I think it would be less misleading to not use the affixes at all in the item name itself, instead only some generic "Runed" or "Enchanted" or something to denote that it is, in fact, an ego. All affixes then can be seen on the Inspect screen.
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But wouldn't that lose an awful lot of flavour? That means that almost every non-artifact item in the 2nd half of the dungeon would be called Runed. That would seem awfully dull."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Yeah, I know this particular approach isn't all that great, but I hope you see that something less misleading would be necessary here. Someone else can probably think of something more flavourful.If you can convincingly pretend you're crazy, you probably are.Comment
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Also, "Iron" weapons are all Slay Demon? My Iron Sling shots can now whomp Demons! but... that wouldn't be readily apparent, right? and Iron is known upon pickup.Hobbitish is not ID'ing upon pickup, as I Believe it should.And now I've had a sword fully ID as of enchantment on it's own- It does show as Average when I squelch it though. (Since it has a +0,+0, I imagine.)
Many thanks for the reports."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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1. We list all affixes in the name. Accurate - yes. Flavourful - yes. Practical - no.
2. We list none of the affixes in the name, and all on the 'I'nspect screen. (Whether or not we use a generic affix to indicate the presence of real affixes is kind of irrelevant.) Accurate - yes. Flavourful - no. Practical - yes.
3. We list only a manageable number of affixes in the name (e.g. one prefix and one suffix). Accurate - no. Flavourful - yes. Practical - yes.
So far I've chosen flavour over accuracy (because the latter can be found in the 'I'nspect screen) - but if anyone can think of a way of ticking all three boxes, please say."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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The simplest way to do this is to have a list like this:
Great == two prefixes
Awesome == three prefixes
etc.
of Power == two suffices
of Immense Power == three suffices
of Vast Power == four suffices
etc.
But I really don't like that idea. I think that the names would need to provide some indication of what the affixes were about, i.e. whether they were stat-related, or attack bonuses, or defence boosts, or resists etc. Otherwise we're losing both accuracy and flavour.
Personally I think it's better to shift our mindset to the idea that an item's name doesn't necessarily tell us everything about it - that's what the 'I'nspect command is for. But I'm open to suggestions - if anyone wants to have a go at coding an affix naming matrix, providing flavourful names for different combinations of affixes, I'm happy to try it out - that's what v4 is for. I think you'd want at least two or three dozen possible names, given the number of items you find in a game - otherwise things would feel a bit bland.
And JFTR, Diablo didn't do this. Items in Diablo which used affix names only had one prefix and one suffix, so the problem didn't arise. Rare items in D2 had up to three prefixes and three suffices, but they were given random meaningless names which bore no relation to the affixes - flavour over accuracy again."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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* Have a file called ego_names, which would be similar to ego_themes, except it would be checklists of affixes of which, if your item has at least two, it acquires a collective name for them. E.g. if an ego has two or more resistances, it gains the name 'Elemental', if it has two or more physical property affixes, it gains the name 'of Craftmanship', two or more slays/*slays* it gets 'Cruel', etc.
* If you generate a non-themed ego, run an array of its affixes against that names file. Where you can replace some of them with a collective name, do so. E.g. "Resist Acid, Resist Lightning, of Stealth" goes in, "Elemental, of Stealth" comes out.
* Rank your final set of names, and pick the best prefix and best suffix to use. If there are any other names still left over, append a third generic affix such as 'Enhanced' or 'Superior' to indicate "more to be seen on the Inspect screen".
So to borrow fizzix's example, maybe you generate a Broad Sword that has the affixes "Sharp, Diamond, Elven, Slay Troll, Slay Orc, of Acid".
You run that against ego_names to see if you can replace any of those with collective names, and get "of Craftmanship, Cruel, of Acid". You pick the best prefix (only one, so easy) and the best suffix (arguably Craftmanship, since it's a collective name) and since you still have a third affix left over, append 'Superior' as well.
So what comes out at the end of the naming process is a 'Superior Cruel Broad Sword of Craftmanship'. Not perfect, but more accurate than 'Elven Broad Sword of Acid' as it might get under the current scheme.
(Of course, this is easy for me to suggest when I'm not a coder. )Comment
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Well, if anyone codes that up and submits a pull request I'll happily review and merge it. But it seems to me like a lot of work for little gain, because we *still* end up with the name not guaranteed to tell you accurately about the item!
But I can see that it could be considered an improvement over the current somewhat random names, so very happy to try it out.
In other news, I've just updated all the graf-???.prf files, so v4 should now work fine with all four tile sets. Thanks to Nomad for making that simple."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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There's a bug with making character dumps; the details of objects aren't 'printing' fully to the text file, so you only get the first letter of each line, like this:
Code:h) a Cloak of Shielding [1,+7] B P i) a Tough Large Shield of Resist Acid [5,+3] D P C
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I've got to say that I like seeing tutorial modes in games (like ToME 4, Crawl, etc). If you don't want a few options (Priest, fighter, mage), provide one option for a tutorial, maybe a ranger or rogue who will eventually get magic.Comment
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Squelch/ID issues in the latest build (02dd343):
I picked up a Long Sword, it pseudo-ID'd as {magical} and auto-squelched itself. By unsquelching and wield-testing I was able to discover it was Cheap, which was obviously why the "squelch bad" setting worked on it.
I had seen a Cheap item before, so I'm assuming rune-based ID did its job and I 'knew' it was bad, but for some reason it didn't become explicitly identified until I wielded it in combat.Comment
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EDIT: I can't reproduce this. Can anyone else duplicate this behaviour? Nomad - can you attach a savefile which will (on your system) generate this kind of dump?Last edited by Magnate; October 25, 2011, 18:11."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Squelch/ID issues in the latest build (02dd343):
I picked up a Long Sword, it pseudo-ID'd as {magical} and auto-squelched itself. By unsquelching and wield-testing I was able to discover it was Cheap, which was obviously why the "squelch bad" setting worked on it.
I had seen a Cheap item before, so I'm assuming rune-based ID did its job and I 'knew' it was bad, but for some reason it didn't become explicitly identified until I wielded it in combat.
But I think perhaps it is time to separate {magical} into {good} and {poor}, since (i) these affixes are non-magical anyway and (ii) you probably can tell by looking at an item which side of bog-standard it is.
If we do this, the expected behaviour would be that it pseudos as {poor} and then auto-squelches - or pseudos as {good} and doesn't.
Anyone want to argue for a different approach to pseudo and squelch of weapons?"Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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