kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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Registered: 07-11-2014
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Something that come up based on a discussion in chat.

One issue people have with RPG is the way that you have to "scout ahead" and then try to remember what lies ahead if you want to play well, or use something outside of the game like map.php. This makes it more of a pain than it needs to be to plan your choices well, because rooms are hidden in-game until you walk into them for the first time.

I think it's actually quite nice that you don't get overloaded with information he first time you play a hold by having the entire level revealed to you all at once, but it's a pain in the butt on future attempts where I've seen it before.

What might be the best of both worlds would be that if you've seen the room before on any playthrough, it is added to your minimap on all future playthroughs. Regular DROD allows viewing the full map from the restore screen at any time if you've seen the room before, this is similar, but is always present. Essentially it involves decoupling part of the minimap info from the current save and making it some sort of global meta-data sort of thing, so maybe it's not as straightforward to implement as I'd hope it is.

The current behaviours of the mini-map changing colour based on what is in the room and having them be manually selectable is game-specific info that would still be nice to keep. Essentially I'm thinking of some sort of player profile info that on loading a hold or saved game sets the visibility of each room on the map based on your previous progress.

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
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I'd absolutely love to have this feature. Heck, this and displaying ATK needed for 1 hit less and the damage you take per hit would be more than enough to make me want to give this game another serious try!

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mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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skell wrote:
...displaying ATK needed for 1 hit less and the damage you take per hit would be more than enough to make me want to give this game another serious try!

This is implemented in 1.2.4. Is this enough new goodness to at least give the game another mostly serious try?

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
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mrimer wrote: This is implemented in 1.2.4. Is this enough new goodness to at least give the game another mostly serious try?

Yup, already started today!

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kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2670
Registered: 07-11-2014
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Been playing around with it in 1.2.6.286 and will post what I have observed:

* Only works for fully revealed rooms and not unrevealed rooms where you know its position thanks to the red map pickup, in the latter case the appearance of such rooms on your map are local to that saved game. I think this is fine and isn't worth bothering to change/improve if its a huge deal.

* Fully and partially revealed room behaviours are also working as expected when using the Add Room to Map scripting command, where a room that you have never stepped inside that is fully revealed this way will still show up on other saves and new games.

* Maps appear to be updating correctly for games that were started in versions prior to 1.2.6.286. Starting a new game led the map to show only the rooms I had currently explored in previous saved games, and exploring a new room added it to the map in all of the other saves.

* Once a map has been revealed it will also show up in the minimap on the load game screen, including for old saved games, which is neat!

* Colours on the minimap, whether automatically determined by the room contents or by changing them yourself by right-clicking, stay local to the specific saved game.

* Creating a new player profile correctly does not pull in the map info form other profiles and starts with fully unrevealed maps.

* Custom monsters do not show their correct colour (if updated by _MyColor variable) and cannot have their stats shown on the battle predictor when remotely viewing the room before entering it on that specific save. This is because scripts are not run on characters until you enter the room for the first time. This is not a problem specific to this feature (see the published hold Growing which uses the Add Room to Map command to reveal the whole level at the start, where these issues have been present since forever), however I'm bringing it up because with this new feature this will now be extremely obvious to basically anybody who plays a hold with custom monsters.

P.S. This feature is appreciated so so much. Thanks!

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 03-20-2016 06:42 PM]