Borg for 320 is running.

[APWhite]

Something must be very buggy. I let the borg play a gnome mages and all ended ended very soon loosing their spellpoints completely. Not that they were empty, but they were all gone. The gnome mages' spellpoints reached a handfull of max spellpoints around level 4 (some got lost underway) and then the max spellpoints line was suddenly completely gone at some time around character level 4 or 5. Ultimately, their stats in the left look like in warriors' stats which never ever have or get any spellpoints).

This is an example how the amount of max spellpoints chagned over time through the character levels:

Level 1: 2
Level 2: 4, 3
Level 3: 4
Level 4: 6, 0
Level 5: 0, forever 0

Did he lose mana because he was wearing heavy armor or something? I'd like to see the savefile.

[thapper]

Did he lose mana because he was wearing heavy armor or something? I'd like to see the savefile.

I think this may be it. I gave gnome mages a quick try last night and at clvl 4 one had put on a pair of gloves and a too heavy body armour and hence lost 4 sp. He wasn't down to 0 but I guess he could get there with some more encumbrance. I don't have the savefile though...

[Zababa]

Gnome mage lost his spellpoints

Thanks for the further update of the town scumming, Andrew. I have downloaded the updated version from your site and ran some tests with Random race Mages. They were all more all less normally dying, and then a Gnome mage came about where it happened again. Here I upload you a savefile of about one second after he lost all his spellpoints.

[Zababa]

Gnome Mage Bug captured on video

I also managed to catpture the bug happen from the very beginning of the game in this video:



Sorry for aligning my windows vertically, but if you play the video in 1080p or in its original size, you'll see enough detail. Spellpoints get lost somewhere around 50 seconds into the video. Borg in in town and enters the dungeon. That's where his spellpoints seem to get lost. However, I am not sure whether this loss happens always when entering the dungeon. Or whether it can happen any time.

I suspect that other classes lose their spellpoints as well, it is just not that apparent. I saw a ranger having lost all his spellpoints, a rogue loosing spellpoints, but these other classes leveled up pretty quickly and the spellpoint loss was compensated by the growing total spellpoint amount so that they never ended up like warriors. Yet, they had much less spellpoints than they should have had.

[Nick]

It's the armour - about 0:48 he puts on Chain Mail, and away go the SP.

[Zababa]

You are right, with the chainmail on, the spellpoints are gone. I have always thought that it's only gloves which affect the spellpoints. OK so I see this is not exactly a bug. For the early mage borg, the protection from an armor is more important than the ability to cast spells. That's not how I play mages, but I see that it is a possible strategy to safely overcome the early levels where most mages die.

I'll now let Borg play a few Mages, randomizing their race, and see whether he'll actually get back to spellcasting at some point.

[Timo Pietilä]

You are right, with the chainmail on, the spellpoints are gone. I have always thought that it's only gloves which affect the spellpoints.

Weight of the armor causes that. AFAIK that is fixed amount, not relative to total MP so it is smaller penalty than gauntlet penalty, but it is still significant for early mages.

[Zababa]

The Mages surviving chances are better than I expected (and than I remember from earlier borg versions), roughly 1 in 15 manages to play a bit longer

But some of the Borg Mages look really funny, like this:



Not magy at all by the looks of it. This High-Elf Mage managed to have 1 spellpoint at character level 11, but died soon thereafter.

I am currently running borg for 3.2.0 on three windows computers in parallel, all playing random race mages. It's fun to watch, I'll merge their borg.dat files and mail them to Andrew for his statistics.

[Netbrian]

I'm attaching two savefiles today.

The first borg seems to be in another constant swap mode. As seems to be suspiciously frequent, it involves a shovel.

The second borg seems to keep trying to run back and forth around a room, maybe as some sort of workout. I realize that eventually the borg will escape this loop, but it probably shouldn't happen.

[Zababa]

Testing the random race mages I have come across these loops. I have screenshots of them, but when I restarted angband and loaded the savegame, they were all gone and resolved. But these were loops where the Borg hang for over one minute.

[Zababa]

I see Andrew has promptly fixed the spellpoints issue with Mages. Thanks for that, Andrew. I think the mages your new borg plays level up quicker in their early game while not playing too risky.

I wonder how you managed it. Is it a special race-dependent decision borg makes? Like: "try to have as much AC as possible, *but* if you are playing a mage, don't put on any heavy armor or gloves that are not suitable for spellcasting." I would not be happy with this solution. Borg shall not roleplay any characters. Borg shall kill Morgoth fast. In the previous version, all Mages started to use their spellpoints in their mid games again. I think your Borgs were fine, it's just the mage class which is very weird to play in Angband. Their spells in the beginning are so useless and weak (or too expensive to cast), that the borg figured out he'd be better off without spellpoints but well protected.

In whatever way you achieved that the mages keep their spellpoints in the early game, I like this change. It seems they are doing better. Let me run some borg tests again with them.

[Zababa]

Loop found

I have found a bad loop. It happened with yesterday's borg version, and happens with today's Mage-fix-version too. This loop is even so bad that it survives an angband restart.

Here is a screenshot of it:



and here is the savegame:

[APWhite]

I have found a bad loop. It happened with yesterday's borg version, and happens with today's Mage-fix-version too. This loop is even so bad that it survives an angband restart.

Here is a screenshot of it:



and here is the savegame:

Back in the day, the bane of my borg was the starve-to-death-in-town issue and the hunt-for-more-CCW issue. Now it seems to be Best Combo.

The problem deals with a keyboard flush which was introduced after 309. Basically the borg will queue up key strokes, then lay them all down in order. In this case, he wants to queue up ws. But after he hits w the s is flushed, or wiped by the game code.

I'd hate to disable the 'best combo' until it's fully fixed, but I might have too. I never seem to have a 5 or 6 hour block of time to fully rewrite that code.

[Zikke]

The borg does not eat. The borg does not sleep. The borg programs Angband bot all night.

[Netbrian]

Back in the day, the bane of my borg was the starve-to-death-in-town issue and the hunt-for-more-CCW issue. Now it seems to be Best Combo.

Is this responsible for the issues where the borg keeps trying to throw something?