Object detection and ID - a proposal

[kaypy]

* Should there be runes for plusses To Hit, To Dam and to AC? (would enable you to tell a magical from an average item at a glance)

I would suggest that everything of variable quantity should behave as:
* + and - are treated separately
* you know everything less extreme than what you have identified before
* you probably also want to separate eg to-hit melee /to-hit launcher / to-hit missile; possibly even down to eg to-hit hafted / to-hit sword / etc

* How does jewellery fit into the rune system in general?
* Are Activations runes?

* For that matter, when do you first learn that a given item has runes and how many? Sight/walkover/pickup?

I would tend to not actually show any 'runes' and just give "this item has unknown properties" vs "you know all about this item". This basically eliminates rune-bloat.

* Should using magical ID on items with runes identify all runes at once (potentially very powerful and more far-reaching than current ID) or just one rune at a time (requires faffing with selection menus, potentially causes issues if there are non-rune properties that also need identifying)

I would have thought it would be as it is now, but now that you mention it- how would the following work:
* ID has a 50% chance of identifying each unknown property. At least one property will always be identified.

[debo]

I seem to remember there being a long thread on rune-based ID proposals before, back when V4 was under development. Does anyone have a link to that? I'd be interested in taking a look.

I don't understand how these runes are going to make squelch better, which is mainly what I'm interested in learning about. After a few pages, all I found was this: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...90&postcount=4 which wasn't particularly inspiring.

[Zireael]

I seem to recall such a thread too but I can't find it either.

***

* ID has a 50% chance of identifying each unknown property. At least one property will always be identified.

That's a good idea.

* Should there be runes for plusses To Hit, To Dam and to AC? (would enable you to tell a magical from an average item at a glance)

I wouldn't make basic plusses runes, but Power/Accuracy/Slaying/Protection would all be runes. However, the way I see it, knowing a rune for Power would let you know the dam plusses at a glance; same for Accuracy and to hit and Protection and AC.

Common activations should be runes IMHO. Uncommon, well, I don't really know.

For that matter, when do you first learn that a given item has runes and how many? Sight/walkover/pickup?

I suppose it could be tied to pseudo-ID (has runes/doesn't for the weak pseudo-ID and number of runes for strong pseudo-ID)

When/how should +To Hit/To Dam and the numerical component of stat boosts become apparent?

Numerical components should be apparent on wielding for stat boosters and AC and on hit for hit/dam.

As for jewellery, I think it should have runes.

[Nomad]

I don't understand how these runes are going to make squelch better, which is mainly what I'm interested in learning about. After a few pages, all I found was this: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...90&postcount=4 which wasn't particularly inspiring.

Well, say you're at the stage in the game where you're still interested in Boots of Speed, but other ego boots - Slow Descent, Stealth, Free Action, Stability - are useless junk to you.

Under the current system in 3.5, the procedure for filtering for Speed boots is:

- pick up every pair of boots
- wait for pseudo to kick in
- if boots are non-ego, they'll auto squelch
- if they are an ego, use w to put them on
- if boots are merely {excellent}, confirm at the prompt that you want to squelch them even though you're wearing them / if boots are {splendid} but not Speed, take them off yourself and drop or manually squelch them
- use w to put your old boots back on

(This system is marginally improved by the Ego squelch settings in 4.0, but all that really means is that you can tell the system to auto-squelch other splendid-but-not-Speed items like Stealth at the trying on stage instead of having to do it manually.)

Under rune based ID, the procedure is:

- notice on sight/pickup that boots are FA/Stability/Stealth/Slow Descent because you've seen the runes for those properties before
- boots are auto-squelched without you having to do anything

[debo]

Well, say you're at the stage in the game where you're still interested in Boots of Speed, but other ego boots - Slow Descent, Stealth, Free Action, Stability - are useless junk to you.

So the only reason that I wouldn't squelch this under the rune-based system is because speed is totally overpowered and I would always want to keep things that have the 'speed rune'? (Or maybe I would have asked to keep everything with an immunity rune?)

