Rune-based ID

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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?).

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[Derakon]

Oh, awesome! Congrats on getting this out the door, Nick.

Re: initial identification, I kind of feel like anything that a veteran player would know should be automatically identified for the player, so e.g. the fact that daggers are 1d4, longswords are 2d5, soft leather armor gives 8 AC, etc. Those things aren't really "interesting" to have to identify. Characters should also be able to recognize that an item is non-magical, as it has no runes on it.

[ScaryMonster]

What if the shopkeeper has his own 'body of knowledge' and reliably id's those things that s/he recognizes? The scope of this 'body of knowledge' is either static or accrues. Perhaps this makes the Black Market a useful tool.

[Pete Mack]

Should you be able to instant pseudo by seeing that an object has(say) 8 runes on it? As in:
"It increases your stealth by 2. It provides resistance to acid and fire. It allows you to see invisible things. It has 4 additional runes." (Obviously it is a defender)

Also I agree with Ingwe: List the name of the object, but add {unseen} if you don't already know its runes. IDing Fearher Falling by wearing one from the store is just not that big a deal. Same with learning Slay Troll. It's objects with multiple runes that should be hard to know. Maybe add names for the runes (like Futharks or Quenya names?)

[Ingwe Ingweron]

What is the principled distinction between, say, knowing right from the start that a Staff in the magic shop is a Staff of Teleportation, but only knowing an amulet in that same magic shop is a "Bone amulet". Okay, books have titles that might be intelligible to @, perhaps even scrolls, but staves? Why does @ know that the potion in the alchemist shop is a potion of Resist Heat or in the temple is a potion of Cure Light Wounds? Do potions have "labels" immediately recognizable to @. If it is that the shopkeeper is believed about the qualities of these items, why is the shopkeeper not to be believed about the qualities of weapons, launchers, missiles, armor, rings, or amulets?

My feeling is let items in shops be advertised by the shopkeeper. If @ doesn't actually buy the item, @ won't "know" the rune for that item, but @ can believe the shopkeeper. E.g., a weapon in the temple can be advertised as a "Slay Evil" weapon. If @ buys the item, @ will learn the "slay evil" rune. Either that, or all the items (including books, scrolls, potions, ... everything) in shops should be unknown.

[Nomad]

So having something in the name to indicate unknown properties is not a bad idea, but I don't want to lose the sense of "I have no idea what's going on" from a starting character.

Honestly, I think it would work just to slap {???} on everything until you've identified all its tags. The problem is that currently, the sense of "I have no idea what's going on" persists even once you've started to recognise stuff, because although you begin to auto-identify familiar items as you progress, you can't tell the ones that have been identified from the ones that haven't without manually inspecting everything.

As for shops, I feel they should at least show the names of items, even if the stats remain hidden. So you might be able to see that a shop is selling a weapon advertised as *Slay Evil*, but not be able to recognise what the exact stat bonuses and random special ability are unless you've seen the runes for those in the wild. (Or at the very least, if you're going to have unidentified items in shops, I think they should be tagged with the old average/magical/excellent/splendid distinctions to offer a bit of vague guidance.)

[spara]

Unidentified stuff found from dungeon makes sense, but buying unidentified stuff from shops just feels silly. If some handwavium is needed, one can imagine a counter and shelves behind it. On shelves there are swords and daggers and spears and such. The shopkeeper is happy to tell you about the qualities of the items, but does not let you touch them or examine them more closely. Gold first, then you get the good.