Decoration type spree for 0.32
There's been a positive reception of the slow trickle of new decorative features over time. Merging in #2903 added a good splash of colour throughout the game, most notably recently, but people have appreciated sparse uses of differing tiles over time (the autumnal forests and Crypt dead forest, as easy examples). There's also already a fairly large of one-off decorations already, which tend to be forgotten about over time- even outside of making Wizlabs as fancy as possible, we've added petrified trees, demonic trees, canonized demonic and withered plants, and so on, without too much evidental perception of excessive complexity or difficulty in parsing the still relatively constrained set of what's mechanically relevant.
We've got a number of spare tiles in the UNUSED folder and the git history that can easily continue this trend and add a little more life to Crawl beyond the same plants + liquids + fancier walls in empty rooms and halls, without adding much for mechanically burdensome terrain in a game with tactics so heavily centered around luring. The review going through for each of these can also reduce the extreme proliferation of particularly visually-noisy and fancy materials now in nearly every branch across nearly the entirety the game- a reduction in transparent rock, crystal, and plain granite statues, especially earlier on, is already warranted, and they'll stand out more with the rest of these additions if those aren't used as often.
Some of this write-up is mostly to test the waters for some of the most weird and strange pieces. Some of this write-up is also just readying up commit message essaywork. Some of this write-up is even just to formally request various additional tiles beyond what regret-index has managed to find or assemble. None of these names descriptions, or tiles are settled upon- suggestions and new offerings can help this plenty.
With such narrow groupings as orcish idols or golden statues inherited from a decade or two ago not causing any particular issues, additional entries in such a domain should be fine.
"An geometric statue of solid silver, in both material and form championing security and stasis."
(Initial spread plans: ~20 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Zin vaults, holy trio vaults, and the V branch.)
These are metal statue of order, law, security, and stasis. These are obviously useable in vaults for Zin, but also employeable in the Vaults, a place full of metal, disciplined guards, and rather monotonous features and terrain beyond sparing glass or bookcases. (Yes, there's undead in the branch, but these statues aren't direct links to Zin, and guards in different areas can have different faiths. Think of the Crypt as being actively sealed away inside the branch.)
(Probably their name probably won't be much confusing: it's been nearly nine years since e8a12f6, when obsidian statues had the prior name.)
The tile here uses the sparkles of roctavian's Zin altar, Denzi's silver star without the Zin altar's hand in front of it, and the pedestal of ontoclasm's old silver statues before those were turned into obsidian statues.
"A magically shifting statue seemingly content to glimmer and dance in place, dedicated to the ineffable cosmic games of chaos."
(Initial spread plans: ~15 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Xom vaults, Nemelex vaults, klown vaults.)
These are rainbow stone statues, representative of chaos and chance. There's enough Xom and Nemelex vaults for them to fill out a respectable number, alongside some klown-centric vaults in Zot and a rare flashiness component for Gauntlet exteriors. Worthy of noting is that there's some extremely messy Xom and Lugonu vaults (tgw_xom, xom_redecorated, kennysheep_kobold_lugonu_temple) that could emphasize these fancy animated statues instead of completely random terrain placement, dealing with their opacity and no_tele_into statuses.
The tiles here uses ontoclasm's statue plinths alongside CanOfWorms's pieces from Xom's chessboard tiles, with some edits to fit them on those plinths.
"A cage reinforced with magic, left open."
(Initial spread plans: ~15-20 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. "Beastmaster" vaults.)
Mystic cages are statue redefinitions of kennels and enclosures for many pets: the hounds of gnolls and orcs, the menageries of vampires, the experiments of various wizards, the many elephants and dragons within Vaults, and so on and so forth. With how often there's a mix of given intelligences in randomized generic floor spawn sets, it's easy to miss a vault deliberately pairing given monsters together- these can help straightforwardly imply such with minimal effort.
The mystic cage tiles are a mild edit of Maxwell's Etheric Cage, removed since 0.25.
"A strange but sturdy construct, collecting and analyzing raw ambient magical energy. When destroyed and disrupted by sufficiently mighty magic, its energy will harmlessly disperse."
(Initial spread plans: ~40 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Vehumet & Kiku vaults, ice caves, wizlabs, Snake, Elf, Zot, various D / Depths vaults. Display in-game as "arcane receptacles", "misfortune receptacles", "dimension receptacles", "alchemical receptacles", "receptacle of souls", "fiery receptacles", "icy receptacles", "storm receptacles", and "earthen receptacles".)
