Ideas/Suggestions

Drop your new ideas and suggestions here.

When there are multiple items on the ground, it should allow you to pick and choose certain items when pressing 'g'.

Here's a minor suggestion worth telling you.

Add a more descriptive character dump, because even though you died or whatever, character dumps are pretty important in roguelikes, atleast for me.

Such as telling their overall score, max HP and MP, what depth they were on, last messages before they died, etc etc.

Playing stupid, I lost my good character to a pool of acid .

Only time I wasn't using the shift key to move, I accidently go diving in a pool of acid.

Perhaps a question before moving into the acid, lava, or whatever is dangerous, such as --

"Are you sure you want to go headfirst into a steaming pile of acid? (N)o (y)es"

Thanks,
JM

JMskit wrote:

Playing stupid, I lost my good character to a pool of acid .

Only time I wasn't using the shift key to move, I accidently go diving in a pool of acid.

Perhaps a question before moving into the acid, lava, or whatever is dangerous, such as --

"Are you sure you want to go headfirst into a steaming pile of acid? (N)o (y)es"

Thanks,
JM

Alongside razor fiends, acid pools tend to keep me out of autopilot mode and on my toes; therefore, I encourage you to instead glue your finger to that shift key!

Dryst wrote:

JMskit wrote:

Playing stupid, I lost my good character to a pool of acid .

Only time I wasn't using the shift key to move, I accidently go diving in a pool of acid.

Perhaps a question before moving into the acid, lava, or whatever is dangerous, such as --

"Are you sure you want to go headfirst into a steaming pile of acid? (N)o (y)es"

Thanks,
JM

Alongside razor fiends, acid pools tend to keep me out of autopilot mode and on my toes; therefore, I encourage you to instead glue your finger to that shift key!

It's hard for me to play shift key, hahah I gotta get used to it. Haven't been playing many roguelikes before downloading MG.

Is there a way to view a page of your character's stats in game? I haven't found it if there is one, short of making a dump. That would be a nice convenience factor though, because I know I tend to forget which edges I've taken.

At the moment, in the grand tradition of POWDER, the only way to see your stats is to do a chardump. I'll add a character details screen.

These don't seem to be in the game yet, so...

How about wands? Not like they are in other games, of course.

Wands would behave basically like your staff's blast attack when 'U'sed, with a few differences. The main one would be that instead of using your mp, they would use their charges (of which they would have only a few -- about six, say.) Of course, potions of permanence would increase this.

As with your staff, you can stick things onto them to add effects; these would work like with your staff, except that the combined item would be permanently destroyed (cannot be recovered with a dissolution potion), and instead of using the combined item's charges, the wand's charges would continue to be used. Since you cannot get the stuck item off, and the wand disintegrates when out of charges, a wand can only receive one such item.

The main purpose of wands would be to let people use more 'situational' powers (like digging or teleporting away) several times at different points from a single inventory item (if you put it on your staff, you have to either use a dissolution potion every time, or use the item up at that point.) Of course, like amulets and rings (which serve the same purpose for things that affect the player), wands would have to be fairly rare.

Alternative ideas or variations: Let wands absorb powers from potions instead of 'sticking' things onto them (give them the powers imbued crystal balls give when placed on your staff). This could be more powerful (death wands would be absurdly easy to make), but would also make them more limited (you couldn't put chunks of creatures on them.) Another possibility would be to give wands more charges than I suggested above, making them even more valuable (closer to amulets.)

When using the graphical tiles, the large map view (V key) uses tiles the same size as the normal display. I assume it's working as intended that the algorithm used to 'compress' the view down is lossy. Is it not feasible to use smaller-sized tiles to make the large map 1-to-1 with the normal view? I guess it's not a big deal, but sometimes the results are a little weird and it is slightly inferior to using the non-graphical view.

Aquillion wrote:

How about wands? Not like they are in other games, of course.

Neat! I like it, I'll add it to the list. I'd say there's a good chance this (or some near variant of it) will show up, somewhere down the line.

