Weapon/armor resistances & capabilities grid...for Home?

[moosferatu]

And... one more thing...

What if the items were indexed similarly as in stores/home? Then you could do comparisons like xaB without having to scroll to the item.

As, Nick said, there are limitless features...

[DavidMedley]

Took my first look at this. Seems useful. I like that you can look into stores to see if any of them plugs a hole, too. Accessing this menu from inside your home would be appropriate, I think. Or all stores.

[backwardsEric]

moosferatu, thank you for taking the time to experiment with it and write up your impressions. To fix the quick filtering not being able to select some columns, I'll probably change some of the labels ("Nx" for nexus resistance, "Sy" for the sticky curse, and "Lt" for light radius). The sticky curse is the one that confused your search for "st". To handle searching for the core stats (strength, ...), I'll allow two or three characters for the filter to avoid having to come up with alternative labels for those stats.

Changing the color on an entire row or column to highlight it isn't as straightforward as it should be, but I'll try to keep that in mind as a way of indicating a choice to the player. Having a row index like in the stores would also work. I was trying to eke out a couple more columns of space by omitting it.

Having some or all of the numeric modifiers like stealth and speed show up as numbers rather than +/-/. is easy to do with the way things have been structured. If one column per attribute is kept, color would be used to indicate the sign and values greater than +9 or less than -9 would show up as something like '*' or '=' to mark that the value couldn't be shown properly. Showing properties like AC, damage modifier, or weight isn't so easy since they're handled by the game differently than the attributes the comparison shows now.

[backwardsEric]

Originally Posted by DavidMedley

Took my first look at this. Seems useful. I like that you can look into stores to see if any of them plugs a hole, too. Accessing this menu from inside your home would be appropriate, I think. Or all stores.

Thanks for looking at it. All of the knowledge menu is accessible while within a store or home, or were you thinking of some tighter integration so part of this equipment comparison view would be visible while still having part of the store screen visible and access to its commands?

[moosferatu]

Thanks, backwardsEric, I write software too and I know all too well that it's easy to come up with ideas that are hard to implement due to the realities of the code, so no worries there. Just throwing out some ideas.

I hear you about the screen real estate problem. The index isn't necessary. Whatever you think is best. One thing I did notice, is a number, but not all, of the item names are abbreviated. For example, my sling is listed as "of Power" and my helmet is "of Telepathy". However, all of my rings are listed as "Ring 'Dexterity'" or "Ring 'Whatever'". The same is true for amulets. I'm guessing that this is probably a result of how the underlying data is stored?

[backwardsEric]

Originally Posted by moosferatu

One thing I did notice, is a number, but not all, of the item names are abbreviated. For example, my sling is listed as "of Power" and my helmet is "of Telepathy". However, all of my rings are listed as "Ring 'Dexterity'" or "Ring 'Whatever'". The same is true for amulets. I'm guessing that this is probably a result of how the underlying data is stored?

That was a choice, though perhaps a poor one. "Ego items" only have their ego name shown (chopped, if necessary to fit , to only show the end). They could be handled as the normal items are or could get a different treatment to get the information people want. I should also look more closely at how the other parts of Angband get an appropriate short name for an item. At least with the current set of attributes, there's also some room to make the names longer.

[DavidMedley]

Originally Posted by backwardsEric

Thanks for looking at it. All of the knowledge menu is accessible while within a store or home, or were you thinking of some tighter integration so part of this equipment comparison view would be visible while still having part of the store screen visible and access to its commands?

Just thinking a one keypresss activation, like g or l does, and listing that in the menu of things you can do.

[moosferatu]

Originally Posted by backwardsEric

That was a choice, though perhaps a poor one. "Ego items" only have their ego name shown (chopped, if necessary to fit , to only show the end). They could be handled as the normal items are or could get a different treatment to get the information people want. I should also look more closely at how the other parts of Angband get an appropriate short name for an item. At least with the current set of attributes, there's also some room to make the names longer.

I was actually thinking the shortened listings were fine since you already have the item's character displayed. "= of Strength" would save some space for an index column. :P

[FogSpear]

Question from a new player on this feature that I am just starting to use for helping my inventory management.

Is there a way to cycle ('c') the comparison so that it shows only equipped and inventoried (on self) items? I have found that I can cycle to see what's available in stores but the alternate view seems to include equipped/inventoried (on self) AND equipable/inventoried in home.

The use case that I am dealing with is: have a ring of digging and a shovel both with the tunneling ability. I stored the shovel in my home inventory but when I return to equipable comparison, it includes what is also in my home inventory. I am using this screen as a check for my character before I descend again. It would be useful to have one cycle state be what is only equipable on person (in addition to the existing ones - one including home inventory, one including store inventory).

Maybe I am missing something.

Also, is there a lookup somewhere that has the abbreviated codes for the resistances and abilities? I did not see much yet in the manual for this feature.

[backwardsEric]

Originally Posted by FogSpear

Question from a new player on this feature that I am just starting to use for helping my inventory management.

Is there a way to cycle ('c') the comparison so that it shows only equipped and inventoried (on self) items? I have found that I can cycle to see what's available in stores but the alternate view seems to include equipped/inventoried (on self) AND equipable/inventoried in home.

The use case that I am dealing with is: have a ring of digging and a shovel both with the tunneling ability. I stored the shovel in my home inventory but when I return to equipable comparison, it includes what is also in my home inventory. I am using this screen as a check for my character before I descend again. It would be useful to have one cycle state be what is only equipable on person (in addition to the existing ones - one including home inventory, one including store inventory).

No, there isn't an existing option to show only what's in the equipment and pack. Adding that as an additional cycle state may not be too hard.

Originally Posted by FogSpear

Also, is there a lookup somewhere that has the abbreviated codes for the resistances and abilities? I did not see much yet in the manual for this feature.

It isn't mentioned in the help. The ordering of the columns in that display is the same as the rows, going from the top to bottom and then left to right, in the resistances/abilities part of the second screen of the character sheet, so that may help. For many, the abbreviation is the first two letters of the label used on the second character sheet (i.e. 'Acid' is 'Ac' and 'pBlind' is 'pB'). The exceptions are 'Nx' for nexus resistance, 'SI' for see invisible, 'FA' for free action, 'Ft' for feather falling', 'SD' for slow digestion, 'TI' for trap immunity, 'IH' for impaired hit point recovery, 'IS' for impaired spell point recovery, 'NT' for teleportation ban, 'DE' for experience drain, 'Sy' for a sticky curse, 'Lt' for light radius, 'DR' for damage reduction, and 'MS' for movement speed.

I should experiment with staggered horizontal column labels (like what is used for subwindow configuration) using the two character abbreviations to see if that is more usable and worth the cost of an extra row for the column labels.