Trap/door feature branch

[Nick]

This is definitely true. I think the problem is now that with detection gone but traps auto-detected, the layer of tedium is gone but avoidance being trivial and boring remains. So the challenge of making traps interesting, as I see it:

1. Visible traps are trivial to avoid, BUT hidden traps can be an unfair form of instadeath.
2. If players have a way to manually find traps, they will spam it to always find 100% of traps. BUT if they have no manual search/detection, they're stuck when they know there's a trap but passive search hasn't found it.

Some brainstorming on possible solutions

Most of your suggestions work with always-noticed traps, so I'm going to consider them assuming that:

• Make visible traps less avoidable. (Pretty difficult to achieve with Angband's many escape options.)

  This is pretty much solved - they go in corridors, or in any place appropriate for a door.

• Make visible traps more tempting to try disarming. (Trapped objects, staircases, etc.)

  This just becomes "Do I need to pass?" There's always the observation that you can dig around, but that then adds some more interest to digging.

• Make search/detection a learning curve, so traps are initially mostly hidden but become 100% visible by instadeath depth.

  This could be done, but unless it's very well-balanced it risks causing unfair instadeaths at too great a rate.

• Nerf nastier traps to make them less instadeath-y. (e.g. allow player the first move after setting off a Summoning trap)

  This should happen anyway. I would think that a player on full health should be able to set off a trap and expect to not die directly because of it.

• Come up with methods of repeatedly searching a square that are tough to spam/macro. (e.g. search check on moving but not on resting in place)

  I'm not a fan of this, I don't think - it sounds like useless busy-work for the player.

• Restore Trap Detection, but as a rare high-end spell/scroll like Banishment that you'd save for use in vaults.

  I think this would be pretty annoying too.

• Introduce partial detection. (e.g. spells that only find magical runes like Teleport and Summoning, but not mechanical traps)

  Possible, but I think it's starting to get a bit too intricate. Angband is a long game, and you don't want things that you are doing over and over to be too involved.

• Trap immunity from worn equipment. (e.g. buff Feather Falling to Levitation so it means you don't fall down trapdoors, add an Anti-Magic ability that stops you setting off summoning traps or teleport runes, etc.)

  This is certainly worth pursuing. Some traps already have variable effects, expanding that is good.

[nikheizen]

This might be just an issue on my end, but has anyone else playing the feature branch had issues with squelch not working? I can set items to be ignored, but the game doesn't functionally ignore them in any way.

[calris]

This might be just an issue on my end, but has anyone else playing the feature branch had issues with squelch not working? I can set items to be ignored, but the game doesn't functionally ignore them in any way.

Did you accidentally hit Shift-k? that turns ignore on and off. I've caught myself out a couple of times with this.

[Ed′]

What about the following? Apart from the create traps spell, the only rooms that are trapped are vaults (maybe with some special rooms thrown in), but when a room is trapped, it has a lot of traps. As here, traps are detected by moving next to them, but they can also be detected at range with the appropriate spell(s). Most importantly, traps cannot be disarmed without spending resources, usually scrolls or charges, though some classes could also have a high-level, low-mana spell for the purpose.

[nikheizen]

Did you accidentally hit Shift-k? that turns ignore on and off. I've caught myself out a couple of times with this.

Ah that is exactly it. It's O in my keymap, but I think I ought to move that somewhere I'm less likely to accidentally hit since it's largely useless.

So my next idea is

• Bring back door and stair detection, but not have it detect secret doors;
• Limit secret doors pretty much to just vaults (and maybe one-square pillar entrances), and still have them discoverable on stepping adjacent.

If I may, consider bringing "Detect Stairs" back, just having it find stairs on the entire level instead of in a radius.

[Nick]

OK, after much help from many people, I've done a major rework in a new branch. There are new Windows and OS X builds, and source is here.

Changes from the previous branch are:

• Detect traps, doors and stairs are all back, pretty much as they were
• Except detect doors doesn't detect secret doors
• Secret doors are much rarer, and are still spotted by walking next to them
• Traps are only in vaults/template rooms and corridors; in particular, they often appear at junctions where doors might have been

Let me know how this compares to the other traps branch, and to master.

There are no new traps yet, but I am thinking hard about them, and we won't get the full effect until they're done. Just try and imagine the traps you're dealing with are actually more interesting

[TJS]

Ok. Let's apply some assumptions and logic:

Mages solve things with magic. Magic for traps means, at a minimum, being able to magically detect traps. Therefore mages should, at a minimum, be able to magically detect traps.

Mages solve things with magic. For a detected/visible trap, the mage should have a magical solution. The conclusion to this depends on the types of challenges that the various traps provide.

I'd be happy if people were able to show that these are wrong without invalidating the premise that mages solve things with magic.

Mages don't solve everything with magic. They use melee, ranged weapons, stealth, searching, disarming and potions like all the other characters.

Even if they did I don't see why it follows that they should be able to magically detect traps if it results in boring gameplay. Are we agreed that just magically detecting traps is boring?

[spara]

Haven't gone deep yet, but so far the instant trap detection when stepping next to them is excellent. No need to constantly search for traps to avoid accidentally stepping into them. Still they work as rubble, closed doors and unmovable monsters as a way blocker.

This looks like a bug: a trap and a door in a same tile. Or maybe it's a trapped door . Opening the door makes the trap go away.



Save: trap_and_a_door.zip

[Nomad]

Okay, I've played the new branch, so some updated thoughts and observations:

• I'm liking the new corridor trap placement a lot! I feel like whenever I run into one it's almost always blocking progress in some direction, so they're actually worth trying to disarm. Also, the mechanic of always noticing a trap when you're adjacent to it feels much more natural when you're mostly coming upon them in corridors.

