Plans for 4.1 - 4.3

[caruso]

Some time ago there was a brainstorming regarding trap effects, and at some point we realized that it would be interesting if traps could cause an effect that can be actually beneficial to the player.

Also, I'd like to call attention to the runes in Quickband: They can fire spells at the player character, but like traps, they are invisible at first and need to be disarmed rather than destroyed.

[Grotug]

Some time ago there was a brainstorming regarding trap effects, and at some point we realized that it would be interesting if traps could cause an effect that can be actually beneficial to the player.

Also, I'd like to call attention to the runes in Quickband: They can fire spells at the player character, but like traps, they are invisible at first and need to be disarmed rather than destroyed.

I like some of your suggestions:

• Invasion teleporter: Teleports (OOD) monsters into the town. You will need to defeat them all to lift the curfew and regain access to the shops.
  
• Banishment: Transfers you into a foreign dimension from where you need to fight your way out (weird level design, no WoR...). Guaranteed reward if you survive.

[jrodman]

I'm personally a big fan of the Crawl style trap experience. At least in old crawl -- I haven't kept up with the modern versions.

Most traps are damage sources. Stepping on a trap results in the trap 'attacking' you. You might get hurt, you might not (the attack may miss). Some traps do a piddly amount of damage, while some are much heftier. In general, a fully healed character stepping on the nastiest (mechanical) traps won't die, but they could do you in when fleeing at low health, or could make life complicated when hit mid-combat. How this plays out for deep-diving players I don't really know.

But that's really not compelling enough, as Derakon points out. So we get:

* Traps can be set off by monsters.
* The player can deliberately drag monsters through traps.
* Disarming the trap provides ammunition of the trap type (more compelling without the town, but some people play ironman.)
* When aware of a trap, you're much more likely to be able to pass through the spot without setting it off.
* Some characters are good at noticing them, and can use them more to their advantage. Some characters aren't as good at noticing them, and should be slightly tankier or whatever to compensate.

[brbrbr]

I am very new to Angband (1 month). So I have an advantage of very fresh view.
Here are the things I'd improve:

1) Windows customization is painful. "Increase tile width, decrease tile height, change font size" - I spent at least 30 minutes fiddling with parameters until it gets comfortable. That is huge barrier for new players. Any chance to automatically adjust font/windows to current screen size/resolution??? Default setup is ugly: very small symbols, hard to see. Or maybe it is just my screen resolution.

2) Full monster memory as a menu option, but not considered as a cheat.
Or give rod of probing earlier.

3) I am still confused what game options are saved by default, and what options I need to manually save to .prf file. Visuals and keymaps are not saved. Maybe save them all by default? It is also confusing to have several .prf files applied in a stack.

4) You will be laughing, but it took me a month to understand what is "to hit". That is _chance to to hit the enemy expressed in percents. Maybe leave percent sign there?

5) There are no difficulty packages. You play very hard or you are a cheater.
Very little in between. Too easy and never get a winner title, or too hard. I would think of
Level Simple: avoid death, full monster memory
Level Medium: death is unavoidable, full monster memory
Level Hard: death is unavoidable, disconnected stairs, no monster memory, monsters learn from their mistakes
Level Veteran: gnome mage in ironman mode, randarts

Or maybe just modify Hit Die according to game level.

6) Show calculations of monsters damage in the "look" screen or simplify calculations so player can do it himself

7) Give meaningful and non-obscured description to rod of probing action.

8) Ideally make game shorter. Maybe 1/4 or 30%. I see some players do skip diving anyway.

9) I LOVE that you've removed shop haggling. There is no incentive, however, to collect gold now. It is very rare when I buy something good on black market. Things are either too expensive or too rare to appear. I would make black market items more interesting and more persistent for player to wish to hunt for moneys as a strategy. For example: artifact shop with very expensive persistent randarts.

[yyt16384]

4) You will be laughing, but it took me a month to understand what is "to hit". That is _chance to to hit the enemy expressed in percents. Maybe leave percent sign there?

It is not the chance to hit the enemy. You have to consider your enemy's AC too. I think we need to document this somewhere (and the whole damage calculation and the XdY notation).

5) There are no difficulty packages. You play very hard or you are a cheater.
Very little in between. Too easy and never get a winner title, or too hard. I would think of
Level Simple: avoid death, full monster memory
Level Medium: death is unavoidable, full monster memory
Level Hard: death is unavoidable, disconnected stairs, no monster memory, monsters learn from their mistakes
Level Veteran: gnome mage in ironman mode, randarts

Or maybe just modify Hit Die according to game level.

I think we should not combine difficulty options together. The current options are fine, but we should have more of them. They should also modify the score in some way, but we need to make the score more meaningful before that.

[Timo Pietilä]

2) Full monster memory as a menu option, but not considered as a cheat.
Or give rod of probing earlier.

Probing earlier. You don't need monster memory. If you need it, you are doing something wrong. You need to examine what that something might be.

4) You will be laughing, but it took me a month to understand what is "to hit". That is _chance to to hit the enemy expressed in percents. Maybe leave percent sign there?

It is not percent, therefore percent chance can't be used. It's just "bigger is better" number. Full chance to hit and damage you might do is way more complicated than just a single number.

5) There are no difficulty packages. You play very hard or you are a cheater.
Very little in between. Too easy and never get a winner title, or too hard. I would think of
Level Simple: avoid death, full monster memory
Level Medium: death is unavoidable, full monster memory
Level Hard: death is unavoidable, disconnected stairs, no monster memory, monsters learn from their mistakes
Level Veteran: gnome mage in ironman mode, randarts

That's not roguelike. Roguelike needs to be hard, otherwise there is no point playing. There is no "too hard" because in roguelike journey should be more important than the destination. If you die, then you die. Learn from it and get a next char a bit further. If/when you win it should feel like real accomplishment. If you can do it in "easy" level without labeled as cheater, then there is no accomplishment.

