So what else should we revert?

[nppangband]

I'm certainly willing to help write the actual text. I just don't feel comfortable working with the UI interface.

Most everything is written in the help files. It just needs some code to extract it and print it in a sub-window. If you look at the actual help files, there is a header before each subject that is not displayed on-screen. This is why, if you are in the options menu, click on help with a certain option highlighted, it will look in the help file and printing on-screen the remainder of the text file after where the option explanation starts.

So all that is needed is a function that will 1) automatically print portions of specfied help files in a sub window when certain events happen in a game, such as when the player switches race/class in the birth menu. 2) stop printing when it reaches a new header (currently it just prints the rest of the file).

I am sure the whole thing is mostly a cut and paste job of currently existing code, with a dozen or so new lines thrown in, and then make it an event in game-event.c. It would probably only take a couple hours to have it fully playtested. But like somebody else stated previously, there is always some other little project that I am more excited about starting that has kept me from doing this.

[nppangband]

I was definitely in the same camp when I first heard about ID-by-use, but thinking about it, what did outright bad items add to the game? Past 400' or so you'll be IDing everything before using it anyway, so it just slowed down the very early game. Bad items just mean that either you don't use un-ID'd stuff and have to return to town sooner (to sell all the new flavors you found), or use un-ID'd stuff and accept an early penalty to stats / cursed equipment. Which, if they make a serious difference, just mean going back to town for Remove Curse, which is not exactly expensive.

I tried to think of a reason to keep the bad items beyond just flavor, and I couldn't manage it. And I don't think the bad items added enough flavor to be worth keeping, compared to the increased fluidity of gameplay without them.

It probably isn't too big of a deal, but the grumpy old man in me has a question:

1) So, what, exactly, is the downside of playing a warrior any more? It used to be lack of ID and spells, but there are so many rods, staves, and wands available through rod/wand stacking (not complaining, after all, I was the one who did the patch that took this feature from Oangband). It used to be that one of the big advantages of playing a mage was early ID, and all the other classes had to wait for a steady source of ID, for some reason or another. Has the game been re-balanced for this change. I have always wanted to see the classes more distinct, with varying strengths and weaknesses that lasted throughout the whole game. This seems to be a step in the opposite direction.

[Magnate]

Ok, I'll have time this weekend, so I'll get working on it ASAP. Any area specifically to start with?

Nope - everything in lib/help/ needs updating. Entirely up to you what's most interesting.

I would start with just updating the text in the existing sections. Jeff's suggestion of adding a game event for context help can come later.

[Magnate]

It probably isn't too big of a deal, but the grumpy old man in me has a question:

1) So, what, exactly, is the downside of playing a warrior any more? It used to be lack of ID and spells, but there are so many rods, staves, and wands available through rod/wand stacking (not complaining, after all, I was the one who did the patch that took this feature from Oangband). It used to be that one of the big advantages of playing a mage was early ID, and all the other classes had to wait for a steady source of ID, for some reason or another. Has the game been re-balanced for this change. I have always wanted to see the classes more distinct, with varying strengths and weaknesses that lasted throughout the whole game. This seems to be a step in the opposite direction.

I would say there are still significant downsides to playing warriors. Staves of detect evil are heavy and don't detect non-evil critters. Rods of detection are deep and rare. Everything the other classes can do with spells you have to do with consumables or devices (until you start finding activatable items), and you still only have 23 inv slots.

I don't think ID-by-use has given warriors (who always had strong fast pseudo) much more than it's given any other class.

[ewert]

Actually has id been a problem for godknowshowlong? I've been playing more actively since '04 or '05 don't remember, but for the life of me I can't remember id being anything more than a nuisance like, forever ...

Nuisance as in a small cash drain, and in some rare cases a reason to rest a LOT for pseudo to kick in and pick the next armor/weapon up, sometimes leaving non-rare consumables/books behind to bring up un'id interesting stuff, etc. But honestly, mostly just an annoying nuisance ...

