Rune-based ID

[PowerWyrm]

I understand that pseudo-id is gone... but why removing the ego quality squelching categories? Before, I could squelch slay dragon and such vs westernesse and such by choosing "excellent but not splendid" as a category. Now I have to select "non-artifact" and squelch all egos in the ego item ignore menu manually...

[PowerWyrm]

If the weapon doesn't have a +to-hit, that would do it - otherwise it looks buggy.

Facepalm... Of course, that was the case (I was using the starting dagger enchanted to +1 to-dam with a scroll). Tested with a fully enchanted weapon, the to-hit was learned.

[Nivra]

There has been a bit of discussion on this, and I'm still unsure which way to go. As you say, this change would mean the player knows how many unknown runes there are (which might be seen as good or bad), and also requires some sort of names to be given to the runes (a bit like for scrolls).

I don't know - what do other people think?

I love the idea of showing runes using Runic Unicode

ᛈ ᛚ ᛖ ᛆ ᛊ ᛖ

[Nick]

After some discussion, we decided to name ego items in stores, although (IIRC) you don't get the rune until you hit a dragon with it

Looks like I recalled incorrectly - you do learn the rune. So buying ego items is a way of learning runes.

[Nick]

I've hit a lot of somethings, still the rune isn't learned...

If the weapon doesn't have a +to-hit, that would do it - otherwise it looks buggy.

[PowerWyrm]

Um, generally just by hitting something

I've hit a lot of somethings, still the rune isn't learned...

[Nick]

- there's a "mace of slay dragon" in the temple, although I've not seen the tail of a dragon yet

After some discussion, we decided to name ego items in stores, although (IIRC) you don't get the rune until you hit a dragon with it

- hitting something makes you learn the "to damage" rune... but how are you supposed to learn the "to hit" rune (I was expecting by "missing" something, but it's not the case)?

Um, generally just by hitting something

- full dice/ac are automatically learned, so what's the point of the corresponding runes?

These aren't runes any more.

[PowerWyrm]

Newly generated character with the latest build:
- there's a "mace of slay dragon" in the temple, although I've not seen the tail of a dragon yet
- hitting something makes you learn the "to damage" rune... but how are you supposed to learn the "to hit" rune (I was expecting by "missing" something, but it's not the case)?
- full dice/ac are automatically learned, so what's the point of the corresponding runes?

[AnonymousHero]

especially gcu.

Kill GCU. Seriously, kill it. There's no rationalizaton for what GCU does. Kill it. KILL!

/stops channelling Bill Hicks.

(If T2 code is anything to go by there are loads of features of the Term interface struct which only exist to satistfy GCU... on platforms where you cannot move the cursor to "max (x,y)" because... reasons.)

[Nick]

I'm for it. Further, Unicode has Futhark support.

True, but a quick investigation suggests we might struggle to get fonts to support it. Runic is more possible, but we would still need to do some work to get appropriate fonts on all platforms - especially gcu.

[Pete Mack]

I'm for it. Further, Unicode has Futhark support.

There has been a bit of discussion on this, and I'm still unsure which way to go. As you say, this change would mean the player knows how many unknown runes there are (which might be seen as good or bad), and also requires some sort of names to be given to the runes (a bit like for scrolls).

I don't know - what do other people think?

[PowerWyrm]

This has been reported a few times, and I have now tracked down the cause - which is basically a message being given when it shouldn't be. It happens when an item is dropped by a monster or comes out of a chest, and there's no room on the floor for it, but the player hasn't seen it so has no description; the correct thing is just not to even give the message in that case. There will be a fix at some point - probably after I pull the traps feature branch in, because that is easier for me

There's also this: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...21&postcount=5

[Thraalbee]

I played two ironman games to DL99 with the early rune id builds. Fighter and mage. As mage I had to abandon a lot of ego weapons without knowing their type. That feels reasonable. Otherwise not much to say, it works. For the fighter I think it was better than before, as mage about the same. Worse initially but better in the later game.

[calris]

I think the main advantage of distinguishing individual runes is in giving them names so @ can compare items and discard duplicates pre-identification.

To be honest, I have never had a problem with duplicates. I sometimes have to dump a few items at home, but generally speaking, auto-ID and identify scrolls usually keep my home count fairly low.

Of course, it's a totally different story for ironman (which I haven't played), and I'm guessing there would be greater value to knowing what items are duplicates in that scenario

[Nomad]

I don't know that it's necessary to show the number of runes in the actual item name - just the standard {??} with the details on the inspect screen would work. (As calris notes, a Defender weapon is potentially going to have up to {????????????} as an inscription otherwise, which is a bit silly.) That said, I'm not convinced it's particularly useful to indicate just the number of runes without having them individually named - most items with more than one rune are "splendid" egos with recognisable stat boosts that make it fairly easy to guess a ballpark number of runes anyway, so I think the main advantage of distinguishing individual runes is in giving them names so @ can compare items and discard duplicates pre-identification.

The affix system in v4 used named runes, so you could always just recycle the list of seed names from the names.txt here for randomly generated names. (I could go either way on implementing this in Vanilla, really, but I do think having named runes worked well in v4, and would probably become more of a useful thing to have in V if egos eventually become more randomised with less predictable rune sets.)