These are all further statue types of miscellaneous magic-collecting devices, with a slightly different orb, different palette, and names each for all the spell schools. (Translocations is grouped together with Summoning, though as we have few workable translocations themes for vaults and "dimensions receptacle" being just a random feature is great in its absurdity). These receptacles help a couple of magical portals and branches beyond the recent occasional presence of bookcases- Ice Caves, Volcanoes, Wizlabs, Snake, Elf, Crypt, and Zot. They also provide some more workable flavour for the spell-gifting gods who don't give spellbooks, Kiku and Vehumet, plus a small number of particularly magic-focused vaults across Vaults and Depths.
The receptacles are a mix of snw-0's first spell icon for Battlesphere, the rltiles original iron golem, and a variety of subtle overlays using ontoclasm's item type icons.
We've got a fair number of these already: Wizlabs, Gehenna:$, Cocytus:$. As long as the exact type of wall is still mentioned in the description, it should be just as safe to use these as countless vaults already use to decorate entire vaults in different rock, stone, or metal than their branch defaults.
"A wall made from shimmering crystal, from which some demonic plane peers out. While its composition both make it resist destruction plus reflect both fire and cold, the otherworldy forces within it seem to be entirely harmless... from this end, anyway."
(Initial spread plans: ~35 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Demonic and abyssal vaults outside of extended.)
These are a different tile and description for crystal walls, and serve as links to the various demonic planes of regular games and extended for a multitude demonic vaults without all of them leaning too hard on demonic vegetation or lava (as clashes with quite a few other themes). They don't actually spawn inside Hell / Pan / Abyss themselves, but there's a large number of demonic vaults across D, Depths, and a few Lair / branch spawns that can reasonably fit a little window into Cocytus or Pan or the Abyss.
This tile combines quite a few parts- roctavian's old lugonu altar, snw-0's grey crystal recolouring, jpeg's original strange machine for Tukima's wizlab, and depending on the crystal: dd's lava, snw-0's recolouring of roctavian's floor_frozen, Denzi's cobalt_stone + wall_bars + floor_demonic, roctavian and due's edits of Denzi's iron walls, and the original rltiles work on floor_nerves.
"A sturdily-assembled wall with a recessed chamber for heating and cooking purposes. Only substantial magic could shatter it."
"A metal wall with a recessed fire chamber, for heating and cooking purposes. Like other metal walls, it will ground electricity."
(Initial spread plans: ~25 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. "Housing" and fortress vaults.)
Stone hearths and metal hearths are simply wall name + description redefinitions- singular uses of stone in metal vaults or vice-versa. They work as both fireplaces and ovens for given housing and fortress vaults without needing free-standing perpetual flame clouds, and should be relatively straightforwardly parseable as just modified walls.
The stone hearth uses roctavian's Conjure Flame spell icon plus edits to a currently practically-never-used Crypt rock wall tile by Sastreii. We need a metal hearth tile...
Plants, fungi, bushes, withered plants, demonic plants, and so on, all seem to have little issue being parsed as they are.
"A large and vivid bloom drifting placidly upon the surface of the water. The cradle of the lotus's petals shine with eternity and elegance- while it is entirely harmless, it would take immense effort to destroy it."
(Initial spread plans: ~15 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Ely, Fedhas, Wu Jian, holy trio vaults, sparse Swamp / Shoals use.)
A potential opposite of demonic plants in multiple ways, sacred lotuses could bushes instead of plants for their base stats (thus not withering away on hit like plants do) and float on top of water rather than dry land.
They're useable in vaults for Elyvilon (as symbols of longevity), Fedhas (as a revered plant), and the Wu Jian Council (as a symbol of elegance and grace). In particular, the first of those provides a little more fanciness for holy themed vaults, which focus heavily on floor and wall retiling due to the rather limited breadth one can use holies when compared to the wide variety of potential unholy themes. It can also provide a little bit of fanciness to the very watery, plant-filled branches of Swamp and Shoals.
This use the old thorn lotus tile by snw-0. It's been 9 years since it was used for a hostile monster, so this should be fine.
(Initial spread plans: ~15 vaults out of the 5550ish current vaults. Earth-themed vaults, crumbling ruins, volcanoes.)
We should be very sparing on spreading almost any of various monsters used to make various spells work. Several of them are bad as threats (fire vortices, ball lightnings), and several of them are essentially adding new monsters that have to go over the rigorous design process entirely seperate of that (probably never seeing non-glassed cactus giants, for example).
