00:00:03 Unstable branch on CRAWL.XTAHUA.COM updated to: 0.20-a0-927-g1ae2c61 (34) 01:39:46 -!- Marvin is now known as Guest52258 03:02:52 -!- amalloy_ is now known as amalloy 03:13:11 Unstable branch on crawl.beRotato.org updated to: 0.20-a0-927-g1ae2c61 (34) 04:27:18 -!- amalloy is now known as amalloy_ 07:58:52 hey SteelNeuron 07:59:05 Our timezones might be lining up a bit better today 08:01:24 Hey!@ 08:01:30 Yes, I was going to say the same :) 08:01:39 I'm glad we seem to be reaching at least an understanding of what the other wants 08:01:44 yeah, agreed 08:02:08 I'd like your view on the dizzy idea, even if it's very underdeveloped 08:02:50 And for what it's worth, I think I might not have successfully conveyed my feeling that both your stated revision and my stated revision are both better states of affairs than either the current revision or the previous revision 08:03:43 Re: dizzy, it's a step in the direction I'd like: making the benefits of the moves purely about positioning. 08:04:28 as far as me misunderstanding you, I hadn't quite understood the nuance that you disliked the secondary effects for being combat boosts 08:04:55 Some time ago I think brannock brought up that whirlwind could distract too 08:05:20 that had some issues that MPA brought up, but the general idea that I agreed with is that neither of the effects should necessarily help combat directly 08:05:31 My worry is that adding dizzy (or keeping slow) and having lunge still do bonus damage and/or combat statuses leaves in place the situation I currently don't like where the player gets a benefit for doing a series of movements that grant added combat advantages, specifically in that case the damage from lunge. 08:05:31 and slow is problematic because it really does 08:05:42 yeah, definitely 08:06:24 The idea of partially negating enemy movement is an interesting one, but I'd want it to be paired with effects that don't inherently reward kiting. Crawl inherently rewards kiting, of course. 08:06:40 But I'd like to move in a direction where it is rewarded less rather than more. 08:06:45 agreed 08:07:04 lunge is a bit tricky to discuss 08:07:27 but its relationship to kiting is a bit counter intuitive, or at least I found it to be counterintuitive 08:07:46 tactically it's generally bad, unless you really want to make a move that incidentally lunges 08:08:12 so it needs to have some form of benefit. I tried raw damage in the earliest iterations of the god, but that lead to swapping with your minions back and fort and exploting energy randomisation... which is horrible 08:09:04 pairing it with reductions on enemy mobility would seem like it promotes kiting, but at the same time it removes the tedious parts of kiting 08:09:20 only (and this is important) if the debuff durations are super short 08:09:23 this is something I had to tweak 08:09:39 I took the slow duration (and in this theoretical scenario dizzy would be the same) down to around 5 turns 08:09:52 so there's an actual tradeoff if you want to step back and lunge, you're wasting precious slow time 08:10:02 I think that's more or less where the sweet spot is 08:10:34 it's not a no brainer to lunge, because that time can be spent tabbing instead, but you can get some benefit from lunge as well 08:10:40 same thing with wall jump distraction really 08:12:53 IMO lunge isn't tactically bad, it's just sometimes tactically bad. It's good against monsters with ranged attacks and polearms, against summoners, against blinking monsters, and it's fine against melee monsters in a reasonable number of circumstances -- when you aren't on the space you'd prefer to be on. 08:14:25 I don't think "you waste precious slow time" is a good argument for two reasons: 1) you're not wasting it, you're using it to secure a large damage boost with no retaliation. If you just tab during that time, you deal less damage and also take some retaliatory hits. 2) you can easily get more slow thanks to whirlwind. 08:15:00 I don't think your point 1 adds up there 08:15:18 20 auts spent walking back and lunging is definitely less damage than 20 auts tabbing, even considering bonuses 08:15:32 but I agree about 2, it shouldn't stack (my bad) 08:16:43 FWIW I'm increasingly sure that we have a very similar goal in mind, but I think the sweetspot is between your position and mine 08:16:51 I do see the point of what you propose 08:17:19 I think it's a bit too extreme however. I agree that a "flowchart" is undesirable, and I agree that the player shouldn't be constantly trying to exploit links between moves 08:17:29 But I think these connections have value 08:17:44 When the player decides to use them to navigate a difficult situation 08:17:50 SteelNeuron: you may not more absolute damage over time with walking backwards and then lunging, but you do do more damage output over damage input 08:18:13 Which is usually the more relevant factor 08:18:25 depends 08:18:30 walking back doesn't guarantee you a tile 08:18:36 even against a slowed monster 08:18:44 you may need to be 33% efficient instead of 50% efficient 08:18:48 Another way of thinking of it is damage dealt over total recovery time