Random Artifacts and Auto Travel please?

[thiskidrob]

Hello Thomas and all other people here.

First, thank you for ADOM, an amazing game, and the game that got me into roguelikes again after a 15 year hiatus I started when I was 7 or so.

We are all here because we love ADOM and because we eagerly anticipate playng JADE. I loved ADOM, what a great game. I havn't played ADOM in years, after playing it for about 2.5 years straight, though I always checked adom.de for updates.

And recently, Ive been playing Crawl. After playing both, there are some features not in ADOM that I hope you will incorporate into JADE. Just want to make sure that these things are on your radar. :)

Random Artifact generation - It was always fun to get the Bracers of War, but it got old after a while. With random artifact generation, it never gets old, just like an infinite dungeon. And not only does it not get old, but the allure of scoring an amazing random artifact can't be beat on the excitement scale.

Also, I would really like to see some type of autotravel. It would have been nice in ADOM if I could just tell it to go to D45, or whatever, and the char would travel until interrupted. This type of inter-level travelling just makes the game so much better to play. Its the carpul tunnel factor.

And really, thats all I have for ya. I have no concept of what it takes to implement these types of things, and I don't expect you to just jump or anything. But like I said, I just wanted to make sure that these things were on your radar.

thanks...

*bows graciously to the Creator*

[Baranor]

I always thought that the artifact generation was random. I do get the bracers of war a lot, but I feel like I get other stuff as well. My thought always was that since bracers were the most rare type of normal item, TB made the artifact bracers the most common type of random artifact. Perhaps the artifacts should be evened out in randomness to be more to your liking. I would like to see some of the other artifacts. I have never had the clothing ones, but they looked fun.

[thiskidrob]

I always thought that the artifact generation was random. I do get the bracers of war a lot, but I feel like I get other stuff as well. My thought always was that since bracers were the most rare type of normal item, TB made the artifact bracers the most common type of random artifact. Perhaps the artifacts should be evened out in randomness to be more to your liking. I would like to see some of the other artifacts. I have never had the clothing ones, but they looked fun.

As far as I can recall, all of the artifacts encountered in ADOM were predetermined. By this I mean they had a set name, with set bonuses and resistances.

Im talking about in JADE, having randomly named artifacts that have random properties, which could very well be good or bad. This way, an adventurer can encounter strange and random artifact weapons and armor outside of the pool of predetermined artifacts...

[Dougy]

Re: Random artifacts. That's not a bad idea thiskidrob!

I've always wondered about the conspicuous absence of the "scroll of recall" in ADOM. I suspect there's good reason for this. Similarly, I don't think it'll be allowed to walk 45 levels of a dungeon or so without user input.

[thiskidrob]

Re: Random artifacts. That's not a bad idea thiskidrob!

I've always wondered about the conspicuous absence of the "scroll of recall" in ADOM. I suspect there's good reason for this. Similarly, I don't think it'll be allowed to walk 45 levels of a dungeon or so without user input.

Well neither of these are actually my idea. They are currently iworking well in another roguelike called Crawl. And believe it or not, the auto-travel works fantastic. I can tell it to go to anywhere that I have been, and it will go along the shortest route, stopping when interrupted. But you can customize what counts as an interruption. Many times my char can travel between stashes with 1 keystoke instead of 1 hundred or more.

Crawl even has auto explore and autopickup. I wouldn't even ask for that, its such a luxury to have.

oh yes, and programmable in-game macros too! Its gonna be hard to leave Crawl without seeing some of those features here, or knowing they may come eventually!

[Dougy]

By the sounds of things Crawl is quite different to ADOM, so I wouldn't expect any of what you've written to occur in ADOM. JADE is a mystery, anything could happen. Oh, and ADOM does have Auto_Pickup in the .cfg file. This is what I set mine to: Auto_Pickup = *'(=\!?~$"

[thiskidrob]

By the sounds of things Crawl is quite different to ADOM, so I wouldn't expect any of what you've written to occur in ADOM. JADE is a mystery, anything could happen. Oh, and ADOM does have Auto_Pickup in the .cfg file. This is what I set mine to: Auto_Pickup = *'(=\!?~$"

Yes, that feature might not be as important in JADE.

