Persistent levels

[backwardsEric]

Originally Posted by swim

Are there any plans to implement these at all in the future?

" - Have monsters on saved levels heal over time
- Make uniques and artifacts able to be generated on new levels (or by newly spawning on the current level) regardless of if they exist on a saved level; the previous one would just be deleted from where it was.
"

The first is likely much easier to implement (record the time when the player leaves a level; upon return to the level, fast forward the creatures to the current time to handle healing and any timed effects). The second would be harder. Either probably requires new information stored in the save file. So, putting them in the game would bump the minor version number (i.e. 4.2 to 4.3) and break compatibility with old saved files.

Originally Posted by swim

It would be cool if there could be an option for levels to persist only as long as you remain in the dungeon. For example, you could descend down a few levels, then ascend quickly retracing your steps as the map is already filled out. But once you get to the town the dungeon would then reset everything.

Persistent levels in Hengband work that way (returning to the surface, either by the stairs or by recall, forgets the stored levels). It's possible that the variants that split off from Hengband (Poschengband, Composband, Frogcomposband, and Oposband) retain that behavior.

[swim]

Originally Posted by backwardsEric

Persistent levels in Hengband work that way (returning to the surface, either by the stairs or by recall, forgets the stored levels). It's possible that the variants that split off from Hengband (Poschengband, Composband, Frogcomposband, and Oposband) retain that behavior.

Cool I will have a closer look at some of those. Though I have really looked at them all on the surface and felt more at home with Angband for now. I would be curious if the dev's here would be receptive to the idea of adding it as an optional feature here. Though I would of course understand if that's not a direction they want to bother going in.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by backwardsEric

The first is likely much easier to implement (record the time when the player leaves a level; upon return to the level, fast forward the creatures to the current time to handle healing and any timed effects). The second would be harder. Either probably requires new information stored in the save file. So, putting them in the game would bump the minor version number (i.e. 4.2 to 4.3) and break compatibility with old saved files.

Actually, I think the first could be done fairly easily, because the savefile does record the entire level plus the game turn when it was stored. The second could technically be done too, but would slow down level generation horribly - before placing any artifact or unique, the game would have to trawl through every stored level to see if it needed to be deleted from there.

[Pete Mack]

Wow. A rule 34 cite! Gotta be a first. Thankfully I have never once seen Godwin here, though.

[bughunter]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Wow. A rule 34 cite! Gotta be a first. Thankfully I have never once seen Godwin here, though.

You did nazi that, ever?

Originally Posted by Nick

The second could technically be done too, but would slow down level generation horribly - before placing any artifact or unique, the game would have to trawl through every stored level to see if it needed to be deleted from there.

Couldn't one instead keep a list of artifacts and uniques, with spawn status, last spawn level, level coordinates if previously spawned, a seen by character flag, and an lost/killed by character flag? At least it would be a fixed size.

Maintaining it would still cause some delays at new level generation, and when summoning monsters are active.

Not sure I think this kind of persistence is a good idea, mind you, but nor am I convinced it should be dismissed as impractical without applying a little bit more analysis. You guys are pretty darn smart...

[Huqhox]

Originally Posted by bughunter

You did nazi that, ever?
Couldn't one instead keep a list of artifacts and uniques, with spawn status, last spawn level, level coordinates if previously spawned, a seen by character flag, and an lost/killed by character flag? At least it would be a fixed size.

...or maybe flip it around. If an artifact/unique is seen/generated on a different level then that will update the player knowledge. Every time you go to a previously explored level check any artifacts/uniques on there against the player knowledge and if the level doesn't match then remove it from the level.

Again it's a slight delay when entering the level, but it's still going to be way quicker than running through a level generation routine since you wouldn't need to do this for a new level, so I doubt the player would notice any difference.