Item prefixes and postfixes

[Hajo]

I've been digging through the code and the config files, and as far as I understood it, Angband has "postfixes" for items, like "of resist fire", but no prefixes. In addition there are three more modifiers for "to hit", "to damage" and "to defense".

Some of the postfixes have several effects.

Diablo II has a system of item prefixes and postfixes, but each modifier only has one effect. I think magic items could have a prefix and a postfix, and rare items had up to 7 modifiers overall, but I don't know how they were chosen from pre- and postfixes.

The wide range of different items and item combinations in Diablo II was always very interesting to me. The system seemed to be better than Angbands, but I haven't played Angband a lot lately, so I can't say that for sure.

Now that I work on my own variant now and then, I want to ask if it would be worth to change the Angband item system to a more Diablo II-like system, or if such a change would not add anything of interest to the game?

I think the change would involve replacing the one "ego" pointer of an item with an array of several, and group the "ego" modifiers into prefix and postfixes. And then to fin all places which access the ego modifiers and make the iterate the array of modfiers instead.

Would you like such a change?

[PowerWyrm]

Isn't that what v4 is all about?

[Hajo]

In the past years I had only sporadically contact to Angband and didn't follow the development very closely. So I must say, I have no idea. From what I read in the forum v4 has very similar plans, maybe quite the same even. Actually the only time when I played Angband frequently was before 2000, afterwards it's been an on and off interest, and I used to work with code based on 2.9.1.

I think I'll get the v4 sources and take a look how it's done there. I'm not very good at reding code, but it should be a start.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Hajo

In the past years I had only sporadically contact to Angband and didn't follow the development very closely. So I must say, I have no idea. From what I read in the forum v4 has very similar plans, maybe quite the same even. Actually the only time when I played Angband frequently was before 2000, afterwards it's been an on and off interest, and I used to work with code based on 2.9.1.

I think I'll get the v4 sources and take a look how it's done there. I'm not very good at reding code, but it should be a start.

If development work on V continues then we may well import the affixes but start it off just generating the things that V currently generates (v4 affixes are quite different stylistically to V's ego-items).

[Hajo]

The v4 system is very generic and flexible, but it deems me also a bit complex.

I wonder a bit which way to go with my variant. Implement something like in v4, but in a bit simpler fashion, or wait till the v4 system is backported to a new Angband release and try to patch my variant with a diff from Angband 3.4.1 to that code?

[Nick]

ToME 2 also has prefixes I believe, although I know nothing about how they work. That might be worth having a look at.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Nick

ToME 2 also has prefixes I believe, although I know nothing about how they work. That might be worth having a look at.

And EyAngband (+ Mist). Which is awesome, by the way.

[Hajo]

Thanks for the pointers. Somehow I thought that EyAngband had stalled long ago, but it always had very interesting ideas while I was still watching.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Hajo

Thanks for the pointers. Somehow I thought that EyAngband had stalled long ago, but it always had very interesting ideas while I was still watching.

It did, last release was a long time ago. Mist is its modern successor by a different author.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Hajo

The v4 system is very generic and flexible, but it deems me also a bit complex.

I wonder a bit which way to go with my variant. Implement something like in v4, but in a bit simpler fashion, or wait till the v4 system is backported to a new Angband release and try to patch my variant with a diff from Angband 3.4.1 to that code?

The v4 system was as simple as I could make it given the limitations of the existing Angband codebase.

Actually that sentence only really applies to the affixes; perhaps the complexity to which you refer is the themes aspect. I implemented themes as a way to make the affix system generate coherent multi-affix items like Defenders, Gondolin, Westernesse, HA etc. etc. Otherwise items with multiple affixes would only ever be totally random, like D2's rares.

What you could do is port over the affixes code to your variant without the theme code (they are easily separable - I can tell you which functions you need). Then you can decide if you like it enough to grapple with the themes.

Porting it to V is really all-or-nothing, because without the themes you can't replicate the existing V ego types. (Well you can, but it would be a massive hack and not really advance on the current V ego system.)

As takkaria says, it was designed so that its initial implementation in V could produce *exactly* the same range of items, and no more. This slightly increased the complexity.