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tote up a bags
Jun 8, 2006

die stoats die

Ok but a couple of things

1. Skeletons being "spooky" and "scary" is similar to Tolkien's approach to the undead. In DCSS, their scaryness and spookyness should be neutral (+0)
2. Fear is a great mechanic that temporarily robs the player of any control, thus providing challenge. Skeletons will not only be able to feel fear, they will sometimes be feared for N turns for no reason.
3. Bone armour is fine but to balance, whenever it activates your regular armour falls off and you have to spend a turn putting it back on.
4. Poison immunity is too strong early, so to counter this Skeletons have -rF
5. Cold resistance is fine but to counter this Skeletons have -rF again
6. This will effectively nullify new Tomb, so we can't have it. They can have +rSteam instead.
7. Also ruins new Tomb, so let's replace this with +rStickyFlame instead.
8. This is fine, well balanced.

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Pacra
Aug 5, 2004

SteelNeuron posted:

Well, here we go.

I hope this revision goes through, I honestly believe it's one of the most interesting and not too watered down, and it fixes the problems flagged by the devs.

Awesome work SteelNeuron. You put a lot of work into this, I eagerly look forward to testing your ideas out!

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I can't code so the only thing I can contribute to Crawl other than rants is medicore art. In that vein, here's Gastronok and spammals.



Gastronok is one of my favorite uniques but in the proces of making this I realized his sprite is not actually wearing the hat of pondering. Plz fix.

jerkstoresup posted:

please adopt hellcrawl's spooky skellie race into regular crawl :hb:



This is just a mummy but not garbage. Mummies aren't allowed to be good or fun.

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders
Quokkas are adorable and it pains me to kill them :saddowns:

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer

This is the best thing.

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

jerkstoresup posted:

please adopt hellcrawl's spooky skellie race into regular crawl :hb:



Lom Lobon got spooked:

Heithinn Grasida
Mar 28, 2005

...must attack and fall upon them with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart, and, if possible, vanquish and destroy them, even though they have for armour the shells of a certain fish, that they say are harder than diamonds, and in place of swords wield trenchant blades of Damascus steel...

SteelNeuron posted:

Well, here we go.

I hope this revision goes through, I honestly believe it's one of the most interesting and not too watered down, and it fixes the problems flagged by the devs.

Here's a random thought I had while waiting for the bus: I like the change to serpent's lash to prevent it from ever missing. However, in terms of an "alpha strike" ability, it's still extremely possible to be screwed by a terrible damage roll. This is somewhat like "stabbing" with a long blade back when they had higher stabbing multipliers. Sometimes you could get a really monstrous amount of damage on a stab, but mostly you still just tapped the monster and woke them up, even though you were guaranteed to hit. Short blade's effectiveness in getting a guaranteed alpha strike is not only that they can't miss, but that they add a fixed amount of damage before damage gets multiplied.

Perhaps Serpent's Lash should also work like this. Rather than multiplying the damage of your martial strikes, maybe it should add fixed damage to your weapon attack (not aux attacks). This makes the possibility of killing a given enemy far less random since you can reasonably predict that you'll do at least x amount of damage.

Of course, the amount of damage and whether it's affected by your weapon is up for debate. I'd suggest weapon independent damage starting at +2 and going up per each star of piety. This gives an advantage to quick weapons, more like the older version of WJC before flurry attacks, but I quite liked having a god that let you go toe to toe with heavy enemies with a short blade.

I recommend this not only because it makes the alpha strike aspect of the god more deterministic, but I'm worried that currently WJC gives you abilities to maneuver in open spaces, but not a strong enough reason to use them, so the safest play will almost always be to get back to a corridor and hold down tab. Ideally, staying in the open so you can use your piety consuming abilities should be an attractive option, and for that to be the case, they'd better be pretty strong.

Woohoo
Apr 1, 2008
Jesus why do all those cool roguelikes have to be in goddamn rear end-backwards text mode for all the important parts?
How does one code three galaxies worth of bullshit that can be used with other bullshit, but can't handle basic-rear end hello-world-programmer-level feature called mouse-driven UI?

Might & Magic 3 had better interface. Icons and clickable buttons. And game was released in 1991. That's 26 years ago. Do we really still press '/' to select all items in 2017?

