Experiences with Frog-knows

[Magnate]

I'd prefer flavour junk to be in the shape of more 'dungeon furniture' like chests; things that might have traps on, sometimes turn out to be monsters, or could be smashed or opened to reveal monsters/items. Have skeletons lying around that sometimes come to life if you step too near them, coffins that can be opened and might contain an undead or a treasure, statues that you can sometimes smash to get treasure and other times turn out to be disguised golems, etc.

I also would prefer flavour to be introduced through an approach like this rather than via pointless objects that do nothing and need a special "don't pick this up" flag. But I don't mind stuff like filthy rags and broken swords coming back, since they are occasionally useful. Yes, I'm aware that this is exactly the opposite of what d_m said ... since I'm not motivated to code any of this, it'll be entirely up to whoever contributes the flavour how it's done!

@fizzix: I agree with your general comments on inventory - especially the importance of STR to encumbrance. I don't yet have a proposal for incentivising smaller stacks, other than capping them on a per-tval basis (which seems arbitrary).

[Nomad]

I'd prefer flavour junk to be in the shape of more 'dungeon furniture' like chests; things that might have traps on, sometimes turn out to be monsters, or could be smashed or opened to reveal monsters/items. Have skeletons lying around that sometimes come to life if you step too near them, coffins that can be opened and might contain an undead or a treasure, statues that you can sometimes smash to get treasure and other times turn out to be disguised golems, etc.

[Jungle_Boy]

@magnate: regarding junk. I know both you and takkaria have disliked junk. However, I have not become convinced that variable floor terrain is the way to go. Specifically for the squelch reasoning. It's hard to squelch terrain, it's easy to squelch items. Furthermore, as d_m said, there's a difference between junk items littering the dungeon and useless weapons and armor generated from monster drops/vault squares. I'm aware that this debate isn't new, but I don't really think it's been thought of properly since squelch has gained such promenance.

What about creating junk that has a flag or some other method of making it so it is not automatically picked up regardless of other pickup settings. Could also add an option to squelch junk if people want a nice clean dungeon. For me the most annoying thing about junk was the way it filled up my inventory when I had autopickup on. If you have junk that cannot be picked up you add flavor without the tedium of cleaning out your inventory.

[fizzix]

@magnate: regarding junk. I know both you and takkaria have disliked junk. However, I have not become convinced that variable floor terrain is the way to go. Specifically for the squelch reasoning. It's hard to squelch terrain, it's easy to squelch items. Furthermore, as d_m said, there's a difference between junk items littering the dungeon and useless weapons and armor generated from monster drops/vault squares. I'm aware that this debate isn't new, but I don't really think it's been thought of properly since squelch has gained such promenance.

regarding inventory. I think staves are already punitively heavy enough. You can't even carry them with mages. There's something to be said about making the cumbering penalty more severe, especially deeper in the curve. So you can imagine a curve that looks like this:

cumber      penalty
---------------------
<limit      0
0-15 lbs    -1
15-25 lbs   -2
25-30 lbs   -3

where each additional 5 pounds is another point of speed. I think this *could* work. Also the cumbering penalty, is way too much of a function of strength. Mages are a pain in the early game because they can't even carry all their spell books unless they go naked.

But I think there's soemthing very interesting about having space-limited inventories (or both together). So instead of having a hard limit by slot, you're limited by how many total items you have. So 20 potions of CCW take up as much space in inventory as 5 CCW, 5 healing, 5 *healing*, and 5 life. On the other hand, bringing 50 ?phase into the dungeon is no longer feasible.

Of course, rewriting the entire inventory handling takes a much more intrepid individual than myself.

[Timo Pietilä]

Yes, way back in Moria, and presumable in the first stages of Angband, you had a secondary weapon slot, and you could switch weapons with the x command. There was no bowl slot. There were countless instances of people trying to beat an ancient dragon to death with their shortbow, and tryign to tunnel into a greature vein with thier whip. I guess eventually the bow slot was introduced.

Yes, but Max Stats was talking about removing that spare weapon slot and instead using macro for swapping weapons as reason for adding extra letter in inventory. That sounded like there was a time between removing spare weapon slot and introducing bow slot where bow slot didn't exist.

