Rejected

• This list contains ideas that were considered and outright rejected. They are

• recorded here mainly so that if the idea finds its way back onto a list, there's

• a way to quickly tell that it was already considered.

• Fix glyph of flying object rendering as base material - see tmp_at()

  • mapglyph code (which controls color overrides) only gets a coordinate and a glyph, and can't derive the pointer to the flying obj from just that
  • I thought this might be possible with the preexisting globals thrownobj and kickedobj, and took a second crack at it, but it turns out that these aren't used in all cases of flying objects (for instance, monster throwing doesn't touch thrownobj), and the object doesn't update its ox and oy at each step of the flight anyway.
  • Remaining possibilities for a fix: hunt down every case an object is flying and make sure thrownobj is set and unset properly for each one, AND that it tracks its ox and oy...
  • Maintenance note: DELETE THIS ITEM once PR #82 is merged and the bug is confirmed gone.

• Reservoir sampling to rewrite random-select loops (rndcoord particularly)

  • This is nice but absolutely no particular reason to do anything about it without actual devteam interest

• the closer the shooter of ammo is to iron bars, the less likely it is to hit the bars and drop. Down to 0% chance if you're right next to the bars.

  • Seems like ammo hits iron bars a lot less often than I thought it did.

• Spawn only some of the low level shamans as telepathic, and give telepathy 100% of the time when eating the corpse of one that happened to be telepathic and never for ones that didn't.

  • The intrinsic-granting code, all the way back to cpostfx, doesn't use the actual obj struct of the corpse (and thus can't access the mon struct of the monster it used to be to see its intrinsics). Considering this, it doesn't seem that useful to only spawn some shamans as telepathic if you can still get telepathy from one that wasn't telepathic.

• TDTTOE: picking up a hingeless trapped door actually works (triggering the trap)

  • no appropriate doorstate with which to call doortrapped, not worth making up one

• Have no wands give no message at all when zapped.

  • then what's the point of wand of nothing?

• Fix: peaceful zombies will zombify more peaceful zombies

  • Not a huge problem for the resulting ones to turn out hostile

• getobj patch fix: '-' never displayed when user hits ?* to show a menu, since getobj code doesn't call display_pickinv.

  • Possible solution: make getobj code call display_pickinv instead of display_inventory.
  • The window shown lacking the hands actually comes from query_objlist and I can't figure out where it ought to be putting in hands but doesn't

• Fix: getobj patch + force_invmenu doesn't let you do things on the ground such as eating corpses off it

  • Trying to consult with FIQ on what the behavior should be for this? I'm not sure he accounted for all the force_invmenu quirks when writing the patch

• Cache the total probability of objects in a class (per game session, not saved) so that it doesn't need to be calculated on each mkobj() call

  • The existence of SPBOOK_no_NOVEL (negative number) as a valid mkclass argument makes this a non-trivial problem to tackle. For the moment, it works, so no need to optimize here.

• get rid of rotten food paralysis or possibly just rotten food in general

  • Only cursed food can cause rottenfood effects now. So this is not necessary.

• fourk/dnethack revise Ran-goal (but level is a bit weird)

  • going to redesign the level anyway

• hea can start with not enough pw to cast healing

  • not a bug, they can wield their healing book if they need to

• refactor context.warntype to handle both M2_* and S_* for artifacts

  • this is to avoid kludge where M2_MAGIC means "actually I want you to treat the rest of this bitmask as a S_* warntype", thus making it impossible to warn against M2_MAGIC, and also making it impossible to warn against both a M2_* and a S_*
  • As of right now, there are no artifacts (existing or planned) that need to warn against both M2 and S monster types at once, nor that need to warn against M2_MAGIC. Not currently needed.

• fourk hallu protects against falling rock trap (ef85f06)

  • No. Hallucination has pretty well defined limits on what it can and can't do. It can't magically make a rock falling on your head not hurt you.

• unnethack malcolm ryan cancellation patch (98587)

  • No. Monsters that can cancel you are the bane of variants like grunthack and is only considered balanced by the fact that you can kit up in dragonhide gear instead.

