I'll play a few more, but as noted there doesn't seem to be any way for
short-blade-wielding HuFis to kill anything with heavy armor with their
starting kit. This includes ice beasts and orc warriors. Giant ants
and scorpions are killable, but not quickly, and ogres are only a maybe
since they do so much damage (though as noted, given a few rounds near
them and some curare-tipped needles, they can still be stung).
It's still really too early to say if anything needs to be done, though,
(my sample size is three :-) ... I feel like I'd have options if I found
any of: a) a wand of flame/frost/magic darts, or even
paral/confu/slowing, b) a blowgun, or c) the temple, when I could at
least tell myself that Might is just around the corner.
It'd probably also help if I didn't dump so much XP into Darts :-)
[curare-tipped needles]
>> Ah, yes, I'll enjoy deaths to the first kobold with a blowgun. Thanks.
>> :-)
>
>Right, because you know we didn't balance-playtest the first levels of
>the dungeon at *all* before the 0.1 release. We're *that* stupid. ;-)
Kobolds rarely have blowguns in the first levels of the dungeon ;-)
>> >!* New missile weapon ego -- velocity.
>> > (Like slicing/chopping/piercing, but for missile weapons.)
>>
>> "of massive exit wounds"? "of ouchiness"? "of Agincourt"?
Blowguns of Agincourt :-)
>> > * Of Speed ego nerfed for missile weapons.
>>
>> Why? Are they really that bad? Or do you just expect them to be with
>> missile weapons beefed up? And how badly, exactly, did you nerf them?
>
>Speed egos are really rare. (The ego probabilities are untouched, so
>this is true to precisely the same degree in b26 and SS.)
...but you've added more missile-weapon egos, so even if there weren't
the buggy "of freezing" et al. in the mix I'd assume that "of speed"
would be rarer in SS.
>The people who really benefitted from them were maniacs like me who
>literally went through dozens of missile weapons to get one --
>succeeding only about once every several *whole games*. That's the
>maniacs. (Or just "maniac"? I don't know of anyone else, actually.) The
>rest didn't get them at all. They were so good that they worth that
>kind of fanaticism. Why reward sick fanaticism? Now they're merely
>really good.
I've had one, and it didn't seem all that good to me :-/ Of course, it
was a crossbow, and my crossbow skill wasn't amazingly high...
-Andrew ()
Martin Read
>bandish pseudo-ID mechanism (e.g. dependent on Throwing skill).
Or just make projectiles subject to the existing weapon-autoID
mechanism, but with much higher chance per shot of getting autoID - maybe
25% base, plus 2% per level of the appropriate skill.
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
\_\/_/ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mpread/dungeonbash/
\ / "the lights shine clear through the sodium haze the night draws near
\/ and the daylight fades" -- Sisters of Mercy, "Lights"
Rubinstein
> Rubinstein <pib...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Negative enchantments for ammo I could only accept if ?oID really
>> would grow on trees or if there would be some sort of bandish
>> pseudo-ID mechanism (e.g. dependent on Throwing skill).
>
> Or just make projectiles subject to the existing weapon-autoID
> mechanism, but with much higher chance per shot of getting autoID -
> maybe 25% base, plus 2% per level of the appropriate skill.
I already thought about this (even long before 4.1) and I like this idea
very much. Though I don't dare to say anything specific about the
numbers. This I guess should be matter of various facts like skill:
launcher or ranged combat? Or whether negative enchantments will be
introduced at all etc...
--
Rubinstein
Martin Read
>I already thought about this (even long before 4.1) and I like this idea
>very much. Though I don't dare to say anything specific about the
>numbers. This I guess should be matter of various facts like skill:
>launcher or ranged combat?
Higher of RC or applicable launcher skill (if any), like with staves.
erisdiscordia
[auto-ID missiles by firing]
> >I already thought about this (even long before 4.1) and I like this idea
> >very much. Though I don't dare to say anything specific about the
> >numbers. This I guess should be matter of various facts like skill:
> >launcher or ranged combat?
>
> Higher of RC or applicable launcher skill (if any), like with staves.
