Ability to identify traps

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

We need some manner to identify traps on the ground. Not detect them, but to learn what they are.

Not to turn this into a gender-trap gripe, but when we have a character who ordinarily disarms any trap within 2 turns and never sets them off; ends up triggering a trap of masculinity/femininity/neutrality, and they dont recognize any gender trap but the one they turned into, they shouldnt have to trigger EVERY trap of 'unknown type' to try and change back.

The same holds true for characters who hit traps of shrinking repeatedly but dont recognize a trap of growing. Noone WANTS to stay a 2 inch character for the rest of the game, but they have to trigger every trap to try and get back.

This inevitably ends up with them triggering some sort of DANGEROUS trap. (trap of calling out - Summons *UNIQUE*... like shudde m'elle; trap of scatter items - scatters your sorcerors fireproof tomes across all the vaults in the ironman level; trap of steal item - steals your level 45 small sword 'sting'.) You get the picture. I ahve had 2 of these three happen, and both times the result was that i died trying to retrieve the books or fight/escape shudde m'elle.

I think that an knowledge/sphere combo in runecraft, a staff of identify (with radius levels) or the identify spell should be able to identify traps they touch. Also possible is have a CHANCE for a trap to be recognized when it is disarmed. (then well just kick ourselves and safely wait for the next trap of gender-change, instead of wanting to abandon the character)

Or we could allow a trap to be researched. (semi-cheap... dont know how it would work though...)

Just an idea!

[Arthur]

I thought that identify will eventually ID traps as well? But for non-mages, you are right, identifying traps should be possible.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Nope. The spell wont do it, even at the radius 2 level. (spell level 48.)

I tried that with my sorceror who UNFORTUNATELY hit a trap of femininity but doesnt recognize traps of masculinity. (and he doesnt WANT to be a girl, since that would end his character dump, since you would have to change the name to match the gender. (Come on, whos gonna play a GUY named Susan!! (just an example.) OR a girl named BOB!)

By the same definition, though, sometimes people WANT to try and change gender later on, Just like *I* wanted to 'grow' my Hobbit thaumaturge so he could be man-sized... then i got a little carried away and made him god-sized. (313 inches) now i want to shrink him down JUST a bit so hes at reasonable proportions. (well reasonable for a giant...)

[Arthur]

Shouldn't you be spending more time trying to kill Morgoth?

[Guest]

To some extent you can ID a trap without triggering it. I don't think its too spoily to say that the traps are grouped by color according to what they do. (does anybody not know what a dark blue trap does after a week of playing?)

To turn your gender back you don't need to test every trap. Only certain colored traps. If you've hit one of the three gender changing traps (he/she/it) you should know which color. If you've got a decent Disarming skill you can make cheap xp by finding a trap of multiplication. Use it to find the color you are interested in. Disarm the rest.

Even though some traps never 'ID' they can be obvious if you've ID'd most or all of the other traps of that color. (Acquirement comes to mind).

Some colors are pointless to ID since there are no reasons to set them off (at least none I've discovered).

[Guest]

a GUY named Susan!!

Sounds like a Johnny Cash song.

[Maylith]

I voted no.

Even if you have put no points into disarming, you'll eventually have a pretty good idea of which traps are which. If you don't, you should be carrying means of detection. (Actually, you should be, anyway.)

IMHO, the only characters who could/should *possibly* have some form of innate trap detection are rogues and, to a lesser extent, assassins, and then only after significant skill points are invested.

[Nerdanel]

I have played ToME a lot (and even won once) but still don't know any trap colors... I haven't played any rogues, though.

I think it would stand to reason that there was some chance of learning a trap on a successful disarm. If you disassemble it, you're going to see its innards, right? This could apply only to manual disarming and perhaps very high levels of the disarming spell.

[Alex]

I vote yes. Nerdanel has a point.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

MAylith, i wasnt talking about DETECTING traps, i was talking about being able to ID an unknown trap that you can plainly see on your screen.

I just dont like having to set off traps repeatedly (both of the incidents came when i FIRST stepped out of the range of my detect traps spell, and i guess thats what comes from playing carelessly in an ironman vault.

Edit:

And What the heck do you people mean by trap colors!! They are all either a black/grey pit or some sort of egg with a blue halo on it. Unless my systems screwed up the colors.

[Guest]

On my defaul;t configuration for winxp they are ^s on the map which definitely have color.

I would like somehow to be able to indentify detected traps.

[Canderel]

In graphics mode 90% of the traps has the same tile, and i cannot determine what the 10% of the traps that look different has in common.

I voted a yes.

[Massimiliano Marangio]

In graphics mode 90% of the traps has the same tile, and i cannot determine what the 10% of the traps that look different has in common.

This is due to an error in the graf_new.prf pref file and should be fixed in ToME 2.3.

Historically there were traps with different tiles (look at the second line in 16x16.bmp: dart, gas, spot, pit, trapdoor, rune summon, rune teleport traps). Some of these graphics are now used for other things, e.g. for webs (?).

The code was changed, and now all traps share the same feature and the same graphic. There are commented out commands in the pref file for each new trap type, i.e. it could be possible to use different tiles for the different trap types.

[Canderel]

Any plans to change the graphical traps in future versions? (Low priority I would presume).

[Massimiliano Marangio]

I will try to fix some errors when I have some more time, e.g. the spider webs mentioned above (new picture is already drawn), some off by one errors (e.g. the quest plot features in the towns) and some problems with the flag SUPPORT_LIGHT.

About the traps: Changing the following lines in graf_new.prf

Code: Select all

# Trap of Sinking
G:T:39:0x81/0x8C

produced the proper trap door image. I think these commands were commented out because the Tile Assigner of Andreas Koch could not handle the new format.

Any plans to change the graphical traps in future versions?

ToME 3.0.0 will use another trap system, and I'm not sure if we should change this in the 2.3 version.