Competition 110

[caruso]

Oh! Well, doubtless you're right - I'm inexperienced with O and variants - but it means I spent a lot of wasted time trying to hide in trees

You were right to hide in the trees, because they provide you with a bonus of their own. Can't remember what it is exactly...

[Nick]

You were right to hide in the trees, because they provide you with a bonus of their own. Can't remember what it is exactly...

It makes you harder to hit, both in melee and with spells/missiles.

[buzzkill]

It makes you harder to hit, both in melee and with spells/missiles.

About that, it seems a little odd that enemies duck behind trees and boulders to avoid spell effects like sleep monster or confusion.

I get it when it come to conventional missiles and elemental spells like fireball or lightening bolt, but I envision status effect spells as being non-evadable, like focusing on your enemies minds rather than an firing an actual projectile. Oh, and magic missiles (D&D legacy) should alway hit... or change the name.

[buzzkill]

I've got 5 purple blotched mushrooms (blindness, un-ID'd) in my pack. When I try to eat one, nothing at all happens. No message "You have 4 PBM's remaining {tried}", and I still have 5 in inventory.

[caruso]

Supposed bugs in 1.2.4

I've come across a few weird things (FAangband 1.2.4 comp save on Vista):

1. Items get edit: pseudo- /edit identified as soon as you pick them up.
2. A lightning attack reduced my character's dexterity (wouldn't be too surprised if this really is just another example of FAangband nastiness ^^ ).
3. In a battle against Ulwarth I seemingly lost the ability to walk and there were no messages about what was going on. Meanwhile my HP were dropping with every turn while my speed increased, probably because of the "Fury" ability. After I used a scroll of Phase Door, everything seemed to be normal again. The problem about missing messages had already occured during or after another battle against Ulwarth with the same character a couple of turns ago.
4. You've already heard about characters wandering off in random directions if they pray on tree squares...
5. I still can't find the character dump. The replacement prompt says that it should be right in the FAangband folder, but it is neither there nor in the user folder.
6. Same with screenshots. I really would have liked to show you what I found east of Gondolin.
7. There are several saves of dead characters in the save folder, but you can only see them when trying to open a file in-game. When using Windows Explorer, it just displays the "110" save.

[Nick]

1. Items get edit: pseudo- /edit identified as soon as you pick them up.
2. A lightning attack reduced my character's dexterity (wouldn't be too surprised if this really is just another example of FAangband nastiness ^^ ).

Both deliberate. Unresisted basic element attacks can drop a stat.

3. In a battle against Ulwarth I seemingly lost the ability to walk and there were no messages about what was going on. Meanwhile my HP were dropping with every turn while my speed increased, probably because of the "Fury" ability. After I used a scroll of Phase Door, everything seemed to be normal again. The problem about missing messages had already occured during or after another battle against Ulwarth with the same character a couple of turns ago.
4. You've already heard about characters wandering off in random directions if they pray on tree squares...

Yes, I'm still struggling with the walk command

5. I still can't find the character dump. The replacement prompt says that it should be right in the FAangband folder, but it is neither there nor in the user folder.
6. Same with screenshots. I really would have liked to show you what I found east of Gondolin.
7. There are several saves of dead characters in the save folder, but you can only see them when trying to open a file in-game. When using Windows Explorer, it just displays the "110" save.

That's annoying - I'll test it on windows when I get the chance. Can anyone else who's been using windows shed any light?

[Nick]

I've got 5 purple blotched mushrooms (blindness, un-ID'd) in my pack. When I try to eat one, nothing at all happens. No message "You have 4 PBM's remaining {tried}", and I still have 5 in inventory.

All right, that's a new one.

[buzzkill]

Discount inscriptions {50% off} aren't visible in shops, though prices are discounted and the inscription does appear in your inventory.

The warlord level has connected stairs.

[Nick]

Not sure but it seemed like becoming hungry while rested did not break the resting. I nearly starved to death.

Looks like this is just having the "Disturb whenever player state changes" option set to no. I guess it is usually on by default, but the starting options for this character were weird.

[Nick]

Inventory bugs are interesting. If I wield a replacement item, my inventory temporarily gains an X slot, which lasts until i drop something or otherwise close a slot.

Not so big a deal. However, it seems that if I now replace-wield something that starts on the ground, the taken-off item attempts to go into that X slot, fails, and vanishes entirely!

I've got 5 purple blotched mushrooms (blindness, un-ID'd) in my pack. When I try to eat one, nothing at all happens. No message "You have 4 PBM's remaining {tried}", and I still have 5 in inventory.

I can't reproduce any of this - I don't suppose someone has a savefile showing the relevant behaviour?

