Competition 76

[Bagplant]

I said I'd post my DaJ impressions so here goes.

Overall I thought it was fun and felt different in flavor to V while still playing very similarly. Some of the monster descriptions made me laugh ("It's just like every other centipede!")

Sliming and silver poisoning didn't seem too hard to manage, just one more cure type to stockpile at home (although I rapidly concluded that I needed to dive past 250' fairly quickly). They might be more of a challenge for ironman characters. Playing a ranged character seemed to help as it seemed like most of the attacks that caused these were melee only. Maybe adding some ranged attacks with those side effects would add some tactical complexity and force people to worry about them a bit more? Perhaps mind-affecting breath attacks such as amnesia could add to silver, and you could give some monsters a mucus spit ranged attack for slime.

The new monster types were good, adding depth to the V list while fitting well within the existing difficulty scale. I liked the expansion of u, l and i types particularly. It was interesting that some of the monsters that seemed truly new (and not lifted from an existing source like D&D, Tolkien or Harry Potter) also appeared to have a bit of a context of lore and setting behind them. I did a bit of Googling to try and find out why, which was uninformative until I found one page that explained everything. In any case, it's a nice touch and helps add to the uniqueness of the variant.

The archer felt overpowered, but that's normal for archer types in *band games. The spell list seemed good on the whole, although spells that are just a less-powerful version of the archer's normal attack (i.e., the arrow spells) seemed a bit pointless. I found Missile Magic extremely useful, mostly for the various branding spells, but rarely used Advanced Archer's Tactics as I found the mana cost and fail rates for the combat spells were too high for them to be very effective.

Some creatures seemed to hit harder than I remembered despite not looking any different in monster memory - Ologs could hurt me badly if I wasn't careful. Did you change anything about the damage absorption component of armor? I might just have been lacking in armor at the time.

Staves as weapons was nice early on (I used a 2d5 frost branded one up until stat gain) and later became annoying. I kept hoping new ones would be 'average' so that they would stack properly. Perhaps a "disenchant staff" utility spell and/or scroll that removes bonuses and ego properties would be a nice addition. I did not try wielding a staff from a stack - hopefully the game handles that properly if it occurs.

Weapon damage algorithms seemed different from V (more like O perhaps?) and were tricky to figure out. I was surprised at how well some weapons like my frost-branded staff stacked up against others. Fortunately the 'I' command removes any guesswork here.

Spelling, capitalization and punctuation could use improvement - many of the new descriptions were a bit rough. It felt amateurish at times, which was a shame as the game is generally quite polished otherwise.

Overall a fun variant and one I'll probably play again, especially now that I have a good monster memory built up.

[fizzix]

Staves as weapons was nice early on (I used a 2d5 frost branded one up until stat gain) and later became annoying. I kept hoping new ones would be 'average' so that they would stack properly. Perhaps a "disenchant staff" utility spell and/or scroll that removes bonuses and ego properties would be a nice addition. I did not try wielding a staff from a stack - hopefully the game handles that properly if it occurs.

You can disenchant staves in the game with '&'. I figured this out halfway through when I started getting annoyed at staves not stacking. Although, you can't do it if a staff is cursed. One of my recommendations is not allowing cursed staves to show up below a certain depth, maybe dlevel 50 or 60. You probably aren't going to be wielding any ego staff at that point anyway.

I'll post the rest of my stuff in another day or so.

[will_asher]

Overall I thought it was fun and felt different in flavor to V while still playing very similarly.

That is exactly the point of DaJAngband. I'm glad it works.

Sliming and silver poisoning didn't seem too hard to manage, just one more cure type to stockpile at home (although I rapidly concluded that I needed to dive past 250' fairly quickly). They might be more of a challenge for ironman characters. Playing a ranged character seemed to help as it seemed like most of the attacks that caused these were melee only. Maybe adding some ranged attacks with those side effects would add some tactical complexity and force people to worry about them a bit more? Perhaps mind-affecting breath attacks such as amnesia could add to silver, and you could give some monsters a mucus spit ranged attack for slime.

This will happen in the next version. Some monsters will breathe amnesia for silver poison and some monsters will breathe (or spit) slime.

The new monster types were good, adding depth to the V list while fitting well within the existing difficulty scale. I liked the expansion of u, l and i types particularly. It was interesting that some of the monsters that seemed truly new (and not lifted from an existing source like D&D, Tolkien or Harry Potter) also appeared to have a bit of a context of lore and setting behind them. I did a bit of Googling to try and find out why, which was uninformative until I found one page that explained everything. In any case, it's a nice touch and helps add to the uniqueness of the variant.

