[User Guide Development] Questions

[takkaria]

Sorry to edit your post like that but:
1. Honestly, Thanks for the appology. But I know you are developing for a community - hopefully overall the community is appreciating the changes (forum posts seem to show that they are)

Communities are made up of individuals, so it's worth talking to everyone individually when that's possible.

2. I will give it a go. I have some version since tried 3.0.5, and not seen a reason to change yet. I would hope the difference between 3.0.x and 3.0.y is a lot less than the difference between 3.0.99999 and 3.1.0

The difference between 3.0.9 and 3.1.0 is bigger than the difference between 3.0.5 and 3.0.9; otherwise I might have been tempted to make it 3.0.10.

3. I had not realised it was only to be an option. In fact I am getting a huge impression that a great deal of work was being done to reduce the number of options (and as someone who plays with auto scum both on and off, and with preserve both on and off, .... that is another seeming reason to not change versions)

Work has been done to reduce the number of pointless options that few or no people actually change-- not genuine gameplay options. I trust that if you look at 3.0.9, you will find it easier to find the options you want to find and will not be distracted by ones which you don't.

Also, if autoscum disappears, it will be because dungeon generation at large will have been changed. There is enough demand to keep preserve around, so that's not going, either.

4. I don't think you can compare a 21st century supermarket with a middle ages "general store" (as if such a thing existed). hell, even in the current century if you go to the right (wrong) parts of the world there are frequent seasonal variations in food supply. It's all about communications and transport: http://lirneasia.net/2007/05/mobile-...n-fish-markets
5. see 4. If the supermarket is actually a farmers market, and I drove in with a truck load of watermelons (think: @ walks in with 99 flasks of oil) when they have none at all... sure they will buy them. Where do you think farmers markets get their stock from anyway? (by which I mean, real farmers markets which do still exist if you look in the right places)

I agree, to some extent. However, the shops in Angband are clearly modelled after supermarkets: you get 20% off discounts and mass-produced weaponry and armour. Also, assume that the flasks of oil are all found in a dungeon and look a little the worse-for-wear...

Having said all that, yes, stores are a bit of a weird construction at the moment, and I'm not entirely happy with them. There's no good in-game explanation for how the stores work; they're there entirely for gameplay's sake. All I've done is tweaked that a bit.. and they'll be tweaked more in future.

6. I like !salt water. I like broken sticks. I like canine skeletons and I miss that they aren't there. I don't expect that every item I find when I kill a thousand year old dragon will be useful to me... some of it will be the crappy equipment which lead to the demise of the last hundred poor saps that tried killing it. Hell, I even play with "auto pickup" turned on until I get to DL25 or so.

Fair enough. I hope to re-introduce skeletons and the like at some point as dungeon features rather than items so they don't get auto-picked-up. Also, there will always be some junk in the dungeon, I just want to reduce the amount of it, particularly at later levels (e.g. at dungeon level 100 at the moment, it would not be atypical to get ~300 objects generated. that is far far too many for any individual to sort through).

There is a difference between "consensus" and "unaminous". But hey, you're the maintainer: go ahead and change things. Overall the community will like the changes or bay for your blood!

As I said, a community is a community of individuals. Whilst I may not be able to satisfy everyone, I can at least discuss and explain changes I've made so that people have a better idea of what the game now is and where it's going. I do, of course, hope that I bring some people round to liking the changes if they didn't before, but it's not necessary to do that.

[ekolis]

I agree, to some extent. However, the shops in Angband are clearly modelled after supermarkets: you get 20% off discounts and mass-produced weaponry and armour. Also, assume that the flasks of oil are all found in a dungeon and look a little the worse-for-wear...

Funny, I thought the discounts were removed a while back for being too silly/unbalancing/whatever...

But what WOULD be cool (albeit perhaps beyond the scope of vanilla Angband and more suited for a variant) is if you did NOT model the shops after supermarkets and instead modeled them after farmer's markets, bazaars, etc...

