The Monster Memory

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yeah, we've not done that in V yet - it is in v4 though. I wonder if it's actually overly complex - I'd probably prefer the ego item flavour approach, so when you learn one flavour of ego item, you can ID them all on sight. Maybe combined with artifact knowledge saved over characters. What do you think?

I like! But what about weapons that only have plusses/minuses?

I'd prefer plusses and minuses on weapons and armour to be always visible. Unidentified ego weapons could be marked with (ego).

After these changes, Identify could be made much rarer and more expensive, to encourage identifying potions and scrolls by use. IMO that's the fun part of the identify system.

EDIT: But actually v4's rune-based system solves the identifying chore with non-ego weapons more elegantly. Simple plusses/minuses are based on runes, too, right? Does the game tell you if a weapon has no runes at all, or do you need to identify it to be sure?

[takkaria]

I think that the changing the official rules of the game in this way violates the integrity of the earlier design choices.

In which case, I and others have broken the design integrity of the game many times and I expect future developers to do so in future. That's part of what it is to have a living game.

The earlier programmers of the game came up with a balance they preferred and decided that instant monster omniscience violated that balance. I personally think that since this was an earlier choice, some respect should be given to that determination by the current devs.

Monster memory goes right back to Moria; but the cheat option goes back to Ben, circa 2.7. I'm not sure that the team of people who made the first version of Angband really thought about it much - it certainly wasn't modified very much and remains in much the same form today. So I don't think you can rely on the fact there was an intentional decision about monster memory, because there probably wasn't.

[takkaria]

AFAIK whole ID sub-game is going thru overhaul so that you get rune-based ID: once you learn what firebrand is you recognize it automatically on new items.

IMO that should be huge improvement as long as you get that even without picking things up, just seeing them should be enough.

Yeah, we've not done that in V yet - it is in v4 though. I wonder if it's actually overly complex - I'd probably prefer the ego item flavour approach, so when you learn one flavour of ego item, you can ID them all on sight. Maybe combined with artifact knowledge saved over characters. What do you think?

[Timo Pietilä]

@ Tak: As long as we're heading down this read... how would you feel about full item knowledge as an option, seriously? Instant full ID on sight. IMO this might be interesting, and would certainly fall in line those who want to streamline the game, have limited time to invest, or simply don't like the ID mini-game.

AFAIK whole ID sub-game is going thru overhaul so that you get rune-based ID: once you learn what firebrand is you recognize it automatically on new items.

IMO that should be huge improvement as long as you get that even without picking things up, just seeing them should be enough.

[Oramin]

Or maybe I just downloaded the DOS executable from a local BBS and it didn't come with the monster spoiler.

[DaviddesJ]

I don't recall the monster spoiler being around 20 or so years ago.

I do. Maybe my memory is better than yours. Here is the "monpedia.faq" for Angband 2.4 from May 1993:

http://web.mit.edu/games/lib/angband/old/spoilers/monpedia.faq.gz

I remember this particular file very well. This, and other spoilers, even predate the *.spo files that came later. There have always been people who wanted to play the game with more information and people who wanted to play it with less information.

[Oramin]

Hmm, just because anybody *can* look things up in the spoilers currently doesn't mean that the earlier programmers intended for the game to be played that way. I don't recall the monster spoiler being around 20 or so years ago.

As I pointed out with the CM2100 Championship mode example - when you're playing that mode all the in-game conveniences (take backs, hints, etc.) were disabled. The programmers obviously couldn't prevent people from going outside the game and doing things like analyzing moves on a board but I'm pretty sure that was contrary to the spirit of that particular option.

I think the game design indicates that it was the intent that people should discover information about monsters by playing the game. If people don't want to, they're welcome to use the spoilers, use the cheat option, or tweak the program. I think that the changing the official rules of the game in this way violates the integrity of the earlier design choices.

Sort of like, if people want to play chess with 3 queens and a teleporting king, more power to them, but that doesn't mean that I think the basic rules of chess should be altered to reflect that as an official option.

[DaviddesJ]

I'm still waiting for the folks who want to use the option to admit that this discussion is happening only because they don't want the game to label them as "cheats".

