Early assessment on a change...

[fizzix]

I think consumable drops need to be separated from equipment drops so that they can be dealt with independently. There was never really a TMJ problem with consumables. You can always just become more profligate if you're drowning in heroism potions or other low level consumables. Any solution should have been designed to preserve the consumables distribution.

Suppose monster X used to drop 1d3 items, and now drops 1. What it should do is drop 1 equippable and 1d2 or 1d3-1 consumables.

One way to do it without changing file parsing or needing new flags is to limit all non-drop_good monsters to only ever drop one equippable, and the rest must be consumables, then go back to the old drop quantities for everything without drop_good.

I think it's the right idea, but you night need a little more than that. I don't think that would have a significant enough impact. Most of the non-drop_good monsters are unlikely to drop more than two weapons as is. In fact, the probability of an Ancient dragon dropping two useless weapons is a lot less than the probability of the dragon having two gold drops.

Which leads to, how about having a decreasing probability of gold drops as you descend in the dungeon? This might be a problem if you move to a 'no selling to stores' system, but then you need to retool the drops anyway.

Or maybe consumables aren't broken and we're all playing faster than we're supposed to be?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Are any of the potions classed as 'good'? That would be one thing right there. What would I rather see Maggot drop, a dagger of slay undead or a !Str?

It is true, tho, that a gold drop is effectively the same as no drop at all, once you're wrapping up stat gain. What might be more fun is to make gold drops less common, but MUCH larger when they do happen, at those deeper levels. There's a visceral, emotional appeal to the whole 'dragon's hoard' notion that just isn't satisfied with getting 500 gp out of it. "Hey, I throw away stuff worth 5x that." 5000 gp worth of sapphires or diamonds or rubies...now that's way cool.

[Nick]

Or maybe consumables aren't broken and we're all playing faster than we're supposed to be?

Someone might easily make the argument that

1. Dive fast to make the game more exciting
2. Complain that you're dying too much until devs give in and the game is made easier
3. Go to 1

is an algorithm that doesn't terminate.

I, of course, would not make that argument. No, sir.

[Jungle_Boy]

Someone might easily make the argument that

1. Dive fast to make the game more exciting
2. Complain that you're dying too much until devs give in and the game is made easier
3. Go to 1

is an algorithm that doesn't terminate.

I, of course, would not make that argument. No, sir.

Well I got the dive fast and die lots thing down pat.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Someone might easily make the argument that

1. Dive fast to make the game more exciting
2. Complain that you're dying too much until devs give in and the game is made easier
3. Go to 1

is an algorithm that doesn't terminate.

I, of course, would not make that argument. No, sir.

Haha, oh man. I need to fire up the complainer after reading that.

[buzzkill]

I, of course, would not make that argument. No, sir.

Classic Nick !

[fph]

As someone said: "Dive fast, die young".

[Atarlost]

The problem is that the TMJ fix has made consumables rarer than they were when diving was not the current fad.

[PowerDiver]

The problem is that the TMJ fix has made consumables rarer than they were when diving was not the current fad.

Diving is just good strategy. The attack on TMJ is the fad.

I'd like to see drops including money increased by a factor of 3, and rarities of weapons and armor also increased by a factor of 3. That is, assuming that would be a wash on weapons, seeing as I don't fully understand object generation.

[Zikke]

I don't think the attack on TMJ was a fad. Tak made those changes amidst a great deal of support. I think a lot of people are happy it happened, and this stat potion topic is really the only issue I've heard raised that is based on the TMJ Project.

[Pete Mack]

@Eddie:
Are you playing the FA competition? I gave it a quick try. I have no idea how the current leader (and almost certain winner) finished in 173K turns.

[PowerDiver]

@Eddie:
Are you playing the FA competition? I gave it a quick try. I have no idea how the current leader (and almost certain winner) finished in 173K turns.

I downloaded and compiled and got a font error. I haven't managed the energy to debug. The file appears to be there. It must be some configuration thing.

eddie@linux:~/Angband/work/new/FAangband114> ./faangband 
./faangband: Couldn't load the requested font. (8x16x)
eddie@linux:~/Angband/work/new/FAangband114> ls lib/xtra/font/
10x14xb.fon  12x18x.fon  16x24x.fon  6x10x.fon   8x12x.fon  8x8xb.fon  Makefile
10x14x.fon   16x16x.fon  5x8x.fon    8x12xb.fon  8x16x.fon  8x8x.fon

Also, it has connected stairs, and I tend to avoid those comps.

[Nick]

I downloaded and compiled and got a font error. I haven't managed the energy to debug. The file appears to be there. It must be some configuration thing.

eddie@linux:~/Angband/work/new/FAangband114> ./faangband 
./faangband: Couldn't load the requested font. (8x16x)
eddie@linux:~/Angband/work/new/FAangband114> ls lib/xtra/font/
10x14xb.fon  12x18x.fon  16x24x.fon  6x10x.fon   8x12x.fon  8x8xb.fon  Makefile
10x14x.fon   16x16x.fon  5x8x.fon    8x12xb.fon  8x16x.fon  8x8x.fon

x11 stuff seems to be playing up lately (in all variants) - I usually use the SDL port, which should work fine as long as you have all the SDL packages (image, ttf, etc).

Also, it has connected stairs, and I tend to avoid those comps.

You can choose disconnected stairs

@Pete:Nor do I, nor I think anybody else.

[PowerDiver]

x11 stuff seems to be playing up lately (in all variants) - I usually use the SDL port, which should work fine as long as you have all the SDL packages (image, ttf, etc).

You can choose disconnected stairs

Not if I want to approach that turncount.

Despite configuring with --with-no-install I see

Configuration:

  Install path:                           /usr/local
  lib/ path:                              /usr/local/share/faangband/
  (with private user files in ~/.angband/)

I guess I should have checked that earlier.

I tried with --enable-sdl and it told me missing libraries, so I am going to have to work one way or the other to get it going. I suppose I could also go install on my windows box. Horrors! Maybe not.

Maybe it will be as easy as adding a symlink /usr/local/share/faangband. Nope.

I'm sure I can figure it out if I can manage the motivation. In the meantime, time to finish M with my dwarf mage.

[Nick]

I'm sure I can figure it out if I can manage the motivation. In the meantime, time to finish M with my dwarf mage.

I wouldn't bother. That's an insanely good turncount, and I'm sure you won't beat it.