autoinscribe at item creation

[PowerDiver]

There are a couple of bugs with autoinscriptions, but instead of fixing them piecemeal I think it makes more sense to change the dynamic.

Currently, autoinscribing is considered something the character does to items in its possession. That kind of makes sense, but I see it differently. To me, autoinscriptions are simply part of the UI system.

I'd like to see the autoinscription applied to the object when it is created. That would allow for example to put "=g" on items you want to autopickup. It would also clean up the code.

The one drawback I can think of relates to squelch. I autoinscribe things with !* that depending upon race and class and CL I may decide to squelch. If I want to squelch, and autoinscriptions are applied at object creation, I would have to remove the autoinscription. Currently, I never change autoinscriptions and they carry over game to game.

Obviously, this is no big deal one way or the other. Does anyone care?

[Magnate]

There are a couple of bugs with autoinscriptions, but instead of fixing them piecemeal I think it makes more sense to change the dynamic.

Currently, autoinscribing is considered something the character does to items in its possession. That kind of makes sense, but I see it differently. To me, autoinscriptions are simply part of the UI system.

I'd like to see the autoinscription applied to the object when it is created. That would allow for example to put "=g" on items you want to autopickup. It would also clean up the code.

The one drawback I can think of relates to squelch. I autoinscribe things with !* that depending upon race and class and CL I may decide to squelch. If I want to squelch, and autoinscriptions are applied at object creation, I would have to remove the autoinscription. Currently, I never change autoinscriptions and they carry over game to game.

Obviously, this is no big deal one way or the other. Does anyone care?

In my approach to the pref file stuff, I see autoinscriptions as a preference to be saved along with squelch settings. But you seem to see squelch as per-character, and inscriptions as per-user. I see both as per-class. Ho hum.

[Derakon]

Squelch is per-character and changes over the character's lifetime. Early on I'm interested in average- and good-quality equipment, wands of magic missile, staves of CLW, etc. Later I don't want to see 'em.

[Magnate]

Squelch is per-character and changes over the character's lifetime. Early on I'm interested in average- and good-quality equipment, wands of magic missile, staves of CLW, etc. Later I don't want to see 'em.

I understand that - sorry my post was not very clear. I was referring to the initial squelch settings, for a new character. My mages squelch all priest books, etc.

[ewert]

Autoinscriptions are sort of both, per character and per user ... but per user is more important IMHO.

[PowerDiver]

I'm not asking how any of you view using squelch or autoinscriptions. To each his own. My question is whether anyone cares about changing the dynamic to autoinscribe at item creation instead of at pickup.

There will also have to be autoinscription when learning a flavor, but that is a separate issue.

[bulian]

Perhaps this is a ridiculous question, but what do all of the various inscriptions do?

I know, for example, that !d prevents dropping, !k prevents destroying, and !* requires confirmation of any action. Also @ symbol is useful for consumables, spellbooks, and macros, but beyond that I don't know. I've seen !! on some ladder characters but don't know what it does and wasn't aware of =g either. I currently set maces of disruption, BoC, and SoS to !k autoinscribe, which is helpful endgame if I have squelch settings to artifact only. But I still have to pick the item up first. Otherwise they may suffer the wrath of [F9], which is macrod to k-ay.

Being able to set certain consumables, such as !healing, !rmana, !*Healing*, ?banish, etc., to autopickup would be useful, as I collect those mid-game but don't carry them. If inscribing the item when it is created would allow that, I would be in favor of it. Certainly rings of speed would be something else I always want to pickup.

On an unrelated note, is there a way to squelch chests?

[buzzkill]

On an unrelated note, is there a way to squelch chests?

I believe empty chests are auto-squelched. Do you want do squelch chest before you open them?

You may learn a little more about inscriptions here. (!!) notifies you when an item is recharged, it's one of my favorites.

[takkaria]

I'm not asking how any of you view using squelch or autoinscriptions. To each his own. My question is whether anyone cares about changing the dynamic to autoinscribe at item creation instead of at pickup.