Huh? Hasn't that been the point from the beginning? What other reason could there be? If I'm just playing on my own system, it makes no difference that I'm labeled as "cheating", but it's inconvenient for participating in the ladder, competitions, etc. If you want fewer participants in those things then the "cheat" setting serves that purpose.

The earlier programmers of the game came up with a balance they preferred and decided that instant monster omniscience violated that balance.

I don't think so. I think it's just to satisfy players who like accumulating information as they play (which are obviously a significant fraction, judging from the comments here). It never had anything to do with balance, as anyone who wanted to know what a monster does would just look in the spoilers. And you've argued vociferously that anyone who has played the game a short while already knows everything they need to know, so if that's true there can't be any "balance" change from looking up monsters, anyway.

[Oramin]

Tome 4 plays this way. Both full monster info & item info from the start. It works, it's just different. Not my preference, I like the Id game & find the idea that my character is omniscient a little weird. However I understand why others like to play that way & can see no reason to label those players a "cheat". Just a different way of playing, same as ironman or no selling or any other optional setting. Why not just let people play the way they want to play? Makes no difference to my enjoyment of the game.

I'm still waiting for the folks who want to use the option to admit that this discussion is happening only because they don't want the game to label them as "cheats".

The earlier programmers of the game came up with a balance they preferred and decided that instant monster omniscience violated that balance. I personally think that since this was an earlier choice, some respect should be given to that determination by the current devs. If this were an entirely original game then I wouldn't feel that way and the current programmers could strike whatever balance they wanted.

[wobbly]

Tome 4 plays this way. Both full monster info & item info from the start. It works, it's just different. Not my preference, I like the Id game & find the idea that my character is omniscient a little weird. However I understand why others like to play that way & can see no reason to label those players a "cheat". Just a different way of playing, same as ironman or no selling or any other optional setting. Why not just let people play the way they want to play? Makes no difference to my enjoyment of the game.

[Derakon]

I once patched the game so that everything automatically identified itself. It works decently well, though it does IIRC leave you vulnerable to losing artifacts (since identifying an artifact counts as "seeing" it). Certainly this style of play is preferable to the ID game pre-3.1 or so, which is when I tried that patch.

My personal preference would be to switch everything to a "flavors"-style identification system. Different ego items are just different flavors, so once you recognize one Holy Avenger, you recognize them all. Pluses, pvals, random high resists, etc. would all be automatic once you recognize the flavor. Artifacts can be automatically fully-ID'd since they're unique; justify it as the lore about famous items being well-known (as e.g. Glamdring is well-known as a bane of orcs).

The main goal of this is to make finding an un-identified item be innately exciting, since it's something you haven't encountered before (with this character).

[buzzkill]

@ Tak: As long as we're heading down this read... how would you feel about full item knowledge as an option, seriously? Instant full ID on sight. IMO this might be interesting, and would certainly fall in line those who want to streamline the game, have limited time to invest, or simply don't like the ID mini-game.

[jrodman]

Splitting memory out from save files (making it per-player, not per character) seems right.

Thematically it says "ancestors", but it isn't too much of a stretch to allow for multiple descendents if the theme is important.

Mechanically it's recording things that I did as a player, and making multiple separate such recordings makes things more confusing for me, at least.

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Mostly though, i lose monster memory because when I decide to start playing angband again it's typically on a new computer, and I don't think to go fish out an old savefile from another computer at another location. Eg, right now I started playing Angband on the train. So my fantasy would be that monster memory would be cloud synched. (Not a realistic fantasy I guess.)

[Djabanete]

Currently in all variants I've played, including my own, monster memory forces me to play only one character at a time. Being able to alternate between several characters freely might give me more enjoyment than the monster memory game mechanics...

If I have one savefile with fairly complete knowledge, I just copy the file as if I was about to savefile scum (), open it in the game, suicide, and start a new character. Though perhaps you already do this; it's still not a perfect method, because if the new character adds to the memory, the additions don't feed back to the old character.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Currently in all variants I've played, including my own, monster memory forces me to play only one character at a time. Being able to alternate between several characters freely might give me more enjoyment than the monster memory game mechanics...