from that turn 08:18:53 which includes the turns spent healing 08:20:22 yeah, that's a good metric 08:20:50 in any case, this particular part of the discussion is probably not productive, since neither of the revisions we are proposing would have slow (mine would be dizzy and yours would be nothing at all) 08:22:23 Tho arguably dizzy would amplify the issue -- if you stay and tab, you take full damage; if you back off and then lunge, you take no damage until you actually execute the lunge 08:23:03 That's right, but you have paid the price in a different way 08:23:15 by starting the fight with an attack that deals severely reduced damage compared to tab 08:23:42 this damage reduction should be enough for the price not to be worth it against single targets, unless you really want to guarantee you can run away 08:23:47 SteelNeuron: I think one of the larger differences in our vision is about the thought process that should motivate the player to use martial attacks. In my view it should always be one thing: "I am here, but I wish I was there". 08:24:14 This is a good exercise :) here are my cases: 08:24:23 "I am here, but I wish I was there". (share this one with you) 08:24:52 "I want to fight this enemy, but I want to make sure I have it under control and can run away if it goes bad, because it's strong" 08:25:00 and "I want to fight this group and I don't want to get surrounded" 08:25:19 I don't think you'll necessarily object to point 3, so point 2 is probably the most contended one 08:25:58 my proposal of a lower damage whirlwind + dizzy, together with damage boost on lunge, would largely leave you dealing the same amount of damage over a long fight, and be exposed to as many retaliation hits 08:26:04 because the damage you win on lunge, you lost on whirlwind 08:26:19 however, you gain the ability to keep the monster debuffed in a way that gives you an escape tool 08:26:35 "unless you really want to guarantee you can run away" -- that's part of the problem for me. I mentioned in another post recently that I think "optimal play" is currently boring and I want to change that. I'm concerned that optimal play with this god will have the normal optimal play boringness issue, plus some new cases; you should always want to minimize damage taken and ensure you can run away in an optimally-played game, no matter what you're fi 08:27:41 The truth is, that's so deeply ingrained in Crawl that I think it's unrelated to the god 08:27:47 if you aren't playing WJC, you'd lure somewhere safe 08:27:59 WJC affords you this safety without the luring, which I'd argue helps with the tedium 08:28:18 you can be in the open and have tools to escape or protect yourself against newer enemies 08:28:36 An interesting point. If that's the case, then the question becomes, "would fixing the problem with crawl also fix this problem for WJC?" 08:28:50 Or, phrased differently, "would WJC make it harder to fix this problem with crawl?" 08:29:09 I... guess? it really depends on what kind of fixing we are talking about 08:29:18 there are so many possible ways you can go around that 08:29:30 I don't think removing any and all mechanics that allow you to gain distance at little or no cost can just be axed 08:29:37 sorry, I didn't even begin to phrase that properly 08:29:56 s/axed/done 08:30:04 Also, I agree that point 2 is the point of contention 08:30:34 the real problem with crawl tactics from my limited (and personal) experience is that one tile of distance might as well be invincibility in most cases 08:30:50 once you can achieve that and you're not movement impaired in one way or another, you're off the hook 08:31:40 Yeah, that's definitely an issue. Against a lot of monsters, 0 tiles of distance is also invincibility. 08:31:56 Or as close as makes no difference. 08:32:57 I'll give you something though 08:32:58 The leading three proposals I've heard to combat these effects are 1) something like the dynamic monsters branch. 2) Make stairs harder to use -- for example, can't use if you get injured while climbing. 3) A meaningful clock that would discourage all slow tactics. 08:33:12 (I'll hold that thought, I think the current discussion is interesting) 08:33:36 I've argued before (but I'm thoroughly inexperienced here compared to the other people involved in the conversation) that the clock seems like a lazy solution 08:33:45 it seems to me like a workaround, really 08:34:13 What I'd like is some variant of dynamic monsters that is a bit more explainable in-universe 08:34:18 Of these, I think all have the possibility to impact the power of luring, but none would meaningfully impact behavior with WJC, which would imply that a solution to crawl in general wouldn't solve any problems with WJC. 08:35:03 actually, the current implementation of dynamic monsters would impact WJC, since monsters are more likely to move in-combat 08:35:46 Would you be happier with the Dizzy idea if Lunge lost all connection to the other status effects, and just dealt a raw 130% damage? 08:36:00 just exploring 08:36:26 Not really; it still would have the "better damage-over-time-spent-healing ratio" issue, which is to my mind the fundamental problem. 