Chaosforge Forum

DoomRL => Requests For Features => Topic started by: Thomas on October 06, 2010, 06:43

Title: Brevity Mode
Post by: Thomas on October 06, 2010, 06:43
A toggle-able ini option for DoomRL veterans. Shortens most combat messages so only very large fights will require you to press space even once, improving the flow of the game.

The most important change would be "The missile hits the BEING_NAME" being shortened to "Hit!", or "Ouch!" if the thing being hit is you.

Also, there should be a button for repeating the level feelings, unless brevity mode shortens unimportant messages to the point where it doesn't take a lot of scrolling to find them in your Previous Messages screen.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: thelaptop on October 06, 2010, 09:52
I second.  This is like "terse mode" in the old Rogue.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: TFoN on October 06, 2010, 09:57
Hm. Thirded.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on October 06, 2010, 13:50
Track it. I like it ;)
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: ParaSait on October 06, 2010, 13:53
Yeah me too.
Y'know, old roguelikes needed messages, since a lot was left to your imagination... but since DoomRL has so much visual effects, messages have become almost obsolete. :P
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Tavana on October 06, 2010, 14:54
Ticket created with all brevity.

EDIT: By the way, the ticket points back to this thread, so please add more thoughts if you come up with enhancements for this mode.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Madtrixr on October 06, 2010, 23:23
I like this. Fund it.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: thelaptop on October 07, 2010, 04:09
I just realised that this change can make sub-5-minute AoPC runs a reality.

Compet'n Diamond much?

>.<

To make things even more terse, compact the number of hits so that only one message shows, e.g. "Ouch! (x10)" instead of you know, "Ouch! Ouch! ... Ouch!".

I like this. Fund it.
I'll chuck in 10 bucks to see this happen.  See also this thread (http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,3376.0.html).
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Game Hunter on October 07, 2010, 04:54
I just realised that this change can make sub-5-minute AoPC runs a reality.

Compet'n Diamond much?

>.<
HA.

HAHA.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah, that's some funny stuff. If I hadn't been furiously skipping messages via the Enter key, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did in 5m 48s. On the whole, however, that run didn't even include monsters half the time. This would have cut my time by about...10 seconds. If that. What'd really make speedrunning helpfully quicker would be auto-equipping armors and boots whenever you aren't wearing any. Otherwise? Praying that you start next to stairs on every, single, floor is as close as you'll get to a sub-5 time.

Sorry about the laughing, but man...I mean, you should complete a sub-10 first before joking about it.

In all seriousness, this mode will be really nice. It could use a special exception on BFG shots, which take forever to happen (on animation alone) when there are enough monsters on the screen. Something like a quick tile-flash on all affected monsters, without the radial effect. Arach caves would still have the same problem if you didn't include the x# for hits/ouches, so I'm in favor of that inclusion.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on October 07, 2010, 05:04
Quote
What'd really make speedrunning helpfully quicker would be auto-equipping armors and boots whenever you aren't wearing any.
That could be done. Tracker?
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Tavana on October 07, 2010, 06:07
New (seperate) ticket created. Keep 'em coming.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: AStranger on October 07, 2010, 10:47
Sorry about the laughing, but man...I mean, you should complete a sub-10 first before joking about it.
Game Hunter is spot on with his description of furious enter pressing. So far I have nine Compet'n platinums and still haven't gotten any faster then 7:07. I'm starting to wonder if playing in a virtual machine is hurting my chances. Ignoring that, I still think breaking the 5 minute barrier is going to take an EPIC amount of RNG luck. Even if a player has the luck, I still think there are a few things that could help.

* Terse mode, which has already been described

* Auto armor/boot usage, that Game Hunter spoke about

* A keystroke that selects the small med-pack in you inventory and uses it. It may not sound time consuming, but if it takes ~1-2 seconds to open the inventory then use a medpack and you eat ~10-15 a game, the time adds up.

* Auto-trait selection. Currently you can only define the starting trait. If you could define a sequence of traits, then you'd save ~20-30 seconds during the game not having to manually select them.

* Animation free mode. I think the most time can be saved here. Even being invulnerable while in an arachnatron during a speed run is suicide, since the amount of time spent to draw each mob shooting is probably more time then you had to spend on the level. I'm not sure if this is the best idea on the list because despite being the most time-saving, it could make people move *too* fast. At least now when you are panicking about the lost time during shots you are also watching your health go down.

If I could only choose one of these, I'd choose auto trait selection. Ignoring animation free mode, the other four really only save you keypresses at crucial moments. The auto trait would save you the most keypresses overall.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: thelaptop on October 07, 2010, 10:56
So I think we are looking at a more general thing here.

Can we macro some series of actions using some defined key somewhere in the configuration file?

Because I really don't see it as being a good thing to have too many keys defined for all these shortcuts for the normal player -- I believe somewhere in this forum Kornel said something like that before.  But if we have a provision for some form of key macro definition, then I think most of the problems can be solved.

As for auto-trait selection... it does sound like a good idea.  But I would put this under the "Advanced players" category of the help file and not allude to it much.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: Kamikaze14 on October 07, 2010, 14:24
Idea for the immediately equipping armor/boots: use G to immediately use/equip items from the ground.  This works even with a full inventory, but it will only equip things if the slot is empty.
Title: Re: Brevity Mode
Post by: rchandra on October 07, 2010, 15:11
Idea for the immediately equipping armor/boots: use G to immediately use/equip items from the ground.  This works even with a full inventory, but it will only equip things if the slot is empty.

I like a command for equipping / using from the ground, but it should work identically whether or not your inventory is full.  A simple implementation: swap the item on the ground with your item slot.  So Gg to pick up and equip an armour.  Often you won't care to recover the item you're wearing (boots, sometimes armour when inventory full) so you would just use G then.  Using the medpack from the ground would also be G.

edit: Then the AoI could just disable g for items, and reduce the irreversible errors from picking up items that you didn't know you needed to use right away (nuke, firestorm mod, etc.)