I read those threads and wish I could just play. But there's no way in the world I'm going to last 5 minutes with walls of txt

Woohoo fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Nov 15, 2017

Cicadalek
May 8, 2006

Trite, contrived, mediocre, milquetoast, amateurish, infantile, cliche-and-gonorrhea-ridden paean to conformism, eye-fucked me, affront to humanity, war crime, should *literally* be tried for war crimes, talentless fuckfest, pedantic, listless, savagely boring, just one repulsive laugh after another
Never mind that bullshit, the real question is why has no one added a Snakes to Sticks spell

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

Or a Sticky Snake spell for continuous poison DoT

Cicadalek
May 8, 2006

Trite, contrived, mediocre, milquetoast, amateurish, infantile, cliche-and-gonorrhea-ridden paean to conformism, eye-fucked me, affront to humanity, war crime, should *literally* be tried for war crimes, talentless fuckfest, pedantic, listless, savagely boring, just one repulsive laugh after another
Sticks to Steaks: transmute arrows into meat rations

I think there's an entire class concept here honestly. Just need to work in a boulder beetle mount and we're set

SteelNeuron
Feb 23, 2017

Heithinn Grasida posted:

Here's a random thought I had while waiting for the bus: I like the change to serpent's lash to prevent it from ever missing. However, in terms of an "alpha strike" ability, it's still extremely possible to be screwed by a terrible damage roll. This is somewhat like "stabbing" with a long blade back when they had higher stabbing multipliers. Sometimes you could get a really monstrous amount of damage on a stab, but mostly you still just tapped the monster and woke them up, even though you were guaranteed to hit. Short blade's effectiveness in getting a guaranteed alpha strike is not only that they can't miss, but that they add a fixed amount of damage before damage gets multiplied.

Perhaps Serpent's Lash should also work like this. Rather than multiplying the damage of your martial strikes, maybe it should add fixed damage to your weapon attack (not aux attacks). This makes the possibility of killing a given enemy far less random since you can reasonably predict that you'll do at least x amount of damage.

If I'm totally honest, I've been disconnected from DCSS for long enough that my grasp on numbers isn't as good as I'd want it to be. I sympathize with what you're saying, but sounds like something with ramifications I don't know about. Back when martial attacks scaled damage and not quantity, it broke certain builds right open as it allowed short blades to cut through high AC enemies, which is supposed to be their weakness (modulo stab).

That may be the way to go after some trunk testing, but at a cost of 2 piety I think current Serpent's Lash is stronger than many god nukes as is. We shall see. An option could be to base that damage modifier on piety as you said, since the god does not scale with piety or invocations at the moment.

On a side note, you can emulate this to some extent with Heavenly Storm, since it gives you a very high Slaying bonus. Short blade users have said that Heavenly Storm is stronger for them since they benefit from the flat damage bonus, so I wouldn't want to push the short blade advantage too much further.

SteelNeuron fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Nov 15, 2017

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




the Pick Up Sticks spell returns all arrows to your quiver

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

Fitzy Fitz posted:

the Pick Up Sticks spell returns all arrows to your quiver

Included in the book of chores

Sage Grimm
Feb 18, 2013

Let's go explorin' little dude!
Also included in the book: Level 9 Translocations/Charms spell called Begin Again. In the event of a catastrophe, you start over from the beginning with a vague feeling of deja vu! :v:

Heithinn Grasida
Mar 28, 2005

...must attack and fall upon them with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart, and, if possible, vanquish and destroy them, even though they have for armour the shells of a certain fish, that they say are harder than diamonds, and in place of swords wield trenchant blades of Damascus steel...

SteelNeuron posted:

If I'm totally honest, I've been disconnected from DCSS for long enough that my grasp on numbers isn't as good as I'd want it to be. I sympathize with what you're saying, but sounds like something with ramifications I don't know about. Back when martial attacks scaled damage and not quantity, it broke certain builds right open as it allowed short blades to cut through high AC enemies, which is supposed to be their weakness (modulo stab).

That may be the way to go after some trunk testing, but at a cost of 2 piety I think current Serpent's Lash is stronger than many god nukes as is. We shall see. An option could be to base that damage modifier on piety as you said, since the god does not scale with piety or invocations at the moment.

On a side note, you can emulate this to some extent with Heavenly Storm, since it gives you a very high Slaying bonus. Short blade users have said that Heavenly Storm is stronger for them since they benefit from the flat damage bonus, so I wouldn't want to push the short blade advantage too much further.

I think it's a fair point that further changes should be based on actual play, rather than armchair speculation.

