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[G-Flex]

Yeah, I'm dumb and didn't put two and two together. I think my brain was stuck in "skills for kills" mode since you mentioned DC:SS. I can tell I haven't played Cataclysm in a while.

I thought DCSS used something similar to the current system, where using a skill spends XP?  Hence victory dancing and such.

Haven't played DC:SS in a while, eh? They eliminated victory dancing and the XP pool. Now, XP you gain (same method, by killing dudes and such) goes directly into skills you have enabled. Other details vary a little bit depending on whether you use the "automatic" or "manual" mode, not to mention it's changing a little bit more in trunk as well.

[Aqizzar]

I'm honestly not sure an XP system is even necessary. Surely there are ways that morale could more directly affect skill gain and cut out the middleman, and I'm pretty sure I've heard a couple decent proposals for how that could be done.

What I'm proposing is exactly that actually.  There is no XP--as you get skill points from morale, they're directed immediately into skills.

This is my biggest criticism of the game right now, that you have to be constantly chugging soda and candy, or spend character points to be Optimistic, to make doing anything except reading books worthwhile.  Get caught in the rain, or have to eat bad food?  Now no action you take for the next couple hours will improve you at all.

Putting aside the incongruous connection, and the omission of character-building-through-adversity, it's just a pain to keep up with.  My biggest suggestion, if you're committed to the system working as it is, is give all characters a permanent boost to morale, like how Optimistic works, so that being at a natural state of Morale Zero isn't worthless.

[Whales]

Well, increasing your skill levels is just one small slice of what"improving yourself" is in Cataclysm.  If your focus is on increasing your skill levels, maybe I need to nerf them to make them less valuable.
Character buiding through adversity is exactly what I want to omit.  Cataclysm is a game more often about avoiding aversity than plunging yourself into it.  This, and the fact that skills are often less important than equipment (outside of melee, which I'm always in the process of retooling ), are things which I hope will differentiate Cataclysm from traditional "role-playing games."  As I move into NPC development and things like factions and missions, I'm hoping that Cataclysm will become a real role-playing game--not in the sense of grinding for levels and gold, but in the sense of playing a character defined through its actions.

That aside, yes, occasionally you have negative morale and your skills won't improve for a while.  That's hardly the end of the world.  Increasing your skill levels is not the goal here; if anything it's a minor aside.
I have been considering making XP increase faster at 0 morale, though, and may implement that soon.

[Aqizzar]

Character buiding through adversity is exactly what I want to omit.  ... in the sense of playing a character defined through its actions.

I guess what I'm saying is, these two sentences seem directly contradictory to me, at least going by the entire history of human storytelling.

I've got my doubts too about this "something's working well? time to nerf it" idea, but I can't really complain about that.  It's not that I'm focused on increasing skills, it just seems patently unfair that all the activity in the world will do nothing to improve me at that activity if I happen to be damp at the time.

As long as were on the subject, I guess one idea you could look at is making injury give a morale penalty.  That gives you a huge incentive to not get into trouble, and it's pretty realistic.

[G-Flex]

I guess what I'm saying is, these two sentences seem directly contradictory to me, at least going by the entire history of human storytelling.

Why? We're talking about a game primarily based on survival. A lot of that genre is avoiding confrontation. Even if you think growth-through-adversity is necessary, that adversity doesn't need to be in the form of things punching other things. Trying to find shelter in the rain, struggling to forage for food, and trying to avoid contact with Harmful Entities are forms of character-building and adversity. Hell, in a game like this, simply doing what you need to in order to survive should count.

I've got my doubts too about this "something's working well? time to nerf it" idea, but I can't really complain about that.  It's not that I'm focused on increasing skills, it just seems patently unfair that all the activity in the world will do nothing to improve me at that activity if I happen to be damp at the time.

The morale system being a little poorly-implemented doesn't make it bad. Yeah, standing out in the rain affects morale more than it should (it probably only should affect it so much if it, say, makes you very very cold), and there's too much focus on drugs and not enough on other things that should affect morale (like, say, not getting into fights, being healthy, finding neat things, being successful at something, etc.), but that's not the kind of fundamental, systemic problem you seem to be talking about.

Basically, I think you're having trouble distinguishing between a system being conceptually flawed and a system that just needs some work.

[Whales]

Well, in the first sentence I meant character building as you meant it: skill increase.  Which isn't character building at all, but silly video gamey stats.

In the second sentence, I meant character definition as human storytelling means it: defining how others think of you, essentially.  Are you welcome in this town?  Are you seen as a philanthropist or a mercenary?  Do people really care about you, or do they keep you around because they want to use you?

RPG "character building" is boring to me, especially when you get to "build" your character after killing 15 monsters.

At any rate, I'm thinking about splitting morale into "morale" and "mood;" the former would change at a glacial pace, probably steadily decreasing, but also receive boosts from sleeping in a warm bed regularly, being in good health, achieving meaningful goals.  The latter would be more or less what morale is now; affected by things like being wet from the rain, eating gross food, etc.  Having either one positive would lead to skill increase.  Building able to read or craft would still be dependant on mood; that was my main intention with the getting-wet penalty (no reading til you dry off or whatever).

G-Flex makes some good points; the morale system is still young, really, particularly when I don't have the work of any other video games to learn from.  I think moving to a morale/mood system will improve these problems.  To be honest, I introduced the thing because I wanted a reason for players to abuse drugs   But it's grown beyond that, and I intend to expand it to fit.

