A bunch of convenience tweaks.
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:54 am
So I've been fiddling around in ToME for the last month or so. Frankly it has lots of things that I find irritating or flat out nonsensical, although that being said I have quite a bit of experience with roguelikes and despite its flaws ToME does have a charm of its own.
I'm not going to list any of my thoughts on game mechanics/balance/engine as changing those would be a larger project with weighing, vehement opposition and whatnot. So without further ado:
- Allow filtering of flying messages or somehow else prevent lines from overlapping each other. It's nice to know that rogue is off-balance but I'd rather know whether I succesfully managed to stun it or not without having to mouseover. This could also be done with status icons but just how many of them you can fit in or around a 64x64 tile is something to keep in mind.
- Add more options for auto-use. Instead of the rather simple system we have now add an option to enable/use an ability if [condition 1 is met] or [condition 2 is met] AND a second option that prevents its usage or disables a sustain if [condition 3 is met] or [condition 4 is met]. E.g. "Automatically enable meditation if resting or no monsters are in sight. Automatically disable meditation if a monster is in sight." These could have a variety of conditions like a percentage of hp remaining, a rare/unique/boss is sighted, % of resource remaining, time on the buff left etc. Manually activating a sustain with auto enable/disable conditions set should probably ignore the disable conditions. Bonus points the ability to save the options on a per-talent basis between games.
- List more/all effects that affect your character in the combat log (I lost a skirmisher in Grushnak pride because it was suddenly thrown to the middle of the lever room from the entrance hallway. I looked over the combat log multiple times, there was absolutely no mention of what caused it. Resultantly I don't know how to avoid this the next time.). In addition add an option to configure the combat log in the main screen so that you can toggle/filter what is displayed, e.g. currently something like flurry with a bunch of on-hit damage effects and retaliation can fill the entire log whereas odds are you'd be perfectly fine just knowing what the total damage dealt/absorbed/reflected was without the individual components. You could just open the full log at any time if you wanted to know the specifics, 'h' should probably allow you to scroll through the filtered log as well. TL;DR: More stuff in the entire combat log 'h', less stuff in the main screen combat log.
- Add the source of the effect for (de)buffs when mousing over. This allows you to quickly identify the stunning monster or whatever when fighting multiple enemies without having to scroll through the combat log.
- Allow dragging the scroll bar in the chat and combat log screens. Using arrow keys or scroll wheel is tedious when going through lines and lines of "the wretchling's area of effect hits the wretchling for 0 acid damage".
- Don't make parts of the interface windows click-through. Currently if you left-click even slightly left of the race's name in the character creation screen you're thrown back in the main menu even though the green window extends much further than that which is extremely annoying.
- Make the character creation screen remember either all of your previous choices or none. The fact it currently remembers the name but NOT the difficulty is misleading to say the least.
- Show the weapon damage of the monster when mousing over. You shouldn't need an addon for something this important.
- Rest should wait for all temporary detrimental effects to wear off.
- Allow annotating zones and/or making notes. When entering a previously annotated zone/floor the annotation will be displayed in the message area.
- Autoexplore exclusions. Press shift+x or mouse over a tile, press e. The tile and all tiles with a line of sight to it (unexplored ones within a sight radius being updated automatically, until you know otherwise unexplored squares are assumed to have a line of sight) will be avoided by autoexplore. Pressing e a second time will exclude only the targeted square. Pressing e a third time will remove the exclusion. If the floor has exclusions and autoexplore has nowhere else to go you'll get notified about this when attempting to autoexplore. Excluded tiles should probably have some kind of marker over them.
- Show treasure chests in the minimap. Alt maze comes to mind.
- Keep auto-use settings when replacing an inscription with one of the same type.
- Show a message in the message area whenever a previously undetected monster enters your LoS, possibly restricted to elites or rares and up. Not noticing a skirmisher rare hidden behind your UI is bad.
- When switching equipment as a demonologist give an option to swap the previous item's demon seed to the new one.
- Sort demon seeds by slot rather than demon. While summoning demons is certainly helpful mostly you use seeds for the equipment bonuses. It's really awkward to find that fire imp for your weapon when there are a whole bunch of fire imps for all the other slots in the mix.
- Allow "forgetting" a level so you can autoexplore it again. Sometimes autoexplore misses stuff, notably items dropped from chests have to be picked up manually if you press 'z' while standing on the chest right after opening it. This also makes it easier to find backup guardians etc.
- Add a prompt if attempting to equip body armour while wearing man/bikini and you haven't removed it previously. Currently it's frustratingly easy to disqualify yourself by accident.
- Prevent shift-move from moving at all if there's an enemy in sight. Currently it behaves just like move if there is one which makes no sense at all, I thought this thing was largely supposed to allow covering large amounts of ground without having to be extremely careful or dying to buttonmashing.
- Allow using 'm' in the world map. I mean, why not? Also PgUp/PgDown don't work in the world map but scroll wheel does.