There will also have to be autoinscription when learning a flavor, but that is a separate issue.

Changing it to item creation sounds fine to me, but I'm not volunteering to do it.

[Derakon]

I'm not certain why squelch-on-creation is functionally different from squelch-on-contact. What would it gain us?

[fizzix]

I believe empty chests are auto-squelched. Do you want do squelch chest before you open them?

I do. Chests are useless, never worth the trouble.

[Derakon]

Each chest type is briefly worthwhile when it first shows up, but given the hardcoded depth of the chest's contents, they very rapidly obsolesce.

I'd much rather see chests generate items based on the chest's own level (which in turn depends on dungeon level and monster level) with a modifier based on the chest's material. E.g. wood => -5, iron => current, steel => +5. So a wooden chest found on the floor on dungeon level 60 would generate items with level 55. Determine the number of items by the size of the chest -- small 1d2, large 2d2.

Hooray, off-topic again!

[Magnate]

I'm not asking how any of you view using squelch or autoinscriptions. To each his own. My question is whether anyone cares about changing the dynamic to autoinscribe at item creation instead of at pickup.

There will also have to be autoinscription when learning a flavor, but that is a separate issue.

I am not worried about when autoinscriptions are applied, but about where they are stored and how they are retrieved - part of savefile, settings file, separate pref file etc. etc. Thus it matters how people view them. The conclusions of the previous discussion still seem valid, but I'm just double checking the mood in the room.

[PowerDiver]

I am not worried about when autoinscriptions are applied, but about where they are stored and how they are retrieved - part of savefile, settings file, separate pref file etc. etc. Thus it matters how people view them. The conclusions of the previous discussion still seem valid, but I'm just double checking the mood in the room.

I wanted an answer to how to approach a bugfix, but I guess I have my answer so I don't mind the thread hijacking. Also, I didn't want to press the issue, but inscribe at creation also allows an additional benefit to people playing no-artifact games.

To me, autoinscriptions are a per-user UI thing. I inscribe all of my ?id with @r1. It would never occur to me to inscribe the same flavor @r1 with a fighter and @r2 with a priest. That way guarantees mistakes. If I am playing a mage, I don't care if the priest books are inscribe @p1. Why would I care? The only overlap that comes to mind is @b1, but given that your preferred book type comes first, that is never an issue.

Squelch is completely different. There are certain items that a person might want to squelch in every game for every class, but those are few and people who care might set squelch_worthless anyway. There are some more items that are useless to particular classes, but those are pretty rare too given the selling mechanic. I even collect iron spikes on my first trip until I am slowed or run out of slots. For the most part, items are useful for a little while and then become useless. Squelch-as-you-go seems to me like the natural way to play, but perhaps that's just personal bias.

The only real issue I see is about changing autoinscriptions. If I autoinscribe something one way at the beginning of my game, and later change or remove the autoinscription, how do I want the next game to start? I think for the most part people generally update autoinscription stuff gradually over many games, so I think it would be a mistake to set things up so that changes you make in one game are discarded before the next game. I suppose you could add extra prompting to ask the player whether to make changes permanent, but that might be clunky and might be overly confusing to new players.

[Derakon]

My autoinscriptions generally consist of putting !* on items I don't want to use without confirmation (e.g. WoR, Teleport, Destruction, Life) and !k on items I want to protect from squelching (e.g. DSM, SoS, BoC, MoD). Most of my macros vary depending on character -- for example, a mage's ! macro would be "target nearest and fire magic missile" while for a warrior it would probably be "zap rod of trap detection". I tend to fill these out as I find the relevant items, choosing the next inscription depending on how many others of the type I've found (thus my first rod is @z1 regardless of if it's trap detection or treasure detection or whatever). Thus I don't put @ inscriptions in the auto-inscription set.

I guess I could auto-inscribe the spellbooks, since those tend to show up in a reliable order.