artifacts are changing
Eddie Grove
Those of you who care about the standard artifact set but do not visit oook
regularly might want to check out
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=26128#post26128
and make your opinions known.
Timo Pietilä
Looks like Magnate is our current maintainer. What happened to Takkaria?
Timo Pietil�
Billy Bissette
news:7n9f2fF...@mid.individual.net:
From reading your response to the thread, it sounds like Aggravate
needs changing more than the artifacts that have it.
There just seems to be too big a jump between normal and Aggravate
status, which means equipment with Aggravate needs to be overpowered
in order to even be tempting to a player.
At the same time, there is no culmulative effect to Aggravate? So
if you commit to a piece of Aggravate equipment, then it becomes a
non-factor on any other piece of equipment. If you try to boost each
piece of Aggravate equipment into being tempting in its own right,
then you risk players jumping straight from nothing with Aggravate to
half a kit with Aggravate. (Way back in the day, I ran into such a
situation from one of the variants that was pretty free with creating
randarts. Anything really powerful had Aggravate as its "balance."
None were tempting enough on their own, but the culmulative bonuses
were certainly extreme when weighed against a non-culmulative
penalty.)
Maybe Aggravate should be split into multiple separate penalties
and/or degrees of penalties. Make the jump to a single piece of
Aggravate a lower penalty, but have some form of accumulation become
a factor when the player considers multiple pieces.
Timo Pietilä
> Timo Pietil� <timo.p...@helsinki.fi> wrote in
> news:7n9f2fF...@mid.individual.net:
>
>> Eddie Grove wrote:
>>> Those of you who care about the standard artifact set but do not
>>> visit oook regularly might want to check out
>>>
>>> http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=26128#post26128
>>>
>>> and make your opinions known.
>> Looks like Magnate is our current maintainer. What happened to
>> Takkaria?
>
> From reading your response to the thread, it sounds like Aggravate
> needs changing more than the artifacts that have it.
Yes, if anybody can figure out how to do that properly.
> There just seems to be too big a jump between normal and Aggravate
> status, which means equipment with Aggravate needs to be overpowered
> in order to even be tempting to a player.
>
> At the same time, there is no culmulative effect to Aggravate? So
> if you commit to a piece of Aggravate equipment, then it becomes a
> non-factor on any other piece of equipment. If you try to boost each
> piece of Aggravate equipment into being tempting in its own right,
> then you risk players jumping straight from nothing with Aggravate to
> half a kit with Aggravate.
This is very much just like you describe. If you use one you can forget
about it and use it with everything.
> Maybe Aggravate should be split into multiple separate penalties
> and/or degrees of penalties. Make the jump to a single piece of
> Aggravate a lower penalty, but have some form of accumulation become
> a factor when the player considers multiple pieces.
Or aggravate just some monsters or make it LOS-effect, or give it a
relatively short range with multiplying it with each item, so that one
isn't that bad, but several is. Or make it two-edged sword so that
aggravated monster forgets about tactics and rushes right to you even
hitting slower monsters in its way (like with confusion) and maybe even
preventing summoning and spellcasting or making them less likely. That
would be bonus, but it would also negate stealth.
Timo Pietil�
Wally the Grey
> Billy Bissette wrote:
>> Maybe Aggravate should be split into multiple separate penalties
>> and/or degrees of penalties. Make the jump to a single piece of
>> Aggravate a lower penalty, but have some form of accumulation become
>> a factor when the player considers multiple pieces.
>
> Or aggravate just some monsters or make it LOS-effect, or give it a
> relatively short range with multiplying it with each item, so that one
> isn't that bad, but several is. Or make it two-edged sword so that
> aggravated monster forgets about tactics and rushes right to you even
> hitting slower monsters in its way (like with confusion) and maybe even
> preventing summoning and spellcasting or making them less likely. That
> would be bonus, but it would also negate stealth.
Why not just replace it with a (cumulative) stealth malus? -3 or
something like that. A few items each with -3 stealth and pretty soon
you might as well be aggravating, but just one isn't so bad.
Timo Pietilä
There is slight difference between current stealth and aggravation:
Aggravation affects in entire LoS-range not caring about monster
detection range, while lack of stealth doesn't wake up monsters that are
not within their detection range. So that change doesn't quite make same
impact in game. But then again, maybe it shouldn't.
You can BTW have huge stealth bonus. I once played artifactless Hobbit
Ranger (one of my favorites) with defender, elvenkind armor, elvenkind
shield, aman cloak and boots of stealth. That char could waltz right
thru big vaults without waking anybody up (except "ever vigilant"
monsters). It almost felt cheating. Of course that didn't last entire
game (needed better weapon and BoS)
I guess hobbit or kobold rogue could have been even better. Not much
better though.
Timo Pietil�
Andi Sidwell
Takkaria went on hiatus for a while and will return to active work at
some point in the future. In the meantime, I am paying attention to
what's going on in the development branch, I've just not go the time to
code or participate in forums/r.g.r.a.