[buzzkill]

I can't reproduce any of this - I don't suppose someone has a savefile showing the relevant behavior?

I guessing that I'm the only idiot who eats un-ID'd mushrooms, and that savefile is long gone.

a couple other notes... the 5 pack of skeleton serpents and skeleton lord seem to me to appear too commonly, probably on half of wilderness level once in depth. It would be nice if there was more variety in the selection of the head undead and his escorts. At times I feel like I'm playing some sort of 'skeleton lord hunter' game, or more accurately 'flee the undead serpent' game. OTOH, they do make scrolls of dispel undead very useful.

Jewelry of DOOM!!! and Woe are some of the best I've come across. Yes, they have large penalties/curses, but the upside makes it all worthwhile. The names a bit misleading, I guess, is my point.

It's unclear (at first) which curses can be removed via remove curse and which can't. I wasted two (hard to find scrolls) scrolls trying to remove a curse from armour of Ered Engren. Pressing ESC after being prompted for an item to uncurse still uses the scroll. I guess this is WAD to prevent free ID of cursed items, but it's unexpected behavior. Maybe put a warning in the scroll description or message and a [y/n] prompt upon ESC.... or better differentiate what's what by referring to some drawbacks as "penalties" (permanent) and others as "curses" (removable) or "heavy curses" (???).

Most item/monsters descriptions use the full width of the screen, some others only use abut half and kinda appear as paragraph.

[buzzkill]

My strating weapon, Mace of the Noldor, seems to have somehow lost it's most desirable traits, FA and SI. Doh! (and I'm not the only one, it's not a curse, is it?)

edit... after further review and much wasted effort on my part to reconstruct my kit, it appears that SI is still present (and I hope FA too) though there is no flag shown on the character screen, despite the description of the item reading "you know all about this object".


edit... and, as you probably suspected, these flags (FA/SI) aren't showing up for any items upon save/reload.

[Nick]

I guessing that I'm the only idiot who eats un-ID'd mushrooms, and that savefile is long gone.

I tried it with a debug character, and had no problems, which is worrying.

Jewelry of DOOM!!! and Woe are some of the best I've come across. Yes, they have large penalties/curses, but the upside makes it all worthwhile. The names a bit misleading, I guess, is my point.

Yeah, that is a bit silly. I could rename them, or I could make them worse...

It's unclear (at first) which curses can be removed via remove curse and which can't. I wasted two (hard to find scrolls) scrolls trying to remove a curse from armour of Ered Engren. Pressing ESC after being prompted for an item to uncurse still uses the scroll. I guess this is WAD to prevent free ID of cursed items, but it's unexpected behavior. Maybe put a warning in the scroll description or message and a [y/n] prompt upon ESC.... or better differentiate what's what by referring to some drawbacks as "penalties" (permanent) and others as "curses" (removable) or "heavy curses" (???).

It's a property of the items (mainly ego-types) rather than the curses that makes them permanently cursed. So, for example, if you had read a scroll of Curse Armour on your AoEE the new curse would have been permanent as well.

In fact ?RC will only give you a list of items you know are cursed, so I should make the scroll not be used.

Most item/monsters descriptions use the full width of the screen, some others only use abut half and kinda appear as paragraph.

Odd. Can you give me a couple of examples?

My strating weapon, Mace of the Noldor, seems to have somehow lost it's most desirable traits, FA and SI. Doh! (and I'm not the only one, it's not a curse, is it?)

edit... after further review and much wasted effort on my part to reconstruct my kit, it appears that SI is still present (and I hope FA too) though there is no flag shown on the character screen, despite the description of the item reading "you know all about this object".


edit... and, as you probably suspected, these flags aren't showing up for any items upon save/reload.

Do you think this has been happening all along? Your ladder character shows the flags - have you saved/reloaded that?

I'm a bit concerned that these sporadic bugs may mean memory overwrites from somewhere else in the code, which is not good.

[buzzkill]

Do you think this has been happening all along? Your ladder character shows the flags - have you saved/reloaded that?

I'm a bit concerned that these sporadic bugs may mean memory overwrites from somewhere else in the code, which is not good.

The flags get relearned once you're exposed to the relevant threat, that's why they are showing in the latest dump. Arin14's dump, at the bottom of the ladder, shows the Noldor weapon without the appropriate flags.

I'd like to provide more info, but I'm kinda afraid to save/load.

[Nick]

The flags get relearned once you're exposed to the relevant threat, that's why they are showing in the latest dump. Arin14's dump, at the bottom of the ladder, shows the Noldor weapon without the appropriate flags.

Right. Thanks, that helps with the finding.