I've been pushing auto-ID of ammo with Darshan ever since we started
reviewing missile combat and forming a plan for which aspects of it to
change how, when. It's scheduled to happen sooner or later. I'm glad to
hear independent cries for it, because that means I can urge him to
make it happen sooner. :-)
No numbers have been planned for it yet, and we can't pretend to know
much in advance about what numbers are good, because we really have no
experience with balancing that kind of thing. Yes, there's 4.1, but 4.1
doesn't seem to be long on balance-testing...
I like your "check the higher" proposition. Care to file a feature
request? I'm constantly scrambling to find enough time... if not, just
write "no" and I'll file myself, though.
e.
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
> Stone Soup is hungry for *you*.
While I know that it is probably very bad posting attitude to drop the
following pamphlet here, the explosion in this and other threads makes
it impossible for me to do it the proper way: so many leaves in the
tree, and so little time. I'm sorry; hopefully you still get something
by glimpsing through this mess.
As a side effect of the recent urge in Crawl development, the game
should become more accessible to new players. IMO, this includes (at
least) the interface and the documentation.
Some comments on the interface:
0. Many heartfelt thanks for "32/52 slots"! It is really appreciated
over here. Of course, I didn't notice it at first, only when needed :)
1. Starting with the documentation, either the table of aptitudes
should be included, or (that being considered too technical), the class
descriptions should be detailed enough to gather the relevant
information. The current version does this to some amount, but maybe
there could be more. If deemed necessary, I'd have a go.
Note that this point also forbids arbitrary class-race combinations. An
observant new player (perhaps guided by the reference) will note that
the only magical occupations available for MD and HD are FE and EE - an
important information.
Another stab at this might involve the explicit mentioning of certain
standard class-race combinations which are representative in some
sense.
Likewise, it should be mentioned that, in Crawl, _race_ is the big
thing and _class_ smaller in comparison. This is different from other
roguelikes. (I actually think that the usual r.g.r.m.-mantra that
'class settles nothing but starting skills and equipment' is not quite
true. Does it have an impact on HP gain later on?)
2. There are many status and aid screens in Crawl, e.g. @, C, ^, ", ]
not to mention the bigger m, a, O, A, \. It would be nice to have a
collective status screen capturing at least the information of the
first set. I propose giving the first (resistance, armour, jewellery)
part of the dump, together with a terse account on religion and dungeon
structure. The latter two could for example look like
"Okuwaru is exalted by your worship. He looks after you during prayer
and provides _might_ and _healing_."
"Stairs to branches: Temple D:6, Orcish Mines D:7 with Elven Halls O:3,
Lair D:9 with Swamp L:4."
Maybe only write down the first appearance of Abyss and Hells. Each of
these should take two lines.
This is not meant to make the smaller status commands obsolete - they
(i.e. @, ", ]) are useful by fitting in the lower message area. Still,
after loading up a character I find myself cycling so much through
these that a summary would be really useful.
As an aside, why is the command for showing worn armor ']' instead of
'['? The driving force behind this decision it not going to get design
prizes anytime soon, I guess :) Of course, one could use ']' for this
general status overview (after giving '[' the armour back).
3. Crawl 4.1 has several interface improvements making it more
intuitive (particularly for newbies, I'd say): among them a very useful
@-status (see below) and displaying turns needed to undress/butcher.
The latter is done in a darker grey and shows "You continue to take of
the plate mail." turn by turn. This was not disturbing to me (but could
be dealt with effectively using message channels, so no further options
necessary for Erik 'Yuck' P.) It shows players immediately the slowness
of some things - I have died to a hydra in the Swamp after trying on a
newly purchased plate mail. The same display method could also be
applied to multidrops.
4. The \-screen (discoveries) could be improved. Not asking for
anything groundbreaking, it'd help a lot if a blank line be introduced
between item types. More comfort could be provided by having '!','?'
and so on map (in the \-screen) to the specified item class. (Or at
least make \ up-page-able).
