Rune-based ID

[Nomad]

I think that it should supplant quality and ego squelch in the long term.

Yeah, I think ultimately, the ideal would be to replace quality squelch with a system where you could mark runes for ignoring for each individual inventory slot. (Would likely require also being able to mark/exclude certain other properties that are not currently runes, like blunt vs. sharp, great weapons, dsm activations, etc.) So for instance, marking "enchantment to armour" for ignoring in the shield slot would effectively be the same as squelching all "good" shields, but then you could get more complicated by, say, marking that you also want to squelch shields that only have base resists, rLight, and/or rShards, but will keep shields that have rPois or rNexus, etc.

But that's a major overhaul to think about for the future, and would probably require a completely new squelch interface. Off the top of my head I'm imagining something like the subwindow setup screen, where you'd have runes/properties down the side and inventory slots along the top, like:

Ignore Rune?    | Weapon  Bow   Armor  Cloak  Shield  Head  Gloves  Boots   
----------------|---------------------------------------------------------
Feather Falling |  Yes    Yes    Yes    Yes    Yes    Yes    Yes    Yes
Free Action     |  Yes    Yes     .      .      .      .      .     Yes
Regeneration    |  Yes    Yes     .      .      .     Yes     .     Yes

That's probably something to consider for around 5.0, though.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Please continue to comment on bugs, potential improvements, and the overall feel.

I haven't played the latest iteration, yet, but I'd say that overall RuneID is a major improvement. I do have some reservations about the balance among the classes. I would probably reintroduce an Identify/Perception spell at least for the major spellcasters -Mage and Priest. Possibly increasing the mana cost and level of the spell. Because these classes have a large inventory allotment to books, they cannot carry around as many items as the other classes just waiting for an opportunity to learn a rune. All the study that is assumedly required to embark on a career as a mage or priest surely would include a study of runes.

Those are just some initial thoughts on balance. I'm sure it will take significantly more playing time and opinions from many quarters to readjust and fine-tune the balance for the classes. All-in-all though, RuneID is an incredible improvement. Thank you, Nick!

[Carnivean]

^^^^ Good answer, I like it.

I'm not sure how that would work, and what you would use it for - I think most of the cases are covered by quality or ego squelch. It's possible that having "don't ignore by rune" might be useful - so regardless of anything else, don't ignore anything with ESP, for example.

Yeah, it's not the easy thing to think about, but I think that it should supplant quality and ego squelch in the long term. I agree that it might be a don't-squelch-by-rune system.

Where's Derakon?

[Nomad]

I'm not sure how that would work, and what you would use it for - I think most of the cases are covered by quality or ego squelch. It's possible that having "don't ignore by rune" might be useful - so regardless of anything else, don't ignore anything with ESP, for example.

I think the idea is that it's essentially an 'and' squelch, so items only squelch if all the runes are marked for squelching. Which makes it a bit more fine-grained than ego squelch because you can set it up so that random ability egos with feather falling or slow digestion will auto-squelch while the same ego with ESP or an unknown rune won't. That said, it's probably more useful in games where the egos are more randomised than V's current fairly fixed set. (It was planned for v4, but I can't remember if it was ever implemented there.)

Auto-inscriptions by rune might be the way to go instead now we've got the entry on the knowledge menu - that way you could achieve the "don't ignore by rune" by setting up a "!k" inscription for items with ESP, but it would also be handy for setting items with aggravation to prompt you before wearing, automatically marking useful randarts and elvenkinds with reminders of their properties, and so on.

Incidentally, the added entry to the knowledge screen now means you now have to scroll the menu to see the last entry, and the menu entry stays greyed out even after having learned some runes (though you can still select it fine). Actually, it seems that's stayed greyed but "artifact knowledge" has turned white despite still being non-selectable and empty, so I'm guessing there's a numbering error somewhere.

[spara]

The new ID system works well and IMHO is a big improvement to the early game. I love the exitement of having {??} in my equipment and trying to find out what they are by testing and searching for ID scrolls.

The new instant ID of consumables is great. I did not realize how much I disliked the previous system where the effect has to show for @ to ID.

Thanks for the known rune page. Very useful.

A couple of suggestions.

I think I have suggested this before, but it would be nice, if I have an unidentified equipment that has question marks all over char info and I then get poisoned, the resist poison rune would get overruled from char info. Naturally assuming I don't know the resist poison rune. Would help remembering what I have already tested against the particular equipment.

Could the tile for the new Identify scroll just be the same as the old Identify scroll? Just recycling the tile. Currently it's a ? when playing with the tiles. And the name should probably be Identify Rune or something instead of Identify.

The disappearing tiles when targeting bug is still around. And it's quite annoying.

[Nick]

Is there a plan to add squelch-by-rune?

I'm not sure how that would work, and what you would use it for - I think most of the cases are covered by quality or ego squelch. It's possible that having "don't ignore by rune" might be useful - so regardless of anything else, don't ignore anything with ESP, for example.

Thanks for the question - in investigating I found that it's impossible to learn SI without the scroll

EDIT: Yes it is - my testing was flawed.

[Carnivean]

Is there a plan to add squelch-by-rune?

[Nick]

OK, I believe that is all known bugs fixed! New Windows and OS X builds are up.

Changes are:

• PowerWyrm's fixes to mapping and door detection (also fixed in master)
• Ruined chests appearing as mimics (fixed in master too)
• A potential memory error in brand and slay knowledge fixed
• Rune knowledge screen added
• DSM activations are automatically known
• Potions and scrolls which are obvious from an aborted use are IDed
• Autoinscriptions are added as soon as objects are known
• Bonuses are no longer leaked by object info
• Narya appears as a Ruby Ring instead of Ring of Fire, etc

Please continue to comment on bugs, potential improvements, and the overall feel.

