Intra- & inter-level travel - ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Forums

Issue Tools
- View Changes

Intra- & inter-level travel

01-08-2013 02:41 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

Number of reported issues by SirTheta: 79

Intra- & inter-level travel

One sorely missing feature in ADoM is intra- and inter-level travel. Add it!

To be fair, intra-level travel isn't a big deal, but it would be nice. I imagine a simple cursor to allow you to select where to travel on the level. Only places you have already explored would be eligible.

Inter-level travel, however, is sorely needed. I think Crawl has a pretty excellent implementation of this (of course, I'm not suggesting you rip them off, but it should give you some ideas)--you press a key and a short dialog in the message area comes up, giving you various options. For ADoM it would look something like

Code:

(V) Village Dungeon (P) Puppy Cave (D) Caverns of Chaos

, etc, etc. You then input the level you want to go to (of course, you cannot travel through levels you have not explored--so, if you haven't found the downstairs in S:2, inter-level travel would take you through D:2, for instance. The major consideration, I think, would be something like how to return to the surface from D:50 and various other things (like trying to travel to the library, or over mountain ranges--it should check for climbing set first). I think one way this could be improved over crawl is to give the levels you've explored. So, after pressing 'D' above, you'd have a dialog that says 'enter a floor from 1-6' (if you had only explored to D:6).

Issue Details

Issue Number 1685

Issue Type Feature

Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)

Category All

Status Suggested

Priority 3

Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 9

Implemented Version (none)

Milestone (none)

Votes for this feature 0

Votes against this feature 1

Attachments 0

Assigned Users (none)

Tags (none)

01-08-2013 02:42 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

What the heck, this was supposed to be a feature request [looks like a bug in the method of posting feature requests...sigh -.-].

01-08-2013 04:35 PM

aerol

Senior Member

I don't know about inter-level travel, but for intra-level travel, perhaps implementing "walk toward nearest down staircase" and "walk toward nearest up staircase" commands a la ADOM II would be nice, if doable.

01-08-2013 05:42 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

That would be ideal, actually, aerol. Much better than what I was thinking.

01-08-2013 08:47 PM

szopin

Senior Member

As ADOM classic is single 80x25 (by default of course, you can starve playing 80x50 repeatedly not knowing that it adapts to term resolution like I did my first 50 or so games... or go ahead play with SMC on higher, this could actually be a challenge game, damn is this thing murderous on 80x50...) map per level... Too much Crawl guys, next up: autoplay. I always found Crawl huge generic levels boring so used it a bit. Also in Brogue when the startups were too easy (fixed in 1.7 I believe). Sure backtracking village dungeon/PC is usually uneventful, but... if walking that long corridor is tiring (as is using walk command): lazy key - take me to the next fight, then lazy key no2, this fight will be uneventful, do it for me, damned summoners, then lazy key no3 - generate pc of my defined class/race combo and check holeinthewall shoppe for me, or another, go generate altar in PC2... Try Jeff Lait's Savescummer for the concept of autoplay taken to the extreme

01-08-2013 09:11 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

I think you're missing the point a little. Is this ripped straight from Crawl? absolutely. Am I asking for everything Crawl has to be implemented here? no. (and, I might add, it would really suck if ADoM became anything like Crawl--that's not to say Crawl is bad [I like it quite a lot, actually], but it just doesn't give me the same feeling as ADoM when I play it) Do I want anything resembling 'autoplay'? hell no.

Having to travel between levels is one of the few things in ADoM that is really annoying because it takes forever and is boring as all get out. (All you do is spam the 'w#' key anyway, so it's not like there's some huge difference here) Reducing this annoyance is a good thing!

01-08-2013 10:17 PM

JellySlayer JellySlayer is offline

Ancient Member

Seems like this would be super exploitable. You can cross DH/AF without risk if you'd done it once, despite the associated hazards, or skip the Eternal guardian despite him being hostile if you've teleported passed, or a Big Room full of summoners or whatever.

01-08-2013 10:34 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

Ah, no, no JS: it does not take you there instantly, it travels the path you would have to travel were you to do it yourself. In effect, it is taking a number of '####{<|>}' commands and chaining them together. It really would be just like the 'w#' commands (i.e. stop conditions, not doing diagonals in corridors), just much shorter and with less keyboard work.

01-09-2013 12:43 AM

Aielyn

Senior Member

Sounds like a lot of effort and programming, pathfinding, etc, just to save you from manually using w#.

One option I wouldn't mind seeing is the ability to set a predefined path of travel through a level. So long as you start out somewhere on that path, you can make the game follow that path until an interruption occurs. Since all of the work would be done by the player, all the system needs to do is follow an explicit path, rather than moving in a straight line.

01-09-2013 04:58 AM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

I don't think it would be--there are plenty of shortest path algorithms that are well-studied, and that's not even what I'm asking for here. Heck, I wouldn't mind it taking the longest route (always hugging a wall) since that would be a pretty severe disadvantage in terms of turns. (trade-off between automatic and manual). Honestly, I assume much of this is already possible based on the 'w#' command--when in a corridor, said command follows the corridor.

Of course, I am really only spitballing here, only TB or jt can really say whether it is possible, or worth it in in terms of effort. I generally agree with a post elsewhere [maybe by Grey?] that speculating on coding work is kind of futile and doesn't help [though I myself have done so in the past and...am doing it right now]

01-09-2013 08:40 AM

Al-Khwarizmi Al-Khwarizmi is offline

Ancient Member

I don't think it's a bad feature (so of course, I'm not downvoting) but I'm almost sure it's not going to be implemented because this is a lot of coding work. Just writing a good algorithm for walking to the stairs is not trivial, and could easily take an hour or two (depending on how much you can leverage the existing codebase). Writing a pathfinding algorithm that will work between levels including the wilderness, finding the shortest path while considering possible restrictions (inaccessible areas like the Pyramid, blocked stairs as with the Eternal Guardian, alternative paths like the CoC shortcut, etc.) and its associated interface that would be rather different to anything already in ADOM, would almost surely take A LOT of work, especially taking into account that the data structures in the game are likely to not even have been designed for that (e.g. maybe there isn't an explicit level graph).

I think you should request this for ADOM II. For ADOM I'd be happy to get the "walk to stairs" behaviour, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get it either.

01-09-2013 09:20 AM

tootboot

Member

I don't have anything against autoexplore type features. Crawl does it, yes, and Crawl is widely regarded as a great game.

01-09-2013 12:26 PM

SirTheta

Ancient Member

I would very much be willing to settle for a 'walk to stairs' feature, for sure, as that relieves most of the tedium of inter-level travel. A guy can always dream, though!

+ Reply

Issue Tools