[Crawl] Some thoughts on enhancements to the Darshan Patch

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Hi all, and especially Darshan,

I was delighted to note, while reading through a conversation about a month
old, that Darshan does not yet consider his Patch a done deal, and is
considering a new release eventually. So I'd like to offer some thoughts.

- Travel stops when a monster is detected at the edge of the PC's FOV.
Sometimes, however, it stops in such a way that when control reverts to the
player, the monster is not necessarily... still? yet? in the FOV. If it's the
former, it's merely disorienting. If it's the latter, it's also a bit of a
cheat in the player's favor. Of course stash tracking sort of is too, and I
don't mind that, but I do mind having travel stop and not knowing why
(especially since it could be yet another of those annoying amulet icons with
the same color as the floor that were probably considered a "feature" when
they were added... but that's another matter ).

Anyway... if there is anything that could be done about this, that would be
nice.

- A nice cheater option to change those damn floor-colored amulets to neon
pink or something

- An expanding of the commented-out travel-stopping lines to include not only
ghoul-related lines, but also lines relevant to a non-Ghoul who has an amulet
of the Gourmand, would be heralded by lazy people like me.

- An option to auto-ignore (as if the user had pressed Ctrl-E) piles bigger
than X items. The idea being that such a pile is almost certainly a junkpile.

- An option to likewise automatically consider all piles containing certain
item types, and/or any cursed items, to be junkpiles.

(As you can probably tell, I have a hard time remembering to mark my
junkpiles as such.)

- An option to squelch flavor text in the stash record, and ideally in the
main dump too.

- The ability to abort interlevel travel using Esc even in the numerical
level choosing step.

- [Dream] Do you really want to stab the foo? (Anyone who's ever followed the
Shining One will know what I mean.)

- [Dream] A big toy hammer that will jump out of the monitor and knock me
unconscious just before I cast Sticks to Snakes on my favorite spear

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper wrote:

> Hi all, and especially Darshan,
>
> I was delighted to note, while reading through a conversation about a
> month old, that Darshan does not yet consider his Patch a done deal, and
> is considering a new release eventually. So I'd like to offer some
> thoughts.

Oh wait, I'ld like to add one thing (before Santa Claus considers these
wish list as final):

Crawl IMO really *needs* an enhanced drop function or (/and) drop menu!
The idea is to eliminate all that tedious dropping of every single item
one by one. Think of a method of 'group dropping' or something similar to
auto-pickup. This could either be a semi-automatic 'drop_all function',
configured by keywords (e.g. drop_all = "rotten", got the picture?) in
init.txt and triggered by ctrl-D for instance (even better with
configurable race-filters), or/and an enhanced drop menu, wherein the
player could manually highlight several items to drop them all at once.

I don't know, whether it falls into Darshan's resources (capabilities,
interests), though. Maybe it's rather an idea for a future version update.
Ok, I'm dreaming...

Rubinstein

 

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Rubinstein <picommander@t-online.de> wrote:

> Crawl IMO really *needs* an enhanced drop function or (/and) drop
> menu! The idea is to eliminate all that tedious dropping of every
> single item one by one.

That was something I was planning to do. I'd forgotten all about
it; thanks for reminding me.

> or/and an enhanced drop menu, wherein the player could manually
> highlight several items to drop them all at once.

This is what I had in mind. An extended drop/pickup command. It
would have to be a multi-turn activity if more than one item is
selected.

Darshan

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

In article <Xns95B1B299BF6E4darshansaztecsoftnet@130.133.1.4>,
Darshan Shaligram <scintilla@gmail.com> wrote:
// Rubinstein <picommander@t-online.de> wrote:
//
// > Crawl IMO really *needs* an enhanced drop function or (/and) drop
// > menu! The idea is to eliminate all that tedious dropping of every
// > single item one by one.
//
// That was something I was planning to do. I'd forgotten all about
// it; thanks for reminding me.
//
// > or/and an enhanced drop menu, wherein the player could manually
// > highlight several items to drop them all at once.
//
// This is what I had in mind. An extended drop/pickup command. It
// would have to be a multi-turn activity if more than one item is
// selected.