If I knew how, I'd patch my game to give mass identify with all id effects at class level 35 to all chars... By that point it's definitely nothing more than a nuisance.

[PowerDiver]

It probably isn't too big of a deal, but the grumpy old man in me has a question:

1) So, what, exactly, is the downside of playing a warrior any more? It used to be lack of ID and spells, but there are so many rods, staves, and wands available through rod/wand stacking (not complaining, after all, I was the one who did the patch that took this feature from Oangband). It used to be that one of the big advantages of playing a mage was early ID, and all the other classes had to wait for a steady source of ID, for some reason or another. Has the game been re-balanced for this change. I have always wanted to see the classes more distinct, with varying strengths and weaknesses that lasted throughout the whole game. This seems to be a step in the opposite direction.

There's always been unlimited ID. It's just a matter of how many often you return to town. That is, so long as the average good weapon sells for more than twice the cost of to buy an ID scroll, which has been the case as long as I have played. The difference for now vs then is mostly about tedium and not about capabilities.

This is a game of slot management. Every spellbook that contains 2 useful utility spells saves a slot compared to warriors. Shockingly, some books have even more than 2 useful spells in them! There may be potions of resist fire and resist cold, but my warriors cannot carry them because their packs are stuffed full of devices, so another difference is that warriors do not get double resists and the other classes do.

The difference between a 0% fail spell and a rod [say of teleport other] is also huge. Failure rates for warriors with magical devices have increased recently. There is also talk of giving mages better effects than warriors from the same devices, but that is still just talk and no specific plans.

BTW - did you see http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3090? I think that was before your recent upturn in activity here. I made some suggestions to try to make priests and mages more distinct. It did not receive the support I hoped for. People say that they want distinctions, but they don't seem to want to give up any powers from their favorite classes.

[Derakon]

There have been suggestions made to give each character steadily-improving inherent ID abilities, starting with existing pseudo-ID, moving to instant pseudo-ID, and eventually instant ID of every equipment item. Nobody's actually taken any steps along that road that I'm aware of (beyond the general increase in pseudo speed that came alongside ID-by-use).

nppangband: oh, warriors still have trouble. They come roaring out of the gate thanks to their massive hitpoint pools and melee prowess, but in the midgame they suffer massively from their lack of utility abilities. Other classes dedicate only two inventory slots to detection (generally speaking, the first spellbook and then a dungeon spellbook have all the detection/knowledge spells they need), they can use those abilities as fast as they can cast so long as they have mana, and the items in those slots can be bought in town. Warriors must dedicate a single slot to each detection effect they want to achieve, the useful detection abilities are only available in the dungeon, most rods recharge more slowly than you want to use them, and several of the more fundamental rods are vulnerable to electrical damage. If other classes suffer badly from inventory fill, then warriors have it even worse.

[nppangband]

I would say there are still significant downsides to playing warriors. Staves of detect evil are heavy and don't detect non-evil critters. Rods of detection are deep and rare. Everything the other classes can do with spells you have to do with consumables or devices (until you start finding activatable items), and you still only have 23 inv slots.

I don't think ID-by-use has given warriors (who always had strong fast pseudo) much more than it's given any other class.

Thanks. I should mention at this point in the thread I went OT and did not say so. I am not questioning vanilla's decision for the new artifact list to put in id-by-use, but rather I am trying to decide if I should incorporate those changes in NPP, and if so, to what degree.

[TJS]

I personally like the way the game is going and I think that most of the changes have been for the better. The new randarts and ID-by-use both being excellent additions.

The problem is with a game as old as Angband is that some people tend to want to resist change no matter what it is. There's a lot of talk of the game being more exciting 20 years ago, but I used to think that about my old Spectrum games until I actually went back and played them.

[EpicMan]

But the old Angband is not gone, the older versions are still up for downloads. DND 2, 3, and 4 are all "Dungeons and Dragons" but very different games. Vanilla versions are nowhere near as different as the DND versions, but different versions of the game are going to be different.

