[3.5-dev] Gorged status missing?

[DaviddesJ]

If we're discussing the actual topic, I quite like the idea of Slow Digestion being made to slow digestion much, much more. At least then it's slightly better. However it does raise the problem that it's hard to get down from being on the threshold of gorged if you consume potions. So I would suggest that this change should (at least) be accompanied by a change so that Slow Digestion also prevents you from becoming gorged.

[DaviddesJ]

Precisely. If food hardly matters at all, for those that wish to play without the concept of food at all, put in an option to play sans food. I personally enjoy the added experience of having to keep my half-troll fed.

I don't want to belabor the point here, but I really don't understand what you're getting at. If you don't want this option, and no one else wants the option either (not a single person has spoken up in favor of such an option), then why are you arguing so vociferously for such an option? It's bad enough to consider options that have only minor game effects (I explained earlier why, in my opinion, gameplay options should be reserved for things that change gameplay quite significantly), but to propose options that no one seems to want to use, and then to complain when there is a lack of support for such options, that really doesn't make sense.

[Derakon]

But ... leave that up to the player. If the player wants to be a total dolt and wait for the auto-roller to generate the perfect character (which was impossible due to code restraints for total stat points upon character creation), let them. Why dictate to players how they must behave when they play the game?

We had some discussion about this awhile ago. Not specifically the autoroller, but the "if the player wants to do boring-but-optimal stuff, why stop them?" The answer is that there are plenty of players out there who can't help doing the optimal thing even though it is boring. This sounds weird, but it's true, and as a result, the game has been modified in several ways to make boring behaviors either unnecessary or impossible. Among some other examples:

* Town scumming for consumables (which is why we now have stores selling unlimited quantities of basics and zero quantities of e.g. restore-stat potions)
* Resting to pseudo-ID every item (pseudo-ID has been drastically sped up and is now practically instant starting from IIRC level 30)
* Stair scumming for good levels (you only get the level feeling after exploring for awhile)
* Clone-scumming monsters (the clone is hasted and both monsters are set to full health)

In short, a decent part of game development is saving the player from themselves. Completely bizarre, but true.

[Derakon]

DaviddesJ, could you please stop talking about that topic? No matter how much you may intend not to, you're clearly angering Spacebux. This argument is not productive, so stop it. I don't care who's in the right or wrong or how justified your attitude is or whatever else. Just stop it.

[DaviddesJ]

I wouldn't say "can't stop themselves". Many people like playing a game where their goal is to do the best they can within a defined set of rules. We already have wizard mode where people can give themselves perfect stats, whatever other advantages they want. But a lot of people prefer a game where the game tells them what they can do, and their goal is to do the very best they can while staying within that framework. Of course, that doesn't describe everyone, but it does describe a large subset of the player population.

[DaviddesJ]

DaviddesJ, could you please stop talking about that topic? No matter how much you may intend not to, you're clearly angering Spacebux. This argument is not productive, so stop it. I don't care who's in the right or wrong or how justified your attitude is or whatever else. Just stop it.

Which topic? The topic of whether to make Slow Digestion better, or the topic of whether to add a game option that turns off food and hunger?

I'm guessing you mean the latter. I might be naive (no one ever said I was great at understanding people), but I thought he might explain why he's asking for that. I thought before that he was asking for an option so that he could use it, but now he says he's asking for an option that he has no desire to use.

I assume that when he writes a long point-by-point reply to my postings that he wants me to respond to his points. That's probably wrong, I guess.

[takkaria]

OK, so going back to the OP - yes this was an intentional change, I made it to try and make slow digestion a more valuable thing. I deliberately made the effect massive at first to see how it played with the intention of moderating it later.

And Gorged is gone because it was pointless, IMO. Personally I'd like to get rid of food from the game but V is too conservative for that so I just removed the most annoying aspect of food.

And just to add to what Nick's said, we normally keep track of upcoming changes here: http://trac.rephial.org/roadmap These are set in a meeting of devs on IRC. Players don't get direct input but most of us read the forums. Magnate has given up on V I think and moved Pyrel, I might do the same at some point.

On the topic of options, my long-standing signature might be of interest:

[DaviddesJ]

OK, so going back to the OP - yes this was an intentional change, I made it to try and make slow digestion a more valuable thing. I deliberately made the effect massive at first to see how it played with the intention of moderating it later.

And Gorged is gone because it was pointless, IMO. Personally I'd like to get rid of food from the game but V is too conservative for that so I just removed the most annoying aspect of food.

And just to add to what Nick's said, we normally keep track of upcoming changes here: http://trac.rephial.org/roadmap These are set in a meeting of devs on IRC. Players don't get direct input but most of us read the forums. Magnate has given up on V I think and moved Pyrel, I might do the same at some point.

On the topic of options, my long-standing signature might be of interest:

People say I'm too negative, so it might not be worth much but I might as well say that I like and appreciate your approach. Coming back to Angband after many years, the improvements are real and appreciated.

