Developer Request: Quality of Life improvements to the game

[slipshod]

I've been struggling to articulate this issue, and I think an example is best.

Imagine you're playing a Byn sergeant and one of your runners took your beetle and ended up with your saddlebags. 
They tell you that they left them on their cot in the barracks.
The barracks has ten cots.  Their cot is cot number 7.

Sergeant walks into the barracks and looks around to see which cot has his giant packed saddlebags atop it.

Key saddlebags all
On a stanky canvas cot:
  1.saddlebags - Sarge's saddlebags

I wish it somehow showed that they were on cot #7.  One still has to go down the line with looking on each cot to find out which it is. 

I understand the code challenge here when the scenario is different and so many keywords could be at play.

For example, a Salarr display room with 4 display cases.  Two are dark wood and two are light wood.
The Agent wants to see at a glance which case has the half-giant hauberk.  It is in the first light wood case, which is the third case overall.  So...

Key hauberk all
In a light wood display case:
 A half-giant sized hauberk

Key case all
In the room:
 1.case -  a dark wood display case
 2.case - a dark wood display case
 3.case - a light wood display case
 4.case - a light wood display case

If the ordering could show us that it was in case #3 here, that only works if we use the keyword 'case' alone, since it's in 3.case but 1.light.case.
And if there are other 'light' or 'dark' or 'wood' containers in the room, those keywords could get mixed up with any "fix" to this.

I don't know if I've made this clear or if anyone else has similar issues, but there it is.

Edited to add:
There could also be issues if, in the above example, the Agent was holding a scroll 'case'.  Now if the "fix" here shows us the hauberk is in 3.case in the room, it's not 3.case when Agent tries to 'get' it, now is it?

[Maso]

For the directions code to not take players outside of a city, round the outside and back in again. I have no idea how this is coded...but I imagine there are a couple of possible options for implementing this?

1. Do not allow the directions code to consider rooms outside of the city?
OR
2. Assign a difficulty-to-traverse value for room types, and have the directions code use that to calculate the 'easiest' route from to A to B rather than the 'shortest' (number of rooms)...I assume the 'difficulty-to-traverse' concept exists already with MV penalties so...

[Narf]

We could just give random PCs the chance to intercept psionic messages? Either by accident or on purpose. Then you could have your skullduggery and people could have their QOC improvement. Cake's better when you get to eat it.

[Maso]

change ldesc for hitched mounts....

[Lotion]

change ldesc for hitched mounts....

I would LOVE this. The one time my mount had a different ldesc was a staff animation and i've been envious ever since

[Kyviantre]

Not sure if it has been brought up, but increased functionality for the text editors (boards, drawing, writing).  Being able to add blank lines at a certain point, delete lines without .c-ing the lot and starting again...these would both make me far more inclined to invest time as it is a painful chore at the moment!

For extra super bonus points, being able to insert lines of text at a certain point.

The way I've seen these done elsewhere is having the lines numbered on the left, ie

1] The green monkey is among us.
2] However we will cope?
3] Kill it!
4]

Then you could type, for instance

.d 4

To delete the 4th line

Or

.l 1

To add a blank line before the first.

Or...

.i 3 Should we feed it monkey nuts?

To insert a line before line 3, and add that text.  So you'd end up with....

1]
2] The green monkey is among us.
3] However we will cope?
4] Should we feed it monkey nuts?
5] Kill it!

This would make writing board posts, tdescs, drawing, scribbling, and all sorts easier.  No idea how hard it would be, but it'd raise my QoL a lot <3

(excuse the monkeys, I've just been reading a primatology paper )

[Maso]

>craft large.chunk 2.large.chunk branch 2.branch bundle into bundle.arrows

[Lotion]

You can add blank lines in the editor by having it contain a single space.

[Kyviantre]

You can also do it by hitting enter between lines.  But that doesn't solve the problem of after reading it, going "Urgh, this needs tidying up to be attractive/readable!", and having to start from the top again!  It is a QoL thing, and hence in this thread...I think it would be nice to fix errors and tweak layouts without deleting the lot

[Hauwke]

.dl 1 or something deletes that many lines too. No need to .c

[Riev]

You can also do it by hitting enter between lines.  But that doesn't solve the problem of after reading it, going "Urgh, this needs tidying up to be attractive/readable!", and having to start from the top again!  It is a QoL thing, and hence in this thread...I think it would be nice to fix errors and tweak layouts without deleting the lot

.dl 1 or something deletes that many lines too. No need to .c

What you're looking for is .d# where the editor will delete # lines from the bottom. It makes it easy if you notice you made a mispelling or something in the last line so you can just .d1

[Kyviantre]

Oooh, is that a thing?  That's useful to know, thank you!

