Trap/door feature branch

[TJS]

Traps and secret doors are noticed as soon as the player steps next to them (unless blind or confused)

So the player will always see traps before he steps on them? Or am I reading this wrong? Surely this makes the entire trap mechanic pointless? Unless the idea is to reduce it to a complete annoyance when it blocks your path and your character can't disarm it.

I remember some talk a while back of you getting one chance to see a trap only which I quite liked the sound of. Also amulets of searching would suddenly become worthwhile.

Like the idea of getting rid of detect traps though (detect monsters next please).

[Derakon]

So the player will always see traps before he steps on them? Or am I reading this wrong? Surely this makes the entire trap mechanic pointless? Unless the idea is to reduce it to a complete annoyance when it blocks your path and your character can't disarm it.

The trap is not pointless; it becomes a question of whether you want to try to move through the tile the trap occupies (and either take the time to disarm it or risk being affected by it), or take the time/different route to go around. With current traps this is not a hard decision, because they are small and placed haphazardly, which makes them easy to avoid. But there is no reason why this has to remain the case.

"You have one chance to detect each trap" solves the tedium induced by continuous detection / searching, but involves randomly punishing the player who fails to detect traps. I personally don't like that punishment as it can be completely out of the blue; it effectively devolves into "characters who are bad at searching will randomly have bad stuff happen to them", which doesn't strike me as an interesting game mechanic. Hence why (in the thread Nick linked) I tend to favor traps that are always visible, but hard to avoid -- the goal is to have the player have to make an informed but difficult decision.

[Nomad]

The main thing I had in mind was not rewarding repetitive actions (I had this thread open while I was coding this stuff). I'm certainly open to changing how it currently works in the branch if people come up with a better way.

I'm okay with removing detection and manual searching, but I think passive searching should still be some form of skill-based check rather than a certainty. There should be a chance of stepping into an unseen trap by accident, and currently there isn't, which feels like a step down from the existing system where at least you could stumble into them if you lacked detection (often the case for Warriors for the first 20 or 30 levels) or just got distracted and forgot to detect.

ETA: maybe, to prevent resting in place becoming a substitute for hitting 's', the search check would only happen when you moved? So you could 'manually search' by walking back and forth along an area if you were sure there was a trap/door there, but just sitting in place wouldn't work as a way of searching repeatedly.

This branch is really only half done - the other half is making new traps to fit the system, and rethinking placement, as you have already suggested. My feeling is that the current traps are kind of OK for low levels, but most of them are irrelevant pretty fast, and what we need are a lot more trap types which are interesting at deeper levels (there are some in that other thread).

So, ideas, people!

• Webs, as mentioned above, are one obvious suggestion - we don't currently have a trap type that keeps you stuck in one square without being completely paralyzed.
• Traps that affect terrain are interesting too (and can potentially be worth setting off on purpose for tactical reasons as well) - destruction and earthquake traps, creating walls around the player, blasting away surrounding terrain to leave a big open area, etc.
• Traps that create an elemental ball spell centred on the player would not just do damage but potentially destroy surrounding floor items - particularly nasty in vaults. (They'd also have tactical potential if you were willing to take the hit to blast surrounding monsters too.)
• How about traps that create other traps, similar to the spell/scroll effect? Step on the trigger and @ suddenly becomes surrounded by a ring of trapdoors or summoning runes?
• Nexus has been changed to a timed effect in the rune-based branch, so you could use that for a stat-scrambling trap. (In fact, a bunch of the high-end hound breaths like time and gravity would probably make good trap effects.)
• Mana-drain or charge drain traps? Or fuel-drain that resets your equipped light to zero fuel?
• Hunger traps that trigger the salt water effect? (This would probably have to go hand in hand with making food more relevant - I'm all in favour of removing spells and scrolls of Satisfy Hunger to make hunger management more of a challenge.)
• In fact, it's probably worth going through all the negative potion/scroll/staff/wand effects, because a lot of those could be repurposed as floor traps: Darkness, Lose Memories, Aggravate/Haste Monsters, Clone/Heal adjacent monsters, etc.
• If you want to get really evil, you could have traps that drop/throw/scatter items from the player's inventory. Make them drop their equipped weapon into an adjacent square, or scatter all the items from their pack/quiver across an n-square radius so they have to collect them all back up again.
• Timed anti-teleport effect? Set off the trap, and for X turns you're unable to use Phase Door/Teleport/TO or Recall?

