Attention casters: dungeon books are now artifacts

[Derakon]

Vanilla, or v4? They aren't the same game. In Vanilla, dungeon books are not artifacts, so you can find more than one copy of each one, and while they're immune to the basic four elements, things like chaos or mana storms can still destroy them. In v4, they're artifacts and are thus completely indestructible, but you can only ever find a given book once.

[meJustmeNotyou]

book artifacts

Just wanted to to say in reference to people saying the special books are not destructible.... I could swear i destroyed a special book in vanilla using a mana storm or whatever the spell is called. I am almost positive. Either that or it disappeared in error. i think the books are only impervious to the normal elements when on the ground, and impervious to anything if in your inventory. Maybe I'm wrong but yeah, if i'm right then maybe the coding needs to be changed to protect them from any harm on the ground too (as they are artifacts now)... but... if i'm wrong.... woops (i'm sure it happened though)

[Magnate]

Wouldn't it be easier to add a new item flag for artifacts that are still generated in a no-artifact game?
Instead of having the game skip loading the artifacts, it would go through the process of loading the artifacts, but skip or drop any that don't have this flag.
So, one function would need to be edited, a new item flag would need to be defined in a couple files, and then be added to the artifact spellbooks.
I can try to make those changes when I get home, but then I'll have to figure out how to get them to you - I know nothing about github.

Have a look at this thread, but use http://github.com/yourname/v4.git as the repo to clone locally. If you have probs, best thing to do is drop by #angband-dev on irc.freenode.net to get help (if you don't have an IRC client, you can use http://webchat.freenode.net/).

Yes, what I meant by "divide artifacts into two types" was simple add a bool struct element called a_ptr->no_art, which indicates that this artifact can be generated in a no_arts game. No changes need to be made to loading artifacts, we just need to add a check for if (!a_ptr->no_art) to the lines which check for OPT(birth_no_artifacts).

[Rydel]

To do that, we'd need to split artifacts into two types - those which can drop in no_art games and those which can't.

Wouldn't it be easier to add a new item flag for artifacts that are still generated in a no-artifact game?
Instead of having the game skip loading the artifacts, it would go through the process of loading the artifacts, but skip or drop any that don't have this flag.
So, one function would need to be edited, a new item flag would need to be defined in a couple files, and then be added to the artifact spellbooks.
I can try to make those changes when I get home, but then I'll have to figure out how to get them to you - I know nothing about github.

[Magnate]

If the spellbooks drop in no-art games and are preserved if not collected, that would seem to solve all the issues (except maybe rarity, but that's "just" a question of balancing)

How would easy-know interact with preserve though?

I see two not terribly wonderful alternatives:

1) Spellbooks are unpreserved on detection or generation. If you have to leave the level, you may as well quit on the spot.

2) Spellbooks are unpreserved on pickup only. If you don't know to pick up the spellbooks you *aren't* interested in, they will keep being spawned, which defeats the purpose of this whole exercise.

easy_know applies to base objects, not artifacts. The artifact books are preserved until pickup, same as any other artifacts in preserve mode. We assume that people playing no_artifacts games will have preserve on - so if the spellbook is created on a level and you miss it completely, you can still get it later. If you play with preserve off, then you'd better pay attention to those special feelings in order to avoid missing a crucial spellbook. Seems ok to me (almost nobody plays with preserve off anyway).

On the randart spellbook front, would it just be a matter of giving each spellbook half a dozen pvals each interpreted as a spell index? I suppose you might want to allow additional variant spells for level/cost/difficulty, but that would open some serious cans of worm...

At the moment the spells in a book are a property of the base item - this is why there's an insta_art base item for each artifact spellbook. Once we rewrite the spell system to be more flexible, we can have a generic object "spellbook", which will get a random list of spells. This will replicate the current play by choosing randomly from the existing spell lists (with the selection filtered differently for artifact books and non-artifact books) - but can then be extended to offer different and/or random spell lists.

[kaypy]

If the spellbooks drop in no-art games and are preserved if not collected, that would seem to solve all the issues (except maybe rarity, but that's "just" a question of balancing)

How would easy-know interact with preserve though?

