Is "identify" really good for the game?
Ray Dillinger
Has anyone done a game where there's no such effect as "identify?"
I'm starting to think I want to... The whole "nail it down
exactly" thing, where items are so alike there're even standardized
names for classes of exactly similar items, is starting to feel
"wrong" for me. It smacks of assembly-line production, not magic.
It's in almost everything because it was in D&D, but I'm starting
to feel that it's not necessarily a good trope.
Assembly-line items like, say, Colt .45 caliber revolvers, are right
for a technology-based game with factories and assembly lines. But
I don't think of enchantment as something that is done in factories
on assembly lines - so every item ought to be individual if possible,
differing in quality and details from other items. There shouldn't
be mere names that immediately tell you everything there is to know
about something, and there shouldn't be a spell that can just give
you such a name. Let the player make up his own descriptive name
for things.
Bear
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Ray Dillinger wrote:
> Assembly-line items like, say, Colt .45 caliber revolvers, are right
> for a technology-based game with factories and assembly lines. But
> I don't think of enchantment as something that is done in factories
> on assembly lines - so every item ought to be individual if possible,
> differing in quality and details from other items. There shouldn't
> be mere names that immediately tell you everything there is to know
> about something, and there shouldn't be a spell that can just give
> you such a name. Let the player make up his own descriptive name
> for things.
One side effect of having standarized names for things is the creation of
domain-specific language, which enables humans to think about the domain
specific problems with less effort and do it in more abstract way. Other
effect of common language is easier communication and then formation of
communities. Of course, roguelike games are not necessarily targeted at
communities -- especially their random nature makes them good for lone and
lonely players. You might still want to have names to lower the entry
barrier and make it easier for player to reason about game.
Another problem with letting players discover the properties of items on
their own is that it's very hard and time-consuming to do it properly. It
probably takes more time than average life of a player character. For sure
it takes more time than the timespan in which the item is expected to be
useful -- by the time you start having some general idea about its
properties, you are ten dungeon levels lower and finding much better stuff
anyways. Plus, you would have to concentrate on your experiments and
take notes and whatnot -- instead of concentrating on other aspects of the
game. Again, one could make a game about it, for people who enjoy this
kind of labor.
Of course, giving up identification completely and just providing all the
information instantly leads to highly predictable and easy to automate
player behavior: automatically equip the best equipment and fill the sack
with most valuable loot. There are however other means of defending
against this boredom than uncertanity, such as making the equipment differ
in more dimensions, making them more suited for different styles of play.
Making the player characters prefer certain kind of weapons or other
equipment can be also good for amplifying this difference: imagine, you
found a super-powerful magical sword, but your barbarian is better with
axes -- the sword automatically get demoted to the loot category.
Potions and scrolls with slightly randomized effects (heal random amount
of hit points, etc.) have the effect of no identification too -- at least
you cannot say it's a manufactured item. But this kind of randomness may
work against thoughtful playing -- you cannot rely on the effects of
items, so you plan less and just respond to current situation. Without
identification (or other reliable source of information), this applies to
practically all items in the game.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
On and on until we change / Everything remains the same
On and on until we learn / On and on the wheels will turn
Billy Bissette
$742e...@news.sonic.net:
Your complaint sounds like it isn't just about identify, but also
about weapon and item design in most Roguelikes.
You could remove identify from an existing Roguelike, but you'd
still have weapons of fairly standardized design. Even if you didn't
see a name like "Dagger of Fire" or "Cloak of Elvenkind" telling you
most of the item's magical data, you'd still have a game where the
fiery daggers all had similar design and there was a family of cloaks
with the same base resistances and same chances of a random high
resist.
You'd need to create a very flexible magical item design system
probably from the ground up. Something where nearly anything can
do or be nearly anything, and to varying degrees.
And if you want identify to be gone from that system, then you'll
need something where people can at least decently judge items
quickly. And automatic notation of known abilities would also be
useful, unless you want to force the player to track everything
manually.
Adam White
>
>
> Has anyone done a game where there's no such effect as "identify?"
IVAN (Iter Vehemens Ad Necem).
There's no identify mini-game, but there is a "get your limbs hacked off
then replaced by your god with metal versions" game.
Adam
dominik...@gmail.com
I'm planning to limit the use of "identify", although not completely
get rid of it, if it's of any comfort for you :).
I agree that knowing an item's magical properties shouldn't be that
easy, but it would make sense to remove "identify" completely only if
there were only ONE magical item of each kind. But since you normally
tend to walk around with heaps of rings of invisibility, each and
every one of them being identical to each other... You know, like,
identifying them on sight is the proper thing to do, otherwise the
player will get tired of wasting time putting each one of them on to
see how it makes the PC invisible...
What I'm planning to do is exactly this sort of thing: unless you find
out "empyrically" what an item does, you have no means of knowing it.
You can "examine" it (an action that attempts to identify an object,
making a lore check or something similar), but it typically will work
for common items, most of them nonmagical. Scarce items need to be
identified magically and there happens to be no "identify" spell :).
You'll need to do a mini quest to identify an unknown item (go to a
temple and pay for the identification; wise priests will happily
consult their tomes about magical items and find a proper reference
for you). If you don't feel like it... well, just try it out and see
whether it does anything :). With a bit of luck, it won't kill you :D.
Or, advance in levels and spend all your bonus skill point on Lore -
at level 50 you'll probably be able to identify just about anything by
merely examining it :).
BTW: I don't know about other games based on D&D, but at least in
Baldur's Gate identifying powerful unknown items was a nuisance,
unless you had someone with high lore with you. Maybe it was because
you couldn't use them until identified...
Mingos.
Lorenzo Gatti
> Has anyone done a game where there's no such effect as "identify?"
Dungeondweller, in which basic commands use up the limited cellphone
user interface: unnecessary features like identification are not
affordable.
Picking up items is not particularly thrilling or even interesting,
but the many trapped chests and the high exploration to useful loot
ratio make item collection a challenging part of the game.
Regards,
Lorenzo Gatti
konijn_
Individuality by Obscurity ??
I think you are blaming a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The
symptom is that people see bland items with id, the problem is not
with id, it's with bland items. Note how id in D&D not only tells you
what it is but also who exactly made it and who has worn it before, it
makes the worn item more interesting instead of less.
Cheers,
T.
