iVanilla - no selling, ranged trap det, spell balances etc.

[ewert]

I don't think eliminating hack and back for melee but leaving it for ranged is a good idea.

I think a simple implementation is best: if you have 4 blows/round, you attack until you've used 4 blows or until your target is dead. Then you lose (# blows used) / 4 of the energy you'd use for a full round of attacks.

I can imagine fancier approaches, but I think that one would help make melee more interesting without requiring too much revision.

This is the method I figured would be a nice quick hack back when I looked at melee code. But coding wise it would actually be "lose full round energy, if didn't use all attacks give back some", but yeah in essence like this. I also dislike single hit keypresses for a couple of reasons, one being more keypresses and two being the "problem" shown by extra shots (less risk vs quick monsters).

[ewert]

So suppose you have 4 blows, which means 25 energy per blow. If you somehow start at 130 energy, you get a blow and are down to 105 energy. Then, if 105 is high enough you get another blow immediately, else some monster gets its turn. Repeat until everyone is below 100, and then increment the game turn counter and add energy and continue.

That approach is definitely intriguing as well.

[ewert]

Annnnywayyyys ... as fractional blows is probably not on my nearby to-do list (as Magnate is working on it, I might do the hack if I run out of things to do), lets leave the frac blows talk.

I made some spell changes now:

Ball spells do dmg based on max radius and distance, so that it is a linear efficiency: 2 radius -> 100%, 66%, 33%.

The top end spells for mage and priests were changed:
Mana storm is now radius 4, and due to the above ball spell change, it is now a pretty darn massive area killer. Pits of stuff beware. Also changed fail/manacost to get rid of the pesky "max lvl max int and still fail wtf?"

Annihilation is gone, cheers! Say welcome to Smite, radius 0 ball (so it jumps to intended target). High dmg variance of 5d50 (5 d plvl) and double dmg on evil, so averages at 125 on non-evil and 250 on evil, but yeah can do 10dmg or 500dmg on evil. Very mana friendly. Honestly, does anyone want archery anymore with priests after this? Well against non-evil maybe.

These are totally untested at the moment. I think I will do the pseudo/id streamlining and unlimited-home options first before playtesting a mage with no-selling, unlimited home, randarts ...

[ewert]

I was also thinking about the status effects that maybe uniques could be affected in minor ways with them. Like slow monsters -> -2 speed. Confuse -> spell fail chance and hit rate reduction. Sleep monster -> less chance of using spells / breaths (drowsy and not quite grasping the situation).

If we consider a fight of 10speed vs 10speed, a successful slow would pay off after 5 rounds (100 energy used, 5 hits = 600 energy or 60 turns, vs. initial + 60*8 = 100 + 480 energy or 580 energy). At higher speeds it is less, but fights usually are also longer. Of course Sauron and Morgoth would be totally immune.

Then for the spellbook versions have level based effects, bolt beam ball and finally LoS. A mage clearing a pit -> LoS slow, confuse, manaaaa stoooooooorm! (Lina Inverse FireBall style )

[Timo Pietilä]

Annihilation is gone, cheers! Say welcome to Smite, radius 0 ball (so it jumps to intended target). High dmg variance of 5d50 (5 d plvl) and double dmg on evil, so averages at 125 on non-evil and 250 on evil, but yeah can do 10dmg or 500dmg on evil. Very mana friendly. Honestly, does anyone want archery anymore with priests after this? Well against non-evil maybe.

How mana friendly? 250 average doesn't beat powerful missiles, but missiles can miss, which is a reason why people might want to use the spell instead. This would be great against evil summoners.

Don't make spells too powerful. Game is a bit too easy as it is, so some balancing act would need to be done too. I find priest spell "clairvoyance" and potions of Enlightenment a bit too powerful as they are now.

I suggest you change those to "map and illuminate entire level", but without item detection. Preferably with not showing the illuminated floor before you actually see it (like already illuminated unseen rooms in mapped area). Make potions of *enlightement* do what plain enlightement does now.

[Atarlost]

Unique special effect immunity has always irritated me. It makes a complete mockery of the source material. Sleep doesn't work on Huan. It works on Charcharoth, Morgoth, and indeed on everything with free run of Angband at the time of the quest of the Silmaril. It's possible Glaurung did not have free run of Angband at the time, and of the undead all were either not yet born or already dead. Drauglin and Sauron resisted, but Drauglin is explicitly stated to be less powerful than Charcharoth so for him it can't be full immunity. Demonic uniques including werewolves can be justified in receiving a saving throw, but not immunity. Certainly there's no way to justify Gorbag the Orc Captain being immune to sleep when Morgoth is explicitly vulnerable to it in the source material.

As one of I think five or six spell effects in the source material sleep shouldn't be lame. Gandalf displays something akin to RoP (in Moria against the Balrog and at the gates of Minas Tirith against the WItch King), firebolt (multiple occasions), either magic missile or spear of light (against the nazgul chasing Faramir), illumination (in Moria), and possibly teleport or blink (in escaping the orcs in the pass in The Hobbit, though he fails to use it in the "fifteen birds" incident). Melian and Luthein demonstrate sleep (on Thingol and the entire population of Angband rerspectively). That's all I can come up with. None of those should be lame useless spells.

[Timo Pietilä]

Unique special effect immunity has always irritated me. It makes a complete mockery of the source material. Sleep doesn't work on Huan. It works on Charcharoth, Morgoth, and indeed on everything with free run of Angband at the time of the quest of the Silmaril. It's possible Glaurung did not have free run of Angband at the time, and of the undead all were either not yet born or already dead. Drauglin and Sauron resisted, but Drauglin is explicitly stated to be less powerful than Charcharoth so for him it can't be full immunity. Demonic uniques including werewolves can be justified in receiving a saving throw, but not immunity. Certainly there's no way to justify Gorbag the Orc Captain being immune to sleep when Morgoth is explicitly vulnerable to it in the source material.

