Friday, 10 October 2008
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| Re: Single use command considered harmful Dpeg 15:53:47 |
| | Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
Roguelike games have traditionally different commands for using items in different ways. ..... There are two common arguments in favor of the multiple command set of traditional roguelikes.
[namely (1) inventory filtering and (2) complexity from having
more than one use for items]
..... I can see another important function of so many separate commands in roguelike games: they work to better differentiate the items in our minds by providing different affordances tied to motions of our fingers on the keyboard.
This is a good point, I call it (3).
Understanding the understanding of roguelike games may lead not only to better description of the traditional mechanisms -- but also to using these mechanisms better and improving both design and interface of the games, leading to better user interface.
All true. However, I feel that there is a good way to have a 'use'
command: instead of saying 'use' first (essentially bringing up
the whole inventory) and choosing an item later, it is better to
first choose an item and then have 'use' be the standard action
(so noun-verb rather than verb-noun). Note that in traditional
roguelikes this requires an additional keypress ('i'nventory, the
item's letter slot, 'u'se). But if you have a (graphical) RL where
the whole inventory is accessible all the time, this point is moot.
Point (3), i.e. different item categories should be mentally
separated, would be done by sorting the on-sceen inventory by type
already. (This would also address (1).) And multi-use actions would
be done by having a simple action (say left mouse click) do the
standard 'u'se, with another action (say right click) bringing up
the full list of available actions; this would take care of (2).
Altogether, this may be as intuitive as the standard system, and even
a bit faster, given the needed tools (on-screen inventory, mouse).
Or I might be completely, totally wrong 
You aren't. Don't provide troll bait
Great formatting on your post, by the way.
David
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| |  37 answers | Add comment |
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| Food myths Marc Hartstein 05:28:42 |
| | I'm not sure how these got started, but having spent a bunch of time
looking at eat.c and confirming in wizmode, I'd like to clear up a
couple of food-related myths that keep floating around:
MYTH #1: Blessed comestibles are never rotten.
FACT: Blessed comestibles have just as good a chance of being rotten
as uncursed comestibles. Blessed corpses can be older before they
cause food poisoning or "mild illness". Blessed non-corpse
comestibles can be older before they check for a random chance of
rotting.
MYTH #2: Cursed corpses are always rotten.
FACT: Cursed non-corpse comestibles other than fortune cookies are
always rotten. Cursed corpses have the same chance of being rotten as
uncursed corpses. Cursed corpses cause food poisoning and "mild
illness" at an earlier age.
MYTH #3: Once you get the "Blecch! Rotten <food>!" message, you "pick
off the manky bits" and the food item is safe to eat. (Sorry whoever
came up with that phrase...I love it, it just happens not to really be
true.)
FACT: The food item is only safe to eat if it is the very next thing
you eat (thus "You resume your meal."). Otherwise you are
*guaranteed* to get a "Blecch! Rotten <food>!" message with a chance
at another rotten effect when you next bite into the food. I believe
the safety on resuming to be a bug in the "resume your meal" code.
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| Re: YANI: Fear Stormbringer Janis Papanagnou 04:57:26 |
| | JoaoSantos wrote:
On Oct 9, 9:32 am, hcobb <henry.c...@gmail.com> wrote: In the sources everybody fears Stormbringer, so why not bring that to
In the [literary] sources, IIRC, Stormbringer even left the wielders
hand to kill people. Should Stormbringer's owner occasionally be left
without weapon while fighting on his own, maybe?
And wasn't Elrik, the (anti-?)hero, finally killed by his own sword?
"You offer the Amulet of Yendor to Anhur...- but wait!"
"Stormbringer turns against you..."
[...]
"You die! DYWYPI?"
Invoking Stormbringer causes a scare monsters as if reading the And draining a level with Stormbringer causes the target to suffer a scare check as if Magicbane had struck it. As for making stormy even more powerful, that would be too much IMHO.
Indeed.
Janis
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| | 6 answers | Add comment |
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| Re: New version Martin Read 01:45:10 |
| | Jeff Lait <torespondisfutile@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 9, 2:17 am, CYBER_Aeon <cybera...@gmail.com> wrote: .. Does anybody know when we'll get a new version of POWDER? If you find out, please let me know!
*hands you the internet* You win.