Soyweiser
I agree, I think it would be more interesting to have more complex
items. Like the different items in Diablo 2. These are randomized from
a very large group of different effects. (All a bit to combat focussed
for my liking, but still there is a lot of variety. More variety then
in most roguelike games) I think instead of removing identify, we
should have a lot more variety in the items generated.
So instead of finding n rings of see invis in nethack, you find a
variety of different rings, all which have see invis next to a lot of
other different abilities (and even if you have time to implement one,
a nice randomly generated history).
It also allows you to create more items with positive and negative
abilities. Which could also introduce nice gameplay issues to the
player. example: I need to have fire resistance the next level. But,
my only ring of fire resistance reduces my speed by 2, and makes me
more visible to demon monsters).
A Identify spell or skill would just reveal these different abilities
and the history to the player. And the large variety of different
items will remove the assembly line feeling of magic items in most
roguelike games. (Where are those wizards that keep writing those
scrolls of genocide over and over?).
Or you could ignore all this and create a joking nudge to the problem
by having a factory level, in which dwarfs power a huge factory that
spits out swords +1 helmets +2 and rings of whatever.
(of course assigning random effects to items will also have very
strange results. (a wand of resurrecting death. Ring of hungry
sustenance, The hoe of death, tables with magical abilities etc).
--
Soyweiser
stu
> I agree, I think it would be more interesting to have more complex
> items. Like the different items in Diablo 2. These are randomized from
> a very large group of different effects. (All a bit to combat focussed
> for my liking, but still there is a lot of variety. More variety then
> in most roguelike games) I think instead of removing identify, we
> should have a lot more variety in the items generated.
The thing with diablo items, yes it creates tonnes of different
ones, but it doesnt really matter if you have the letter opener
of serious hell fire or the mace of super lightening frost and
kill all undead, they both kill everything at the same rate,
the differences become very minor.
Look this neato sword poisons my enemies.. which is great
because poison damage cost them all of 1hp before you
dispatched him with the next strike.
kinda brings things back to the whoever goes first wins
situation in combat.
-stu
David Damerell
>So instead of finding n rings of see invis in nethack, you find a
>variety of different rings, all which have see invis next to a lot of
>other different abilities (and even if you have time to implement one,
>a nice randomly generated history).
Are these not very like POWDER's idiosyncratically named randarts?
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Wednesday, July.
Ray Dillinger
> Ray Dillinger <be...@sonic.net> wrote in news:4895fbf0$0$17235
> $742e...@news.sonic.net:
>
>>
>>
>> Has anyone done a game where there's no such effect as "identify?"
>>
>> I'm starting to think I want to... The whole "nail it down
>> exactly" thing, where items are so alike there're even standardized
>> names for classes of exactly similar items, is starting to feel
>> "wrong" for me. It smacks of assembly-line production, not magic.
>> It's in almost everything because it was in D&D, but I'm starting
>> to feel that it's not necessarily a good trope.
>>
>> Assembly-line items like, say, Colt .45 caliber revolvers, are right
>> for a technology-based game with factories and assembly lines. But
>> I don't think of enchantment as something that is done in factories
>> on assembly lines - so every item ought to be individual if possible,
>> differing in quality and details from other items. There shouldn't
>> be mere names that immediately tell you everything there is to know
>> about something, and there shouldn't be a spell that can just give
>> you such a name. Let the player make up his own descriptive name
>> for things.
>
> Your complaint sounds like it isn't just about identify, but also
> about weapon and item design in most Roguelikes.
Right. It's at least as much about standardized items as it is about
identify. I'm thinking items should follow basic tropes, but vary in
many dimensions.
F'r example, a ring that its maker created to cause healing: should
vary on how much, how often, what status effects if any it cures, how
it's powered (like whether it has charges, or causes hunger or drains
mana when used), how efficient it is (how much healing do you get
per hunger or mana used, whether the draining continues when you're
fully healed, etc), whether or not it auto-resizes to fit and
if not what size it is. Maybe the ring has charges, and recharges
itself if left for a few days in running water (of course, you can
resize it with a "resize" spell, or charge it with a "recharge"
spell if you get those, but I think a lot of items ought to have
their own mechanisms for such things).
The basic trope is "healing ring" -- like "fireball wand" or "speed
boots" etc. But knowing the basic trope doesn't fill in all the
stuff you need to know about it. It just tells you in general terms
what *kind* of thing it is, not the specific mechanics.
> You'd need to create a very flexible magical item design system
> probably from the ground up. Something where nearly anything can
> do or be nearly anything, and to varying degrees.
Thinking about it, I believe in item-effect tropes. Attack powers
should nearly always come from weapons or wands. Teleport should
nearly always be found in boots or rings. Strength should usually
be from belts, weapons, or rings. Climbing and leaping are powers
you should sorta expect to find in boots, although climbing could
also be in gloves. Levitation is something I expect to find in
boots, belts, or robes. And so on. What I don't believe is good
for the game, is easily-obtained *complete* knowledge about how a
particular item implements a particular trope.
Bear
Gamer_2k4
> I agree, I think it would be more interesting to have more complex
> items. Like the different items in Diablo 2. These are randomized from
> a very large group of different effects. (All a bit to combat focussed
> for my liking, but still there is a lot of variety. More variety then
> in most roguelike games) I think instead of removing identify, we
> should have a lot more variety in the items generated.
Well, a good way of doing that is to distinguish between item
descriptions and ego-item modifiers. The first would always be
visible, and the second would require some sort of research or
identification.
Consider Angband. If you have a sword (+1, +2), with no actual
enchantments, why do you need to identify it to understand that it's
superior to an average sword? Why not just have modifiers that convey
the information to the player, like calling it a lightweight (+1 to
hit) sharp (+2 to damage) sword? On the other end of the spectrum,
why not have labels like dull or brittle to indicate reduced damage
and accuracy? That way, the stuff that should be readily obvious to an
adventurer is, without requiring identify scrolls.
Ego-items wouldn't be obvious right away. However, some modifiers,
like speed or ESP, might become identified once the item is worn
(because the effect is immediately noticeable), while others, like
slow digestion, wouldn't be obvious at all, so they would require
explicit identification.
