Bugs and complaints on current master

[Sky]

the "detect traps area", that big yellow box, is now gone? and i dont see the DTrap notification either, i must assume this is voluntary?

not sure why traps are automatically detected, it kinda defeats the purpose of traps.

if the detected area box comes back, could it not disturb? i can see the big yellow line, should be enough.



black market is throwing out waaay too many stacks of useful items .. bundles of 10~15 of *heal, life, augmentation, banish, etc.

[PowerWyrm]

Currently looking at the new object power calculation... it seems that the power from object curses has been lost in the process (old curse_power() method).

[PowerWyrm]

the "detect traps area", that big yellow box, is now gone? and i dont see the DTrap notification either, i must assume this is voluntary?

not sure why traps are automatically detected, it kinda defeats the purpose of traps.

if the detected area box comes back, could it not disturb? i can see the big yellow line, should be enough.

black market is throwing out waaay too many stacks of useful items .. bundles of 10~15 of *heal, life, augmentation, banish, etc.

Traps are now automatically detected when walking next to them, so the indicator has become obsolete.

Yes, I also think that defeats the purpose of traps... they're just "obstacles" now.

I cannot reproduce what you describe about BM. Those items are generated one by one, not in stacks, and they're not "kept" indefinitely, so even if you get a stack of 2-3 in the BM, that stack should be also be able to decrease over time and eventually vanish.

[Derakon]

Yes, I also think that defeats the purpose of traps... they're just "obstacles" now.

Not to broach this whole subject all over again (we've had many discussions about traps), but just to explain how I understand the development process to have been: the attitude guiding this change is that traps must be interesting, first and foremost. We weren't able to come up with a mechanism for hidden traps to be interesting; everything we thought of ultimately would have devolved into "the player chooses a dumb but optimal playstyle (e.g. manually searching every single tile) because that's preferable to risking getting hit by an undiscovered trap at an inopportune time."

And note that current traps are not interesting, except possibly in vaults (where the player will have invariably detected them, so they're not exactly hidden their either). They're haphazardly scattered about the dungeon, and everyone spams magical trap detection all the time anyway. They're an inventory slot tax for warriors, and that's really about it.

The new system hopes to make traps more interesting by placing them more intelligently, so that the player is forced to interact with them. However, we also want to get rid of the detection spam, without forcing the player to risk getting hit out of the blue by a trap at an inopportune time. To do that, traps have to not be hidden -- or at least, the player has to know there's a trap present at least one turn before they move into a tile.

[Sky]

well, they are just traps. i feel that if you just made the stronger in damage / effect, and harder to remove, they would work better. ofc you would have to reduce the number of leave-level traps.

[Pete Mack]

Well, Sil has interesting traps. The trouble is that summoning traps need to be fairly rare. The webs and rookery traps are clever. A sudden descent of crebains and blinding biters seems quite effective.

[Nick]

i feel that if you just made the stronger in damage / effect, and harder to remove, they would work better.

This is basically what has been done (or attempted).

The problem with hidden traps is that (except for maybe the first few levels) they were not hidden. They were routinely detected, once the player had internalised the "Must detect traps when I hit the trap detect edge" mantra, none of which is fun or interesting. Removing trap detection and making traps noticed on walking next to them actually makes them more of a surprise.

In my opinion this whole issue is a microcosm of a common pitfall (heh) in roguelikes (trust me, I've fallen into it often enough), namely expecting something that is interesting and evocative in the real world (and/or in D&D) to work well as a roguelike mechanic. The specific problem with traps is that you can't replicate the finding of a trap - spotting the edge of a pit, or seeing a lever that sets off a rockfall - in a way that's interesting in a repeatable game where everyone has spoilers, particularly one which people play over and over again for years and years and insist must remain as much fun as the first time they played it.

