Re: [Crawl-ref-discuss] Casting flow

[David P. <pl...@mi...>]

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009, William Tanksley, Jr wrote:

> How about this: 'z' means "cast spell interactively", and 'Z' means
> 'cast spell non-interactively'. We can engineer them for the two very
> different use cases -- 'z' will work best for humans, providing
> feedback and defaulting to the quick common case; 'Z' will work best
> with macros, assuming nothing.

This is the idea but, as usual, there will be humans who pick the robotic 
approach. Ask Mr Shaligram :)

> For now, the two can mean exactly what you've said, including the
> error message afterwards.
>
> Of course... Having done some UI design, I'm aware that sometimes the
> best human design works well with macros. It would be nice if whatever
> we pick worked well with all autopilots, whether human or machine.

Yes, one should strive to embrace as many approaches to the interface as 
possible.

> I just hate walking my Omega character into lava because I happened to
> be walking northwest at the time.

In Crawl, we have made it so that such a move is considered as 
not-happened. There is really no reason to punish players for stupid typos 
(they blunder enough anyway) and going into extra paranoia mode because 
lava or water is near seems like ... an ancient idea of fun.

David