More thoughts on v4

[EpicMan]

As far as launcher affixes, the part of the Silmarillion about Numenor mentions the Numenoreans using bows made out of (hollow? Don't remember) steel, so a 'Numenorean Steel Bow" Could be a higher-end bow affix.

[Timo Pietilä]

As I said in the other thread, I strongly doubt that anyone's going to go to the trouble of trying to abuse this; it's too much of a hassle. Is it really that big a deal?

In fact it is. Entire reason for fuzzy detection is to not give away what the item is forcing player to seek it out, that means player should go and look what it is. If you remove that, then there is no reason to have fuzzy detection at all. You could as well look at item list and mentally choose that this I want and those are useless. IOW if fuzzy detection doesn't show items that you have squelched it becomes meaningless.

Maybe message is needed. "you recognize detected item as [enter item here]"

[Antoine]

The way my game's been going so far? Sure. It'll cheerfully inform you that there are no artifacts anywhere, every time.

Turn off 'squelch all artifacts' mate

A.

[Derakon]

Well, does the artifact-detection routine Timo describes above work??

A/

The way my game's been going so far? Sure. It'll cheerfully inform you that there are no artifacts anywhere, every time.

[Antoine]

As I said in the other thread, I strongly doubt that anyone's going to go to the trouble of trying to abuse this; it's too much of a hassle. Is it really that big a deal?

Well, does the artifact-detection routine Timo describes above work??

A/

[Derakon]

As I said in the other thread, I strongly doubt that anyone's going to go to the trouble of trying to abuse this; it's too much of a hassle. Is it really that big a deal?

[Antoine]

You could argue about that in exact opposite way: if you can narrow down fuzzy detection by changing squelch-settings then that interferes with the gameplay. Other way around it works exactly like it should: as soon as you have confirmation what the item is it gets squelched from sight.

Yes Timo is correct

Move to purple-dot squelch if necessary

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, I didn't find any real false positives, so I think they were squelched items. We must keep squelch (which is part of the UI layer) completely separate from gameplay. So detection must not show squelched items, either as asterisks or as items.

You could argue about that in exact opposite way: if you can narrow down fuzzy detection by changing squelch-settings then that interferes with the gameplay. Other way around it works exactly like it should: as soon as you have confirmation what the item is it gets squelched from sight.

That has a nasty side-effect of apparently empty space showing like item, but I think "false positive" when there is an item is better than no "false positive".

Else you could do things like: see couple of stars around you, no need to collect if they are not at least artifacts, change settings to check if any of those are artifacts, see stars disappear, restore setting.

[Magnate]

Were they true false positives or squelched items as you speculated earlier? I not sure that squelched items shouldn't be detected if that is indeed what's happening.

Well, I didn't find any real false positives, so I think they were squelched items. We must keep squelch (which is part of the UI layer) completely separate from gameplay. So detection must not show squelched items, either as asterisks or as items.

[buzzkill]

I've also fixed the false positives in fuzzy detection - I think. Please report if this continues in the new version.

Were they true false positives or squelched items as you speculated earlier? I not sure that squelched items shouldn't be detected if that is indeed what's happening.

[Magnate]

Yeah, the two I found were effectively a product of 'accidental scumming'; I sold my WoR to buy a good weapon, descended a bit to get enough money to replace it, accidentally read a DD when I was nearly back to the surface, ascended again... It seems like any play pattern like that, or just being cautious enough to hang around in the early dungeon for a while to level up, is going to produce quite high odds of finding an artefact.

Yes, but statistically 90% of the artifacts found in the first five levels are 'thancs. Even so, I've committed a small hack to bring artifact frequency in line with V at these levels.

I've also fixed the false positives in fuzzy detection - I think. Please report if this continues in the new version.

P.S. This thread is getting a bit long and old - could we start a new thread or two with any new issues?

P.P.S. The feature of "reached level X" appearing more than once in the history is WAD - it was a deliberate decision as part of the fix for #1170.

[Nomad]

Anyway, @Nomad: yes, the stats agree with you: the first six or seven levels in v4 are *much* more likely to produce artifacts. This would reward scumming and probably needs to be toned down.

Yeah, the two I found were effectively a product of 'accidental scumming'; I sold my WoR to buy a good weapon, descended a bit to get enough money to replace it, accidentally read a DD when I was nearly back to the surface, ascended again... It seems like any play pattern like that, or just being cautious enough to hang around in the early dungeon for a while to level up, is going to produce quite high odds of finding an artefact.

[Magnate]

OMG! Nearly four thousand posts later, magnate learns how to resize the Reply box. ARGH!

