Competition 120

[Nick]

Competition 120 is now available from the competition page - it is an NPPAngband Hobbit Rogue with some interesting equipment.

Note that comp 119 still has a couple of days to go.

[nppangband]

Just one other note: The shops are closed (mostly because on turn zero Rogo Baggins just killed everybody in town. They don't like him any more). But it isn't exactly ironman. Up-stairs work, and with the starting equipment you have it should only present minor difficulties.

This is intended to be a quicker game than usual. Getting to stat-gain might have a few rough spots, but after that it should be a pretty quick trip to the bottom.

[ewan]

OK, I'm officially irritated. It must have happened to five or six chars here now, so I figure it is not going to stop: I start up fine, dive down a few levels, quit to go do something else, and get an error on re-start: '156 Too many player spells.'

Any ideas?

[nppangband]

OK, I'm officially irritated. It must have happened to five or six chars here now, so I figure it is not going to stop: I start up fine, dive down a few levels, quit to go do something else, and get an error on re-start: '156 Too many player spells.'

Any ideas?

EDIT: My apologies you are having this difficulty. I am trying to re-create this, but with no luck.

What OS are you playing on? I don't have this issue in Linux or windows. I do have one player that self-compiles and plays on a mac has that difficulty when he saves on a level that has a player ghost on it. But he doesn't have that problem when he uses Nick's mac binary.

[ewan]

I'm a Mac guy; and yes, in fact, I think that player ghosts may be a commonality here also.

OK, easy enough to work around if needed - thanks already. Let me know if you want savefiles or anything.

[nppangband]

For some reason I can't figure out, when there is a player ghost present in on a level when somebody is playing on the Mac SO, two extra bytes of data are written to the savefile (either that, or two bytes are not read when loading, I don't remember which) I know where in the load process it goes wrong, and I know how to rescue the savefile. When I re-do how player ghosts in NPP 060 the offending code will be wiped out.

I don't know if you compile yourself, but I can also show you the line of code to change once to allow the savefile to load properly. Or you can send me the broken savefile and I can fix it. The trick is when playing on a mac you can't quit playing when there is a player ghost on the level.

For the sake of the competition, I suppose you could also just delete the player ghost entries from monster.txt. They are fun but not essential to completing the game or the competition.

[ewan]

Having just died to one it would seem rather unjust to delete them - I'll just avoid stopping play when there's one around. If it happens at a late-game stage maybe I'll send you the file - thanks .

[No, no compiling for me - just running the .dmg]

[ewan]

Happy to report no further issues - thanks again.

One odd bug: I just found another Phial of Galadriel. Which makes me wonder whether I could find another One Ring?!?

EDIT: which probably means that the drop passed the 'artifact' check, right? Grr :-P.

[nppangband]

Happy to report no further issues - thanks again.

One odd bug: I just found another Phial of Galadriel. Which makes me wonder whether I could find another One Ring?!?

The Phial and One-ring were created via a quick hack in the source code to drop both at character birth, as well as giving the player a bunch of extra food and the rod of mass identify. I guess I forgot to mark the two artifacts as being created. So, yes, both the Phial and the One Ring can be generated again.

All - Remember, the One Ring in NPP also makes you immune to poison as well as acid/fire/cold/elec.

I am playing this comp as well. I just died at 700' to some hummerhorns and an ogre (lack of teleport) and was too confused to escape. I tried using WoR but it didn't save me in time. I had even found the first two mage spellbooks already. I guess the real challenge of the early game is finding sources for healing and teleport.

Has anyone tried activating the One-Ring? Most of the time it should cause alot of damage to creatures, but it could kill an early character as well. When I get home today I will post a quick spoiler on what it does.

In hindsight I wish I had given the player a rod of *identify* as well.

EDIT: which probably means that the drop passed the 'artifact' check, right? Grr :-P.

NPP doesn't quite have an artifact check like the most recent Vanilla versions do. You probably didn't miss much. If it failed the rarity check for the Phial, it would have generated an normal object instead.

My grrr moment was when Wormtounge dropped a defender's sword. Pretty useless for a character that has the one-ring.

[ewan]

I have activated the One several times, without much thought until I finally noticed that the 'black aura' I found myself surrounded by several times was, indeed, bad! I had expected that anything such as that would have been in the *ID* :-( - O well, as far as I can tell (??) it just drained current stats, I hope not maximum?

[nppangband]

I have activated the One several times, without much thought until I finally noticed that the 'black aura' I found myself surrounded by several times was, indeed, bad! I had expected that anything such as that would have been in the *ID* :-( - O well, as far as I can tell (??) it just drained current stats, I hope not maximum?

Yes, the stat drain is permanent. IDing it doesn't describe what it does. It just says it activates for "bizarre things".

Here is spoiler on what it does:

20% of the time it will permanently drain your stats. It loosk like they are reduced by 1 point when your stats are low, but then when you are 18/100 it will permanently take them down to 18/50.

10% of the time it will do 1000 hp damage to all monsters in LOS.

30% of the time it will fire an unresistable ball that does 300 hp damage, radius 3.

40% of the time it fires a unresistable bolt that does 250 hp damage.

So it can be quite good or quite bad. Definitely worth activating if you are desperate and close to dying.

[ewan]

That's unequivocably BAD - ouch . Wish I'd known: I guess use if you're going to die but NEVER otherwise.

[While I am vaguely whining, I would be delighted if I were able in this variant to use the 'normal' shift-direction to move along a whole corridor, and/or ctrl-direction to attack a space continuously but not move. We now return you to the regular whining..]

[nppangband]

That's unequivocably BAD - ouch . Wish I'd known: I guess use if you're going to die but NEVER otherwise.

Well, 80% of the time we will get a good result. But the other 20% of the time is pretty harsh.

The one ring also, every 10 game turns (or 1 player turn at normal speed) has a 10% chance of permanently draining 1 xp. Not a big deal at the higher levels but I had a tough time getting from level 5 to level 6, as I could not find monsters who give good XP quick enough.

[While I am vaguely whining, I would be delighted if I were able in this variant to use the 'normal' shift-direction to move along a whole corridor, and/or ctrl-direction to attack a space continuously but not move. We now return you to the regular whining..]

Does vanilla use CTRL to do this? I know there is a keypress that allows you stay in place and attack, but I don't recall what it is offhand.

[Derakon]

Vanilla's ctrl+direction is alter without moving (context-dependent, so it's disarm for traps, open for doors, attack for monsters, etc.), and shift+direction is run.

[half]

Does vanilla use CTRL to do this? I know there is a keypress that allows you stay in place and attack, but I don't recall what it is offhand.

I believe so. I think this is a very good interface feature and I extended it in Sil, so that is also disarms/opens chest traps, and control-5 (or control and the wait key if no keypad) interacts with your own square (picking up items, using stairs etc). This actually eliminates the need for about a third of the game commands. By the way, the key in V is '+' and in Sil it is '/'.

In Sil I also have 'u' be the universal use command (and allow the more specific (q)uaff etc but de-emphasise them). For the next version I'm also adding a nice lightweight main menu for all the minor UI commands like "show map", "show monster knowledge", "change options", "interact with colours", "quit" etc. With all three of these (control, 'u', main menu) you only need to know about 5 non-movement keys to play the whole game, and yet can do things directly if you want the old system.