5. Crawl has tons of options by now, plus the abilities to use clever
lua's and macros. It might be sensible to write a document file for all
these. For example, it should contain some useful macros for
spellcasting that people use. This way intrigued new players could
(after playing around a bit) get the full force without reinventing
wheels. I would do this, but obviously need the help of r.g.r.m.
Some comments on gameplay:
6. The Patches give leeway for higher difficulty:
The Travel Patch makes the game considerably easier. As an example,
statues have turned into no-brainers: mark them as no-go areas, get (or
wait for) disintegration, kill statue. I am not advocating the removal
of statues, but perhaps they could be made more interesting.
7. The same request (but unrelated to the patch) applies to the
miscellaneous items different from runes and cards (like ebony caskets
and so on). Maybe they are necessary for acquiring miscellaneous stuff.
But from the gameplay perspective they are almost worthless. Before
doing anything to them, it might be best to let them rest, but in the
long run they should be made useful (not necessarily improved) or
thrown out of the window.
8. Gods (addition):
I have the feeling that Crawl lacks a god favouring 'light weight'
characters like thieves and hunters. In order to keep things simple,
the following proposals are not fancy. I suggest a god who favours
wearing light stuff, attacking by range (this might include spells),
offering heavy armours, attacking via stab, maybe usage of air magic.
Frowned upon actions are the opposite, of course, and also the use of
pets (as these remove the stealthy appearance, and we already have
several summoner gods). Gifts would be appropriate missiles (depending
on dominating skills) in the beginning, later also launchers and light
armours. Evocations could include swiftness, blink, teleport, permanent
boni to stealth/evasion later on. Highest one should be controlled
blink, I think. This should be attractive to a clear audience (hunter,
thieves), but also an option for melee-and-ranged characters as well as
for casters who (wilfuly) neglect their Translocations.
9. Gods (subtraction):
I still think the Ecumenical Temple should host all gods minus one (the
loser is drawn randomly). While forcing the occasional new path upon
the unwary player, it reminds us that only three things are certain in
Crawl: the food in Hive, the fixed runes/artifacts, and death. Before
mentally thrashing this proposal, take into account that most religious
needs can be catered for by two gods.
10. Bows vs shields:
While Erik made it crystal clear that there will be no change
concerning this (and I urged them to be more dictator, less prime
minister), here's my two cents: there should be very strong penalties
for wielding both bow and shield (more so for crossbow and shield).
With 4.1's @-status, it could read as: "You feel extremely
uncomfortable with your current ability to hit anything." However, it
should be possible, simply because you can have a shield in your left
hand and a bow in your right one. With growing abilities in both Bows
and Shields, things should become easier. Depending on the numbers
(including launcher and shield size), it could culminate in being
barely able to comfortably wielding bow and buckler very late, or it
could be more forgiving. And, there should be a speed penalty, anyway.
[Think of this like the possibility to use both Armour and Dodging. Not
forbidden, but needs investment and only useful later on.]
11. Stealth:
Playing a MDEE wearing animal skin, dwarven gloves and elven boots
resulted in incredibly (to me, maybe I missed something before)
stealthy encounters, among them not interested orcish priest
two squares away, and 'not interested' jackals following MDEE for a
couple of turns (?). Has anything changed in the stealth/recognition
department?
12. Curare needs description. I don't have an idea what it is. A kobold
used it against C1, CeHu, who closed his eyes in expectation of a
premature demise. Despite around 50 HP available, only a potion of
healing let him survive. Already one of the effects (heavy poisoning,
slowness) is nasty, so it should be possible to survive a single hit on
a couple of hitpoints (100?). Or is it a design decision that Healing
is the only way here? OTOH, in a close battle between CeHu XL 8 and
grey and yellow orcish o's, curare was the decision maker (in CeHu's
favor :)
13. Should the higher speed of Centaurs get mentioned in the A-screen?
14. A small bit of pure archer testing: played a CeHu to XL 10. He is
doing fine, but it was not possible to go by arrows alone (he found
maybe five packages so far). Okuwaru did help, giving good arrows once
(but also darts). So I cannot say that there's too much missiles
around. (In my impression, 4.1 had more stuff and more of it glowing
etc.)