--
Gamer_2k4
Soyweiser
> The thing with diablo items, yes it creates tonnes of different
> ones, but it doesnt really matter if you have the letter opener
> of serious hell fire or the mace of super lightening frost and
> kill all undead, they both kill everything at the same rate,
> the differences become very minor.
>
Actually, this is not totally accurate. If you play diablo 2, in the
last difficulty items and which skills you picked matter a lot. It is
all about picking items that work good with your current skill set.
For example if you make a Amazon that shoots poison, and all your
weapons focussed on poison you could get enormous amounts of poison
damage each turn. So much that most creatures died from being poisoned
alone. Sure, at the lower levels equipment mattered little. But if you
wanted to defeat diablo at the highest difficulty (Hell iirc) you
needed a lot of good stuff.
> Are these not very like POWDER's idiosyncratically named randarts?
> --
> David Damerell
I'm not all that familiar with powder. Have link to a page with an
explanation? Or could you explain more?
Gamer_2k4:
Sure you could use descriptions to convey simple numeral advantages.
(you would run into the, is the 'very sharp' description better then
the 'made of superior craftsmanship' description problem, but that is
solvable). But you would always have things that are hard to identify
without a identify like ability. (What about a ring of luck +1 vs a
ring of luck +2).
Perhaps a normal adventurer can identify the general type easy by
using it. (boots of speed, rings of whatever). Both for descriptions
and most Ego-items abilities. But it sometimes gets hard to identify
which similar item is better, and you could use identify for that.
(So, you have two rings of reduced hunger, you have discovered that,
but only a identify scroll can teach you which is the best ring
against hunger).
But what about magical powers that require command words and other
specifics to activate them (to borrow the command word idea from dnd).
These would be very hard to identify without special skills or a
special spell. While most computer games have done away with command
words and the like, I still think it is a nice touch.
So what can you identify about each item:
- General types (it's a weapon) is silly, and only something for very
low Int characters.
- The specific type (it's a silver short sword).
- The specific descriptions (it is a sharp lightweight sword).
- The easy ego-abilities (it is a speedy sword).
- The difficult ego-abilities (it is reduced hunger sword).
- The very difficult ego-abilities (it is reduced hunger (-2 hunger)
speedy (+2) sword).
- The impossible ego-abilities (it sword that releases fireballs when
you say 'boo' ).
If you only have items that have the first few things that you can id
about the item, then you could do without an identify spell or
ability. But if you want very difficult to get abilities, or have
abilities that are very hard to detect. Or want to provide the players
with the specific details of your underling game system, it would be
hard to without an identify skill/spell. Of course you could also
include a special appraise skill, that compares two different items
for you. (Is sword a stronger or sword b?).
About the question if identify is really good for the game. If you
didn't have some sort of system to identify items for you (or
automatically id items for you when your characters handles them),
determining which items are better or worse would be very tedious. On
the other hand, automatically identifying items for you, or making it
easy (go to shop pay 3 gold per item) also isn't that fun, and only
gives you additional actions to perform that do not challenge. The
identifying of items should not be meaningless, it should either be
difficult to do (only 2 shops can partially identify items for you) or
cost resources, or something. Or it should be done away with. It
should add value.
Bear:
Your item-effect trope looks like it is based on ideas from dnd:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080123
But I'm not totally sure about it. While it is traditional to have
certain magical types based on certain types of items, I think it is
nice to have a few items that don't follow the general rules. You
should of course not overdo this, or else people who play your game
get very confused.
--
Soyweiser
Jeff Lait
>
> > Are these not very like POWDER's idiosyncratically named randarts?
>
> explanation? Or could you explain more?
http://www.zincland.com/powder
The idea is very simple. A very small number of items you encounter
are "artifacts". Being an artifact grants them a unique name, like
"Amyslug" and some corresponding powers. If it is a weapon, this will
consist of some extra damage branding. Most other things get a bonus
intrinsic or two. Some of these bonuses are good, such as
invisibility, some are bad, like vulnerable to silver. Since it is
not just mundane items that can be randarts, but also the "mundane
magic" items, like rings of invisibility, you can find a ring of
invisibility that has some extra powers associated with it.
While it is easy to identify a ring of invisibility by wearing it and
naming it so all future rings of invisibility are know, the same is
not true when you come across a ring of invisibility that is a randart
- you need to identify it to find out what the extra bonuses are. Of
course, you can wear it right away and try and figure out by trial and
error.
This randart process can occur for any item in the game, so it is
quite possible to stumble across boulders that are named.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
R. Dan Henry
<torespon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>The idea is very simple. A very small number of items you encounter
>are "artifacts". Being an artifact grants them a unique name, like
>"Amyslug" and some corresponding powers. If it is a weapon, this will
>consist of some extra damage branding. Most other things get a bonus
>intrinsic or two. Some of these bonuses are good, such as
>invisibility, some are bad, like vulnerable to silver. Since it is
>not just mundane items that can be randarts, but also the "mundane
>magic" items, like rings of invisibility, you can find a ring of
>invisibility that has some extra powers associated with it.
POWDER is actually less unusual for its random artifacts, which are a
fairly common feature, but for its lack of "ego items", although one
might argue that a flaming sword, or ice mace, while technically treated
as a distinct item type, might as well be a sword of flaming or mace of
freezing.
However, there is no trick to identifying such pseudo-egos, so basically
POWDER ID reduces to: knowing what the basic item types do, finding out
what the pluses are on armor and weapons (use them), discovery of
blessed/cursed status, and finding out the blend of attributes on the
randarts (which are instantly identifiable by the fact that they have
individual names -- note that this aspect resembles Crawl's use of
snazzy adjectives on unusual items).
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
If you wish to put anything I post on your website,
please be polite enough to ask first.
Billy Bissette
af17f4...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
> If you only have items that have the first few things that you can id
> about the item, then you could do without an identify spell or
> ability. But if you want very difficult to get abilities, or have
> abilities that are very hard to detect. Or want to provide the players
> with the specific details of your underling game system, it would be
> hard to without an identify skill/spell.
You could get some of that information through without an
all-purpose magical ID spell.
One option would be to restrict full identification to an ability
limited to a specific location, such as a town library, guild,
special shop, or temple. You can take a questionable object there,
pay a fee, and possibly wait some amount of time (either automatically
added to your calendar, or in a form where you can leave the object
while adventuring and return later) before gaining such information.
