Experiences with Frog-knows

[UglySquirrell]

i was wondering if anyone knows how to make a character dump in this version. or what to name the file? i go into the C screen and hit <f>ile and try and use it but theres no name for the file e.g. Squirrell.txt i tried my characters name Asp.txt but it says Can't open file Asp: tried the files i found in frog Knows folder but no luck with those either. any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[Derakon]

Curse Armor isn't too bad. You can live without one of your armor slots for quite a long time, and it makes for an interesting challenge. At least, that's my opinion on it after it happened to me. I had all these nice body armors stashed at home that I couldn't wear until I got this gooey awful leather scale mail removed. It was neat.

Curse Weapon is a different matter; melee is far too vital to many classes for the character to be stuck wielding a nerf bat until they can find enough Enchant scrolls (or a *Remove Curse*). Archery doesn't come anywhere close to being a practical replacement in the 500'-1500' range where you could plausibly read one of these scrolls without IDing it first. When I had this happen to a character, I tried to stick it out, but it just didn't work. Curse Weapon would work better if it just stuck a sticky-curse on the thing and didn't modify its damage; you're stuck with that weapon until you can uncurse it, but it's still as good at killing things as it was before you read the scroll.

Of course, I'm looking at both of these from the perspective of reading them when I'm still using early-game gear, since after that point I'm IDing everything before reading it anyway.

[d_m]

Occasional bad items are actually good for ID-by-use, as long as they are not instantly fatal like death and detonations or too annoying like potion of ruination and scrolls of curse armor and weapon. for example you could use mushroom of confusion in safe position to figure out if item gives you confusion resistance or potion of clumsiness to figure out if item has sustain DEX.

I agree with this. An item that is useless (and maybe tactically bad) but which doesn't cripple your character seems fine. You make a good point about Curse Weapon and Curse Armor.

In my branch which makes artifacts 1/2 as common I will remove Curse Weapon/Armor as a reward to see how it plays

[Timo Pietilä]

I would put these items in the same class of potions of clumsiness, death, and detonations: they are there to penalize the player for IDing by use, and have no place (IMHO) in a game that wants to replace magic ID with ID-by-use.

Occasional bad items are actually good for ID-by-use, as long as they are not instantly fatal like death and detonations or too annoying like potion of ruination and scrolls of curse armor and weapon. for example you could use mushroom of confusion in safe position to figure out if item gives you confusion resistance or potion of clumsiness to figure out if item has sustain DEX.

That was actually how things were done in old angbands for a long long time, *ID* was really rare, and you needed to figure out what the item does and then inscribe it to it at least until you had fully identified it. That did go away only after normal ID was changed to give full ID of the things. I remember collecting bad mushrooms and potions just for testing purposes.

I propose that with full ID-by-use we reintroduce potions of self-knowledge to ID everything you are wearing at once. These do not have to be as common as ID and definitely not town-items, but it would speed up some ID pain.

[EpicMan]

Stepping back for a moment, why not just remove the scrolls/staves of summon monster? What purpose do they serve other than "screw the player who uses them unknowingly"?


If you know something is a staff/scroll of summon monsters, you (or at least I) squelch or ignore it; there's no benefit to the item other than creating monsters to fight, and there's a staircase for that.

I would put these items in the same class of potions of clumsiness, death, and detonations: they are there to penalize the player for IDing by use, and have no place (IMHO) in a game that wants to replace magic ID with ID-by-use.

[Narvius]

Or just make Slow + 0 Energy general summoning sickness that always applies. That's less complicated and makes way for nerfing of mass removal spells.

[Magnate]

The harm isn't in this particular change (though it does make the game easier). The harm is in the overall notion that the player needs to be protected from his own voluntary actions. I stand my previous post where I explained why this isn't necessary because there are other easily accessible ways to mitigate the threat of summoning (stairs, ASC or pseudo (natural) ASC, haste).

In general I would agree that we're not about protecting the player from him/herself. But I think ID-by-use is an exception: if people have to find stairs or dig an ASC before trying to ID anything, they'll not bother with it.

If you're dead set on this path, may I suggest allowing monsters up to +10 speed faster than player, in order to allow stronger summons, but have them 'slowed' (for 1 turn).

Now that's a good idea. I had tried to do it this way by using the "nice" flag, but that gets cleared in between the summonee arriving and the start of the next turn, so it wasn't a viable option (I didn't want to make any fundamental changes to the way "nice" is handled). But it would be possible to adjust the monster speed in the summoning function, with a single turn of MON_TMD_SLOW. So in fact all we need to do is say if monster speed > player speed, set one turn of slowing. If you happen to summon something that's +20 speed faster than you and it *still* gets a move before you do, then you were way OOD when you read the scroll and that's fair enough.

[buzzkill]

I don't see any harm in ensuring that monsters faster than the player are not summoned when the scroll/staff is used unIDd. I see that as an acceptable measure to encourage ID-by-use.

The harm isn't in this particular change (though it does make the game easier). The harm is in the overall notion that the player needs to be protected from his own voluntary actions. I stand my previous post where I explained why this isn't necessary because there are other easily accessible ways to mitigate the threat of summoning (stairs, ASC or pseudo (natural) ASC, haste).