But, just to clarify, I'd like to point out that what I was suggesting was only tangentially related to shortblades. I playtested WJC a good bit before it was added to trunk and I definitely remember killing orbs of fire in one hit with a rapier, which was lots of fun, but clearly overpowered.

What I'm proposing is rather making the damage boost from serpent's lash deterministic, like the damage boost from stabbing, rather than random. Crawl's damage formula is extremely random, and basically any attack, stabbing excluded, has a chance to do extremely low damage even if it hits. Causing serpent's lash to add flat, fixed damage would further reduce the random aspect of it. This is important because chance to hit, depending on the enemy, might well be a smaller reason for an attack failing to deal damage than a very low damage roll.

This could easily be arranged so that it has the same total effect as a 140% multiplier over a large number of attacks, but designed so that 40% of your average damage is guaranteed to apply to each hit of each maneuver under serpent's lash as a flat number in addition to your normal roll, rather than the extremely random damage applied currently. I proposed not arranging it that way because I enjoyed fast weapons getting preferential treatment under WJC, but it's by no means a necessary result of my suggestion.

Pacra
Aug 5, 2004

Heithinn Grasida posted:

This could easily be arranged so that it has the same total effect as a 140% multiplier over a large number of attacks, but designed so that 40% of your average damage is guaranteed to apply to each hit of each maneuver under serpent's lash as a flat number in addition to your normal roll, rather than the extremely random damage applied currently. I proposed not arranging it that way because I enjoyed fast weapons getting preferential treatment under WJC, but it's by no means a necessary result of my suggestion.

I just had a WJC game on CAO where I found the captain's cutlass on d:2 :stare:

WJC's heaven ability makes trunk Tomb actually fun to do

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

Pacra posted:

I just had a WJC game on CAO where I found the captain's cutlass on d:2 :stare:

WJC's heaven ability makes trunk Tomb actually fun to do

What's different about tomb in trunk?

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Woohoo posted:

Jesus why do all those cool roguelikes have to be in goddamn rear end-backwards text mode for all the important parts?
How does one code three galaxies worth of bullshit that can be used with other bullshit, but can't handle basic-rear end hello-world-programmer-level feature called mouse-driven UI?

Might & Magic 3 had better interface. Icons and clickable buttons. And game was released in 1991. That's 26 years ago. Do we really still press '/' to select all items in 2017?

I read those threads and wish I could just play. But there's no way in the world I'm going to last 5 minutes with walls of txt
I kinda think the game as it exists is too long to possibly play like this and I also doubt that anyone who plays at present really wants this. Clicking a button for actions you do 100 times/game is fine, but you attack tens of thousands of times per game and you don't want to mouse to the proper directional button each time, trust me. Like yeah, learning a keyboard-based UI has a front-loaded cost but I imagine that most of us paid that cost in like, 2002 with nethack or whatever.

Console mode should really have some degree of mouse support though.

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010

Cicadalek posted:

Never mind that bullshit, the real question is why has no one added a Snakes to Sticks spell

Xom can cast Snakes to Sticks! He saved me with this earlier by turning an Anaconda into a spear.

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


Cicadalek posted:

Never mind that bullshit, the real question is why has no one added a Snakes to Sticks spell

Xom sometimes turns all snakes in LoS to sticks.

Microcline
Jul 27, 2012

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

I kinda think the game as it exists is too long to possibly play like this and I also doubt that anyone who plays at present really wants this. Clicking a button for actions you do 100 times/game is fine, but you attack tens of thousands of times per game and you don't want to mouse to the proper directional button each time, trust me. Like yeah, learning a keyboard-based UI has a front-loaded cost but I imagine that most of us paid that cost in like, 2002 with nethack or whatever.

Console mode should really have some degree of mouse support though.

There's a very interesting usability study run by a student group that seems to support this. They ran 4 students who had video game experience (but not roguelike experience) through the Crawl tutorial to observe

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:usability_project:dungeon_olms_report

quote:

First tester was 24 years old experienced on gamer who specially liked online role-playing games. Test had to be stopped by moderators since the laboratory was booked only for hour. At this time tester was playing the third lesson. Otherwise there was no problems on the test. Player was frustrated with multiple control possibilities and had troubles finding suitable combination. This shows on the video where tester uses arrows and numbed for moving, mouse for selecting and other keys for actions.

I had a similar experience transitioning from the download version,which has mouse and clickable menu options, to webtiles, which doesn't. There was an initial learning hump but I realize I would have quit after a game or two if I were using the mouse. It's slightly more familiar but it leads to hunting through the icons instead of learning the button commands with ?, and every use of the mouse takes your hands away from the keyboard.