What you wouldn't have would be the ability to cast a common spell,
read a common scroll, or use a common item to ID an object at will.
Another alternative is to build some other methods of delivering
extremely obscure object information to the player. Bits of
information could be randomly delivered to the player through various
sources, such as staying at inns or reading scrolls. Such information
could give away features of random objects that may or may not have
even have been encountered yet (but such ability ID would be logged
by the game so that if the related items are found, then the game
will recall that the character knows it.) ("The dagger of Thoth
can be recognized by a reddish tint to its blade. Speaking the
phrase 'in flambe' brings forth a seering blast of fire.")
> Of course you could also
> include a special appraise skill, that compares two different items
> for you. (Is sword a stronger or sword b?).
The amount of information learned could be based upon character class
or skills. A fighter would know more about weapons than a mage. A
priest would more easily recognize godly or ungodly influences. A
dwarf might have more experience with dwarf items than orcs.
Low ability would give only the vaguest information, perhaps unable
to even tell the practical differences between two swords.
On the other hand, high ability could give all sorts of detailed
information. A skilled fighter might compare the various aspects of
two weapons, being able to tell which is better in each catagory of
speed, average damage, potential max damage, accuracy, and the like.
Numeron
how interesting the individual items are themselves. By this I mean
not the attributes a given item can have, but the playability of the
item itself.
In my game, I have exactly one item of every type, meaning no varying
stats between otherwise identical swords etc. I have attempted to make
each type of item different enough that played correcty they are all
more or less equal. By that I mean that a sword in the hands of an
armored, warrior type is as good as a dagger in the hands of a sneaky
rogue as a spellbook in the hands of a mage: but all for different
reasons. Obviously a dagger cannot deal as much damage right out as a
sword, but its lightweight and small size means it allows a higher
level agility on behalf of the character, where a spear has an extra
tile reach and so on. On top of this, each weapon gives different
energy draining skills, like the dagger has a swipe attack, which
damages 3 tiles around the character in a given direction and knocks
any hit enemies into the knights L position. A sword allows a charge
attack, which is a triple move in one direction, and so on.
Extentions of this idea it to armor requires a little more
imagination, but if a knights helm of headbutt is different enough
from the mages floppy hat of ESP, then the decision comes from utility
rather than stats, as with all items in this schema. Stats are more
often than not indistinguisable from each other when you dont know
what they are. Utility is immideatly noticable and therefore needs no
identification, whats more, getting different abilities out of what
you choose to wear is far more interesting than dealing fire damage
instead of frost...
-Numeron
eyenot
The game I'm in mid-design of right now (the design progress is on
hiatus until I imagine up whatever last little thing it needs for me
to actually be interested in playing) has only unique items. I think
it's a great idea, but in your typical roguelike you may want to make
sure that there are a lot of those unique items.
The problem would be in keeping track of what's been generated
already. Checking the newly-generated item against a growing library
of already-existing would take longer as the game progresses. I'd
suggest somehow keeping the data necessary data (that describe the
item's properties) to something small like 2-3 bytes (and they always
tell me there's no point in bit crunching BUT I NEVER LISTEN!!!) and
generating the name based on the properties and perhaps a prefab'd
names table for those really juicy items.
eyenot
identify-ability, I would say let the player discover most attributes
and perhaps weaken the traditional identify a bit.
Various forms of identify could reveal only specific aspects of every
item that would otherwise be hidden. The player could work on
broadening their identify ability but real devotion of a 'lore master'
level would be crippling in other ways. Some items could have locks on
their data that thwart identification until the player figures it out
through at least one proper usage.
Garrison Benson
you're making a coffee break roguelike, it's probably a good idea to
just axe the identification game altogether (and make everything pre-
identified). On the other hand, if you're making a game where one
character might last weeks or months, it would make sense for
identification to be more of a hassle, perhaps even requiring the
player to take notes.
It also depends how many magic items are in your game. If you want a
Lord of the Rings-style setting, where magic items are quite rare,
it's ok if identifying things takes a bit of effort. But if your
character is constantly knee-deep in various rings and amulets and
potions and such, having to identify a bunch of completely unique
items would be a major pain in the butt.
I'm designing a roguelike with short games in mind, so I'm not
including any kind of identification system. (However, I do want to
keep the fun of frantically using unidentified items when you're in a
jam, so I'm going to include "unlabeled" grenades, or something.)
Ray Dillinger
> Various forms of identify could reveal only specific aspects of every
> item that would otherwise be hidden. The player could work on
> broadening their identify ability but real devotion of a 'lore master'
> level would be crippling in other ways. Some items could have locks on
> their data that thwart identification until the player figures it out
> through at least one proper usage.
This is more or less what I have in mind. I envision a game in which
a win takes about a week of spare-time play and the winning player is
likely to find a total of several dozen magic items and a few score
potions/consumables during the game. In most cases, approximate
knowledge should be good enough for the players' purposes and I don't
expect the players ever to have complete knowledge.
He may get a "Fire Staff" and notice that while wielding it he can
cast fire spells for half mana cost, and that's good enough knowledge.
He may never notice, despite benefiting from the effects, that this
particular staff also makes it easier to learn fire spells and
makes fire-inflicted wounds heal normally instead of at 1/4 speed
as usual for burn wounds. Hey, who waits for wounds to heal when
you got potions, right?
Four or Five of these would be "artifacts" identifiable by legends
known to the character - but many specifics of their operation would
never be revealed.
Bear
Darren Grey
> The basic trope is "healing ring" -- like "fireball wand" or "speed
> boots" etc. But knowing the basic trope doesn't fill in all the
> stuff you need to know about it. It just tells you in general terms
> what *kind* of thing it is, not the specific mechanics.
Whilst it's a nice idea, it requires a bit of careful thought to make
sure it's actually fun to play with. Greater variety to items is of
course great, but if you tend to die early in the game a lot it's
annoying if you never got to identify any cool items, especially if
the random effects are sometimes too dangerous to simply test-use.
Also too many magic items and effects that are too similar to each
other will make all the items feel samey, even if they're all
different. A lot of imagination has to go into making a great variety
of effects that would combine in interesting ways.