--
\_\/_/ turbulence is certainty turbulence is friction between you and me
\ / every time we try to impose order we create chaos
\/ -- Killing Joke, "Mathematics of Chaos"
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| Rotten Food Rations Chris Randle 00:30:07 |
| | Hi All,
Occasionally when I eat a food ration, I'll get a message something to the
effect of "Bleech! Rotten food. The world spins" etc. If I was hungry, I
usually remain hungry, and there's a partially-eaten food ration left where
I've stopped eating it.
So far that all makes sense. But I think that every time I've then eaten the
leftover partially-eaten food ration, it goes down without complaint and I'm
no longer hungry. How come the partially-eaten food ration doesn't have the
same effect?
--
Chris Randle
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| | 8 answers | Add comment |
Thursday, 9 October 2008
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| toys for Archons Ben Rosengart 21:51:46 |
| | I've been leaving artifact weapons around for my Archon. Frost
Brand, Mjollnir, Excalibur. He's sticking with his -- ugh -- orcish
bow. How come? Excalibur, at the very least, shares his alignment,
right?
Thanks,
--
Ben
2.3.2 418 I'm a teapot
Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code
"418 I'm a teapot". The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout.
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| | 4 answer | Add comment |
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| Re: Little advice needed on hoarding items Janis Papanagnou 12:24:21 |
| | Shade wrote:
Hi folks, me again [...] I'm doing ok, but it's very slow going as I am collecting up every item that drops and hoarding them. This includes standard weaponry and armor (the armor i can BUC check and then try on, but the weapons are generally dead weight).
Indeed. Get a decent melee weapon that fits your characters skill
table and that does good damage, once you find a coaligned altar
you'll go for an artifact anyway. You also want to specialize on
one of the ranged weapon types, depending on the class played. If
you're focussed on Valkyries only then you want to go for daggers
and longswords and for the hammer (because of your first artifact,
which is Mjollnir).
Will all this extra stuff be useful later on, once I get a little more practiced at using things like polymorph wands and the like?
No, not really; it's mostly junk. I'd lock away mattocks and the
like because of the huge damage they do in the hands of a critter.
And also lock away poisoned projectiles; they might instant-kill
you if they're used by monsters.
At the moment the only use I can think of for this random stuff is polymorphing. Now, I figure it's going to be a while until i have the luxury of being able to do this (i think i'v had one poly wand ever since i figured out how to ID wands  . Is it worth keeping all this stuff stashed?
No.
Are there any other uses for it, or should I just leave all the crap around the place? obviously if something can be used against me (wands, potions and the like) or magic stuff, I stash that. But does it make much difference if i leave scimitars and knives and the like lying around?
With some exceptions you may even leave the weapons lying around,
usually, but if there's a box or chest nearby put the trash in it
if you like. Occasionally I use niches for weapons and armor that
I might use or that I don't want a monster to use. Engraving the
magic word on that square will also keep most critters away.
Janis
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| Crawl SS - totally stuck? Caesum 12:07:13 |
| | I've just started playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, having played Angband
for years. After a couple of characters I've finally got one that seems
to be doing alright. I've descended to about level 12 and then gone back
up a bit and gone down into the orcish mines but somehow I've ended up
totally stuck. I met this orc knight who was thrashing me a bit and so I
used my one scroll of teleport. I ended up in an area with a staircase
down and a shop. So I cleared the area and went down to level3. I had a
bit of a battle with a two headed ogre and cleared the area but it's
small and only has one staircase back up to where I came from. So I have
two little areas on level 2 and level 3 and can't get anywhere else. So,
any suggestions as to how to get out of these two little areas?
Thanks
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| | 12 answers | Add comment |
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| Strange level setup Janis Papanagnou 12:01:51 |
| | At NAO I've seen a strange level setup in the mines; must be a bones
level that intentionally has been set up for some subsequent victim.
The stairs were surrounded by boulders, then followed by a wide belt
of pits, the downstairs is visible from afar and is surrounded what
seems to be holes, and finally a large yellow arrow (arranged using
gold pieces) points to the west border of the map. The creator must
have spent much time and effort to build that level in the hope that
a bones file will be created... - or is that some special level from
a tournament which I missed to notice having been announced?