08:36:45 is it a matter of tweaking that number? How about no damage bonus 08:37:09 no damage sounds reasonable since it would still be the best to use under Serpent's Lash really 08:38:40 (to clarify what I'm exploring now: 70% and dizzy on whirlwind, 100% and no bonus on lunge, 70% and distract on wall jump) 08:39:29 To my view, encouraging players to leave close combat in order to set up lunge is basically creating a problem with no good solution. I don't think lunge can have benefits beyond "when you do this type of move you also attack" without creating bad gameplay. It may be that you could find a way to specifically prevent it from getting bonuses when used in a context other than initiating a fight in order to prevent this problem, but I'm not sure what th 08:39:43 SteelNeuron: oh, interesting. 08:39:56 Those numbers are much more in line with my goals 08:40:03 hmm 08:40:12 Yeah, I think this can work if we think of the role of Serpent's Lash 08:40:33 Serpent's Lash is the cheat that can make moves do a bit more than their design should allow 08:40:53 Actually, I really like that approach: there's no way to get bonus damage, but you can get bonus status effects that are largely non-combat effects. 08:41:00 exactly 08:41:11 if you really want to blow up, you can whirlwind, step away, serpent's lash and THEN lunge 08:41:16 So if you whirlwind through a pack, you don't do full damage, but you do limit the pack's mobility, allowing you more control. 08:41:22 Now there's an interesting choice. 08:41:24 yes! 08:41:46 And you don't need to leave combat to lunge because tabbing does the same thing if you're already next to the monster. 08:42:16 This has a lot of potential I think 08:42:17 Indeed. I think you've convinced me about the damage bonus on lunge 08:42:28 it starts making sense when you push all other moves below normal attack damage 08:42:55 it was unworkable back when whirlwind and WJ did full damage, because why would lunge do the same when being tactically worse? But this damage split keeps it relevant 08:43:11 I would suggest that in this model, the distract on pole vault should be quite short-lived. I think this hangs together nicely. 08:43:17 yep 08:43:27 the distract is currently 1-3 turns IIRC 08:43:31 10-30 auts 08:43:32 oh, that sounds about right 08:44:06 optionally, serpent's lash damage part could be buffed a bit 08:44:24 so it melds better with lunge, but this may not be necessary 08:44:28 I'm not sure, but I think these changes might push the god too far down the power level. I would suggest that you buff some non-martial attack . . . 08:44:29 I think people are using it for offense enough as is 08:44:33 yeah, like say Serpent's Lash 08:44:55 Or even add a passive (bonus EV? Bonus damage to all melee?) 08:45:17 About that, I've been arguing (and I think you know this) for +1 slay per piety pip in exchange for -5% AC 08:45:22 or something along these lines 08:45:36 alternatively, noise based on encumbrance rating. Anything that punishes high AC really 08:45:45 Something like that seem good, tho if the god is a bit low on the power scale (and it might be after this) you might leave AC as-is 08:46:14 this is exciting, this starts to look like a plan :) 08:46:19 There is one last thing to discuss though 08:46:34 Though I would suggest you make it a damage multiplier rather than slaying since slaying is a bigger influence on fast weapons, and I don't think you're looking to specifically push fast weapons. 08:46:40 true 08:46:57 yeah the god already has a problem with HoE slay so that sounds better 08:47:08 anyway, the other point of contention (mostly with dpeg) is the idea of free wall jumps 08:47:28 now... I want to try and desperately make my case here 08:47:43 IMO don't make the passive penalty scale w/ piety. It kind of sort of works for Chei, but IMO it tends to confuse people and lend to weird scenarios like wanting to use amulet of faith to control piety level. 08:48:03 free wall jumps are very strong, I know 08:48:30 basically, they give you that initial tile for a very small opportunity cost (surrounding level geometry) 08:48:50 however, I think once you have that initial tile, they don't really give you anything else 08:49:11 barring ranged monsters 08:49:28 but then again, if you were facing ranged monsters as non WJC, you would've ensured that safety by choosing a safe fighting spot anyway 08:49:36 which would've probably involved the LOS game and a bunch of luring 08:50:21 on the flip side, free wall jumps are very fun 08:50:34 and now that we've sort of outlawed the damage use of lunge 08:50:52 they're not even that necessary in combat unless you wanted to run, in which case you're in tedium town already 08:51:28 so... Why not keep the free wall jumps as a way to compensate the loss of power from the nerfs across the board? 