[Egavactip]

I would prefer that the present system NOT be changed.

[Pete Mack]

Is there now a possibility of undetected summoning traps? That has a very high probability of instadeath below around dl 50.

[Derakon]

I would prefer that the present system NOT be changed.

Then feel free to make a new thread arguing about the pros and cons of changing how traps work, but please let this thread be about how best to change things for those who believe they should be changed.

[calris]

Reading the ideas on this thread, I must say I am warming to the idea of where this is going.

• Traps can be insta-death for low level (<5) players. Insta-death through no fault of the player at low character levels is annoying and adds nothing to game play. Insta-death by the player doing something silly like letting a worm mass get out of control, not carrying escape spells or potions, etc. are a learning experience and make the game exciting.
• As a mage, detecting traps is trivial after level three, and all traps do is waste a couple of manner points and resting turns when you reach the end of the detect range
• Spellcasters have a 100% chance of detecting traps. Not sure if non-spell casters can ever get to 100% success through searching... So non-spell casters often end up carrying a rod around anyway so they have a 100% chance which makes the whole Search Skill mechanic meaningless
• Apart from vaults and chests, trap location is pretty meaningless. And in vaults, the ability to disable traps with 100% success (using spells or wands) makes them a pointless feature

My thoughts:

• It may not make sense that traps are immediately obvious, but in reality they are anyway - It's just a nuisance to make them to. So I agree that traps should just be visible
• Traps should a meaningful feature - the player needs to be forced into making a choice - disarm the trap or try to avoid if. Currently, there is no choice (except at low levels) - you just disarm it and move on
• When a player steps onto the grid with a trap, they should automatically either successfully disarm the trap/find a way to avoid it on a permanent basis, or trigger the trap. This should take the user one extra 'move' - effectively a trip grid is a temporary Speed (-10) for the extra action required.
• Traps should be a one-time trigger. If you set off the trap, it does it's job and that's it - it's gone
• Love the idea of webs - timed Speed (-10)
• Alarm Trap - All monsters in the level become awake. Honestly think that all monsters in the level should move - possible with pre-defined paths. This would make player resting after setting off an alarm a whole lot more interesting
• Targetted Teleport - Set of the trap and BAMB!!! right in the middle of a vault - especially nasty if the vault is ESP/Detect Monster proof

So yeah, my initial scepticism is turning into excitement

[Nick]

I'm okay with removing detection and manual searching, but I think passive searching should still be some form of skill-based check rather than a certainty. There should be a chance of stepping into an unseen trap by accident, and currently there isn't, which feels like a step down from the existing system where at least you could stumble into them if you lacked detection (often the case for Warriors for the first 20 or 30 levels) or just got distracted and forgot to detect.

I've given this quite a bit of thought, and here's what I've come up with.

I don't like passive searching, because the player has so little control over it. Angband is very much a game where you live and die by your choices. While there is some degree of choice in your searching ability (race/class and gear), there is essentially no choice involved in whether you hit an individual trap. Then there's the question of how much you search - if it's not obvious then the player's making a decision based on almost no information, and if it is then it just becomes a matter of "always search 4 times", and it gets keymapped and we have detection back again.

I believe the idea of searching is attractive, but it's one of those things where all the ways of implementing it end up being unrealistic and annoying.

I agree that there has to be some mechanism in the game for players to hit traps, and the intent (not fully realised yet) is for that to be setting the trap off on disarm (or failing a disable traps spell ).

An additional idea, which I'm uncertain if I like, is to have a kind of ID by use for traps - so the first time you encounter a trap type you hit it unnoticed, and from then on you can always recognise that type.

I also agree that this is an important issue; traps needed work because they had become boring, so the last thing we want to do is change them so that they're still boring.

[Nick]

I would prefer that the present system NOT be changed.

I can guarantee you 4.0.x gameplay will not be changed, and there is nothing to stop you continuing to play 4.0 (or 3.5 or 3.4 for that matter) for as long as you like. Plenty of people do this. And it's also absolutely fine for you to continue voicing your opinion on any changes that are being made - the devteam has a history of not changing things, or changing them back, if most people seem not to like them, and I am completely in accord with that.

I do think there's room for improvement in Angband, though, and I took up the maintainership with the explicit intent of fixing up (or ruining, if you prefer ) a number of aspects of the game, with ID and traps being prominent among them. So everyone was fully warned, and most of them seem to be complicit.

