Squelch by value

[Timo Pietilä]

I don't know if I threw this out there before, but it's been banging around in my head for a while now. It's seems to me, having never used rune-based ID, that gaining nearly complete rune knowledge would come relatively early in a game as long as Angband.

That doesn't bother me, as currently that task is handled by spells, staves and scrolls giving character perfect knowledge pretty much immediately about anything. Problems are only that amount of consumables may be too low for warrior and also for priest/paladin before finding Godly Insights.

Two problems with rune-based I can see are

1) features that are innate abilities of races, like resist light for elves, See_inv for hi-elf, HL for hobbits etc. You never learn those by testing unless you gain that knowledge from somewhere else. Also testing something like FA would be extremely dangerous.

2) Learning ego/artifact-types. Knowing everything from the weapon does not necessarily mean that you recognize the type, unless we rationalize that as char "names" the type once he/she has learned everything from it. It's a bit stretch for imagination.

[PowerDiver]

1) features that are innate abilities of races, like resist light for elves, See_inv for hi-elf, HL for hobbits etc. You never learn those by testing unless you gain that knowledge from somewhere else. Also testing something like FA would be extremely dangerous.

2) Learning ego/artifact-types. Knowing everything from the weapon does not necessarily mean that you recognize the type, unless we rationalize that as char "names" the type once he/she has learned everything from it. It's a bit stretch for imagination.

(1) We currently have the model that if you know you are wearing a ring of rFire, you still learn rFire on an armor if hit by a fire attack. That analogizes to learning wielded with intrinsic if you want it to.

(2) While your char may know that the weapon being wielded is westernesse, and thus slays trolls, there is no need to assume the char knows the rune for slay troll until he hits a troll with it [or some other weapon of slay troll]. The difficulty is intuitively displaying that you know the attribute but not the rune. I'm happy with the way I do resists on the resists screen, but I still need to invent the right analogue for slays.

Oh - maybe I misunderstood your (2). I convinced Takkaria to let me change the rule to make it so that you learn an ego by process of elimination assuming full knowledge of ego_item.txt. They teach the properties of all egos in _Adventurers 101_. This change will go in if Takkaria does not change his mind.

[Max Stats]

Also testing something like FA would be extremely dangerous.

Hmmm... go to 50' and stand naked in front of a floating eye?

[buzzkill]

Hmmm... go to 50' and stand naked in front of a floating eye?

"The floating eye shudders."

[bulian]

Just so I understand things correctly:

1) Is the rune based system a complete replacement for ID scrolls/spells/staves? e.g. these items will be removed

2) Will the player know how many runes are on an item? e.g. westernesse weapon that has slay orc, SI, and FA known, (thus slay troll/giant) unknown, it is clear that there are 2 "unknown" runes? I think the player should know. This is a buff compared to how things are now, particularly for randart games. I like it.

[Derakon]

I don't think anyone has said "This is how rune-based ID will work" because there's no official implementation yet. But from what I've heard/imagined, ID would either be removed entirely or just identify one unknown rune, and the player would always know how many runes are on a given item. After all, if you don't know how many runes there are on an item, then you can't conclusively say that you know everything about the item, and one of the goals of rune-based ID is to allow characters to recognize the powers of an item on-sight (or at least on-pickup).

[d_m]

1) Is the rune based system a complete replacement for ID scrolls/spells/staves? e.g. these items will be removed

AFAIK no, but rather it's a way to partially ID weapons/armor/artifacts based on the properties that those imbue the wearer with. So once you learn that the "ZZX" rune means resist fire, whenever you see items with ZZX you immediately know they confer rfire.

2) Will the player know how many runes are on an item? e.g. westernesse weapon that has slay orc, SI, and FA known, (thus slay troll/giant) unknown, it is clear that there are 2 "unknown" runes? I think the player should know. This is a buff compared to how things are now, particularly for randart games. I like it.

