[Un] The mushroom dialogs

[andrewdoull]

Hi,

I'm just working on a context senstive help system in Unangband. Thought you might like to read some content:

=== An Authoratative Guide to Mushrooms ===

Mushrooms come in a variety of colours and flavours, which can
change with every season. Your only reliable guide to mushrooms
is Farmer Maggot's Mushroom Emporium, where you can find the 
latest and most fashionable mushroom flavours at affordable
prices.  Do not eat mushrooms you find in the wild.

A forthcoming illustrated guide in colour will also be available
from my publishing agents in due course.

                                      - Mr Maggot Esq.

[andrewdoull]

=== An Authoratative Guide to Mushrooms - Part II ===

            ___..._      === The White Mushroom ===
       _,--'       "`-.  Pictured here, the White Mushroom can be
     ,'.  .            \ found in chilly caves and cellars in the
   ,/:. .     .       .' Hobbiton region.  While I cultivate some
   |;..  .      _..--'   of these for professional reasons in my
   `--:...-,-'""\        nearby farm, you should not attempt to
           |:.  `.       trespass as this is one of the many
           l;.   l       dangerous varieties of mushroom I keep
           `|:.   |      in my cellars.
            |:.   `.,    The White Mushroom is also known as 
           .l;.    j, ,  Agaricus refrigeratus due to the chilling
        `. \`;:.   //,/  effect that its spores has.  I am
         .\\)`;,|\'/(    investigating the use of this mushroom
          ` `itz `(,     for the preservation of food, in particular
                         Mrs Maggot's best pie dinners.

You can find out about more mushrooms by purchasing my authorative
and illustrated guide (in colour) which will soon be available from
my publishing agents at a very reasonable price.

                                      - Mr Maggot Esq.

[andrewdoull]

=== An Authoratative Guide to Mushrooms - Postscript ===

For the would-be adventurous types, who would endeavour to visit
my farm uninvited, trespass in my cellars and steal Mrs Maggot's
best pies, please note that I have secured an additional guard
dog to accompany Grip and Fang on their wide-ranging, ravenous
and otherwise unwelcoming run of my property.

I've not yet thought of a suitable name for him.  My initial
thoughts were Tinkerbell, but he seems a little more feral than
the others and perhaps something closer to his beastial nature
is appropriate.

I am also offering a reward for the capture, injury or otherwise
hindrance of one M.B. and his accomplice P.T. who seem to have
taken a liking to my mushrooms out of proportion to the regards
of their own physical wellbeing and safety.

                                      - Mr Maggot Esq.

[andrewdoull]

=== A Short Cut to Mushrooms ===

To whom it may concern,

   Farmer Maggot, or as he styles himself, Mr Maggot Esq, is
a pompous and boring old fool who needs to be put out of his
misery.  His misinformation campaign about the safe and deadly
properties of mushrooms hereabouts has cost more than one
adventurer their life, so don't have any regrets about re-
turning the favour to Mr Maggot in kind.

So here's the skinny: as you've no doubt discovered, many
mushrooms appear in patches which need to be subdued first
before you are able to harvest the mushrooms in turn.  These
newer breeds appear to be able to launch the spores at a
distance - I'm not sure that this was the best idea to breed
them that way, but it seems to have increased the virility of
the patches themselves, so that you can almost always harvest
a mushroom or two, and usually a good collection of spores
as well.

The spores, you can throw in turn, and they explode just
like potions, but with an effect similar to the original
mushroom patch.  You can keep these spores in your quiver,
which hopefully you've learnt how to use elsewhere, and its
a great idea to keep a few of these around, particularly for
those pesky faeries which are otherwise so hard to kill.

The mushrooms themselves can be used in a variety of ways:
you can eat them, but they're usually poisonous, or at least
the ones dropped by most mushroom patches are.  This means
the best bet with harmful mushrooms is to apply them to
an edged weapon, arrow or bolt, and use them against the
enemy.  Mushroom coatings are 'nerve agents' which mean that
they only affect living monsters, but otherwise they are
similar to potions in how they work.  

You can throw mushrooms, but only an enemy stupid enough
to pick them up and eat them will be affected, and many
insects have built up a resistance to ingesting them.

As for the 'changing colour every season' nonsense, this
only appears to happen for mushrooms that don't grow big
enough to be threatening in patches.  If you find a mushroom
patch, and you can harvest mushrooms from it, you'll see
these are the same colour every season from now until we
all travel to the West.  You can use this as a good guide to
what not to eat, at least when you start out.

There are useful mushrooms around, and most of the harmful
ones are dropped from patches, so once you've learnt about
mushroom patches, you can experiment with a little more
confidence.

                                       - M.B.

[Bandobras]

Hilarious!

That has inspired me to the following, rather mundane, proposal: perhaps allow mushroom patches to grow additional spores only up to the number they've originally started with. Otherwise, especially with such fine mushroom guides and with spores in the quiver, this invites scumming (I'm easily tempted into scumming, so I care).