Magnate
And please rest assured that Magnate is not making any changes that have not
previously been initiated with Takkaria's blessing. That's not to say he
won't amend them when he gets back so that they are more to his liking!
CC
Magnate
news:7nblgbF...@mid.individual.net...
> Wally the Grey wrote:
>> Timo Pietil� wrote:
>>> Billy Bissette wrote:
>>>> Maybe Aggravate should be split into multiple separate penalties
>>>> and/or degrees of penalties. Make the jump to a single piece of
>>>> Aggravate a lower penalty, but have some form of accumulation become
>>>> a factor when the player considers multiple pieces.
>>>
>>> Or aggravate just some monsters or make it LOS-effect, or give it a
>>> relatively short range with multiplying it with each item, so that one
>>> isn't that bad, but several is. Or make it two-edged sword so that
>>> aggravated monster forgets about tactics and rushes right to you even
>>> hitting slower monsters in its way (like with confusion) and maybe even
>>> preventing summoning and spellcasting or making them less likely. That
>>> would be bonus, but it would also negate stealth.
>>
>> Why not just replace it with a (cumulative) stealth malus? -3 or
>> something like that. A few items each with -3 stealth and pretty soon you
>> might as well be aggravating, but just one isn't so bad.
>
> There is slight difference between current stealth and aggravation:
> Aggravation affects in entire LoS-range not caring about monster detection
> range, while lack of stealth doesn't wake up monsters that are not within
> their detection range. So that change doesn't quite make same impact in
> game. But then again, maybe it shouldn't.
There's a clear consensus that aggravate needs changing, and Billy is right
that the nature of that change is far more important than any of the
adjustments I have made to artifacts in the nightlies. Once aggravate is
redefined, artifacts will need readjusting anyway - and I think Takkaria
wants to introduce new curse types at the same time ...
> You can BTW have huge stealth bonus. I once played artifactless Hobbit
> Ranger (one of my favorites) with defender, elvenkind armor, elvenkind
> shield, aman cloak and boots of stealth. That char could waltz right thru
> big vaults without waking anybody up (except "ever vigilant" monsters). It
> almost felt cheating. Of course that didn't last entire game (needed
> better weapon and BoS)
>
> I guess hobbit or kobold rogue could have been even better. Not much
> better though.
I tend to play HE rogues (one point less stealth than hobbit or kobold
rogues), and I find I only need about +10 total stealth before I can avoid
waking any sleeping monsters. Yet perfect stealth for HE Ro is +21 total, so
that's not even halfway.
My personal view on aggravate is that it should subtract the item's pval
from stealth - so aggravate hurts more on items with bigger pvals, and it
has a cumulative effect if it's on more than one item. I would combine this
with a slight revision to the stealth scale so that you need more stealth to
get that near-perfect effect.
This would penalise divers a lot more than it penalises level-clearers,
which might help address some recent perceptions.
CC
Timo Pietilä
> This would penalise divers a lot more than it penalises level-clearers,
> which might help address some recent perceptions.
Which BTW. is one other thing that always bothered me: every new
creature spawned after you enter the level is created awake, and all
awake monsters automatically know where you are, no matter how good
stealth you have.
With good enough stealth you should be able to walk past awake monster
that has no LoS to you without it noticing where you are.
This should require three states for monsters:
1) asleep
2) awake but not aware
3) awake and aware
If invisibility is ever introduced then even awake and LoS could be
possible without making monster aware of where you are.
Invisible monsters should naturally see invisible char. If monster is
aware that you are there, but does not have see invisible then you
should have huge AC bonus against those monsters.
Timo Pietil�
The Wanderer
> Magnate wrote:
>
>> This would penalise divers a lot more than it penalises
>> level-clearers, which might help address some recent perceptions.
>
> Which BTW. is one other thing that always bothered me: every new
> creature spawned after you enter the level is created awake, and all
> awake monsters automatically know where you are, no matter how good
> stealth you have.
>
> With good enough stealth you should be able to walk past awake
> monster that has no LoS to you without it noticing where you are.
>
> This should require three states for monsters:
>
> 1) asleep
> 2) awake but not aware
> 3) awake and aware
>
> If invisibility is ever introduced then even awake and LoS could be
> possible without making monster aware of where you are.
Not to mention things like, if you teleport away from a monster (out of
its LOS and, if still applicable, detect-intruders range), it should
lose "aware of where you are" until you come back within its range again.
Off hand, I think the correct solution to the "wake sleeping monsters"
side of aggravate would probably involve what is essentially a noise
system, or perhaps it would be better called a "disturbance" system.
Every action - from taking a step to digging a tunnel to drinking a
potion to even just waiting in place - should create disturbance, more
or less depending on the action and on the character's stealth; a
monster's "notice intruders" radius should be replaced by (or, rather,
redefined as) a measure of how far away it can detect such disturbances,
and possibly how likely it is to actually notice them; aggravation
should simply greatly increase how much disturbance is produced by a
given action.