An initial step in that direction might be simply to randomize the stocking algorithm somewhat so that while cheap "staples" such as daggers, scrolls of blessing, potions of CLW, etc. are always common, you could occasionally wind up with ego items (or even artifacts?) in the shops (going for exorbitant prices of course) - basically making all shops into the "black market" but specialized in one group of items! (As for the black market itself, it could either be removed or made actually shady as opposed to just another shop with better but overpriced items - e.g. perhaps if you trade too much there, you start attracting the attention of thieves?)

Another step might be a "supply & demand" system - I believe this was actually in some variant or another (Ey perhaps?) - basically what this means is, for any savefile, the more of an item (say, "potion of restore mana") you buy, the higher the base price goes (for buying and selling), while the more you sell, the lower it goes, and if you go for a while without buying OR selling an item, the buy and sell prices converge in a similar manner to increasing your charisma. This system might not be popular with everyone, so perhaps a birth option could toggle it...

Finally, a trendy thing in CRPG's these days is "crafting" - that is, creating your own items out of components, and enhancing existing items with other items. It's in a few Angband variants, such as Sangband, and combined with the other ideas here it might make for an even more interesting gameplay experience. So you want to make a (+15, +3) longsword of Never Missing? Well sure you can use enchant weapon scrolls on a longsword you bought from the store, but what if you took 5 lb of iron ore you found while tunneling into a vault, a broken stick (need a handle!), and took it to the smithy in town, where you made your own longsword much cheaper... of course, if you wanted a mythril longsword you'd need some mythril, and if the price of mythril is high... This would help with several problems at once, actually - the TMJ problem (any junk you find lying around the dungeon might actually be a useful component!), the equipment grinding problem (no need to grind for "resist poison" if you can make your own items with commonly available materials!) Of course it would need some sort of balancing so buying stuff from stores isn't TOO pointless (see ToME alchemists!) - perhaps crafting could require lots of time (represented in-game by needing to stock up on rations or something beforehand, much like with chopping trees in ADOM), and of course you couldn't make items ANYWHERE, just at the smithy in town... perhaps you'd need to pay a fee in gold to rent the smithy, less than the cost of buying a premade item but still significant... maybe you could only make items with powers that you've actually observed (e.g. you can't make a shield of poison resistance until you find some other source of poison resistance - though that would negate the "less grinding" aspect)...

But I suppose only the first two ideas are really suited for Vanilla... crafting is just a bit too unusual...

Oh yeah, and one more thing... Non-casters who find spellbooks should get XP for destroying them! Otherwise they're just junk to sell to the store for a few gold pieces... Or maybe take a cue from UnAngband and let the stores offer special services or extra items for selling spellbooks...

[Narvius]

I guess your ideas would be better for JADE (y'know, ADOM 2) than for Angband. And I don't know what's so bad about the shop... it's not really important. At least later.

[ekolis]

Ah yes, JADE, the mythical game, lol... hopefully that Biskup guy will put out a demo or something soon; the screenshots and videos look rather enticing! Dwarf Fortress adventure mode would have been nice too, but I hear it's not all that implemented yet...

[Narvius]

It's interesting for some little village slaughters.

[Garrie]

Dwarf Fortress adventure mode would have been nice too, but I hear it's not all that implemented yet...

As a DF Fortress Mode player, adventure mode (even adventuring through your own abandoned fortress, which seems to be the main reason adventure mode exists) is a bit dissapointing so far.

I like the idea. However it seems that "toady" has been putting 99% of dev time into AI type issues for fortress mode, and as that is what the game is really about that is probably a good thing.

Of course he could always open the source and invite collaboration on areas he doesn't want to devote his own time to right now...

[Garrie]

Oh yeah, and one more thing... Non-casters who find spellbooks should get XP for destroying them! Otherwise they're just junk to sell to the store for a few gold pieces... Or maybe take a cue from UnAngband and let the stores offer special services or extra items for selling spellbooks...

Another idea would be if non-relevant spell casters could use *any* spell/prayer book as if it were a scroll for *any* spell it contains.

priest finds a copy of Incantations and Illusions - and can use it as though it were a scroll of teleport, or stone-to-mud, or whatever.

