RFE Inspection Messages for +Stat Items

[Elsairon]

Just an idea I thought of while on a town trip to restock ?Phase. I noticed several + Stat rings in the BM, and looked at them.

If they showed what benefits they might give when equipped (similar to weapons) inspecting would be more interesting. For example, a +3 CON ring might give a message about how many HP you have now, and how many more you might have if the ring was equipped.

I see the major problem as one of comparison to current items equipped.

[Magnate]

Just an idea I thought of while on a town trip to restock ?Phase. I noticed several + Stat rings in the BM, and looked at them.

If they showed what benefits they might give when equipped (similar to weapons) inspecting would be more interesting. For example, a +3 CON ring might give a message about how many HP you have now, and how many more you might have if the ring was equipped.

I see the major problem as one of comparison to current items equipped.

While I don't really have a strong view on this (nice to have if somebody codes it up), it does make me realise the problem with the stats issue which came up in another thread.

The problem is that you shouldn't have to calculate (let alone need the computer to do it for you) how many additional hp you get from +3 CON. There shouldn't be any special breakpoints or nonlinear regions: if each point of CON gave +1hp/clev (this isn't balanced, just illustrative), then you'd know that if you bought a +3 CON ring at cl25 you'd get +75hp. There'd be no need for any complicated calculation.

Similarly each point of STR ought to net you +10lbs carried, +1 damage, etc. Each point of DEX gives +1 to-hit and +1 AC. Or whatever. This is the kind of simplicity we need.

[half]

That's how it works in Sil.

In fact, you don't even need to do *any* conversion in most cases. +3 Dex means +3 to all the Dex skills (melee, archery, evasion, stealth) and nothing else. +3 Str means up to 3 more sides of damage on your weapon (limited by its weight).

The only non-linear cases are all exponentials. e.g. 0 Str is a carrying capacity of 100 lb. and every +1 Str gives 20% more capacity. 0 Con is 20 hit points, and every +1 to Con gives 20% more hit points...

To a large extent Sil *is* a reworked Angband with all of these systems rethought and simplified (there are other differences, but this is a lot of it). I should stress that this is a reduction in the *pointless* complexity: the game itself has plenty of emergent complexity, with interesting tradeoffs that people can understand etc. If that is what you want, then you really need to play it to see what can work. I'd assumed that it was not where Angband wanted to go, which is why I wrote Sil instead of asking the V Devteam to do it.

Also, it is not just an academic elegance. People seem to like it. See the comments I've gathered here:

http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html

[fizzix]

I think Sil does go about a lot of these ideas in a very good way. I think ToME4 also improves Angband stats a lot. I also think that there would be huge outrage if the Sil or ToME4 model was imported into angband wholesale. However, there probably can be significant improvements in this area, including ones that use Sil as a model, while still being Angband. It involves someone sitting down and reworking a lot of tables. It's also a significant amount of work, such that it's hard to convince someone to do it without assurance that someone will pick up the coding side (if they are not capable) and at least fork a variant.

The bright side is that making tables and theorizing about Stat models is something I really like to do. I used to design D&D type stat systems and combat mechanics when I was a kid for the hell of it. The down side is, I'm struggling a lot to come up with free time to work on stuff like this, and the summer months are looking pretty busy...and there's a lot on my Angband plate. I can also come up with more excuses if you like.

Edit: I'd like to add that there's a difference between linear systems and exponential systems. Right now Angband is on an exponential model for both player growth and monster growth. A character that can comfortably kill 10 dlevel 10 monsters probably cannot kill 1 level 40 monster. Similarly, a character that can comfortably kill 10 level 40 monsters, cannot kill a level 80 monster. In linear systems, that would change, 10 dlevel 10 monsters would be just as difficult as one dlevel 40 monster. So, if Angband went linear, then we'd change gameplay significantly, in a very fundamental way. I haven't ever gotten far enough in Sil to know whether the linear model holds throughout the game.

[Elsairon]

Just read the manual for Sil, and I'm going to play some.

I think moving in the direction of not needing a math degree to know the bonuses of things is a good move for gameplay.

[Magnate]

I think Sil does go about a lot of these ideas in a very good way. I think ToME4 also improves Angband stats a lot. I also think that there would be huge outrage if the Sil or ToME4 model was imported into angband wholesale. However, there probably can be significant improvements in this area, including ones that use Sil as a model, while still being Angband. It involves someone sitting down and reworking a lot of tables. It's also a significant amount of work, such that it's hard to convince someone to do it without assurance that someone will pick up the coding side (if they are not capable) and at least fork a variant.

