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[Soadreqm]

I play on CDO, so basically none of the ghosts I face are my own.

As for diagonal movement, yeah, that's a mess. A hilarious mess, perhaps. Movement uses chebyshev geometry (assuming that G-Flex knows his words), while magic and vision use Euclidean geometry. I asked the the IRC channel, and apparently they can't decide whether to make LOS square or make movement Euclidean. Personally, I find non-Euclidean space somewhat unintuitive. When asked to plot the fastest route between two points, my first guess will be a straight line. It isn't instantly obvious to me that the area of a square depends on its orientation.

[Frumple]

I'd probably prefer a switch to square LoS, if a change absolutely had to happen. If it was made so moving diagonally took more time, that would be the point I stopped playing crawl entirely. Better to remove diagonal movement entirely, at that point.

Really, though, is the system as is in terms of LoS and movement really that broken, or whatever the issue is? I've not personally noticed any major issues with LoS, or with movement. It's certainly not been something that's ever gotten me killed.

[Leafsnail]

Well, a straight line is always one of the fastest routes to something in Chebyshev.

I find it perfectly intuitive, but that might be something to do with being a chess player .  It just seems like... Euclidean movement would bring up a lot of complicated situations.  Like having to bear in mind a monster can attack you 2.81 times if you try to walk around it.  And you'd have to get a calculator out to see if you can beat monsters to the stairs.

Incidentally... apparently you can resist smiting now?  I thought you couldn't in the last version.

[G-Flex]

I play on CDO, so basically none of the ghosts I face are my own.

As for diagonal movement, yeah, that's a mess. A hilarious mess, perhaps. Movement uses chebyshev geometry (assuming that G-Flex knows his words), while magic and vision use Euclidean geometry. I asked the the IRC channel, and apparently they can't decide whether to make LOS square or make movement Euclidean. Personally, I find non-Euclidean space somewhat unintuitive. When asked to plot the fastest route between two points, my first guess will be a straight line. It isn't instantly obvious to me that the area of a square depends on its orientation.

I used to think Euclidean movement would be a good idea, but from what I heard on the IRC channel, that would cause more problems than it would solve. For instance, time spent moving would get rounded in ways that are less easy to predict. Right now, you know how much cost a single move takes, but with Euclidean movement, there's the adjustment for diagonal movement, plus rounding, and you still only get to move one "square" at a time, even if a diagonal square is harder to get to. This is important because, especially for melee fighters, managing turns/delay is important to prevent things like, say, a creature getting a double attack on you. Also, more complicated distances would require more adjustment and rounding, and that might not necessarily turn out well (and might not be worth it) when the grid is so granular (you don't really have many squares to work with). The basic point here is that Euclidean geometry is hard and annoying to simulate when you're working on what's effectively something as small as a 12x12 grid, or whatever LoS would turn out to be.

Really, the most important thing is for the game to be consistent, and I see that happening through chebyshev everything. Normally, I wouldn't like this, but in the circumstances we have to deal with (square 2D grid with a very small size), I think it's the best option, even if it leads to square rooms being effectively circular (which is how it is now anyway, except in terms of LoS and stuff, because crawl is weird) and there being multiple shortest paths to the same point in an open room.

[Mr.Person]

I hated the change to circular spell ranges. Now ideal play is to dance a creature into a straight line every time, which frankly gets old really, really quick. There were a few cases with fast monsters where circular spell ranges cost me a turn or two of casting, which was a nerf to ranged combat. More importantly, it created this strange problem where a creature's distance-to-shoot was not always equal to its distance-to-move. Creatures diagonally positioned couldn't shoot or be shot at as many times as creature orthogonally positioned even if they both took the same number of turns to reach the player if they just moved.

Euclidean looks nicer but is very confusing and nonintuitive. Chebyshev plays simpler but might put some players off slightly. I think we can all agree which is more important.

[UristMcDwarf]

heck yeah kobold enslaver

[celem]

my first crawl...

argh, some guide I read said to run from nasty battles on the first few floors (orcs) and look for down stairs to some temple.  I ended up poisoned, weak, starving and somewhere on d:10 as a lvl 3 troll berserker.  Death by killer bees   I did at one point find a level with a single altar on it....im guessing thats not it though, must have somehow bypassed the temple :S

[Leafsnail]

If you were a Troll Berserker, you already had a god and didn't need the temple anyway.

Plus I'd be damn surprised if there's anything a TrBe can't just rip through right up to the Lair.  I've killed 2 Demonic Crawlers at level 5 with one...