Woohoo
Apr 1, 2008

Microcline posted:

and every use of the mouse takes your hands away from the keyboard.

The what now? People are, say, good at games like Dota2 and Squad. Both games use mouse and entire frigging keyboard, and are real-time and need very quick decision making.

There's no reason WASD+mouse shouldn't work for a roguelike. But rather than game control, it's the inventory and menu management that really sucks with keyboard.
We're talking about this as roguelike was very rare fruit that you couldn't do with icons, slots, dragging, etc mouse-based-systems existing and being industry standard since early 1990's.

That's nonsense. Neo Scavenger - another roguelike - based even fighting on icon clicking. And it worked really well.

Woohoo fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Nov 16, 2017

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




A mouse would slow me down a lot, but I can understand why people would want it.

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender

Woohoo posted:

That's nonsense. Neo Scavenger - another roguelike - based even fighting on icon clicking. And it worked really well.
From what (admitedly little) I played of that, the control scheme was okay for what it did, but nothing outstanding enough that I'd want other games to go out of their way to emulate it. It felt very early 00s shareware game UI - functional, but not elegant.

There's also the issue of it presumably having been built from the ground up for mouse control, whereas Crawl came from an era where it was keyboard or nothing. Making crawl truly mouse-friendly(instead of technically playable using the mouse but a thousand times slower and clunkier than it'd be with the keyboard) would be a huge undertaking. It'd also take up valuable UI space, judging by how the download version handles it - it squishes the monster list down into something nearly useless while taking up a bunch of space for the inventory stuff.

Although I wouldn't mind the current inventory UI turning into something more mouse-friendly(while still being keyboard usable), without having it constantly waste space when you're not in the inventory. Not essential, but would make stuff like shuffling around equipment a bit faster.

Haifisch fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Nov 16, 2017

Cicadalek
May 8, 2006

Trite, contrived, mediocre, milquetoast, amateurish, infantile, cliche-and-gonorrhea-ridden paean to conformism, eye-fucked me, affront to humanity, war crime, should *literally* be tried for war crimes, talentless fuckfest, pedantic, listless, savagely boring, just one repulsive laugh after another

Mystery Prize posted:

Xom can cast Snakes to Sticks! He saved me with this earlier by turning an Anaconda into a spear.

Then I guess crawl is Good again. Thanks, Xom!

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
No matter how bad things get, you can always rely on good ol' Xom to make it worse

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010
Speaking of, chalk up another win for The Best God:



Not pictured: absolutely horrendous, life-ruining mutations caused by eating 40 purple chunks in an effort to rid myself of -Regen and Berserkitis 2

I will never play another melee through Tomb again without having Silence castable, it makes it a hundred times easier.

Edit: Also, it turns out that +10 slaying with a +9 sacred scourge of holy wrath kills pan lords pretty easily.

Mystery Prize fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Nov 17, 2017

Toadsmash
Jun 10, 2009

Dave Tate's downsy face approves.
Silence doesn't trivialize Tomb, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier. You can even use whatever cancellation potions you've got left to clear it on short notice.

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010
I would, but I have to save all of my cancellation pots in case Xom decides to turn me into a bat while I'm fighting Lom Lobon :shepface:

FulsomFrank
Sep 11, 2005

Hard on for love
What magical world do people live in where they have tons of cancellation potions to burn through? I can't remember the last time I had more than three through a normal game.

EDIT: And the ones I have I save for Hell to prevent glow/petrification and/or if I step on a Zot trap that dumps tons of glow too

FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Nov 17, 2017

Floodkiller
May 31, 2011

WJC changes were merged, so check for a sever update soon to mess around with the new version!

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




Fun!

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh
I save cancelation for Mark and never use it for anything else

Sage Grimm
Feb 18, 2013

Let's go explorin' little dude!
Mark on its own either is wanted because it means you can choose the corridor to fight in or easily handled by backing out the way you came and idling on the floor above. I don't think I've had any issue with the occasional alarm trap going off. It's when you're marked and you don't have a way out that causes me problems. I have grudging admiration for the Vault guards due to that.

And speaking of marked, I've finally won my first frogger and my first Hunter!

code:
 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.21-a0-450-gd87a9b2 (console) character file.

