Please, please reset some arts

[Berendol]

Crimson, would you *please* log on with your DM character and reset some of the ancient housed arts? The stuff that's been sitting for > 6 months would be a really nice start. I don't actually care about the stuff out in the wild... that seems really Tolkien-esque, finding artifacts in some legend's lair... but stuff that cannot be obtained because it has been sealed away for a rainy day is another story.

We're looking at stuff like this that's been sitting for months and months, and everyone knows it. I'm not interested in pointing fingers, just getting stuff like this back into circulation. Didn't you threaten to do this anyways?

[Fink]

Careful, the last time someone brought this up, the owners of the houses came back from their extended leave and killed a bunch of people for pointing out the same

[Berendol]

/sarcasm on
Gee, I sure hope I don't get more people playing. Least of all *good* players. That would be horrible for sure.
/sarcasm off

Last time, someone who shall remain nameless named names and pointed fingers. That was a grave error in their judgment, and led to their demise. Notice that I have not mentioned the owners of these artifacts, nor have I speculated, though I may be able to guess at them.

Also let me point out that this was a random sample of the housed artifacts, chosen for no particular reason. IF I wanted to bring someone down, and I don't, I would do so in a less public way.

If we just ignore this and let whoever house arts, then we're actively letting them take away from our fun whether they are online or offline.

If on the other hand, the housed arts are found out and reset, then I/we can enjoy my/our play time more. Should their prior owners be so childish that in their anger they log in and kill me, well, at least I enjoyed the game more while I was alive, and I might go play on a private server where I can actually have arts. I and many others would be severely disappointed by this event, though.

You can't have fun with something you don't use.

[Warrior]

Right, the phial is in Bigjuan's house (or some of his alter ego's).

I think my post about a artifact/house-reset timer rule/limit/thing would be a good way to solve it.

[Fink]

Damn, the only reason I can come up with to not wear the Phial is if you have Elendil isntead - and at that point, you are a big meanie for having both

Juan, do you have *both* the art lightsources?


Course, on the other hand, if you free up the Phial, it will just be found within literally 15 minutes tops. At this point, it will just be on somebody elses neck (admittedly one who currently plays). Although, on the other hand, we seem to have a good death rate among the lower-clevel players, so maybe it would get moved around a bit after all

[Berendol]

[quote author=Fink link=board=discussion;num=1171316703;start=0#4 date=02/13/07 at 11:56:28]*both* the art lightsources[/quote]

Don't forget about the Arkenstone of Thrain, or the Necklace of the Dwarves. Those are pretty nice too. Although we don't know who has them, and it doesn't matter.

Then there are: Razorback, Dor-Lomin, the Golden Crown of Gondor, Cammithrim, Glamdring, Aeglin, Orcrist, Ringil, Anguirel, Forasgil, Sting, Orome, Avavir, Eriril, and Turmil.

[Warrior]

Dor-Lomin and Sting are in my possession, I'm using Dor-Lomin and Sting is my backup weapon. I've been considering (for a loooong time) to set Sting free since I'm not sure if I'll resurrect _if_ I die, but I think I'll keep it for now.
As for the rest I think it's mostly Angus/Bigjuan and possibly Zeb or some other long-time inactive players.

[Fink]

[quote author=Berendol link=board=discussion;num=1171316703;start=0#5 date=02/13/07 at 13:35:53]

Don't forget about the Arkenstone of Thrain, or the Necklace of the Dwarves. Those are pretty nice too. Although we don't know who has them, and it doesn't matter.

Then there are: Razorback, Dor-Lomin, the Golden Crown of Gondor, Cammithrim, Glamdring, Aeglin, Orcrist, Ringil, Anguirel, Forasgil, Sting, Orome, Avavir, Eriril, and Turmil.[/quote]

We've come to realize that, on the mangband.org instance, there appears to be a bug somewhere that is keeping  the Arkenstone of Thrain from generating (after this many years, there is no way in heck this thing would be un-found now). Interestingly, every successive art on the "Special" art list (that is, art id 1-13) has not, in our memory, generated either.


drifting from topic...

I don't know where I got the idea from, but I've always thought that the "special" art list (again, 1-13) is supposed to generate in order, and not randomly like the rest of the art list. I think I originally picked this idea up from a comment Angus made a couple years back.

A buddy of mine who plays a lot of vanilla took a peek at art generation code, and as well said he felt it was supposed to generate in order (although, when I told him about Crim's impression that this method is not the case, my buddy later gave a "hmm, actually, yeah, maybe they dont...).