I already made this offer to Buzzkill in the other thread, and I'm happy to extend it to everyone else: I will undertake to code up the first effort to sit down and thoroughly simplify and/or linearise Angband stats (that gets general approval here and doesn't have any obvious flaws), test it, commit it to v4 and ensure that a build is available for everyone to try.

Edit: I'd like to add that there's a difference between linear systems and exponential systems. Right now Angband is on an exponential model for both player growth and monster growth. A character that can comfortably kill 10 dlevel 10 monsters probably cannot kill 1 level 40 monster. Similarly, a character that can comfortably kill 10 level 40 monsters, cannot kill a level 80 monster. In linear systems, that would change, 10 dlevel 10 monsters would be just as difficult as one dlevel 40 monster. So, if Angband went linear, then we'd change gameplay significantly, in a very fundamental way. I haven't ever gotten far enough in Sil to know whether the linear model holds throughout the game.

But I don't think that linear stats necessarily mean a change to that exponential model of power. In fact Angband's stat gains are already mostly linear after the flat region (up to ~17). I think we should start by simplifying the stats, then adjust the availability and effect of stat potions, and then see if we have any real difficulty with the existing power curves. I suspect we won't need the kind of major rebalancing that you fear. I just don't think stats are quite that important in Angband.

@half: your work on Sil is awe-inspiring, and its plaudits are thoroughly deserved. I feel a need to justify why I haven't played it yet. Two main reasons are WoW and D3, but a deeper reason is that I fear I won't want to work on V or v4 after playing it, as all I would do is turn them into Sil. At the moment I'm in a happy place, being inspired by the excellence of Sil but still keen to take v4 in a different direction.

[half]

In linear systems, that would change, 10 dlevel 10 monsters would be just as difficult as one dlevel 40 monster.

Not necessarily, and this is not how it works in Sil. Sil is much less about HP attrition, but is more about needing to be better than the monsters to beat them. For example, consider that in Sil if your evasion is 18 points better than their melee score, they need to roll a 20 to your 1 to hit you: a 1 in 400 chance. If your evasion were one point lower, they would have a 3 in 400 chance, so do three times as much damage in the long run. If it was one better, they would do zero damage. This is one way in which a 'linear' system can lead to quite non-linear results. Another prominent example in Sil is damage reduction, where it really pays to be doing more damage than the opponent's armour can soak up.

[half]

but a deeper reason is that I fear I won't want to work on V or v4 after playing it, as all I would do is turn them into Sil.

Well, that's a pretty good reason, though I'm sure the systems in Sil are not *that* good. There will be things you don't like, or just think would be excellent in some other way. There were plenty of forks in the path where we could have chosen either option.

[Nick]

@half: your work on Sil is awe-inspiring, and its plaudits are thoroughly deserved. I feel a need to justify why I haven't played it yet. Two main reasons are WoW and D3, but a deeper reason is that I fear I won't want to work on V or v4 after playing it, as all I would do is turn them into Sil. At the moment I'm in a happy place, being inspired by the excellence of Sil but still keen to take v4 in a different direction.

I'm in a similar boat here - I have a lot of work to do on Beleriand, and I would rather just get anecdotes about Sil so it doesn't dominate my thinking.

[fizzix]

Not necessarily, and this is not how it works in Sil. Sil is much less about HP attrition, but is more about needing to be better than the monsters to beat them. For example, consider that in Sil if your evasion is 18 points better than their melee score, they need to roll a 20 to your 1 to hit you: a 1 in 400 chance. If your evasion were one point lower, they would have a 3 in 400 chance, so do three times as much damage in the long run. If it was one better, they would do zero damage. This is one way in which a 'linear' system can lead to quite non-linear results. Another prominent example in Sil is damage reduction, where it really pays to be doing more damage than the opponent's armour can soak up.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it a bit more, and my linear analysis was incorrect. (warning math incoming). Dealing solely with HP to start. I'll parametrize every variable as a function of dlevel. The assumption is that you can roughly expect what a players Con will be as a function of dlevel for some specific player at some specific class/race. Same with clevel. So Con = Con(d) and Level = Level(d), d = dlevel. Then if you assume that HP hits some product of Con and Level you get a squared relation wit the parameters. HP = alpha * Con(d) * Level(d). alpha is some multiplier that probably depends on race and class.

This probably satisfies the desire for a simple relation that's understandable to the player. Although we can get simpler by making HP = Con(d) + Level(d) in which case a gain in Con gives more HP independent of level, and same with level. This would be very hard to balance though, even if it is easier to interpret. I don't think it's so bad to make the player's gains in Con dependent on what level.

