How many people play Angband?

[nppangband]

This wouldn't so much be an option as an alternate standard way of doing things. Currently the inventory display is noninteractive -- it just lists everything in your inventory. Making it so you could select items and use them from the inventory display doesn't preclude allowing you to select a verb directly from the main game.

That's my intent, anyway. I don't plan on removing any keyboard commands. I just want to make the inventory or equipment lists interactive, to be able to click on an object and get a list of buttons with all of the available commands for that item. In looking at the FAAngband 1.6 code I am almost positive it already does much of this.

[Derakon]

+1. If we're having an open season on options, I vote for this one alongside "show all damage numbers" etc.

This wouldn't so much be an option as an alternate standard way of doing things. Currently the inventory display is noninteractive -- it just lists everything in your inventory. Making it so you could select items and use them from the inventory display doesn't preclude allowing you to select a verb directly from the main game.

[pav]

We get about 100 users who use the app each day, 400 who use it each week and 1200 who us it each month. User retention is pretty low. A lot of people run it a couple times and then not again. I'm not quite sure how to read the retained user graph, but it looks like the number of retained users has been growing recently. Up from about 10 at the end of last year to 53 in August. They define a retained user as someone who uses the app twice in a week.

I find playing on a pure touchphone unbearably painful, so I definitely count into the download-and-try-once demographics.

[Magnate]

That's extremely unintuitive to me, so if you are going to change that, please keep both as option. I would much rather have verb-item in shops too. Doing other way around is like trying to talk Yoda -style all of time.

+1. If we're having an open season on options, I vote for this one alongside "show all damage numbers" etc.

[Timo Pietilä]

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:

That's extremely unintuitive to me, so if you are going to change that, please keep both as option. I would much rather have verb-item in shops too. Doing other way around is like trying to talk Yoda -style all of time.

[Derakon]

I don't think anyone suggested removing the existing item-use commands just because unified-use exists.

Under the scheme I suggested (which apparently FAAngband already has), newbies would largely use items by going to the inventory and selecting an item. This would bring up information on the item (per 'I'nspect), and then say e.g.

Would you like to 
(a)im
(d)rop
(v)olley (throw)
(k)runch (squelch)

This nicely teaches the newbie what the verb-specific commands are, so they can use them in the future instead of going through the inventory interface.

[fizzix]

So I am completely not a fan of more unified commands. The reason is, Angband has a very useful inscription index. The index is obscure and opaque to new players, but once you get the hang of it, it's very powerful, and greatly reduces the time it takes to do common actions. Using "a1" for aim wand of light is much better than having to figure out what slot your wand is in after the generic use. Right now I can be carrying both wands and rods of light, have one a1 and the other z1, and choose the correct one without thinking. That would not be possible if all items used the same command. I'd very quickly run out of digits.

[Nick]

I should play more FA, but I really don't like wilderness. Sorry!

If you're interested in seeing the UI etc features that I have/had, FA 1.1 with the dungeon-only birth option might be not too painful.

[Derakon]

FA has precisely this feature, in addition to mouse selection being possible (although testing shows me it currently crashes the game ... that's what I get for updating my codebase ... mutter ..)

D'oh.

I should play more FA, but I really don't like wilderness. Sorry!

[nppangband]

It's still on the to-do list, waiting for someone to do it: http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/51

I plan on doing something like this in the mouse-support commit I am working on, and also a step powards noun-verb item management.

It will work like this:

There will be a button at the bottom of the screen called "items" or something like that. It will open a two column menu. The main categories will be equipment, inventory, floor, and home (the latter two only if applicable). From there, you will be able to select any item. And the buttons on the bottom will become all of the possible commands for that item (wield, takeoff, drop, destroy, squelch settings, inscribe, uninscribe, inspect, quaff, read, zap, fire, throw, browse, etc......depending on the object type.)

It should help the beginner with the steep learning curve by being able to access many commands with a couple mouseclicks , and the advanced player should appreciate being able to quickly through their equipment, inventory and a huge stack of items on the floor or their home inventory and decide what to keep and what to throw away.

[Nick]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:
* Bring up inventory
* Type letter of item
* Get list of possible actions with that item (e.g. browse/cast/drop/throw/squelch for spellbooks).
* Choose option from list, proceed as usual.

OK, it's happening again...

FA has precisely this feature, in addition to mouse selection being possible (although testing shows me it currently crashes the game ... that's what I get for updating my codebase ... mutter ..)

Maybe I'll actually make good on my promise to port some of my features to Vanilla this time.

[Magnate]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

It's still on the to-do list, waiting for someone to do it: http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/51

[d_m]

I feel like you could unify certain commands like read/Browse, Eat/quaff, and aim/use/zap in the same way that (m)agic and (p)ray are interchangable. That way people accustomed to the old system could still hit the keys that they're used to (and inscribe things with shortcuts that work for a specific letter) but newbies could just learn the basic 'read' or 'aim' command and use it for multiple item types.

Definitely. Many of us have the current commands stuck in our brains and just ripping the old commands out would hurt a lot. But having something that new players could use instead would be great.

I agree with the comment about integrating it with a preexisting command like (i)nventory, (I)nspect, or similar.

[Nomad]

I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. for what is essentially one idea "use the item to gain an effect, whatever that means for this item". Ideally there would be one command (mapped to a convenient key) which does these, in addition to the precise versions.

You know, one thing I discovered switching back from Angband to playing Nethack for a while was how incredibly annoying it was to gofrom Angband's system of using the same (w)ield/(t)ake off commands for everything to having three completely separate command sets for wielding and removing different types of equipment.

I feel like you could unify certain commands like read/Browse, Eat/quaff, and aim/use/zap in the same way that (m)agic and (p)ray are interchangable. That way people accustomed to the old system could still hit the keys that they're used to (and inscribe things with shortcuts that work for a specific letter) but newbies could just learn the basic 'read' or 'aim' command and use it for multiple item types.

[Derakon]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:
* Bring up inventory
* Type letter of item
* Get list of possible actions with that item (e.g. browse/cast/drop/throw/squelch for spellbooks).
* Choose option from list, proceed as usual.

Similarly with equipment, though your options would largely be limited to unwielding and activating.

Heck, you could merge this with the 'I'nspect command, so the player not only knows what to do with the item, but also what precisely it will do.

One notable thing this would do is help newbies figure out the quiver. The first instinct on finding a new item type is to see what the valid interactions are with it, which would reveal that you can wield ammo. It'd also expose obscure interactions (like browsing / gaining spells, refilling lamps, and I'd say spiking doors but IIRC spikes are gone).

Of course, all of the old verb-item interactions can stick around; if nothing else they're vital for setting up keymaps. This is mostly a more friendly way to expose those verbs to the new player, as opposed to looking up the help every time they want to zap a rod.