Identify by use

[miyazaki]

Beware: heavily cursed weapons (of Morgul) can occur at any dungeon level, although they are very rare. No other ego item can be heavily cursed, and ego cursed bows are often more useful than the normal bow of the same type, once they have been enchanted up.

Indeed. I just had a promising ironman paladin wiped out by a rapier of morgul I found on dlvl 7. So much for that excellent feeling!

[PowerDiver]

I want to get this straight, as I will probably be including some form of ID-by-use in FAangband soon.

You should probably wait a while. There is no clean way to do it without assuming knowledge of the edit files. It is a question of which hacks you and your audience are willing to accept. The hacks I put into V are just a subset of what is obvious to me as a player, with at least one exception that you learn bodykeeping vs soulkeeping when str is sustained. The hacks are derived from the edit files and would be inappropriate with different egos or flavors.

Suppose you first learn a {blessed} weapon whose random ability is SI. If the next weapon lacks SI, surely it cannot be {blessed}? Just imagine coding to deal with that without implicit assumptions about the edit files.

Perhaps someone will come up with better hacks. I probably should have added "if it has a stealth bonus, learn the ego" but at the time that was too hackish even for me as an acknowledged zealot. I have since changed my mind.

Or you could just do it right, and assume the player knows the edit files.

I also discussed what I called "rune based" in rgra. Each object flag is a rune, and the player can see the runes on objects that are picked up. That's a radical change, but can be made consistent without reference to edit files. It kind of renders egos obsolete.

[Nick]

Suppose you first learn a {blessed} weapon whose random ability is SI. If the next weapon lacks SI, surely it cannot be {blessed}? Just imagine coding to deal with that without implicit assumptions about the edit files.

I'm not planning to remove ID completely; in particular the player will never learn an ego type unless a example has been ID'd at some point to set everseen to true.

Because of the code differences, I probably won't copy the V implementation, so I'm more concerned with getting straight how I want it to work at the moment. In particular, individual objects in FA now keep their flags etc with them, rather than having to appeal to object kind - which means that learning single properties of objects is a possibility.

[PowerDiver]

I'm not planning to remove ID completely; in particular the player will never learn an ego type unless a example has been ID'd at some point to set everseen to true.

Because of the code differences, I probably won't copy the V implementation, so I'm more concerned with getting straight how I want it to work at the moment. In particular, individual objects in FA now keep their flags etc with them, rather than having to appeal to object kind - which means that learning single properties of objects is a possibility.

You still have not addressed the issue that you ID a blessed weapon with SI and a *slay undead* also with SI. Unless you are presuming that the ID spell spits out edit file info, rather than object info, how do you model that the player can suddenly tell that SI is part of the definition of {*slay undead*}, but not part of the definition of {blessed}? If you can't model it, it is hard to code it.

I don't think there is much point in going half-way. Perhaps you should go with "learn any flag, notice the ego". The biggest difference is on weapons with a wis bonus and SI. There are a couple more ego separations you get for free, but overall I do not think it would be a big deal, assuming your ego list is similar to V.

[Nick]

You still have not addressed the issue that you ID a blessed weapon with SI and a *slay undead* also with SI. Unless you are presuming that the ID spell spits out edit file info, rather than object info, how do you model that the player can suddenly tell that SI is part of the definition of {*slay undead*}, but not part of the definition of {blessed}? If you can't model it, it is hard to code it.

Aha, I see - that is exactly what I am presuming, and in fact had not even thought of not presuming it. FA, like O, has descriptions when you ID ego items, like this one for (Blessed):

A priestly weapon that increases wisdom and bears a hidden power.

I think (in my admittedly undercaffeinated state) that given this, the plan I outlined before should work.

assuming your ego list is similar to V.

Actually, it's now (as of the still-about-to-be-released 1.0) significantly different, but I think the principle still holds.

[Pete Mack]

@Nick: I don't see much benefit for this. Making the changes you suggest will pretty much be limited to showing Free Action a little bit early for weapons, and rBlind for Hats of Seeing. That's a really minimal benefit.

