Modded object file rarities for many items - anyone else want to test?

[ewert]

Final edit hopefully for now, #9:
Went through file again. Changed some min levels, some rarities. The top 3 weapons were cut in half (the changed file meant they were appearing quite a lot with current item generation system). Lotsa other minor changes. Mainly same as before. Consider this the final test version from me. File updated here. For you coders, sorry this is edited in Windows shiteditors so CR/LF things are fuxored. =P Doesn't cause errors in Windows systems atleast though.


edit8zillion:
Left older edits in quoted. Now have done a version that has many items have a max level, and in general allocation changes across the board. Will be playtesting it myself, anyone other feel free to test too. Myself am going on a vacation trip though, so won't be posting much after a few days, but will take my computer with me to play when idle time appears.

edit3: (snip)
edit4: Okay reformatted to use | as divisor of alloc info, could work now. Testing myself atm.
edit5: And it does not seem to work with the | either. So, until fixed, this feature is seems to be bugged.
edit6: And now I found a wand of polymorph, which would mean the | works! But how the heck am I getting so little healing potions? Is it the good_great_forcing stuff?
edit7thousand: Okays I figured out that it was the chest item generation that allows low lvl items to be generated, NOT that the | format works correctly. So, no dice, it is not working. At the moment can not define multiple rarity depth combinations. I guess I'll make a different version that just has armor/weapon rarity cut to pieces, because good/great drops force those to happen anyways ...

Okay I went through the object.txt file, modified lots of item level/rarity allocations, modded stat gain potions and gain/lose potions so that they give +2 or +2/-1, etc., in essence trying to find out how much the consumables/statgain problem could be lessened with just "end-user" item rarity balancing.

I'm gonna try to playtest it now, anyone else want to? Here's the file.

edit:
New version, this time broadsided weapons/armor most items with 20% rarity drop except the deep items. Also added ammo rarity to deep levels to remain about same as before, just more of the high kind ammo available relative to normal ammo.

edit2:
Weapons/armor further reduced.

[Timo Pietilä]

Okay I went through the object.txt file, modified lots of item level/rarity allocations, modded stat gain potions and gain/lose potions so that they give +2 or +2/-1, etc., in essence trying to find out how much the consumables/statgain problem could be lessened with just "end-user" item rarity balancing.

I'm gonna try to playtest it now, anyone else want to? Here's the file.

Some thoughts:

Infravision amulet is actually useful, please don't make it more rare.
You made ammo more rare, why?
Boldness has two lines for rarity, but effectively without effect.

Weapons and armor are mostly junk. To solve part of the TMJ problem make all of them a bit more rare, lets say 10% more rare (90 instead of 100). This increases ratio of consumables+jewelry/junk quite a bit.

[ewert]

I don't know the exact code as I didn't check it yet, for generation that is. I went on with the assumption that it works similar to some pen and paper games DM manual charts, that it first picks a type then subtype etc. Hence whole of weapon/armor were left untouched, and why normal ammo was made rarer. I guess this assumption is not how it works in Angband.

Infravision was only deraritized in deeper levels, I know it is useful. Most changes were like that, dropping the rarity at deeper lvls, but keeping original rarity intact (except mushrooms got more rarity, they are too rare imho). Boldness was unmodded yep fixed that.

Also since I did not know how the object generation works with "good" and "great" items, so I left armor/weapons be, as artifacts can be any type. IF it works that an item is generated from the whole list based on the rarity, then I will mod all weapons/armor downwards beyong certain levels.

I guess I will need to see the item generation code itself.

[ewert]

Made some more changes.

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't know the exact code as I didn't check it yet, for generation that is. I went on with the assumption that it works similar to some pen and paper games DM manual charts, that it first picks a type then subtype etc. Hence whole of weapon/armor were left untouched, and why normal ammo was made rarer. I guess this assumption is not how it works in Angband.