Fyren wrote:

When using the graphical tiles, the large map view (V key) uses tiles the same size as the normal display. I assume it's working as intended that the algorithm used to 'compress' the view down is lossy. Is it not feasible to use smaller-sized tiles to make the large map 1-to-1 with the normal view?

It is possible, although it does require some creative adjustments to how some things are handled. I'll add it to the list.

What about charge abilities working on spells, perhaps as an edge?

I say that largely because the overcharged abilities you get from Sateja's tokens are hilarious and fun, but opportunities to use them are rare.

Naturally this shouldn't be anything cheap, because they're powerful, but it'd be interesting to see what can be done with it.

Maybe it could require a charge level that is impractical to use in most situations, have a prohibitive cost in energy, drain some of the caster's life, or even reduce the caster's max health and energy.

Curseman wrote:

What about charge abilities working on spells, perhaps as an edge?

Interesting! To clarify, by charge effects, you mean things like charged remains, right? I'll have to think about how that'd interact with existing stuff, but it's a neat idea.

Curseman wrote:

I say that largely because the overcharged abilities you get from Sateja's tokens are hilarious and fun, but opportunities to use them are rare.

Rare because the tokens don't turn up very often, or rare because they're not useful in many situations?

Sorry for bringing it up again, but could you make it so that for the large map view, the preferred choice is scaling tiles to get a 1-to-1 view and only using the lossy view if that's not possible given the minimum tile size option? I might just be dumb, but I find it really, really confusing when walls get elided and black unexplored areas end up adjacent to explored areas. I end up not being sure if I've been to an area or not. I hate the lossy view with a passion.

Fyren wrote:

Sorry for bringing it up again, but could you make it so that for the large map view, the preferred choice is scaling tiles to get a 1-to-1 view and only using the lossy view if that's not possible given the minimum tile size option? I might just be dumb, but I find it really, really confusing when walls get elided and black unexplored areas end up adjacent to explored areas. I end up not being sure if I've been to an area or not. I hate the lossy view with a passion.

What is it doing now? 'cause, if I'm understanding you correctly, I intended it to do just as you suggest.

I'm not sure what it's actually doing. Here's two screenshots from a brand new game:

Normal view
Map view

I have the default tile size of 32 and I set the minimum to 4. You can tell the game is definitely resizing the tiles (it's not just artifacting from the JPG screenshots), but it's either resizing them to 32x32 and simply making them fuzzy or only making them at most a few pixels smaller in both dimensions. It's still using the lossy algorithm. You can see, for example, some of the water on the left, the middle door, and some wall between the two open doors being chopped off.

Fyren wrote:

You can tell the game is definitely resizing the tiles (it's not just artifacting from the JPG screenshots), but it's either resizing them to 32x32 and simply making them fuzzy or only making them at most a few pixels smaller in both dimensions. It's still using the lossy algorithm. You can see, for example, some of the water on the left, the middle door, and some wall between the two open doors being chopped off.

It certainly is. Well, it's supposed to be doing what you suggested. I'll take another stab at it.

So, a potion of absorbed life increase is better than a potion of life gain, but a potion of magic gain is better than a potion of absorbed magic increase. Unless I'm missing something, I suggest the names be swapped for one side so the strengths and names match for both HP and MP.

Also, sometimes it works out that when you gain a level with an edge, you could have spent the spell point you just got to meet a prerequisite for one of the school-related edges. But, since you can't open the learn spell menu while the edge menu is open, you end up having to wait for your next edge. I'd suggest letting people spend their spell points first, if this isn't by design.

Fyren wrote:

So, a potion of absorbed life increase is better than a potion of life gain, but a potion of magic gain is better than a potion of absorbed magic increase. Unless I'm missing something, I suggest the names be swapped for one side so the strengths and names match for both HP and MP.