What was the one page that explained everything? Did you find the monster dictionary on my website that I wrote several years ago? A few of the new monsters (null, zhelung, extril..) are ones that I made up and most of them are in at least one story that I wrote (none of them published..). Others are from folklore that isn't as well known like the pooka (an irish fairy), the windigo (from canadian folklore), and the hungry ghost (monster based on a concept or spirit with the same name which I heard about from some eastern religion).
EDIT: I just realized it couldn't be my monster dictionary page because it was on geocities which closed down. I still have it on my computer, but I haven't gotten around to putting it back up on my new website yet.

The spell list seemed good on the whole, although spells that are just a less-powerful version of the archer's normal attack (i.e., the arrow spells) seemed a bit pointless. I found Missile Magic extremely useful, mostly for the various branding spells, but rarely used Advanced Archer's Tactics as I found the mana cost and fail rates for the combat spells were too high for them to be very effective.

What about the spells breath shield and quiver protection? Did you find them useful? I often tweak mana costs and such as I play. The problem is I never get far enough to test the last spellbooks. Acid arrow is pretty pointless for an archer (like magic missile for a ranger in V), but I may improve the rain of arrows spell so its damage is actually based on the bow you're wielding.

Some creatures seemed to hit harder than I remembered despite not looking any different in monster memory - Ologs could hurt me badly if I wasn't careful. Did you change anything about the damage absorption component of armor? I might just have been lacking in armor at the time.

I didn't change anything about armor. Ologs are just tougher than they are in V (and native a few levels deeper). Ogres also generally hit harder than they do in V, but they're also slower.

Staves as weapons was nice early on (I used a 2d5 frost branded one up until stat gain) and later became annoying. I kept hoping new ones would be 'average' so that they would stack properly. Perhaps a "disenchant staff" utility spell and/or scroll that removes bonuses and ego properties would be a nice addition.

"&", as fizzix mentioned, is a free command (not a spell) which removes all bonuses from a staff allowing them to stack. It doesn't work on cursed staves, but it will bring an uncursed (-x, -x) staff to (+0, +0).

Weapon damage algorithms seemed different from V (more like O perhaps?) and were tricky to figure out. I was surprised at how well some weapons like my frost-branded staff stacked up against others. Fortunately the 'I' command removes any guesswork here.

Strength bonus to damage is more for heavier weapons and less for lighter weapons, and it gets added before multipliers from slays and brands. This is supposed to even out the '3lb main gauche is the best weapon' thing a little.

Spelling, capitalization and punctuation could use improvement - many of the new descriptions were a bit rough. It felt amateurish at times, which was a shame as the game is generally quite polished otherwise.

oops. I'm ashamed. and me an english minor when I was in college (though I was always more into freestyle poetry than anything with strict grammar or spelling). Maybe I'll look over the monster descriptions and object descriptions to correct this kind of thing.

[Matthias]

Sliming and silver poisoning didn't seem too hard to manage, just one more cure type to stockpile at home (although I rapidly concluded that I needed to dive past 250' fairly quickly). They might be more of a challenge for ironman characters. Playing a ranged character seemed to help as it seemed like most of the attacks that caused these were melee only. Maybe adding some ranged attacks with those side effects would add some tactical complexity and force people to worry about them a bit more? Perhaps mind-affecting breath attacks such as amnesia could add to silver, and you could give some monsters a mucus spit ranged attack for slime.

This will happen in the next version. Some monsters will breathe amnesia for silver poison and some monsters will breathe (or spit) slime.

You have to keep in mind that there are melee characters out there and I can assure you that silver is scary enough for those as it is, no need for silver breathers. My hulk was running in fear whenever those silver breeders showed up. Oh and don't even mention those minor demons with silver touch that look exactly like those other minor demons that are totally harmless.

[fizzix]

Here's my list of comments from the competition. Sorry if it's a bit long.

First the awesome:

Quiver: Really cool, something like this *needs* to be in V. Home quiver could also be neat.

Sound: I've always thought something like this was necessary to make the game a little more realistic. Very cool approach.

Roaming monsters, monsters awareness: This really makes the approach to monsters more reasonable than V. The monsters here can wake up but not quite figure out where you are located, so they just wander around aimlessly.

Monsters wake other monsters: Very nice, realistic too.

Monsters phase without LOS to @: It makes some monsters (like Qs) very scary.

Ego weapons of randomness: I like randarts, so I like these mini-randarts also.

Good option to buy out store (but can't do it the old way if there are magic books that you can't use).

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Bugs: (some of these have been brought up)

Can't target heard monsters. Useful for arrow,spells.

