Trickster
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I have a proposal that will probably never be implemented, but I think it's cool enough I have to request it. I think I've posted this in other places but AFAIK I haven't made a direct request here, so here it is.

Combos are cool. In fact, they're so cool, I think they should be a minor part of the scoring mechanic....and I know of a way to implement this that would not reduce the importance of current room optimization approaches.

The basic idea: once you hit your ninth enemy in a row, you're in combo territory. Each successive enemy struck does not advance the turn counter (for scoring purposes). If you have the turn counter appearing on the upper-left of the screen, it could also show the smaller score counter on the upper-right (only in cases where they differ).

For this to be fair to old scores, the combo scoring metric should only apply to holds written in GatEB. We might also include a checkbox "combos do not apply to score" for a given hold.

I think this would be an awesome optimization feature, something that would change optimization strategies for the first time since I started playing the game, without modifying the importance of what we already do to optimize. But it would need to be supported soon to be worth adopting (before a billion GatEB holds are published).

Comments? I hope I'm not alone in thinking this would be awesome. I really want those combos to "mean" something...

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[Last edited by Trickster at 04-08-2012 07:40 PM]

Tahnan
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It's a really cool idea. But at the same time, I'm personally in favor of not in any way tinkering with the scoring system. It works as is, and I'd prefer it to be consistent across holds.

west.logan
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Ouch. I understand the desire to make the combos count for something but this is starting to sound complicated. I mean, why not count other things like number of sword turns and total moves for a hold? I agree that consistency across holds (regardless of version) is a good thing.

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Jatopian
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I haven't bought the game yet so my opinion could be totally off base but combos sound really stupid and unDRODly.

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Briareos
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Jatopian wrote:
I haven't bought the game yet

Who are you and what happened to the real Jatopian?!

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Someone Else
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Well, I could make a script that causes this to be factored in - but it wouldn't work in rooms with roach queens or tarstuff.

Jatopian
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Briareos wrote:
Who are you and what happened to the real Jatopian?!

Oho, German humor, it is for laughing. I've got less disposable income than I did five years ago, not to mention less time to game. Besides, if I wait until my birthday rolls around to get it, maybe Caravel will have implemented this by that time.

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Someone Else
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Well, you could simply count the number of monsters in a room, set that to a variable, and have a conquer token in a room (Whole force arrow -> conquer token -> green door kind of thing). Then, whenever the player kills a monster immediately after killing another monster, decrement the variable by one. Finally, have a yellow door between the force arrow and the conquer token that doesn't drop for n turns after you step on the arrow, where n is the result in the variable.

I guess it would be possible to have it work in rooms with roach queens and tarstuff, but it would be prohibitively difficult.

Briareos
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Jatopian wrote:

Briareos wrote:
Who are you and what happened to the real Jatopian?!

Oho, German humor, it is for laughing.

You'd be surprised how much Austrian humor loses in translation; can't disagree with you about German humor (as in Germany), though...

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Tahnan
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[Post Deleted] Trickster wrote:
Wouldn't this work in all cases? Or am I missing something...?

If I'm not mistaken, this won't take into account simultaneous kills, something the "combo" system does. This will count the number of turns on which you kill things, not the number of monsters which you kill, and while they're the same in many rooms, there are plenty of conditions under which they aren't (dropping multiple monsters off platforms, dropping bridges, using bombs, having other sworded characters in the room....).

Someone Else
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It also doesn't work because you have to subtract it from the total number of monsters in the room.

stigant
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The idea of a combo door is interesting. There's nothing else even remotely like it in DROD, and I can see some puzzle potential:
1. You have to build up roaches for a while to achieve the right combo level.
2. You have to work out a way to get your assistants to kill a bunch of monsters without getting killed themselves.
3. You have to get enough monsters on a platform/bridge and drop them all at once.
4. You have to NOT combo too much while clearing N (N<30) roaches per spawn cycle to avoid dropping a door which brings too many roach queens (thus increasing N to impossible levels) into play (until you're ready... at which time you need to make sure you have enough roaches still spawning to hit the combo level to drop the door!).

(Does slicing tar count as killing an enemy for comboing or just the tar babies/tar morthers?)

It looks like it would be better implemented as part of the engine (the doors should be a different color than the existing doors to indicate to the player that combos are important in this room) rather than as botched together script, but perhaps a change as small as adding a current-combo variable to the script engine would make all this trivial.

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[Last edited by stigant at 04-09-2012 02:25 PM]

Jacob
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Combo doors are a great idea (and also fit in with the idea that there's some kind of mechanism in a dungeon that monitors monster killing, as in Green and Blue doors)

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Keiya
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I think adding something like _CurrentCombo and _MaxCombo strikes a good balance here. It lets people make combos matter, but doesn't force it.

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