08:51:41 This is an interesting point. Having free escapes from melee is very strong, but that by itself might be good enough to make the god balanced in the current plan w/o adding damage boosts, etc. 08:52:02 I am not currently thinking of a good reason against doing so. 08:52:25 And I do think there is a positive fun value to being able to pole vault anywhere 08:52:37 At least tentatively I'm inclined to say I like this plan 08:53:48 I tell you what, I'm going to code it and open a PR, and then you can check it out at your pace and let me know if you want to push for it on trunk 08:53:53 no pressure 08:53:56 I want to be empyrical about this 08:54:08 I don't like arguments from authority from either side, and that includes myself 08:55:29 Sounds good to me. 08:55:40 I think this plan sounds very good, and I would be personally inclined to commit it. 08:55:50 Fair warning: I may not be able to do that until I get back to the States next week 08:56:48 no problem. My only request to the dev team would be, if possible, to hold back any sweeping reworks until we have accepted or ruled this one out. 08:57:04 I know it's not something we can impose, but we might be onto a good solution here before more drastic measures are needed. 08:58:11 SteelNeuron: I am perfectly happy to personally agree to this, but you may need to message that to the mailing list or something along those lines in order to get more broad agreement. 08:58:39 My sense is that no one is likely to do anything dramatic if we've just rolled out a significant change, but I can't promise anything. 08:58:59 If they see something as problematically pressing, they might act to resolve it quickly. 08:59:32 The mailing list intimidates me a bit honestly, but I'll make sure to bring it up if I see any devs around here 08:59:46 I'm sure at least some will see the logs 09:01:07 I can send an email to the list relating our discussion and its outcome and asking people to avoid changing it until we have a good sense of how the changes are working. I won't be able to draft it for a few hours, tho. 09:01:32 That would be great Lasty_ , thanks! And no rush. 09:02:02 I'm glad we got a chance to talk this through in a more dynamic format. I felt like communication on tavern wasn't working well. 09:02:15 absolutely 09:02:30 oh, and more generally. I'm sorry if I have been rash. I need to get accustomed to this format of collaboration a bit more. 09:02:56 I hope it's clear that despite all my complaining and criticism, I'm enjoying working on this whatever the final result 09:03:26 I've been frustrated by the lack of visibility, so it's good that we lined our timezones up for once! 09:03:29 It can be a tough format. I sort of didn't think about how unusual it is until RPS brought it up in that interview. I really like the format tho. 09:03:45 Time zone issues make communication so hard. :-\ 09:06:44 one last bit 09:06:51 what would you prefer 09:07:09 for whirlwind to deal this new dizzy state, or for it to also distract, for simplicity? 09:07:41 nevermind, distract has a clear combat impact, nvm 09:07:50 If I had to pick, I'd set both Whirlwind and Vault to dizzy, not distract :) 09:08:06 I realized my mistake as I was asking heh 09:08:09 :D 09:08:39 Tho I don't love attaching a combat effect to vault, I love it thematically to a degree that I can accept a very short-lived combat effect. 09:09:09 Now that I think of it 09:09:26 it isn't even necessary to have damage bonuses on lunge since stab takes care of that already if you want your build to go on that direction 09:10:02 we were just double dipping before, which probably contributed to it being really OP 09:10:40 yeah! 09:10:45 Very much agreed 09:25:13 re: backlog i'd be very strongly against bringing back always-available free walljumps, if some buff is needed to compensate for whatever changes it should be something else 09:32:08 MarvinPA: could you be more specific about the reasoning? I'm not sure you're wrong, but I haven't gotten there yet. 09:32:23 *I haven't gotten to the page you're on yet 09:33:18 it just means you're encouraged to use it literally always, whenever it's at all possible 09:33:39 oh, right, moving through levels 09:33:41 I forgot about that 09:33:45 haha 09:33:56 yeah, that's a big problem 09:34:12 it also has sort of a bad interface, which is what i liked about the idea of the usk merge (using line pass instead to do a similar thing in a better way) 09:34:42 <|amethyst> IMO the wall jump interface is more fun to use than the line pass interface 09:36:01 i think the interface for it works a lot better once it's restricted, at least 09:36:10 SteelNeuron: you might be interested in this discussion 09:36:11 since you're far less likely to accidentally trigger it 09:36:48 accidental triggers are a problem 09:37:10 MarvinPA: I do like that. I don't think walljumping away from monsters is problematic though, and could be a good power level adjustment. On the other hand, it might not be very intuitive that you need to have a monster next to origin but not destination 09:37:16 how about this: 09:37:23 you can only wall jump with monsters on LOS 09:38:04 I don't think that's problematic from a power level either, but it's also a little weird from an intuitive standpoint. 