No in game description of silver or slime (that I could find)

Acid coated arrows have wrong damage display

If home is filled last shot does not have a letter marker

Elven cloak of enveloping came up as {splendid} not {ego,cursed}

Monsters summon even if all spaces are filled and no new monsters can be brought in. I got lots of free attacks on M when he continued to summon even though orcs were on all sides.

Telekinesis bug, dunno why this happened, couldn't reproduce.

Sustains don't always sustain. Had stats drained on M even though those stats were sustained.

Palantir gives "running out of light" message

Staves that have bad effects come up as {broken}? Or at least I think that's what happened. Seems a more descriptive term like {dangerous} could be used.

I looked through monster edit file after my game and noticed that some monsters were listed twice. I think fruit bat and novice alchemist were, can't remember if there were others.

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the bad:

Stat gain too rare. Perhaps make less rare, or better yet adopt new item distribution from V.

Good staves with cursed multipliers are annoying, especially after a certain depth.

Spells way too costly/too high fail rate to be useful, at least for this class. Could be better if stat-gain wasn't so hard. Or adjusted so SP depends more on clevel than INT.

Seemingly random changes of monster color was frustrating. Why change frost dragons from white in V to bright blue? It's just confusing. Also, I understand why you may have changed some monster symbols around to make banishment less powerful, but it seems like you didn't really make full use of the color spectrum, keeping a lot of different monsters the same color.

no item list subwindow

monster list not arranged in order of dangerousness. I let a dlevel 120 monster get a move on me because I had no idea what it was. Had the monster list been arranged properly I would have properly avoided the threat. (Luckily for me, it decided not to fart)

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Overall it's very fun. I enjoyed playing it. The first levels seem a *lot* harder than V. There are just too many powerful monsters that come in packs like rothes. Even fruit bats killed one of my characters when I walked into a room with 23 of them. After dlevel 50 it plays very similar to V with the old item distribution scheme. I had a lot of trouble finding useful items early on, and that probably contributed to the first 20 levels being so hard. After reading some other comments on dumps, I also realized that I never made good use of sleep/confuse/slow monsters. oops.

I enjoyed it, and wouldn't mind doing some more testing/debugging for you. Good work!

[will_asher]

thanks for the comments!

Sound: I've always thought something like this was necessary to make the game a little more realistic. Very cool approach.

That's strange. I haven't done anything with sound.

Monsters wake other monsters: Very nice, realistic too.

This will happen a little more often in the next version. In 1.0.99, monsters only wake each other up if they were trying to move past a sleeping monster. Next version, monsters in groups will sometimes wake up the rest of their group.

Can't target heard monsters. Useful for arrow,spells.

No in game description of silver or slime (that I could find)

Elven cloak of enveloping came up as {splendid} not {ego,cursed}

Acid coated arrows have wrong damage display

these will all be fixed in the next version.
The readme.text file included with the game tells about silver and slime, but for 1.1.0 I have also added it to the in-game help files.

If home is filled last slot does not have a letter marker

I fixed that a long time ago. It looks right on my computer. The last three slots in the home should be A, B, and D. Does the D not show up? I don't get it.

Monsters summon even if all spaces are filled and no new monsters can be brought in. I got lots of free attacks on M when he continued to summon even though orcs were on all sides.

I'll look into this. thanks for pointing it out.

Sustains don't always sustain. Had stats drained on M even though those stats were sustained.

Monsters with the POWERFUL flag have a chance to bypass sustains.

Staves that have bad effects come up as {broken}? Or at least I think that's what happened. Seems a more descriptive term like {dangerous} could be used.

'broken' is the default psuedo for anything with 0 cost. I'll probably change the word it uses.

I looked through monster edit file after my game and noticed that some monsters were listed twice. I think fruit bat and novice alchemist were, can't remember if there were others.

This is for monsters which sometimes come in groups and sometimes alone. The same thing is done in V for all the "novice xxxx" monsters. ..but the novice alchemist never comes in groups, it's only in there once.

Stat gain too rare. Perhaps make less rare, or better yet adopt new item distribution from V.

I probably won't adopt the item distribution from V, but stat potions will be more common in the next version. I'm giving them mutiple native depths so that stat gain will be more evened out throughout the dungeon. With multiple native depths, I was worried about making them too common, but that will be improved in 1.1.0.

Good staves with cursed multipliers are annoying, especially after a certain depth.

I can probably think of something to remedy this..

Spells way too costly/too high fail rate to be useful, at least for this class.

It's really hard for me to judge and test how much mana a spell should cost when I never get far enough to learn that spell. Some more specific suggestions would be helpful.

Seemingly random changes of monster color was frustrating. Why change frost dragons from white in V to bright blue? It's just confusing.

Originally, I had white dragons which breathed time, but I removed those. I guess I'll change those frost dragons back to white.