The Ring of Power 'The One Ring' (+15,+15)
Permanently cursed.
+5 strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma, speed. 
Provides immunity to acid, lightning, fire, cold. 
Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, cold, poison, dark, nether, disenchantment. 
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold. 
Sustains strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma. 
Speeds regeneration. Grants telepathy. Grants the ability to see invisible things. 
Aggravates creatures nearby. Drains experience.

From what I understand, you would generally squelch on affixes, where 'affix' = collection of runes that together generally make an ego. How does this work on artefacts? I don't think I ever had an Angband character that was wearing any non-speed, non-artefact equip by by DL40.

[fizzix]

I think the way to do squelch would be for each gear you have a list of resists, affixes and values (+ to hit and to dam) The menu is titled something like "squelch all except for gear with property X". With rune based ID, it works nicely, because the list populates as you learn the runes. So once you learn resist fire, you can choose to squelch gear with resist fire, if you so choose.

For damage, to hit, and AC it's a little trickier. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but any solution is superior to the current state, where you cannot do anything here.

Perhaps most importantly, we have a game option which is, "always squelch gear equal to or worse than current." Which, whenever an item is found, the game compares it to what you're currently wielding, and if it's inferior it gets squelched. If you have +9 boots of speed, the +5 boots you picked up get squelched.

[Derakon]

For damage, to hit, and AC it's a little trickier. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but any solution is superior to the current state, where you cannot do anything here.

Modifiers to-hit, to-dam, and to-AC are each a rune. Once you learn them, and you will very quickly, you recognize the modifiers on all future gear, regardless of size.

Launchers of Power/Accuracy will thus effectively auto-ID on sight because all they are is extra bonuses to-dam and to-hit. Your character will take one look at them, think "that's a really accurate bow", and know it's a Bow of Power, because that's what Bows of Power are.

Re: magical ID, my inclination is to remove all forms of ID except for scrolls of ID which can only be found in the dungeon, and reading such a scroll will randomly ID one of the attributes of the selected item. This encourages ID-by-use, which I do think is reasonable for most properties, especially since many of them are obvious as soon as you wield the item. In fact the main ones that give me pause are the "cannot be harmed by acid/fire/etc." properties, and I'd suggest those should auto-ID whenever the player is hit by such an elemental attack, regardless of whether or not the item in question was targeted.

[debo]

you can choose to squelch gear with resist fire, if you so choose.

Right, but it's exactly examples like this that make me believe this would never work. Literally every decent artefact armor has basic resists covered, but I'd probably still want to see them when they appear.

I guess if I can still say "keep all {splendid}" (which I think means artefact in Vanilla, I can't remember) this problem goes away. But I didn't need rune-id for that in the first place...

Re: magical ID, my inclination is to remove all forms of ID except for scrolls of ID which can only be found in the dungeon, and reading such a scroll will randomly ID one of the attributes of the selected item. This encourages ID-by-use, which I do think is reasonable for most properties, especially since many of them are obvious as soon as you wield the item. In fact the main ones that give me pause are the "cannot be harmed by acid/fire/etc." properties, and I'd suggest those should auto-ID whenever the player is hit by such an elemental attack, regardless of whether or not the item in question was targeted.

I think this will go a long way towards getting people to reconsider Nick's original proposal in this thread. If our options to identify a single unknown item are to (a) read multiple copies of a nonrenewable resource or (b) wait until something innocuous enough not to kill me shows up to breathe element X, I'm pretty sure people are just going to be walking around with a lot of unidentified gear until like, DL50. We might as well put *identify* back in the game at this point IMO.

[wobbly]

My suggestions:

basic +hit, +damage is a quality like a "fine" sword. Visible on walkover from start. Maybe "power", "might" or "accuracy" runes for bigger bonuses. Again, runes visible on walkover.

Basic shop consumables id-ed from start. Saves me buying: 1 !d invisible, 1 !clw, 1 !csw, 1 ?phase etc. No shop id scrolls, id available in mage book.