Basic abilities should be identified easily - either through
intelligence, perceptiveness, or maybe even character experience level
(since experience in battle would usually give experience with
items). It shouldn't be too easy though, like easily scummed identify
spells or blessed identify scrolls to tell you everything about all
your items. Certain effects once identified might be clear in all
future items that contain that effect, and others would be immediately
obvious once equipped. And more powerful effects might be obvious in
general, but the specifics could be unclear. For more subtle effects,
especially curses and negative enchantments, you'd have to visit a
temple or something similar to have it thoroughly identified.
Then there's the issue of naming everything. Do items have all these
statuses merged in with their name ("ultra flaming sword of bitter
wounds +7!"), or as symbols/notes next to them? Or is there a way to
simply examine an object to bring up a list of all known details about
it? One thing you don't want is the player having to spend time
writing notes about all his items.
--
Darren Grey
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Ray Dillinger wrote:
> Right. It's at least as much about standardized items as it is about
> identify. I'm thinking items should follow basic tropes, but vary in
> many dimensions.
I think it could work very nicely combined with the "item-based skill
learning" mentioned recently in the other thread, so popluar in
console games like Riviera or Final Fantasy.
It works, because you have enough information to make short-term
tactical decisions about your equipment, while the long-term plans
about your character development have to be adjusted to the situation.
Jeff Lait
>
> The problem would be in keeping track of what's been generated
> already. Checking the newly-generated item against a growing library
> of already-existing would take longer as the game progresses. I'd
> suggest somehow keeping the data necessary data (that describe the
> item's properties) to something small like 2-3 bytes (and they always
> tell me there's no point in bit crunching BUT I NEVER LISTEN!!!) and
> generating the name based on the properties and perhaps a prefab'd
> names table for those really juicy items.
Use the 2-3 bytes you store as the seed for an RNG. Then you can
generate as many properties as you want. This is effectively defining
a hash function from your object space down to the 2-3 bytes you want
to store. Since you only generate items from the hash, you know it is
perfect, so can just compare against those bytes for equality.
POWDER does something very similar to this. However, instead, it
generates a Name randomly that defines the items properties. The Name
is hashed into a RNG seed which then generates all the assorted
properties. This means there is a high-level magic way of determining
a named artifacts properties - for a given version, any artifact with
the same name has pretty much the same properties.
Billy Bissette
8b98-8c5...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
Another issue is how many items is the player going to be finding
in general, how many are going to be special, how many will be
immediately recognizable as special, and how many can the player
carry?
You could have some really powerful items appear, but if the
player is buried in a flood of weaker and non-magical items, then
he may never even carry them long enough to recognize them. Think,
for example, of how much equipment you can amass in Crawl. And
that doesn't even approach what you can get in Angband, which has
a restrictive inventory as well as a few items that are potentially
game ending if you use or equip them.
If you can find five weapons in the time it takes to figure out
whether one weapon is special, you might have some issues with a
no magic ID system. Particularly if you can only carry ten weapons,
or for some reason cannot afford to burn time putting items through
rigorous testing procedures.
Though one potential fix is to put magic equipment in obvious
places. Like vaults, treasure rooms, and the like, rather than
just laying on the floor or carried by whatever critter you happen
to kill. While that orc unique might have something special, the
low level orc under him aren't going to.
Soyweiser
> Though one potential fix is to put magic equipment in obvious
> places. Like vaults, treasure rooms, and the like, rather than
> just laying on the floor or carried by whatever critter you happen
> to kill. While that orc unique might have something special, the
> low level orc under him aren't going to.
So what would be possible ways to make it more easy to determine which
types of items could be special:
- Make all items auto identify
- Magical equipment only shows up in special places (vaults, treasure
rooms, special boss monsters, named monsters, etc)
- It looks different, it is always of high quality (assuming that high
quality items are also worth more, and that most shops have ways to
make it more easy to identify items, lugging around only high quality
(and thus high value) items makes sense).
- You get a hint when you pick it up, or after a use time (like crawl
iirc): it gives a 'item feeling', a rarity color etc, it identifies it
in part. (which could be based on a lore skill).
- Types of items never vary, if a shoddy low boot is identified as a
boot of speed, all shoddy low boots are boots of speed. (else you
would be forced to id all different items).
- Monsters know which items are good, and use them more. (so if a
monster picks up a item, it is at least better than the one it was
using now (which would could be odd, is fire better than ice? you
could introduce personalities for monster types, orc's like fire,
kings like high value items, barbarians just throw you items back at
you and beat you to death with your own severed arm etc. I think these
would make nice stories).
- Monsters which spawn with magical items are automatically upgraded
to a better version (or given a name if no better versions exist). (In
a group of orcs the orc captain always carries the best equipment).
Any other ways people can think of?
--
Soyweiser
Ray Dillinger
> Any other ways people can think of?
Detection of magic could be easy, even if exact identification
of magic items is hard.
Bear
R. Dan Henry
wrote:
>So what would be possible ways to make it more easy to determine which
>types of items could be special:
>
>- Make all items auto identify
That works. For a 7DRL or similarly simple game, you could do this,
although I'd consider it less roguelike, since the shuffling of
flavor/item type matches is a very roguelike characteristic. You could
have armor/weapons auto-ID and just have stuff like potions, scrolls,
and wands require use-ID, since you do each of those once each game.
>- Magical equipment only shows up in special places (vaults, treasure
>rooms, special boss monsters, named monsters, etc)
I dislike this in general, but I suppose if you come up with a
background story that makes it less arbitrary, I wouldn't mind.
>- It looks different, it is always of high quality (assuming that high
>quality items are also worth more, and that most shops have ways to
>make it more easy to identify items, lugging around only high quality
>(and thus high value) items makes sense).
POWDER and Crawl use non-identifying cues that items are special. This
is a proven method.
>- You get a hint when you pick it up, or after a use time (like crawl
>iirc): it gives a 'item feeling', a rarity color etc, it identifies it
>in part. (which could be based on a lore skill).
Putting on some items auto-IDs in most RLs. POWDER and Crawl both reveal
plusses with use. *bands use pseudo-ID to hint at stuff you carry
around.
>- Types of items never vary, if a shoddy low boot is identified as a
>boot of speed, all shoddy low boots are boots of speed. (else you
>would be forced to id all different items).
In the same game, this is true for Nethack and POWDER. This is treating
worn items as a set of flavors and item types to be matched like potions
and scrolls. It works.