Also, I understand why you may have changed some monster symbols around to make banishment less powerful, but it seems like you didn't really make full use of the color spectrum, keeping a lot of different monsters the same color.

I tried to minimize having multiple monsters with the same symbol and color, although the difference between white and silver or silver and grey is pretty subtle..
Those minor demons that look exactly alike which Matthias mentioned are (I assume) the grepse devil and the shadow devil. One is white and one is silver. Maybe I'll re-arrange those colors slightly so they'll be easier to tell apart.

no item list subwindow

monster list not arranged in order of dangerousness. I let a dlevel 120 monster get a move on me because I had no idea what it was. Had the monster list been arranged properly I would have properly avoided the threat. (Luckily for me, it decided not to fart)

I have added the object list for the next version.
Currently in my 1.1.0 version, the monster list is still sorted by monster index number, but in reverse order so that deeper monsters are usually at the top. I'm not sure how to make it sort directly by depth, but maybe I can figure it out.

[Bagplant]

EDIT: I just realized it couldn't be my monster dictionary page because it was on geocities which closed down. I still have it on my computer, but I haven't gotten around to putting it back up on my new website yet.

It actually was your monster dictionary on geocities, although I'm not quite sure how I found it now as it doesn't seem to be there any more.

What about the spells breath shield and quiver protection? Did you find them useful? I often tweak mana costs and such as I play. The problem is I never get far enough to test the last spellbooks. Acid arrow is pretty pointless for an archer (like magic missile for a ranger in V), but I may improve the rain of arrows spell so its damage is actually based on the bow you're wielding.

Never tried them, although I probably should have. I wasn't gearing for INT primarily so my mana pool tended to be on the low side, and I reserved a lot of that for cure light wounds, phase door, speed boosts, or emergency teleports. I preferred burst of speed due to the lower fail rate, but it had a tendency to run out and need renewing. All in all I think I'd reached the conclusion that casting those spells in combat would deplete my mana pool to a degree that would offset any benefits I might gain from them. I was intending to try them out when I had more intelligence/mana, but somehow that time never came.

I do tend to wait longer than I should before using new spells, and I'd been playing mages a lot just prior to the comp so I probably retained the mage-style pathological fear of running out of mana.

[Bagplant]

I was able to hit 'heard' monsters with missiles by targeting a spot on the floor. That caused some headaches with target memory at times, as I had to manually reset it so I didn't keep shooting at that same spot forever. Other than that I really liked the target memory (to the point where it was a bit irritating going back to V and doing without it).

I also liked the monster AI changes - "awake but hasn't noticed" behaviour and waking up other monsters. Patrol routes definitely added another tactical dimension. On a couple of occasions I ended up with a number of relatively dangerous creatures piling into a room where I was, not because they'd noticed me and were chasing me, but simply because that's where they happened to be going.

Color/letter changes took a bit of getting used to at times, but I just figured that was variant maintainer prerogative. I will nearly always avoid time breathers unless I have an extremely good reason not to - there were one or two Great Wyrm types later on that I never fought simply because it sounded like they might be time breathers based on the description.

[PowerDiver]

Other than that I really liked the target memory (to the point where it was a bit irritating going back to V and doing without it).

I believe the target memory you are talking about has been in V forever. Set the use_old_target option under interface options.

[fizzix]

by sound: i meant that @ hears monsters and monsters hear @. Not actual in-game sounds. Sorry for the confusion.

I'll go back and look through the spells available, and try to say which ones I used. I didn't use many the entire game.

[will_asher]

Monsters summon even if all spaces are filled and no new monsters can be brought in. I got lots of free attacks on M when he continued to summon even though orcs were on all sides.

This appears to be a strange intended behavior inherited from V: It doesn't check if summoning is possible unless the ai_smart option is turned on. (I'll fix it for next release). Anyone have Morgoth try to summon in V and not be able to?

[Bagplant]

This appears to be a strange intended behavior inherited from V: It doesn't check if summoning is possible unless the ai_smart option is turned on. (I'll fix it for next release). Anyone have Morgoth try to summon in V and not be able to?

All the time - ditto for any summoning creature that I fought in an anti-summoning corridor (back when I still used them). It's standard for that AI setting.

[buzzkill]

Macor (CL34 DL64) finally dead, of amnesia (via lesser balrog). Not being able to read really screws with your normal mode of operation. I should have recalled earlier, but I wanted to press on. I had a Staff of *Destruction*, I should have used it. I needed an escape, normally that would have been TL. Just inexperience on my part, failing to recognize the Staff as an escape. I know what it does, it just didn't occur to me to use it in that situation. Dump attached.