• remove spell of cancellation

  • I don't think there are enough ways to abuse this to make it worthwhile.

• unnethack show rider as just "Rider" if viewed from distance

  • I think it's nice to be able to plan your astral strategy around the rider you feel most comfortable approaching

• maybe replace Retention 0 with the old (gone) for spells

  • the code uses a %d and I don't think it's worth the effort to change it to string formatting

• trolls killed by fire or acid, or zombies by fire, shouldn't revive

  • The way damage works makes it incredibly hard to do this. Most damage code just increments a tmp or dmg variable, with no way to tell whether the newly added damage is in the killing blow.

• unnethack burlify quest leaders (1e3d3, 0e87b)

  • With xnethack adding disincentives to kill the quest leader to open the quest, it is not a priority to make them uniformly a tough fight like this.

• farlook of iron doors should show "iron door"

  • Worthwhile, but too difficult to track down where the "iron" needs to come from.

• splicehack muse drum of earthquake (f22812bc and subsequent commits)

  • This doesn't hugely improve the game; the pros of having monsters use more items intelligently seems offset by the cons of having pits created everywhere when the player doesn't want them to be.

• unnethack/nh4 tutorial messages

  • The game seems to do fine in the absence of these, and it's a more involved feature than it looks.

• unnethack shop honorifics (5462e9)

  • this only adds things for vampires specifically, a rare case in vanilla since vamp isn't a race

• elven mithril-coat is the same AC as dwarvish due to elven base being copper

  • Balanced until shown otherwise

• unnethack create traps by applying wands (a7909, 7d7a6)

  • magic missile -> magic trap is silly though, and sleeping -> sleeping gas is iffy. actually none of these seem like great ideas

• unnethack/dyna make rustproof automatically known (8c5f4)

  • This is based on the fact that all fooproof items in the game come from known sources. Not the case in xNetHack where items can randomly generate fooproof.

• eyepatch: +1 Cha, -2 to-hit (Red kangaroo)

  • this would only be a worthwhile addition if adding the Pirate role and that's not happening.

• Malcolm Ryan different poison types (bilious 80)

  • If different poison types are introduced, it will be only on ammo and using an entirely different system than this.

• Implement monster-vs-player grudging: even peacefuls will attack.

  • Then why are they marked peaceful and the player will take penalties for attacking them?

• Place Sokoban's ring/wand/food prizes in a box in the goal area rather than scattering

  • Not enough reason to do this. Having them scattered is interesting and not a huge pain point if one is lost under a boulder somewhere.

• Monsters zapping cursed wands should have them backfire just like the player

  • This requires basically a parallel implementation of zapyourself(). Not a high enough priority to pursue.

• gem enchantment

• weight based trap

  • I'm struggling to find a place where this could be used and add something to the game.

• 5+ zombies together can bust down a door

  • This would be hard to do properly for little gain

• Polymorph traps will never turn you into an armor-breaking form (unless you have control and choose one).

  • combined with slithy polyform idea above, should probably encapsulate into a function cant_wear_armor(permonst*).
  • This strikes me as being nice to the point of defying game logic.

• unnethack levelport randomly if trying to controlled-port outside current branch (8516ca, c3638, acf911)

  • tweak message: "You feel a sensation like bouncing off a rubber wall."
  • Not going to do this; messing with porting to 99 to get into the valley is unlikely to be popular. There's not any actual problem with out-of-range levelporting to do anything.

• additional evilhack livelog "acquiring %s" for finishing Sokoban

  • This is not particularly compatible with the achievements code, and evilhack will have trouble reconciling it when it merges 3.7.

• move xorns off X and onto U so that golems can be moved to X

  • no demand for ' and thus no reason to put golems elsewhere

• "Corner doors" - room in a maze level generates misaligned and gets a door in its corner

• Hitting a monster made of a material you hate should cause you material damage. (Should be generalized into defender_contact_slots?)