That said, Brom's Barrelling Boulder makes an extremely physical object that, when made to not move as the default placement works, can reasonably fit in any number of vaults already placing stones, large rocks, crumbled columns, shafts, and so on looking for earthen decoration. The boulder can use a different description now when it's not sent to roll forth, and here is using a recolour of the rltiles crystal orb for a quick placeholder so non-rolling boulders don't look like instant-rolling boulder beetles. We could probably do with a different tile for the spell boulders and a recolour for vault uses, entirely.
Incidental rule: no sokoban vaults.
Terrain one can walk through, blocking neither fire nor sight, with no mechanical effects.
Fountains set a enduring precedent for this, and in console, they can all fit under additional
colours for the U glyph.
"The volatile confines of the Dungeon regularly require more active circulation and controls than most buildings. Clouds will indefinitely issue forth from this vent over time."
"Whether for defense, research, or ambience purposes, many wizards within the Dungeon have carved onto the dungeon potent magic symbols. Clouds will indefinitely issue forth from this emblem over time."
"The unstable infastructure of the Dungeon often produces various fractures in the dungeon floor. Clouds will indefinitely issue forth from this crevice over time."
(Initial spread plans: About 7/8ths of the ~380 vaults that use fog_machines.
About 35% of vaults would use vents, 40% would use emblems, and
25% would use crevices. They can all be cyan Us in console.)
Unlike many other decorations in this project helping out various weird vault designs, these particular features are meant to serve a much more directly useful purpose for players. All of these are solely to be used as visible origin points for lua fog_machine cloud generators, which have awkward issues spawning relatively arbitrarily out in the open or a given random nook in a wall by default. None of them should be used outside of this purpose. They don't completely fit under all current cloud uses- there's a narrow number of vaults that make them emanate from water and lava that would distractingly introduce various flight-ending issues, of course.
The vents are for relatively mundane construction, the emblems are meant for particularly fanciful magical arrangements, and the crevices are for relatively naturalistic contexts like campfires, Trog vaults, and Ice Caves. I'd prefer to have this many due to their very different flavour uses throughout the hundreds of vaults, since they all don't have innate mechanical purposes so much as just reflections of whichever flavours given vaults have.
The vent repurposes an old gas trap tile by ontoclasm, while the emblem is a heavy edit of Reaver's evoke fog ability icon back when Cloak of the Thief had such an ability. We probably should make a request for several recoloured options for a glowing, seeping crack in the ground.
"A pile of assorted fruit, ranging from common dungeon staples like chokos and snozzcumbers, to rarer treats such as apples and oranges. You already carry as much food as you will ever need for this journey, but the occasional nibble wouldn't hurt."
"A stash of preserved meats of unknown origin: strips of jerky, lumpy smoked sausages, and even more indeterminate protein rations. You already carry as much food as you will ever need for this journey, but this offers the rare chance to try out yak meat..."
(Initial spread plans: 60 vaults for fruit, 40 for meat, out of the 5550ish current vaults.
Caches of fruit can be green Us and caches of meat can be brown Us in console.)
These bring back the flavour of fruiting trees and groves, plus monsters discreetly stashing away food, without the tedium and focus attached to managing a minimally relevant, inventory-pressuring food clock. A lot of Crawl vaults try to create homes and housing, while struggling to sell this without leaning on surrounding greenery and with nothing to fill them with besides combat items. This helps with those many vaults on such fronts without particularly interfering with normal gameplay.
Both of these fruit and meat piles are akin to dry fountains, not statues- they don't block fire or movement, and solely sit on the ground. (We could add rare messages when non-mummy players walk over them about the player nibbling away at the food pile, if that's not too overly cute or contributive to message spam.)
The current fruit pile tile was made by snw-0, with a brief adjustment for another visual option. The meat pile tile components go as far back as the original rltiles project. These, more than any other decorative feature, would benefit from more contributions over time- getting back sultanas, snozzcumbers, and pizza would be nice.
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There are currently at least two statues made of metal that explode from LRD into stone shards- Gozag and TSO's golden statues, plus iron statues in Dis. With another two metallic statues coming up above, would it be weird if a "metal statue" was made an underlying feature for the sake of LRD's messaging and damage, plus consistency with how metallic walls aren't diggable but otherwise explicitly metal statues are?
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Are three cloud-source features too much mental overload, or is it no worse than the current situation of how they currently can appear from almost anywhere and anything? If pushed, I'd probably rely on crevices because they're the most flexible of all of these, and they're only flavour that works for ice cave cloud sources.