Well, right and wrong. You can think that anything in object.txt is the base type and ego-item.txt and artifact.txt would then be a sub-type.

Infravision was only deraritized in deeper levels, I know it is useful..

That case your deeper level is just not deep enough. That 2500' is the exact place where you need it most (not yet ESP, but already in hound-territory). Make that 3500' then it is OK.

[ewert]

I guess I thought more in line of having found a good one prior to dropping under 2500 ... But will up it till the ego amulet range, 3500' it is.

Man, I think I'll downgrade basic weapons/armor some more... I've tried to statgain at 40-41, no potions at all... I've seen exactly one (wis statswap pot) and that was while dropping down.

[ewert]

Okay, a further drop, now base weapons/armor are at 60% of previous. That's 40% less armor/weapons should be dropping (not ammo though) straight up. Clvl 30 almost and no stat gain potions (mostly gained lvls post dlvl30) ... funky.

[ewert]

Mind you, at 80% I was still totally getting swamped in weapons. Never thought it was THIS bad this TMJ problem, thank god for squelches. =P

[Derakon]

If you think TMJ is a problem in Angband, go play ToME for a bit -- or heck, play an earlier version of Vanilla. Great wyrms guaranteed to drop 16 "good" useless items...

[Timo Pietilä]

If you think TMJ is a problem in Angband, go play ToME for a bit -- or heck, play an earlier version of Vanilla. Great wyrms guaranteed to drop 16 "good" useless items...

Go far enough backward and that TMJ problem goes away though. Item stacking made a huge difference in drop sizes. Kill that GW in corridor and get maybe five items. Kill another in same location and get nothing.

Before that floor items were your main source of decent items and vaults were more than exciting because quality of the items compared to monster drops were so much greater.

[ewert]

Well I have played roguelikes since, err, Rogue and Hack, which included Moria and earlier Angband versions too, but I think I so rarely got into deep levels before. Definitely remember when was getting to my first winners in V, that there was insane amounts of stuff on the floor after clearing pits. =P Whereas now it is nearly every character that gets to 95+ (I sometimes just delete chars when I feel bored ...) but with squelch it just doesn't look that bad as so many things are squelched away I guess.

I'll give this 60% reduce version a whirl now. Freaking doing stat gain for hours and NO stat gains, lol.

[ewert]

Okay I think I broke something trying to make the potions do the same effect twice just adding two E: lines? I'm just not seeing any stat gain potions at all ... I mean I am diving like nuts and even vaults have no un-id'd potions in them ... They are not squelched either.

[ewert]

Okay dropped from town to +- stat potion levels, they drop. So adding two effects in the object file does not work. If they are different, the later effect is the one that will happen. If they are identical it seems it breaks them and the potions just do not appear at all...

Or something is broken in using two rarity lines in the file, could be that aswell.

[ewert]

Actually, the lack of the items might mean that any double line in object.txt works that only the latter line is taken into account ... I think I read somewhere that it was supposed to work so that you could add two lines for "rarity" and it would work.

Apparently it does not. It would explain all these problems I'm having.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

It does say that it should support 2 such lines. A quick note, tho...I expect it was a typo, but allocation is the A: line.

I can confirm what ewert noted; it doesn't work right. What I did: modify the A lines for rounded pebbles and iron shots, first to this:

N:110:& Rounded Pebble~
A:100:0 to 10
A:10:11 to 100

N:111:& Iron Shot~
A:100:0 to 100

Then, I gave every town monster DROP_4 and ONLY_ITEM, so I had a rather rich source of drops, and given that not many things *can* drop in town, I'd get a fair number of pebbles/shots.

So go off and kill a few townies. With the lines as above, 9 sets of iron shots, NO pebbles.

OK, test 2:

N:110:& Rounded Pebble~
A:100:0 to 10

N:111:& Iron Shot~
A:100:0 to 100

So now things should be pretty much even. Yep...7 pebbles, 5 shots.