BTW. are mushrooms or mushroom spores usable in traps? If so, Mr Maggot Esq would surely be suspected of using them that way. If not, is there any other use for them for a character without weapons (e.g. a mage) or with only blunt weapons and slings? Alchemy (e.g. by dropping into a fountain)? Temporary stat-swap with a little extra bonus, at the cost of the usual damage by eating? Testing resistances? (Slowing down and possibly harming monsters that eat them is enough, though, to keep them from being absolute junk for such characters, so I don' complain.)

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Bandobras

Hilarious!

That has inspired me to the following, rather mundane, proposal: perhaps allow mushroom patches to grow additional spores only up to the number they've originally started with. Otherwise, especially with such fine mushroom guides and with spores in the quiver, this invites scumming (I'm easily tempted into scumming, so I care).

You mean the ADD_AMMO flag - I suspect its a bit broken but the intention is already there.

BTW. are mushrooms or mushroom spores usable in traps?

AFAIR they just get 'found' if they are put in a trap.

Andrew

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

AFAIR they just get 'found' if they are put in a trap.

I think spores should explode. As for mushrooms, perhaps force the monster to eat it if he trigers the trap (already a save against triggering the trap, so not _so_ powerful).

One more idea for useful poisonous mushrooms: perhaps they can cancel some long-lasting bad effects, like hallucination, nexus stat swap, stat drain, disease, fatigue, at the cost of their normal bad effect. perhaps also merge the mushroom of Mana with some weaker of the bad mushrooms? OTOH dropping all potions to eat a white mushroom to restoro Intelligence introduces micromanagement. Unless it's guaranteed not to endanger inventory.

I wonder where you will put these wonderful texts. I'd suggest to put them all in the spoilers submenu of the help menu as well as displaying some of them as newbie tips when finding mushrooms for the first time, spores for the first time, eating a mushrooms for the first time, etc.

But what could be really climatic is to pinpoint some of the texts on the rescpective buldings: somewhere in Hobbiton, on the Farm bulding, somewhere in Buckland, etc. The features engine is already there, allowing to read them by bumping into them or looking at them (both in this case?). Perhaps also stick one to the bridge on the way to Bree and let the dogs drop them from time to time (in a dog-eared form). M.B. and P.T. could carry them, too.

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Bandobras

I think spores should explode. As for mushrooms, perhaps force the monster to eat it if he trigers the trap (already a save against triggering the trap, so not _so_ powerful).

Doable.

One more idea for useful poisonous mushrooms: perhaps they can cancel some long-lasting bad effects, like hallucination, nexus stat swap, stat drain, disease, fatigue, at the cost of their normal bad effect. perhaps also merge the mushroom of Mana with some weaker of the bad mushrooms? OTOH dropping all potions to eat a white mushroom to restoro Intelligence introduces micromanagement. Unless it's guaranteed not to endanger inventory.

That was the intention with diseases - at least some diseases require that you do negative things to yourself to fix it. Its always possible to widen the parameters.

I wonder where you will put these wonderful texts. I'd suggest to put them all in the spoilers submenu of the help menu as well as displaying some of them as newbie tips when finding mushrooms for the first time, spores for the first time, eating a mushrooms for the first time, etc.

But what could be really climatic is to pinpoint some of the texts on the rescpective buldings: somewhere in Hobbiton, on the Farm bulding, somewhere in Buckland, etc. The features engine is already there, allowing to read them by bumping into them or looking at them (both in this case?). Perhaps also stick one to the bridge on the way to Bree and let the dogs drop them from time to time (in a dog-eared form). M.B. and P.T. could carry them, too.

Have a look at the tips code (queue_tip and show_tip) which I've just added. Basically these particular ones you'll find as you find more and more mushrooms (actually, tval 80 items).

Andrew

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

Have a look at the tips code (queue_tip and show_tip) which I've just added. Basically these particular ones you'll find as you find more and more mushrooms (actually, tval 80 items).

I won't spoil myself, but wait for them to suddenly pop up in my next game.

I see spores are very light, so they cannot be too big, even considering that mushroom matter is not dense. They are not very powerful, either, so perhaps make them count the same as arrows and bolts wrt. quiver space and not as weapons (5 times more)? There are many kinds of spores, so the number of quiver slots (not backpack slots) will be the limiting factor for them, anyway.

I think, if and when nexus stat swaps are changed to a timed effect, there may be rule that stat drain cancels any swap related to that stat (there may be many such swaps). In this way mushrooms of Weakness, etc. will be useful for canceling stat swaps before they run out (which takes very long). This is one more way of discouraging the nexus stat-swapping exploit, because any monster or any disease lowering a stat cancels the effects of the many hours of forcing Nexus Hounds into cooperation.

Yeah, I think it would be fun to add a speed effect to the mushroom of confusion (quite short confusion, no speed if confusion resisted and cancel speed effect by any method of cure confusion), restore mana to the mushroom of poison (no mana if not poisoned), cure stun and wounds to mushroom of paranoia or blindess (the same). Change the names to more interesting. Three less mushrooms and not a bit less fun. Then perhaps you would be able to replenish the mana of your pets at the cost of poisoning them by throwing a spore corresponding to the mana mushroom. Or poison Dunlending, but adding to his mana. A bit complex for newbies, but let them just use elemental spores and keep clear of the Farm, anyway.

[GCD]

I like all the changes you guys are planning. Hope there will be a downloadable version soon.