DJA: Tossing around ideas

[buzzkill]

I like the time concept, especially if game time will be displayed in the status area. Here's another idea. A countdown (inscription) based on your current speed. A Rod of Recall (charging 50) means that it will be recharged in 50 turns (actions) at your current speed. Should you haste yourself to (+10) the inscription would change to (charging 100), or 99 or 98, I guess hasting yourself would take a turn. You could do both. Time based recharge in the description (which would be normal speed turns), and turn based (which would incorporate any permanent speed and temporary haste) in the inscription .

[will_asher]

..trying to figure out how many turns should = 1 minute. Discovered I can't base it on how many turns between the in-game dawns:
There are 1440 real minutes in a real day. In the game, there are 10000 turns between dawns, thats 10 turns for a normal action at normal speed. If we compare to real time and have 1440 minutes in a day, that would mean that about 7 turns = 1 minute. If 7 turns = 1 minute then it would take more than a minute for our little @s to move 10 feet (1 space).
As a contrast, in the rules of the DND3.5 system, each turn of combat represents 6 seconds of in-game time.

@Buzzkill: I said I didn't want to bother with the math of converting the recharge times based on the player's current speed. I don't intend to do that.

(goes to eat a sock)

PS: If 7 turns = 1 minute, how many minutes would it take to kill a troll with 160 HP doing 24 damage per hit with 2 hits per player turn if the character has +9 speed currently but only has 3 player turns left until the effects of the potion of speed he drank wears off? (remember the troll regenerates 2 HP every 100 game turns)
How much time would you cut if you took a turn to eat a mushroom of extra attacks half way through the battle?

EDIT: I'm leaning toward making 1 game turn = 1 second, 60 game turns = 1 minute (which means that there are less than 3 hours in each day)

EDIT: doesn't look like it's going to happen anyway. I don't know how to show anything that looks like 02:12:13 on the character screen or anywhere else.
EDIT: scratch that, I think I've figured it out..

[Nick]

From O:

/*
 * Display the time and date
 */
void do_cmd_time(void)
{
	s32b len = 10L * TOWN_DAWN;
	s32b tick = turn % len + len / 4;
  
	int day = turn / len + 1;
	int hour = (24 * tick / len) % 24;
	int min = (1440 * tick / len) % 60;
  
  
	/* Message */
	msg_format("This is day %d. The time is %d:%02d %s.", day,
		   (hour % 12 == 0) ? 12 : (hour % 12), min,
		   (hour < 12) ? "AM" : "PM");
}

[Rizwan]

How about modifying buzzkills idea so that you don't have to calculate anything and the countdown is in game turns? So a rod of recall (charging in 50) means it will recharge in 50 game turns. No calculation and no need for the player to know its game turns and not player turns and what the heck is game turns etc. But I still like the idea of a clock just for the heck of it.

[will_asher]

From O: ...

My version is too ugly to post. But if it works fine in-game, it's cool with me.
I'd rather have it show on the character screen in place of game turns instead of having a command to show the time.

EDIT: ugh. I just noticed that timed player effects are also handled by procress_world() which means they use game turns and not player turns. I thought timed player effects used player turns. I guess I have a lot of translating to do.

[will_asher]

Okay I've gotten DaJAngband so that the game never says anything to the player about game turns. It instead uses hours, minutes & seconds with 1 game turn = 1 second (That means there are less than 3 hours in a day and that a torch can burn for over 16 hours without being refueled, but oh well). Even torches show how much fuel they have left in time instead of turns. It'll take a little getting used to, but I like it because from an in-game perspective turns don't mean anything.

Game time will always show on the character screen instead of turns, but there will also be an option whether to show the game time in the main window as well. I'm thinking when this option is on the game time will replace the equippy characters. Does anyone care about the equippy characters? If no one cares about them, should I even make it an option or just remove the equippy characters? If people do care about the equippy characters, is there a better place to put the time in the main window?

[buzzkill]

Does anyone care about the equippy characters? If no one cares about them, should I even make it an option or just remove the equippy characters?

If 'equippy chars' are what I think they are, then they're useless eye-candy and could easily be done without. I think that the shift to a time based system is a good one.

