Ideas

+forum rep if you use a similar code to program the Magic 8 Ball into IVAN.

Hehehe, fortune cookies.

Fortune cookies are a cool idea It would be nice to be able to hack down spiderwebs ('a' with a pickaxe or something)

I'd prefer an "A"ttack button that lets you choose what to attack with (such as choosing to bite an opponent, with bites having a higher chance to hit the head, or just swinging your thunder hammer in the air hoping to throw a bolt at an approaching opponent, etc, which would also work with missile weapons or learned spells if such are ever added, not to mention allowing you a proper first attack on a pet to piss them off if your aim is to kill said pet instead of a kick).

That would be awesome indeed. It could also be used to hack doors open with your Iron Battleaxe +5 instead of trying to kick them, or prying chests open with a dagger, or even repeatedly kicking a weak opponent instead of attacking him directly, allowing you to keep his sweet armor intact. Or to use your left-hand thunder hammer only if there is no wall directly behind your opponent, and you don't want to equip and unequip it every time your enemy makes a sidestep. Or even make spears and/or whips have a range of two tiles.

Man I love those ideas... I wish I had time to start coding, but no... =( Too many irons in the fire already, I've barely got time to sleep.

What about permanent polymorph into an orc, by drinking a potion or something? Then you can play the rest of the game as an orc character.

Is there any code for the Magic 8 ball, by the way?

The 8ball is on IRC. It's Bored's.

How about a skeleton key? Opens any locked door or chest. Would be extremely rare, OFC. Or a Bag of Holding?

A skeleton key isn't really necessary - any locked chest can be opened with a firm kick/bottle of sulphuric acid/wand of polymorph/exploding mine.
"A wand of polymorph hath a thousand uses"

Not sure a Bag of Holding would be possible as of now. You could of course just give it a ridiculously negative weight, but that would effect your total carried weight rather than the weight of the bag's contents.
Also, would unbalance play


Also I just had an idea: An orb/scroll of scrambling. Does nothing to affect gameplay - all it does is randomly mix the tile graphics and names of all in-game entities around. Think walls having the graphic of a goblin head, and Elpuri looking like 4 tiles of pineapples, and a two-handed sword being a element coloured door. "A door is stridulating here." "You pick up the mustard gas dolphin of agility +2"
Would have to be an extremely rare random spawn, or locked away deep in some dungeon where only forumites/developers would know how to find it.

Many of those methods jeopardize the contents of the chest/door.

How about a key ring to hold all the keys you find?

Wand of Polymorph doesn't, and explosions don't do much except break bottles occasionally. Acid is negligible if you get to the items in time.

Key ring would be nice. Like, you "a"pply the keyring to open a chest if it has the correct key rather than an individual one.

i still want to program the magic 8-ball into IVAN.

On anaother note, I'm wondering if anyone has found an easier way to build up rooms in the dungeon.dat files? i.e. a more wysiwyg way rather than manipulating a bunch of ascii? (That said, editing the script in ascii still has some charm to it).

There was the image-to-map converter by someone linked somewhere here long ago.

Fake edit: found it, Planplan's converter.

Ah I remember this, thanks for bringing it back into the daylight

I have an idea that should be easy to implement and would increase realism of the game - shop shelfes. Each shop should have specialised furnitures for item display. Armor racks, weapons racks, potions cabinets and so on, they suppose to work in the same way as bookshelfs in Attnam librairy. This way shops could be smaller, contain more items of wider array and be generally more friendly to costumers.

That... Is actually a great idea. Nice one Zulox.

Kind of gives more incentive to rob the stores though. I think an increase of guards would be in order.

I'd bet that a graphical map editor would encourage a lot more people to contribute maps! The actual maps themselves aren't bad but then assigning properties to all the different tiles and etc. can be a pain.

Well would you look at that I found an old """map editor""" I used for my project which stores maps in plaintext and doesn't look like it needs much to be reworked. I'm on the job*!

*-may or may not finish

Yay! That is great Alvers

Well, because Erno asked so nicely.

The dreamworld, or limbo, is a universe parallel to our own. Dreaming people are observing and subtly, but constantly manipulating that universe, and as such, it is a bizarre place, where no laws apply. As the dreamworld is not exclusive to human dreams, it contains items and entities no man can understand, in addition to warped and mutated monstrosities, objects or places that can cause insanity simply by looking at them, and so on.

Dreamcasting is the art of projecting the power of the dreamworld into reality. The caster enters a state of very lucid dreaming, in which he perceives both the dreamworld and the real one. The caster then uses his consciousness as a portal to let a select item, entity, or idea enter the real world from the dream world.

While the caster can manipulate such a dream-thing to an extent, he is still limited to what he finds once he enters limbo. In addition, thinking dream-entities might try to use the caster to escape limbo, by force, diplomacy, or other means.

Another disadvantage of dreamcasting is the use of the caster's mind and body as a carrier for dream-things. Human brains and bodies work great in this physical world, but they weren't meant for the insanity of the combined dreams of everything that ever lived.

Every dream-thing that passes trough the caster's consciousness changes the brain, causes it to question what used to be facts, and accept as reality what it saw in limbo. Depending on what knowledge erodes and what weirdness is added, several sorts of insanity are possible, ranging from almost all known phobias to megalomania, extreme sadism or masochism, severe depression or unwavering optimism, hallucinations, amnesia, ...

Similarly, as the dream-matter passes trough the body of the caster, a bit of its reality erodes. Slowly, the physical body will show more and more oddities and discontinuities. Examples of later stages are missing body parts (even missing connections between two fully functional body parts), boiling skin, more or less joints, supernatural abilities or disabilities (eg, a vampire's weakness to garlic), ...

Ultimately, either the mind or the body of the caster will give in. If the mind collapses to madness, the caster will become a monster, controlled by that same madness. (A bone file is generated, with a monster instead of a ghost.) The monstrous caster will haunt the place where it died, in a manner controlled by its madness. (eg, a megalomaniac will attack relentlessly, thinking himself invincible. An agoraphobic caster/monster will wait for prey in the smallest, most winding and cramped corridor it finds)
If the body erodes completely, the caster is cut loose from this world and sucked into limbo. From there, he has no choice but to endure, hoping another caster will one day open a portal nearby, trough which he can try to escape.

That's my idea about the whole dreams/magic thing.

Has there been suggestions for an Armor skill? I was just considering how such a skill might work the other day.

Not that I'm aware of. How would armour skills work?