>- Monsters know which items are good, and use them more. (so if a
>monster picks up a item, it is at least better than the one it was
>using now (which would could be odd, is fire better than ice? you
>could introduce personalities for monster types, orc's like fire,
>kings like high value items, barbarians just throw you items back at
>you and beat you to death with your own severed arm etc. I think these
>would make nice stories).
If you can't auto-ID stuff, I don't see why monsters should. Now, they
should know the stuff they start with and maybe some specific knowledge
based on monster type (brownies ID footwear, cave elf alchemist knows
potions and elven items).
>- Monsters which spawn with magical items are automatically upgraded
>to a better version (or given a name if no better versions exist). (In
>a group of orcs the orc captain always carries the best equipment).
This makes some sense.
>Any other ways people can think of?
Well, if I ever do my own original game, identification will be
skill-based like everything else. Also, you can give special ID
abilities to different races and classes. Maybe anyone auto-IDs items
specific to their race. An elf might not know a dwarven shield of
deflection from a dwarven shield of orc-taunting, but instantly
recognizes an elven helm of eye protection. Then you can dole out class
abilities:
Fighter: knows his weapons
Thief: doesn't get any ID as such, but knows everything's market value
Assassin: knows poison and other potions, also stealth items
Magician: knows wands and staves
Priest: knows healing items and armor
Ranger: knows missile weapons, stealth items, boots and cloaks
Bard: knows all items
Druid: knows wood and stone items
Crafter: knows jewelry
Sage: knows books, scrolls
If you need something else identified, ask someone who would know (other
adventurers can wander the dungeon and you can team up for awhile).
Brog
> On Fri, 8 Aug 2008 03:46:53 -0700 (PDT), Soyweiser <soywei...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >So what would be possible ways to make it more easy to determine which
> >types of items could be special:
>
> >- Make all items auto identify
>
> That works. For a 7DRL or similarly simple game, you could do this,
> although I'd consider it less roguelike, since the shuffling of
> flavor/item type matches is a very roguelike characteristic. You could
> have armor/weapons auto-ID and just have stuff like potions, scrolls,
> and wands require use-ID, since you do each of those once each game.
I recall this @play column where there's a game which is not a
"roguelike" in any usual sense but has a kinship because it uses the
randomised item labelling: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/10/_play_toejam_earl_the_roguelik_1.php
Identify/random-item-labels is good for the game Rogue because it's an
interesting mechanic that leads to some enjoyable play. It can be
good for other games, but it's less interesting if everyone does it.
Figure out what is best for your game.
Billy Bissette
news:shqo94h98a7r7vf9u...@4ax.com:
>>- Magical equipment only shows up in special places (vaults, treasure
>>rooms, special boss monsters, named monsters, etc)
>
> I dislike this in general, but I suppose if you come up with a
> background story that makes it less arbitrary, I wouldn't mind.
You don't *need* a background story for this. You need a
background story to explain why it isn't uncommon to find insanely
powerful magical items just laying on the floor, or carried by the
weirdest of creatures, as is the normal practice in most Roguelikes.
It makes sense for treasures to be kept in treasure vaults, or
used by the great warriors, or whatever. Someone like Gollum
carrying the One Ring is the kind of special case that calls for
a background story.
>>- It looks different, it is always of high quality (assuming that high
>>quality items are also worth more, and that most shops have ways to
>>make it more easy to identify items, lugging around only high quality
>>(and thus high value) items makes sense).
>
> POWDER and Crawl use non-identifying cues that items are special. This
> is a proven method.
Simply marking an item as "special" without any specifics is a time
honored tradition in gaming. Whether it be putting a tag afterwords
(like "special"), putting it in all caps, making it a special color,
or even putting something like "????" in it.
Ray Dillinger
> POWDER is actually less unusual for its random artifacts, which are a
> fairly common feature, but for its lack of "ego items", although one
> might argue that a flaming sword, or ice mace, while technically treated
> as a distinct item type, might as well be a sword of flaming or mace of
> freezing.
Tell me what you mean by "ego items" as opposed to "artifacts" as opposed
to "magic items?"
'Cause as far as I'm concerned an artifact is no more nor less than a
magic item with a reputation big enough that nearly everybody's heard
of it. They tend to be powerful, because otherwise the reputation
wouldn't plausibly have happened. But sometimes other magic items that
nobody's heard of are just as powerful, and some artifacts are wimpy
but known because of the reputation of a former wielder.
But I've never really made a separation between "ego items" and other
magic items. Based on the word "ego", I'd expect that you're talking
about something with its own personality, some intelligence, and an
agenda of its own (and maybe the ability to act quasi-independently?).
But aside from pets, I haven't seen many such items in roguelike games.
Bear
Lorenzo Gatti
> Tell me what you mean by "ego items" as opposed to "artifacts" as opposed
> to "magic items?"
>
> 'Cause as far as I'm concerned an artifact is no more nor less than a
> magic item with a reputation big enough that nearly everybody's heard
> of it.
[...]
> But I've never really made a separation between "ego items" and other
> magic items. Based on the word "ego", I'd expect that you're talking
> about something with its own personality, some intelligence, and an
> agenda of its own (and maybe the ability to act quasi-independently?).
> But aside from pets, I haven't seen many such items in roguelike games.
Both "artifacts" and "ego items" are well rooted in Dungeons & Dragons
tradition (especially the older iterations of the game up to "Basic"
D&D and AD&D 2nd edition).
The largest portion of magic items in a typical D&D game are randomly
generated as part of treasure troves, with a system of cascaded tables
starting with item category (wand, scroll, ring, etc.) and specific
item type (e.g. wand of fireballs rather than wand of sleep).
Most magical item types are completely determined at this point,
except for minor variants and random stats like number of charges;
weapons, on the other hand, are particularly complex because they can
have bonuses to hit and to damage, bonuses against specific item
classes, special effects in combat (e.g. flaming), and on top of that
continuous and activated abilities.
A portion of swords, the most important weapon type in the game, are
so loaded with enchantments (i.e. have accumulated so many good die
rolls in the sword feature tables) that they are intelligent and
willful, and they have an "ego" score (hence the name) with which they
can assume mental control of their user.
