[evilhack] Reflecting shield and silver armor

[Janis Papanagnou]

The material silver in EvilHack still confuses me; I fear it's
probably just an inconsistent concept implemented...

I have an uncursed +0 silver blue and green shield; I understand
that this is an elven shield made of silver as material. In the
file objects.c it is categorized as "wood", though, and I suppose
that the silver (or wooden) material would not make it usable as
"a shield of reflection", which is (in objects.c) categorized as
being made of "silver".

Is the attribute defined in objects.c just a default value or an
unused relict and the actual material "overrules" it in EvilHack?

Janis

[Janis Papanagnou]

Yet another question concerning materials of armor in EvilHack, here
it is dragonhide...

My healer had worn this body-armor and cloak for quite some time:
an uncursed +0 banded mail (250 aum)
a blessed +2 dragonhide dwarvish cloak (20 aum)
If I understand correctly, the dragonhide makes the standard dwarvish
cloak get better, with a higher AC.

Now I found also dragonhide body-armor in a death-drop:
an uncursed +0 dragonhide armor (being worn) (100 aum)
which has a slightly better AC than the heavy banded mail. But here,
and unlike the cloak, I cannot see the base type of the armor. - What
would that be?

Assuming dragonhide is some neutral (uncolored) dragon scale material
without any properties but reduced weight and higher AC protection.

Janis

[Janis Papanagnou]

Another game; found "a gold polished silver shield" - WRT material
this again sounds wrong to me! - on dungeon level 1 in the starting
room.

In the second room: "You fall into the lava! You burn to a crisp..."
(end of game at T:42 - magic number)
A lava pool on level 1 - doh! (Okay, I should have checked that this
was not (as usual on upper levels) a forge, but who expects that?!)

Oh, and BTW; my promising healer died in the quest locate level; he
continued a dragon meal and choked to death. - Either the saturation
game mechanics has changed or I got victim of the unfamiliar user
interface, mistyped, and ate the other dragon corpse by accident.

Seems I've got a fatalistic fascination for that variant...

Janis

[Keith Simpson]

To answer all your questions about objects and the different materials they're being created as, see https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/EvilHack#Object_materials - it being 'probably just an inconsistent concept implemented' is false.

The eating saturation mechanic has not changed, with one exception - the Hobbit race can eat much more before becoming full.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 17.03.2023 13:03, Keith Simpson wrote:
> On Thursday, March 9, 2023 at 1:14:12 PM UTC-5, Janis Papanagnou
> wrote:
>> Another game; found "a gold polished silver shield" - WRT material
>> this again sounds wrong to me! - on dungeon level 1 in the
>> starting room.
>

> To answer all your questions about objects and the different
> materials they're being created as, see
> https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/EvilHack#Object_materials

I have been reading it but missed answers (or didn't understand)
on several questions I had.

> - it being
> 'probably just an inconsistent concept implemented' is false.

I understood it that materials have been introduced as an own
new [technical] dimension (with own properties).

A "a gold polished silver shield" has it's materials mixed; or
what am I missing. Is it a silver shield, providing reflection?
Or is it a gold shield? Or something completely different?

Maybe it makes sense on some technical in-game level, but the
interface visible to the player is... - call it as you like;
to me it sounds wrong and makes no sense. (That's why I am
asking for [logical] explanations.)

Janis

[Keith Simpson]

A bit of backstory - all of the materials in EvilHack also exist in vanilla NetHack (even dragonhide). It's just that in NetHack, an object is always created using its default material, whereas in EvilHack (and a few other variants) most objects are able to be created made of various materials.

We'll use a shield of reflection as an example. By default, it's made of silver, and in EvilHack, most shields of reflection spawn made of silver. However, they can spawn made of various other materials (see https://github.com/k21971/EvilHack/blob/master/src/mkobj.c#L3347-L3357); these other materials can also reflect/are shiny. You won't ever see a wooden or stone shield of reflection as that makes no sense. The materials chosen in that particular array make sense.

Janis, earlier you mentioned you had found a set of 'dragonhide armor' and were wondering what its base material was - it's dragonhide. The default/most common material for 'armor' is leather and it'll appear that way (leather armor), but there's a very small chance it can spawn as dragonhide.

Hope I'm explaining this sufficiently.