Allow assignment to multiple glyphs at once.

All glyph assignment declarations in maps (e.g. COLOUR, KPROP, FTILE)
can now assign multiple glyphs simultaneously.  This should make some
vault definitions less cumbersome.  See the doc for more details.

1 files changed, 38 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/crawl-ref/docs/develop/level_design.txt b/crawl-ref/docs/develop/level_design.txt
index 2a8889c193..f0e9f73eae 100644
--- a/crawl-ref/docs/develop/level_design.txt
+++ b/crawl-ref/docs/develop/level_design.txt
@@ -753,11 +753,8 @@ FTILE:    . = floor_grass:20 / floor_dirt / none
           underneath it will be the tile that was specified.
 
           If a feature that normally covers the floor (e.g. rock walls) is
-          destroyed, this floor tile will be used in place of the normal floor.
-          Thus, it can be useful even for non-floor features.
-
-          For convenience, multiple glyphs can be specified together as a
-          group, e.g. ".[{( = floor_orc".
+          destroyed, this floor tile will be used in place of the normal
+          floor. Thus, it can be useful even for non-floor features.
 
           Like COLOUR, this should be used sparingly.
 
@@ -1009,6 +1006,9 @@ MARKER:   A = feat:<feature_name> or lua:<marker_expr>
           SHUFFLE: Oa/|c
           MARKER: O = lua:<expr>
 
+Handling long lines
+-------------------
+
 For most map headers, you can split long lines by ending the line that will be
 continued on the next line with \ as:
 
@@ -1040,6 +1040,39 @@ ITEM: potion of\
 
 Crawl will see "potion ofhealing", not "potion of healing".
 
+Assigning multiple glyphs at once
+---------------------------------
+
+Declarations that modify glyphs allow multiple glyphs to be assigned
+simultaneously as a convenience.  For example, the following declaration will
+assign floor_orc as the tile to be used for all up stair cases and floor:
+
+    FTILE: .[{( = floor_orc
+
+This case is identical to the longer syntax:
+
+    FTILE: . = floor_orc
+    FTILE: [ = floor_orc
+    FTILE: { = floor_orc
+    FTILE: ( = floor_orc
+
+Using : instead of = while assigning glyphs will assign the same value to all
+glyphs.  In the following example, the glyphs A, B, and C will either all
+contain gold or all contain nothing:
+
+    KITEM: ABC : gold / nothing
+
+Note: The number of items assigned in an NSUBST expression applies to the
+entire group of glyphs being assigned.  For example:
+
+    # Among all A, B, and C glyphs, make one a floor and the rest walls.
+    NSUBST: ABC = 1:. / *:x
+
+    # Make one A glyph floor, one B glyph floor, and one C glyph floor.
+    # Make the rest of the A, B, and C glyphs walls.
+    NSUBST: A = 1:. / *:x
+    NSUBST: B = 1:. / *:x
+    NSUBST: C = 1:. / *:x
 
 E.    Conditionalising levels
 =============================