[Nick]

Also outstanding, the light radius error that was recently introduced. Torches now have a 2 radius and lanterns a 3 radius. They used to be 1 and 2, respectively.
Correction: Regular lanterns are now radius 4 light. That's even better than the Phial used to be.

That's only for savefiles from older builds which have been updated to the latest. Newly created torches and lanterns will not have a magical bonus to light, but old ones will have their radius doubled.

[Nomad]

It seems you have to wear and test the breath activation of every individual DSM you find to fully ID them, which is not ideal. (And also means they can't be easily auto-squelched.) Maybe DSM activations should be immediately apparent, since they're a basic item property rather than a special enchantment anyway?

[Nomad]

Fun times cracking vaults at 2650'...

The Great Wyrm of Balance breathes chaos.
Your Flail of Taramaith glows.
You have learned the rune of resist chaos.
[color=orange]Low hitpoint warning!
*** LOW HITPOINT WARNING! ***[/color]
You resist the effect!

And now, some general thoughts after playtesting for a while:

Adventures with OOD Great Wyrms aside, I'm actually really liking how the rune-learning curve shakes out now I've got to the mid stages. By the time I started regularly coming across vaults, I'd learned pretty much all the runes to ID ego items on walkover, and it's only really a few higher resists and protections I'm still filling in now. (Having just learned rChaos in slightly hairy circumstances, according to the C screen I now only need to learn rDark, rNether, rDisen, pConf and Hold Life.) It's also amazing how much of a difference it makes to vault clearance when you don't have to constantly juggle your inventory and decide what to temporarily drop just to pick something up for the a pseudo ID.

That said, assuming the RNG isn't messing with me, I feel like scrolls of identity could maybe stand to be a little more common in the earlier levels - it seems like in the region around 1000' to 1500' I'm too often schlepping around half a dozen rings and weapons in the pack because they've got some kind of unknown rune on. (Though I haven't played with the changes to ID of sustains yet, so that may be a help with that.) OTOH, I guess there is merit in the fact that scrolls of identity are now rare and needed enough to be pretty exciting to find.

I've also changed my mind on unidentified items in shops, which I wasn't too sure about before - the {??} tag has helped a lot, but also, while it feels a bit weird in the early game not to recognise anything, it does serve to make shopping decisions more interesting at that mid-game stage where you've already got tons of money and most of the basic runes ID'd: is it worth blowing tons of cash on the armour of Elvenkind with a mystery resist? Is that unknown ring in the black market junk or something worth getting? So I think it actually adds an element of interest and a bit of gambling to proceedings in place of a simple process of "hoard money, buy only the most useful stuff".

I would definitely like to have a list of discovered runes shown on the knowledge menu, though, ideally split into subcategories. The C screen display is a bit difficult to read, and I find it's actually the slays that I most want to be able to call up a list of to see which ones I need to test for.

But all in all, I'm definitely enjoying rune-based ID a lot, and I feel like it's a major improvement to the mid- and later game. Great stuff, Nick! (And as always, I'm impressed with the speed of the bug-swatting in threads like these.)

[Ingwe Ingweron]

...Magic devices don't ID on a failed use...

Nick, I think this correction went slightly too far. Fine for magic devices, but now unidentified scrolls such as ?Identify, ?Banishment, ?Mass Banishment are identified by their message, such as, "You have nothing to Identify", or, "Choose a monster race (by symbol) to banish.", BUT, remain unidentified flavors in @'s pack. I would think these should identify. I also imagine the same problem will occur for !Dragon breath because it will ask for a direction, but if @ escapes out and doesn't breath, the potion will remain unidentified.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Outstanding bugs include the special flavor thing, the mapping/enlightenment thing (which needs fixing on master as well), ruined chest mimics, the multiple stat boost information leak, and anything else I've missed.

One other minor bug introduced in the RuneID branch. It used to be that if @ had autoinscriptions set up for items and picked up an unknown item, identified such item, and the item was one for which autoinscriptions were set up, the autoinscription would attach to the item in @'s pack. In the RuneID branch, if the runes for the item in @'s pack are learned, thus "identifying" the item, @ must drop the item and pick it back up for the autoinscription to attach.

Also outstanding, the light radius error that was recently introduced. Torches now have a 2 radius and lanterns a 3 radius. They used to be 1 and 2, respectively.
Correction: Regular lanterns are now radius 4 light. That's even better than the Phial used to be.

[Nick]

New builds for Windows and OS X.

Changes:

• *Slay* weapons now have a random power or low resist instead of fixed ones
• Putting on an item with a stat boost and the same sustain IDs the sustain as well as the boost
• Magic devices don't ID on a failed use
• Things that are learned after time (like Slow Digestion) are now learned after less time

Outstanding bugs include the special flavor thing, the mapping/enlightenment thing (which needs fixing on master as well), ruined chest mimics, the multiple stat boost information leak, and anything else I've missed.

As Nomad points out, messages probably need some work - in particular, learning an ego or jewellery type probably should get a message. It's not completely obvious to me what other situations warrant it, though, and I don't want to create message spam.

[Nomad]

Just encountered a chest mimic pretending to be a ruined chest. (Which was easily spotted in tile mode, since there's no tile for that.) That shouldn't be able to happen, should it?