Rune-based ID

[Pete Mack]

Yah. Carrying around weapons to try them out is a huge pain. It's why weak pseudoID was removed in the first place. (I don't care so much about slay weapons, but early brands are important to ID.)

[nikheizen]

I agree with the sentiments of others regarding shop stuff being UNID. It might take some hackery, but IMO the best solution is to make them show up as ID, but not "reveal" the rune to you if you haven't bought it. Shopping as a method of ID early on was always handy in Angband.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Great job getting this out, Nick!

My first foray until crash immediately upon casting detect traps, doors, stairs or using a rod of detection when arriving on some levels. (I believe the same was already reported by others, so no savefile attached). Also looked through the gamedata files.

The following are my observations about the new system thus far:

1) Don't fathom any principled distinction between labeled but unseen and completely unlabeled advertising by shopkeepers?

2) Killing townie doesn't identify the average heirloom dagger? I'd think average items should be known.

3) PSEUDO_ID_IMPROV flag in class.txt for warriors, rogues, rangers and paladins? Shouldn't this be removed? Does the flag do anything anymore?

4) class.txt - # of spells in "book" line for Incantations and Illusions should be 8, not 9, for mage and ranger, and 5, not 6, for rogue now that identify is removed.

5) class.txt - # of spells in "book" line for Godly Insights should be 4, not 5, for priest, and 3, not 4, for paladin now that perception is removed.

6) Elsewhere in object.txt, when item numbers are unused, they are commented out, e.g., "### 268" or "### 269", but the same is not done for the utility scrolls items 284 and 285, (and now that Identify is removed, 286, 424, 456). The numbers just don't appear. I'd think there should be the ### 286, so that one knows the number is available for creating a new object, if such was the desire.

7) Successful use of ?Enchant Armor does not update the armor values. Have to drop and then re-wield the item to see the new values.

8) It sucks that stat swap potions must be identified by use or by hauling back to town for sale to shops (ironman @ gets screwed).

Edit: Don't know what happened to quotation marks and apostrophes in text above. Corrected, hopefully.

[Nick]

OK, new builds up for Windows and OS X (new source in the old place) with the two crash bugs fixed, plus the numbers of spells per book and correct plusses on enchantment (or disenchantment).

A few individual points:

Don't fathom any principled distinction between labeled but unseen and completely unlabeled advertising by shopkeepers?

Flavoured non-wearables (scrolls, potions, devices, mushrooms) behave exactly as before. Rings and amulets await learning of runes.

Killing townie doesn't identify the average heirloom dagger? I'd think average items should be known.

But it does! Dagger (1d4) is full information, especially when you don't know magical enchantment is possible

It sucks that stat swap potions must be identified by use or by hauling back to town for sale to shops (ironman @ gets screwed).

This is a good point, although probably not game-breaking.

A few more general points:

• I think it was suggested that non-wearable flavoured items should get immediate ID on use, regardless of effect; that hasn't happened yet, but I'm not averse to it and would like opinions
• I haven't implemented Nomad's {???}, but I do see merit in it; similarly I think maybe having dice and base AC obscured is maybe a bit silly (although it is very temporary, and is an early intro to the ID system for new players)
• Buying a sword of Slay Troll and not getting the rune seems silly, buying a Holy Avenger and getting all the runes seems to be putting too much emphasis on shops. That's the reason for the way I did shop items; I'm happy to listen to alternatives, but they need to address those points and be logical
• This is a big change, and does take some getting your head around. I'm inclined to leave the major bits as they are for a while, at least, to get a proper sense of how the system works overall.

The high-quality discussion on these forums never ceases to amaze me

[spara]

This whole rune-ID will freshen the game tremendously. However, IMHO the system needs to be more visible. And here are a couple of suggestions to digest.

If there are runes on objects, I want to "see" them. Two letter combinations could be used. AE, PR, DE and so on. These could be shown when inspecting an item. "Inscribed on object are runes AE, DE and TH". Or something.

