Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[BlueFish]

You should be able to do this in the object.txt file by removing TWO_HANDED in the description BUT 5d2 can be good damage even now, when you change it to a one-handed weapon mattocks would do 5d4+STR damage (+power+damage rings+charge) when wielded two-handed. As Morgoth has been slain with a shovel once (custom shovel and insane song of mastery by Psi) I guess you can't completely forget about their use as weapons too.

The damage dice are in that same text file, so those afraid they'll abuse the combat system by wielding a mighty mattock one-handed can go ahead and change them to 1d1 or something.

As long as you only have to handle rubble song of freedom is a good way to free an item slot and it does much more as well if you can afford it (say because you found a sharp weapon).

Well, it's generally always handy to be able to get through granite.

[taptap]

I actually designed the menu to work well for fast switching too. You just hit, say, "<tab> a a" in order to toggle Power. Believe it or not, the spell system in Angband requires you to do a three key sequence like this every time you want to fire a magic missile. I think doing the three key dance when you want to toggle something is pretty easy and you will memorise the two non-tab keys for the ability very quickly.

Believe or not I actually toggled starting with @, then a, then selecting the skill tree with direction keys and RETURN then again direction keys and RETURN... for a dozen more keystrokes each time.

[taptap]

Is there a file somewhere that can be edited to make shovels and mattocks one handed? Or is that baked into the code?

You should be able to do this in the object.txt file by removing TWO_HANDED in the description BUT 5d2 can be good damage even now, when you change it to a one-handed weapon mattocks would do 5d4+STR damage (+power+damage rings+charge) when wielded two-handed. As Morgoth has been slain with a shovel once (custom shovel and insane song of mastery by Psi) I guess you can't completely forget about their use as weapons too.

As long as you only have to handle rubble song of freedom is a good way to free an item slot and it does much more as well if you can afford it (say because you found a sharp weapon).

[BlueFish]

Is there a file somewhere that can be edited to make shovels and mattocks one handed? Or is that baked into the code?

[Derakon]

I think using the digger from the inventory is probably the best solution here. You can still wield the digger as a weapon if you like, but the tunnel command could simply prompt you for the digger you want to use (and users could readily set up keymaps to automatically select their favored digger if they want).

[BlueFish]

Another option rather than just using diggers from inventory would be to disable the off-hand equipped item when two handed items are wielded, while leaving the off-hand item wielded.

[debo]

I like it but would refine it so that diggers are just used from inventory. Yes, this would make the game slightly easier and turn counts slightly less, but the differences would be very minor in those regards and the interface would be made significantly less cumbersome for digging.

Also need to think about what happens if you clear rubble and there's e.g. a vampire or a serpent waiting right behind it I'm not sure I'd 100% want to use the next 1-2 turns equipping a sword and a shield. I imagine at that point it would just halt the builtin "macro" and let you decide what to do.

I might also consider it surprising behaviour if the game dropped my shield due to full inventory if I pushed ctrl-dir -- might need to bring up that prompt that says "This will mean dropping your shield, still proceed?"

[BlueFish]

It can be annoying when you wield a digger as a shield user, and have a full inventory. And even without a full inventory, you have to put on both your shield and weapon each time (it's the same amount of keystrokes really). Macros make this fairly painless, but it still feels like a lot of work just to clear some rubble.

Not that digging is a very large part of Sil, I just don't like how it takes so many keystrokes.

What if the whole wield/unwield process could be handled automatically? Let's say I have a shovel in my inventory (but not equipped), and want to clear some rubble. If I hit ctrl+dir or use the tunnel command, the game could automatically wield the shovel (if you're carrying multiple diggers, just pick the best one), dig, then re-equip my weapon and shield. The turn-count would be the same as if I did all of this manually. But, it would mean that clearing rubble would only be a single command rather than seven (I counted). Also, you'd still be able to weild the digger normally and use it that way, which would be a good choice if you're going to dig multiple squares.

This system should also be smart enough, so if I drop my shield when digging, it automatically re-wields it off the floor.

I like it but would refine it so that diggers are just used from inventory. Yes, this would make the game slightly easier and turn counts slightly less, but the differences would be very minor in those regards and the interface would be made significantly less cumbersome for digging.

[evilmike]

It can be annoying when you wield a digger as a shield user, and have a full inventory. And even without a full inventory, you have to put on both your shield and weapon each time (it's the same amount of keystrokes really). Macros make this fairly painless, but it still feels like a lot of work just to clear some rubble.

Not that digging is a very large part of Sil, I just don't like how it takes so many keystrokes.