The cool thing is that even though HP is the square of Con and Level, it's dependence on dlevel isn't constrained to be quadratic. This is because neither Level(d) or Con(d) are constrained to be linear. In fact, they are decidedly non-linear and this is ok. For example, Con is constant roughly until level 30, after which it starts slowly rising, and then accelerates until it hits max values. On the other hand, Level rises quickly at the first half of the dungeon and then slows down in the second half. I made a toy model here. The chart shows the HP gain for a relatively conservative character that gets Max CON at dlevel 75. As is obvious from looking at it, it's anything but linear (although it's piecewise quadratic just because I made Con and Level piecewise linear).

If we go a step further and decide that what we care about is not HP but how much damage the player will receive, then we need to factor in player absorption Abs(d) which is based on gear. And player evasion Eva(d) which is based on gear and Dex. So monster damage can scale quarticly with the parameters and it would look something like this. MonsterDam = alpha_M * HP(d)/(Eva(d)*Abs(d)). For the Angband model we can assume that battles go long enough that even though Eva(d) is a binary function, the damage gets averaged out over the battle. This also assumes that Abs is a percentage value (as it is currently) so high absorption will remove some percentage of damage. If it's a set value as it is with monsters in v4 you would get. MonsterDam = alpha_M * HP(d)/Res(d) + Abs(d). This of course only covers melee. For spells you don't get evasion and absorption is a multiplier (called Resistance) which only has fixed values. SpellDam = alpha_S * HP(d)/Res(d). You set monster damage and spell damage based on how much damage you think the player should sustain from one round of melee or one spell. Something like 10% of HP for a round of melee and 20% of HP for a spell seems about what we currently have, so that could be a starting point.

ok, that's enough math for now. Thanks to anyone that bothered reading this mess. I'm debating writing this up more nicely in Latex with various graphs, but, we'll see. It might be better to just make up a complete model and see how it works.

[Scatha]

I think your analysis of health looks interesting, fizzix, but there is a general point that you (and the monsters) have lots of different stats, and general power level is some increasing function of these, which is usually at least linear in each one (and can be substantially superlinear with things like an evasion/protection system or combat rolls as in Sil). So if the stats rise linearly with depth you'll naturally get something which rises at least like a significant polynomial. Sil's system behaves pretty similarly to an exponential (it may even be super-exponential -- I think a lot of characters could stand next to an enemy from 10 levels earlier and just pass, and would starve to death before dying from the attacks). There are some parts of Sil's system which rely on it being a short game, but if anyone is interested in adapting it to a longer game I know how to change them to make it essentially scale-free (this is something we considered a while back in development), and would be happy to talk about that.

To Magnate and Nick:
Obviously those are pretty flattering reasons for not trying Sil! I'm a little sad, not least for the rather selfish reason that you both seem to have good instincts for game design and it means we're deprived of criticism and ideas from you.

More generally, it's obviously better to have a spread of games trying out different ideas than clones of the same game. But Sil has made a lot of changes. I think it's quite possible to divide these into a spectrum from those which are fairly uncontroversially good, through ones which should maybe be adapted by more games in the genre but probably shouldn't be universal, and to things which are quite specialised to the game and may well not want to be copied.

Let me attempt to draft such a spectrum. Obviously the location of individual items is pretty subjective, and I'm sure some people will disagree with some of my placings, but hopefully I'll have these largely correct.

Relatively uncontroversial:
- Tutorial and manual (but these are quite a lot of work; in the case of Sil, almost all due to half).
- Simplifying and streamlining the commands required (to make it easier to learn).
- Choosing clean mechanics and making these transparent to the player (there probably is a space for games with obscured mechanics, but at least V and v4 seem to be going in this direction).
- Philosophy of encouraging interesting choices for the player.
- Realistic weapon weights.

Widely beneficial:
- Making the start of the game challenging (or having an accessible mode where this is so, or presenting dangerous opportunities early which you can choose to avoid, etc.). If I can't find something difficult or where it feels like there's a potential for it to go wrong in the first 15-30 minutes of a game, I'll often not continue playing. This is where a lot of the interest of the game is, so present it up-front.
- Consistent flavour.
- Generally keeping numbers visible to the player (health, damage, bonuses etc.) as small as possible while giving enough resolution for the mechanics to work (+1 to just about anything is a nontrivial amount in Sil).
- Decaying experience with kills of the same type of monster (doesn't need to decay as fast as Sil); more generally incentives to venture out of your comfort zone.
- Almost never having more than one attack per character/monster per round (to avoid message spam).