Janis
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| | 1 answer | Add comment |
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
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| Re: YAFAP - Sheut Ib One the Lawful Human Valkyrie! Jeremiah DeWitt Weiner 19:53:01 |
| | Shade <dancinghat@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi folks, as some of you probably figured from my questions over the last few weeks, I'm pretty new to Nethack. Started my first game in August (so maybe 6 weeks ago?) so I'm pretty pleased I've managed to ascend This is my 32nd character
You ascended after only 32 tries? Bah, kids these days. I
officially hate you now. It took me some years, as I recall. Still, I
can't hate you too much, since I've ascended three times, so I'm not
that insecure. Now, if you were to ascend twice more in the next 64
tries...! Congratulations, though.
--
Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression
and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me
anymore.
-- William Cowper, 1731 - 1800
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| Re: iphone app subsidy? Martin Read 10:05:14 |
| | nadabrain <faehnle@gmail.com> wrote:
Anyone willing to help subsidize the cost of an iPhone nethack? I'd be willing to throw in some money for an app...
I do not believe that it is possible to comply simultaneously with the
licence terms required to get Apple to let you put the app on the store
*and* with the licence terms required in order to lawfully distribute
Nethack binaries.
--
\_\/_/ turbulence is certainty turbulence is friction between you and me
\ / every time we try to impose order we create chaos
\/ -- Killing Joke, "Mathematics of Chaos"
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| | 5 answers | Add comment |
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| Re: Killed by healing potions AnimalMagic 03:05:13 |
| | On Mon, 6 Oct 2008 18:53:15 -0700 (PDT), Link <chillynois@yahoo.com>
wrote:
In the second room of the game, a trapped chest caused my potions to boil, which killed me. The semi-amusing part is that the potions that killed me were healing and extra healing potions.
Lobsters live... and die... in water.
The difference? Temperature.
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Tuesday, 7 October 2008
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| Re: Trying to contact the user Rico from Rogue Basin Michal Bielinski 03:18:35 |
| | On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:28:05 +0200, Peter Harkins wrote:
Howdy. If you're the user 'Rico' on the Rogue Basin wiki, could you drop me an email?
How about you drop him an email? Go here: (make sure you are logged in)
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=User:Rico
then use "E-mail this user" option from toolbox.
--
Michal Bielinski
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Monday, 6 October 2008
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| Re: YAFAP: ais523-Val-Dwa-Fem-Law, artiwishless, polyselfless S · Reservoir 19:42:39 |
| | ais523 wrote:
Ais523 the Warrior St:18/57 Dx:24 Co:20 In:13 Wi:16 Ch:16 Lawful Astral Plane $:0 HP:190(190) Pw:3(3) AC:-34 Xp:16/507251 T:49737
3 pw? A valkyrie with 7 wis has abut 7 pw at XL4.
--
someday, i will regret ever having been alive
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| | 3 answer | Add comment |
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| Pits (not) filling with lava Janis Papanagnou 18:20:15 |
| | In a recent game (on a quest level) a dwarf triggered a land mine that
was adjacent to three lava squares, but the pit from the explosion did
*not* get filled with lava. That surprised me. Since in another game I
made bad experiences with trying to dig a pit, which was also adjacent
to lava (on the Plane of Fire); it immediately got filled with lava.
Is that a bug, maybe, that a pit from an explosion doesn't get filled?
Janis
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| | 1 answer | Add comment |
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| Re: weaponry for end game Janis Papanagnou 18:17:56 |
| | Shade wrote:
[...] i'v been using my trusty mjollnir +5, but reading up on the wiki it seems this wont be so hot for later on due to shock resistance creatures. Via my offering over the course of the game, i also go frostbrand. would i be better off enchanting and switching to this, and keeping mjoll for backup? are there any monsters that are resistant to both lightning AND cold, so that i would have to use a third weapon for them?
Don't bother. If you don't mind that wands get destroyed (Mjollnir) or
potions freeze (Frostbrand) use them. Frostbrand very much preferred at
later stages! Though it's possible to ascend as well with Mjollnir[*];
you know that it's not necessary to melee every encountered monster.
Janis
[*] Im my logs I see at least one ascension with Mjollnir even wielded
when I was offering the Amulet.
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| | 21 answer | Add comment |
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| [ANN] New public server for Slash'Em, NetHack-De and NetHack Patric Mueller 10:17:09 |
| |
Friedrich Hust has setup a new public server with these roguelikes:
Slash'Em 0.0.8E0F1 with hasteself patch
NetHack vanilla 3.4.3 with menucolor patch
NetHack-De 3.4.3-20080907a
You can connect to the server with:
ssh nethack@slashem.de
password: fed
ssh-fingerprint: 2048 ad:b5:1c:b7:99:60:c2:1b:3d:5f:0e:9d:ba:28:c4:81
Statistics of games played are available on http://slashem.de/
When playing NetHack-De please make sure your terminal program uses
the iso-8859-1 charset (latin1). Otherwise it is possible that the
Umlauts won't be displayed correctly.
