Level counter

[Derakon]

Chod: you assume that just because the game isn't minimized, it's being played. I assure you this is not the case. Take a look at my desktop. Do you think I would notice if Angband were running in the background?

Now, you might be able to make a case for running the clock so long as one of the Angband windows has focus, but what if Angband playing is the last thing I do before going to bed? Should I have to switch to another app just to keep the game clock from ticking? This is why I suggested the "time since last keystroke" idea.

[bebo]

How about introducing a counter, which increases every time player enters new dungeon level and is shown in character dump.

I find the idea very interesting, and probably not that hard to implement. Lately with mages and priests I regrettably admit that stair scumming in the first part of the game is getting to be a habit, something I never did before with rogues/paladins/rangers.

Having a statistic about it might give players a good indication of how much they are "abusing" the mechanic. Plus incorporating this somehow in a general scoring algorithm that takes into consideration also turns in-game and such makes sense.

I don't really think spawn-farming and summoner-farming is going to be such a big issue, I figure practically no one does this any more, it's boring beyond belief

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I don't think there's any 'abuse' potential in here at all. Low turn count means something about play strategy; low time spent can just mean that you have fast fingers and good macros.

And I'm with Derakon; just because the game isn't minimized, doesn't mean I'm not playing. I may well play a bit while getting dinner ready, which might mean play for 15 minutes, then walk away for 10 minutes to get the next thing done. One thing I really like about the game is that *nothing* is going to happen in the meantime. I also play in the living room, with the TV on, usually watching some sports. Last night, it was baseball...which cut over to the Tigers game, and the attempt at *another* perfect game. I only pay nominal attention to the game normally but hey, perfect games are too cool NOT to watch. So there goes another 10 minutes.

I also expect that many folks play, these days, on 2-monitor systems, with things like instant messengers and email up as well. These are more sources of distraction.

But this really goes more to the point that this isn't a meaningful 'competition' measure, even with a heuristic such as Derakon suggested.

I would still say, tho, that we can't answer when the clock should run, without first asking, what is it that you want to know? I agree that, on certain levels, time spent in town is in-game time, but I'd be more interested in knowing how long I'm spending on any given level, or in the dungeon as a whole. If we want to look at play styles, then for each dungeon level, track:

a) # of times that level is visited
b) total time spent on that level

preferably with a timer pause feature, for those distractions. Put this data in the save folder, but NOT part of the character file per se, so it could be tracked for individual characters, and also combined across characters...it's likely that different classes will have different statistics.

[ewert]

Speed runs are definitely a possible scoring method, IMHO. It's for those of us who are temporally challenged. I find playing for low turn counts to be really tedious. I play more like an action game. If I wanted strategy I'd be playing some squad based rpg (fallout tactics was nice for example). Angband I play more like Diablo-like games nowadays. As in very, very hectic in real time (macros for pretty much everything etc.).

[Timo Pietilä]

I may well play a bit while getting dinner ready, which might mean play for 15 minutes, then walk away for 10 minutes to get the next thing done.

You can do that?

If I do that it is like, put something boiling, go playing, notice that this something has overcooked so that there is no water left , throw it away, put something to owen and turn it on, play some more, notice that there is fireman tapping your shoulder and commenting something about smoke, throw that away, put something in micro, play some more, notice how that one burned to crisp, order pizza.

[flechette]

I play angband while at work... as a pizza delivery driver.

You can do that?

If I do that it is like, put something boiling, go playing, notice that this something has overcooked so that there is no water left , throw it away, put something to owen and turn it on, play some more, notice that there is fireman tapping your shoulder and commenting something about smoke, throw that away, put something in micro, play some more, notice how that one burned to crisp, order pizza.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Timo, 2 words: kitchen timers.

And don't try to play when dealing with anything that does require periodic attention...even something relatively simple like crisping up some bacon.

But Angband's not really any different in that regard than, say, checking the day's accumulation of email, or hitting eBay, or even some maintenance work on the puter...fired up my XP laptop to move some ebooks from my Linux box, where they'd been downloaded, to my Sony Reader. Sounds simple and short enough, but...there was an update for the Reader Library software, so that had to be restarted, there was a Java update to be installed, and there was an Acrobat Reader update to install that wanted to restart the system. All told, now, a 15-20 minute exercise.

So you have the timer to make you realize that yes, indeed, time is really passing while you do all of this....

[bebo]

I don't think there's any 'abuse' potential in here at all. Low turn count means something about play strategy; low time spent can just mean that you have fast fingers and good macros.

Actually I was referring to the stair counter mentioned in the first post and stair-scumming, which I find has a clear impact on turn count and is a kind of play style that many here (including me) cosider a bit of an 'abuse' of game mechanics.

Regarding the real time counter personally I don't find it really adds any kind of meaningful information, since as pretty much everyone said keystroke speed, time left minimized, experience with game macros, etc. have a big impact on clock time. Sure if the devs feel like it they can add the feature to satisfy our curiosity, but I don't see any reasonable way to incorporate it in the calculation for the final score.

[Magnate]

You can do that?

If I do that it is like, put something boiling, go playing, notice that this something has overcooked so that there is no water left , throw it away, put something to owen and turn it on, play some more, notice that there is fireman tapping your shoulder and commenting something about smoke, throw that away, put something in micro, play some more, notice how that one burned to crisp, order pizza.

Why did our parents separate us at birth?

[ewert]

Regarding the real time counter personally I don't find it really adds any kind of meaningful information, since as pretty much everyone said keystroke speed, time left minimized, experience with game macros, etc. have a big impact on clock time. Sure if the devs feel like it they can add the feature to satisfy our curiosity, but I don't see any reasonable way to incorporate it in the calculation for the final score.

Well who said it needs to be incorporated into final score. I still strongly feel it is a very interesting value to track. I don't care at all about final score. Nor about turn counts. Or player move counts. I just play how I like. If there was a time counter, that would atleast spark my curiousity. I would probably see how fast I can get to clvl 50, or to stat gain depth, or to whatever point like farming lvl95-98, and finally of course to killing M (though I prefer to make my chars superstrong in the end by farming 95-98, not kill S and M when strong enough...)

[PowerDiver]

If there was a time counter, that would atleast spark my curiousity. I would probably see how fast I can get to clvl 50, or to stat gain depth, or to whatever point

This discussion of real time has caused me to play using

echo "" >> timelog ; date >> timelog ; ./angband ; date >> timelog

Windows must have some similar capability, though I have no clue what it would be or how one would use it.

[fizzix]

This discussion of real time has caused me to play using

echo "" >> timelog ; date >> timelog ; ./angband ; date >> timelog

Windows must have some similar capability, though I have no clue what it would be or how one would use it.

It has a clock that can be found on the lower right corner of your screen...

[ekolis]

echo Angband Started: >>angbandlog.txt
time /t >>angbandlog.txt
angband.exe
echo Angband Quit: >>angbandlog.txt
time /t >>angbandlog.txt

Not quite as compact as the Linux version, but it does the job