• Monster- and scroll-created traps being visible on creation is an improvement too.

• I don't think it was actually necessary to reintroduce Trap Detection - I was using the rod out of habit because it was there, but it doesn't really add anything except for being a way of spotting vaults (and Treasure Detection works just as well for that). Maybe allow rods of Detection to still find traps, but scrap the separate scrolls/rods of Trap Detection?

• OTOH, I did appreciate having Door & Stair Detection back. The fact it doesn't find secret doors was mildly weird/annoying, but maybe I just need to get used to it.

• I've always squelched scrolls and wands of Trap and Door Destruction as junk, and they seem even more useless now they're just Door Destruction. Are they really worth keeping? You can already remove closed doors with Stone to Mud.

• A couple of times I've disarmed traps and found doors underneath, which I assume is a bug, though quite an interesting one.

• I think with the switch to visible traps, traps inside of special rooms now need to be intelligently placed instead of in random positions. When I was making the room templates I coded randomly scattered traps to mimic the way it worked for existing special rooms like checkerboards, but it would be easy enough for me to go through room_template.txt and add fixed positions for traps like we have with the vaults if you want.
  
  Not sure how the non-template special rooms are generated, but if it's feasible, I think it would be good to have more regularly placed traps in those, too - e.g. in front of all possible door positions so you're forced to go through the traps to find the way in:
  
  

  [bc=black]
       #####     
       #...#     
       #...#     
  ######[color=cyan]^^^[/color]######
  #....[color=cyan]^[/color]###[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
  #....[color=cyan]^[/color]#[color=red]*[/color]#[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
  #....[color=cyan]^[/color]#[color=#804000]+[/color]#[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
  ######[color=cyan]^^^[/color]######
       #...#     
       #...#     
       #####     [/bc]

[Nick]

I'm liking the new corridor trap placement a lot! I feel like whenever I run into one it's almost always blocking progress in some direction, so they're actually worth trying to disarm. Also, the mechanic of always noticing a trap when you're adjacent to it feels much more natural when you're mostly coming upon them in corridors.

Good, this was what I'd hoped.

I don't think it was actually necessary to reintroduce Trap Detection - I was using the rod out of habit because it was there, but it doesn't really add anything except for being a way of spotting vaults (and Treasure Detection works just as well for that). Maybe allow rods of Detection to still find traps, but scrap the separate scrolls/rods of Trap Detection?
OTOH, I did appreciate having Door & Stair Detection back. The fact it doesn't find secret doors was mildly weird/annoying, but maybe I just need to get used to it.

I think you're probably right. It was easiest just to put everything straight back in, but it can be amended.

I've always squelched scrolls and wands of Trap and Door Destruction as junk, and they seem even more useless now they're just Door Destruction. Are they really worth keeping? You can already remove closed doors with Stone to Mud.

I tend to agree.

A couple of times I've disarmed traps and found doors underneath, which I assume is a bug, though quite an interesting one.

Yes, I'll have to sort that out.

I think with the switch to visible traps, traps inside of special rooms now need to be intelligently placed instead of in random positions. When I was making the room templates I coded randomly scattered traps to mimic the way it worked for existing special rooms like checkerboards, but it would be easy enough for me to go through room_template.txt and add fixed positions for traps like we have with the vaults if you want.

Not sure how the non-template special rooms are generated, but if it's feasible, I think it would be good to have more regularly placed traps in those, too - e.g. in front of all possible door positions so you're forced to go through the traps to find the way in:

[bc=black]
     #####     
     #...#     
     #...#     
######[color=cyan]^^^[/color]######
#....[color=cyan]^[/color]###[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
#....[color=cyan]^[/color]#[color=red]*[/color]#[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
#....[color=cyan]^[/color]#[color=#804000]+[/color]#[color=cyan]^[/color]....#
######[color=cyan]^^^[/color]######
     #...#     
     #...#     
     #####     [/bc]

If you redid the template rooms with fixed traps, that would be wonderful; I'll remove the code for placing them.

As for your picture - that might just be too annoying. Especially if you get in and find a centipede and a, erm, scroll of Trap Detection...

[Nomad]

Okay, here's the updated room_template.txt - I've added traps to most of the rooms that contain treasures or item stashes.

[Nick]

Okay, here's the updated room_template.txt - I've added traps to most of the rooms that contain treasures or item stashes.

Excellent.

I will also note for the future that when you offer to do something, it means you've already done it

[nikheizen]

I edited this in to a previous post, but have you considered scrapping trap detection entirely and leaving ?_Detect Stairs as a level-wide effect?

[spara]

I love it! I was too deep already and then read an unIDd scroll of deep descent. Now I was way too deep with my low level ranger and cast "detect doors, stairs and traps" to find the nearest stairs. Found them and soon found out that the way was blocked from all (!) directions with traps. No other way to the stairs than trying to disarm one of the traps. And yes, I set of a trap door, and right next to a bunch of gnome mages. In a moment I was blind and shortly dead.

About magical disarming. A possibly interesting option might be a spell that, instead of disarming, allows @ to magically jump over one tile to a tile in LOS. You read the spell, select the direction and off you go.

[PowerWyrm]

TomeNET has a *lot* of varied traps, and except a few ones that I don't really like (the dreaded "drop all" trap -- which inside a vault could be followed by a fire trap in the next square -- or the seasoned traveler one which decreases your stacks to 1 or 2), they add a lot to the game. And they can be deadly at level 1 as well as at level 50!