Angband (or variant) Feature Suggestion Poll/Feedback thread

[Magnate]

I really like this idea.

V+++

Glad you like it, but I hasten to point out that it's not my idea. I can't remember whose it was, sadly, but I definitely read it somewhere (probably either this forum on rgra).

Thinking about it though, I don't really see why the 2nd option is necessary - I can't think of (m)any macros I ever make which are race-specific. Options 1, 3 and 4 would suit me fine.

CC

[Nick]

F011 A V1 "Add stealth as a stat"

In place of Charisma, as detailed in original thread
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I'll keep it a separate feature request because I don't want people to have to choose between charisma as a stat and stealth as a stat (if they don't want to).

OK, I've got an alternative suggestion - make all the existing stats more like stealth; in fact, exactly like HP. For each stat, at each increase in character level, either boost it by one or don't, in such a way that they all end up at 18/100 at level 50. Preferably, randomly select the levels to allocate these at birth, like for hitpoints. No more stat gain, no more stat potions.

[Pete Mack]

OK, I've got an alternative suggestion - make all the existing stats more like stealth; in fact, exactly like HP. For each stat, at each increase in character level, either boost it by one or don't, in such a way that they all end up at 18/100 at level 50. Preferably, randomly select the levels to allocate these at birth, like for hitpoints. No more stat gain, no more stat potions.

I'm against this: UnAngband and Steamband work this way, more or less, although you don't ever get to 18/100; more like 18/90 or 18/80. The trouble with this is it makes diving easier in an entirely predictable way: the faster you dive, the more CON, etc you get. Currently, if you dive fast, you get lots of good gear, and level up quickly, but you take a big risk until your HP catches up.

[PaulBlay]

V++ Change "append macros to file" into four options:
- 1: save this macro to user.prf (loaded every game)
- 2: save this macro to <current race>.prf (loaded every time a character of that race is loaded)
- 3: save this macro to <current class>.prf (as above for that class)
- 4: save this macro to <current name>.prf (loaded only for this specific character)

I waste hours re-defining macros, because they're never saved where I need them.

Why stop at the macro section? The same thing could be useful for options, etc. I would however suggest a few changes:

- 4: save this macro to <current name>.prf (loaded for this specific character and prompted to load for characters of same name)

I would also suggest that the 'knowledge' of which prf files have been applied in which order should be available from somewhere (stored during game startup / character load / character creation).

[pav]

OK, I've got an alternative suggestion - make all the existing stats more like stealth; in fact, exactly like HP. For each stat, at each increase in character level, either boost it by one or don't, in such a way that they all end up at 18/100 at level 50. Preferably, randomly select the levels to allocate these at birth, like for hitpoints. No more stat gain, no more stat potions.

V--- boooooriiiiing!!

[Magnate]

Why stop at the macro section? The same thing could be useful for options, etc.

Yes. The other thing I want it for is auto-inscriptions (which IMO are just another type of macro).

- 4: save this macro to <current name>.prf (loaded for this specific character and prompted to load for characters of same name)

By all means. I hadn't thought of that, because I never re-use character names. I do however make a lot of use of roman numerals, so what would be really cool would be to strip any trailing roman numerals (or digits, to embrace the less sophisticated ;-) from the current name, and load it whenever it matches the first part of a character's name.

I would also suggest that the 'knowledge' of which prf files have been applied in which order should be available from somewhere (stored during game startup / character load / character creation).

Well, knowing which prf files have been loaded doesn't help you unless you can inspect what's inside them. I'd rather have an option in the macro menu which displays all the keys for which macros currently exist (and, preferably, the macros too). I guess a screen of which visuals are non-default might be handy too.

CC

[Donald Jonker]

V++ Change "append macros to file" into four options:
- 1: save this macro to user.prf (loaded every game)
- 2: save this macro to <current race>.prf (loaded every time a character of that race is loaded)
- 3: save this macro to <current class>.prf (as above for that class)
- 4: save this macro to <current name>.prf (loaded only for this specific character)

I waste hours re-defining macros, because they're never saved where I need them.

This (including if you extend it to options, &c) seems incredibly unnecessary to me. How difficult is it to dump a warrior's macros and options to a file named Warrior.prf? And that's the hard part, and you only need to do it once (if you feel like revising, just dump again whenever).

When you want to adopt the Warrior's settings for a given char, you just load Warrior.prf and immediately dump it to the char's name. It takes all of 10 seconds per character.

Of course I wouldn't be heartbroken if the effort was made to put your plan into action, but is there anything it gets you beyond what I've described above?

[Pete Mack]

The one thing I would like to see with preference dumps is that default values not be included in the dump.

They make the preference file unnecessarily large and hard to read.

[Nick]

V--- boooooriiiiing!!

I didn't say it was a good idea.

[Nolendil]

Heretic. :-P

Anyway, I adopted Nolendil's system.

not to mention two different voting systems (of which I prefer Nolendil's).

Muahahahaha. See, I've got followers. Fear my legions of adepts

More seriously, I understand you want us to focus on what's important but I believe most *band players are mature enough to give priorities to what they really want and even if some of us mess up, the final count should still reflect what would be the most appreciated.
More over, with the 1/2/3 system, you have to rethink all your votes everytime something new is suggested. That's not bad but it's time consuming when the list gets long and I'm not sure it's more efficient in the end.