What if the whole wield/unwield process could be handled automatically? Let's say I have a shovel in my inventory (but not equipped), and want to clear some rubble. If I hit ctrl+dir or use the tunnel command, the game could automatically wield the shovel (if you're carrying multiple diggers, just pick the best one), dig, then re-equip my weapon and shield. The turn-count would be the same as if I did all of this manually. But, it would mean that clearing rubble would only be a single command rather than seven (I counted). Also, you'd still be able to weild the digger normally and use it that way, which would be a good choice if you're going to dig multiple squares.

This system should also be smart enough, so if I drop my shield when digging, it automatically re-wields it off the floor.

[evilmike]

Am I right in thinking that MarvinPA and evilmike come from the Crawl community? I really like the idea of more cross-fertilisation between Sil and Crawl as there is a lot of overlap in the design style (probably more so than between Sil and Angband).

MarvinPA and I are both members of the Crawl dev team, although I'm currently inactive (right now all my attention is going into another game I'm developing - still unannounced). clouded is also a major contributor to Crawl.

There is a large overlap between the design philosophies of Sil and Crawl, which is why Sil is fairly popular with some crawl players. Some big differences are that Sil is much more concerned with theme/flavour, and that Sil has been carefully designed from the ground up. Crawl has sort of just evolved over time, so it's not as tightly designed, although its also much larger.

[half]

I also wanted to give a general thanks for the recent discussion of features to change. Compared to the average on this forum, Scatha and I are pretty far out in the dimension of wanting to make the fun and optimal play coincide in Sil (and in most games in general). It is fascinating to receive criticism from people who are further in that direction than us! If we are hesitant to adopt the suggestions, it is usually because we think that it is not worth the flavour sacrifices. This is something we also care about a lot and is an area in which we think Sil excels. Do keep up the suggestions though, and don't let our reluctance to implement some of them make you think that we aren't taking them seriously.

Am I right in thinking that MarvinPA and evilmike come from the Crawl community? I really like the idea of more cross-fertilisation between Sil and Crawl as there is a lot of overlap in the design style (probably more so than between Sil and Angband). I hear that Crawl has taken the Song of Slaying. That's great to hear. Do take other features you like. The rage visual effect, the style of the in-game help screens, and the behaviour of Grotesques were definitely influenced by Crawl, and there may be other things too that I'm forgetting.

[half]

When I use the ability menu to toggle power, I can't just hit tab-a-a.. I also need a sequence of keys to escape the menu. For me, it's tab-a-a-tab-tab, with the last two keypresses being how I get out of the menu (if there's a better way to quickly exit the skill menu, I don't know it...).

Ah, you are right. I had thought it would disappear on the keypress, but I now see that it doesn't and that it would be a bit inconsistent with other menus if it did. tab-a-a-tab-tab is probably the best you can do at the moment (and then use macros). I agree that this isn't ideal though!

[evilmike]

I actually designed the menu to work well for fast switching too. You just hit, say, "<tab> a a" in order to toggle Power. Believe it or not, the spell system in Angband requires you to do a three key sequence like this every time you want to fire a magic missile. I think doing the three key dance when you want to toggle something is pretty easy and you will memorise the two non-tab keys for the ability very quickly.

When I use the ability menu to toggle power, I can't just hit tab-a-a.. I also need a sequence of keys to escape the menu. For me, it's tab-a-a-tab-tab, with the last two keypresses being how I get out of the menu (if there's a better way to quickly exit the skill menu, I don't know it...).

I use macros now to get around this issue (same with casting spells in angband), but this is a complicated feature which I don't think most people know how to use. A basic macro to toggle Power would be something like "\taa\t\t" for example. This doesn't give much feedback though - the macro will work, but you will only see an extremely brief screen flash (from the menu). There won't be a message printed, since it only gets printed in the menu system. Overall it's convenient, but a bit kludgey.

[half]

Oh, actually, that reminds me. It would be good to have a better interface for enabling and disabling abilities. There are a couple where it can make sense to turn them on and off a lot, for example flaming arrows, but it sucks how the menu takes up the whole screen and how you have to go into a sub menu. Maybe a key that brings up a menu of abilities that are worth toggling. It could behave like the song menu.

I actually designed the menu to work well for fast switching too. You just hit, say, "<tab> a a" in order to toggle Power. Believe it or not, the spell system in Angband requires you to do a three key sequence like this every time you want to fire a magic missile. I think doing the three key dance when you want to toggle something is pretty easy and you will memorise the two non-tab keys for the ability very quickly.

[evilmike]

Oh, actually, that reminds me. It would be good to have a better interface for enabling and disabling abilities. There are a couple where it can make sense to turn them on and off a lot, for example flaming arrows, but it sucks how the menu takes up the whole screen and how you have to go into a sub menu. Maybe a key that brings up a menu of abilities that are worth toggling. It could behave like the song menu.