• Set up a variable to track the player's corrupted status besides HUnchanging & FROMOUTSIDE, then apply this to can_slime_with_unchanging (SAVEBREAK)

  • actually that variable might be useful to expose in the xlog
  • Given that there are currently no plans to create another way to get intrinsic

• sysconf option to block "there is a game in progress; destroy it?" replace with msg saying to contact local support

  • most xnethack players will already do this

• vanilla patch: oh dear Tyr why are there both pick_lock and picklock functions

  • unfortunate but not worth trying to get a refactor into vanilla

• give quest leader the bell of opening, and if they leave the level or die not by your hand, the quest becomes unlocked.

  • superseded by allowing the leader to be killed

• cancelled incorporeal monsters can be hit normally

  • this is a bit like canceling a red dragon and then it's not resistant to fire anymore. incorporeality is an inherent property, not a magical ability. slight chance of revisiting it in the future though if it's desirable to open up a side strategy for defeating them

• invisible monster wearing mummy wrapping renders as I (could maybe just turf this one to devteam...)

  • not parallel with player wearing mummy wrapping; they appear as the player in that case. currently invis monsters wearing mummy wrapping show as normally visible.

• belts (cool, but a very long way off)

  • the game doesn't really need these.

• upper dungeon trap ambiance: empty falling rock traps, empty rolling boulder traps, pre-sprung bear traps, ammo traps containing some ammo dropped already

  • superseded by 3.6.1 pre-triggered traps with psuedobones

• Demo points out there's no difference between lit and dark grass. there also isn't a difference for ice.

  • not worth adding S_litgrass or S_darkgrass.

• #851: Convert the spell of polymorph to a form that polymorphs only monsters and never items.

  • players would revolt

• #1007: Artifacts occasionally resist being vaporized from overenchantment (however, if they do, they don't get the extra points of enchantment.)

  • meh what is really the point of this, to make it slightly safer but not totally safe to overenchant artis?

• #1109: Boost healers' starting Dexterity; they should be better at delicate surgical procedures than the minimum Dx:7 implies.

  • Healers already had starting attributes rebalanced. Plus, crappy Dex is not all that common anyway.

• maybe fix multishot so that you can't pound something with 3-5 +7 ammo in a turn

  • Balanced until shown otherwise; considering vanilla dagger nerfs, multishot doesn't seem incredibly broken

• restore ability sources don't restore stats past their starting values

  • with gain ability nerfs, this doesn't seem particularly bad

• #1439: A magic trap that causes you to yearn for your distant homeland may instantly magic portal you to your quest home level (perhaps asking you first).

  • This is adding complex, bug-prone stuff based on a single vanilla message and doesn't really have any obvious benefit

• #1449: If you stand on a pile of objects that are all the same class, replace the "objects" in the message "There are several objects here" with the name of that class. E.g. "There are several weapons here". Also do this even more specifically if they're all the same object type: "There are several daggers here".

  • Such a low priority that it is likely never to happen.

• #1593: Allow configuration of a list of monsters that the player should be prompted to confirm fighting before automatically attacking by moving into them. Fighting with F bypasses this check. Also, possibly add an option to make this behavior happen for any monster.

  • I don't see this happening ever.

• [meaningful monster stunning] #1716: In the absence of monster hallucination being implemented, make a monster stunned whenever it would become hallucinating.

  • Monster hallucination is intended in the future.

• #1939: Make somewhat more of the effects from dropping a ring into a sink not lose the ring.

  • Considering that xNetHack preserves the ring dropped in 80% of the time, I don't think this is needed.

• #2283: A peaceful large dog named Sirius is found in the Ranger quest home level near Orion. Ranger starting dogs don't have to be named Sirius anymore.

  • This is planned as part of Ranger quest redesign.

• #2336: The directional loot command works on adjacent containers, not only on your own square.

  • No player support or will to do this.

• buc-identified containers containing unidentified contents should be listed in "items of unknown b/u/c status"

  • this would be confusing if implemented.