I also would like to see if there are runes on an object when I just look at it. That could be done with {??????} so that the number of exclamanation marks would tell the number of unknown runes on an object. That would also make some sense to the sillyness of not telling the object properties in a shop, the pricing could be based strictly on the number of runes (or is it already?).

[Carnivean]

• I haven't implemented Nomad's {???}, but I do see merit in it; similarly I think maybe having dice and base AC obscured is maybe a bit silly (although it is very temporary, and is an early intro to the ID system for new players)
• Buying a sword of Slay Troll and not getting the rune seems silly, buying a Holy Avenger and getting all the runes seems to be putting too much emphasis on shops. That's the reason for the way I did shop items; I'm happy to listen to alternatives, but they need to address those points and be logical

I like Nomad's {????} idea. I'm not sold on the idea of the number of ?'s being the number of unread runes though. I think most people are imagining a single rune for each power (as I initially did), but the more I think about it the more I think that it's a magical language or series of power words. This would preclude the player from knowing how many more runes there are, while still knowing that there are still properties that they don't know.

The Holy Avenger thing is, I think, a bit of a furphy. A new player won't be able to afford a HA weapon until they know half or more of the runes on it already, unless they waste a whole bunch of time mining low levels. If they learn 1 or 2 runes from buying a HA, then I think that's fine. Similarly if they learn them all because they mined 100,000 gold without having learnt a rune yet, that also seems fine.

[spara]

I think most people are imagining a single rune for each power (as I initially did), but the more I think about it the more I think that it's a magical language or series of power words. This would preclude the player from knowing how many more runes there are, while still knowing that there are still properties that they don't know.

This is a fair point and on a second thought combining runes feels a bit simplistic and gamey. Although I do remember loving it in Ultima Underworld eons ago. The idea of a magical language that the character slowly learns is nicely vague and mystical. "There's writing you don't (yet) recognise on the object."

Objects with magical writing could also be color coded to distinguish from the ordinary ones.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I've gotten a @ down to stat-gain depth. I'm finding some of the new Rune based ID quite refreshing and a good change, making the game move more quickly. Like not having to pick up weapons or armor that are seen and (after walk-over) are known to be irrelevant to @.

However, some of the Rune-based ID system I'm finding to be more of a pain in the butt. Having to haul around rings and weapons in hopes of one day finding out their runes, rather than being able to sell them to a store or get them identified is just aggravating. We've replaced one painful ID regime for another possibly more painful process. I'm for bringing back the store ID of items and also some other identification mechanism, even if rare or say an ID scroll that only identifies a single unknown rune, but not all runes on an item. (Thus, ironman players don't have such a huge disadvantage on the identification front.) My current @ is hauling around Nimloth, Forasgil, Narthanc, Gondricam and Aeglin, all because there's no way for him to know (without my own veteran knowledge) which one to bother keeping. Without knowing what to try to learn, I'm afraid new players will find it hopelessly frustrating. Even with veteran knowledge that @ is trying to learn certain things, but being unable to, is giving me angina. I like Rune-based ID, so far, but this aspect of it is, in my opinion, a big step backwards.

Some other things noticed:

- when a light radius is part of an item, the description on inspection is showing a "+1 ." This seems strange.
- @ that is immune to an effect can never learn the rune for that property? (E.g., Innate free action, never learns free action rune? kobold immune to poison never learns Rpoison rune? Carries those rings around endlessly?)

Edit: You can add an Amulet of Inertia to the list of items that will never be fully identified if the @ has innate free action. I know it's an amulet of inertia (the -2 speed gives it away), but @ knowledge shouldn't have to rely on my own veteran knowledge forever. Seems unfair to new players and just frustrating for veterans.

[spara]

After playing a while with the rune-ID, I would cast my vote to bring back pseudo-ID in one form or another. It's indeed tedious to carry stuff (mostly weapons and armor) around trying to figure out the runes. And that actually requires the player to know what properties to look for. For a new player that's likely a mission impossible.

Maybe carrying goods with unidentified runes could slowly reveal themselves, rune by rune.