09:38:11 keeping it simpler sounds much better to me, especially if the proposed changes to martial attacks are to make them apply a move slow there's no need for walljump to also let you escape easily on its own 09:38:24 ah, that's an interesting point 09:39:06 I do think the most intuitive restriction that prevents using it for free travel is limiting it to monster-at-destination. 09:39:45 The only half-decent alternative I can think of would be something about earning charges with attacks against monsters and having those charges fade quickly out of combat, but I think that's way more complex 09:39:49 for relatively little gain 09:40:03 I still advocate for free wall jumps all the time 09:40:15 the only problem is with AUT speedruns but in those cases you're not benefitting from autoexplore anyway 09:40:18 SteelNeuron: I don't think it's possible to allow that without adding a huge interface problem 09:40:48 why not? It worked before, I think the issues raised against it were mostly power related 09:40:55 SteelNeuron: it's not just that, it also affects things like piety decay and buff length and OOD timer 09:41:03 yes, it in fact didn't work before 09:41:06 ^ 09:41:08 the issues just hadn't been pointed out yet 09:41:18 alright 09:41:26 what about monsters on LOS? 09:41:38 it just feels too limiting not being able to jump away from a pack 09:41:40 see like, 5 lines above 09:41:57 "if the proposed changes to martial attacks are to make them apply a move slow there's no need for walljump to also let you escape easily on its own" 09:42:01 is that what you're referring to? 09:42:15 again, I think that resolves the issue with travel, but it's a really weird restriction from a player experience standpoint. 09:42:31 "I can see a monster, so I can pole vault" 09:42:39 I don't think it's any weirder than restricting to both into monster and away from wall 09:42:41 er, wall jump 09:42:52 that's one too many restrictions imho 09:43:13 it stifles creativity and I think the feedback (yes yes, arguments about fun) reflect that 09:43:32 I agree that free travel uses are a problem 09:43:50 but I am not convinced that restricting it to only work against a pack is any better than restricting it to monsters in LOS 09:43:56 "stifles creativity" and "not fun" can be fine arguments, they're just not very heavy ones, and the arguments against in this case are really heavy. 09:44:16 hmm 09:44:17 which of these arguments apply to the LOS idea and not to the pack idea though? 09:44:17 I can see the argument there 09:44:19 other than power arguments 09:44:55 I'm changing my mind on that point. I think I agree that wall jump only to monsters and wall jump any time a monster is in LOS both feel equally arbitrary and silly. 09:45:48 what I had proposed a while ago is to have significant noise on wall jump regardless of encumbrance, but I wasn't sure if that would be enough of a deterrent to wall jump travel 09:45:49 I do think that MarvinPA is right that from a power standpoint you don't need to be able to leap away thanks to the moveslow effect, but I don't think that means you shouldn't be able to. 09:46:09 SteelNeuron: IMO no, because one often travels through cleared levels 09:46:16 making it explicitly an attack that has to have a target seems entirely reasonable to me, as with eg shadow step 09:47:02 in comparison to making it some weird method of attack and travel that sometimes you can use and sometimes you can't 09:47:28 true 09:47:52 But that would require making it an activation ability, which causes other problems 09:47:57 activated* rather 09:49:29 It is activated, but the activation is by walking into the wall 09:49:41 I mean, I could accept going one step further 09:49:51 restricted to jumping into a pack, and away from one 09:49:59 i.e. a monster adjacent to any of the points you move between 09:50:03 This argument makes sense to me: you can't whirlwind without a monster; you can't lunge w/o a monster; why should you be able to vault without a monster? 09:50:14 but I don't think there's a point in wall jump if you can't use it to gain a tile 09:50:24 without that, it's another flavour of whirlwind 09:50:39 Getting to the other side of a monster can be very good, but yeah, it would be quite similar to whirlwind 09:50:48 It just gets to a different destination 09:52:03 Silly alternative, but now that we're exploring things, why not 09:52:07 food costs? 09:52:26 would nutrition be enough of a factor that you'd want to use it in combat but not outside for travel? 09:54:03 Hmm... In fact, I think there's something that could be better 09:54:05 With chunks around, probably not; chunks would effectively be speed fuel 09:54:23 Okay, hear me out: This may sound a bit mechanical, but I'll offer a flavour justification later 09:54:36 A piety cost might be better in terms of forming a meaningful limit 09:54:45 when in close combat (i.e. enemies around you, before or after) a wall jump takes 10 auts 09:55:09 when not in close combat (no enemies in LOS or in any radius) it takes 20, the equivalent to walking up to that spot 09:55:58 theme wise, there are many ways to justify it (the council makes you agile when in danger, adrenaline makes you jump quicker, etc) 09:56:12 mechanically it does away with the travel issues and keeps the interface simple 09:56:56 