Would be good to see more of:
- Lack of instant escapes. (I doubt V wants this, as it seems that the escapes and frequent situations where you can die in one round that they entail are part of the identity of game, but the lack of instant escapes does help the tactical depth.)
- The stealth system, or something close.
- Experience for non-combat things like encountering monsters.
- The essence of the combat system (v4 is going in a similar direction).
- The forced descent, or other mechanic to prevent grinding.
- No town (actually there are quite a lot of games with this already).
- Game length (again by no means unique to Sil, but it is a major departure)

Might be good for some other games:
- The light/darkness system (could be good if another game wants magical darkness, but perhaps that's a bit niche)
- Classless system with lots of options to build your character by spending experience.
- Player health not really changing through the game.

Fairly specific to Sil:
- Low magic, and what magic there is subtle (I suppose Beleriand might go in this direction for the same flavour-driven reasons as Sil, but I think magic is part of the appeal of a lot of fantasy).
- The story/setting (trying to steal a Silmaril)
- Having the races at such disparate power levels (again, flavour driven)

Well, that's quite a long list, and I'm sure I've missed some important changes (feel free to suggest where I've gone wrong), but hopefully it's a useful starting point for people thinking about what would be good or bad to borrow from Sil.

[Derakon]

Relatively uncontroversial:
- Tutorial and manual (but these are quite a lot of work; in the case of Sil, almost all due to half).

Documentation always ends up being more work than you think it'll be (he says, while writing documentation for a program at work). And once you write it it has to be kept up to date with changes in the game. The real trick is having useful documentation that people will actually read. Some kind of tutorial mode seems to be the go-to method these days.

- Simplifying and streamlining the commands required (to make it easier to learn).

At this point, I think the only convincing reasons we still have multiple "use" keys are to a) reduce the odds of accidentally using the wrong item, and b) enable more keymaps (since you can do both @m1 to bind your spellbook, and @z1 to bind a rod, for example). If we had a better keymap system that let you say e.g. "Cast a spell from Magic for Beginners, whatever slot it's in", then we'd be a lot closer to being able to do away with all of the varied use keys.

Otherwise, what other commands do you think we could remove from Angband?

Widely beneficial:
- Making the start of the game challenging (or having an accessible mode where this is so, or presenting dangerous opportunities early which you can choose to avoid, etc.). If I can't find something difficult or where it feels like there's a potential for it to go wrong in the first 15-30 minutes of a game, I'll often not continue playing. This is where a lot of the interest of the game is, so present it up-front.

Vanilla needs to have some room for players to experiment with the game mechanics, I think. But there's no need for this to be more than one or two levels' worth of the dungeon. Right now we have a fairly smooth difficulty ramp from level 1 through level 20; if we cliff-faced that at level 3, say, then the game would get "interesting" much more quickly.

- Generally keeping numbers visible to the player (health, damage, bonuses etc.) as small as possible while giving enough resolution for the mechanics to work (+1 to just about anything is a nontrivial amount in Sil).

Yeah, yeah, the +100 weapons in v4 were a mistake.

- Almost never having more than one attack per character/monster per round (to avoid message spam).

v4's combat system makes half the classes, more or less, rely on attack spam. But we could probably compress this to "You hit the Foo 4 out of 6 times" or something. Monster attacks usually could be handled similarly, though there are a few monsters who have varied effects on their attacks (e.g. hit to hurt, touch to drain charges, and bite to drain experience).

Would be good to see more of:
- Lack of instant escapes. (I doubt V wants this, as it seems that the escapes and frequent situations where you can die in one round that they entail are part of the identity of game, but the lack of instant escapes does help the tactical depth.)

I'm inclined to agree here; what I think would probably work better for Vanilla would be to make it harder to stockpile these escape items, mostly by making them harder or impossible to buy. I know that there are lots of people who would disagree with me, so let me get sidetracked for a moment:

One big way that Angband and similar games get interesting is by getting you in over your head. You know that whole "ignorance breeds fear" thing? Well, when you don't know if you can handle a challenge, you become afraid -- and being frightened, in a game, is interesting! But when we have all these escape items, any time you're worried that you might get in over your head, you just hit the reset button and can carry on playing inside your comfort zone. We should be trying to push you outside your comfort zone as much as possible, because that makes the game more interesting.

That means that easy access to easy escapes needs to be removed. Easy escapes (broadly, ones that work quickly and also almost certainly provide safety) should be valuable items that you hoard and have to consider carefully before using, in case you get into even greater trouble down the road.

Now, we of course have to counterbalance that by making certain that we don't just present you with impossible challenges that you now cannot escape from. That's only rarely fun.

