Some thoughts on Home inventory and a question about shop code

[academic.sam]

Been enjoying this great game again after a long hiatus and thought I'd venture in to mucking about the guts of its code

Seeing the comment on the FAQ about shop interface, I get the feeling that this has been talked about in the past. I hope you will bare with me for now.

One issue that bothers me is the lack of space in home. One could argue that increasing inventory slots at home will impact game balance. However, I feel that there is no practical impact as players are currently forced to keep only the best. They will still keep the best even with more home inventory slots and can even have a few variations for specific situations.

I prefer having more space in home as it allows me to experiment with some less powerful, but interesting combinations. IMO, this is a win. Yesterday, I found the helm of Gorlim and I really want to keep it (even just to look at it).

After some mucking around, I just increased STORE_INVEN_MAX to 48 and was able to play both on Linux and Windows. This did cause some wierdness in display as menu code was not designed for larger size. After some hunting, I just modified store_menu_set_selections(...) and set menu->selections to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW XYZ123456789"

This also nicely avoids the jarring effect of missing letters in the item indexes. My question is about the attept to remove command letters from the inventory index list. Admittedly, you can't go directly to any item whose index happens to be a store command. But, I don't see that as a problem as having that ability doesn't save any keystrokes.

My question is the comment that says menu->cmd_keys and menu->selections should not intersect. I haven't seen any ill effects so far. If a dev-team member can comment on if I've overlooked anything, I'd really appreciate it.

On the upside (downside?), I've forked a copy on github and will keep tinkering. If any of these changes are useful, I'll be happy to contribute.

Regards
Sam

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by academic.sam

My question is the comment that says menu->cmd_keys and menu->selections should not intersect. I haven't seen any ill effects so far. If a dev-team member can comment on if I've overlooked anything, I'd really appreciate it.

My guess is that this is for exactly the reason you noted: you can't go straight to an item whose slot uses a command key. Personally I don't find it jarring to have "missing letters" in the shop display; it's a little weird, but you quickly get used to it. Whereas being forced to use the arrow keys to select certain items is definitely a bug.

I can appreciate the complaint about lacking home space though. Many users have complained about it, and I don't see any good balance reasons to restrict the home size.

[academic.sam]

Thanks for the clarification. That was my guess. What I was trying to say was that the ability to press a letter and go to that entry directly doesn't really save any keystrokes or time when in the store. So, I was OK with not having that ability at all in exchange for orderly index

If home inventory slots gets increased, that also seems to increase the store slots as well. However, they don't seem to restock to the max. Only effect would be that you can sell more stuff.

Regards
Sam

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I don't see any good balance reasons to restrict the home size.

I think the reason is same as limited inventory space: to force player to choose what to keep and what not. I wouldn't mind if the home gets increased by just a few slots though: it feels smaller than in old games somehow even that it is 24 slots just like it was in 2.9.3, maybe because there are now more stuff to tweak with.

[Mondkalb]

Wouldn't it be possible and easier to code, if there were different "rooms" in the house, represented by different pages, that were reserved for different item categories, like weapons, armor, rings and amulets, scrolls and other magical items, and potions. Each category could be called up by a letter or symbol or whatever keystrokes are currently still not used.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

I think the reason is same as limited inventory space: to force player to choose what to keep and what not.

The problem I have with that explanation is that I don't really think that this creates any interesting kind of difficulty. If you could access your home while in the dungeon, then sure, I'd agree with you, but you can't.

EDIT: also, I could have sworn that the old homes went from (a) through (v) on two pages; surely even with skipped letters that's more than 24 slots.

[debo]

Originally Posted by Derakon

The problem I have with that explanation is that I don't really think that this creates any interesting kind of difficulty. If you could access your home while in the dungeon, then sure, I'd agree with you, but you can't.

EDIT: also, I could have sworn that the old homes went from (a) through (v) on two pages; surely even with skipped letters that's more than 24 slots.

@ decided he wanted a condo instead. He could only afford a jr 1-bedroom. No cheap credit lying around anymore!

[academic.sam]

I'm a pack rat and like to collect things. Since I play slowly, I tend to get attached to my @ and like to admire my loot while in town.

What I'd really like to do is to make a trophy room/museum (similar to what Mondkalb mentioned) that allows me to store all my artifacts. Perhaps charge a small fee to take one out for a run.

If someone can tell me whether there is an easy way to determine if an object is an artifact, that would save me a bit of time.

[Mondkalb]

In the newer version of the game, artifacts are identified as "special" and know by their name and some basic attributes as soon as you pick them up.

Earlier, if you don't want to wait for pseudo id, you can try to destroy an item. Artifacts can't be destroyed (exept by destruction spells - that was an easy way in old times after you had cleared a dragon pit or whatever and looted all potions and scrolls and stuff you needed, you just could cast destruction and everything was gone unless it was an artifact in that spot; this has been changed, I believe for game balance).

[academic.sam]

Actually, I meant within the source. E.g. Is there any object flag I could test to determine if an object is an artifact.