Rune-based ID

[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.

[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.

[Carnivean]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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!

[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.

[spara]

The price of an Identify Scroll from the black market feels a bit cheapo. Only 45 AU. Just bought 10 scrolls . Actually BM has become my main source for ID as they seem to be quite rare in the dungeon. Maybe the RNG favors me, but they seem a bit too common at the BM. On the other hand they seem a bit too rare in the dungeon.

[Thraalbee]

Artifact Spoiler files without weapon and armour bonus

Weapons in artifact spoiler lack (to_hit, to_dam) and armour lack (ac_bonus)

[Derakon]

Where's Derakon?

Derakon mostly reserves his efforts for things he feels he can readily dive in and do without having to learn a great deal about how the codebase works. The squelch system is not one of those things. Sorry guys.

[Carnivean]

Well that's disappointing. I thought you'd have a nice manifesto ready. After all, you usually do.

[fruviad]

If @ can recognize a known rune on any item after learning the rune, then should @ also be able to recognize (but not know the meaning of) an unknown rune if @ sees it on multiple items? Or should runes only be differentiated from each other after they have been identified?

For example, you find Elvagil and you do not know the 2 slay runes on it, so the description is:

the Long Sword 'Elvagil' (2d5) (+12,+12) <+2> {??}

Now suppose you find another weapon that has a rune you don't know. You would like to know what the rune means, but it's a weak enough weapon that you're not interested in keeping it, otherwise, because it's inferior to Elvagil, which you're already using as your primary weapon.

Currently, both weapons will display as {??}, without any indication that they share the same rune. (None that I've seen, at least.)

But, if the rune on this other weapon also is "Slay Orc", then should you be able to look at the two weapons and say "Hmmm...I have this fairly lame sword with this unknown rune that I'll call 'D' but I also see/feel the 'D' rune on Elvagil. Given this, I don't know what 'D' does, but I know that there's no point in keeping this lame weapon around in the hopes of ID'ing 'D', because I already have Elvagil to get the ID for that rune."

This might mean enumerating each rune when finding the item, rather than the more vague {??} which means "one or more runes". I wonder if this would give away too much about a new item?

Perhaps a rune would only be enumerated separately from {??} when you've encountered that rune on multiple items? {??} would mean "one or more runes you don't know and have never seen elsewhere", and wouldn't be displayed for an item if you have seen all of its runes on other items.

Thus, if I do not know "Slay Troll" or "Slay Orc", and I haven't seen those runes on any other weapons, then Elvagil would display as:

the Long Sword 'Elvagil' (2d5) (12,+12) <+2> {??}

If I find another weapon that has "Slay Orc", but I still do not identify the "Slay Orc" rune, then Elvagil will display as:

the Long Sword 'Elvagil' (2d5) (12,+12) <+2> {D} {??}

If I then find a weapon with "Slay Troll" and I do not yet know that rune, it would be assigned another label (e.g. "F"), and the Elvagil display would change to:

the Long Sword 'Elvagil' (2d5) (12,+12) <+2> {D} {F}

I haven't tested this in today's release, but I repro'd the current behavior with yesterday's release using Narthanc and a flask of oil.

Thoughts?

Thanks to everyone who's been working on this, whether developers or otherwise. I've been enjoying the new ID scheme.

[Carnivean]

Seems a reasonable line of thinking, but would it be better on the inspect screen than the display line?