Suggestions and observations from 1.06

[Quikngruvn]

OK, I finally got around to sending Aaron my list of suggestions for the next patch. As threatened... er, promised, here's what I sent to him (minus the brown-nosing ). As always, comments are most welcome.

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Some of these items are requests that carried over from before 1.06, so there may be some repetition from previous Messages. They are in no particular order, expect the order I thought of them. Let me warn you now-- it's a long list!

--You still do not get experience for slaying summoned monsters. I still think you should.

--The character should not be able to close a door while standing in the doorway. If potions can block the door, why not the character?

--Monsters that can cast spells should move to a location where they're spells will be effective. Specifically, if a monster casts a spell that hits an obstacle before reaching the character, the monster should move to where it has a clear path to the character.

--Monsters should have a setting for 'type'. More accurately, they should have a setting for 'number of types' and a setting for each 'type'. Examples of 'types' could be animal, undead, evil, insect, person, etc. Monsters could be more than one type (such as an evil person). If this system in place, you could have the map generator call for a particular type of creature instead of a specific one. You could also then create items that are effective against certain types of monsters (a sword of animal slaying, for example).

--Spell effects should have a 'type' setting as well. This way, you could have the game call for a monster to have one (and only one) of a particular type of effect (such as only one steel carapace).

--Monsters that are guarding other monsters should attack monsters that are next to them when they are at maximum guard range. Right now they just dance around getting hit by those monsters.

--Speed factors for weapons should be implemented, so that you'd really have to decide between wielding a slow, damaging weapon and a fast, less-damaging weapon.

--Introduce tomes that can increase skill levels. A certain tome could increase a certain skill be a level or two, subject to regular level and class requirements. (A mage would still need to be tenth level to benefit from a Tome of Fire Storm.)

--Include an option to remove all items and money from an imported character at the start of a module, and place whatever else in its stead.

--The game crashed when it attempted to autosave when the character stepped on a portal. No autosave file was created (in fact, the old file was deleted), and I could not go back to town until I had loaded a different character's game, and then reloaded the first game.

--Add a description line for all monsters in the info window. Sometimes it's just not clear what we're fighting!

--Introduce Acid as a damage type, including resistances, spells, spell effects, and continuous damage (until the acid is neutralized or wears off).

--Introduce side effects for other damage types. A nasty physical attack (such as from a monster with Painful Strike) could stun the character, causing a temporary loss in attack ability. A magic attack could daze the character, temporarily halting mana regeneration.

--In the spellbook, the blue ribbon that shows you have more scrolls is not very clear. It would help if it were a little bigger, or say something like 'More'.

--The information frame does not refresh if a monster moves underneath the cursor while the mouse is not moving. This is most noticeable when the character opens a door and fights a stream of monsters in the doorway. If you don't move the mouse, you won't see the monster's information when it moves into the doorway, so often you never know what you killed.

--In Win98SE, when you quit, the game leaves a bar in the Task Bar. Clicking it will make it go away, but it still appears that the game does not exit as gracefully as it should.

--The exit square for the Up staircase on the bottom level of Crack of Doom is not in the right location. You actually have to move into a square a couple of paces away from the staircase to go up.

--Include a confirmation window: 'Do you really want to quit?' Another confirmation, 'Do you want to save before you quit?', would be nice as well.

--While the game was paused, I saved the game, and then the game automatically unpaused, but 'PAUSED' was still flashing. (It may have unpaused because there were monsters in sight....)

--A monster with a poison attack should not be able to automatically poison the character on a successful hit. The chance to poison should be based on the monster's level, the level of poison resistance the character has, maybe the character's constitution... but not 100% all the time.

--I'd like to be able to create an area-effect spell that causes diminishing damage the further out you go from the spell's center. Thus, you should include a setting like 'Effect loss per range per cent' to spells.txt.

--There needs to be a more efficient way to pick up items in a stack on the floor, or to at least pick and choose what to pick up.

--When choosing a value from a possible range, there should be an option to 'throw dice' to get a value instead of just picking a number between AX and I. There are several places where I would like to use a bell curve instead of just a linear chance.

--Add an event effect of popping up a text box when an event is triggered, but different from the text box like the one for completing the game. I'm thinking a box about the size of a chest box.
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If you've read this far, my hat's off to you! So what do you think?

Quikngruvn