That's pretty much why it hasn't been done (it's been a to do for a long
time). Single turn multidrop would render several other game elements [1]
as pointless. So basically, a system to do this isn't just as simple as
a bit of UI work... it requires reworking several mechanics [2]. I suppose
the simplest option is just listing the number of turns required as part
of the interface (à la Ragnarok).

Brent Ross

[1] Namely, effects that target the player's inventory... mummy death
curses, giant spores, fire and ice throwing monsters. These aren't
exactly major threats in the first place and shifting he balance would
probably just result in them becoming worse than pointless... they become
tedious (because every encounter just results in an automatic drop,
kill, pickup response). These effects are desirable, in that it's more
interesting to have some monsters who can provide different kinds of
threats (other than the bland HP one).

[2] Personally, I'm fine with the asymmetry between pickup and drop...
game balance is more important in my books. A working system where they
are symmetric would be better, but that doesn't seem likely because
pickup > 1 turn is bad (consider autopickup) and multidrop <= 1 turn
breaks the monster effects. So that requires some reworking.

 

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bwross@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Brent Ross) wrote in message news:<cojiji$q26$1@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>...
>
> [1] Namely, effects that target the player's inventory... mummy death
> curses, giant spores, fire and ice throwing monsters. These aren't
> exactly major threats in the first place and shifting he balance would
> probably just result in them becoming worse than pointless... they become
> tedious (because every encounter just results in an automatic drop,
> kill, pickup response). These effects are desirable, in that it's more
> interesting to have some monsters who can provide different kinds of
> threats (other than the bland HP one).

I always hate the drop/pickup cycle that some systems result in.
Nethack's scroll of fire comes to mind.

You could always have the death effects target the area of the player
in addition to the player's inventory, so merely dropping doesn't save
you:

http://tinyurl.com/4s62e

One could drop away from the critter, but then one could have done a
multidrop anyways.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)

 

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bork bork bork Brent Ross bork 5:50:58 AM bork 12/1/2004 bork bork:

> In article <Xns95B1B299BF6E4darshansaztecsoftnet@130.133.1.4>,
> Darshan Shaligram <scintilla@gmail.com> wrote:
> // Rubinstein <picommander@t-online.de> wrote:
> //
> // > Crawl IMO really needs an enhanced drop function or (/and) drop
> // > menu! The idea is to eliminate all that tedious dropping of every
> // > single item one by one.
> //
> // That was something I was planning to do. I'd forgotten all about
> // it; thanks for reminding me.
> //
> // > or/and an enhanced drop menu, wherein the player could manually
> // > highlight several items to drop them all at once.
> //
> // This is what I had in mind. An extended drop/pickup command. It
> // would have to be a multi-turn activity if more than one item is
> // selected.
>
> That's pretty much why it hasn't been done (it's been a to do for a long
> time). Single turn multidrop would render several other game elements
[...]
> as pointless. So basically, a system to do this isn't just as simple as
> a bit of UI work... it requires reworking several mechanics [...]. I
> suppose the simplest option is just listing the number of turns required as
> part of the interface (` la Ragnarok).
>
> Brent Ross

Here's one vote in favor of keeping the mechanics (to maintain the mummy
threat, as Brent said) and just tweaking the UI in the manner outlined by
Darshan. In a maximally simple implementation, the order in which items are
marked could serve as the drop order (with the option to unmark/re-mark an
item for dropping if the player sees she's made a mistake in setting the
order), and there would be a hardcoded set of conditions for stopping the
multidrop. A frillier version could include a configurable set of stop
conditions and a SHIFT-based "Risky Drop," with much looser stop conditions
and an interface screen noticeably different from the other multidrop.
Frillier yet: configurable Risky Drop.

Erik