Anyway, @Nomad: yes, the stats agree with you: the first six or seven levels in v4 are *much* more likely to produce artifacts. This would reward scumming and probably needs to be toned down.

* Spellbooks found: Resistances at 2600', Ethereal Openings at 3050', Mordenkainen's at 3150'. The first two feel a bit late, but Mordy's is normal IMO.

Did you get them from certain uniques, or just random finds?

* It took me until 2950' to find a Rod of Illumination. That was annoying.

* Acquirement and *Acquirement* are noticeably more common now. Of course, they still usually don't generate anything interesting. I did get a shield with a triple-stacked Protection affix, though (total +50 to AC!). Is that intentional?

* Object detection frequently gives false positives (i.e. red stars where there aren't actually any items). Intended?

The rod of illumination is a fluke - it's as common as it is in V (slightly more so, in fact).

The Acquirement scrolls are indeed more common, as noted in the stats thread. Normal Acq is about 2x and *Acq* is about 3x as common as in V. This is a result of the object generation changes and can be rebalanced - though of course since the ego items fetched by them are noticeably less powerful, it might not actually be a problem. And yes, an acquirement scroll is now a legal target for acquirement.

Object detection giving false positives is a new one - I doubt that they are completely random asterisks. Perhaps they are squelched items?

* "Reached level X" notes are added to the log multiple times if you have to regain the level due to experience drain.

Wow, I fixed this back in 3.1.x - not sure how that's come back.

* There's no way to squelch ordinary lanterns without squelching the good ones too, at least not from the 'k' menu.

I think this has something to do with EASY_KNOW; I remember discussing it with someone before. Now that lanterns are the same as other non-jewelry wearables in terms of affixes, it should be possible to fix this.

I haven't commented on everything, but I don't have any issues with the rest of it. Thanks for the details on the utf-8 issue - hopefully this will enable noz and/or myshkin to trace the problem.

Thanks for the report - hope it's still fun.

[Derakon]

Okay, new progress report. First off, here's some shots of the message box when accented characters are displayed:


Nothing particularly off here except for the double space, which I'm pretty sure isn't normal.


The space before "terror" is definitely wrong.


Stray character introduced at the end of the string.


Unrecognized character! Uh oh.


This immediately followed the previous message. Note the space in "have".

It looks like there's some form of string corruption. My guess is that a wide character (2 bytes) is being used somewhere when only 1 byte is expected. In the middle of a string, this would result in extra spaces (since the wide character would probably print as a space), but off the end of the string we get garbage characters instead because we're reading uninitialized memory.

Anyway, onwards! For context: currently clvl38, dlvl67 (3350').

* Spellbooks found: Resistances at 2600', Ethereal Openings at 3050', Mordenkainen's at 3150'. The first two feel a bit late, but Mordy's is normal IMO.

* Notable finds: Boots of Speed +10 at 2350' (dropped by Ulfast), *Acquirement* at 2950', "ESP at 3050' (finally can wear that artifact helm I found much earlier),

* I've found one more artifact, a hammer (playing randarts). It only became worth using once I got some +DEX from my gear -- and even then, it only barely outdamages my old dagger.

* It took me until 2950' to find a Rod of Illumination. That was annoying.

* Acquirement and *Acquirement* are noticeably more common now. Of course, they still usually don't generate anything interesting. I did get a shield with a triple-stacked Protection affix, though (total +50 to AC!). Is that intentional?

* Object detection frequently gives false positives (i.e. red stars where there aren't actually any items). Intended?

* Scrolls of Deep Descent should mention the delay, like Word of Recall items do.

* Staves of Remove Curse seem singularly useless to me right now. Not that the scrolls are much more useful, but the effect is inherently single-shot.

* Maul description: "A heavy war hammer with a larger head." I guess the "larger" could mean "in comparison to normal war hammers", but it should still just be "large" IMO.

* Dwar dropped ?Acquirement, which, when read, generated ?*Acquirement*.

* "Reached level X" notes are added to the log multiple times if you have to regain the level due to experience drain.

* I found a pile of creeping adamantite coins worth only 295 AU. In practice adamantite is always at least 800 AU when found normally, so that's a bit of a giveaway.

* There's no way to squelch ordinary lanterns without squelching the good ones too, at least not from the 'k' menu. Incidentally, I'm still using an Everburning Lantern of Observation (a.k.a. See Invisible). No Phial.

[Derakon]

Meanwhile, while I've made a number of lucky finds (including Boots of Speed +10 at 2350'), I've only found two artifacts, one of which I can't even use because I need my telepathy helmet, and the other of which was distinctly underwhelming and has now been replaced by the aforementioned boots. Now clvl 36, dlvl 58 (2900').