######
There's probably a bunch of other stuff I can't think of right off the bat. Yes a lot of this comes from addons and other roguelikes. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
I'm not going to list any of my thoughts on game mechanics/balance/engine as changing those would be a larger project with weighing, vehement opposition and whatnot. So without further ado:
- Allow filtering of flying messages or somehow else prevent lines from overlapping each other. It's nice to know that rogue is off-balance but I'd rather know whether I succesfully managed to stun it or not without having to mouseover. This could also be done with status icons but just how many of them you can fit in or around a 64x64 tile is something to keep in mind.
- Add more options for auto-use. Instead of the rather simple system we have now add an option to enable/use an ability if [condition 1 is met] or [condition 2 is met] AND a second option that prevents its usage or disables a sustain if [condition 3 is met] or [condition 4 is met]. E.g. "Automatically enable meditation if resting or no monsters are in sight. Automatically disable meditation if a monster is in sight." These could have a variety of conditions like a percentage of hp remaining, a rare/unique/boss is sighted, % of resource remaining, time on the buff left etc. Manually activating a sustain with auto enable/disable conditions set should probably ignore the disable conditions. Bonus points the ability to save the options on a per-talent basis between games.
- List more/all effects that affect your character in the combat log (I lost a skirmisher in Grushnak pride because it was suddenly thrown to the middle of the lever room from the entrance hallway. I looked over the combat log multiple times, there was absolutely no mention of what caused it. Resultantly I don't know how to avoid this the next time.). In addition add an option to configure the combat log in the main screen so that you can toggle/filter what is displayed, e.g. currently something like flurry with a bunch of on-hit damage effects and retaliation can fill the entire log whereas odds are you'd be perfectly fine just knowing what the total damage dealt/absorbed/reflected was without the individual components. You could just open the full log at any time if you wanted to know the specifics, 'h' should probably allow you to scroll through the filtered log as well. TL;DR: More stuff in the entire combat log 'h', less stuff in the main screen combat log.
- Add the source of the effect for (de)buffs when mousing over. This allows you to quickly identify the stunning monster or whatever when fighting multiple enemies without having to scroll through the combat log.
- Allow dragging the scroll bar in the chat and combat log screens. Using arrow keys or scroll wheel is tedious when going through lines and lines of "the wretchling's area of effect hits the wretchling for 0 acid damage".
- Don't make parts of the interface windows click-through. Currently if you left-click even slightly left of the race's name in the character creation screen you're thrown back in the main menu even though the green window extends much further than that which is extremely annoying.
- Make the character creation screen remember either all of your previous choices or none. The fact it currently remembers the name but NOT the difficulty is misleading to say the least.
- Show the weapon damage of the monster when mousing over. You shouldn't need an addon for something this important.
- Rest should wait for all temporary detrimental effects to wear off.
- Allow annotating zones and/or making notes. When entering a previously annotated zone/floor the annotation will be displayed in the message area.
- Autoexplore exclusions. Press shift+x or mouse over a tile, press e. The tile and all tiles with a line of sight to it (unexplored ones within a sight radius being updated automatically, until you know otherwise unexplored squares are assumed to have a line of sight) will be avoided by autoexplore. Pressing e a second time will exclude only the targeted square. Pressing e a third time will remove the exclusion. If the floor has exclusions and autoexplore has nowhere else to go you'll get notified about this when attempting to autoexplore. Excluded tiles should probably have some kind of marker over them.
- Show treasure chests in the minimap. Alt maze comes to mind.
- Keep auto-use settings when replacing an inscription with one of the same type.
- Show a message in the message area whenever a previously undetected monster enters your LoS, possibly restricted to elites or rares and up. Not noticing a skirmisher rare hidden behind your UI is bad.
- When switching equipment as a demonologist give an option to swap the previous item's demon seed to the new one.
- Sort demon seeds by slot rather than demon. While summoning demons is certainly helpful mostly you use seeds for the equipment bonuses. It's really awkward to find that fire imp for your weapon when there are a whole bunch of fire imps for all the other slots in the mix.
- Allow "forgetting" a level so you can autoexplore it again. Sometimes autoexplore misses stuff, notably items dropped from chests have to be picked up manually if you press 'z' while standing on the chest right after opening it. This also makes it easier to find backup guardians etc.
- Add a prompt if attempting to equip body armour while wearing man/bikini and you haven't removed it previously. Currently it's frustratingly easy to disqualify yourself by accident.
- Prevent shift-move from moving at all if there's an enemy in sight. Currently it behaves just like move if there is one which makes no sense at all, I thought this thing was largely supposed to allow covering large amounts of ground without having to be extremely careful or dying to buttonmashing.
- Allow using 'm' in the world map. I mean, why not? Also PgUp/PgDown don't work in the world map but scroll wheel does.
######
There's probably a bunch of other stuff I can't think of right off the bat. Yes a lot of this comes from addons and other roguelikes. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
. Can be done, I suppose?
