Picking up monsters

[miki151]

What I like about roguelikes is that they allow non standard behavior, like wielding potions or corpses. I was thinking about taking it a step further and allowing to treat live monsters as items.

Some examples:
- pick up a puppy you need to rescue and carry it
- pick up and throw an enemy against a wall or into a river, provided you have the strength or size advantage
- eat a live monster
- use a spell turn someone's weapon into a snake
- carry an unconscious enemy to lock it somewhere

I was wondering if something like this has been already done by someone. Also, implementation wise, is it enough to represent picked up monsters using a special item class. I think trying to represent items and monsters with the same class hierarchy would be a disaster, maybe someone has thoughts on this.

[wire_hall_medic]

I've had both Actors and Items extend ScreenObject, and they're not too dissimilar (conceptually, an actor is just an animated item).

If you're looking for maximum usability, I'd probably just have have actors extend items.  Anywhere where the actors would be treated differently (like taking damage), just override the item method.

Of course, actors being carried should be able to attack the thing carrying them . . .

And I'm picturing one of your players gleefully explaining to his friend that he was barely able to defeat the giant who had picked him up, before the giant was able to smash him to death against the floor.

[Krice]

Teemu allows you to pick up some monsters and use them as weapons, or throw them and they return to the action. I think the current version (release or development, don't remember) has it disabled, but thinking to add 'em later. They were transformed to items when picked up, so they weren't like doing anything in backpack, but it could also be possible. I just don't see any advantage picking up a squirrel that eats your food rations... unless using it as a weapon.

[miki151]

In my game I try not to discriminate monsters i.e. they can perform any action that the player can. So as a player you would be picked up by a monster at some point, and would need to be able to act while in his hands or backpack (I try to not go into too much detail here .

Having actor derive from item is an interesting idea, I'll have to think about it. There is also the problem of visualizing it, but I guess it could be done similarly to riding steed in nethack.

I have to decide if it's really a useful feature, and not just a bell and whistle.

[King Ink]

I did this on accident my class for creatures Dude was derived from my class Thing.
I was experimenting with "Dude"s being able to occupy the same patch then pow the started picking each other up.
 

[AgingMinotaur]

In my old Squirm, there was a quest which required you to catch a runaway pancake, which could be picked up. The code had Critters and Items as subclasses of the same mother class Being, so it wasn't too hard to code. If I recall correctly, I just put an "actor" flag on the pancake, while making sure it lived on the same layer of the dungeon floor as regular items, whereupon it started speeding around. Once in your inventory, it just sat still, but it shouldn't be too difficult to implement a system where stuff acts from within the inventory. Designing the system should prove more difficult, but it could be used for stuff like the Philosopher's stone (turns your other inventory to gold), uranium (slowly poisons the carrier), or leak bottles (ruins scrolls). Allowing for stuff other than actual critters to act can even be used for dungeon features that should have some sort of effect – altars boost morale of nearby followers, lava pits occasionally splash magma, that sort of thing.

And actually picking up other critters does certainly rule. Maybe Dungeonjacks has something like this – it's based on the board game Blood Bowl, where big monsters are allowed to pick up and throw smaller monsters.

As always,
Minotauros

[guest509]

What was that 7DRL where everything was derived of one class. So you could, like, wear a sword and throw a scroll and what not? Well of Enchantment? That can't be it...

[King Ink]

What was that 7DRL where everything was derived of one class. So you could, like, wear a sword and throw a scroll and what not? Well of Enchantment? That can't be it...

I am playing with the idea of letting folks wear what ever they want but wearing a sword as a hat may cause your hat to fall off all the time.