I tried milking arrow traps (for the first time) and discovered the
following: ctrl-left would start to pray (this could be related to
having backspace map to 'p'). Still it's a bug, right?
I also played XL 10 HDBe Trog and XL 10 TrFi, but nothing to tell right
now. They refuse to die :)
David
Rubinstein
>
> Martin Read wrote:
>> Rubinstein <pib...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> [auto-ID missiles by firing]
>> > This I guess should be matter of various facts like skill: launcher
>> > or ranged combat?
>>
>> Higher of RC or applicable launcher skill (if any), like with staves.
>
> I've been pushing auto-ID of ammo with Darshan ever since we started
> reviewing missile combat and forming a plan for which aspects of it to
> change how, when. It's scheduled to happen sooner or later. I'm glad
> to hear independent cries for it, because that means I can urge him to
> make it happen sooner. :-)
Go Erik, go! :-)
> No numbers have been planned for it yet, and we can't pretend to know
> much in advance about what numbers are good, because we really have no
> experience with balancing that kind of thing. Yes, there's 4.1, but
> 4.1 doesn't seem to be long on balance-testing...
>
> I like your "check the higher" proposition.
I've yet no clear opinion on the proposition, since I don't yet fully
understand the effects of the new RC-skill. If we still had the old
Throwing skill, I'd vote for this candidate exclusively (the higher this
skill, the better your ammo-speudo-Id), since this would spice up an
otherwise somewhat weak skill (right now muting this skill at 1/2 of
their best launcher skill is a no-brainer for most players).
I'd also like to see ammo-pseudo-ID (sounds clumsy, don't we have
something better?) not as an easy give-away which usually would slowly
start somewhere in the midgame, with the exception of pure hunters who
would develope the corresponding skill much faster than others.
> Care to file a feature request? I'm constantly scrambling to find
> enough time... if not, just write "no" and I'll file myself, though.
I'm pretty sure I can top your laziness with ease, but since I have time
and you not I'll do it. *grmpf* *grumble*
Before I file the request though, I'd like to read some details about
the RC skill. Any suggestions what I should read (other than the code)?
For now I only could found an explanation by yourself, where you stated
(on roguelikedevelopment.org) that RC now "has a stronger direct effect
than Throwing did". When I have a look at item_use.cc, all I seem to
understand is that it does exactly what a launcher skill does, but only
half of it:
shoot_skill = you.skills[launcher_skill];
effSkill = (shoot_skill * 2 + rc_skill) / 3;
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hardly can imagine that this already should be it and guess either
must have misread it or missed something else...
--
Rubinstein
Haran Pilpel
> 2. There are many status and aid screens in Crawl, e.g. @, C, ^, ", ]
> not to mention the bigger m, a, O, A, \. It would be nice to have a
> collective status screen capturing at least the information of the
> first set. I propose giving the first (resistance, armour, jewellery)
> part of the dump, together with a terse account on religion and dungeon
> structure. The latter two could for example look like
> "Okuwaru is exalted by your worship. He looks after you during prayer
> and provides _might_ and _healing_."
> "Stairs to branches: Temple D:6, Orcish Mines D:7 with Elven Halls O:3,
> Lair D:9 with Swamp L:4."
> Maybe only write down the first appearance of Abyss and Hells. Each of
> these should take two lines.
Some time back I added a "%" which shows the beginning of the chardump:
HP, MP, XP, resists, worn/wielded items, and so on. (Just look at the
first screenful of the chardump to see what it is.)
I'd like to make it more useful - how exactly would you want it to
look?
> As an aside, why is the command for showing worn armor ']' instead of
> '['? The driving force behind this decision it not going to get design
> prizes anytime soon, I guess :) Of course, one could use ']' for this
> general status overview (after giving '[' the armour back).
It's both. Apparently it was historically ']', though '[' makes more
sense, so both are tehre.
> 3. Crawl 4.1 has several interface improvements making it more
> intuitive (particularly for newbies, I'd say): among them a very useful
> @-status (see below) and displaying turns needed to undress/butcher.
