experimenting with minimal id

[Nick]

How long I've been waiting to hear someone else to express this sentiment. Such sweet music.

OK, well see how you like my next proposal. It's a simple change to 1 line of object.txt: Rod of Perception goes from depth 55, rarity 6 to depth 30, rarity 1. I think this (together with the lack of *ID* in FA) brings a nice clean end to the ID mini-game at about the time it is starting to seem pointless.

[Antoine]

OK, well see how you like my next proposal. It's a simple change to 1 line of object.txt: Rod of Perception goes from depth 55, rarity 6 to depth 30, rarity 1. I think this (together with the lack of *ID* in FA) brings a nice clean end to the ID mini-game at about the time it is starting to seem pointless.

Nice, but it would be good to get an easy source of Mass ID in the late mid game, too.

A.

[Big Al]

I'm not concerned as such, but my checkout failed - is there another way to get the development trunk files?

A.

Not until the site is back up. I have a copy of r1059 (about half a dozen revisions back) if you're really eager to start work on that, send me an email and I'll send it, but maybe not worth it as the site will probably be back up in a day or two.

[vorondil]

OK, well see how you like my next proposal. It's a simple change to 1 line of object.txt: Rod of Perception goes from depth 55, rarity 6 to depth 30, rarity 1. I think this (together with the lack of *ID* in FA) brings a nice clean end to the ID mini-game at about the time it is starting to seem pointless.

Gorgeous. 1500' is exactly where I'm starting to type the sequence "k-ay" about a billion times. I pseudo all equipment, kill everything "average" or "cursed," etc. etc.

[takkaria]

I'm not concerned as such, but my checkout failed - is there another way to get the development trunk files?

A.

If you use bzr at all, you can check out a copy using "bzr branch lp:angband", but otherwise, we just have to wait til the server comes up. Hopefully that'll be fairly soon.

EDiT: it's back. enjoy!

[Donald Jonker]

OK, well see how you like my next proposal. It's a simple change to 1 line of object.txt: Rod of Perception goes from depth 55, rarity 6 to depth 30, rarity 1. I think this (together with the lack of *ID* in FA) brings a nice clean end to the ID mini-game at about the time it is starting to seem pointless.

This sounds good. Perhaps not as clean as id on pickup, but it's certainly a good compromise. Would you plan on making the activation easier for warriors and their ilk? I've never run across a rod of perception in FAA, but I recall having to leave them at home when playing warriors in V until fairly late in the game. Or perhaps you want this to be a class differentiation thing? I suppose that would be a valid design choice, but I'd rather see this change made across board.

...Thinking about it, the only actual gameplay difference between copious RoP's and id on pickup is that the former takes up an inventory slot and requires some extra keypresses. Something to think on...

[Psi]

This sounds good. Perhaps not as clean as id on pickup, but it's certainly a good compromise. Would you plan on making the activation easier for warriors and their ilk?

This may or may not be accurate, but I believe that activation is based on the objects depth - therefore making it native to level 30 should also make it easier to activate.

[Seany C]

Hmm, does 'Depth = 30' and 'Rarity = 1' also make it significantly more common at 'Depth 58'? Just thinking of those poor thralls and their easily-depleted stack of ID scrolls...

[Mangojuice]

> Antoine wrote:
>> Takkaria wrote:
>>> Antoine wrote:
>>> [suggestion that identification should not change the sale price of 'good' weapons and armor]
>> I'm not a massive fan of this, really.

>Fair enough. Do you agree, though, that there should be some way around
>the need to ID 'good' weapons and armor purely for sale purposes??

This, maybe, explains why I was so enamored of the Alchemy effect in Z, and made it so much more common in Z+. Gold-gathering in Z+ is entirely different from in vanilla because of the ready availability of Scrolls of Alchemy.

For those not familiar, Alchemy turns an object into gold; the amount of gold it turns into is related to its true worth, but a bunch less than you would get in a store. So, if you alchemize a {good} item, you get gold based on its true value, without having to ever ID its plusses.

So, what about a town Alchemist that would turn objects into gold for you, giving you say 30% of the object's true value, but *not* identifying it? This would completely remove the need to ever ID anything for gold-gathering purposes.

This might also let you implement the suggestion to disallow merchants from buying (and thus ID'ing) potions/mushrooms/scrolls. Instead, players bring them to the Alchemist, who will let them discover that the object is worthless, but not tell them exactly what kind of worthless object it is. (Ideally, the whole object flavor would be marked so that the player learns {worthless} when they come across more un-id'ed potions of blindness.) And even beyond that you get an idea of the relative value of objects; if one mushroom turns into 20 gold and another turns into 500; you know which one is likely to be the mushroom of restoration.

Adding a portable alchemy ability to the game is another possibility but is a much bigger game change, because it lets you cut out the trip to town and do your "selling" in the dungeon.

[takkaria]

Hmm, does 'Depth = 30' and 'Rarity = 1' also make it significantly more common at 'Depth 58'? Just thinking of those poor thralls and their easily-depleted stack of ID scrolls...

"Depth = 30" means it will not be found before dungeon level 30, but has no bearing on rarity. "Rarity = 1" (from rarity 6) means a sixfold increase in its common-ness, so yes, it will.

[vorondil]

Adding a portable alchemy ability to the game is another possibility but is a much bigger game change, because it lets you cut out the trip to town and do your "selling" in the dungeon.

But that also allows you to "sell" many more objects than can fit in your inventory and kit.

...not that that would be terrible...

[Narvius]

Ego-type "of Knowledge" that auto-ID'ies everything you step over, rarity ~equal the rarity of ESP.

[Nick]

This may or may not be accurate, but I believe that activation is based on the objects depth - therefore making it native to level 30 should also make it easier to activate.

Correct. 30 would make it easier to activate than a rod of recall, for example.

[PowerDiver]

Correct. 30 would make it easier to activate than a rod of recall, for example.

Activation depending upon depth is another bogus overloading that needs to be fixed.

IMO there ought to be deep items whose whole purpose is that they are easier to activate than the shallower versions of similar items.

[Nick]

Activation depending upon depth is another bogus overloading that needs to be fixed.

IMO there ought to be deep items whose whole purpose is that they are easier to activate than the shallower versions of similar items.

Yes, probably. When are you going to release your V patch as a full-blown variant with all this stuff fixed, so the rest of us can start stealing code from it?