I think effect power should scale with caster level. Clvl 1 sleep should hardly affect a fly, but clvl 50 sleep should make groups of giants fall to sleep. For game purposes the very high uniques like Morgoth, Sauron, Gothmog, Vecna should be immune or simply too high level to be affected by player spells. Same with slow. Maybe even with fractional slow effect so that if the level difference is high enough and monster doesn't make saving throw that practically paralyzes the foe. Freeze the entire room full of Hummerhorns.

[ewert]

(about spell power to Timo)

Yep, I used OoD as comparison for the single target version. It is bit more mana efficient than OoD. Also 250/rnd is only about 80/hit of 75% hit chance 4 hits melee, and 80/hit in the end game is not that much, I'd say average end-game quality weapon (I think 100/hit is a good endgame weapon, and great ones go 120+, even 150+ for superb ones, and then there are the INSANE ones ).

The dmg/rnd for both classes with the end-game spells is a bit more with these changes vs. single targets, dmg/mana stayed about same for mages and increased a bit for priests. Mages get a lot more area effect dmg now (comparing farming end game monsters with ball spells vs. melee in corner, that's why I changed it, to promote more heads on spellfights against groups too) though.

The clairvoyance/item detection discussion is a true one, I personally abuse the hell out of ?DetTreasure for example. Overall will prolly aim for changing that stuff after traps are streamlined into more gaming oriented form rather than obsessivecompulsive-press^F form.

Game balance, overall I think monsters damage is fine, but player dmg has creeped up powerwise bit by bit. At some point a simple across-the-board hp increase for monsters might be in order. I'll balance spells at the moment more versus melee and archery than versus monsters.

[takkaria]

Okay, messing around with github a lot still, but think now have gotten the hang of it for branching etc. enough to work with it somewhat okay. Did delete it a few times to start from clear to figure things out. =P

http://github.com/ewert/angband/tree/ivanilla

I'm trying to upload a working .exe there so people can easily test it, but no luck with Win7 / Opera or Win7 / IE. Beats me why not, flash or http version of uploading, no dice.

Anyways, currently there is no selling option made. It replaces no_stores, takes away d/s option from all but home in stores, and increases gold drops based on vague "I think sort of like this could work"-way and one nosell/nobuy character I played. That char had plenty of gold in the end, so I increased gold drops more at low levels in a non-linear curve...

I can test this version as I finally got a working branch of the master made, so will move on to spell balances next and then ranged trap detection.

The latest master branch has fixed menus now, you might be interested in knowing.

[fizzix]

The dmg/rnd for both classes with the end-game spells is a bit more with these changes vs. single targets, dmg/mana stayed about same for mages and increased a bit for priests. Mages get a lot more area effect dmg now (comparing farming end game monsters with ball spells vs. melee in corner, that's why I changed it, to promote more heads on spellfights against groups too) though.

Mana storm is not good at all for "farming endgame monsters" since it destroys anything on the ground except for artifacts.

[camlost]

As one of I think five or six spell effects in the source material sleep shouldn't be lame. Gandalf displays something akin to RoP (in Moria against the Balrog and at the gates of Minas Tirith against the WItch King), firebolt (multiple occasions), either magic missile or spear of light (against the nazgul chasing Faramir), illumination (in Moria), and possibly teleport or blink (in escaping the orcs in the pass in The Hobbit, though he fails to use it in the "fifteen birds" incident). Melian and Luthein demonstrate sleep (on Thingol and the entire population of Angband rerspectively). That's all I can come up with. None of those should be lame useless spells.

Gandalf totally confuses the Trolls.

[ewert]

Mana storm is not good at all for "farming endgame monsters" since it destroys anything on the ground except for artifacts.

True ... so soften up with a few mana storms, and finish them off with other ball spells. :P Unless one IS farming for artifacts.

Priests having a better ball spell than mages for farming ... while having LoS spells too ... aaaawww, shucks. *ponderhat*

I'll merge to newest master when I have time, having to work at work sucks.

[ewert]

Pseudo id seems like a bad joke TBH. Numbers just seem like no planning in them, the formulaes are whacked (p_class.txt "level based improvement" is not level based), every class but mage has improved pseudo but it basically means nothing but that mages have just even worse pseudo id chance ... Prolly most are just stuff that were left behind when pseudo id was different for different classes?

Hrpmh!

Anyways, I'll totally revamp pseudo-id chances, and just straight out remove the improv flag as useless currently. I'll aim at formulas that give warriors pretty much near instant pseudo at clvl30. I was not sure of giving id by pickup after classlevel x (40?), but now that I think about it, only the warrior will really benefit from it due to one less item slot? Right? So I guess I will go ahead with it.

[fizzix]

Priests having a better ball spell than mages for farming ... while having LoS spells too ... aaaawww, shucks. *ponderhat*

Yeah, that was where I was getting. Alternatively, possibly with Magnate's changes, priests will have a very rough go in the beginning until they can start killing things with OoD. I'm not sure if they are guaranteed 1 blow per round with heavy weapons as currently.

If you want to even it up, give mages the equivalent of _power in kelek's (instead of bedlam)

[ewert]

The latest master branch has fixed menus now, you might be interested in knowing.

Dunno if I messed up something, but can't access birth settings in my compiled version still ...