[nppangband]

Was there such a time when that slot didn't exist? If there was I have missed that one completely.

Yes, way back in Moria, and presumable in the first stages of Angband, you had a secondary weapon slot, and you could switch weapons with the x command. There was no bowl slot. There were countless instances of people trying to beat an ancient dragon to death with their shortbow, and tryign to tunnel into a greature vein with thier whip. I guess eventually the bow slot was introduced.

[Timo Pietilä]

IIRC, the inventory was expanded by one slot when the secondary weapon slot was eliminated.

I can't remember time where you couldn't have two weapons in equipment list, currently you have melee and missile weapons both equipped at the same time, in Frog-knows that is "spare weapon" -slot which can be any weapon.

Was there such a time when that slot didn't exist? If there was I have missed that one completely.

[Max Stats]

One thing I noticed just second ago is that inventory ends at letter 'v' not 'w', so you have one letter less space in already very small inventory.

IIRC, the inventory was expanded by one slot when the secondary weapon slot was eliminated. Shortly after macros and @ inscriptions were introduced, the "X" command was eliminated as an actual command and instead made into a "standard" macro that was automatically loaded and set to 'w0'. They reasoned that you could still use the extra slot as a secondary weapon if you wanted, but you could also use it as just an extra item.

[Timo Pietilä]

That said, I *think* they were removed before the squelch code was added. Now that they can be squelched, the arguments against them are somewhat weaker.

That is what I think too. At that point any removal of junk was improvement, even if it did mean getting rid of atmosphere creating items. People were ready to remove iron spikes too IIRC even that they do have some limited use.

[d_m]

Flavor items that can't be squelched are not a bad idea. Broken sticks, shards of pottery and skulls lying around creates atmosphere. You don't need to squelch them because you can immediately see that they are just junk. You could make them invisible in item pickup screens or use them as mimic disguises. Or give them all some minor damage dice so that if you throw them you can wake up monsters or even kill small ones.

So, I am someone who really misses broken swords (in particular the artifact Narsil). These aren't technically junk but are similar.

I do miss junk items. Before squelch became popular/common/easy I was ambivalent about them. On the one hand they are definitely clutter and can be annoying. On the other they do add flavor, and a fun feel. Now that squelch is accepted and works well I don't see a good reason not to put them back in. In fact the junk of the "TMJ problem" is totally different than actual junk items.

The only kind of junk I'd be reluctant to permit back in is junk which can't be safely squelched without negative consequences. For instance, junk that 99% of the time does nothing but is occasionally useful. But AFAIK shards of pottery, bones, etc. don't qualify and could easily be squelched.

[Magnate]

I'm not sure "good reasons" is fair case, junk items were flavor in game, problem with junk was not actual junk items but the fact that majority of items that were supposed to be good were junk in practice. In F-K junk skeletons are 's' which means you can't distinguish "living" skeletons from items before you see them. Also filthy rag of elvenkind still beats any non-ego basic armor, and Rusty Plate mail doesn't rust any further, so if you enchant it up it doesn't get corroded by acid.

Flavor items that can't be squelched are not a bad idea. Broken sticks, shards of pottery and skulls lying around creates atmosphere. You don't need to squelch them because you can immediately see that they are just junk. You could make them invisible in item pickup screens or use them as mimic disguises. Or give them all some minor damage dice so that if you throw them you can wake up monsters or even kill small ones.

Well, I know at least one of the current devteam agrees with you, so they might come back. I wasn't part of it when the decision to remove them was made (3.0.x IIRC), but ISTR exactly this debate playing out exhaustively at the time, and a large majority in favour of removing them. There are ways to add flavour that don't interfere with gameplay, and junk items weren't one of them.

That said, I *think* they were removed before the squelch code was added. Now that they can be squelched, the arguments against them are somewhat weaker.

I don't feel strongly either way - I just wanted to let people know that this isn't a new debate, and it wasn't particularly evenly contested last time round.

