trimming out useless stuff -------------------------- there are some parts of brogue that I consider "misfeatures"-- basically things that the game could really do without. many of these features are also removed in other mods, or altered to be more useful. altering is a little more difficult, so this post will deal with stuff that can just be deleted entirely. what to delete potion of darkness: this potion temporarily limits the player's fov (field of vision) when quaffed, and when thrown darkens a small area, which limits the fov of both the player and other monsters in the area. in practical usage, darkened areas are really dangerous and have little advantage considering how the player can use potions like invisibility to more safely evade monsters. potion of hallucination: when quaffed, this makes the player hallucinate (ie see really wacky colors and ascii chars) for a long time. it doesn't have any other use; really it's just an annoyance when you first quaff-test it and there's no reason to use it after that. some mods have given it confusion/discord powers when thrown, but that's just a combination of other magical effects without any original mechanisms, so wasting time on that solution isn't personally worth it. wands: wands are like staves, but they often do more powerful types of magic and don't recharge over time. here's a quick rundown of why certain wands can be cut out: | teleportation: redundant since there's a scroll of teleportation | slowness: redundant since there's a potion of speed | beckoning: only useful for beckoning a monster into lava or into a hole, so rarely used | invisibility: why not give the potion of invisibility an effect when thrown? as a consequence of removing the less useful wands, the probability of each "good" wand spawning can be adjusted. I'm thinking to make the ally system a bigger part of the game, so domination, plenty, and empowerment should once again be made more common. some may say the ally system made brogue too easy, but I think it added flavor and nuance and should be balanced with more difficult monsters rather than toned down. removing potions *siiiiiiiiiiiiigh* open Globals.c and go to ~line 2447. there's a definition for a potion of hallucination (in another one of those tables, which I don't think I need to bother explaining after last post), which you can comment out. then, go to Rogue.h and comment out the enum value POTION_HALLUCINATION somewhere around line 724. after that, go to Items.c and comment out every instance of the value POTION_HALLUCINATION. then, apply the same process to the potion of darkness. removing wands the wand table in Globals.c is defined right underneath the potion table. apply the same procedure as before by commenting out entries for the wands of teleportation, slowness, beckoning, and invisibility. then, remove their declarations (which begin with WAND_) in Rogue.h. that's all. bonus challenge? the demonic chicken monster is fun, but also kind of silly. now that we're working on a serious mod (and not just a warm-up), try retracing the steps of the chicken tutorial and removing it from the mod.