• get "bashing" message when wielding weapon at unskilled and then enhancing it to basic

  • this is a "not worth it"; the g.unweapon code is such that it would require refactoring how unweapon works and no appetite for that

• #2789: Remove the player's Intelligence as a factor in determining the outcome of a foocubus interaction. Instead, use Intelligence (or possibly Wisdom) rather than Charisma as the determining factor in whether they are able to say no to having a piece of armor removed.

  • Not considered a priority right now since foocubus interactions have already been revamped and besides, Charisma doesn't get much time in the limelight.

• #2895: Shopkeepers should charge a very high usage fee for using a charge from a store-owned wand of wishing, though not more than the wand costs by itself.

  • Rendered irrelevant by WoW changes. The only way this would happen is if you sell the Castle wand in a shop.

• #3248: Allow lua files to specify a trap as "mapped"/"known"/"seen"/"premapped"/"visible"; when the trap is generated it will set its tseen value so that the player instantly sees it from a distance, like how most holes work.

  • There is currently no known use case for them. If it's later desirable to add them, this is fine to be added.

• #905: Wielding a light source increases its radius by 1. Or possibly 1 if offhanded and 2 if directly wielded.

  • Complicated and not worth it.

• #803: Very rarely, when eaten, candy bars have a Golden Ticket inside, which does something good like grant a wish. (Requires some method of not being farmable; possibly, polypiled candy bars have obroken set, and obroken candy bars never have a ticket in them.)

• #1102: Wind trap: when you step on it, your wielded weapon and any items on the square are blown upwards by a gust and fall back on your head.

  • Not enough room for both this and whirlwind trap.

• #1272: Thrown potions of sickness create a stinking cloud centered on the spot they break. If the potion were diluted, the cloud is either smaller or disperses faster.

  • Sickness isn't poison gas, it's contaminated juice.

• [combat overhaul] - not currently planned

  • #724: Add a defence/evasion skill, which is trained by having monsters miss the player (while not wearing torso armor?) and grants an AC bonus when enhanced.
  • Combat overhaul: 1d(all attacker's bonuses) vs 1d(all defender's bonuses); hit if attacker's roll is higher
  • #1351: Weapon differentiation - possibly a replacement of the old D&D "damage vs. small / damage vs. large" system currently in use. Weapons would do the same damage regardless of what size the target is, but might get a damage bonus or penalty based on if the target is vulnerable or resistant to piercing, slashing, or whacking/blunt weapons. Being resistant to this weapon type means that the damage is halved; being vulnerable to it means that the damage is multiplied by 1.5. Some obvious examples:
  • Most undead are resistant to piercing damage. Skeletons are additionally vulnerable to blunt damage.
  • Thick-hided animals are resistant to slashing damage.
  • "Blunt is best against hard things, slashing is best against soft things, piercing is best against fleshy things"
  • #2585: When a creature is completely surrounded by enemies that have hands, or is completely surrounded by enemies that have hands except for squares it can't safely move to (like walls, or water that it would fall into), every attack made against that creature is an automatic critical hit. This is to make it more difficult to just wade through a sea of monsters while ignoring most of their hits, and incentivize having pets to surround an enemy with.
  • Possibly, do a lesser version of this (critical hits only some of the time) when a creature is almost but not completely surrounded. Though it should probably require a certain amount of adjacent enemies or something; two opponents facing off in a straight, empty passageway shouldn't count as "almost completely surrounded" by the walls.
  • Several issues have been pointed out with this system if implemented naively: getting "surrounded" by two monsters in a corridor or being surrounded instantly with summon nasties or a cursed scroll of create monster could pretty much spell instant death. The original idea was that being surrounded basically amounts to being held down so that all hits have maximum accuracy.

• #1827: Killer bees occasionally drop lumps of royal jelly when killed.

  • It's sort of nice having it only appear in beehives.

• #1839: Characters with at least Basic in sling can do something (use a touchstone? flint stone? any gray stone?) to break rocks into slingshot, which weigh 1 and have comparable to-hit and damage to flint stones. Slingshot may be weapon-class instead of rock-class. The higher the sling skill, the more shot that one can get out of a single rock. There should also be rare silver rocks, which can be broken into silver shot.