Sorry, I feel better now

[Derakon]

It is possible to make hidden traps in an RPG in a fair and interesting way that behaves similarly to how it does in D&D, but it generally relies on having a higher graphic fidelity, so that you can have a floor panel that's slightly raised, or a subtle shadow that indicates a tripwire, etc. Players who are observant then will notice the trap, regardless of their characters' stats. There's no impossible-to-avoid "surprise gotcha" because the player should have noticed the trap if they were just paying enough attention.

This is somewhat difficult in an ASCII-based display.

[Nick]

OK, having ranted about the impossibility of having surprise traps, I have a proposal for surprise traps. Thread incoming.

[Antoine]

I always thought traps should be hidden, but placed in locations that are predictable given the layout of the dungeon (vaults, t junctions, the interiors of rooms, etc).

A.

[PowerWyrm]

New object power calculation:
- power can be 0 for some basic items like cloaks or iron crowns: the power calculation should probably ensure that power is at least 1 for things that are not worthless (see 4.0.5 bug -- BASE_ARMOUR_POWER of 1 is not added for armor parts with 0 ac)
- resulting value could be simplified (currently using a sign + setting to 1 if 0): probably just set to 0 if power is <= 0 (worthless items) and use the normal value (squared power) otherwise
- power for all brands is never added (the code does a loop on all brands to get the count, which gives 10 instead of 5 because of the "weak" brands)

[Nick]

New object power calculation:
- power can be 0 for some basic items like cloaks or iron crowns: the power calculation should probably ensure that power is at least 1 for things that are not worthless (see 4.0.5 bug -- BASE_ARMOUR_POWER of 1 is not added for armor parts with 0 ac)

Yeah, I did a different hack this time round, and rounded up the value of those things. The calculations are changed a bit, mainly in armor and ability bonuses, where I approximated the existing method in a way that was more amenable to going into the edit file.

- resulting value could be simplified (currently using a sign + setting to 1 if 0): probably just set to 0 if power is <= 0 (worthless items) and use the normal value (squared power) otherwise

There are several places it can be simplified. I just tried to get something close to the existing algorithm, and now that it's puled apart like this it should be easier to change.

- power for all brands is never added (the code does a loop on all brands to get the count, which gives 10 instead of 5 because of the "weak" brands)

Oops, thanks. In my defence, I did pick up the bug where the all ability bonus was given for 8, and there are only 7

As for the curses calculation you mentioned earlier, I deliberately left that out for now, because curses will need to be treated differently in the randart generation algorithm, and because I was getting sick of the whole thing at that point (having already lost my first attempt about halfway through due to hard drive failure).

[Sky]

Dont let curses reduce arti power, if they can be *removed.
If anything, make curse work like aggravate, the higher the power value, the more curses attach to an item post generation, requiring the player to find scrolls to make it useable, or wearing it with the curse in the meanwhile.
(Disregard if wrong)

I noticed the squelch no longer gives a message. I squelch a lot, including useful items, so it would be good to know i just squelched a helmet of telepathy 8, +13 in case mine gets disenchanted later on. Also useful for players who sell.

[Carnivean]

Dont let curses reduce arti power, if they can be *removed.

I agree somewhat with the sentiment, but it's still a cursed object. I'd probably put a fractional or small value for each curse.

After all I could find a 9d9 (+0,+0) and enchant it up to 9d9 (+15,+15).

[Grotug]

I realized if I remove the curse on my ring of teleportation I will have a ring of speed <+2> so I found a ?Remove Curse in the dungeon and tried to remove the Teleporation curse (power level 100) from the ring of Teleportation, but I could not get the scroll to activate. When I read the scroll, it would give me the option to remove the curse from the ring. I'd select the ring and then it would ask me if I want to remove the curse from the ring? so I'd hit <Enter>, but nothing would happen. I couldn't get the scroll to be read. I tried all the letters on the keyboard as a response in case there was some visual bug, but nothing worked. I simply was unable to read the scroll. And so my ring of Tele is still cursed, and somewhere on the dungeon floor is a scroll of remove curse that I wasn't able to successfully read.