What do you want from the list of visible monsters?

[Marble Dice]

I mentioned I've thought about a patch to add distance/direction and columns to the monster list, and konijn_ (presumably) wanted to tear apart what I've done so far, so here's a screenshot. I'm not really satisfied with this, which is why I haven't been working on it lately. I think it would be nice to have a monster list that met all the following conditions:

1) Easy to read with a glance, and nice to look at (possibly with columns).
2) Display name, quantity, qty sleeping, and distance/direction to nearest of each group.
3) Display quantity next to name.
4) Groups with all sleeping/some sleeping/none sleeping are easy to tell apart.

If distance/direction wasn't in there, I still think the list would look nicer with columns. In the screenshot, partially sleeping groups' status is in grey, all sleeping in white, and none sleeping blank. What does everyone else think, along these lines:

Would it be nice to have columns?
Would it be nice to have the distance/direction?
Does anyone use a fairly narrow visible monsters list in a term window?
Does this look terrible?

[Pete Mack]

That's nice, but I'd rather have a precis of the visible monsters under the character info.

Something like:

[[COLOR="Navy"]**********[/COLOR]]
[COLOR="DarkGreen"]g[/COLOR][COLOR="Orange"]D[/COLOR][COLOR="Magenta"]R[/COLOR]

that is, top 5 in order of dangerousness.

[Derakon]

The only suggestion I have that immediately comes to mind is to sort the two lists by monster level, and put uniques at the top.

[Tobias]

Does anyone use a fairly narrow visible monsters list in a term window?

I do. And I would have to rearrange my windows if you did columns like you have now.

I also don't see how the direction display would be useful.
I would rather have speed, summons or special attacks in a coded form.

An option where Monsters faster then you are red instead of the OoDs would be nice.

btw. I have been meaning to write a summon/breeding warning for the monster list for some time. But i have some problems with the display code. Can you show me how you did the table?

[Marble Dice]

I do. And I would have to rearrange my windows if you did columns like you have now.

I also don't see how the direction display would be useful.
I would rather have speed, summons or special attacks in a coded form.

An option where Monsters faster then you are red instead of the OoDs would be nice.

btw. I have been meaning to write a summon/breeding warning for the monster list for some time. But i have some problems with the display code. Can you show me how you did the table?

Magnate also uses a narrow list, I was somewhat surprised to find. Mine is immediately below the main game window, and just as wide.

The idea with the direction display is to give you a general idea of where that group (or the nearest part of that group) is relative to your current position. It would be most useful for those times when you're in a semi-crowded area, and want to know roughly where that one important target is.

The monster code is kind of a mess (due to no fault of Magnate's), I was trying to clean it up a bit as I went. I'll post a patch with what I've got so far and you can see if that makes things any clearer for you.

[Magnate]

Would it be nice to have columns?
Would it be nice to have the distance/direction?
Does anyone use a fairly narrow visible monsters list in a term window?
Does this look terrible?

No, it looks fine. Yes, I use a narrow term window for my monster list - I'll post a screenshot when I work out how. It's only really a problem on my 1024x768 laptop, where the monster list window is only about a dozen characters wide. At better resolutions there's plenty of space (and I want more than seven subwindows, but that's another story!). EDIT: I attach my sdlinit.txt so if you can fire up the sdl version you can see my setup.

Personally I don't think distance/direction is very important - if it's on the monster list, it means I can see it on the main screen, and my brain is much better at working out distance/direction from that than from co-ordinates on the list. The co-ordinates seem to be helpful to people who can't seem to locate the monster in the main window - I don't have that problem. What would be helpful would be to have a flag (single character column) indicating if the monster is off-screen or on-screen. Then I know whether I need to use 'L'ook to find it.

[Marble Dice]

Personally I don't think distance/direction is very important - if it's on the monster list, it means I can see it on the main screen, and my brain is much better at working out distance/direction from that than from co-ordinates on the list. The co-ordinates seem to be helpful to people who can't seem to locate the monster in the main window - I don't have that problem. What would be helpful would be to have a flag (single character column) indicating if the monster is off-screen or on-screen. Then I know whether I need to use 'L'ook to find it.

That was the point for me actually - help me find enemies I need to 'L' for. But that's interesting - a two-character indication of ON, N, E, S, W, NE, NW, SE, SW would work just as well for hunting down errant singles.

[Rizwan]

That was the point for me actually - help me find enemies I need to 'L' for. But that's interesting - a two-character indication of ON, N, E, S, W, NE, NW, SE, SW would work just as well for hunting down errant singles.

Or how about the map quadrants/panels already used in the 'L'ook command?

[Hariolor]

I, too, use a fairly narrow window down the side, so I selfishly find myself wondering the following:

Would it be feasible to present monster info in a 2-line format, perhaps like:

<monstername> ON 45
<resists> <ranged attack>

---

I have lifted marble dice's format for orientation and distance, as I think it's a good idea. Monster status would be indicated by color (asleep/awake)

Resists could maybe be indicated by a row of colored asterisks in a standard sequence, with each color corresponding to an element that creature resists (if known).

The presence of a ranged attack could be a simple <Y/N>, or maybe could be in some format like RB / BPo / RA / BPl, reflecting abiities like Ranged Boulders, Breathes Poison, Ranged Arrows, Breathes Plasma, etc

I am thinking this kind of shorthand would be justifiable, as the monster detail screen gives specifics - the monster list is just a fast and dirty reference while exploring.
---

alternately, if it were possible to make the monster list word-wrap, this might accomplish something similar.

[Tobias]

some more thoughts.

The direction and distance display would be very nice for the item list. So you can pick up that _Banishment before taking on the vault.

I will open a thread were we can post screenshots of our setups. might be useful for newbies and for interface improvements.

I have written a mod to color the monster list to mark interesting monsters:
summoners are red
faster monsters are orange
unkilled monsters are yellow
monsters that drop good loot are green
quite useful.

While I was in there I also changed the breeder message to yellow.

[andrewdoull]

I had a quick check of the Unangband implementation again, and one significant thing I did was distinguish between monsters you can see and shoot, and monsters which you can only see. I don't think the Angband LOS / LOF implementation supports this unfortunately.

As mentioned, I've also used '[' to toggle between sorting monsters by distance, depth, vengeance (number of times the player has been killed by this monster, then depth) - and in an unfinished version of this, proximity (whether the player is in the monster's awareness range, then distance). I could also see sorting by novelty (unknown monsters to known monsters) as being useful.

Andrew

[PowerDiver]

I don't use any separate windows, but I occasionally '[', and the main thing I want is location info.

I also think it is much more important who can target you, including double moves if they are faster, than who you can target.

[Magnate]

I don't use any separate windows, but I occasionally '[', and the main thing I want is location info.

To each his own.

I also think it is much more important who can target you, including double moves if they are faster, than who you can target.

Both this and the Unangband see/shoot distinction are impossible until V's LOS/LOF logic is overhauled. There are numerous long threads on this topic, so I won't rehash it here. Suffice to say that targetting should be symmetric: if you can shoot it, it can shoot you, and if you can see-but-not-shoot it, it should be able to see-but-not-shoot you. IMO.

I do love how trying to do something as inocuously helpful as improve the monster list leads people on to the really big challenges like LOS/LOF. If making uniques purple got us 256 colour support, perhaps I should set all ammo damage to 1 and maybe someone will finally sort out the melee/archery rebalancing?