Happy hacking and slashing!
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| | 1 answer | Add comment |
Sunday, 5 October 2008
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| FAQ? Sherm Pendley 06:36:07 |
| | I *thought* there was some mention of a group FAQ a while back, or at
least a work on progress.
I'm sure Google Groups has it archived, and I'm going to go look there
next. In the meantime, a suggestion for the FAQ maintainer: Most groups
post their FAQ on a regular basis - I've seen them posted as often as
two to three times a week in busy groups. If you'd like to automate the
process, I can help set that up.
sherm--
--
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org
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| | 17 answers | Add comment |
Saturday, 4 October 2008
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| Re: What are the odds of a fountain wish? David Damerell 22:12:24 |
| | Quoting Carl <carlhnelson@gmail.com>:
Has anyone ever calculated the expected number of wishes granted from fountain dipping for a single character? (Or, the odds of acquiring at least 1 wish, or ...) I'm not so great with probability but I can calculate expected values just fine.
You probably want to quaff (with minimal inventory) from any fountain not
confirmed non-magical.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Chedday, September - a public holiday.
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| | 4 answer | Add comment |
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| Re: add to list of Python roguelikes and libs? Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski 20:40:46 |
| | At Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:25:39 -0700 (PDT),
George Oliver wrote:
http://sheep.art.pl/z-day
This address is easier to remember and more likely to work in the future
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
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| | 8 answers | Add comment |
Friday, 3 October 2008
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| Re: Crawl SS - Advice for SpAs? Rachel Elizabeth Dillon 21:09:56 |
| | On 2008-10-02, SSSimon <sssimon@post.pl> wrote:
Hi, I just had a YASD with a promising SpAs. I simply thought he could take one more hit  Can you offer any advice? Thanks!
(chardump snipped)
Looks good to me, though with three exceptions: (1) I wouldn't bother
training Short Blades actively, preferring Fighting, (2) by that point
in the game, I would want some basic spells! Stabbers love Ensorcelled
Hibernation and Confuse; early spriggans have difficulty with spells
because of the food clock, but at that point you should be OK, and
(3) it looks like you didn't have Might up when facing down a powerful
monster in melee.
(Of course, maybe you didn't find any spells worth casting.)
Hope this helps,
-r.
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| | 6 answers | Add comment |
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| Shortest game ever Matthew Vernon 19:42:11 |
| |
Starting high-elf mage - buy equipment, descend into dungeon, turn
searching on. Two steps later, walk into an acid trap (undetected),
and die.
Never mind, eh?
Matthew
--
Rapun.sel - outermost outpost of the Pick Empire
http://www.pick.ucam.org
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| | 5 answers | Add comment |
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| Re: Where is magic mapping? Magnate 15:08:09 |
| | <aeneas_g@yahoo.com> wrote
On Sep 25, 9:23 am, magnate <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> wrote: Yeah. I just can't spare a slot. It's less important than I would prefer magic mapping to more than one thing on that list. By 3700' I don't generally carry a lot of damage rods. I would consider tossing at least one of them.
Hmm. I've squelched -ColdBolt and -ElecBolt, but I have four of each
of -AcidBolt and -FireBolt, and they do quite a bit of damage. And they
always hit, and they have unlimited ammo, and 10% beam, so they're
competitive with my shooting FWIW.
Anyway, even if I squelched them, I'd want to keep ball rods as soon as I
found them.
Mapping is hugely important, as it tells you whether you can safely go after things or not, when there are nasty things in close proximity, as the crow flies. And that's just the beginning- it's very hard to play well, tactically, if you don't know what the terrain looks like ahead of time.
True. I stopped carrying it because I ran out, and the town didn't stock it
for a long while (four or five recalls). I think it's now back in stock, but
I've got used to not having it. I guess I will stock up next time I recall,
and probably bin something. To be honest I'm less than impressed with
_dispEvil. It's great for clearing orc pits, but those are trivial now
anyway. It's not really damaging enough for clearing troll pits, let alone
giant pits - I get pummelled before I kill anything. The -fireBalls is
generally more use in non-pit situations.
CC
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