[still on status area printing interrupted by first tutorial message] >>> Yeah, this is because the lua epilogue is evaluated sometime between >>> level load and stats update. Not sure how to change that. I could >>> remove the forced -More- at the beginning, but I rather like how the >>> tutorial starts out with what the player needs to do if the game >>> appears "stuck" on the messages. >> >> Would it be possible to display the whole stat section after the message? > > I don't know. Didn't want to deal with dungeon.lua or whereever the > epilogue is handled. :(
I'll ask Darshan when he's around. It's no big deal, but it's definitely something the next UP team will make a note about :) >> However, we should: >> (a) tell players (in some way, could be indirect) that the encounter can >> be reliably overcome (i.e. it is not dumb luck) > > That might be achieved by a sensible death message. See (b). > >> (b) tell dead players that often it is the player's fault, but sometimes >> she just isn't to blame > > You should have gotten some mention about that in the death message, > though there's certainly room for improvement. Didn't read that properly :) Will think about the death message. >>>> 11. I am not sure if telling players to take out the bats with sling is >>>> good advice. The poison scimitar will do just fine. There could be a >>>> shooting monster around which makes using the sling a good idea. >>> >>> Well, the dart-throwing kobolds come later, and the earlier goblin >>> also qualifies as a sort of shooting monster. Maybe add another single >>> dart-throwing kobold? >> >> Yes! > > I wanted to have something were switching weapons (ranged -> melee) > made sense, and sometimes you'll take out the kobold early. For me, > the bats seemed perfect because they tended to flutter away, so I > switched back to kiting and then back to melee when they came close. > Sometimes, they'd flutter right away again, of course, but at least > the ' key saw a lot of activity. :) > > Is it that bad? Not really bad, but I don't think many Crawlers use ranged combat to take out bats. I don't really see a scenario which involves a shallow forest and a lot of ' usage. :( >> 13. In the current round of tests I finally took out the island kobolds >> from afar (been dying too often when I was too lazy to do it, nice >> challenge). > > Might be sensible to remind the player about the possibility of > retreat at this point. Not necessary, I think. They can figure out on their own. >> Anyway, when you do so you go to XL 3. I chose Str which >> immediately made me not Burdened when picking up the 50 rations :) Just >> increase their number a bit more. (Also take into account that the player >> may not have picked up the dagger, or the stones.) > > It appears you're not such a pack rat as me, chopping up all those > jackals on the way and carrying their chunks. :) > It's probably best to reduce the starting Str instead. 50 meat rations > is already bordering on ridiculous. Yes, lower Str is better than more rations. Check if playing like a packrat can make the player Burdened at an earlier stage (ideally not, but if so, we need a message). >> 14. The encounter after you get the wand of fire should be something >> drastic -- definitely not a goblin with a dagger. We want to tell players >> to use stuff (e.g. wands) on tough enemies. I mean > > Right. What would you recommend? Keep in mind that the player probably > wouldn't even realize that it's something epically dangerous. Ranged > attack is out, of course. An ogre would qualify. We can also have the goblin first and the ogre next corridor, so that players can learn the art of testing wands on harmless monsters. >> 16. There's a bug (or at least misfeature) with wand targeting (when >> you're asked to check the wall types): The feature under the cursor is >> _not_ listed (in console, that is). > > Oh, I didn't try checking the wall types while targeting. xv works, > and I'm surprised to find out that 'v' also works while targeting. > Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I'll tell on ##crawl-dev. >> The loot is neat. The section about going back to the shop is great. >> What's the reason for the dagger and the statues in the room which sends >> you to the shop? > > Oh, those are remnants of my original treasure room design. > Originally, the room was filled with smaller gold piles, but I > couldn't decide where to place the shopping message, so I changed it > to a single pile. The former might be more flavourful, though. Maybe > put the message square in the middle? Yes. What about eight gold piles around the central message square? >> 17. Final fight: you don't need anything from shop. The wand of fire will >> do. This should be finetuned so that the wand won't solve the encounter >> and stuff from the shop is almost necessary. > > Now that I can control the number of charges, I could play with that. > On the other hand, there's some kind of variance in how many charges > it takes to take out one measly goblin (1-3 charges), which will > probably increase if we take a larger monster. Also, I absolutely want > the player to be able to experiment with shooting the _fire_ wand at > the different types of walls, which means we need ~6 more charges. If > you skip melting the wax etc., this leaves the player with a whole lot > of charges for killing all those monsters. Of course (hehe) we could > equip them with fireproof armour. :P The only way I see to make it somewhat interesting is with an orc rush. (If the number of enemies is too small, you can all fry them at once.) What about around 15 orcs and 5 orc warriors? >> I am not so sure about "uppercase W". What about >> (uppercase) <white>W</white> >> when the command is first introduced, but just >> <white>W</white> >> afterwards? At least in console the distinction between "w" and "W" is >> obvious. > > Changing that is, while certainly possible, not trivial. The > get_command() method returns the command name as a whole, which for > the tutorial includes the "uppercase" prefix. It's only in the lua > wrapper that this is encased in colour tags. I'm not sure passing a > boolean parameter (for highlighting or not, or mentioning uppercase or > not) through all those nested function calls is actually worth it. > > Also, I think these commands aren't repeated often enough for this to > really matter. We need the uppercase distinction at the first > encounter and on the summary screens. See section 4.7 of > https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:usability_project:report > Hopefully, the repetition will make it clear that lower and uppercase > are distinct commands without actually having to hammer the player on > the head with it. Hard to tell, really. (I was surprised by this being > an issue, too.) Okay, let's drop this point. David ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special Offer-- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE (a $49 USD value)! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! Download using promo code Free_Logger_4_Dev2Dev. 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