> The latter is done in a darker grey and shows "You continue to take of
> the plate mail." turn by turn. This was not disturbing to me (but could
> be dealt with effectively using message channels, so no further options
> necessary for Erik 'Yuck' P.) It shows players immediately the slowness
> of some things - I have died to a hydra in the Swamp after trying on a
> newly purchased plate mail. The same display method could also be
> applied to multidrops.
This sounds like a good idea. Can you file a feature request on it?
That increases the odds that we'll get it done.
> 4. The \-screen (discoveries) could be improved. Not asking for
> anything groundbreaking, it'd help a lot if a blank line be introduced
> between item types. More comfort could be provided by having '!','?'
> and so on map (in the \-screen) to the specified item class. (Or at
> least make \ up-page-able).
Same comment as above.
> Some comments on gameplay:
>
> 13. Should the higher speed of Centaurs get mentioned in the A-screen?
It will be soon.
Thanks for all the suggestions!
Haran
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
> pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
>
> > 2. There are many status and aid screens in Crawl, e.g. @, C, ^, ", ]
> > not to mention the bigger m, a, O, A, \. It would be nice to have a
> > collective status screen capturing at least the information of the
> > first set. I propose giving the first (resistance, armour, jewellery)
> > part of the dump, together with a terse account on religion and dungeon
> > structure. The latter two could for example look like
> > "Okuwaru is exalted by your worship. He looks after you during prayer
> > and provides _might_ and _healing_."
> > "Stairs to branches: Temple D:6, Orcish Mines D:7 with Elven Halls O:3,
> > Lair D:9 with Swamp L:4."
> > Maybe only write down the first appearance of Abyss and Hells. Each of
> > these should take two lines.
>
> Some time back I added a "%" which shows the beginning of the chardump:
> HP, MP, XP, resists, worn/wielded items, and so on. (Just look at the
> first screenful of the chardump to see what it is.)
Very nice - I reckon this will be in 011?
> I'd like to make it more useful - how exactly would you want it to
> look?
As you (or the dump) have it, a blank line, one or two lines with
"_Religion_: Okuwaru is..."
(preferably the name of god and the granted powers coloured),
a blank line, one or two lines with
"Stairs to branches: Temple ..."
(preferably the names of the branches colored).
It might be open to debate whether shops should be included (worthwhile
information, but perhaps not that important when browsing the
character) or whether a terse list (not line-by-line) of mutations
should be added. With a "Mutations: You have become too much of a freak
to have a concise summary here." when real estate is short.
> > As an aside, why is the command for showing worn armor ']' instead of
> > '['? The driving force behind this decision it not going to get design
> > prizes anytime soon, I guess :) Of course, one could use ']' for this
> > general status overview (after giving '[' the armour back).
>
> It's both. Apparently it was historically ']', though '[' makes more
> sense, so both are tehre.
For me, '[' does not work.
> > 3. Crawl 4.1 has several interface improvements making it more
> > intuitive (particularly for newbies, I'd say): among them a very useful
> > @-status (see below) and displaying turns needed to undress/butcher.
> > The latter is done in a darker grey and shows "You continue to take of
> > the plate mail." turn by turn. This was not disturbing to me (but could
> > be dealt with effectively using message channels, so no further options
> > necessary for Erik 'Yuck' P.) It shows players immediately the slowness
> > of some things - I have died to a hydra in the Swamp after trying on a
> > newly purchased plate mail. The same display method could also be
> > applied to multidrops.
>
> This sounds like a good idea. Can you file a feature request on it?
> That increases the odds that we'll get it done.
I'll try (and come back if it didn't work out).
> Thanks for all the suggestions!
Your welcome!
David
Haran Pilpel
[show armour command]
>> It's both. Apparently it was historically ']', though '[' makes more
>> sense, so both are tehre.
>
> For me, '[' does not work.
Weird. It does for me and I don't think I've changed that part of the
code (though I might have.)
If it's still a problem in 0.1.1 let us know and we'll fix it.