[Susramanian]

Just got a DaJ wizard up to Clevel 25. Then he got his int swapped with his charisma by a baby silver dragon (fast-moving nexus breather native to 550 feet; cruel). I think I'll try a warrior next.

My thoughts on DaJ so far:

Favorite feature: no sell birth option. This is on my wish list for vanilla and every variant. It really makes the game more fun. No more going with minimal backpack clutter to save space for hauling loads of stuff up to town to sell. Worrying less about backpack space means using all sorts of things that you just wouldn't have been willing to consider before. Whereas before my dungeon trips were constrained by my capacity for sellable loot, now they go on for as long as I have what I need to not get killed. I'd suggest bumping the gold drop multiplier back up to four, though. I was definitely poorer than I would have been without the option on.

Please make this a vanilla option, somebody.

Nice little touches:
-Verbose spell descriptions (including the word Jamnation in one case)
-Monsters can track you down over surprising distances after you teleport away
-Rubble mimics
-Casting (badly) while confused
-Wizard Lock.
-Detailed information about crits when inspecting weapons.

Minor weirdnesses:
-Illumination often misses corners of rooms that have diagonal walls.
-Magic missile hits (on trees and sometimes brite sprites) produced zero damage and no message at all
-Dark hounds aren't hurt by Spear of Light
-I missed a tree with a melee attack (yes, a regular old tree)
-Getting unslimed seems to be rather difficult (no reliable source for potions of purity or waybread)
-The only launcher of accuracy I found had a higher +todam than +tohit.
-Hallucination spelled wrong in Purity potion description.
-Destroyed levels
-Annoying and unnecessary -more- prompt when encountering rubble.
-No display of burden as a percentage that I could find. Only a total weight... inconveniently located in the (C)haracter info screen.
-Automatic pickup of items matching inventory items doesn't always happen, even with no monsters in sight.
-A poltergeist (I think) picked up a pair of throwing daggers and threw them at me (message was something about it throwing junk off the floor). They turned into a pair of walking sticks after the throw.
-The view distance changed whenever I moved, expanding and contracting erratically. This seemed like a feature, maybe an attempt to simulate flickering lantern light or something. But it did it in fully illuminated rooms, too. Disorienting.

Suggestions:
-Include a squelch option in the confirmation to destroy items. (y/n/s)
-Include an option to interrupt when leaving a trap detected area.
-Display 'Dtrap' or something when you're in a trap detected area. Also, some indicator of whether sphere of charm is still in effect, and any other status effects that are missing indicators.

Least favorite feature: the drastically shortened view distance. In a variant that's going for a vanilla feel, this seems out of place to me. I never got used to it, never stopped getting annoyed by it. Maybe I need to give it more time, or maybe it changes with the awareness stat or something, but I'm really wishing for the standard view distance. The shortened one induced a decidedly claustrophobic feeling.

DaJ is a ton of fun. Lots of flavor. Just what I needed after a long wallow in vanilla. Looking forward to getting a warrior rolling.

[will_asher]

Just got a DaJ wizard up to Clevel 25. Then he got his int swapped with his charisma by a baby silver dragon (fast-moving nexus breather native to 550 feet; cruel). I think I'll try a warrior next.

I'm thinking about making silver dragons theme-only for the air/wind themed levels so that they'll never appear on other levels. (They're changed to violet in the next version simply to make them easier to tell apart from grey dragons.)

Favorite feature: no sell birth option. This is on my wish list for vanilla and every variant. It really makes the game more fun. No more going with minimal backpack clutter to save space for hauling loads of stuff up to town to sell. Worrying less about backpack space means using all sorts of things that you just wouldn't have been willing to consider before. Whereas before my dungeon trips were constrained by my capacity for sellable loot, now they go on for as long as I have what I need to not get killed. I'd suggest bumping the gold drop multiplier back up to four, though. I was definitely poorer than I would have been without the option on. Please make this a vanilla option, somebody.

Like several people I've heard talk about this, I was pretty skeptical before I tried it, but once I tried it I definetly like it better without selling.

-Monsters can track you down over surprising distances after you teleport away

This is the same as in vanilla 3.0.9. I haven't changed it.

Minor weirdnesses:
-Illumination often misses corners of rooms that have diagonal walls.

This is a bug that should be fixed in the next release.

