Things which are hard to code

Compilation by Kornel Kisielewicz of the thead on rgrd

Things which are harder to code than one might initially think

Antoine

• Invisibility
• Polymorph-self
• Charm monster
• Stacking objects
• Friendly NPCs in the dungeon

The Sheep

• Selling items
• Timed events
• Animation
• Persistent levels
• Monsters moving between levels
• Monsters with FOV
• Pets
• Random artifacts
• Random monster races
• Doors with keys
• Throwing items
• Monster inventory
• Running

Kornel Kisielewicz

• Random Quests
• Random Plot
• Random Overworld
• Adding content
• Balancing
• Polishing

Stu George

• Balance
• Sense of time
• Food
• Q&A, Testing, Documenting, Planning
• Water (infinitely divisible)
• Fire (I want to burn everything!)
• Mixing liquids
• Economy

konjin

• Stealth

Ray Dillinger

• Rope

Michal Bielinski

• Inter-monster fights

Stoolmaker

[Not part of Kornel's kompilation.] I think it depends on the whole framework of code. In my world, for instance, making critters invisible is a rather simple task because of how I've implemented Line of Sight. Making them dead is harder :) That said: I find that balancing everything is a delicate task. Randomizing quests, equipments, races etc. is also an interesting challenge. Regarding these, however, I think its possible to find some short cuts just by writing imaginative pieces of sentences/elements and combining them in unpredictably large structures (needn't be so huge). For example: put n kinds of "wandlikes" in a list (wands, lamps, bottles (uncork to release effect) etc.), have n kinds of "range models" (cones, rays, single adjacent/far points, zones (eg. fireball), clouds which start to drift and finally dissolve...), and n kinds of effects (elemental damage, teleport etc.). Already you'll have weird objects popping up: from the presumably predictable ("copper wand: ray of ice"), by means of the useful ("painted calabash: cloud of panic") and all the way to the outright silly ("ugly conjurers hat: rain of polymorph").