[Bogatyr]

Probing earlier. You don't need monster memory. If you need it, you are doing something wrong. You need to examine what that something might be.

We will need to agree to disagree on this one. Knowing precise max attack values is essential. @ has 175 hit points, and sees a grey "p". Is it a p with a 150 HP cause wounds attack, or a 225 HP cause wounds attack? The difference is life and death. Just what sort of "examine" gives you that data today, other than dying and remembering (or rod of probing combined with some mysterious other actions that end up displaying the types and magnitudes of attacks)? Monster memory is basically just that, a file of memories of past encounters.

[Timo Pietilä]

We will need to agree to disagree on this one. Knowing precise max attack values is essential. @ has 175 hit points, and sees a grey "p". Is it a p with a 150 HP cause wounds attack, or a 225 HP cause wounds attack? The difference is life and death.

Your error there is to have char with that low HP in LoS of the unknown monster. Don't even think of risking it if that's how low your HP is.

[brbrbr]

in roguelike journey should be more important than the destination.

Ah yeah. You're right.

[Bogatyr]

Your error there is to have char with that low HP in LoS of the unknown monster. Don't even think of risking it if that's how low your HP is.

One person's "error" is another person's play style. My mages usually don't get 500 or more HP until clev > 40 (or even closer to 50), but I play the more fragile races (gnome mage is my favorite). With a flushed out monster knowledge, I can make more informed decisions, and dive deeper sooner.

[Timo Pietilä]

One person's "error" is another person's play style. My mages usually don't get 500 or more HP until clev > 40 (or even closer to 50), but I play the more fragile races (gnome mage is my favorite). With a flushed out monster knowledge, I can make more informed decisions, and dive deeper sooner.

I don't deny that you can dive deeper sooner with more detailed monster knowledge, but I don't agree that you need that in order to advance in game. You might want that but that's different thing.

This was actually a topic a few years ago: how to give people hints about abilities of unknown monsters without giving detailed info so that new player could make educated guesses and not get surprised.

Not easy thing to do with UI that isn't very visual. You need to actually read, be willing to read and comprehend what you read, and that seems to be vanishing skill set in current generation. Everyone wants just pretty pictures.

[EDIT] that last bit is not directed to you. It was just what we learned about the thing when we last time meddled with it.

[Nick]

Scorecard for progress toward 4.1:

4.1

• Traps - basic principle is less traps, less dangerous, harder to avoid. No more specific trap locations in vaults. Magical trap detection and specific searching for traps to be removed. The player will have one chance to detect nearby traps, dependent only on perception/searching skill. The player will also get a saving throw against the effects of traps. Consider allowing objects in trapped grids and/or trapped objects.
  
• ID - ID for consumables will work as currently. For wearables, each potential property (“rune”) will be immediately recognised once it has been seen once in any game (similar to how flavours are learned). How exactly this works for artifacts, ego items, jewellery, and to-hit/to/dam/to-ac bonuses is still to be fully worked out.
  
• Player knowledge - split the player’s knowledge of the current level from the game’s knowledge, allowing things like doors opening out of sight, but the player still seeing them as shut.
  
• Dungeon generation - lots more vaults and room types. New (fairly rare) level types in the same vein as caverns and labyrinths. More use of areas (from rooms to whole levels) containing monsters all fitting some theme. Consider reduction in size of levels, but making them more dense and interesting.
  
• Monster AI - monster pathfinding will be improved, so they’re not as easy to trick. Maybe some of the stuff under 4.2 gets done here.
  
• Monster breaths - to become cone shaped spreading out from the monster, as in Oangband. Force will push players and monsters, distinguishing it from plasma.
  
• Terrain - all rubble to become passable, but blocking line of sight. Lava will probably at some point become passable, but damaging to walk through.
  
• Calculations - there are lots of individual calculations, particularly related to randarts and object and monster power, which might be adjusted for reasons
• of balance, accuracy or simplicity.
  
• Theme - look at being a little more thematically consistent (along the lines of Angels -> Ainur).

• Traps - turned out a bit different after much discussion, but basically done.
  
• ID - done.
  
• Player knowledge - done.
  
• Dungeon generation - basically done.
  
• Monster AI - not done.
  
• Monster breaths - done.
  
• Terrain - done. There is still non-passable rubble, which I'm inclined to leave.
  
• Calculations - not really done, some may still happen.
  
• Theme - not done.

So, in summary, the main body of work to be done (if you disregard fixing a billion bugs) is the rework of the monster list I've been talking about.

[Pete Mack]

The trouble with this is that if you dive, you will have to assume every unknown monster is dangerous, rather than looking for high value targets. It's a recipe for less bold strategy. It's also a huge pain when going into a new variant and finding your pace slow to a crawl. I really don't have a problem with full monster memory.

Your error there is to have char with that low HP in LoS of the unknown monster. Don't even think of risking it if that's how low your HP is.

[wobbly]

I don't have a problem with full monster memory either. As for your pace slowing to a crawl without, that doesn't have to be true. Diving & dying is still the quickest way to work out what's dangerous & what's not.

[Estie]

Is lava going to stay ?

I have played with the lava version now for a long time, and for the life of me I cant find anything positive about it. If thats my shortcoming, could someone possibly explain why they like lava and how it enhances their enjoyment of the game ?