- The forced descent, or other mechanic to prevent grinding.

Generally I don't see why we should actively prevent players from grinding if that's what they want to do. Rather we should ensure that the player never has to grind -- grinding then effectively becomes a way for players to vary their "difficulty level" over the course of a game. There are three roadblocks currently in Vanilla that can force grinding, though: the need for Free Action / basic four resistances, and the need for "enough" damage and consumables to kill Sauron and Morgoth. The latter is somewhat flexible -- there was a credible attempt to kill Morgoth with a hand-enchanted shovel, but sadly Ditchdigger ran out of healing -- thus, endgame damage and consumables trade off between each other. Generally, the existence of multi-hundred-HP damage sources in Angband is a problem.

- No town (actually there are quite a lot of games with this already).

Despite prophecies of doom from various forum members, the Vanilla town is not going away anytime soon.

Fairly specific to Sil:
- Having the races at such disparate power levels (again, flavour driven)

The race you choose is a form of difficulty selection in all Angband variants, as you basically decide how heavily you want to min/max your character. A gnome warrior will have a harder start than a half-troll warrior will, and the high-elf and dunadan races are effectively an "easy mode" of sorts. We could readily exacerbate this and increase the impact that race has on gameplay; currently the effects are usually somewhat subtle.

[ekolis]

If we had a better keymap system that let you say e.g. "Cast a spell from Magic for Beginners, whatever slot it's in", then we'd be a lot closer to being able to do away with all of the varied use keys.

ToME2 had something like that, IIRC, though its spellbooks functioned differently - they were more like Nethack-style spellbooks in that each book contains only one spell, and you don't need to carry the book around to cast spells that you've already memorized. But the memorized spells themselves did become menu items in various submenus according to what type of spell you were casting, so the casting mechanic was the same from the perspective of keypresses.

So in ToME2 you could cast "manathrust" (the equivalent of magic missile) by typing something along the lines of "maa" just like in Angband, but the first "a" didn't represent "book 1"; instead it meant "attack spells" or something like that.

As for the "search" functionality, you could type an @ sign at the "m" menu to search through your spell list, so you could cast manathrust by typing "m@Manat" and pressing enter (assuming you didn't know any other spells that began with "Manat"). And then of course you could bind keys to these searches

[AnonymousHero]

ToME2 had something like that, IIRC, though its spellbooks functioned differently - they were more like Nethack-style spellbooks in that each book contains only one spell, and you don't need to carry the book around to cast spells that you've already memorized.

You're misremembering. There's no memorization, nor explicit spell learning of individual spells. You just have to have a high enough level in the appropriate skill and have a single-spell book, a tome (collection of spells) or an item containing the spell you want to cast.

But the memorized spells themselves did become menu items in various submenus according to what type of spell you were casting, so the casting mechanic was the same from the perspective of keypresses.

So in ToME2 you could cast "manathrust" (the equivalent of magic missile) by typing something along the lines of "maa" just like in Angband, but the first "a" didn't represent "book 1"; instead it meant "attack spells" or something like that.

Your memory is also slightly off here. "m" means invoke the "magic" menu -- typically the menu contains at least two choices "a) cast a spell" and "b) copy a spell [to an item]". (The letters may sometimes be swapped which is... unfortunate.).

So "maa" usually means "cast a spell from the first book". You would then select the spell with a-z.

You could inscribe books just as in angband such that "ma2" would specify a specific book inscribed with "@m2".

As for the "search" functionality, you could type an @ sign at the "m" menu to search through your spell list, so you could cast manathrust by typing "m@Manat" and pressing enter (assuming you didn't know any other spells that began with "Manat"). And then of course you could bind keys to these searches

Not quite correct. You would macro "m@Cast a spell\r@Manathrust". Since spells were available from various sources (single-spell book, item or tome) this is by far preferable to any other method of macroing spellcasting.

[Derakon]

The proper way to handle that, of course, is to have a keymap recording system that assumes that any selection from a list of choices means to always make that selection, not to always select that slot. So if you turned on recording and then did "maa", instead of recording "cast the first spell from the first spellbook" it would be "cast Magic Missile from the spellbook Magic for Beginners." And if you didn't have Magic for Beginners, or if somehow Magic Missile weren't in it, then the keymap would fail.

The only case this breaks down in, really, is when you're shooting ammo at your closest target, since you can run out of your tier-0 ammo and want to gracefully fallback to your tier-1 ammo. Fortunately Vanilla already has a "target nearest enemy and shoot first ammo" keymap in the 'h' command.