Chaco
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The Ctrl-5 function, the way it is now, currently waits until either of the following two events happens:

- The turn count reaches a multiple of 30 (roach queens spawn)
- Any briar in the room expands

Nuntar, Jutt and I were talking about this in chat today, and we propose further discussion on the matter. Nuntar would like an option for Ctrl-5 to only wait for multiples of 30 (ignoring briar growth). Jutt would like a way to quickly wait up to the next multiple of 5 (for puff manipulation) or to the next multiple of 10 (for spike trap or waterskipper spawn).

I'm not sure what the best way is to handle all this - separate configurable wait keys for separate conditions?

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mrimer
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I can see how these wait variants could be useful. Not sure how we'd want to surface these options. I foresee that whatever we come up with would probably be somewhat obscure.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 01-26-2016 11:24 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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Maybe there could be a "Wait" button you could click on and enter a number of turns to wait? Maybe with an option for "next multiple of X" to make it stop on a puff-moving turn/spike turn/etc. More advanced options could be to wait for a room event (or even for a room event to happen a certain number of times) so you could still wait specifically for briar expansions but wouldn't have it slow down the waiting if the room requires a low of growth.

That's not as convenient as shortcut buttons, but it would still be better than manually waiting.

For micro-waiting, maybe Control-Special Command could wait for the next multiple of five? (Recognized by scripts as Wait rather than Special Command, for convenience.) Does that currently do anything?

A related option that would be nice: Control-Undo undoing multiple moves, because sometimes you're trying to coordinate time clones and you wait one spawn cycle too long. Probably something taking you to the start of the previous spawn cycle, stopping where your undo limit would take it.

Nuntar
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It's good to keep things simple and consistent, so that it's easy for players to learn and remember the controls. My suggestion would be:

Alt-Wait waits until the next multiple of 5. Then you only need to press this at most twice to wait until a multiple of 10.
Ctrl-Wait waits until the next multiple of 30. It should do this even in rooms with briar. Waiting until the next multiple of 30 is very often useful whether there is briar or not, whereas waiting until the next briar growth is almost never useful. And the current setup is awkward and annoying because you get used to a key doing one thing, and suddenly it doesn't do what you expect.

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Xindaris
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Would Shift-5 be a viable option for "wait for briar growth only, ignore turn number"?

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Someone Else
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Not really, as Shift is already for locking the room. I'd say Ctrl-Alt-Wait would be better, but that might be clunky.

skell
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Question: has anyone ever used Ctrl+Wait because they wanted to wait for briar growth?

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Dragon Fogel
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I can't remember doing so; if briar is close to a critical growth level, I'll usually wait out the last bit manually.

The situation where I might want to wait specifically for briar is one where I want to do things in between each growth but I have nothing useful to do during downtime. In that case I would want to assess the new state of the room after the growth finished.

That's pretty niche and I can't think of any rooms like that. A "Wait for the next multiple of 5" shortcut would probably come close enough to cover any situation where 30 turns is too long but one is too short.

mauvebutterfly
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skell wrote:
Question: has anyone ever used Ctrl+Wait because they wanted to wait for briar growth?

I don't remember the context, but yes, I have. I also remember being mildly annoyed that Ctrl+Wait stopped on turn 30 in that instance without briar growing, but that's such a minor thing that it's not even worth considering how to change it.

Unless we wanted a different command for "wait for growth" instead of "wait for turn 30" but that also seems like such a minor edge case that it's not worth spending any development time on.

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skell
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Are there any other things that happen on uneven turn numbers that should disrupt a counter?

Because I can see something like this (which is heavily inspired by the conversation so far):
Ctrl+Wait - Wait until the next spawn cycle
Alt+Wait - Wait for 5 turns (should it also stop on the next spawn cycle?)
Ctrl+Alt+Wait - Wait for the next significant event, if it can happen. Caveat - there is no good way to detect if briar can ever grow, so it would have to either be interruptable or would have an upper limit of, say, 100 turns.

At the same time I don't care about the briar thing, implementing it will be a slight pain so if no one cares much I'd just happily throw it out the window.

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Dragon Fogel
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Bumping this because I noticed the thread and realized nobody responded to the questions.

I think "wait for the next multiple of 5" is probably a better option than "wait 5 turns" because certain events (puffs moving, spikes, waterskipper spawns, serpent preference changing) happen specifically on multiples of 5. I think most of the time I would use this option, I would be waiting for puffs to move.

The main significant events I can think of that aren't on a fixed timer are briar growth, fuses burning, and serpents dying. Actually, a serpent stuck on itself and shrinking until it breaks out of that is also something that might take a while, so I guess if feasible, I'd like "a serpent or adder that was shrinking stops shrinking" to count for the "event" condition, if that's implemented.