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authorzelgadis <zelgadis@c06c8d41-db1a-0410-9941-cceddc491573>2009-01-09 05:00:22 +0000
committerzelgadis <zelgadis@c06c8d41-db1a-0410-9941-cceddc491573>2009-01-09 05:00:22 +0000
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downloadcrawl-ref-8767119a72d6885ab40380e77c2224a4c16896c1.tar.gz
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First draft of documation for the arena.
git-svn-id: https://crawl-ref.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crawl-ref/trunk@8350 c06c8d41-db1a-0410-9941-cceddc491573
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+The crawl arena is a special mode during which the player is absent and
+monsters fight each other, useful for both testing/debugging and for
+entertainment. It can be invoked on the command line like this:
+
+ crawl -arena "kobold v goblin"
+
+Which will cause one kobold to fight one goblin, with crawl shutting down once
+one of them has won. To make them fight for three rounds you can do:
+
+ crawl -arena "t:3 kobold v goblin"
+
+You can make monsters fight for at most 99 rounds. You can stop the
+arena simulation early by pressing Escape, 'q' or Control-G (though if
+the arena has lots of monsters it might take a few second before it
+stops).
+
+You can also give each side more than one monster. For example:
+
+ crawl -arena "rat, giant cockroach v kobold, goblin"
+
+will give team A a rat and a cockroach and team B a kobold and a goblin; a
+victory is declared when all of one team is dead and at lest one member of the
+other team is still alive.
+
+You can also make multiple of a single type of monster (note that the singular
+form of the names are still used):
+
+ crawl -arena "2 kobold v 3 goblin:
+ crawl -arena "2 rat, 3 giant cockroach v 4 kobold, 5 goblin"
+
+You can even have multiple instances of uniques:
+
+ crawl -arena "10 Murray v 11 Boris"
+
+Additionally, you can specify the monsters by a place in the dungeon, in
+which case a random monster appropriate for that place will be chosen.
+For example:
+
+ crawl -arena "2 Lair:10 v 3 Vault:7"
+
+will choose two random monsters from the 10th level of the Lair and pit them
+against three random monsters from the 7th level of the Vaults.
+
+If you want endless hordes of monsters to kill each other forever you can
+use the test spawner, an unkillable monster which does nothing but sit there
+and summon monsters with the Shadow Creatures spell:
+
+ crawl -arena "test spawner v test spawner"
+
+ Options and parameters
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+There are three arena parameters that you can set in your crawl options file:
+
+* arena_delay: The delay in milliseconds between turns within the arena.
+ Can be set to 0 to make the simulation zip along.
+
+* arena_dump_msgs: If set to true causes messages to be dumped to the file
+ arena.result
+
+* arena_dump_msgs_all: If both this and arena_dump_msgs are set to true
+ then diagnostic messages will be dumped as well as other messages.
+
+The are also a number a parameters you can use by putting them in the
+string which specifies the monsters:
+
+ crawl -arena "parameter1 parameter2 parameter3 goblin v kobold"
+
+The parameters include:
+
+* "arena:name" lets you pick the name of the arena to place the monsters
+ in (defaults to "arena:default"). See source/dat/arena.des for
+ a list.
+
+* no_force_ai: The monsters in the arena are somewhat smatter than they are
+ than when they're facing the player. This parameter removes that
+ extra intelligence.
+
+* names: Causes all non-unique monsters to be given random names.
+
+* no_animate: Prevents corpses from being animated into zombies.
+
+* no_summons: Prevents monsters from summoning more monsters.
+
+* no_chain_summons: Allows the original monsters to summon more monsters,
+ but the *summoned* monsters can't themselves summon any more.
+
+* no_immobile: Prevents immobile monsters from being randomly generated.
+
+* allow_zero_xp: Allows zero xp monsters like plants to be randomly generated,
+ which are forbidden from the arena by default.
+
+* "arena_place:place" sets the place used when determining which monsters the
+ spell Shadow Creatures uses. So "arena:Lair:5" would make it
+ summon the types of monsters you'd find on the 5th lair of the Lair.
+ (This defaults to the 20th level of the main dungeon).
+
+* real_summons: Summoned monsters are made real as soon as they're placed in
+ the arena, so they can drop corpses and equipment (no_chain_summons
+ still prevents them from summoning more monsters, though).
+
+* move_summons: Moves summoned monsters to a new, random location as soon
+ as they're placed, so they don't end up clustered around the
+ summoner.
+
+* "summon_throttle:N" prevents summoned monsters from being placed if the
+ summoner has N or more allies present.
+
+* cycle_random: If any monster summons monsters with the spell Shadow
+ Creatures spell (including test spawners) then arena cycles through
+ the list of valid monsters, rather than taking rarity into account.
+
+* random_uniques: Any monster using Shadow Creatures will summon uniques.
+
+* "ban_gylphs:ABC" prevents monsters with the listed ASCII glyphs from
+ being placed in the arena. For instance, "ban_glyphs:&C" prevents
+ demon lords and giants/cyclopses/titans/etc from being placed.
+
+* "delay:N" allows the delay between turns to be specified on the command
+ line instead of in the options file.