lopsidation
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 176
Registered: 05-30-2008
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It'd be nice to have a scripting command that stored which move the player made as a variable, 1-11. Note that I'm not talking about moves as in "where Beethro goes"; you can do that already with mimics. I'm talking about recording which button the player presses, which can currently only be done by surrounding Beethro with 8 NPC's. That doesn't leave much room for him to go around and smite monsters, so the "Store Move as Variable" command is essential for any complicated scripting.

Of course, with "Store Move as Variable" comes "Execute Variable as Move". Yes, you could do this with 11 if/then statements but one script command is a lot simpler and less tedious.

Finally, this doesn't relate to the previous two requests, but it'd be nice if DROD preloaded adjacent rooms when you moved close to the border of that room. This would make room transitions run a lot more smoothly. Preloading would also be nice in the editor- why is it that if I've been building room A for a while and then switch to room B, the game takes a while to actually switch over?

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mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Registered: 02-04-2003
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lopsidation wrote:
Preloading would also be nice in the editor- why is it that if I've been building room A for a while and then switch to room B, the game takes a while to actually switch over?

The game is purging the edit undo buffer and committing your editing changes to disk. Depending on how large your hold file is, this could take a while. Also, if you move to a room with a different graphical style, it is loaded to replace the old one. I agree that a pre-loading mechanism could make this faster, but would eat up more RAM, so this wouldn't work on all systems. Maybe a user preference flag is in order.

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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 01-18-2009 02:24 AM]

Briareos
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 08-07-2005
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mrimer wrote:
I agree that a pre-loading mechanism could make this faster, but would eat up more RAM, so this wouldn't work on all systems. Maybe a user preference flag is in order.

Well, an option to keep all styles in my 2GB of RAM would certainly be nice; it's not as if DROD came with 15GB of datafiles like GTA4 does...

np: Saul Williams - Survivalism (Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D)

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Kwakstur
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 385
Registered: 05-05-2006
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In my experience both normally and on a networked drive (where save/load times are at a larger scale), and between a fast computer and an ancient one, I think that the saving is by far the most prevailent contributor to delay.

The second largest factor is loading the next song to play (which it will always do when moving between any two rooms of which at least one has an enemy, unless scripted otherwise).

It is a big delay when moving between different styles, but the only time you really see that is when moving between levels in the level editor. While adjacent rooms of different styles are not unheard of, they're not exactly common.

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