Discussion thread on some UI improvements.

[Stingray1]

Some of us are of the view that a player should not be punished for pressing the wrong key at the wrong time.

Is it possible in a non-tedious way to make these misclicks less of a game ender or otherwise annoyance?

The purpose of this discussion is to establish how to make the user interface more friendly wrt misclicks and to do it here before formulating RFE's with many posts in them, which the creator will have to read through, thus postponing development.

Some RFEs have already been created in this regard, so no need to discuss them again here:

Prompt me if I attack certain pre-defined monsters: RFE

Accidental bouncing bolts: RFE

Accidentily pressing shift q: RFE

Handling certain items while having poisoned hands or mana battery: RFE

From post #27 we discuss non-misclick UI improvements.

[Stingray1]

The misclicks I mostly fall victim to is dipping, equipping and eating.

Wrt dipping, is it acceptable to create a config variable in which some potions are flagged as fine to use for dipping?

Wrt to equipping is it fine if I can expect the UI to prompt me if I want to equip a cursed or auto-cursing item( also defined by a config variable )?

[Blasphemous]

I think potion dipping shouldn't be included, I don't see how the game can discern whether it's desirable to dip a stack of potions of invisibility in holy vs unholy water. Both may be desirable depending on situation and PC's needs. There are plenty of other similar examples. As for eating and equipping items with known status, I guess similar behavior may be justified - boots of slow shuffle for example produce a situationally desirable outcome if the PC wishes to increase exp gains for a short duration.
Still, with the right amount of player customization via adom.cfg, any of the OP's ideas could be implemented.

[Stingray1]

Yes, I was thinking along the lines of receiving a "Are you sure prompt [y/N]?" prompt when I want to dip something into a potion I did not define in the config variable.

Also wrt crown of science or boots of slow shuffle, I'll define them in the config variable and expect to be prompted when attempting to equip them. As you can see from this RFE, I am someone that often change my equipment and I tend to press keys very fast, especially during mid to late game. So mistakes are inevitable, but this RFE will reduce that possibility considerably and speed up my gameplay. Please upvote that and to those 5(and any additional) that voted against it, I hope you die during every lategame. If you even manage to get that far.

Are these code-able?

[magpie]

Please upvote that and to those 4 that voted against it, I hope you die during every lategame.

You're opposed to giving people clear advice about the game, but you want a feature built into the game that rewards carelessness and hastiness?

I don't see that it would be worth his time. You do know that his ADOM-time is pretty limited thanks to his real world commitments, and he already has a long laundry list of stuff that needs adding to ADOM first (because it's been promised in the past).

What's next, demanding that savefiles aren't deleted when your character dies?

And incidentally, there's a game that allows 'equipment sets' to be set to a button click - World of Warcraft.

[Silfir]

Some of us are of the view that a player should not be punished for pressing the wrong key at the wrong time.

Since 99.9% of all deaths are preventable, that essentially means nothing. At some point before every death, the player pushed the wrong key at the wrong time and gets punished for it.

I absolutely think players should be punished for pressing the wrong key at the wrong time, and when it comes right down to it, so do we all. What's important is that the UI should not be confusing and obnoxious. There is nothing more obnoxious than a confirmation prompt you didn't need. There's no problem with adding them where it avoids hassle for the player, such as the confirmation prompt for attacking neutral creatures (saving them from having to 'l'ook all of the creatures up), or prevents less experienced players from falling into non-obvious danger (Huh, it's asking me if I'm sure if I want to dive into the water - it's probably not a harmless thing to do). Bouncing spells in your face is an obvious danger. Creature types that are undesirable to attack are an obvious danger (If you choose to play the game too fast, that's really on you; none of these are common or deadly enough to justify putting any degree of work into such a feature). There's a potential for mixing up which potion is meant to be dipped into which other potion, so that might be something to consider. ("You're attempting to dip the holy water into the holy water. Proceed?") Don't see much of a necessity there, either, and it would get real old real fast if you ever want to dip several times in a row.

Bringing up the shift-q thing again (seriously, you suggested it yourself, and it got 1 to 13 votes? wasn't that enough of a hint?) didn't endear me to this thread's start at all, so I apologize for coming off like a grumpy dinosaur. I pretty much am.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Since 99.9% of all deaths are preventable, that essentially means nothing. At some point before every death, the player pushed the wrong key at the wrong time and gets punished for it.

I absolutely think players should be punished for pressing the wrong key at the wrong time, and when it comes right down to it, so do we all.

I think you know this, but the important distinction is between (1) pressing the wrong key because you chose to do the wrong action, or (2) pressing the wrong key because you chose to do a good action, but failed to use the right key for it.

The first case is what a game is all about and it should be punished. The second case, as long as we agree that ADOM is not a twitch game where reflexes are important, is extraneous to the game and should be minimized. This is UI design 101. It's not even arguable, no software engineer of the 20th century would think that having an UI feature that leads a significant number of users to perform a disastrous action against their will is OK.

Bouncing spells in your face is an obvious danger, as you say, and that's precisely why it should have a confirmation prompt. Because it's obvious. If it weren't so obvious, it would make sense to have players figure that out by themselves. This happens with kobold corpses, for example - I wouldn't introduce a prompt for eating them, it's something that players need to learn and the process of learning it adds fun to the game. But in the case of bouncing bolts, since it's totally obvious, a player that does it probably doesn't really want to do it, he just fat-fingered. It doesn't add any wealth to the game to kill him, it only detracts from usability, and contributes to make people weary of playing on netbooks (let alone smartphones if the game is ported at some point).

In the issue about Shift-Q I also voted against, because I think that change would actually kill more characters than it would save, but I did suggest an alternative, and other people in the thread did the same. I don't think the 13 votes against that means that people is against preventing UI pitfalls, it's just that that particular proposal was not good.

[Stingray1]

I listed those RFEs so they don't get discussed again. Added that to the OP.

@magpie Maybe WoW has it, you would know. Is it a bad feature there? e: BTW, it makes the game less tedious and straining on the eyes. Equipping should not be an exercise in tedium, I believe. It is really annoying to search the screen for a piece of armour and then look down at the keyboard to make extra certain you don't press the wrong key. Using quickmarked numpad shortcuts is all I'm asking for, but no because some people don't play like others it should not be done. I started that RFE at priority 10, but I was requested to raise the priority. Which means I was happy if it was looked into right at the end of development.

e: I'm opposed to giving people advise, either they did not ask for or realized that it will spoil their fun of figuring it out themselves. I know, I hate it when people spoil something for me and if they give me good reason to believe that getting spoiled is bad I still get to choose otherwise. At least they gave me the option and did not shove it in my face. The fact that I was able to figure the game out and win it without any help gave me great joy and I want others to experience that joy for themselves. Every little simple thing I figured out, which you maybe think are minor things, was exhilarating.

[JellySlayer]

[edit]I've moved this post to the relevant RFE.

[Stingray1]

Ok, discuss them here then.

What I was thinking, is in the config file I would set a variable for potions which I do want to dip in without a confirmation prompt. Water, poison, exchange, raw chaos, booze, etc. but when I accidently select potion of toughness for example, I would then be prompted. The player himself sets this variable with the potions he/she does not want to receive confirmation for, by default it would be as it now is.

Edit - Oh, lol.