2329775 Grimm the Barachian Arbalest (level 27, 201/201 HPs)
             Began as a Barachi Hunter on Nov 17, 2017.
             Was the Champion of Okawaru.
             Escaped with the Orb
             ... and 4 runes on Nov 18, 2017!
             
             The game lasted 04:41:46 (74612 turns).

Grimm the Barachian Arbalest (Barachi Hunter)      Turns: 74612, Time: 04:41:47

Health: 201/201    AC: 43    Str: 22    XL:     27
Magic:  31/31      EV: 22    Int: 15    God:    Okawaru [******]
Gold:   7092       SH:  4    Dex: 24    Spells: 23/42 levels left

rFire    + + .     SeeInvis +   Y - +9 triple crossbow (freeze) {Dueling Banjo}
rCold    + + .     Gourm    .   (shield currently unavailable)
rNeg     + . .     Faith    .   c - +2 crystal plate armour of Magic {rElec rPois MR++ Str-2}
rPois    +         Spirit   .   G - +2 hat of the Will of the Gods {*Contam rC+ Regen+ Slay+2}
rElec    +         Reflect  +   v - +1 cloak of Starlight {rElec rC+ EV+4 Stlth--}
rCorr    .         Harm     .   q - +2 pair of gloves {Dex+3}
MR       ++++.     Rnd*Rage +   J - +2 pair of boots {Stlth+}
Stlth    ..........             z - amulet of Buqyj {Reflect rPois Str+3 Dex+4 Slay+2 SH+4}
HPRegen  0.83/turn              W - ring of Haiffit {rPois rF+ Dex+4 SInv}
MPRegen  0.22/turn              B - ring of positive energy

@: slow
A: +LOS, swims, antennae 1, iridescent scales 1, thin metallic scales 1, berserk
1, blurry vision 1, clumsy 1, fire resistance 1, frail 1, low mp 1, electricity
resistance, slowness 1, no potion heal 2, sturdy frame 1, strong legs 2
0: Orb of Zot
}: 4/15 runes: barnacled, slimy, silver, gossamer
a: Hop, Heroism, Finesse, Renounce Religion
Once you've got out of the hand crossbows it's a treat to be able to send 18/22 base damage hits down range, or equivalent to an executioner's axe/bardiche and giant spike club, respectively. There were a couple of occasions where I splattered high threat enemies in 3 hits or less! I never realized it produces a lot of noise and named my weapon accordingly. Shoals also has its teeth pulled for much of the water nastiness when you're Barachi as you can't get engulfed and water is merely normal terrain. That was a nice change of pace.

Sage Grimm fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Nov 18, 2017

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders
Initial impressions on new WJC:

The pin mechanic is pretty cool, you can use powerful combinations like luring a hydra into a flame cloud, pinning them by moving around them, and step away while they burn. If you have a polearm you can keep hitting them while they sit there (or place more flame clouds). Overall this means you can spend a lot less time in harms way and get a lot of free hits.

On the flipside: if you have a polearm, you are basically a "poor man's Centaur" anywhere you have space to move around your target to trigger the pin effect, since you can kite the poo poo out of everything under the condition you can risk trading blows occasionally. It's a little more dynamic and interesting than simply running away/kiting as a centaur/spriggan but I can see this getting criticized. I like it so far but I guess time will tell if it becomes repetitive.

Wall jump is not giving me an evasion bonus, but even still being able to use it for repositioning with no strict requirement of having an enemy feels better as it is compared to before. Without the EV bonus though I don't see myself using it as an opener much.

Overall it feels nice, better than the first iteration because it's not as overpowered and definitely better than the previous version where most of his abilities were more of a "tab plus".

edit: also playing hybrid characters that use temporary buffs feels almost unplayable now in DCSS :( permabuffs in hellcrawl spoiled me

apple fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 19, 2017

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.
What temporary buffs? They removed most of them.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

IronicDongz posted:

I save cancelation for Mark and never use it for anything else

Hope you like dying to petrification in Dis then.

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh
I don't do extended

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apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Speleothing posted:

What temporary buffs? They removed most of them.

Regeneration's still around in trunk which is the most annoying one to me at least. It makes resting efficiently go from pressing 5 to pressing z->(spell letter)->5 but only if regen doesn't fail so you can't just macro it. There's a bunch of other spells that were turned into "permabuffs" like spectral weapon, song of slaying, spell forms, etc. Some of them are insanely overpowered right now in hellcrawl but it really feels much nicer that way and all it probably needs are some minor adjustments to the ones that are too overpowered.

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