I guess there might need to be some rebalancing but at least it would fix the "TMJ" for wrong-flavour spellbooks (phase door, teleport, teleport other, cure spells are always useful). I could see *any* class hording books with the prayer "alter reality".

That said, I also agree with the idea of Paladins getting XP for destroying opposite aligned spell books. Problem is, V doesn't have alignment...

[Bandobras]

Both are done quite well in MultiBand, a very interesting, totally forgotten variant. Actually, many of my characters were starting the game buying off begginer magic book and tearing it to pieces to get Phase Door scrolls out of it. The other scrolls obtained that way were sold, making it almost as cost-effective as puchasing Phase Door from Alchemist, unless the stats responsible for tearing ability and RNG were very bad that day.This is a nice way to almost guarantee Phase Door in town, without making the shops boring.

[ekolis]

Ah yes, Multiband... is that variant still around anywhere? It was pretty cool, except for a few glitches here and there which I can't recall at the moment... maybe something like having to manually switch classes to use certain abilities or something :P

[JamesDoyle]

So, I've finally got around to completing the artifacts section of the UM. Having dived right through the raw data file and the spoiler file, I've a couple of questions to put to people, as well as reminding you of some that I could still do with answers to from earlier. Also, one query not for the UM, but for my interest.

New questions:
1. What is the actual effect of DRAIN_EXP?
2. There are two artifacts - Power Dragon Scale Mail 'Bladeturner' and the Cesti of Fingolfin - where the actual base AC is different to the normal for that type, i.e. Bladeturner is [50, +35] whereas 'normal' PDSM is [40, +15], and the Cesti are [5, +20] compared to normal cesti at [2, 0]. Wouldn't it make more sense if these were [40, +45] and [2, +23], or am I missing something?

Old questions:
1. Is Scarabtarices a person? If so, where does the name come from?
2. Why is the Ring of Lightning 5000gp when the other three elemental rings are 3000, and all four have completely parallel stats?
3. Ammunition of Slay Evil and of Venom cannot be Mithril; why not? Every other sort of ego-item ammunition can be

Finally, my game query/feature request: I'd like to be able to view the list of known items when in a shop. This used to be possible, but has gone in 3.0.9

OK, on to monsters and combat...

[PowerDiver]

1. What is the actual effect of DRAIN_EXP?

You lose a fixed amount of exp from max exp every fixed number of turns.
Whatever the specifics are, it is irrelevant.

2. There are two artifacts - Power Dragon Scale Mail 'Bladeturner' and the Cesti of Fingolfin - where the actual base AC is different to the normal for that type, i.e. Bladeturner is [50, +35] whereas 'normal' PDSM is [40, +15], and the Cesti are [5, +20] compared to normal cesti at [2, 0]. Wouldn't it make more sense if these were [40, +45] and [2, +23], or am I missing something?

Normal cesti are base 5. Just as weapons can come with different dice,
it seems reasonable for armor to come with different base AC. It just means
you can recognize the artifact before you identify it. This was [is?] particularly
true of NPP.

Old questions:
1. Is Scarabtarices a person? If so, where does the name come from?

I would wildly guess from some D&D campaign.

2. Why is the Ring of Lightning 5000gp when the other three elemental rings are 3000, and all four have completely parallel stats?

It actually makes sense. The standard artifacts are set up to miss rElec.
OTOH, it is probably just a typo.

3. Ammunition of Slay Evil and of Venom cannot be Mithril; why not? Every other sort of ego-item ammunition can be

Probably added later by someone not familiar with the format.
Again, I am just guessing wildly.

Finally, my game query/feature request: I'd like to be able to view the list of known items when in a shop. This used to be possible, but has gone in 3.0.9

I think that anything unaware should be listed as such. In my patch in the store

(c) 3 scrolls of identify (unaware)

[zaimoni]

Finally, my game query/feature request: I'd like to be able to view the list of known items when in a shop. This used to be possible, but has gone in 3.0.9

I think that anything unaware should be listed as such. In my patch in the store

(c) 3 scrolls of identify (unaware)

Eh...wouldn't it be simpler just to make the scrolls aware if you see them in a shop, automatically?

