Interface improvement: Shop lists & ID status

[danr]

I would really love it if, when you were looking at scrolls / potions / jewellery for sale in a shop, it would indicate right on the main list which items were already known (or which were not yet known).

I know you can look at the list of known and unknown items, but with a long list of scrolls or whatever, it can take a few toggles to make sure you've checked them all. It would just be easier and faster, would take minimal screen space, and doesn't "spoil" anything, if you could see at a glance which items you could shop-ID.

[7hm]

This is a good idea.

Another, related but not interface specific idea, is to have shops stop selling ID'd bad potions for 1 gold.

It's a no brainer decision to buy the potion if you haven't already ID'd it.

Either charge an appropriate amount (similar to for example mutation potion) or don't sell bad potions at all.

It's not a high enough cost to have a major impact, but it is high enough that when ID'd the potion is a high priority, there is a cost involved to it that has a real impact.

[galehar]

Good idea. Any suggestion on how to fit it nicely in the interface?

[jpeg]

Another, related but not interface specific idea, is to have shops stop selling ID'd bad potions for 1 gold.

It's a no brainer decision to buy the potion if you haven't already ID'd it.

Either charge an appropriate amount (similar to for example mutation potion) or don't sell bad potions at all.

It's not a high enough cost to have a major impact, but it is high enough that when ID'd the potion is a high priority, there is a cost involved to it that has a real impact.

The price system overhaul is on our TODO list and might come for 0.9, though I'm making no promises. Bad potion prices are a minor problem on the scale of iffy pricing, but they definitely will be upped.

[mageykun]

Personally, I'd suggest doing it with color coding, but there already seems to be color coding in potion shops (red is bad, yellow healing, blue everything else, I think?). Maybe just add another column after the price, and place a marker after every un-ID-ed item.

For example:

  Code:

a - a potion of healing                22 gold
b - a potion of poison                  1 gold *
c - a potion of heal wounds            33 gold

You have 50 gold.
Welcome to Mageykun's distillery!  Some items in this shop are unknown to you [*].  What would you like to do?


Or maybe "are new to you" is better word choice?

[dpeg]

New prices will come, bad items in shops will be among them. (No promises as for 0.9, like jpeg said.)
For unidentified items, I'd use a shop-only item annotation of "(unidentified)". The items this applies to are consumables; those have short names and there will be enough space in all cases. The advantage of this over a symbol like "*" is that we (a) don't have to explain the symbol and (b) save the column you'd use for the asterisk for the names (randart names can be very long).
Once this thread goes stale (and the idea is not in), please add it to the interface ideas wiki page. Thanks!

[danr]

It occurs to me - if you buy a randart ring( or amulet), that does not cause that ring's "base type" to be identified, does it?

(artefact jewellery seems to be based on a standard jewellery type, with additional properties added, e.g. the brooch of shielding is an amulet of warding with an additional AC+4 EV+4)

[danr]

"Unidentified" works, but I suggest (unknown) or (unseen) as a bit shorter. IIRC "Unknown" is already used in-game, as in "This ring may have unknown properties".

[mageykun]

What I liked about using color codes, or even marking items with pips, is that you immediately know, in one glance, which items are un-ID-ed. If you put an adjective in the middle of the description it's less obvious. You have to read through the whole shop. While I know that's a lazy complaint, my point is right now you already have to read through the shop carefully to see if there's an item you haven't met yet this game. Hunting for a word in each line is about the same level of difficulty- it doesn't simplify anything.

Saving the column for space reasons seems silly, you're only adding one character to each line in the menu. Unless this is a complaint about code necessary.

Alternate suggestion: add a key that toggles away from the default color coding to an ID one, where say ID-ed items are grayed out and unknowns are marked in a priory color, say yellow. It's not like we don't have a whole row of toggles and options at the bottom of the shop screen already.

How do shop color codes work right now, anyways? There seem to be conflicting standards- potion shops seem to color code by type, the letters are coded green/red according to affordability, weapon and armor shops color code artefacts white, and some scrolls are coded yellow, red and purple for good, bad, and weird, I think. Honestly- right now, aside from the artefacts, I don't think shop inventory color coding provides useful information. Except that red (bad) items are the cheap nasty things you probably want to shop ID (providing you haven't ID-ed them already, of course).

[dpeg]

mageykun: I don't think that shop lists are those where you need quick, at-a-glance information about known/unknown. Relevant is immediate unformation about what you can purchase, and for that we use colours. Having an "(unknown)" tag is exactly what is needed.

[danr]

It's not clear to me - are we talking about the (unknown) being shown in the item listing, or in the detailed ! description?

Anyhow, I've created a wiki page for shop interface at https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... face:shops, please continue there.