[Nick]

@Nick: I don't see much benefit for this. Making the changes you suggest will pretty much be limited to showing Free Action a little bit early for weapons, and rBlind for Hats of Seeing. That's a really minimal benefit.

I'm seeing it largely as a housekeeping thing - if you have something that's obviously a Gondolin weapon, then it gets labelled as such. If that's what you meant - I wasn't quite sure

[Ghen]

Another way would be that they learn, regardless of whether it is correct or not. So in your boots example, a player who has seen Slow Descent but not Stability, and learns FF, would identify the boots as Slow Descent. Maybe this could be a tentative identification (like in UnAngband). Then when the player learns RNexus, the boots revert to unidentified ego.

Thats what I was thinking, having the pseudo-id or ID-by-use wrong sometimes based on the character's history and personal knowledge. Would make identify seem more real. I wonder how that would actually pan out across numerous games.

[PowerDiver]

I'm seeing it largely as a housekeeping thing - if you have something that's obviously a Gondolin weapon, then it gets labelled as such. If that's what you meant - I wasn't quite sure

Did you ever decide what to do for your variant?

There is also the question of how to fix V. Things that are obviously gondolin when you wield them do not currently get marked until you learn a slay.

In V, with the current egos, I think that the following is enough for me to personally figure out any ego, although it is possible I am overlooking something.

(1) learn an ego when you learn any slay or brand
(2) learn an ego when you learn any two flags that affect the player (e.g. not IGNORE_ACID)

The only time a single flag doesn't determine things that comes to mind is for the +int and +str *SLAY egos, and you get the +str differentiated as soon as you have a chance to notice regen. Why not just say "learn any flag, notice the ego", the way that learning any effect learns awareness of a flavor?

When I coded the current scheme, I was worried about learning FF on boots or seeing blessed with SI on a weapon, but given the current V paradigm that when you have learned all flags you get the ego, those cases are already covered so there is no point worrying about them.

[Nick]

Did you ever decide what to do for your variant?

I'm planning to have ID-by-use in some form in 1.1. I'll probably base it on the V system, but there are complications because there's a lot more randomness of egos in FA.

In V, with the current egos, I think that the following is enough for me to personally figure out any ego, although it is possible I am overlooking something.

(1) learn an ego when you learn any slay or brand
(2) learn an ego when you learn any two flags that affect the player (e.g. not IGNORE_ACID)

This sounds reasonable to me.

[PowerDiver]

The only time a single flag doesn't determine things that comes to mind is for the +int and +str *SLAY egos,

For those keeping track, there is one more ambiguous ego situation. Hats with an int bonus could be either intelligence or magi.

[Pete Mack]

For those keeping track, there is one more ambiguous ego situation. Hats with an int bonus could be either intelligence or magi.

Crowns with an int bonus could be either one. Ordinary hats, no. Anyway, Magi is pretty obvious, between the ability and RBase.

[PowerDiver]

Anyway, Magi is pretty obvious, between the ability and RBase.

It's not obvious until you learn the second flag. Most egos are obvious after a single flag.

The question is whether to require learning 2 flags to notice an ego, which is annoying for wisdom or beauty or elvenkind, or to allow noticing with a single flag which e.g. gives away int vs magi on wield.

[Maupin]

Identify by use isn't really my style of play, since I've been conditioned since Moria not to wield anything I haven't spent an identify scroll on... and I don't play Ironman. However I just noticed that the following "hint" messages seem to be out of order when changing weapons:

You were wielding The Lucern Hammer 'Turmil' (2d5) (+10,+6) [+8] (+4) (s).
It coats itself in ice!
It glows!
You are wielding a Rapier (1d6) {special} (a).
You do not feel comfortable with your weapon.

"It" above appears to be referring to the former weapon, not the one just wielded. I think these hints should appear after the "You are wielding" message.

[Ghen]

Identify by use isn't really my style of play, since I've been conditioned since Moria not to wield anything I haven't spent an identify scroll on.

Try it, you'll like it Just keep some remove curse scrolls handy. It's certainly not as big a deal as before and fun to watch items get slowly identified when you hit different monsters.