Water in Angband

[tangar]

Of course, there is the question of what happens when water and lava meet.

Water should evaporate and lava would become 'cold' to form a rock - passable rubble or a wall also could depend - is it shallow water/lave (lava depth matters!)

Also it's great thing to be able to 'freeze' water (with spells or breath of powerful frosty mobs)

[Derakon]

Of course, there is the question of what happens when water and lava meet.

One of the reasons my proposal was so simple is explicitly to punt on these kinds of simulationist questions. There is a lot of complexity that you could introduce in terms of rules, but my gut instinct is that having that level of hand-coded detail doesn't actually add much to the gameplay, and it makes the system more complex and bug-prone.

(You can avoid even having the question if water and lava simply never generate on the same level)

Tangar: regarding surprising the player, certainly the game should have the scope to surprise the player through unforeseen combinations of game elements. But each individual element should have straightforward mechanics that the player can readily understand. For example, if sufficiently strong firebreath could convert water into steam, which dealt immense damage as the player was broiled in their armor...that's surprising in a bad way, both because weaker firebreath didn't create steam and because the steam is so deadly. But if you're exploring a dungeon and run into a situation where there's a river with some Fire Hounds on the other side, that's surprising in a good way. You have a novel challenge to deal with that you couldn't have had without the new mechanic, and it's clear how the various elements interact.

[Adam]

Water in Angband

It's too harsh.. -5 speed is death sentence, because speed influence not only for moving, but to performing actions and attacking monsters.

If you walk in 3' deep water you lase half of your base speed - i find that fair. If you do this against archers, breathers or casters... well, you learn not to do it next time. Against melee opponents it may be an escape as they also lose speed or may even not be able to enter the water.
Races could get different penalty for walking in water, depending on their height. Hobbits/dwarves suffer much more than half trolls.
You can make fire based spells have a higher failure rate and do less damage but that probably does not fit into the game mechanics well and personally i would not do it (but logically if you try to burn a swimming snake with fireball it's not that effective).

In general water would be interesting to see and could add more options. But i don't miss it currently.

[NightLizard]

I also really like Derakon's suggestion: slowing unless flying, some monsters can't walk on it. Logical, interesting and not annoying.

[Nick]

Another possibility here is water just can't be crossed by the player.

At the moment I'm kind of leaning toward not introducing it at all; it is an interesting discussion, though. And maybe someone will come up with a killer reason for it that I won't be able to ignore.

[tangar]

Nick, it's great to see how you 'observing' & 'scouting' at different 'battlefields' I'm learning a lot from how you look at things, trying to be unaffected and to look from the point of view of the game itself, impersonal; and at the same time being open to community. Really cool approach for maintaining the project. Respect!

// sorry for offtopic

[fph]

Another possibility here is water just can't be crossed by the player.

That would make sense, but then it would be strange that a high-level player can cross lava but not water.

[Sky]

Would this be affected by Feather Falling or similar?

My first thought is that games that have Levitation and such deal with water rather early on, as those are pretty common abilities, like Free Action.
In that case adding water would be something making the early game harder but have no effect later on. Early game Angband doesnt need any more difficulty, but rather if anything more late-game difficulty.

[Grotug]

I would also like to join the chorus in support of Derakon's water proposal. I think it strikes the perfect balance of adding realism/immersion, a thematic element, as well as interesting gameplay, while remaining simple enough to not wind up being confusing or annoying. I do not think -5 is too big a penalty. Seems just right. Also, I think implementing water in the dungeon is completely appropriate for vanilla. It does need be handled delicately, though, and keeping its implementation as simple and straightforward as possible I think is the key for it to be "thematically" fitting for Vanilla; as interacting with the environment in V is, overall, simple and straightforward.

It also might be fun if a mage could use a pool of water to create a powerful attack spell the way Arwen does to thwart the Nazgul shortly before arriving at Rivendell with Frodo in the movies. The spell simply would not be possible without at least 20 connected tiles of water available to the Mage. (You need a sufficient body of water to create the spell).

Arguments for adding water:

• it adds depth, immersion and atmosphere to the game
• it adds new tactical situations (some monsters unaffected, some unable to enter the water, some move slower if they leave)
• It offers new space for new monsters, especially the very dungeon appropriate Watcher in the Water. As Gandalf says of it "Something has crept or been driven out of the dark water under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world." A possible non-unique monster:razorback catfish)

Arguments for not adding water:

• it complicates gameplay and is annoying to deal with.
• It is too cumbersome to implement compellingly within the super-simple top down graphical interspace that is Angband

Personally I feel the pros outweigh the negatives. But maybe there are other negatives I am not articulating.

Since Nick is not terribly moved to add water, I might suggest implementing it in very limited form (ie. water shows up sparingly; and no giant lakes; just the occasional pool where smeagol might be found slinking about).Maybe have it only show up in cavern levels. With only one (max two) pools on such a level, and small, like maybe a small pool at the edge of an area, easy to circumnavigate.