Haran
erisdiscordia
> Haran Pilpel schrieb:
>
> > pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de writes:
[Suggestions]
I'm really sorry that I'm too slow today to interact with your list...
erm, or even to speak English properly, it seems. :-)
I almost always write from work, and today they actually want me to
work at work. The nerve! So I can't concentrate much on the things that
are really important. :-)
Thanks for your ideas! And thanks, Haran, for processing them!
Erik "Yuck" P.
Elethiomel
> 2. There are many status and aid screens in Crawl, e.g. @, C, ^, ", ]
> not to mention the bigger m, a, O, A, \. It would be nice to have a
> collective status screen capturing at least the information of the
> first set. I propose giving the first (resistance, armour, jewellery)
> part of the dump, together with a terse account on religion and dungeon
> structure. The latter two could for example look like
> "Okuwaru is exalted by your worship. He looks after you during prayer
> and provides _might_ and _healing_."
> "Stairs to branches: Temple D:6, Orcish Mines D:7 with Elven Halls O:3,
> Lair D:9 with Swamp L:4."
> Maybe only write down the first appearance of Abyss and Hells. Each of
> these should take two lines.
Case in point: I have three wins. I did not know about the " and ]
status screens. I'm sure they're in the command list, but the command
list is not very friendly. It, too, could do with some sorting and
categorisation with nice headlines. It is already two pages, but that
second page is barely started on.
> 8. Gods (addition):
> I have the feeling that Crawl lacks a god favouring 'light weight'
> characters like thieves and hunters. In order to keep things simple,
> the following proposals are not fancy. I suggest a god who favours
> wearing light stuff, attacking by range (this might include spells),
> offering heavy armours, attacking via stab, maybe usage of air magic.
> Frowned upon actions are the opposite, of course, and also the use of
> pets (as these remove the stealthy appearance, and we already have
> several summoner gods). Gifts would be appropriate missiles (depending
> on dominating skills) in the beginning, later also launchers and light
> armours. Evocations could include swiftness, blink, teleport, permanent
> boni to stealth/evasion later on. Highest one should be controlled
> blink, I think. This should be attractive to a clear audience (hunter,
> thieves), but also an option for melee-and-ranged characters as well as
> for casters who (wilfuly) neglect their Translocations.
I think this is a good idea. With a high piety cost, the CB power
doesn't "feel" too powerful - you will only use it when you really
really need to. (and not like my DE Conjurerlikes who use it to cross
rivers when they're too lazy to go by staircase)
I disagree on the "no pets" rule, though. A wand of enslavement is a
very "sneaky" type item. I'd argue for "no summons". However, the first
time the player successfuly uses a box of beasts or a deck of
summonings, the god should say "Ah, you didn't know that's what you were
doing, eh? Don't summon stuff! Let this be a warning!" With some piety
loss but no penance.
> 10. Bows vs shields:
> While Erik made it crystal clear that there will be no change
> concerning this (and I urged them to be more dictator, less prime
> minister), here's my two cents: there should be very strong penalties
> for wielding both bow and shield (more so for crossbow and shield).
> With 4.1's @-status, it could read as: "You feel extremely
> uncomfortable with your current ability to hit anything." However, it
> should be possible, simply because you can have a shield in your left
> hand and a bow in your right one.
The accepted method of archery is to hold the bow in your (straight)
off-hand and use your main hand to draw the string and feed it arrows.
The accepted place to hold a shield is in your off-hand. I can see
having a shield on your main hand, but anything larger than a buckler
would definitely interfere with the arrow. A shield on the off-hand
interferes less (because the arm is straight) but is heavy and thus
tires the off-hand more quickly and makes aiming difficult. Holding the
bow in the main hand and using the off-hand to draw arrows, string them,
and draw the bowstring would be extremely awkward. My left hand is
feeling narcoleptic at the thought alone.
> With growing abilities in both Bows
> and Shields, things should become easier. Depending on the numbers
> (including launcher and shield size), it could culminate in being
> barely able to comfortably wielding bow and buckler very late, or it
> could be more forgiving. And, there should be a speed penalty, anyway.