Did you look at the linked thread? (The old title is misleading - that was pre-edit)

Yes, I read it but I was missing RConfusion, thanks for the clarification

I can't help feeling that a forum thread is a totally inappropriate vehicle to do it. Forum threads are intended for recording the chronological flow of discussions - this thread is less than 24 hours old and it's already almost impossible to follow and contains numerous edits

Well, it might not be ideal but most of the work is done by Paul who has to copy suggestions and votes in the first post so it's ok
The problem, as Paul said in his Clarification (see bottom of first post), is that this post should only contains the summary and votes in the first post, posts with votes and posts with a quick description of a new request with a link to the appropriate thread.
Right now, we're discussing almost every proposal altogether in the same thread which is fun but not really efficient (not to mention posts like this very one debating about the thread itself)
However having a section for feature requests and using the poll system would be nice. I'd still like a locked sticky where a moderator would copy all the suggestions and links to them. This way, anyone could have a clear view of what has already been suggested before adding a new request or if he wants to express himself about what's already been suggested.

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F020 A V++ Add a "Feature requests" section to the forum

This forum would be moderated by someone who can spend time collecting all suggestions with links to related discussions in a locked sticky

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PS :
I'll vote for the new suggestions later, I need some sleep right now.
Damn, I wanted to continue playing my Priest and I wrote this long post instead ^^'

[PaulBlay]

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F020 A V++ Add a "Feature requests" section to the forum

This forum would be moderated by someone who can spend time collecting all suggestions with links to related discussions in a locked sticky

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If you can't find a scroll of "summon person with time on their hands" I'm going to have to vote against that one on the basis of the detailed description.

What I would not be against is
a) formalising the "Discussion thread" links so that they all look the same and hopefully people actually use them and
b) creating new threads (here, or in a subforum if created) for suggestions that don't have a separate thread. (Most actually do)

I think it's a bit soon to talk about subforums on the basis of a one day old thread that might lose me tomorrow.

[Magnate]

This (including if you extend it to options, &c) seems incredibly unnecessary to me. How difficult is it to dump a warrior's macros and options to a file named Warrior.prf? And that's the hard part, and you only need to do it once (if you feel like revising, just dump again whenever).

When you want to adopt the Warrior's settings for a given char, you just load Warrior.prf and immediately dump it to the char's name. It takes all of 10 seconds per character.

So I, er, can't count on your vote then?

Of course I wouldn't be heartbroken if the effort was made to put your plan into action, but is there anything it gets you beyond what I've described above?

It's not as if I haven't done what you describe, but I don't find it as simple as you make out, hence my suggestion. I play Angband on dozens of different machines, and it takes quite a while to re-do the macros on each machine, especially as the default is to save to <name>.prf and I find I often do that by accident. Also I don't want *all* the macros defined for that character to be saved for that class, and there's currently no way to do this.

An interim step would be to change the default to <class>.prf, as most macros I use are class-specific and this would solve over half the problem.

I guess what I ought to do is get myself organised, write myself a <class>.prf for each class, keep them on a USB stick and see if I still think this change is required. But I could probably implement the change in less time than it would take me to get that organised.

[Magnate]

I think it's a bit soon to talk about subforums on the basis of a one day old thread that might lose me tomorrow.

But this is not the first time it's come up. I think a Feature Requests subform for the Vanilla forum is a good idea, because currently they get buried in the main V forum under requests for help, bug reports, debates about play style etc. etc. Moving feature request threads into a separate subforum would make it a lot easier for someone motivated like yourself to maintain a stickied thread which listed a summary of feature requests with a tally of how many 'votes' each one currently has. I'm not so fussed about this latter issue (adding a "feature request" type to the bug tracker would be a much easier way to do this tracking and summarising), but I accept that others think it's important.

[PaulBlay]

It's not as if I haven't done what you describe, but I don't find it as simple as you make out, hence my suggestion. I play Angband on dozens of different machines, and it takes quite a while to re-do the macros on each machine, especially as the default is to save to <name>.prf and I find I often do that by accident. Also I don't want *all* the macros defined for that character to be saved for that class, and there's currently no way to do this.

There seems to be a bit of an "anti-userfriendly" tendency among devotees of roguelike games. Maybe a backlash from people who find character based displays too difficult to bother trying. Sure most people here don't need more easily accessible and relevant help-pages etc. but everybody was a new user once.

[PaulBlay]

OK I'm going to make some minor changes to the way the features listed on the first post. I'm just posting here to warn you.

====================================
Current summary of features in reverse order of popularity (needless to say, by my voting system).
F010 A +3 "merge prayers dTraps & dStairs"
F002 A +2 "Add player history to character dumps"
F007 A +2 "Newbie command menu in Roguelike keyset"
F021 A +2 "Strengthen mage and priest charm spells"
F004 A +1 "Context sensitive help for inventory / equipment"
F005 A +1 "Update help for (f)ire and item"
F009 A +1 "Advanced macro handling with actions, not keypresses, shown"
F016 A +1 "Get rid of magic mushroom patches. Completely."
F018 A +1 "Change 'append macros to file' into four options:"
F011 A 0 "Add stealth as a stat"
F008 A 0 "User friendly display of existing macro trigger keys and actions"
F012 A 0 "Macro command 'pause and accept direction/target'"
F013 A 0 "improve mage sleep/confusion/slow/polymorph/wonder spells"
F015 A 0 "Slightly reduce natural depth of scrolls of acquirement"
F017 A 0 "Nerf zephyr hounds"
F019 A 0 "Naturally increasing stats, no stat potions"
F020 Oook 0 "Add a 'Feature requests' section to the forum"
F001 A -1 "Remove charisma."
F006 A -2 "Store pre-order system"
F014 A N/A "monsters waking up shouldn't act right away"
F003 A N/A "Combine points-based with standard roller"

I will also make the announcement that if any feature reaches +10 votes I will attempt to create a patch that implements it and submit same to the developers' mailing list. (I give no guarantees as to whether I can code well enough to succeed or whether it will be accepted. )