and it can allow you that little trick that people like of jumping over a water tile in sewers or whatever 09:57:31 making time taken depend on where you are definitely doesn't sound like an improvement, and is a whole ton of complication just to make it be a weird method of travel as well as an attack 09:57:56 the objective is not to validate it as a method of travel, it's to reduce the jarring effect of it working some times and not working others 09:58:14 I think that has value 10:00:26 Lasty_: piety cost isn't a bad idea 10:01:09 again, i see nothing jarring about not being able to use an attack when you've got nothing to target 10:01:21 but the point is that it shouldn't be an attack 10:01:28 that's what Lasty_ and I were sort of converging on 10:01:32 martial attacks as mobility, not attack moves 10:01:38 that's the domain of Uskayaw 10:02:34 if wall jump is restricted to jumping over monsters to cause extra damage, is performing the same role that whirlwind is. 10:02:49 that seems fine to me and substantially better than this other thing, at least 10:03:39 but that's so boring 10:03:45 MarvinPA: if, hypothetically, we had a really good way to limit wall jump as generic travel and it was sufficiently consistent and well-communicated that all players would immediately understand it, would you still prefer that wall jump be restricted to just an attack? 10:03:47 jumping from one side to the enemy to the other, again and again 10:04:01 Or is the primary issue the difficulty of making it functional in both modes? 10:06:01 probably the former, i don't think it is a well-designed general mobility ability 10:06:21 I'm leaning towards the piety cost tbh 10:06:27 anyway, afk for a bit 10:06:49 Lasty_: How would you feel about 0-1 cost per wall jump, keeping it globally available? 10:07:03 maybe higher 10:08:15 this could even justify a prompt when walking into something. Wall jump? (1 piety) y/n 10:08:46 at least as a RC file option for people frustrated with the accidental ones 10:10:06 Oof, adding a prompt feels clunky. 10:10:34 though without a prompt, how would the player know it has a piety cost? Tridcky. 10:10:38 er tricky 10:10:47 I assume the ability has documentation somewhere? 10:11:04 "spend piety to deal a jumping strike, by walking into an obstacle" 10:11:21 phrasing might need work but that would do 10:11:30 and the ^^ screen ofc 10:12:05 Is there a message associated with executing the jump? It might make sense to mention the piety cost there. 10:12:13 yeah that could work too 10:12:45 I like this anyway because it gives your escape mechanisms a range of costs 10:12:56 dizzy is free, but you have to pay for the superior wall jump 10:13:07 and even more for lash 10:13:11 I do think that a piety cost would be a fine way of preventing it from being travelspammed while also not particularly interfering with its use in combat. I'm not sure I agree w/ MPA about it being a poorly designed movement ability, but I'd like to understand his position better. 10:14:21 glad to see this discussion :-) 10:14:47 advil: woo. Got any thoughts re: wall jump? 10:14:57 I have not really played wjc to speak of 10:15:16 I was worried about the complaints about constant "you can't do that" msgs with the current version 10:15:20 so less interface cost I guess 10:15:27 but other than that I'm not yet qualified 10:20:13 side note: I'm implementing DIZZY and I get the feeling that monster.cc:5039 is lying 10:20:49 does monster::calc_speed() really only calculate the monster's movement speed? or is it speed generally 10:21:03 of the ideas in the backlog walljump with enemies in los actually seems more UI intuitive to me. but crazy people might carry around a snake or something. 10:22:02 <|amethyst> SteelNeuron: the comment is wrong, it sets the monster's speed, not movement speed/energy 10:22:31 thanks |amethyst 10:22:48 <|amethyst> (also, why is monster speed stored in the monster anyway? seems like you could just turn calc_speed() into an accessor speed() that returns the number 10:22:53 <|amethyst> ) 10:24:11 |amethyst: do you have any tips on debugging webtiles stuff that involves sending/receiving json? 10:24:36 I spent like 2 hours last night trying to fix flashing and all I did was make webtiles inexplicably freeze whenever a flash changed 10:24:57 <|amethyst> advil: hm, probably if you turned off compression you'd be able to see the frames in your browser's debug window/dev tools 10:25:13 I was able to get at stuff from that side 10:25:36 but less sure how to do anything on the TilesFramework side 10:26:08 one question is, is it possible to run a debugger on the crawl binary that webtiles is using? 10:26:19 <|amethyst> sure 10:26:31 <|amethyst> you'd probably have to attach to the process after it starts 10:26:34 ahh 10:26:39 <|amethyst> gdb -p 10:26:41 yes, I forgot that is a thing 10:26:46 well, lldb for me, but similar 10:28:48 I also generally want to find out why webtiles runs s l o w for me locally, like a 30s pause every time I load a game 10:29:03 something to do with debug builds I suspect 10:34:02 Lasty_: Ballpark on the piety cost? I'm averaging it at 0.5 but it could be too little 10:34:39 1 maybe? 