This would seem reasonable to me, but I'm not sure how Eddie imagines this working. I like the the idea that you can see that an item is engraved with:

ZZX VVE NPT YWV XNM

(Possibly using actual characters from the Unicode Runic set for bonus points)

[PowerDiver]

Just so I understand things correctly:

1) Is the rune based system a complete replacement for ID scrolls/spells/staves? e.g. these items will be removed

2) Will the player know how many runes are on an item? e.g. westernesse weapon that has slay orc, SI, and FA known, (thus slay troll/giant) unknown, it is clear that there are 2 "unknown" runes? I think the player should know. This is a buff compared to how things are now, particularly for randart games. I like it.

(1) That's my goal, but this approach is variant status until support is overwhelming, if that even ever happens. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to get into V.

(2) I've reinterpreted "pseudo" to mean that the player notices the number of runes, and I think the ID spell should provide pseudo + attack and defence mods on wieldable items. That way you can ID the mods on a ring of damage without having to track down a monster to whack.

There's an orthogonal question of whether to allow ID on things like potions, which don't fit into the rune framework. I'm sure some people would be upset if that ID was removed.

[bulian]

I like the the idea that you can see that an item is engraved with:

ZZX VVE NPT YWV XNM

Personally I would prefer reading "there are 2 unidentified runes" as opposed to additional text.

I've reinterpreted "pseudo" to mean that the player notices the number of runes

I'm assuming you don't mean troll warriors count runes faster than gnome mages. IMO rune "counting" should be instantaneous for all classes.

I think the ID spell should provide pseudo + attack and defence mods on wieldable items

So runes won't tell you the PVAL of stat rings and the like without wielding? Seems reasonable, though somewhat counter to the squelch by PVAL requests people have.

I'm sure some people would be upset if that ID was removed.

Agreed. There is nothing quite like that feeling of ID by use a !Life in the stat gain areas. Though now that stat restore potions are gone, only the pesky cure poison and boldness are the troublesome ones to ID by use that come to mind.

[Derakon]

Troll warriors may not notice runes as quickly as gnome mages do. Runes can easily be hidden in delicate filigree and other such decorations.

[Max Stats]

Troll warriors may not notice runes as quickly as gnome mages do. Runes can easily be hidden in delicate filigree and other such decorations.

Not to mention Troll Warriors might have to use their fingers and their toes to count them. Of course, I wouldn't say that to their faces.

[PowerDiver]

I'm assuming you don't mean troll warriors count runes faster than gnome mages. IMO rune "counting" should be instantaneous for all classes.

It's the idea that troll warriors get faster pseudo than gnome mages that is the problem. I'm not responsible for that idiocy.

If you check what I wrote upthread, I said that I give mages instant count-the-runes pseudo at CL 1, and I give warriors instant see-the-plusses at CL1.

If you want to differentiate the classes, differences in what they notice in the early game seems like an obvious first approach. I was looking for the least change from the status quo I could find acceptable.

[PowerDiver]

So runes won't tell you the PVAL of stat rings and the like without wielding? Seems reasonable, though somewhat counter to the squelch by PVAL requests people have.

I'm not sure what to do about pvals. I've been playing with forcing a wield to see them, and it gets annoying by the end. If you decide to show them earlier, does that mean you should be able to immediately [before wield] distinguish a pval rune from a non-pval rune even though you don't know either of them? Rather than worrying about such issues I've left them for later.

[Derakon]

I'd say the simplest patch-job solution to that problem is to give instant pval ID at some character level. Not very elegant but it should work.

[d_m]

I'm not sure what to do about pvals. I've been playing with forcing a wield to see them, and it gets annoying by the end. If you decide to show them earlier, does that mean you should be able to immediately [before wield] distinguish a pval rune from a non-pval rune even though you don't know either of them? Rather than worrying about such issues I've left them for later.

This might be really annoying for people who don't like my idea of actually displaying "runes" but I could imagine each number getting a rune.

So if you've seen the "STR" run and the "+4" run then you know something is "+4 STR" otherwise it might be either "+? STR" or "+4 ???"