V 3.5 now in feature freeze

[takkaria]

Yep! Here's the final set of 100 room designs, which hopefully ought to be enough to keep things varied and make sure you don't see the whole set in one game. (I also reordered the file to make things a bit more organised and tweaked a few of the existing room designs so it should be easier for corridors to connect up to them.) So this will be the last update to room_template.txt unless I spot any problems during further playtesting.

Incorporated, thanks

[Nomad]

Great, I just found these again and committed them Do you have any more?

Yep! Here's the final set of 100 room designs, which hopefully ought to be enough to keep things varied and make sure you don't see the whole set in one game. (I also reordered the file to make things a bit more organised and tweaked a few of the existing room designs so it should be easier for corridors to connect up to them.) So this will be the last update to room_template.txt unless I spot any problems during further playtesting.

[takkaria]

I added some more special rooms to the template file, taking the total up to 60. There's a few more non-rectangular shapes in there now, and I added some ammo dumps (little stashes of three piles of shots/arrows/bolts, which I hope isn't enough to unbalance anything).

These layouts are quite fun to design, so there's always a chance I'll end up creating even more before 3.5 is ready to go...

Great, I just found these again and committed them Do you have any more?

[takkaria]

Overhead view bug. I thought this had been fixed, but it is still present in 439-gd2b2e2d. See picture. Term 1 is set to show overhead view. I think this is related to main window refresh bug.

This should be fixed in nightlies now.

[Derakon]

Yes, it will.

[Tregonsee]

Out of curiosity, why do you want a directional prompt if there's only one option (i.e. one adjacent trap/open door)?

Will it give you a prompt if there are more than one option, like after reading a scroll of trap creation?

[jrodman]

Personally i think it should be called like training wheels mode or something, and should have a separate 'score' file. It's fun to read the score file even when you know it doesn't represent skill. It's just a record of games you've played.

[Oramin]

Or just record the score at the time of initial death and then give the option to continue (at which point with the zombie_flag set to true the game will not record any further scores until after suicide).

[ekolis]

Good idea! Just make sure to warn the player that his character will be marked as a cheater if he continues.

Or is it the entire savefile? That would be cruel...

[Oramin]

Ok, that's one I can agree on.

You have died.

Do you wish to continue? (Y/N)

Note that if you choose to continue, any further adventures will not be included for your score.

[Derakon]

One simple way to do that might be to, when the player dies, automatically turn on the "cheat death" option and then save the game as normal. So loading the game would leave the player 1 turn from death (which admittedly might not be enough to survive), with a marked savefile.

This has the added benefit that the savefile then becomes recoverable for the rare situation in which the character dies due to outside causes (e.g. bugs, or cats walking across the keyboard). Currently, "dead" savefiles are severely truncated and can't be used to restore characters.

The only problem with this scheme is figuring out when to invoke the birth UI when loading an old savefile.

[DaviddesJ]

Now, suppose for a second that I have selected a Softcore character and manage to finish the game without dying a single time (which I have done several times). I could have won on Hardcore; should I be entitled to the Hardcore title? No, I shouldn’t be because I made the choice to have the convenience of infinite lives.

BTW, this is a great example of another thing worth changing. I think it makes complete sense to let players have the "infinite lives" option on from the start, but they are only marked as "cheater" if they actually use it. Some players might not want to resurrect their characters, or even be tempted to do so. But others might like the idea that after their character dies, they can play around with what would have happened if it had lived, knowing that it's not a "legal" game but it's still fun for them to experiment with. Maybe they can try out different tactics in a low-pressure setting, etc. You can do the same things with wizard mode, but it's more hassle. I see no reason at all not to give players that option, or to somehow argue that a character is "less valid" just because the player wanted to have the option to play around with it in afterlife-mode after it dies. Let people have fun in their own way, reserve "cheat" markings for things that actually give the player an advantage with that character.

[MattB]

I love the giants with their hound escort (although I'm disappointed/relieved about the absence of the Time Giants Nick dreamt up)
I love the little dragon families. They actually make me feel guilty when I kill mum, or her children, which is brilliant.
And I love the Unique pairs and trios.
The only issue I have with these is that Bill, Bert and Tom are identical, are they not?
Is there an argument for, say, making Bill have higher AC and HP but less attack dice, making Bert have lower AC and HP but more dice, and leaving Tom where he is. It would make the battle against the three of them a bit more interesting. Just a thought.

[MattB]

Priest spell unbarring ways destroys doors and traps.

Ah, that makes sense then.
Must try a priest sometime.

[Timo Pietilä]

That's very clever!
But I still wouldn't sacrifice an inventory slot on the off-chance that I might encounter this situation.

Priest spell unbarring ways destroys doors and traps.