Customization of gamedata files

[takkaria]

It's not pleasant but the following would give you a 1/4 chance of poison:

effect:RANDOM
effect:NOURISH
dice:6000
effect:NOURISH
dice:6000
effect:NOURISH
dice:6000
effect:TIMED_INC:POISONED

[tangar]

Yayyy! Thank you It's alright for now

*rubs his hands in anticipation* Time to poison some food.. poor things...

[tangar]

What about to give a possibility to assign an object to tileset 'quick&dirty' way (actually it nice and clean.. ), right in gamedata file? eg:

name:& Lantern~
type:light
graphics:~:U
properties:3:50:35
alloc:70:5 to 100
combat:0:1d1:0:0:0
flags:TAKES_FUEL | EASY_KNOW | LIGHT_2 | IGNORE_FIRE
tile:3:0x87:0x99
tile:4:0x89:0x81

where:
tile:[number of tileset]:[x]:[y] , so in eg above 'tile:3' is Gervais tileset; 'tile: 4' - Nomad.

and make it override tileset .prf files. Such addition would make adding and assigning new object to tileset very pleasant and easy

Right now to add or reassign object you need to edit 5 different .prf files with the same name.. It's hell mess. Even if it's only 1 tileset to modify - having everything in one file is so great DD

[Nick]

Originally Posted by tangar

What about to give a possibility to assign an object to tileset 'quick&dirty' way (actually it nice and clean.. ), right in gamedata file? eg:



where:
tile:[number of tileset]:[x]:[y] , so in eg above 'tile:3' is Gervais tileset; 'tile: 4' - Nomad.

and make it override tileset .prf files. Such addition would make adding and assigning new object to tileset very pleasant and easy

Right now to add or reassign object you need to edit 5 different .prf files with the same name.. It's hell mess. Even if it's only 1 tileset to modify - having everything in one file is so great DD

That's worth thinking about. What do others think?

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Nick

That's worth thinking about. What do others think?

I think it would be a mistake to have both systems in place. Having it in object.txt is quite elegant. But it depends who you're optimising for - existing tileset maintainers or new tileset producers. If the latter, you want tilesets as modular as you can get them; if the former, you want everything in one place.

[tangar]

/bug (?)

1) it seems 'dice:n+4d2' doesn't work (and dice:4d2+10 would crush the game)

I've tried several tests:

dice:10+4d2
dice:50+4d2
etc

eg

spell:Detect Monsters:1:1:23:4
effect:DETECT_VISIBLE_MONSTERS
dice:10+4d2
desc:Detects all non-invisible monsters in the immediate area,
desc:for one turn only

it works as 4d2, not as 10+4d2

2) when I make spell:

dice:11d2 - it works at distance ~4, not 11-22

dice:8d2 - works as... 8. not 8-16
8d3 also works as 8

[tangar]

It seems it works this way (thanks to Powerwyrm for help):

spell:Detect Monsters:1:1:23:4
effect:DETECT_VISIBLE_MONSTERS
dice:11d2

dice is radius. For x and for y; so:

11 tiles horizontally
2 tiles vertically

so 10d10 would be LOS

/rfe
maybe it should be not 'd', but 'r' (radius).. Like 11r3

cause right now it's very messy with RPG dice notation

[tangar]

It would be great to add 'simple' condition's system to gamedata customization. It would be give wide possibilities, eg to make different races to react differently at stuff.

It could be called: flagcheck

Example of impementation: in PWMA we have corpses of monster. Why not to give possibility to eat them (hello, Nethack!). But different races should have different effects on eating corpses. We can't let elf to eat orc's corpses without consequences So, eg:

name:corpse (orcish)
graphics:%:w
type:corpse
properties:0:100:0
combat:0:1d1:0:0:0
flagcheck:race: ELF | HIGH-ELF # works at elves
effect:SET_NOURISH # this would happen to all elves
dice:$B
expr:B:FOOD_FAINT:- 1
random: # this is random event which could happen in addition
effect:TIMED_INC:CONFUSED
dice:20d40
effect:DRAIN_STAT:WIS
dice:1
flagcheck:race: HALF-ELF # half-elf is better in eating orcs ^^
effect:SET_NOURISH
dice: 1000 # as we don't have hunger as timed status effect yet, lets just take weak status ;)
flagcheck:race:except: ELF | HIGH-ELF | HALF-ELF  # next effects would work at everyone else.. donno how to implement better ('except'?)
effect:NOURISH
dice:1000
desc:Whatever happened with this one, it wasn't pretty.

It would bring customization to the new lvl

[tangar]

/rfe
add customization in monster.txt - death message for monster

so when you 'kill' certain monster, you would see different messages about their defeat:

not only this:
<mob> dies!

But also:
Radagast the Brown defeated and teleported out of dungeon.
Bullroarer the Hobbit begs for mercy and you let him live.
Farmer Maggot is finally persuaded to return back to his country.

It would give possibility to deal with 'good' monsters and do not feel sorrow that you killed them (also there won't be need to remove this mobs from the game with upcomming 'tolkienization' process).

So actually it's like to add to monster.txt 'msg:' from object.txt

[takkaria]

At some point, if you start adding checks to gamedata files, you end up with a (hard to understand and nonstandard) scripting language... at which point you might as well just add one. Angband tried this around version 3 and it was taken out in 3.0.7 because it was badly implemented and no-one liked it. I suspect there is limited appetite to re-incorporate one.