[Brytta Léofa]

More tools for dealing with room/container capacity. For instance:

> weight room
The current room currently holds 1234 stone, and can hold a maximum of 1000 stone.
In the room:
 234 stone - items on the ground
 500 stone - a big baobab crate and its contents
 500 stone - a big ol' table and the items on it
> weight table
The table weighs about 100 stone.
On the table:
 400 stone - many big baobab branches
> weight me
You weigh about 70 stone.
 5 stone - an obsidian helmet
 3 stone - a bone sword
 1 stone - chalton leather boots
etc.
> weight mekillot
It probably weighs about 700 stone, or about 10 times what you weigh.

[Kyviantre]

More tools for dealing with room/container capacity. For instance:

> weight room
The current room currently holds 1234 stone, and can hold a maximum of 1000 stone.
In the room:
 234 stone - items on the ground
 500 stone - a big baobab crate and its contents
 500 stone - a big ol' table and the items on it
> weight table
The table weighs about 100 stone.
On the table:
 400 stone - many big baobab branches
> weight me
You weigh about 70 stone.
 5 stone - an obsidian helmet
 3 stone - a bone sword
 1 stone - chalton leather boots
etc.
> weight mekillot
It probably weighs about 700 stone, or about 10 times what you weigh.

Being able to pin down what the problem items are, when trying to clear up a store room, would be AWESOME!

[Khorm]

implement some sort of coup de grace style command that doesn't invite the same level of delay as kill 

[Brytta Léofa]

implement some sort of coup de grace style command that doesn't invite the same level of delay as kill 

Reduce the kill command delay if the target is immobilized and not humanoid.

[Delirium]

Or just don't stop fighting something when it is mortally wounded unless you have mercy on.

[Hauwke]

I enjoy the stoppage, means that you can do a final emote, how you finish it off. Also works for other players.

[Narf]

I enjoy the stoppage, means that you can do a final emote, how you finish it off. Also works for other players.

Some (most) of us can type substantially faster than that delay takes.

[Hauwke]

Typing speed has little to do with it. If they are in negatives, then you have time for a final emote and for them to do a final emote. It takes longer than a second to type out a full emote and then get a response to it.

[Narf]

Typing speed has little to do with it. If they are in negatives, then you have time for a final emote and for them to do a final emote. It takes longer than a second to type out a full emote and then get a response to it.

You're talking about something different. The OP said non-humanoids. They don't usually emote back at you. And the post-kill lag is much longer than a second.

[Brytta Léofa]

Or just don't stop fighting something when it is mortally wounded unless you have mercy on.

Unless I'm misremembering, I pretty regularly get disengaged from combat when the critter goes down, even with mercy off. Maybe this is only happening in group combat...I'll have to do some research.

Typing speed has little to do with it. If they are in negatives, then you have time for a final emote and for them to do a final emote.

None of us are talking about PKING you MONSTER.
#joke

[LindseyBalboa]

You get disengaged when you knock something unconscious, critical, etc. Sometimes your last damage will kill it, in which case it's dead. Other times it will just be critically or mortally wounded, or unconscious, at which point one has to re-engage with the kill command to slay it.

A 'slay' command for non-humanoids would be nice to insta-kill carru and the like, I agree. I don't think there's any danger or point to the delay when it comes to hunting, really, that would be negated by the slightly-less-time taken.

[Brytta Léofa]

You get disengaged when you knock something unconscious, critical, etc. Sometimes your last damage will kill it, in which case it's dead. Other times it will just be critically or mortally wounded, or unconscious, at which point one has to re-engage with the kill command to slay it.

A 'slay' command for non-humanoids would be nice to insta-kill carru and the like, I agree. I don't think there's any danger or point to the delay when it comes to hunting, really, that would be negated by the slightly-less-time taken.

I'm assuming this is why every well-traveled route is littered with almost-dead critters. It's not that folks don't have mercy off. It's that it's an extra step and you weren't even intentionally hunting.

Related QOL improvement:
What if you could move (without using flee) whenever your opponent is reeled? (i.e. as though you were no longer in combat.) Is that an unbalancing change?

Rationale: kagor #27 attacks me. I hit it. It reels from the blow. I don't care about finishing the fight/killing it, so I just move on.

[LindseyBalboa]

QoL request:

In the 'rinth, have VNPC scavengers snatch up items left by dead bodies that have disappeared. The rinth can quickly end up full of half screens of equipment in every room, even from NPCs killing one another. Also it makes it really hard to stay poor, to the point where nobody bothers gathering up fallen equipment to sell. That loot should be sought after and disappear quickly in rinthi streets!

I mean like even an IC day would be fine, so dropped stuff wouldn't just be auto disappeared in the streets.