[zchris13]

Yeah, hit ctr-o to see where dungeon branches are.  Temple is somewhere in between D:4 and D:7?

Also, playing online is better.  And in regards to the poor Earth Elemental sap, it's been buffed in Trunk.  Stone Arrow can actually hurt things now, and sandblast is range 2. Also everything is transmutations, for some stupid reason.  "If its earth, then it just has to be transmutations!"

[Tinker Thinker]

@Leafsnail: Earth elementalists actually have one escape spell in the starter book - passwall. It's more situational than most, but combine it with magic mapping and you're a god. It becomes something of a moot point with LRD, though.

Finding the morgue in the installed version was hell. I knew where it had to be, but because hidden files are somehow impossible to view (yes, I am the admin and I know how the settings work) on this Windoze machine, I have to somewhat know where to start. So, if anyone else finds themselves up a creek on locating this stuff, seek out C:\Docs & Sets\Relevant User\Application Data\crawl

Also, I'm playing stone soup, so I'm stuck with the nature of my earth elementalists. Ironically, I've found them to be my favorite class despite being "weak", but then my other top two are Mummy Necromancers (admittedly a powerful combination, if finding Necromutation redundant), and Kobold Summoners (whatever their potential is, it isn't many that get to live up to it).

And I kind of like the whole setup of Earth Elementalists with regards to transmutations (it also makes it easier for transmuters to branch into direct damage when Evaporate's power starts waning), in that they're not just pulling this crap out of thin air, they're using the environment (which you have to admit heavily favors the earth, being UNDERGROUND) to screw the foe over. LRD is one of my favorite spells, because it's part of a group along with Ozcobu's Refrigeration and the Somebody's Lesser Intoxication or whatever it is of spells that are intended for nonviolent purposes, but have been noted to be /really useful/ for ruining someone's day.

I also support Cherbyshev for the simple reason that it is more accurate to reality given our representation (there is no fixed X or Y to be moving diagonally to in real life, you know), and the point here is reality - but cooler.

[celem]

argh, attempt two as troll fighter went only slightly better.  fully cleared 1-4, bumped into an ice beast on 5 and ran for 6, immediatey confused by an orc wizard who then went invis and darted me to death.

My masterful running away skills meant that i ended up dragging the icebeast to the down stair before giving it the slip, then dragging the wizard back to the same stair and failing to give it the slip.  Result: both guys i was running from standing next to me and 1 hp.  I'd even identified a teleport scroll, i just panick :S

[Soadreqm]

The basic point here is that Euclidean geometry is hard and annoying to simulate when you're working on what's effectively something as small as a 12x12 grid, or whatever LoS would turn out to be.

Yeah, good point. Crawl is built so that even small distances really matter. If a normal-speed monster is three spaces away from you, it will stay three spaces away forever. If you get to a staircase, you can lose any non-adjacent monster. And the LOS is really tiny. In DF, by contrast, your speed varies depending on a whole bunch of things, everything lives in 3d space making stairs meaningless, and time is less granular, with something like tens of ticks every "turn". It's not really a big deal whether the goblin is two spaces or 2√2 spaces away.

I'm a level 10 MuCK of Makhleb on D:11 at the moment. Minor destruction is virtually free when you don't have a food clock.

UPDATE: Dead. A komodo dragon on Lair:1.

[UristMcDwarf]

O gosh I love Spriggians.

"Hah, orc, you wanna kill me? Heh heh. -runs off-

[Tinker Thinker]

Earth Magic doesn't totally cut you off from the high-power spells, there's the crystal spear for lategame single target kills, Shatter for anyone who doesn't fly, and it also features Bolt of Magma which enables easy Fire crosstraining.

That said, looking at the table of spells, I note two things: Earth doesn't have many spells, and several of them have been cut on top of that, and Divination seems nearly redundant as a school of magic.

@celem: A few tips: Running /down/ isn't necessarily a good idea, as the power of enemies increases drastically at the start. It can be a better idea to flee up to a cleared floor and strand a tough enemy there until you can take them down later. (Enemies who could theoretically use stairs (not skeletons) who are adjacent to you will follow you up or down stairs, which of course leaves the question of /how/ you'll extricate yourself from them if they're the same speed as you).

I do have a question about mutations: Do characters ever get mutations that affect the "mutations" of their species? Like spriggans becoming able to digest meat or trollish metabolisms slowing?

[Frumple]

Yup.

Easiest way to notice it is probably from a troll's metabolism increasing, though. Had that happen a number of times, generally a game-ender.