Rune-based ID

[Derakon]

A priest wielding a trident of *slay undead* (+1 wisdom) (??) feels uncomfortable. I suppose "blessed" is a rune that needs identification ? If so, shouldnt it auto-id ?

*Slay Undead* isn't blessed by default. It gets a random power instead.

[Estie]

*Slay Undead* isn't blessed by default. It gets a random power instead.

Now I am confused. I had assumed anything that gave a wis bonus would automatically also get blessed.
My bad then.

[Derakon]

Now I am confused. I had assumed anything that gave a wis bonus would automatically also get blessed.
My bad then.

I think that's just for randarts. *Slay Evil* is also automatically blessed, though.

[Chud]

A few times now, playing the nightly build revision 883d9e0 from April 24, I get the message:

The (nothing) disappears

Usually when fighting a large crowd like a pit of apprentices or something where stuff is piling up on the ground and creatures are still milling around. I'm guessing this is maybe when something I have squelched gets picked up or crushed? Or maybe it's just when I can't see the object in question?

[Chud]

A thought, and I apologize if this has been mentioned before (I did look a bit but might have missed it).

Rather than show just {??} for something with unknown runes, why not show each rune separately? Something like:

You see the Circus Hammer of Harley Quinn (12d2) (+12, +14) {XA} {JJ} {ITO} {TZ}

Or something similar? It seems reasonable that someone could count runes when looking at an object, and it also makes a way for them to be tallied in the knowledge screen so you can know how many unknowns are left, f you want to do that.

[Nick]

A few times now, playing the nightly build revision 883d9e0 from April 24, I get the message:

The (nothing) disappears

Usually when fighting a large crowd like a pit of apprentices or something where stuff is piling up on the ground and creatures are still milling around. I'm guessing this is maybe when something I have squelched gets picked up or crushed? Or maybe it's just when I can't see the object in question?

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

[Nick]

A thought, and I apologize if this has been mentioned before (I did look a bit but might have missed it).

Rather than show just {??} for something with unknown runes, why not show each rune separately? Something like:

You see the Circus Hammer of Harley Quinn (12d2) (+12, +14) {XA} {JJ} {ITO} {TZ}

Or something similar? It seems reasonable that someone could count runes when looking at an object, and it also makes a way for them to be tallied in the knowledge screen so you can know how many unknowns are left, f you want to do that.

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?

[Derakon]

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?

If we were to go down this road, I'd just have one ? per unknown rune on the item.

It would be nice if when 'I'nspecting the item you saw rune names, but I don't consider it to be vital. All it allows you to do is say "okay, these two items have the same unknown rune on them", which is potentially useful but I don't think of enough benefit to be worth going to great effort to implement.

[calris]

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?

Items like Defender weapons are going to have awfully long inscriptions

I suggested before that on the items Info page to have something like 'This {x} has [a power, powers, many powers] that you do not understand yet'

[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.)

[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

[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.

[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

[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?

[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.