[Magnate]

Honestly, have the maintainers ever looked around at all the variants and thought - hmmm, what's good / what's bad with VariantA, ... VariantX ? I think it would be a good exercise for vanilla coders to hear what Nick and some of the other variant keepers have come up with.

Not wishing to sound sanctimonious or anything, but after two decades the answer to any question that starts "Have the maintainers ever ..." is usually yes.

All this talk of wanting to stick to the core values of historical angband is fine and dandy. But, then again, its not historical angband. We have new dungeon mobs, new dungeon vaults, new mob AI, new dungeon outlays. We've nixed some of the older items - Shards of Nasgil, wands of wall-building, and so on. We nixed the auto-roller. Many things HAVE changed that make this current version quite dissimilar to the older, historical version. If the maintainers were ang-bent on keeping to the core values, we would not be playing 3.4 or 3.5.

Indeed, Slow Digestion meant something much different in 3.0.9 and prior versions. Eating was still something that had to be done on a fairly frequent basis. You cannot tell me that permitting a player to go for 1,699,999 turns without eating is adherence to conservative angband principles. Because it isn't.

Therefore, I posed the question, for those that don't want to be bothered with the eating / digesting process, why not make a Birth Option to set food / no_food. 1 million turns between meals is nearly the same thing anyway.

This is all gold. Totally with you until here. I've done my fair share of upsetting of historical precedent and always happy to discuss it.

Telling me that we are trying to reduce the number of birth options, so it won't work that way... that's not an answer.

As a few other people have said - yes, it is.

"Hey, we write the code, so we're just not gonna do it." Magnate, you're a fine fellow,

Thanks

but that's not endearing me to discuss how I feel about the direction the Vanilla developers are taking the code.

Indeed - but you misquoted me, quite badly. I said nobody had done those things yet - neither devs nor any other contributors. I don't think I said that nobody *will* do them - I certainly didn't intend to say that.

Finally - I am not all gripe. I did mention I was quite happily impressed with the new dungeon layouts and the newer mob grouping structures. Yes, it was meant as a compliment.. and, apparently, that got looked over.

No, it wasn't overlooked, it was just drowned out. You liked two things and you disliked about ten. Again, I don't mean to sound offensive or sanctimonious, and I'm sorry if it comes across as either. As takkaria said, I've largely moved my efforts to pyrel instead of V, so I no longer have any real feeling of maintainership over V, which is good news for all concerned.

[MattB]

We had some discussion about this awhile ago. Not specifically the autoroller, but the "if the player wants to do boring-but-optimal stuff, why stop them?" The answer is that there are plenty of players out there who can't help doing the optimal thing even though it is boring. This sounds weird, but it's true.

Yep, that perfectly describes me. Until various people on this forum persuaded me to try no_sell, I used to bore myself silly trying to work out the most valuable combination of kit to take up to the town, even if I had a million plus in the bank account. Like you said, given the option I just can't help myself.

[DaviddesJ]

As takkaria said, I've largely moved my efforts to pyrel instead of V, so I no longer have any real feeling of maintainership over V, which is good news for all concerned.

What appeals to you about working on Pyrel? Is it that the code base is easier to work with, or that there's less history and more of a free hand, or something else entirely?

[Patashu]

We had some discussion about this awhile ago. Not specifically the autoroller, but the "if the player wants to do boring-but-optimal stuff, why stop them?" The answer is that there are plenty of players out there who can't help doing the optimal thing even though it is boring.

This is me to a dot, I never feel like going to finish off a game of Angband because I can always make my character better by grinding longer.

[Gorbad]

What appeals to you about working on Pyrel? Is it that the code base is easier to work with, or that there's less history and more of a free hand, or something else entirely?

From reading all of the forums, and trying to speak for other people here (who can correct me if I speak out of turn), it seems the main reason developers would rather devote their efforts, which is freely given and in limited supply, to a project where a change is not greeted by a mass clamoring of howler monkeys claiming you are ruining their game.

[Derakon]

Personally, my motivation for working on Pyrel is that I get to stop worrying about a code base that's over 20 years old and has over 100k lines in it, and instead get to start fresh and Do It Right. Lots of things that would be very difficult to do in Vanilla become much easier to do in Pyrel, partially because of the more flexible design, and partially because of the language (Python is a heck of a lot more expressive than C is).

Frankly, most of the feature work in Pyrel is just re-implementing things more or less as they are in Vanilla or v4; we're not getting all that creative yet in terms of how the game plays. Though we're also not trying to re-implement an existing game exactly; variations are allowed and a lot of weird little quirks that have subtle and minor effects on gameplay are getting jettisoned.

[Antoine]

Personally, my motivation for working on Pyrel is that I get to stop worrying about a code base that's over 20 years old and has over 100k lines in it, and instead get to start fresh and Do It Right. Lots of things that would be very difficult to do in Vanilla become much easier to do in Pyrel, partially because of the more flexible design, and partially because of the language (Python is a heck of a lot more expressive than C is).

Based on personal experience, coding in Python is just a pleasant experience.

A.