~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~
~~E~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~h
~~~~



You can go after the scroll, but the Watcher in the Water might surprise you.

[wobbly]

Yeah I think something simple mechanically & rare could be good. See those special lava rooms that pop up? They break the constant monotiny of Vs otherwise dry aesthetic. I don't think -5 spd is too nasty if it's clear. That's less then shriekers, haste or slow.

[bio_hazard]

My preference would be to start with "small streams and pools".

-no more than 3 tiles wide
-no risk of drowning, always passable by @
-no effect on lights
-no new monsters, but maybe new traps
-Slow (-5) and combat penalties for @
-Same penalties for most non-flying monsters
**impassable by some monsters (maybe some lesser undead and demons, reptiles), blocks tracking for some monsters
-can't rest

I think this would add a little more texture to the dungeon, and make for a few new tactical opportunities (e.g. easier to escape, maybe to fight monsters when you are on the shore and they are standing in water), without going too crazy. Also, they'll be small enough in scope that players can cross them in just a couple of turns. Angband isn't DCSS or Dwarf Fortress so I don't think we need to figure out steam/ice/electrical conductivity etc.

[tangar]

One of the reasons my proposal was so simple is explicitly to punt on these kinds of simulationist questions. There is a lot of complexity that you could introduce in terms of rules, but my gut instinct is that having that level of hand-coded detail doesn't actually add much to the gameplay, and it makes the system more complex and bug-prone.

You are too serious This simulationist questions (about lava and water) was for fun. And answer to it was 'rhetorical'.

Of course game should be relatevely 'simple'. And the main reason there - complexity (I'll say kinda impossibility) to code interaction between too much objects.

Tangar: regarding surprising the player, certainly the game should have the scope to surprise the player through unforeseen combinations of game elements. But each individual element should have straightforward mechanics that the player can readily understand. For example, if sufficiently strong firebreath could convert water into steam, which dealt immense damage as the player was broiled in their armor...that's surprising in a bad way, both because weaker firebreath didn't create steam and because the steam is so deadly.

This sounds ridiculous (at least at current level of technologies and gameplay design).. As I said - water and lava was just funny talk.

But now back to serious stuff. I see some people like the idea of -5 speed penalty. What would become if this would be added:

Players simply wouldn't ever step in the water. Water isn't endgame terrain - it would appear everywhere and actully more logical to have more water at shallow depths (as low depths got lava onces, so water should be there less often). So new characters who come to the water and got -5 speed.. They would look at it like at lava and would just avoid.

Water should be an alternative terrain, which wouldn't frighten players too much. I very recommend to look into 'shallow'/'deep' water concept as it works really marvelous in TomeNET (and it's kinda 'real-time angband', more hardcore in different ways; but even there water do not reduce !!-5!!! speed). Players do not fear waterin TomeNET too much, but sometimes you could meet there Water Hounds or Silent Watcher or other dangerous stuff which could sometimes be harsh. So you have to think and make decision (it's what roguelike games are - give a choice) - to go this way over the water or to try to find another way.

Water should be an alternative; provide certain pros/cons; not to be a another 'lava' tile with blue color.

[Philip]

For what it's worth, in Tolkien, water is for sure something you do not want to spend time in. Isildur dies (despite having the ring, mind you) because he's stuck in the water and is easy prey for archers on the banks. An entire episode of the Hobbit revolves around trying to get a large amount of people over a river without entering the water at any point. Even being close to water can be dangerous, since strange stuff lurks in the water. When people do travel using the water it is a desperation play.

I don't think we should encourage players to go swimming, let alone to actually fight stuff while they are underwater. Water, if implemented, should be an obstacle, not a theme/aesthetic thing. One that you can possibly cross, but you should be careful, and it might not go very well. If anything, -5 speed feels a bit generous. Perhaps for movement speed it is reasonable, but for combat speed it seems like not enough of a deterrent. Personally, I think it should be possible for water-themed monsters to be hiding in the water (possibly visible to detection), but I don't think there are any existing mechanics that could be adapted into that. The only benefit I would afford to swimming would be that your smell trail would end wherever you entered the water and only restart when you leave.

I agree that going into simulationist nonsense would hurt the game. Obscure and unpredictable rules turn the game into Nethack, and Nethack might be fun but there is a reason I don't play it. The answer to what should happen when water and lava meet is nothing. If you want an explanation, view it as the water and the lava forming a rocky barrier between them and then not interacting any more, and the rocky barrier isn't imposing enough to be rubble.

[wobbly]

Well more important then the "what happens when water meets lava" question is the "How does this effect fire breathers big enough to create lava" question.

[Derakon]

Water should be an alternative terrain, which wouldn't frighten players too much. I very recommend to look into 'shallow'/'deep' water concept as it works really marvelous in TomeNET (and it's kinda 'real-time angband', more hardcore in different ways; but even there water do not reduce !!-5!!! speed). Players do not fear waterin TomeNET too much, but sometimes you could meet there Water Hounds or Silent Watcher or other dangerous stuff which could sometimes be harsh. So you have to think and make decision (it's what roguelike games are - give a choice) - to go this way over the water or to try to find another way.

And the choice under the -5 speed regime would be: is it worth eating the speed penalty to take the direct route to where I want to go? It's a "soft barrier": you can cross it if you want, but you're taking on extra risk if you do so when there are monsters around. The tricky bit will be balancing the placement and quantity of water such that this is a difficult choice. If the water is 10 tiles across, then you probably won't want to cross it to reach monsters on the other side, if they have ranged attacks. If it's 3 tiles across, then you might!

Lava is a harder barrier, in that you take extra damage regardless of when you cross.

Honestly my biggest concern with -5 speed isn't the effect it'd have when applied to the player: it's the effect when applied to monsters. I foresee the player trying to lure monsters to rivers so that the player can stand on the banks and get a free relative +5 speed modifier. We'd want to be certain to make the AI smart enough to not stand in water if there's an alternative (or unless the monster isn't affected by water).