If you're dead set on this path, may I suggest allowing monsters up to +10 speed faster than player, in order to allow stronger summons, but have them 'slowed' (for 1 turn).

[Magnate]

There is. It becomes from the quite old standard newbie question "do I have this and that bonus even that I don't know it?". Standard answer to that is "yes". Now having something act differently without knowledge than with it breaks that rule of things do exactly same thing with or without knowledge.

This should be universal law of things in angband.

I agree that once you have wielded/worn something, its properties should not then change just because it is IDd. I can't imagine anyone wanting to change that for wearables. (As an aside, I quite like the idea of certain things that can't be IDd *until* you wear them, but that's a different issue.)

Thing in question here is summons. IMO summons should always start with zero energy without exception. Call that "summoning sickness" if you wish, or surprise delay of action.

If they still are faster than you and can kill you the turn they get, then you are too slow / have too few HP.

I think it's a little different for consumables though. Most deaths in Angband are due to mistakes - it should be all deaths, but you and I are both of the view that the very occasional unavoidable death from a hugely OOD monster actually adds to enjoyment of the game rather than detracts from it.

By contrast, I think deaths from ID-by-use would not add anything to the game for most people. If we want to encourage people to ID things by use (with the ultimate aim of removing the need for magical ID), they need to be able to do so without getting killed. Lots of roguelikes do this quite well - Crawl uses hardly any magical ID, and I've already mentioned Sangband. I believe FA does this pretty well too ...

So while I agree that summons arriving with 0 energy is fine and doesn't need to be messed with, I don't see any harm in ensuring that monsters faster than the player are not summoned when the scroll/staff is used unIDd. I see that as an acceptable measure to encourage ID-by-use.

[Timo Pietilä]

And in case there's any doubt, I don't agree that there's ever been any rule, unspoken or otherwise, that objects have to behave identically before and after they're identified.

There is. It becomes from the quite old standard newbie question "do I have this and that bonus even that I don't know it?". Standard answer to that is "yes". Now having something act differently without knowledge than with it breaks that rule of things do exactly same thing with or without knowledge.

This should be universal law of things in angband.

Thing in question here is summons. IMO summons should always start with zero energy without exception. Call that "summoning sickness" if you wish, or surprise delay of action.

If they still are faster than you and can kill you the turn they get, then you are too slow / have too few HP.

[Magnate]

Oh, come on. He set me up for the first line.

... but you're probably right. I'm on a bit of an (frequently posted) anti-Vanilla streak right now as a few topics that are, from my PoV, important have come up for discussion. It was all pretty much tongue-in-cheek. My apologies to those who may had been offended.

I'm ok with that. Just because something good happens to be in a variant doesn't mean that it can't be adopted by V - quite the opposite, in fact.

I'm working on V because I enjoy working with a friendly bunch of other devs, not because I have any purist vision of what it should be. If you have one - and you seem to have strong views about what we should and shouldn't be concentrating on - post it somewhere for people to discuss. Start a poll. Write a patch, or a bunch of edit files. Write a spec for how your pet peeves could be solved and I'll try and code it in a branch. Do something that says "I'm not just taking pot-shots, here's my contribution towards making V what I want it to be".

And in case there's any doubt, I don't agree that there's ever been any rule, unspoken or otherwise, that objects have to behave identically before and after they're identified.

[buzzkill]

That seems rather unkind.

Oh, come on. He set me up for the first line.

... but you're probably right. I'm on a bit of an (frequently posted) anti-Vanilla streak right now as a few topics that are, from my PoV, important have come up for discussion. It was all pretty much tongue-in-cheek. My apologies to those who may had been offended.

[Derakon]

It's unspoken.My bad, I was under the impression that you thought that you were working on Vanilla Angband, not a variant of (which is what I've long suspected).

That seems rather unkind. All development that is not strictly changes to the user interface will interfere with the balance, for good or ill, and everyone has a different opinion about what the "core" Angband experience is. If you don't like where development is going, feel free to say so (as you have been), but politely, hey?

And if you consider modern Vanilla to be a variant of the "true" Vanilla, well, that game's still available to play and/or fork.

[buzzkill]

Where does it say that?

It's unspoken.

Leon Marrick, who was probably the best game designer ever to grace the Angband world, didn't think so - Sangband's ID-by-use system depends entirely on this not being true, and it works extremely well.

My bad, I was under the impression that you thought that you were working on Vanilla Angband, not a variant of (which is what I've long suspected).

[UglySquirrell]

You have been way more lucky than I have. Only artifact I have seen this far is Phial, and I have only ego-helmet of infravision and katana of animal slaying, everything else is not even ego yet, and I'm as deep as you are. My luckiest find this far has been RoDam +6 dropped by some orc at 300' or so.

Got lucky with finding a whip of flame and a ring of damage fairl early, and bought another ring from bm. I'm taking it really slow. rerolled from helf to my current hobbit, starting stats are giving me 3 blows a round so that helps s lot.