-Magic missile hits (on trees and sometimes brite sprites) produced zero damage and no message at all

I know why this would happen with a tree (the code which keeps trees from acting like monsters has some kinks I'm working out and will at least have less kinks in the next release. The thing about missing a tree in melee should be fixed also.) If it happened with an actual monster (like a bright sprite) then something very weird is happening. I'll have to try and find why.

-Dark hounds aren't hurt by Spear of Light

This is same as in vanilla (unless that's changed since 3.0.9 but I don't think they've been changing monsters). For some reason, it never occurred to me to give the HURT_LITE flag to dark hounds.

-Getting unslimed seems to be rather difficult (no reliable source for potions of purity or waybread)

I'm having this same problem in a current game as a half-orc black knight. I'll have to find a way to make it a little easier to cure without making it too easy. Also certain other things (like the prompt with rubble) I'll try to find a way to make less annoying.

-Automatic pickup of items matching inventory items doesn't always happen, even with no monsters in sight.

Automatic pickup gets turned off when you are below your HP warning mark. It doesn't check for monsters in sight, maybe I'll fix that.

-A poltergeist (I think) picked up a pair of throwing daggers and threw them at me (message was something about it throwing junk off the floor). They turned into a pair of walking sticks after the throw.

Poltergeists throw junk off the floor whether there's anything shown on the floor or not. It is not connected to when you see them pick things up. Anything you see them pick up will be dropped when you kill it. How it looked like it turned into walking sticks I have no idea (must have been a fluke).

-The view distance changed whenever I moved, expanding and contracting erratically. This seemed like a feature, maybe an attempt to simulate flickering lantern light or something. But it did it in fully illuminated rooms, too. Disorienting.

Yes, this is to simulate dim light in the dungeon. Even most magical illumination is not very bright.

Suggestions:
-Include a squelch option in the confirmation to destroy items. (y/n/s)

I might do this if I can figure out how (without making it a separate question).

-Include an option to interrupt when leaving a trap detected area.
-Display 'Dtrap' or something when you're in a trap detected area. Also, some indicator of whether sphere of charm is still in effect, and any other status effects that are missing indicators.

I'd like this, but again, I'm not that skilled with the code. We'll see if I can figure out how after looking at how V does it. (It's not as easy as copying from the V code anymore because the V code has changed so much and there's a lot of new stuff I don't understand in it).

Least favorite feature: the drastically shortened view distance. In a variant that's going for a vanilla feel, this seems out of place to me. I never got used to it, never stopped getting annoyed by it. Maybe I need to give it more time, or maybe it changes with the awareness stat or something, but I'm really wishing for the standard view distance. The shortened one induced a decidedly claustrophobic feeling.

Are you referring to the dim light effect you mentioned earlier? If so, that's only a couple spaces shorter, nothing drastic.
Or are you referring to the fact that some monsters sneak up on you and you don't notice them until they're a couple spaces away? That's your alertness vs monster stealth, not view distance. Most monsters aren't very stealthy, and for those that are, amulets of alertness are one of those mid-level useful amulets I mentioned in the other post.

DaJ is a ton of fun. Lots of flavor. Just what I needed after a long wallow in vanilla. Looking forward to getting a warrior rolling.

Thanks, glad you like it.

[Susramanian]

I know why this would happen with a tree (the code which keeps trees from acting like monsters has some kinks I'm working out and will at least have less kinks in the next release. The thing about missing a tree in melee should be fixed also.) If it happened with an actual monster (like a bright sprite) then something very weird is happening. I'll have to try and find why.

If it helps at all, I was confused and stunned at the time. I failed a lot of casts, but got messages for those. Successful casts resulted in nothing.

Are you referring to the dim light effect you mentioned earlier? If so, that's only a couple spaces shorter, nothing drastic.
Or are you referring to the fact that some monsters sneak up on you and you don't notice them until they're a couple spaces away? That's your alertness vs monster stealth, not view distance. Most monsters aren't very stealthy, and for those that are, amulets of alertness are one of those mid-level useful amulets I mentioned in the other post.

Ah. Got it. I'm playing a dwarf warrior now, and the dark vision seems to result in seeing monsters at full range regardless of lighting conditions. Dark hallway, bright room, etc.

I meant to mention earlier how much I liked some of the interesting new items I found, like staves of manaless casting and potions of super spell casting. Can't wait to find more like them... hopefully for melee characters, too!