D&D "artifacts" appeared as the natural opposite of the convoluted
random generation of generic and "ego" magic items: each is unique and
endowed with an history; designed meaningfully and different from
normal magical items; never found in random treasure troves, and
planned for as an important story element (well, in theory...); and
made interesting by nasty drawbacks that balance its great and
extraordinary powers.
Then random generation tables for artifacts made their appearance, but
that's an irrelevant degeneration.
Roguelike games have historically imitated random powers, ego items,
artifacts and other idiosyncratic features of D&D magic items (like
difficult and extremely important item identification, the case in
point, and cursed weapons that cannot be discarded) without much
critical thought; this thread shows that a few decades of experience
can produce some wisdom and originality in game design.
Regards,
Lorenzo Gatti
Billy Bissette
It can vary by game. But it roughly comes down to ego items being
some kind of middle ground between "generic" magic items and artifacts.
More magical than the almost assembly line nature of generic magic
items, but without some of the things that set artifacts apart as
their own class.
For example, in Angband terms:
Artifacts are unique named indestructable magical objects. Like
"The One Ring".
Ego items are destructable and are not unique, but are instead
created from fixed templates. All "Defender" weapons will have the
same general abilities, even if some of the numbers involved are a
bit different. You can easily find multiple "Defender" weapons in
a single game, even possibly ones that are identical.
Generic items tend to have only one function. A generic magic
sword might have a plus to hit and a plus to damage, but that is
it.
Ray Dillinger
> For example, in Angband terms:
> Artifacts are unique named indestructable magical objects. Like
> "The One Ring".
Ehh. I'm considering most magic items beyond the character's
ability to destroy, with exceptions like overcharging wands,
etc, duly coded.
> Ego items are destructable and are not unique, but are instead
> created from fixed templates. All "Defender" weapons will have the
> same general abilities, even if some of the numbers involved are a
> bit different. You can easily find multiple "Defender" weapons in
> a single game, even possibly ones that are identical.
> Generic items tend to have only one function. A generic magic
> sword might have a plus to hit and a plus to damage, but that is
> it.
Ah. In that case, I'm looking at a game where almost *every* item
is what you're calling an ego item. I just don't believe in the
assembly line.
Bear
Billy Bissette
$742e...@news.sonic.net:
Actually, in Angband terms, what you are after may be more like
rand-arts (random artifacts.)
In a way, Angband's ego items feel even more assembly line than
the generic magic items. The templates are pre-determined, and
Angband ego items can only vary in some of the numbers, not the
basic effects. It is one thing for every wand of fireballs to be
identical except for number of charges. It is a bit stranger when
every "Holy Avenger" weapon has the same specific magical boosts,
even if the base weapon and numeric value of bonuses can vary.
Cuboidz
(1) ID-spell
Because ID-spells are an infinitely renewable source of item
identification, they effectively render the ID-minigame nonexistent.
(2) ID-scrolls
ID-scrolls, whether they're found or bought, present a challenge of
resource management to the player.
(3) Use-ID'ing & Logical Deduction
Arguably the most intellectually stimulating means of identification,
but at the same time a slippery slope to grind-dom.
[RANT]
If I understand the original poster correctly, he is suggesting to
remove (1) and (2) from roguelikes, to allow for a greater sense of
discovery. But at the same time, he wants to individualize items to
get rid of the prefabricated character they supposedly suffer from.
This, however, seems incompatible with having (3) as the main source
of identification.
What makes use-ID'ing possible is a limited set of item classes with
specific, recognizable properties. You can of course scramble the
appearance of the different types of items, like POWDER does - e.g. a
silver circlet can be either a helm of draining, a helm of telepathy
or a helm of warning. But without fixed item types, you can't make
deductions like: "I already found the helm of draining and the helm of
warning, so that silver circlet I found must be a helm of telepathy.
Alternatively, you can include randarts - but without (1) and (2), the
randart's properties must - again - be selected from a limited set of
properties. Moreover, there must be semi-reliable way to discover
these properties on your own. For example, in POWDER, you can try to
find out whether an artifact grants fire resistance, by letting a red
dragon attack you, or by zapping yourself with a wand of fire. If the
distinctions between item properties are less strict, e.g. 10% versus
15% fire resistance, they become hard to identify by use or deduction.
[/RANT]
Billy Bissette
969761...@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
> AFAIK, there are three sources of item identification in roguelikes:
>
> (1) ID-spell
>
> Because ID-spells are an infinitely renewable source of item
> identification, they effectively render the ID-minigame nonexistent.
>
> (2) ID-scrolls
>
> ID-scrolls, whether they're found or bought, present a challenge of
> resource management to the player.
>
> (3) Use-ID'ing & Logical Deduction
>
> Arguably the most intellectually stimulating means of identification,
> but at the same time a slippery slope to grind-dom.
There is also stuff like Angband's pseudo-ID. Infinitely renewable,
automatic, but takes time (at least in Angband) before it kicks in
and only gives vague information (like "special", "worthless", etc.)
On a related note, even infinitely renewable ID doesn't have to
remove the ID-minigame. That depends on how much information such
a spell gives. Full ID is just the standard implementation.
Also, there can be shop/location-based ID, which can be less
convenient that ID scrolls but also infinitely renewable.
Garrison Benson
> What makes use-ID'ing possible is a limited set of item classes with
> specific, recognizable properties. You can of course scramble the
> appearance of the different types of items, like POWDER does - e.g. a
> silver circlet can be either a helm of draining, a helm of telepathy
> or a helm of warning. But without fixed item types, you can't make
> deductions like: "I already found the helm of draining and the helm of
> warning, so that silver circlet I found must be a helm of telepathy.
That's assuming magical items are really common. If you're playing a
roguelike where you only find a few magic items per game (consumables
aside), it makes a lot of sense for each item to be unique and to
require a long, experiment-based identification process.
Brog
>
> What makes use-ID'ing possible is a limited set of item classes with
> specific, recognizable properties. You can of course scramble the
> appearance of the different types of items, like POWDER does - e.g. a
> silver circlet can be either a helm of draining, a helm of telepathy
> or a helm of warning. But without fixed item types, you can't make
> deductions like: "I already found the helm of draining and the helm of
> warning, so that silver circlet I found must be a helm of telepathy.
It doesn't allow the exact same gameplay as in Nethack so it's not
interesting?
This could easily* be made to work without a small fixed set of item
types. You just need to give lots of feedback about what's going on.