Also, one of the new guys on mang.org as well was under the impression the special list generates in order. You can see where this leads - that something is keeping the Arkenstone from generating, which is clogging up the rest of the special list.

But, Crim said he took a peek, and felt that the in-order idea wasn't necessarily the case. I looked over the comments for that section, and realize that, if I recall, the comments kind of make it sound like things go in order, but the code looks rather similar to conventional art generation - ie, that perhaps this special art meme (heh) really arises from people just noticing what might be a poorly-phrased comment, and not actually arise from the code itself.

[Berendol]

Warrior, holding onto Sting makes it impossible for anyone else to use it. You're not actively using it. We'd appreciate if it were in circulation.

[quote author=Fink link=board=discussion;num=1171316703;start=0#7 date=02/13/07 at 14:15:58]We've come to realize that, on the mangband.org instance, there appears to be a bug somewhere that is keeping  the Arkenstone of Thrain from generating (after this many years, there is no way in heck this thing would be un-found now). Interestingly, every successive art on the "Special" art list (that is, art id 1-13) has not, in our memory, generated either. [/quote]

I grepped a dump of all the characters in December 2002... and Xander had Thrain. So it has existed since I've been playing, but probably not very often, and something might have changed since then to break it.

Yes, it is true that certain artifacts are meant to be generated specially, and those artifacts have special, reserved item kinds in k_info.txt ... I'm not entirely sure how that all works (or doesn't) quite yet. Artifacts 1-15 are "special" and there is code to support them, which IMO should be made more 'normal'. Personally, I'd set the two Morgoth artifacts as numbers 1 and 2, then make the game free to choose from the rest. In addition, it would have a new artifact creation routine, which actually just picks one from the list given the random criterion, instead of basing it upon item type.

I think the problem with those artifacts is that the item type is so rarely chosen that it pretty much never gets picked. It's kind of like finding a Feanorian lamp at 50'. It might be a problem with the item creation routine. Then again, maybe it doesn't even consider the last few items in k_info for some reason.

The first 15 artifacts, which are special, are as follows...HUGE SPOILER WARNING!!
Notation: (Depth:Rarity) in feet, 1/X rarity
1. The Phial of Galadriel (50:1)
2. The Star of Elendil (1500:25)
3. The Arkenstone of Thrain (2500:50)
4. The Amulet of Carlammas (2500:10)
5. The Amulet of Ingwe (3250:30)
6. The Necklace of the Dwarves (3500:50)
7. an unused artifact slot
8. The Ring of Barahir (2500:25)
9. The Ring of Tulkas (3500:50)
10. The Ring of Power (Narya) (3500:30)
11. The Ring of Power (Nenya) (4000:40)
12. The Ring of Power (Vilya) (4500:50)
13. The Ring of Power (The One Ring) (5000:100, special)
14. an unused artifact slot
15. an unused artifact slot

Other things to compare these with:
HUGE SPOILER WARNING!!
Potion of Experience (3250:1)
Staff of the Magi (3500:2)
Seeker Bolt (3250:4)
Shield of Deflection (3500:8)
Mace of Disruption (4000:8)
Wrath of God / Raal's Tome of Destruction (3750:8)
Feanorian lamp (2000:10)
Balance DSM (4500:16)
Potion of Augmentation (2000:16)
Rod of Speed (4750:16)
Scroll of *Acquirement* (3000:16)
PDSM (5500:64)

[Fink]

[quote author=Berendol link=board=discussion;num=1171316703;start=0#8 date=02/13/07 at 17:46:36]Warrior, holding onto Sting makes it impossible for anyone else to use it. You're not actively using it. We'd appreciate if it were in circulation.
[/quote]

I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping some art as legitimate backup. I recall in the past Crimson indicating a similar feeling as well: keeping art on an active character, or tossed in a house for backup, is a reasonable use of art. Hoarding mountains of art and/or storing art without ever playing is bad.

[Fink]

Yeah, the thinking is that the March 2005 instance (that we are still using), and perhaps the instance prior to that, wound up with something fishy going on. As you noted from digging through the chardumps from the prior instance - and from chatting with people on the topic - definitely seems to show that the special arts have been found, but not on the current instance.

For example, Ive had two mages who have found RoS15 (and a 16 I think), a handfull of PDSM (5 or 6 in total I think), and loads of extremely rare items. Over time, I think its pretty clear that the Arkenstone through the One Ring are getting held up due to something. It will be interesting to find out what that is - I've never actually played and had them around and so am used to their absence, but it weal be neat to see whats ticking under the hood.