There is a method to my madness, on this one. A Potion of Gain Energy/Life comes from a specific recipe, and it gains a specific amount. Potions of Absorbed Magic/Life Increase can come from a variety of recipes, and depending on which specific one you choose, they'll gain differing amounts. Increase potions from certain recipes are not, in fact, better than their Gain counterparts. It might make sense to unify the names, though; change Potion of Gain Energy to Potion of Magic Increase, and so on.

Fyren wrote:

Also, sometimes it works out that when you gain a level with an edge, you could have spent the spell point you just got to meet a prerequisite for one of the school-related edges. But, since you can't open the learn spell menu while the edge menu is open, you end up having to wait for your next edge. I'd suggest letting people spend their spell points first, if this isn't by design.

I wish I could say this was a high-level design choice, but it's mostly a consequence of organic growth. I'm not particularly displeased with how it functions, however. I'll put it on the list for consideration.

Nahjor wrote:

I wish I could say this was a high-level design choice, but it's mostly a consequence of organic growth. I'm not particularly displeased with how it functions, however. I'll put it on the list for consideration.

Well, it means that at level 6 without taking any spell training, you can't get a 5 prereq. school edge if you took spells 1+2 (since you end up with 3 points to spend upon level 6 to get 3), but you can if you do 2+3 or 1+4. Seems kind of arbitrary. But maybe I'm just complaining because I love haste and gravity but want my alien mentality. Edit: Obviously these examples were wrong, heh. But the idea still stands. (I was actually describing when I had already gone 1+1+2 with 3 left over at level 7, then got confused thinking about it later when I posted.)

Another thing, when you click the X to close the game and it asks if you want to save, could hitting escape cancel the quit? Right now it acts like you picked to not save and then quits if you hit escape.

Nahjor wrote:

Rare because the tokens don't turn up very often, or rare because they're not useful in many situations?

Because they don't turn up very often. I haven't tried a majority of the spells under its effect, but the ones I've seen looked useful.

Fyren wrote:

Obviously these examples were wrong, heh. But the idea still stands.

I knew what you meant.

Fyren wrote:

Another thing, when you click the X to close the game and it asks if you want to save, could hitting escape cancel the quit? Right now it acts like you picked to not save and then quits if you hit escape.

Eww. Yeah, I'll fix that.

Curseman wrote:

Because they don't turn up very often. I haven't tried a majority of the spells under its effect, but the ones I've seen looked useful.

Ok. I'm looking at rebalancing the tokens at some point, so we'll see how that all shakes out.

Here's some edge ideas...

Fountain Efficiency: You take longer to dry fountains up than others.
(In effect, fountains have more energy, or they only lose X% of the energy they give to you, 'cause you're better at drawing from deeper within them or some such thing.)

Scroll Mastery: Allows you to use each scroll an additional time before it is used up (can be taken multiple times.)

Also, the stat-raising edges get less and less useful the deeper you go into the dungeon I assume the bonuses they give are not factored into the chance of successfully using a life/energy gain potion, or they're really really useless beyond the first few levels. But even with that, I don't think it's good to have such a short-term bonus for an edge... Maybe they should give something like, say, +1 for every X orbs you grab, or something of that nature? Plus an initial +Y bonus so they're still useful if you take them initially.

...I wonder if it would be possible / balanced / thematically appropriate to have an edge that expands your spell selection somehow, in some fashion letting you eventually learn a spell outside your initial schools? Of course, you'd still have to spend spell points on the spell (possibly more than usual), in addition to taking the edge to get 'access' to them. Increasing the spell-point cost of 'cross-school' spells taken with this edge would limit the potential imbalance of, say, just grabbing Drain or Create Boulder or some other useful level-1 spell; you'd be giving up overall spell knowledge (and an edge) in exchange for versatility. I don't know whether the edge should grant access to one additional spell, or one additional school... with the increased spell-point cost (and maybe even an increased MP cost), this edge could certainly be balanced, but I could understand not liking it for thematic reasons. Anyway, I thought I'd suggest it.