Oh, and I've got another bug for you. Squelched items stay out of sight and mind their own business until you try to perform an action on an item on the ground and it brings up a list of what's under you. The previously invisible squelched items on the square also show up, getting in the way. For example, I have a macro that destroys the first object in a pile that I'm standing on. But if there are invisible squelched items actually on top of that item, the macro tries to destroy them, which it can't for some reason. Same with, for example, trying to read a scroll on the ground. Seems similar to some bugginess in the squelching system in FAangband.

My warrior is about as far along as the poor crippled wizard and going strong. Thanks for a great game.

[will_asher]

If it helps at all, I was confused and stunned at the time. I failed a lot of casts, but got messages for those. Successful casts resulted in nothing.

That would explain it. While confused, you not only have a high fail rate, but also any direction you chose has (IIRC) a 2/3 chance to be randomized. So probably what happened is the magic missile went in some other direction, missing the sprite completely.

Ah. Got it. I'm playing a dwarf warrior now, and the dark vision seems to result in seeing monsters at full range regardless of lighting conditions. Dark hallway, bright room, etc.

There are sources of darkvision which you can find with other races (ego torches/lanterns, dwarven armor and boots).

[will_asher]

I'm happy because I just got some cool stuff to work in DaJAngband:

Egos are no longer restricted to one random power or one random sustain or one random resist. Egos now may have up to 2 random sustains, 3 random high resists, 2 random low resists, 2 random powers, 2 random slays (any x3 slay), 1 random brand, 2 random skill bonuses (alertness/speed/stealth kinda stuff), 2 random stat boosts, and 2 random drawbacks.
Using this method, you may find what are essentially randarts in any game along with the normal artfacts (whether you have normal randarts turned on or not). Some of you may remember the "of randomness" egos. Before, they were not really random at all, but now they are. And now they have random names like true randarts so you won't see "of randomness" anymore.

[will_asher]

(replying in a different thread than the post I'm replying to cause the other thread is about code stuff)

So, just curious, will known flavors show up as mimics (or is that too evil). Will perception allow you to recognize a mimic as you approach it?

You see a Potion of Healing. It casts a nether bolt. You feel your life draining away. <more>
You Die.

That could happen except potion mimmics don't cast nether bolts. Mimmics will be like stealthy monsters that don't move (at least not until they've been discovered) but instead rely on their disguise. High alertness will help you to recognise them, but they have two differences from other stealthy monsters 1) you can be adjacent to it and still not notice it and 2) instead of being invisible until you notice it, you see their disguise without recognising it as a monster. If you don't recognise it by alertness, you won't until you run into it or it attacks you in melee. They can cast spells in the disguise without revealing themselves.
Other common ways to recognise mimmics: cast detect hidden (renamed detect invisible spell), Rchaos, true sight (which isn't like 'true sight' in vanilla).

[EpicMan]

Chemical Combat

I don't know if you are still looking for alchemist attack spells, but if so look at the vaporize spell from Crawl. It takes a potion and creates a targeted cloud (Ball) effect with it, with the damage type based on the potion. It would add a use for some of the bad potions (with better effect than throwing them).

[will_asher]

(I like the term 'thread necromancy' that Magnate used recently)

I don't know if you are still looking for alchemist attack spells, but if so look at the vaporize spell from Crawl. It takes a potion and creates a targeted cloud (Ball) effect with it, with the damage type based on the potion. It would add a use for some of the bad potions (with better effect than throwing them).

I just now saw this post and I kinda like this idea.

Anyway, I opened up this thread again to say that I just fixed a crash bug (with help from diff and plog) that's been annoying me and de-motivating me from working on DaJAngband for about a couple months. Progress on DaJAngband will now resume, though still slowly because I'm focussing more on my novels these days.

A couple of the new changes I'm working on:
- implementing monster size and partial resistances for monsters.
- resists can protect against inventory damage vs low level monsters
- traps gets harder to disarm with dungeon level
- shortened DSM recharge times and some rod recharge times
- Rogue, alchemist, and tourist (only) may put damaging mushrooms into the quiver as throwing weapons. In addition, the rogue and alchemist may put other damaging non-weapons (like !poison) into the quiver as well.