[Egavactip]

I just have to say that this whole things sounds like a really poorly-conceived notion. It seems pretty awful.

[Derakon]

I just have to say that this whole things sounds like a really poorly-conceived notion. It seems pretty awful.

The implementation has been around for literally less than two days. Can you hold off a bit on the doomsaying until it's had a few iterations of playtesting? We've had millions of arguments about what if anything to do about identification; this is an extended experiment in one of the potential options.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

The implementation has been around for literally less than two days. Can you hold off a bit on the doomsaying until it's had a few iterations of playtesting? We've had millions of arguments about what if anything to do about identification; this is an extended experiment in one of the potential options.

+1 here. I find the concept of rune-based ID to be very good. Once runes are known, it sure makes game play smoother. My frustrations are in the difficulty (and in some cases, apparently, the impossibility) of learning some of the runes. When mechanisms are put in place to reduce those frustrations, I think rune-based ID will be fantastic.

[spara]

To concretize the problem, I made quite a nice find on DL1:



Now I know what the hidden property is, so I know what to do to reveal it. And in this case an uneducated player might make some assumptions about the icy nature, but that's probably wishful thinking. If the property is something like slay, then it would be next to impossible to reveal the rune. And if you have like 5 weapons that have something to reveal, then it's pure chance, you have the correct one in hand.

I would say that something is needed to a) hint the player about the nature of the hidden rune or b) the hidden rune should reveal itself over time or c) there needs to be spell/scroll/shrine/shopkeeper (anything starting with 's' ) to help with the rune.

[Derakon]

To concretize the problem, I made quite a nice find on DL1:



Now I know what the hidden property is, so I know what to do to reveal it. And in this case an uneducated player might make some assumptions about the icy nature, but that's probably wishful thinking. If the property is something like slay, then it would be next to impossible to reveal the rune. And if you have like 5 weapons that have something to reveal, then it's pure chance, you have the correct one in hand.

I would say that something is needed to a) hint the player about the nature of the hidden rune or b) the hidden rune should reveal itself over time or c) there needs to be spell/scroll/shrine/shopkeeper (anything starting with 's' ) to help with the rune.

Perhaps runes could have categories, and you could identify categories in addition to individual runes? So instead of just knowing nothing about the rune vs. knowing everything about it, you could know "this is a defensive rune" or even "this rune provides resistance to an element". You'd learn the categories as soon as you identify a rune within the category -- thus, having learned that Nimthanc has a cold brand, you'd be able to recognize any future rune that has a brand or slay as being a rune that enhances your offense in some way.

That would at least narrow down the amount of required experimentation, as each rune would no longer require you to do every single possible interaction with it. Offensive runes just require hitting the right targets, protective ones require being attacked in the correct way, etc.

Potential categories:
* Slays+brands
* Elemental resists
* Status immunities (pBlind, etc.)
* Sustains
* ?

You can gloss this as runes that fall into the same category are structurally similar when visually examined.

EDIT: indeed, you could potentially have multiple categories for a rune, so if you recognize one electricity-themed rune then you can tell if other runes are electricity-themed (thus, learning any of brand, resistance, immunity gives you information about the other two). That might be overcategorization, but I think it'd be worth experimenting with. Remember that the original goal of rune-based ID was to make the identification process less tedious, so I don't think we need to worry about giving away information too easily.

[Nick]

All right, two things.

1. There will be a comp on this - debo talked me into it by the simple method of not listening
2. Proposed scheme to fix having lots of gear with unknown runes:
   • Set a character level for which the ID game is over - I'm thinking 30, but it should probably be put in constants.txt
   • Calculate

     (total number of runes in the game) x (character level) / 30

     and that's the standard number of runes for a character of that level to have learned
   • If the character is below the standard number, they learn runes of wielded objects until they run out of such runes or reach the standard number
   
   So the player can learn by actual use, or by being sufficiently advanced.

Maybe some variant of this ID by clevel should be used for flavored items too.