Competition 93

[Nick]

Competition 93 is now available from the competition page - it is a Sangband 1.0.1 Dark-Elf.

[UniqueName]

Heh, I was going to suggest S. I've only played Steam/Josh and Iron/Fuivie so far and S hasn't had a comp in 2 years. Is it stable though? I still see a lot of development activity on 1.0.1.

[Magnate]

Heh, I was going to suggest S. I've only played Steam/Josh and Iron/Fuivie so far and S hasn't had a comp in 2 years. Is it stable though? I still see a lot of development activity on 1.0.1.

It's one of the most stable variants there is. The activity you see is evolutionary change and related bug-squashing.

[NotMorgoth]

Ok, reckon I'll give this a go - I haven't played Sang in a while as I've been enjoying Crawl more, but I've also never done a competition before.

Not sure I'll have time to finish a game in the timeframe of the comp, but here goes...

[Magnate]

Ok, there is a bug on the ladder: it's parsing the quest info incorrectly, and taking the first figure (the number of kills) instead of the second (the depth).

Also, I presume we are not messing with any game options (e.g. no_skill_cap, or never_haggle) in this comp. I haven't touched any, but I bet the anti-hagglers are weeping.

[Nick]

Ok, there is a bug on the ladder: it's parsing the quest info incorrectly, and taking the first figure (the number of kills) instead of the second (the depth).

Set depth from feet back to dungeon level and resubmit, and you should be fine.

Also, I presume we are not messing with any game options (e.g. no_skill_cap, or never_haggle) in this comp. I haven't touched any, but I bet the anti-hagglers are weeping.

Hey, I didn't know what I was doing. Now if someone had submitted me a savefile...

[NotMorgoth]

Also, I presume we are not messing with any game options (e.g. no_skill_cap, or never_haggle) in this comp. I haven't touched any, but I bet the anti-hagglers are weeping.

I've already suicided one attempt after the shopkeeper locked me out of the temple.

[PowerDiver]

I've already suicided one attempt after the shopkeeper locked me out of the temple.

Just turn off haggling and note it in your dumps and also inform Nick directly if you happen to win. If Nick disqualifies you, accept that as the price you pay for having fun while you play.

[NotMorgoth]

Just turn off haggling and note it in your dumps and also inform Nick directly if you happen to win. If Nick disqualifies you, accept that as the price you pay for having fun while you play.

The thing is, turning off haggling is sub-optimal, as you always get charged more for anything you could have haggled for.

With no selling in the latest version, getting money is very hard in the early game and you basically have to haggle the shopkeepers down to the lowest possible prices.

Edit: This is essentially why I think it should be removed entirely and not just an option that can be switched off.

[camlost]

Also, I presume we are not messing with any game options (e.g. no_skill_cap, or never_haggle) in this comp. I haven't touched any, but I bet the anti-hagglers are weeping.

I would assume that the difficulty options (option 5) are off-limits. Otherwise you could play a beginner (multiple lives) game. I would assume that other options are kosher. Why wouldn't they be?

[Nick]

To quote the competition rules:

There are no prizes for the competition, and everyone is trusted to follow the rules - if you don't, it's really your problem. Savescumming (making a savefile more advanced than the starting one and reloading it when you die), wizard mode, debug mode and altering edit files and/or source code are not permitted (duh). The options of disconnected/connected stairs (dungeon_stair) and monsters knowing the players weakness in advance (smart_cheat) should not be changed to the easier setting if they were set on the harder setting in the starting savefile in variants where they can be changed. Other conditions imposed on any individual competition will be on the competition page.

Clear?

[PowerDiver]

The thing is, turning off haggling is sub-optimal, as you always get charged more for anything you could have haggled for.

With no selling in the latest version, getting money is very hard in the early game and you basically have to haggle the shopkeepers down to the lowest possible prices.

I still wouldn't haggle. If that made the game unplayable, then I'd play something else.

[PowerDiver]

To quote the competition rules:



Clear?

Clear, but rather surprising. You are saying that there are only 2 specific difficulty options you are not allowed to change [from harder to easier], and that that applies to all variants. A message up Camlost mentions a multiple-life option. You didn't disallow that on the comp page, so I guess that means changing it is OK for this comp.

We thought that the rule was "no changing difficulty options". That seems like a fair rule, but it is ambiguous. Is no_haggle a difficulty option? It could be argued either way. In the context of ambiguity, I think the players should play for fun and saddle you with the decision later if they happen to win.

[Nick]

We thought that the rule was "no changing difficulty options". That seems like a fair rule, but it is ambiguous. Is no_haggle a difficulty option? It could be argued either way. In the context of ambiguity, I think the players should play for fun and saddle you with the decision later if they happen to win.

My understanding is that changing to no haggling would be technically more difficult but less annoying - so that seems like fair game. There are in fact three options under the Difficulty heading, so it wasn't really too ambiguous.

Also, that excerpt was from a paragraph entitled Honour System. My feeling is that this sort of issue will come up from time to time, but mostly it's easy to be reasonable.

[UniqueName]

Deepest Quest

Does deepest quest mean we can only take difficult quests? I just took an easy quest to try to dive faster but now that I think about it I'm not so sure.