(At this point, I'm more or less brainstorming.)
Awake monsters could potentially have different "detect disturbance"
ranges and/or "notice disturbance" chances. When disturbance is noticed
by a given monster, that monster becomes aware that "the player is/was
at X location", and possibly gains greater chance to notice further
disturbance as long as the player is near that location; however, if the
player leaves that location without enough disturbance for the monster
to notice their new location (whether by simple luck of the dice or by
teleporting away or because the monster was temporarily put to sleep or
what-have-you), the monster doesn't learn of that until notified by some
other means, such as further disturbance at the new location or simple
LoS detection.
Being in LoS would normally override disturbance-based detection for
awake monsters. However, as Timo mentions, there's the potential for
that to change; he mentions invisibility, but I think it would also be
possible to implement monster blindness, such that e.g. jellies don't
automatically know your location just because you're within LoS.
(Rationally, and ignoring magic, they should only know you're there by
detecting vibrations - which would fall under "disturbance"...)
At this point, this rather sounds like variant territory. I'm not sure
it needs to be thought of that way, however, for the simple reason that
it could easily be quite unobtrusive. Done properly, I think the basic
form of the idea could be essentially invisible to players who don't go
looking for it, but still manage to be effective.
> Invisible monsters should naturally see invisible char. If monster is
> aware that you are there, but does not have see invisible then you
> should have huge AC bonus against those monsters.
More than that - the monster shouldn't be able to use LoS to pinpoint
your location; it should have to rely on disturbance.
Perhaps "in LoS" should simply mean a vastly greater "chance to notice
disturbance", if the character is visible to the monster? That way, I
think an intuitive behavior would arise naturally... and monster
blindness (inherent or temporary) could be implemented as simply a LoS
range of zero.
That would mean that monsters are never aware of "the player's current
location", even when the player is in LoS, but only of the last location
they detected the player. With a high enough "detect while in LoS"
chance, that shouldn't be different from the current behavior in
practice, but it could make a considerable difference when *not* in LoS.
It would potentially fix the annoying "newly-generated monsters already
know where to find you" issue, without requiring a third monster state,
but it would require some potentially complicated changes to the
"monster searches for the player" code; it would also allow some new
features, like invisibility and monster blindness, more easily.
Anyone care to point out problems with this, so that I can try to fix
them? (Or is this actually that rare gem of a perfect idea that somehow
no one ever thought of before?)
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Martin Bazley
> If invisibility is ever introduced then even awake and LoS could be
> possible without making monster aware of where you are.
>
> Invisible monsters should naturally see invisible char.
[snip]
Oh, not necessarily... In ToME, which does have invisiblity, the @
disappears if you don't have see invisible!
Even more absurdly, you can get round it by turning on 'Highlight the
player with the cursor'!
--
__<^>__
/ _ _ \ You always find something in the last place you look.
( ( |_| ) )
\_> <_/ ======================= Martin Bazley ==========================
Eddie Grove
function of distance through walls. I'd prefer the distance to be through
open squares, so that closing a door means monsters on the other side of it do
not hear you.
Eddie
J�rgen Lerch
On Fri, 4 Dec 2009 11:11:50 -0000, "Magnate" wrote:
[...]
> This would penalise divers a lot more than it penalises level-clearers,
> which might help address some recent perceptions.
;-)
Ad Astra!
JuL
--
jyn...@gmx.de / L'�tat, c'est toi. (Moi)
J�rgen ,,JuL'' Lerch /
The Wanderer
> The following bytes were arranged on 4 Dec 2009 by Timo Pietilä :
>
>> If invisibility is ever introduced then even awake and LoS could be
>> possible without making monster aware of where you are.
>>
>> Invisible monsters should naturally see invisible char.
>
> [snip]
>
> Oh, not necessarily... In ToME, which does have invisiblity, the @
> disappears if you don't have see invisible!
True, but by Tolkien-theme accuracy, invisible creatures *should* be
able to see invisible. (Ref. the "Black Riders" at Weathertop, vs. Frodo
with the Ring at the same point.)
Magnate
news:878wdi6...@linux.site...
I am with both of you: monster perception should go along open squares,
except for those with PASS_WALL. (I'd probably allow sound to travel over
rubble.) And Timo is spot on that stealth should affect the chances of being
noticed/followed by generated-awake monsters as well as just-woken ones.
This would make hounds a lot less awful with decent stealth (though
admittedly they should have higher perception than normal monsters).
Sangband has invisibility, and it does have a noticeable effect on awake
monsters noticing and coming for you. If this perception thing were added to
V, invisibility could easily follow. What I don't know is, can this be done
without a full implementation of 4GAI? AFAICR Takkaria was never really sold
on 4GAI for V (mainly because of the implicit requirement for O-combat,
IIRC).
CC