10:39:31 SteelNeuron: I'd probably do either 1 or 1-2. 1 feels about right, but 1-2 has piety blur, which we like to do to avoid piety-counting. On the other hand, the god has piety rot which already blurs piety. 10:39:51 yeah, I'm testing 0.5 and it's way too small 10:40:02 I'll try 1 now, see how it goes 11:22:23 New branch created: pull/502 (1 commit) 13https://github.com/crawl/crawl/pull/502 11:22:23 03SteelNeuron02 07https://github.com/crawl/crawl/pull/502 * 0.20-a0-928-gd610a19: Rework WJC martial attacks 10(in the future, 11 files, 65+ 69-) 13https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/d610a19a12d8 11:22:26 Lasty_: here it is: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/pull/502 11:38:55 -!- Menche_ is now known as Menche 11:44:05 I'm testing it out and there is a very cool emergent interaction that I didn't expect 11:44:32 SteelNeuron: oo, what's that? 11:44:35 walljump with a cost like that definitely has to be an 'a'bility, otherwise the interface just becomes way worse and it makes accidental uses even worse (but i would still strongly oppose changing it like that, for all the reasons previously listed) 11:44:39 if you want to use Serpent's Lash for damage, the ideal is to SL, lunge, then whirlwind. Getting to the spot where you can do that it's an interesting problem 11:45:33 how does the interface become worse, other than the issue with accidental wall jumps? 11:45:59 if anything it's clearer when you can do them now 11:46:08 it's one less condition 11:46:44 I agree that it makes accidental uses worse, but accidental uses haven't been a problem for any testers past the second game. You get used to it, just like you get used not to moving into the wrong tile in tactical situations. 11:47:35 I found that miskeys during movement were a constant problem with old walljump 11:47:37 you get message spam that doesn't actually tell you anything 11:48:22 or if it gets changed to be better it'd still be awkward to communicate well, compared to abilities which are our existing functionality for "show the costs clearly for a god invocation that you're going to use" 11:48:49 I mean, there is an option... Which is a complete tangent to all of this 11:49:06 which is to do away with wall jump altogether, and use something else that I also tried for a while 11:49:26 that achieves a similar purpose. I didn't like it at the time, but I'm reconsidering it now 11:49:33 there's definitely no reason for it to use "press a movement key in a way that you'd never do normally" compared to "use the ability menu like every other ability" with it having a piety cost and being usable always 11:50:06 back in the day when I was considering move abilities, I had this other one in mind: 11:50:26 walk 1 tile in one direction, then walk 1 tile in the opposite direction triggers a jump 11:50:46 and the jump is essentially old wall jump (propels you 2 tiles forward, aoe, etc) subject to the same restrictions 11:51:13 when walking back, you need the tile you are walking back to to be empty, of course 11:51:29 this has some interesting consequences, for one, it's AUT neutral compared to walking 11:51:38 so there's no point in using it for level traversal 11:52:20 second, it can't be used in corridors because you can't do it to an enemy on your toes (need to actually walk back on your track) 11:53:16 third, it can't be done accidentally (or not in any meaningful damaging way) 11:53:56 MarvinPA: you mentioned earlier that you felt that the movement ability wasn't a well-designed one. I was wondering if you could expand on that. Is part of the problem that the movement pattern of "move in direction, end up two tiles in the opposite direction" is too easy to trigger accidentally? 11:54:49 (and fourth, it's not trivial to use this ability to gain distance from a monster. You need other trickery for it to work) 11:55:34 Lasty_: that's fixable by changing the interface, as a movement ability it's just extremely reliable and boring 11:56:19 Boring because it's reliable and freely available? Because it goes a short distance? 11:57:07 I'm digging into this because I'd like to understand your viewpoint better. I think there may well be aspects of this that I'm missing. 11:57:37 it's just "reliably get distance from stuff on demand" if it's usable wherever as opposed to only for attacks 11:59:16 I think wherever is a bit too strong a word, you need the 3 tile space 11:59:59 Anyway, I have to go now, I'll be back later 12:00:14 I'd like to read your opinions on this alternate form of walljump though, so I'll look at the logs 12:00:19 <+MarvinPA> it's just "reliably get distance from stuff on demand" if it's usable wherever as opposed to only for attacks 12:00:19 <+MarvinPA> giving it minor costs to hack around it being optimal when travelling (when it doesn't really merit those costs as a regular combat ability) doesn't help there at all 12:00:46 re: that other thing, i don't think introducing tracking of your past state for when you can activate an ability is a good approach 12:01:02 Is this a fair restatement: the only interesting uses are to attack or to move away from monsters, and moving away from monsters with it is trivially repeatable in a way that makes it boring. The power level of reliably moving away from monsters isn't the fundamental issue. 