But, the random artifacts? Those I still really have to hope for. They should fit in with the random nature of JADE. They must be part of the plan.... im hoping....

[Baranor]

Ooooh, me likey. That does sound cool. I would figure names would be tough, but the random effects could be really cool.

[Grey]

Random names would be simple enough. More difficult might be choosing appropriate stats that get lumped together. An item shouldn't give you both cursing and luck for instance. A helm should be less likely to give you a strength bonus than a sword. There should be certain rules in place to stop silly looking artifacts. Very nice idea though - it would suit the JADE world perfectly.

[sgeos]

An item shouldn't give you both cursing and luck for instance.
Autocursing + Fate Smiles? =)

-Brendan

[spectre]

Yeah, you want to keep you lucky charm close o you at ALL times (-:

Given the size of JADE I thing any sort of magical traveling is a must. Adding mounts looks like a lot of trouble, but can be so worth it in the end.

On the other hand, some sort of magical teleporters could also work. Once you find one, you can freely travel to all ohers. Every major city should have one. And you can ind scrolls that'lll teleport you to any one visited.

Auto-generated artifacts sound a lot like Diablo, but I like them. What I would prefer, though, would be if the artifacts had stories about them for you to learn. (They could be randomly generated like the Player backgound in ADOM too).

[electric_wizard]

To be honest I kinda assumed JADE would have random artifacts. If you are creating a random world then why not?

[Epythic]

Auto-traveling kills realism, I think. Magic would be okay, though.

[thiskidrob]

Auto-traveling kills realism, I think. Magic would be okay, though.

In real life, do you know how to get from your bedroom to your bathroom, or do you take 1 step and reassess your journey, requiring more instructions to get you to your destination? :D

[spectre]

Depends how it is handled.
If it were seomething in the lines of: you gang up with a caravan... 10 days pass and after an uneventful journey you arrive at Kkhldrfzan.

(Hint, hint, it allows for Bandit random encounters along the way and getting paid for participating)

[Dougy]

Perhaps this auto walking idea could be combined with combat. As you move past a monster you can attack it too.

[Nezur]

I second random artifacts. They would great because you couldn't "identify" them by just reading spoilers. ;) I support the autotravel feature as well if it won't automate the movement of the character too much.

EDIT: Yes, Electric Wizard, I used to assume the same.

[ZeroTheBird]

"Autocursing + Fate Smiles? =)"

*Universe implodes*

[DumbleDoor]

Example of random artifact

----- Rune covered mithril spear (3d7+3)[+6, +4] ------
Weight: 120s
It slays jelly's

[phauli]

The random art thing would be cool but i think the random artifacts should be "lesser artifacts" ie. item that can't be destroyed and are slightly more powerful than normal items but there should also be the more powerful stuff that give instrincts, sl?ying power and whatever. Also if there are quests witch reward the PC artifacts the harder and longer ones should definitely be the more powerful non-random arts (ie. the ADOM crone quest) and the lesser, more easily completed quests could give lesser random arts (ie. go to cave x near our village and vanquish the orc tribe and i'll give you a nice weapon type of thing)

[Python]

I think semi-random artifacts would be the best. Create a list of lots of artifact templates (for example 100 meele weapons, 50 shields, 30 rings, 20 amulets, 20 missle weapons, ...). These templates shall have some fixed and some random attributes (for example, a weapon always slays undead, but in 50% of the games it also slays demons, a shield can be generated with 10, 12, 14 or 16 DV randomly or the crown of king X shall give either +6 St or +6 To and 2d2 intrinsics randomly chosen from -Stun, -Sleep, -Conf, +SeeI, -Deth, -Fire). These random attributes shall be decided when the character is created ("in this game, this artifact will give X PV and Y resistance if it is generated"), to avoid savescumming for generating the artifact with the best attributes.

I think every artifact can be generated this way (the attributes of the guaranteed artifacts may be fixed, they are just templates with 0 random attributes). If artifacts are generated this way, greater identify/potions of insight/Relevation would be useful, because you don't know the exact propeties of the artifact, but no "stupid" artifacts would be generated and the artifacts may have some history/background.

[Sradac]

to my knowledge, xenocide was the father of autotravel. you give crawl too much credit!