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
- Balance
- Sense of time
- Food
- Q&A, Testing, Documenting, Planning
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").