[PowerDiver]

Eh...wouldn't it be simpler just to make the scrolls aware if you see them in a shop, automatically?

For some reason, that is considered abuse. It used to be that if you inspected a shop item you could see its flavor, but that was removed.

It is important, at least if you are diving, to know which items you should buy to gain awareness of the flavor.

[zaimoni]

For some reason, that is considered abuse.

It makes identify frequency in stores (both scroll and staff) overabundant in the early game, and dramatically increases the odds that an early-game unidentified scroll is bad.

It used to be that if you inspected a shop item you could see its flavor, but that was removed.

It is important, at least if you are diving, to know which items you should buy to gain awareness of the flavor.

As long as the decision is made to keep intentionally broken eidetic awareness of items seen in stores, it strikes me as equally "abusive" to show flavors in stores, and have an item knowledge menu at all. Both reward meticulous out-of-game per-game record keeping.

(It does suggest that the save screen dump in the stores was also intentionally torn out for the new store code.)

Except for rebalancing identify frequency, banishing the usefulness of meticulous out-of-game record keeping makes sense. The simple ways are either remove the item knowledge menu completely on top of not showing flavors in stores, or fix eidetic awareness of items seen in stores.

Naturally, I think fixing eidetic awareness is better. [This went into Zaiband 3.0.8 alpha, idea attributed jointly to USENET Eddie Grove and Timo Pietella(sp? Accent marks may be needed for perfect spelling, local notes are lousy).]

[JamesDoyle]

1. What is the actual effect of DRAIN_EXP?

You lose a fixed amount of exp from max exp every fixed number of turns.
Whatever the specifics are, it is irrelevant.

thanks, that was my expectation but I wanted to check.

2. There are two artifacts - Power Dragon Scale Mail 'Bladeturner' and the Cesti of Fingolfin - where the actual base AC is different to the normal for that type, i.e. Bladeturner is [50, +35] whereas 'normal' PDSM is [40, +15], and the Cesti are [5, +20] compared to normal cesti at [2, 0]. Wouldn't it make more sense if these were [40, +45] and [2, +23], or am I missing something?

Normal cesti are base 5. Just as weapons can come with different dice,
it seems reasonable for armor to come with different base AC. It just means
you can recognize the artifact before you identify it. This was [is?] particularly
true of NPP.

Oops, you're correct about base cesti. I must have mistaken it because I was sure there are two armour items (Bladeturner being one), and only two where the base is different. But I guess there's ony 1! So whereas I think your point about being able to recognise them might have some value, if it were true, then such items would be in the majority, not 1 out of 49 items. Perhaps this was ported over from NPP?

2. Why is the Ring of Lightning 5000gp when the other three elemental rings are 3000, and all four have completely parallel stats?

It actually makes sense. The standard artifacts are set up to miss rElec.
OTOH, it is probably just a typo.

I think the latter rather than the former; there isn't a significant hole for rElec, there are 33 artifacts with it compared to 37 for RAcid, 43 RCold and 49 RFire. Those are pretty comparable figures

3. Ammunition of Slay Evil and of Venom cannot be Mithril; why not? Every other sort of ego-item ammunition can be

Probably added later by someone not familiar with the format.
Again, I am just guessing wildly.

Seems reasonable

Finally, my game query/feature request: I'd like to be able to view the list of known items when in a shop. This used to be possible, but has gone in 3.0.9

I think that anything unaware should be listed as such. In my patch in the store

(c) 3 scrolls of identify (unaware)

Well, that one opened a can of worms! I admit I'm one of those people who buys items in stores to identify them, and it's a pain to have to come out of the sotre to check if I know them. I feel that if a decision has been taken to remove that, it's an overly prescriptive decision - people who don't want to take advantage of it don't have to, and for those who do, you still can, it just takes long and make the game merely annoying, not better. BUT, I also agree that you shouldn't automatically be able to recognise seomthing just from seeing it in the shop - that would save cash, but make the early game at least a little boring.