Although with all of the changes Tak and the guys have made / are making I think the next big release of Angband should be 4.0, not 3.X.

[Magnate]

The difference between a 0% fail spell and a rod [say of teleport other] is also huge. Failure rates for warriors with magical devices have increased recently. There is also talk of giving mages better effects than warriors from the same devices, but that is still just talk and no specific plans.

I'm afraid not. The code already contains a boost to effect damage from device skill. I can't remember the details, but it went in in 3.1.1 some time.

[TJS]

I'm afraid not. The code already contains a boost to effect damage from device skill. I can't remember the details, but it went in in 3.1.1 some time.

Sounds interesting. So what changes are currently happening in the game? Also who is coding them all up? I quite like the idea of a new release appearing with loads of new stuff that we've not heard about.

[miyazaki]

I personally like the way the game is going and I think that most of the changes have been for the better. The new randarts and ID-by-use both being excellent additions.

The problem is with a game as old as Angband is that some people tend to want to resist change no matter what it is. There's a lot of talk of the game being more exciting 20 years ago, but I used to think that about my old Spectrum games until I actually went back and played them.

I'd like to toss out that I have been playing since the days of Moria and I really like playing the game now in a time of rapid change. I love that I can download and play a game that is considerably different than yesterday. Although I don't always agree with every change I appreciate that the devs with the power to change the game listen to the opinions here. I think y'all are doing a great job!

[TJS]

I'd like to toss out that I have been playing since the days of Moria and I really like playing the game now in a time of rapid change. I love that I can download and play a game that is considerably different than yesterday. Although I don't always agree with every change I appreciate that the devs with the power to change the game listen to the opinions here. I think y'all are doing a great job!

Moria is that all? I've been playing since the original Oria dog-knows days. The game was more exciting then because you could only look at your inventory once a day (real-time), which meant that you were much more careful about which objects to pick up since any overflow deleted the first item in your inventory.

[Magnate]

Sounds interesting. So what changes are currently happening in the game? Also who is coding them all up? I quite like the idea of a new release appearing with loads of new stuff that we've not heard about.

The three most active committers for 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 were me, d_m and MarbleDice (though all three of us committed numerous patches from others in addition to our own work). Having led most of the work on 3.0.7/8/9 and 3.1.0 personally, Takkaria has not personally committed as many changes during this period - but he has had numerous discussions with all three of us via IRC and mailing list, so please be in no doubt that he is aware of what's going on and has pre-approved any major changes. For example, I discussed with him a year or so ago my plans to rework base AC values to make heavy body armours more viable choices. But we didn't specifically discuss Derakon's patch for changes to inventory damage - this is the kind of thing that's small enough to go in for testing straight away.

The bottom line is that Takkaria has always seen 3.1.x as a beta series of releases (which is why 3.0.9b is still shown as the "stable" version on rephial), which means that all changes are for testing purposes and we accept that he can revise or revert any of them if he doesn't agree with our implementation. So purple uniques will become a display option which defaults to off (I am intending to implement this as soon as Timo sends me his re-coloured monster.txt file), and hound rarities might get tweaked back down again - apparently some people can't get enough hounds.

Takk has also always been keen that we listen and respond to feedback here, so I presume he'll be happy about the large amount of recent debate. The last time he expressed views on the significant proposals he said he wanted to look at archery, curses and shopping ... but I have no idea what he thinks of the proposals for new monsters, or changed spell lists, or fewer dungeon levels. I am pretty sure he isn't about to implement persistent levels though.

Having said all that, there isn't any kind of hidden agenda about what's being committed. You can follow everything at http://trac.rephial.org/timeline, and see over 300 open tickets remaining to be worked on (which vary hugely in size and complexity). 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 both had fairly detailed change logs, so although the damage boost from device skill might have slipped through the net, not much else did. You can see the changes file for 3.1.3 at http://trac.rephial.org/browser/trunk/changes.txt.

So this means there shouldn't be any surprises about what's changed in the next release - sorry!