Maybe a message saying "your ring flashes brightly" or "some of the
flames vanish" or even "your ring absorbs some of the flames" when a
ring reduces some fire damage, possibly based on the character's
perception stats/skills. Or if you're not set on keeping the game
mechanics hidden, you could show all rolls and bonuses so the player
can see that they're getting a +2 sometimes and try to deduce what
item it's coming from and what the rule for it is.
* easy for me to write about, that is. not necessarily easy to
implement.
Billy Bissette
4104-9a9d-8...@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
Assuming you can easily tell the difference between a magical and
non-magical item. Else you end up having to exhaustively test
everything you find just so that you won't accidentally ditch one
of those rare magical items.
Cuboidz
> It doesn't allow the exact same gameplay as in Nethack so it's not
> interesting?
I wouldn't put it that way - it's just that meta-ID'ing and use-ID'ing
go hand in hand; they both depend on a limited set of items or
intrincics.
> This could easily* be made to work without a small fixed set of item
> types. You just need to give lots of feedback about what's going on.
> Maybe a message saying "your ring flashes brightly" or "some of the
> flames vanish" or even "your ring absorbs some of the flames" when a
> ring reduces some fire damage, possibly based on the character's
> perception stats/skills. Or if you're not set on keeping the game
> mechanics hidden, you could show all rolls and bonuses so the player
> can see that they're getting a +2 sometimes and try to deduce what
> item it's coming from and what the rule for it is.
It is of course possible to not have any fixed item types, and focus
on detachable intrinsics, instead. But there'd still have to be a
relatively small number of intrinsics, if you want players to be able
to identify item intrinsics by use. And with this, comes the
possibility of meta-ID'ing.
So in a sense, it's difficult for roguelikes not to allow the exact
same gameplay as in Nethack, concerning item identification. Is there
any roguelike in which it isn't possible to say: "I've already
discovered potion type A, B and C - so the unidentified potion I've
found should be either D or E"?
David Ploog
> It is of course possible to not have any fixed item types, and focus
> on detachable intrinsics, instead. But there'd still have to be a
> relatively small number of intrinsics, if you want players to be able
> to identify item intrinsics by use. And with this, comes the
> possibility of meta-ID'ing.
>
> So in a sense, it's difficult for roguelikes not to allow the exact
> same gameplay as in Nethack, concerning item identification. Is there
> any roguelike in which it isn't possible to say: "I've already
> discovered potion type A, B and C - so the unidentified potion I've
> found should be either D or E"?
In Crawl, this is attempted by having several potions which are extremely
rare (potion of magic, experience, gain Int/Dex/Str). You cannot expect to
stumble upon one in a game.
David
Cuboidz
> In Crawl, this is attempted by having several potions which are extremely
> rare (potion of magic, experience, gain Int/Dex/Str). You cannot expect to
> stumble upon one in a game.
This does make meta-ID'ing slightly more difficult, indeed. A bigger
step in the same direction would be to have only a subset of potion
types appear in any given game. But aside from the balance issues that
could arise, one can ask the question, what's so bad about meta-ID'ing
to begin with?
David Damerell
>Tell me what you mean by "ego items" as opposed to "artifacts" as opposed
>to "magic items?"
Not xD&D-style intelligent items. It's an Angband-ism; weapons and armour
either have straight plusses, or are unique artifacts and have special
properties beyond plusses (slays, resistances, etc) or are non-unique and
have a random selection of those special properties; these are the "ego
items". Angband's very long equipment improvement game makes this middle
ground desireable.
I see the term used (and use it myself) to describe similar items in other
roguelikes; calling the POWDER flaming sword / ice mace / etc "ego items"
doesn't seem that remarkable to me.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Gouday, July.
Ray Dillinger
> This does make meta-ID'ing slightly more difficult, indeed. A bigger
> step in the same direction would be to have only a subset of potion
> types appear in any given game. But aside from the balance issues that
> could arise, one can ask the question, what's so bad about meta-ID'ing
> to begin with?
One can say that it's only a matter of opinion. But _My_ opinion
is that there should be some mystery about items. In my view, these
games exist mainly to provide the players with good stories. That is,
stories as an experience, in addition to tales for them to tell others.
Mystery, suspense, and gradual revelation are all part of good stories,
and I feel that a "known set" of magic items and mechanistic methods
for identification eliminate these elements.
I think that, in an ideal game, players should still be discovering
new things in the game - items they've never even seen or heard of
yet - even after they've played it dozens of times. And, even if
they know what something is, they could discover that it's a truly
excellent one, or quirky in some ways, or just plain inferior.
Also, in balancing a game, I don't want to find that I've created
a "royal road" to a win that can be duplicated at will. If items
are uniform, the same combination of items will work the same way
every time. A lot of variability in items means that a player has
to work with what he finds and what he can discover about what he
finds, creating a lot of *different* stories, rather than just
developing a winning strategy once and repeating it.
Bear
Cuboidz
> One can say that it's only a matter of opinion. But _My_ opinion
> is that there should be some mystery about items. In my view, these
> games exist mainly to provide the players with good stories. That is,
> stories as an experience, in addition to tales for them to tell others.
> Mystery, suspense, and gradual revelation are all part of good stories,
> and I feel that a "known set" of magic items and mechanistic methods
> for identification eliminate these elements.
I know what your getting at, but any video game is restricted to its
mechanics - and these can always be exploited. Players _will_ read the
source code and develop mechanistic strategies to get ahead. It's just
a matter of time.
You could try to foil attempts at playing the system by randomizing
item properties, like you suggested. But laying matters in the hands
of the RNG to such a high degree kind of detracts from the tactical or
strategic nature of many roguelikes.
Garrison Benson
> Also, in balancing a game, I don't want to find that I've created
> a "royal road" to a win that can be duplicated at will. If items
> are uniform, the same combination of items will work the same way
> every time. A lot of variability in items means that a player has
> to work with what he finds and what he can discover about what he
> finds, creating a lot of *different* stories, rather than just
> developing a winning strategy once and repeating it.
This is one of the problems with NetHack - the first half of every
game is different and full of interesting stories... but once you
start getting wishes (especially at the castle) you can start building
an ascension kit, and every game begins to look the same. So I think
you made a really good point - having different items in every game
means there is no clear-cut strategy to the game in general.