?id ids all runes on 1 item. ?*id ids pack.

@debo is it still a problem if you can do it the other way as well? Like keep fire immunity, keep free action etc.?

[Nomad]

Right, but it's exactly examples like this that make me believe this would never work. Literally every decent artefact armor has basic resists covered, but I'd probably still want to see them when they appear.

Well, if you were to have rune-based squelch, you'd need an AND system where the item only squelches if all runes on it are marked for squelching. So marking basic resists for squelching would only squelch armour of Resistance, not Elvenkind which also has additional runes you haven't marked. One advantage being that you'd be able to do things like squelch the base four, stealth and shard resistance, and then Elvenkind with shard resistance would auto-squelch but Elvenkind with nexus resistance would not.

But I'm not sure rune-specific squelch is even necessary to implement, at least to begin with - you could also just use rune-based ID in conjunction with 4.0's Ego Squelch. (The difference being that in the current 4.0 system, you can mark, say, all weapons of Slay Orc to squelch, but you still have to stab an orc or use an ID scroll before you recognise that what you've got is a weapon of Slay Orc and it squelches; with rune-based you would immediately recognise the Slay Orc rune and the squelch would kick in without needing the testing/manual ID phase.) IIRC that's essentially what was implemented in v4, except it was squelch-by-affix rather than squelch-by-ego because v4 had affixes instead of egos.

Basically, I see the main advantage of rune-based ID for squelch as doing away with the crude categories of 'excellent', 'excellent with high resists', and 'splendid' for choosing which egos to squelch, and instead making it seamless to divide ego types you're still interested in from other egos you aren't without a lot of manual-identification faff. It wouldn't make any difference for artefacts, but then I don't think there needs to be any system for auto-squelching of artefacts in any case.

[buzzkill]

OK. Kinda skipped ahead in the thread, not reading every post. Rune based ID seems OK, but eventually experienced players will once again want something more streamlined. I fear, and have for some time now, that Angband development caters to career players, while lamenting the fact that it can't attract new novice players. We're building a theme park with only rides that one violently Ill and then wonder why no one shows up despite our polite staff and free admission.

Anyhoo, changes in ID seem like a bandaid for a inferior squelch system, which we surely have. I'd much rather effort be put into refining that. What if we could squelch unlearned properties and also squelch per property/per item type. The IMO would necessitate the removal of "unsquelch" (but you would still be able to set future objects to no longer be squelched), but with progress comes a price.

[mushroom patch]

If you guys are really serious about wanting an automatic squelch option for 1 in 2000 items, then you should do the following: Assign a string/set of tags to each item and allow the player to define squelch rules as regexps or some simplified version of regexps (such things can be gotten through standard libraries and would be very straightforward to add). If you feel ambitious, make a little menu to generate these in a user friendly way for people who don't want to learn how to use whatever syntax is chosen.

[EpicMan]

I would enjoy Nick's system much more than the current system. It's interesting to ID the various potions, scrolls and devices as you progress through a game. It is a tedious slog to ID the hudreds/thousands of weapons and armor you encounter. I usually just modify the game to *ID* all weapons/armor/ammo on creation, but this proposal allows for unknown equipment with as little effort as possible.

[the Invisible Stalker]

The id minigame has been around for a long time, so it would be a bit of a shock at first to see it neutered, but I think after a little while I would find it hard to believe I put up with the tedium of the old system for so long.

[fizzix]

Anyhoo, changes in ID seem like a bandaid for a inferior squelch system, which we surely have. I'd much rather effort be put into refining that. What if we could squelch unlearned properties and also squelch per property/per item type. The IMO would necessitate the removal of "unsquelch" (but you would still be able to set future objects to no longer be squelched), but with progress comes a price.

The problems are orthogonal.

ID addresses the question of "how do I know whether an item is worthwhile or not"

squelch addresses the problem of "how do I sort the worthwhile items from the not worthwhile ones quickly"