[Aqizzar]

Well, in the first sentence I meant character building as you meant it: skill increase.  Which isn't character building at all, but silly video gamey stats.

In the second sentence, I meant character definition as human storytelling means it: defining how others think of you, essentially.  Are you welcome in this town?  Are you seen as a philanthropist or a mercenary?  Do people really care about you, or do they keep you around because they want to use you?

Ah, it's easy to forget that side of it without NPCs around.  Right now, skills and items are the only metric of a character's progression, both of which you said you wanted to avoid and downplay, which was confusing.  I was thinking about storytelling as a Man vs The Elements thing, in which what you can do is what defines you (since right now, The Elements is all you have to gauge yourself against).

I disagree anyway.  Being good at something is as much an aspect of character as how people think about you.  Especially in a setting like this, having useful skills is a prime source of respect.

[ChairmanPoo]

The problem is that some skills are too damn important not to care about them. For instance: food will spoil after a few days, and if you don't have a half-decent butchery skill, you won't get anything from most animal corpses (how about revamping this so that you get at least one meat item from each butchery?).

[TheBronzePickle]

Alternately, a book on butchery. Even increasing butchery to 1 has a drastic effect on meat gain.

[BishopX]

Well, in the first sentence I meant character building as you meant it: skill increase.  Which isn't character building at all, but silly video gamey stats.

In the second sentence, I meant character definition as human storytelling means it: defining how others think of you, essentially.  Are you welcome in this town?  Are you seen as a philanthropist or a mercenary?  Do people really care about you, or do they keep you around because they want to use you?

RPG "character building" is boring to me, especially when you get to "build" your character after killing 15 monsters.

At any rate, I'm thinking about splitting morale into "morale" and "mood;" the former would change at a glacial pace, probably steadily decreasing, but also receive boosts from sleeping in a warm bed regularly, being in good health, achieving meaningful goals.  The latter would be more or less what morale is now; affected by things like being wet from the rain, eating gross food, etc.  Having either one positive would lead to skill increase.  Building able to read or craft would still be dependant on mood; that was my main intention with the getting-wet penalty (no reading til you dry off or whatever).

G-Flex makes some good points; the morale system is still young, really, particularly when I don't have the work of any other video games to learn from.  I think moving to a morale/mood system will improve these problems.  To be honest, I introduced the thing because I wanted a reason for players to abuse drugs   But it's grown beyond that, and I intend to expand it to fit.

I would love a more detailed morale system which tracks long term things, mostly because it would make thriving (as opposed to just surviving) long term a decent challenge, especially if you try and do it without  human contact.

[Whales]

Another small bug-fixing update.
As usual, a clean build is required and old saves are incompatible.  Wait, old saves might be compatible actually.

Features:

• Madrawn's mod merged!  Auto-run mode means that run mode turns itself on (you can toggle auto-run with "), wild dogs that can be tamed with craftable dog food, craftable boody traps, C4, and a bionic that lets you see your scent and any monsters in your scent trail!
• Fungal spires spawn now!  They are highly difficult boss battles found at fungal blooms.  Killing one will cause the fungus population to die out at a rate of 20% per day--a half-life of around 3 days.
• Item wishing is much more user friendly.  Stuff displays properly, your selection is highlighted, and searching will let you scroll through multiple items.  For example, type /hammer to search for "hammer," then press > and < to cycle through jackhammer, hammer, sledge hammer, etc.
• New monster "wish" function.  Z6 to activate it.  It works the same as item wishing for the most part; pressing f will let you make the monster friendly if you want.  After making your selection, move the cursor to pick a location to place the monster (the screen blacks out for a second here--not important enough for me to fix it right now).  Spawn friendly ants and pit them against a horde of hostile zombies for a battle royale.

Tweaks:

• Hacking practices Computer skill a little more.
• MF_SHOCK flag removed.
• Fungal bed is now diggable; spores can implant there.

Bug Fixes:

• Molotovs now properly use an entire bottle of liquor, including the bottle it's contained in.

\

• No more crafting using items you're wearing.  This fixes crashes.
• Backspace works properly when adding notes to the overmap.
• Turrets can no longer follow you up/down stairs.

Code features:

• Making a craft component have a negative count forces it to instances of the item, not charges.  It also means that the component's container will be consumed along with the component.
• game::look_around(), the function called when the player hits ; or x, now returns a point.  If the player hits enter, the highlighted point will be return.  If the player hits spacebar escape or q, (-1, -1) is returned.

[ChairmanPoo]

Fungal spires spawn now!  They are highly difficult boss battles found at fungal blooms.  Killing one will cause the fungus population to die out at a rate of 20% per day--a half-life of around 3 days.

Hmmm... does this, in turn, give a practical use to nuclear silos? (aka: if I nuke fungal blooms, will the fungus die out as well?)

[Whales]

In theory, yes!  Hadn't thought of that but it should work.

Assuming that launching the nuke doesn't crash your game

[Aqizzar]

Welp, trying to board up a window reliably crashes my game.  I think it might have something to do with night falling as I'm working, but I honestly don't know.

[Whales]

It's a problem with construction that seemed to manifest itself in a Windows version.  Aposos is fixing it, it seems.