[Berendol]

[quote author=Fink link=board=discussion;num=1171316703;start=0#10 date=02/13/07 at 19:29:41]Over time, I think its pretty clear that the Arkenstone through the One Ring are getting held up due to something.[/quote]

Well, I'm sure you already know this, but the One Ring is only ever created when you kill Morgoth.

As to the fishiness... I'll give the code a look. Something tells me the "special" reserved item kinds just aren't being considered in the item creation functions.

Backup artifacts are not easy to justify, when there are so few artifacts in general. I will maintain my preference.

It would be nice if we heard from Crimson on this thread.

[Fink]

You sure about the One Ring only spawning after Morgoth is dead? Always thought that was a player myth thats been passed on (and I've never been able to find reference to it in the places I've poked around in the code).

[Berendol]

Hm, you're right. After a little more poking, it seems that only the Massive Iron Crown and Grond are generated when a monster with DROP_CHOSEN (which, in theory, could be anything but is actually just Morgoth) is killed. Well, how about that?

On to the code digging...

To create one of the special arts, object2.c:place_object calls object2.c:make_artifact_special. If the code works properly and probability works out right, meaning that the player is at the appropriate depth to find the artifact (note that this is probably a holdover from single player), the special arts will be created in order. Special arts that fall out of existence must be recreated first before the special arts higher up on the list (for that depth range) will have a reasonable probability of being made. The function starts at zero, and goes up, checking each one for existence. It it exists, the function moves on to the next one. So on until it finds one that doesn't exist. That one will get its dice rolls. It first checks depth, which is very loosely clamped. If that fails, it moves on to the next special art. Rarity * 100 is rolled if it passes. If the rarity rolls fail, it'll exit and not make an artifact - thus, the lowest one in the list pretty is intended to be created next! If rarity passes, the object depth is loosely clamped, and rolled. If that fails, it moves on to the next special art. (Notice the return (0) statements in the function where you'd expect a continue statement instead. That's the rarity roll failure.)

Special artifacts are loosely clamped to a depth range of (depth, depth + 20 or 1000') with two dice rolls to see if it can be generated out-of-depth, one for the artifact and one for the base item kind. In other words, look where you're supposed to find them, instead of scumming the bottom. You just won't find them at the bottom, the probability is absolutely astronomical.

For example: Finding the Arkenstone at the bottom is a 1 in 16,245,000 chance! That's (57) * (57) * (50) * (100)... 57 levels past the depth clamp for the artifact, 57 levels past the depth clamp for the item kind, the artifact's rarity which is 50, and the special factor of 100. However if you look in its normal depth range, you have a 1/5000 chance of finding it... that's 50 (the base artifact's chance) times the factor of 100.

Good luck finding those specials. It's entirely possible to find them, just not where you'd have previously looked!

(edit) Wow, apparently there is a factor of 100 involved in special artifact rarity. Holy cow...

[Warrior]

When it comes to me housing Sting as a backup weapon I don't feel too bad, I'm a rich, powerful and for the most part an active player and considering that I think having only two artifacts is very fair compared to most other similar characters.

So both in that respect and as far as server rules goes(which for the most part means "do what you wish" on this particular subject)... I feel it can be defended.

Sting is still a lot better than my next backup weapon. If it was any artifact just _slightly_ better than the ego items I had I would definitely not house it.

But as I said, I might put Sting back into circulation again but I'd prefer finding the time to attempt Morgoth (AGAIN...) before I do that.

But that doesn't mean just logging in for 15 minutes and going to the bottom and killing him, it means potentially day after day or week after week of bottom scumming trying to find him in a good spot. Not to mention the time it takes to kill all the uniques before you can really have a go at him.

I've tried now, maybe as many as 7 or 8 times, to fight him, long, long fights, usually more or less in the open (it gets kinda open after a while anyway...) and though I was close the last time (he had only 2 stars left but I ran out of *heals*) - it's just a lot of work and a lot of time.

Anyway, thats not really related.

I remember discussing the whole thing with Crimson in the #mangband channel, that some of the special artifacts apparently _can't_ be found though they "should" be and he did look into it and as far as I remember (I can check the logs later, they're on a different computer) he said that it didn't seem like they're supposed to show up in a special order.

BUT now that I think about it, he might not have said that at all because indeed you _must_ find the phial before you can find elendil and you _must_ find elendil before you find the arkenstone. And the arkenstone is where it's most likely "broken".

He said that he "might've broken something" when he was doing ... this or that, I don't remember, that was not impossible at all and maybe the most probable explanation why the arkenstone hasn't been found (and thus blocking out the other special arts after that).

Hm, about the irc logs, I'm sure it's somewhere in Fink's logs too, I think he was there also.