I see two not terribly wonderful alternatives:

1) Spellbooks are unpreserved on detection or generation. If you have to leave the level, you may as well quit on the spot.

2) Spellbooks are unpreserved on pickup only. If you don't know to pick up the spellbooks you *aren't* interested in, they will keep being spawned, which defeats the purpose of this whole exercise.

On the randart spellbook front, would it just be a matter of giving each spellbook half a dozen pvals each interpreted as a spell index? I suppose you might want to allow additional variant spells for level/cost/difficulty, but that would open some serious cans of worm...

[buzzkill]

@buzzkill: the honest answer is that nobody thought of it. We've always thought no_artifacts meant ... no artifacts. But you're right, it does seem to meet all the right criteria, and it's not hard to do. Opened as #1585.

Thanks Magnate. I was just thinking that they're not 'real' artifacts. They are just indestructible, non-consumable items that can't be purchased in town and therefore there's no benefit to finding extra copies (except to sell). We just want them a to have a couple of artifact-like properties, namely singularity and the level of preservation associated with artifacts.

[Magnate]

But I think if you're going to include artifact devices they really need to do something pretty unique and interesting - not just 'Mana storm with 5% DPR more than the version in my spellbook".

It's not *just* that O has these (thanks Nick) - they've been on the to-do list for years - one of the first conversations I remember having with d_m was about artifact devices.

So, another topic on which Timo agrees wholeheartedly with the devteam - artifact rods and palantir coming any year now!

The spellbooks thing is going to take a little longer - at the moment we *could* implement lots of new spellbooks using the current mechanic, but if we're going to have more flexibility in spell lists it needs rewriting. That way we can have randart spellbooks ...

@buzzkill: the honest answer is that nobody thought of it. We've always thought no_artifacts meant ... no artifacts. But you're right, it does seem to meet all the right criteria, and it's not hard to do. Opened as #1585.

[Nick]

P.S. I don't mean in my variant, I mean I have an actual artifact staff in my house. I use it for teleporting out the garbage and fireballing Jehovah's Witnesses.

I will give you A MILLION DOLLARS for that.

[Antoine]

But I think if you're going to include artifact devices they really need to do something pretty unique and interesting - not just 'Mana storm with 5% DPR more than the version in my spellbook".

A.

[Antoine]

"O has these" - Magnate.

I have one too.

A.

P.S. I don't mean in my variant, I mean I have an actual artifact staff in my house. I use it for teleporting out the garbage and fireballing Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Nick]

Artifact rods, staves and wands with different effects (as made possible with effect library).

"O has these" - Magnate.

[Timo Pietilä]

So don't throw them away, because they won't turn up again!

As of ff29e63, the top five books in each realm are artifacts.

Just for thought:

Since books are not wearables, this is the first time something else is made as artifact.

Then: how about re-introduce Palantir, but not as lightsource, but as rod? Rechargeable heavy clairvoyance-activating rod. We could make a lot more things like that. Artifact rods, staves and wands with different effects (as made possible with effect library).

(for Arkenstone I would like to compose its effect then as combination of full detection + magic mapping).

Not that we necessarily want to make those, just as possibility. Anything that isn't consumable could be artifact. If it is wand or staff is should be indestructible by recharge failure.

Also for books, there could be a lot more than just five of each kind with different composition of the spells if they are made artifacts (no TMJ problem with artifacts) Ringil-equal could have a lot more powerful spells than even current Wrath of God, but it should be also very rare. Rogue-high spellbook with composition of current Rogue dungeon only spells wrapped in one instead of spread over five. If you are not Rogue, throw it away. If you are... Things like that.

[EpicMan]

Wouldn't it be more consistent with the general solution to TMJ to allow different spellbooks to be squelched? That avoids all the corner cases you're having to code around and is guaranteed to not affect balance.

[buzzkill]

It doesn't solve the problem of no_artifact games though. To do that, we'd need to split artifacts into two types - those which can drop in no_art games and those which can't.

This seems like a easy fix with no weird side effects and it accomplishes what is intended, so why not go this route in the first place (or now)?