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I don't quite know how far to take the notion of "plausible liveability". Further walkable floor decor of low tables or bedding aren't quite as flexible or easily slotted into "some kind of statue / fountain / wall" as many of the other pieces here, and the former might be quite difficult to manage the proper perspective. If they were drawn, I'd still be plenty up for fitting them in, of course, but I don't know if either might push this whole conceit of more decoration a little too far.
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Would other equivalents to butterflies- zero-attack, randomly-moving monsters- add to further annoyance in terms of autoexploring through them, or be reasonable if sparsely used additions? Butterflies themselves have the scroll and the contrast with moths, of course. Some golden koi, for example, would easily fit Gozag / TSO / WJC, though....?
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Would people prefer any other names for any of them before dozens of vaults end up getting them?
A quick resummarizing total, in order of usefulness.
- Spell rolling and non-rolling boulder
- Cloudy crevices
- Metal hearths
- At least one more fruit cache and meat cache each
Naturally, while I'm reviewing vaults for other fits, this is a reasonable context to hunt out other vaults that can reasonably use our current suite of underused pieces. Broken pillars, golden statues, demonic tree, petrified trees, withered plants, gravestones, bookcases- all of these can most likely fit a half-dozen or more uses each without much strain.
Also, again, as stated at the start, some of the use of these features would also entail reducing glass, crystal, and granite statues used throughout D, especially earlier on. A lot of vault submissions trying to make generic but different options for overflow altars, arrival vaults, and so on, have made crystal not particularly stand out any more, which is an awkward state for something that has a lot of dangerous relevance much later in the game. We also don't need constant suggestions of elaborate statues throughout every part of the dungeon, and they could do with more emphasis of a place being special, not just "whatever sculpture pile is over by this corner".
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Some sort of tall and ornate prayer mirror attached to a wall, flavoured around self-reflection and contemplation and unveiling whatever might haunt a pilgrim, would provide some reasonable workable flavour for Ashenzari, Uskayaw, Ru, and various housing vaults.
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There's a fairly large amount of martial fortresses, plus Oka and Trog flavour, that would be nice to hang something deliberate within beyond piles of weapons or the same metal and statues available constantly throughout the rest of the game. Maybe some banners with coats-of-arms coated with weapons? Training dummies riddled with blades?
"A brazen and desperate scrawl hung up on a pedestal, written up by schismatics and heretical historians. It depicts [...]"
These are very loose concepts, but meant to provide a very rare bit of story to Crawl through our own development history around some of the highest profile mechanics in the game, in god worship and conduct changes. They're explicitly meant to be short snippets of story and rather rare- we don't need to info-dump to players constantly. They also should have some weight of drama and history to them- note the ones [below] are much more dramatic that "TSO allows poison now" or "Trog was once The Hairy".
Sample short bits:
- Dithmenos: "the darkness smothering a forgotten god of fire, no longer caring about feeble sparks in the night"
- Nemelex: "lost ancient cards of unsustainable magic, opening countless portals to warping chaos"
- Okawaru: "a heartbroken general, standing in a field of corpses, dismissing the rest of their army"
- Yredelemnul: "a god cast down from a triumvirate, spitefully joining the forces they once purged"
- Zin: "crowds openly speaking against the Law-Giver, avowing that orcishness is not impurity"
- TSO/Beogh: "a god who once opined all orcs were evil, bringing war with the orcs' god and oceans of blood"
- good gods: "a screed on gods who seek puppets, falsely claim holiness, and cast out the honest ones"
- Xom: "an age when some angels worked alongside demons, under the tutelage of the same unpredictable deity"
- Ru: "a truth-seeking deity who discarded their original name as an obscenity"
- Fedhas: "rumours that a god's powers over flora formerly belonged to Zot, and were used to defend the Orb"
- Trog/Vehumet: "a great spellbook bonfire, turning one god against another and forcing them to grant magical knowledge directly"
- Pakellas/coglins: "a now-exiled god who loved devices over magic, inspiring goblins to strengthen themselves with greater and greater tools"
- Elyvilon: "the legend of Jerimx, a demonspawn so devoted to healing that Elyvilon smiled on them and purged the evil from their heritage" [possibly put this character in a one-off vault?]
- order versus chaos: "a page of the sacred text 'The Rise of Zin', vandalised to read 'The Curse of Silverface', with graffiti in the margins praising Xom"
I don't have much for plans in where to use these, as I'd like to have a reasonable quarter or third of the pantheon with these sorts of lines readied before bothering to get much in- this is definitely a very open project needing suggestions and ideas regarding this broad and subtle lore.
The tile was heavily recoloured from the rltiles' original Nemelex altar.