[Timo Pietilä]

The other three things fizzix mentioned I disagree with. Junk items were removed for good reasons, and they shouldn't come back

I'm not sure "good reasons" is fair case, junk items were flavor in game, problem with junk was not actual junk items but the fact that majority of items that were supposed to be good were junk in practice. In F-K junk skeletons are 's' which means you can't distinguish "living" skeletons from items before you see them. Also filthy rag of elvenkind still beats any non-ego basic armor, and Rusty Plate mail doesn't rust any further, so if you enchant it up it doesn't get corroded by acid.

Flavor items that can't be squelched are not a bad idea. Broken sticks, shards of pottery and skulls lying around creates atmosphere. You don't need to squelch them because you can immediately see that they are just junk. You could make them invisible in item pickup screens or use them as mimic disguises. Or give them all some minor damage dice so that if you throw them you can wake up monsters or even kill small ones.

[Magnate]

My memories about F-K are a bit vague, but IIRC those self-knowledge potions are a lot more common than *ID* scrolls. If my memory serves me properly they are the main source of *ID* in the game, not the actual scrolls, even that *ID* is more complete in case you have something covered by race/class.

One thing learned in recent short gaming: OoD doesn't destroy cursed items in F-K. Things maintain {cursed} even after casting remove curse, but you can remove them. Not sure what that means with Calris if I find it. Is that a bug that inscription doesn't go away, or is the item really still cursed.

I think it just means cursed as in still "bad", not sticky.

You are right that SK potions were much more common that *ID*. We did away with SK in 3.1.1, but I'm not sure when the 'I'nspect command came in - well before that, I think.

Fizzix has already picked up the two areas where the devteam definitely wants to make changes back towards FK: map updates outside LOS, and not being able to 'l'ook at things outside LOS. To avoid note-taking, an object you saw ought to stay on the screen after you move out of LOS - but if something picks it up or tramples it while it's outside your LOS, you should not see it disappear until you go back and get that grid in LOS. This is actually really difficult with the current code, so is unlikely to happen any time soon, but it's definitely on the list. Not being able to 'l'ook outside LOS is trivial, and should definitely be in a dev version for testing soon.

The other three things fizzix mentioned I disagree with. Junk items were removed for good reasons, and they shouldn't come back (though this does not stop us having more flavourful terrain or other descriptive mechanisms). Stolen items disappearing is a complete torpedo to suspension of disbelief (though I could see the logic of a chance of this, or reduced charges, if the monster leaves LOS between picking it up/stealing it and being killed - but IMO this would be infuriating to most ppl). I agree that lots of things have made inventory management easier and that's a big reason for the game overall getting easier, but IMO there are better ways of redressing the balance than making things not stack. I guess this comes down to the old "99 suits of armour" argument. My suggestion would be to make wands and staves much heavier, so that the real value of stacks of rods is their lower weight. Currently wands are 1lb, staves are 5lb and rods are 1.5lb. I'd put wands up to 4lb and staves up to 8lb and see how it played.

Sangband prevents staves stacking, but also allows them to take two fire or acid baths before being destroyed ("damaged" and "badly damaged"). This is another possibility.

[Timo Pietilä]

*ID* exists in frog-knows, but like Self Knowledge, it only shows the information for as long as you have the "page" open; once you dismiss it, you have to read another *ID* to get it back.

Self Knowledge can be used as an ad-hoc *ID* -- strip off everything but the item in question, quaff the potion, and subtract your intrinsic abilities from what the potion tells you.

My memories about F-K are a bit vague, but IIRC those self-knowledge potions are a lot more common than *ID* scrolls. If my memory serves me properly they are the main source of *ID* in the game, not the actual scrolls, even that *ID* is more complete in case you have something covered by race/class.

One thing learned in recent short gaming: OoD doesn't destroy cursed items in F-K. Things maintain {cursed} even after casting remove curse, but you can remove them. Not sure what that means with Calris if I find it. Is that a bug that inscription doesn't go away, or is the item really still cursed.

[Derakon]

*ID* exists in frog-knows, but like Self Knowledge, it only shows the information for as long as you have the "page" open; once you dismiss it, you have to read another *ID* to get it back.

Self Knowledge can be used as an ad-hoc *ID* -- strip off everything but the item in question, quaff the potion, and subtract your intrinsic abilities from what the potion tells you.