secret doors

[MattB]

The more time you spend on a level, the more monsters there'll be, and most of 'em will be awake too. Spending time searching isn't necessarily going to be fatal but it is time wasted to little productive end.

Well, I get that and fair enough.
However, we were talking about the 'Stuck Newbie Conundrum' and, in that respect, the shift-s command is useful. Many's the time a low-level character of mine has found himself on a two room level and has had to run around the known periphery searching for a door every couple of moves. Shift-s certainly lessens the tedium in these situations.

(Providing you remember to turn it off, of course).

Given that, I was wondering why it was considered to be 'included solely for historical reasons?'.

[Derakon]

The more time you spend on a level, the more monsters there'll be, and most of 'em will be awake too. Spending time searching isn't necessarily going to be fatal but it is time wasted to little productive end.

[MattB]

Pretty much no one should ever use search mode. Doing that will get you in trouble. It's just included for historical reasons.

Please explain?

[MattB]

As in, "You are now carefully searching your surroundings with every step" when you activate it? That would be useful, yes...

I was thinking of a shopkeeper message, such as "If you can't find a way out of a level, search as you go by pressing Shift-s", but yeah, what you said too.

[DaviddesJ]

There's already a help page on keyboard commands that lists every single command that exists.

Pretty much no one should ever use search mode. Doing that will get you in trouble. It's just included for historical reasons.

[ekolis]

As in, "You are now carefully searching your surroundings with every step" when you activate it? That would be useful, yes...

edit: and of course some sort of deactivation message too, such as "You stop searching your surroundings so carefully."

[MattB]

The big difficulty with secret doors is that they can get newbies stuck.

So is there an argument for an in-game message about the shift-s command?
(I only found it by accident and until today I wasn't sure what it did).

[MattB]

Thanks guys, that's really helpful.

[DaviddesJ]

Yes. It's in the docs somewhere. Search mode spends one extra move searching for every normal step you take. (I'm not sure what it does if you're firing missiles that only takes a fractional time step!)

[ekolis]

Toggles search mode. I'm not entirely sure what search mode does exactly, though - my best guess is it automatically spends an extra turn searching every time you perform an action. Anyone want to back me up on that or correct me?

[MattB]

Could I just ask please, what does the shift-s command actually do?
Thanks.

[DaviddesJ]

I would say that part of the concept of Angband is that there are some things that are only relevant early on but become less relevant later in the game. Secret doors are one of those---one way or the other you are likely to gain a detection ability that detects all doors, including secret doors, and so they are not "secret" any more. Identification is another example. At some point, you probably get a resist fear ability, and then the monsters that used to frighten you, don't any more. Or you get see invisible and then the difference between visible and invisible monsters becomes irrelevant. Etc., etc.

[Derakon]

The big difficulty with secret doors is that they can get newbies stuck. When you don't know where a door is and it's cutting you off from the rest of the level (especially if there's no staircase in your section for whatever reason), your only recourse is to tediously search every candidate wall section in the hopes of stumbling across the door. This isn't fun.

What we need secret doors to do is to add interest to the game, without the penalty for them being hard to find being just "you get to waste your time searching". Some thoughts:

1) Secret doors hiding alternate routes through the level. Everything in the level is accessible without needing the doors, but they give you more options for getting around and/or avoiding unpleasant areas.

2) Secret loot closets. A small adjunct to the rest of the level that's blocked by the door and has some loot in it. More or less equivalent to Croesus's vault in NetHack.

3) This is a bit offbeat, but hidden "control rooms" that the player could interact with to change the rules on the level slightly. For example, adjusting the rate at which monsters spawn (by setting the state of alarm on the level). This kind of thing would probably work better in a variant where the player is made to feel like they're infiltrating a fortress rather than exploring some caves.

Things like the entrances to pits and other special rooms can of course also remain hidden, because being unable to open them does not prevent you from exploring the rest of the level.

[damerell]

Secret doors that are not discovered yet cannot be opened/ bashed down by monsters, allowing for some tactical usage.

An obvious change there would be to have the player's knowledge not affect the tactical situation. Until you go and open the secret door, the monsters can't use it.

[takkaria]

I think it's a good idea to make secret doors less detectable. But not with as many secret doors as we have now. I think we need fewer secret doors in the dungeon and we need them in less predictable places, which is something the devteam has discussed for 3.5.

And as to traps, I have an extensive rework planned after 3.5 if my enthusiasm for it doesn't decrease. This includes LoS searching, removing/nerfing magical trap detection except maybe for rogues or high-level mages, searching and disarming skills that don't increase much with level making items that affect those skills a lot more valuable over the entire game, adding undisarmable traps, always-visible traps, trap avoidance, fewer traps per level, better trap placement, and a variety of more interesting traps (like webs near spiders).