A general RFE discussion thread

RFE = Request For Enhancement.

From the shoutbox:
5:12 pm Ischaldirh By the way, can i propose a new item which plants would have a chance of dropping? Seeds that you apply on a neighboring tile to spawn a plant
6:40 pm Serin-Delaunay Isn't that what UT2 is for?
9:20 pm 4zb4 Wouldn't quite fit with the lore. The carnivorous plants are magically mutated kiwifruit plants. It'd make more sense for a given fruit such as a kiwi or banana to have a small chance to turn into a carnivorous plant when a magic beam passes by it.
9:21 pm 4zb4 Or when struck by it. Perhaps a unique effect for the wand of polymorph?
September 28
7:27 am capristo How about if a kiwi rots on the ground it turns into a plant? Or a kiwi zapped with a wand of resurrection
8:44 am Ischaldirh I like cap's ideas. All the kiwis we find (well, almost all of them anyways) are dropped by said mutant kiwi plants anyways...
2:31 pm Ischaldirh Could we / do we have an RFE thread?
2:33 pm Ischaldirh because something that has always bothered me, is how sneaky the game is with leprosy.
2:33 pm Ischaldirh you get that little message in the messages box, but it's damn easy to miss
2:34 pm Ischaldirh I would recommend either an alert that requires a particular keypress, or else an entry in the status bar
2:45 pm Serin-Delaunay Most of the negative status effects (teleporting, polymorphing, parasite, not poisoned or slowed) only show up with a stethoscope; presumably that was a deliberate design decision. Still, I agree with you it was a bad decision!
3:30 pm 4zb4 I disagree, I think leprosy's fine as it's best tell is when a limb drops off - which should cause a pause with an alert message.
3:31 pm 4zb4 If we alert the player when they're infected then the chances of it taking effect at all reduces dramatically as everyone will just leg it to the nearest priest or chug an antidote.

So from this there are two items:

1) A way for a player to spawn carnivorous plants. Ideas include seed items dropped from the plants themselves, or something to do with the kiwis (rotting, zapping with wands of necromancy)

2) A change to how leprosy is handled, to make it more noticeable when you contract it.

On 2 there is some discussion. One argument against is that if it was given an alert, it would have a much lower likelyhood of actually having an effect; players would immediately drink antidotes or run for the nearest priest. An argument for it is simply the frustration that occurs when, mid-combat, your limb abruptly snaps off, utterly crippling you in a dangerous situation - often when you were carrying a means of dealing with the condition.

How about a compromise - the "You feel you are falling to pieces." message you get when you are infected recurs every few hundred turns as long as you are infected. Gives you a greater chance of catching it before it dooms you, without being as obvious as a "You sense danger!" message.

I like this approach for leprosy. It brings it more in line with poisoning and parasites which also notify you now and then albeit in more... obvious ways.
I think the message that gets printed should be the regular one for when you first contract it, and then something more subtle for the recurring warning messages.

Something like "You feel sore all over" or "Your arms and legs feel quite numb".
This would be close to the message used for parasites, which is "You feel something violently carving its way through your intestines" - It's not immediately obvious what is wrong and what you need to do to fix it, but it at least lets you know that you're infected and an experienced player would know what to do immediately. Newer players would need to learn that lesson themselves, but the message prompts them to take some kind of action. Plus by not pausing the game to alert the player, the possibility for someone to be ignorant of the message until their arms fall off is still there.

It's a good point that a clear notification of leprosy would lead to the player curing it quickly before it has any effect. Then again, if leprosy was intended to be undetected until limbs started dropping off, probably it shouldn't have a special message when the player contracts it, because that just encourages the player to read through the entire message log whenever they come into contact with a zombie. Which when punching it to death in UT1 can be a long read.
Leprosy does already have occasional notifications in the form of lost points of charisma, but more regular text notifications like for the parasite could be a good idea.

And tedious. IMO, it's poor game design when playing optimally (in this case, reading every message whenever you run into a zombie in case you catch leprosy) is unreasonably boring.

Ad 1) - I thought rotting kiwis already spawn carnivorous plants? if not, I must have mixed it up with something. In that case: +1 to that.

Ad 2) - I would hate to see all status conditions on the screen. I think the choice to hide some conditions (ecpecially leprosy, tele and confusion) was deliberate and good - all of these would become insignificant if they couldn't surprise the player.

Tele and confusion are both harmless enough that they should stay the way they are, but I would argue leprosy should also be hard to notice at first. I still remember when I first started with IVAN and suddenly, my arm dropped off. I had no idea what was going on, but it was interesting and very different from other roguelikes - plus I figured without a limb, the best thing to do would be to find a priest. Then, I figured out your limbs still carry a leprosy if you attach them after being cured...