Always remember, anyone at any time has the option of picking up the code from their favourite point, making (or not) what changes they want, and saying "This is the real Angband". I am maintainer and the code being released is official only in as far as people mostly seem to agree. Feel free to reject that reality and substitute your own.

[Nick]

Is there now a possibility of undetected summoning traps? That has a very high probability of instadeath below around dl 50.

There's currently 0 possibility of any undetected traps whatsoever (unless you're blind).

[PowerWyrm]

• Webs, as mentioned above, are one obvious suggestion - we don't currently have a trap type that keeps you stuck in one square without being completely paralyzed.
• Traps that affect terrain are interesting too (and can potentially be worth setting off on purpose for tactical reasons as well) - destruction and earthquake traps, creating walls around the player, blasting away surrounding terrain to leave a big open area, etc.
• Traps that create an elemental ball spell centred on the player would not just do damage but potentially destroy surrounding floor items - particularly nasty in vaults. (They'd also have tactical potential if you were willing to take the hit to blast surrounding monsters too.)
• How about traps that create other traps, similar to the spell/scroll effect? Step on the trigger and @ suddenly becomes surrounded by a ring of trapdoors or summoning runes?
• Nexus has been changed to a timed effect in the rune-based branch, so you could use that for a stat-scrambling trap. (In fact, a bunch of the high-end hound breaths like time and gravity would probably make good trap effects.)
• Mana-drain or charge drain traps? Or fuel-drain that resets your equipped light to zero fuel?
• Hunger traps that trigger the salt water effect? (This would probably have to go hand in hand with making food more relevant - I'm all in favour of removing spells and scrolls of Satisfy Hunger to make hunger management more of a challenge.)
• In fact, it's probably worth going through all the negative potion/scroll/staff/wand effects, because a lot of those could be repurposed as floor traps: Darkness, Lose Memories, Aggravate/Haste Monsters, Clone/Heal adjacent monsters, etc.
• If you want to get really evil, you could have traps that drop/throw/scatter items from the player's inventory. Make them drop their equipped weapon into an adjacent square, or scatter all the items from their pack/quiver across an n-square radius so they have to collect them all back up again.
• Timed anti-teleport effect? Set off the trap, and for X turns you're unable to use Phase Door/Teleport/TO or Recall?

Please don't turn Angband into TomeNET

But yeah, adding obvious effects like web, bolts, balls would be cool.

[spara]

About the detection. How about this:

* When there are no monsters in LOS, @ automatically searches and finds traps and secret doors.
* When there are monsters in LOS, @ does not automatically search. If wanted, searching can be turned on, but it slows @ down.

The idea being that @ can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Two things, keeping an eye on a monster and searching takes more time.

Pluses for searching could give percentages for finding traps when there are monsters in LOS.

[Nomad]

An additional idea, which I'm uncertain if I like, is to have a kind of ID by use for traps - so the first time you encounter a trap type you hit it unnoticed, and from then on you can always recognise that type.

Maybe you could have a searching skill that's 'trained' by choosing to disarm traps? So at first you're stumbling about near-blind, but every time you successfully disarm a trap it adds x-percent to your search success until you eventually get 100% effective trap-spotting? (And perhaps instead of having a pval rings and amulets of Searching should just convey 100% search skill so weaker class/race combos can keep one equipped until they've trained their natural skill level up enough to do without it.)

Individual trap types could have some sort of difficulty rating that affects both how hard they are to spot/disarm and how much of a skill bonus you get for disarming them. That way it becomes a tactical choice whether to wear equipment with Searching and slowly build your natural skill by only tackling safe and simple traps, or leap in there and risk tackling every Summoning trap you see to get to 100% search skill early on.

[Nick]

There are new builds up for Windows and OS X, with some bugfixes by takkaria, a fix to Nomad's assert bug and change so that created traps are immediately apparent.

[fizzix]

Maybe you could have a searching skill that's 'trained' by choosing to disarm traps? So at first you're stumbling about near-blind, but every time you successfully disarm a trap it adds x-percent to your search success until you eventually get 100% effective trap-spotting? (And perhaps instead of having a pval rings and amulets of Searching should just convey 100% search skill so weaker class/race combos can keep one equipped until they've trained their natural skill level up enough to do without it.)

DCSS used to have a trainable traps skill which was removed a few versions ago. We should probably figure out why they removed that. My guess is that training a trap skill is one of those things that sounds good in theory but isn't all that interesting in practice.