  • Obsoleted by rock-breaking into flint and flint weight reduction.

• #1941: Dunce caps are made out of paper. (They continue to be the same color and tile as cornuthaums, though, so it's not trivial to tell them apart).

  • Doesn't work with object materials in play.

• #1963: Amulets of change don't disintegrate when you put them on; instead they autocurse. Once you remove the curse and take off the amulet, your original gender is restored.

• #2048: Spell of earthquake, mid-level matter spell. Causes an earthquake centered on you; range and power varies based on your skill level. (SAVEBREAK, NEW TILE)

• #2068: Rename cone of cold to "frost blast", because it does not act like a typical D&D cone spell in either of its forms.

• #2136: Upper Mines levels' stairs are biased to generate relatively close to each other.

  • Upper mines now are always lit, this is not really needed. (The flavor still stands, but I think it would be too easy to hit minetown with it.)

• #2282: Guarantee a sack somewhere in Minetown.

  • This is capitulating to packrats and is basically inviting credit cloning.

• #2297: On the level containing the stairs to the Gnomish Mines, either always or often generate one gnome in a random place.

  • Mines entrance has a level sound now, which basically accomplishes what this was trying to do.

• #2412: Rangers have a role bonus which decreases the overall probability a projectile will break.

  • Post Fourk projectile change, it doesn't seem to be needed anymore.

• #2520: Paralysis only freezes you in place on a square; it doesn't prevent you from attacking and taking other non-movement actions.

  • If there is even demand for something like this, it would be better off as its own status effect.

• #2559: Add a NAME: directive to the level compiler. Levels that have this will auto-annotate themselves as such (or add an immutable line with the name) once the level is entered.

  • where would this actually be used? most places it would be used already appear to do this

• paxed's Toon Hits Patch (bilious 200) (do it as 1 or 2 separate commits)

  • The toon hits themselves over-goofify with hallucinatory descriptive hits for monks (the main use of that code), and the interjections after plines are a) a little off-flavor and b) are bugged and happen sometimes when typing # for extcmd

• #2900: Copper weapons get a bonus versus Kops.

• #2962: Snow golem, which is a bright cyan ' monster found in icy locales. Does not generate in Gehennom. It uses a spitting attack to launch snowballs (flavored as throwing them), which are an object which behaves like spat venom in that they disappear one way or another at the end of their flight. These deal damage and possibly knockback. The encyclopedia entry for snow golems uses "Frosty the Snowman" as reference material. (SAVEBREAK, NEW TILE)

• figure out issues with boss appearance messages being mostly visual, not handling blindness very well

  • This won't get addressed unless general blindness handling for quest messages gets fixed upstream, which I doubt.

• #2895: Shopkeepers should charge a very high usage fee for using a charge from a store-owned wand of wishing, though not more than the wand costs by itself.

  • Store-owned wands of wishing only happen when player sells them to shop; too rare to bother with.

• #3355: Add an option that forces the hero to be rendered even when invisible and unable to see invisible; terminals may not reliably display a distinct cursor that allows the player to tell where they are.

  • No one has actually complained about this.

• unnethack lemure pit (but as Gehennom only room) (60564dd8)

  • Gehennom overhaul removes Gehennom special rooms, these would only appear in Gehennom, and they can be made easily enough in Lua.

• Special gems that generate non-randomly in Gehennom, and the same number each game.

  • Unclear that this would add anything to the game.

• #2666: You cannot levelport down past a demon lord's lair level until the demon lord is killed, appeased with a bribe, or otherwise gotten rid of. Attempts to levelport past it will just land you on their lair level instead. However, you can still go below the level by way of the stairs, a hole, or a trapdoor in the lair.

  • Gehennom overhaul removes demon lord lairs from the main branch (and will remove all levelporting in Gehennom) so this is obsolete.

• #1967: Buff the potion of gain energy so that it refills around 100 points of Pw.

  • discarded in favor of other gain energy buffs