12:01:14 agreed on that last point, MarvinPA 12:01:40 what is bad about it? save + reload issues for example? 12:02:25 It can be represented with some UI element following you. It's not foreign in cases like Dith 12:02:36 i.e. using a colour shade to represent a passive area of effect 12:02:40 SteelNeuron: having to keep active track of your last action is irritating; if it were something you should do, it should be something that crawl does for you, but it would be weird for it to only apply to this one case. 12:03:03 and yeah, save/reload is a pretty egregious case 12:03:20 Lasty_: don't think it as past state then, think of it as an effect you cast every time you move, that affects the previous tile (with a GUI element to show it) 12:03:54 like a little transparent cloud or some light you leave behind 12:05:00 I have to head out as well, but I'll be back tomorrow 12:05:47 Talk to you later! 12:09:33 -!- amalloy_ is now known as amalloy 12:37:43 -!- amalloy is now known as amalloy_ 13:05:24 Unstable branch on crawl.akrasiac.org updated to: 0.20-a0-927-g1ae2c61 (34) 13:15:39 -!- amalloy_ is now known as amalloy 13:24:06 !tell lasty I can't see myself using the 502 version of wall jump as anything other than a way to run to stairs really fast (and with a bad interface) 13:24:07 minmay: OK, I'll let lasty know. 15:44:22 I like 502 though I'm not sure about unlocking wall jump again, even with a piety cost 15:45:06 I will say, though, wall jump is very popular with these who've played the wall jump council, and that there are multiple other low-investment escapes in the game (swiftness and sputterflies coming to mind) 15:45:27 the rest of 502 looks good, though 15:45:41 especially separating out ww/wj from damage 15:55:15 "it's popular with people who've played it" remains as unhelpful and untrue as it's ever been, unless you literally just mean "it's popular with the people who it's popular with" in which case it's just unhelpful i guess 15:59:14 (and if sputterflies is one of its closest points of comparison that doesn't really speak too well of its design merits) 16:07:40 What I mean is that nearly every discussion sphere where I saw WJC discussed in, after its release, had near-universal adulatory praise of the movement abilities, which is something I have very very very rarely seen from an addition to Crawl over the literal decade I've been playing this game. I cannot remember any other god being received this positively or this vociferously. That is what I mean by saying "it's very popular" 16:08:21 Arguments ad popularity are easily dismissed when we have a few vocal people speak up over a removal, because it doesn't make sense for something unhealthy to be kept in the game for the sake of a few people 16:08:54 But when something is added and everyone goes "Wow! This is fantastic!" and post repeatedly about it, I think that should be taken in account. Noise bar had a similar (if much more muted) reception 16:11:31 fwiw i think it's fine for wall jump to be always available as long as it isn't better than walking 16:11:48 in terms of like 16:11:50 walking to another branch 16:12:02 WJC makes me wonder if anything else can be liberated from the ability menu, like breath weapons, or oka 16:14:39 Brannock: i don't think some people (and yet again, definitely not "everyone" as you keep claiming) saying "wow i like this" is particularly meaningful in comparison to any kind of actual thought about design merits 16:15:29 near-universal adulatory praise also doesn't sound right, since there were a lot of notable players criticizing it 16:15:57 singularity had lots of people saying "wow this is so cool" but it also it had lots of people pointing out the many problems with its design, and those problems were really bad! so it was removed, luckily 16:24:28 I'm suggesting that player appeal matters. This is independent of Wall Jump's design or any problems with it. I in fact opened up with "I'm not sure about unlocking Wall Jump" 16:27:40 Hm, I have a bit to catch up on 16:29:42 gammafunk, I'm judging off responses in 4chan /rlg/, reddit /dcss/, SA's thread, and /roguelikes/. I try to not read Tavern very much but my impression was that only a few "notable" players had issues, primarily minmay. I haven't gone through Tavern recently, though, because of the SSL thing being a pain to deal with, so maybe I should catch up on the talk about it 16:32:18 I really don't find these nebulous popularity arguments convincing, sorry; There were cogent arguments made by experienced players as to why old wall jump was bad 16:33:19 I have come to agree that old wall jump was problematic, for the record 16:33:21 Maybe I'm not being clear. I don't mean them to be convincing, I'm saying that players are being very enthusiastic about this, and that there's an underlying reason for this. I think any successful design path forward would need to tap into and retain this underlying reason 16:33:22