> [Think of this like the possibility to use both Armour and Dodging. Not
> forbidden, but needs investment and only useful later on.]
I somewhat agree with the consequences, but not the reasoning you put
ahead of them, as seen above. ;)
--
A good signature is a concise and original summary of personality. This
is not a good signature.
pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de
Elethiomel schrieb:
> pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de wrote:
> > 2. There are many status and aid screens in Crawl, e.g. @, C, ^, ", ]
> > not to mention the bigger m, a, O, A, \. It would be nice to have a
> > collective status screen capturing at least the information of the
> > first set.
> Case in point: I have three wins. I did not know about the " and ]
> status screens. I'm sure they're in the command list, but the command
> list is not very friendly. It, too, could do with some sorting and
> categorisation with nice headlines. It is already two pages, but that
> second page is barely started on.
This is very true. Maybe it's us who should start the sorting? I'll
have to wait till I can see that screen again. Would you be interested?
I think they (the DevTeam) have so much to do, they'd take anything
from us :)
Also, the game doc file should have a _single_ page with all the
commands.
> > 8. Gods (addition):
[suggestion of a god favoring light armor, ranged attacks, giving
evasion/translocation type gifts]
> > Frowned upon actions are the opposite, of course, and also the use of
> > pets (as these remove the stealthy appearance, and we already have
> > several summoner gods).
> > Highest power should be controlled blink, I think.
> I think this is a good idea. With a high piety cost, the CB power
> doesn't "feel" too powerful - you will only use it when you really
> really need to.
Yes, that's what I thought, too. Plus, Ely has a life-saving final
power as well. It cannot be unbalanced per se - only depends on the
cost :)
> (and not like my DE Conjurerlikes who use it to cross
> rivers when they're too lazy to go by staircase)
Maybe not so anymore with the new cost (and fail rates involved)...
> I disagree on the "no pets" rule, though. A wand of enslavement is a
> very "sneaky" type item. I'd argue for "no summons".
I see what you mean. I just wanted the [new god] not to be too parallel
with Vehumet. This also explains my take on Air vs Earth magic.
> However, the first time the player successfuly uses a box of beasts or a deck of
> summonings, the god should say "Ah, you didn't know that's what you were
> doing, eh? Don't summon stuff! Let this be a warning!" With some piety
> loss but no penance.
Or you could simply put this in the flavour text.
> > 10. Bows vs shields:
[Another pledge to at least partially be able to to do both.]
> The accepted method of archery is to hold the bow in your (straight)
> off-hand and use your main hand to draw the string and feed it arrows.
I remember from my Indians-vs-Cowboy days.
> The accepted place to hold a shield is in your off-hand. I can see
> having a shield on your main hand, but anything larger than a buckler
> would definitely interfere with the arrow. A shield on the off-hand
> interferes less (because the arm is straight) but is heavy and thus
> tires the off-hand more quickly and makes aiming difficult. Holding the
> bow in the main hand and using the off-hand to draw arrows, string them,
> and draw the bowstring would be extremely awkward. My left hand is
> feeling narcoleptic at the thought alone.
I just think that very bad (and clearly documentated to players)
abilities are better than forbidding things. In 4.1, you could for
example also introduce an additional strength barrier for even
_wielding_ that combination.
> > With growing abilities in both Bows
> > and Shields, things should become easier. Depending on the numbers
> > (including launcher and shield size), it could culminate in being
> > barely able to comfortably wielding bow and buckler very late, or it
> > could be more forgiving. And, there should be a speed penalty, anyway.
>
> I somewhat agree with the consequences, but not the reasoning you put
> ahead of them, as seen above. ;)
Alright!
David
erisdiscordia
> Elethiomel schrieb:
> > pl...@zio.mathematik.hu-berlin.de wrote:
> I just think that very bad (and clearly documentated to players)
> abilities are better than forbidding things.
Nobody makes a fuss about the existence of 2-handed weapons, so the
"2-handed bows! No!" phenomenon seems to be not just about that.
e.