It's not that likely to contract leprosy after each zombie fight, plus it's quick and easy to check yourself with a stethoscope. This might be one of the reasons stethosope is in the game, after all. And having a limb fall off in the middle of a fight - I don't think that's all that much of a common occurence. It definitely happened to me more than once, but it was more an "oh crap" moment that I managed to survive (unless it happened on UT:1 or UT:2) and that made the game more fun, than something I would see as a cheap shot at my character. Still, it's much more likely you'll simply be walking down a corridor when one of your limbs falls off - and I find this cool.

Regarding leprosy, I would like to see another way to cure it in pets. If you have a pet who doesnt eat and contracts leprosy it is doomed. Maybe a wand of antidote, or have a wand of ressurection have antidote qualities.

What pets can catch leprosy that don't eat?

Angels.

I'm surprised they're not simply immune. Being divine beings and all.

Me too!
It does kind of serve to balance things by reducing the number of pet angels you can drag past GC6 into the frog levels, especially if you were taming necromancers to chat with.

I think if you actually contracted leprosy in real life, you'd be able to tell. So I agree with the messages being spaced out, but not too obvious.

I don't think I've ever seen my charisma drop from it. Maybe that should be more likely to occur (but you should get it back when you're healed)

And also agree with angels being immune

IRL, you would ba able to tell, but only after some time. You also wouldn't just loose a limb from time to time.

I don't think you'd be able to tell you'd contracted real-world leprosy the moment it happened. Then again, IVAN leprosy is most likely not real-world leprosy.

The charisma drop works by giving the player negative experience in the charisma stat every tick. It could be made more frequent by increasing the amount of negative experience, but you couldn't get it back when healed unless the whole mechanic was shifted to work something like burnt limbs.

Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. Not immediately but probably before your limb dropped off

In the real world there's symptoms that you'd notice before your limbs dropped off, such as developing lesions and numbness in the extremities.
Since we can't visually show that in-game without doing an assload of extra coding, we can compensate by having the occasional message pop up with things like "Your arms feel numb" or "You notice you're covered in sores" before the limbs actually start falling off.

Much like in the real world, if you didn't know they were leprosy symptoms you wouldn't know you've contracted it but you'd definitely know something is wrong and you'd go seek out a doctor.
On the same note if you DID know they were leprosy symptoms you could take appropriate action immediately.
This can be reflected in-game too!

There is currently no drawback to wearing a full helm, vs a normal helmet. All other armor items involve some sort of trade-off - using a metal armor piece causes you to take a hit to dex, agi, or both. Now, realistically, wearing a big helmet definitely impairs your vision/hearing. So how about if full helms cause a penalty to perception?

They should also protect from sound damage type.

Maybe a little bit.

If they're made of a flexible material.

Absolutely. A fully padded helmet impairs your hearing at least as much as your vision.

While we're on this subject, is there any truth to full-helmets "ringing" like a goddamn bell when they get hit?

Further than that, if we're going to be going whole-hog on helmets, then regardless of whether that's a thing that actually happens or not, a helmet made of a metalic material should ring when you're hit in the head and have a chance to cause confusion.
Or at least print a message. Pretty sure getting hit in the head can cause confusion in the first place. And memory loss too!

Alternatively it could be restricted to a unique variant of Valpurus striking you with a hammer for bothering him, triggered only while wearing a metal full helm.
"Valpurus smites you with a small hammer, causing your helmet to ring like a church bell!"

Thought about this some more. I don't think it actually makes any sense. The Enner's awful voice doesn't hurt you because you hear it, it hurts you because it's awful. Otherwise it wouldn't be smashing your gear. You could be deaf and still die from the Enner.

No it doesn't - usually the helmet has a lot of padding to help dissipate the blow. A blow to the head will still make your head spin momentarily, not for the impact or the loud clang but for the sudden acceleration and mild concussion caused by your brain bumping to the inside of your skull, so the confusion is real. I've got 1st hand experience on this. =P I would still do the Valpurus effect for the humor factor - we shouldn't let realism get in the way of a good joke!



I thought about that too. The damage is caused by his singing being too loud and the flesh rendering resonance of the notes (full body damage) in which case it should effect your whole body, as you said. If it was just bad singing sticking carrots into your ears should suffice as a precaution to close in, which is not the case.

My interpretation was that his voice is so loud, it's actually sending shockwaves through the dungeon.
Which would be why it causes damage to anything hit by it, and why it's particularly good at breaking glass.

That's my interpretation too. I think the player is protected from damage by AV, but physically it might make more sense to make personal damage reduction dependent on material flexibility, as flexible materials could absorb more of the energy of the sound waves. Material strength would play a bigger part in object breakage (and probably does already).

Then again, similar arguments could probably be applied to a lot of damage types, depending on how one interprets "strength" and "flexibility" as material properties.