Nightlies

[PowerDiver]

Eddie, you're out of line. That was rude, uncalled for, and absolutely inaccurate.

I sent a message about the bugs I had found and what needed to be done. I was matter of fact, nothing pejorative, trying to be civil. I offered to fix things, but didn't want to be modifying the same code I thought he might already be working on. I believe my summation of the response to be accurate. I shouldn't be writing this, but I cannot leave "absolutely inaccurate" uncontested.

Nevertheless, if you and Nick think I am out of line then surely I am. I'd better take an extended break from discussions here.

[Nick]

Nevertheless, if you and Nick think I am out of line then surely I am. I'd better take an extended break from discussions here.

I wouldn't go that far.

Both of you have long experience with the game, and care deeply about it. Different opinions are fine, but lowering the temperature a little seems like a good idea.

And if your opinions are that different, just make your own damn variant and stop whingeing

[Magnate]

I wouldn't go that far.

Both of you have long experience with the game, and care deeply about it. Different opinions are fine, but lowering the temperature a little seems like a good idea.

And if your opinions are that different, just make your own damn variant and stop whingeing

Amen.

To be fair to Eddie, my reply to his email was indeed rude. I felt that he had been both unjust and disingenuous in his attacks on me in this forum, piling on the criticism when (i) we had made it clear there was a long way to go for 3.3 and things would get odder before they got better, and (ii) he had informed takkaria privately that he intended both to lobby for a return to 3.0.x gameplay and finally to release his own fork/variant, without making those clear in public. So to receive an email out of the blue which didn't acknowledge any of that or offer any kind of apology for the deterioration of the debate was infuriating.

I think my posting history makes it clear that I have always had a great deal of respect for Eddie's abilities and views, agree with most of the latter, and have largely enjoyed debating with him. The respect and enjoyment are clearly no longer reciprocated, if they ever were, and he likes to believe that we agree about almost nothing.

Anyway, I've had a break and mentally resigned from my position as de facto devteam spokesperson, compulsively responding to every thread about the nightlies. On this particular issue, I have made clear for over two years that I will rewrite obj-power.c to correct all sorts of failings with it - see tickets #1003, #1004, #1005, #1188 for a start. This was dependent on #803, which has taken me a very long time but was committed to staging this morning (it's an internal refactor so should not be noticeable when it hits the nightlies). I am now confident that I will get to the obj-power rewrite fairly soon (see http://trac.rephial.org/roadmap - my other big goal for 3.3 is the "knowledge" file, #950 et al.). Whether this will be 3.3 or a later release depends on takkaria, of course.

I have also made clear over the same two-year period that if *anyone* can produce a pricing algorithm which better handles random combinations of item properties, I'll be the first to test and commit it. I am under no illusions about my abilities as a designer or a coder, and I'm happy to see my work improved by others.

All that said, I am sorry that the implementation of multiple pvals has caused a few pricing issues (they have nothing to do with randarts btw). To be honest it's caused far fewer than I had feared, these being nightlies and all, but I admit that I didn't spend very long fixing obj-power or randarts to work perfectly with multiple pvals. This was a deliberate decision, because the longer I spent fixing up the current versions, the more that would delay the rewrites, and while 3.3 is still without a release date I figured it was better to work towards the rewrites. d_m has kindly offered to fix up obj-power in the meantime, and I'm now free to help with that. Paternity leave is a wonderful thing.

[Derakon]

Thanks for providing some badly-missing context, Magnate. I apologize for calling Eddie's assertion "entirely inaccurate". It sounds like shots have been fired on both sides, now. I hope everyone involved can still cool off and apologize, even if they don't agree with each other.

It's great you've been able to dedicate so much time to Angband development. I'm sure we all appreciate it. But your kid comes first. And speaking of which, congratulations!

[Magnate]

Thanks for providing some badly-missing context, Magnate. I apologize for calling Eddie's assertion "entirely inaccurate".

You couldn't have known, since the existence of email correspondence was not revealed in the initial assertion.

It sounds like shots have been fired on both sides, now. I hope everyone involved can still cool off and apologize, even if they don't agree with each other.

Yes, I feel I've had my say, and got my head to a better place where working on angband is fun again. As for apologies, I can point to a number of posts in which I apologise to Eddie for misunderstanding him, disagreeing with him, implementing something imperfectly or otherwise annoying him - including my last one in the previous thread. Since he's raised the issue of the emails here, I'm happy to apologise here again for the rude reply: sorry Eddie.

It's great you've been able to dedicate so much time to Angband development. I'm sure we all appreciate it. But your kid comes first. And speaking of which, congratulations!

So you read the whole thing then ;-) ... thank you. Gabriel was born on Thursday at 1am GMT, so we're in that normal no-sleep-for-about-ten-weeks phase. And no, his name only coincidentally matches Timo's favourite unique - it was chosen by my angband-hating wife ...

[Nick]

no-sleep-for-about-ten-weeks

An optimist, I see.

[Magnate]

An optimist, I see.

Well, we were lucky the first time - his sister started sleeping through from ~11pm to about 6am from ten weeks old. But even without that kind of luck, there's a difference between the 3-5 hours at a time you get after the first ten weeks and the 1-2 hours you get before ...

[PowerDiver]

(ii) he had informed takkaria privately that he intended both to lobby for a return to 3.0.x gameplay and finally to release his own fork/variant, without making those clear in public.

I wasn't planning to release a variant. I believe in testing ideas, throwing half away, revising the rest, and repeating some more before I ask others to try them. The ID-by-use stuff in 3.1 was released much earlier as a patch, and my initial attempts started several 3.0.x versions before that. My current work is focused on rune-based ID. It is no more intended to be a variant than that patch was. It is true that I could always go in the variant direction, but it is not my current intent. It's just a way for people to see my ideas in action and decide what's good for themselves. I included reversions to some power boosts because once I get into coding mode I might as well include what I think improves the game. As modular as I can so devs can pick and choose. Change one #define to unrevert power boosts if you prefer. I would have made everything separate birth options, but that's not feasible at the moment.

Why anyone should be bothered that I gave Takkaria a private heads-up before I publicly called out the project he heads is beyond me.

[Antoine]

Gabriel was born on Thursday at 1am GMT, so we're in that normal no-sleep-for-about-ten-weeks phase. And no, his name only coincidentally matches Timo's favourite unique - it was chosen by my angband-hating wife ...

How nice. My little boy's middle name is Gabriel.

A.

[Magnate]

Why anyone should be bothered that I gave Takkaria a private heads-up before I publicly called out the project he heads is beyond me.

Because it wasn't takkaria who was dealing with your posts.

I have no problem with you "calling out the project". But to do it with a series of increasingly irascible posts in a multitude of threads, without giving any details of your own work, was not constructive. Either start a thread that sets out your position clearly, so that your replies to other threads can be read in the context of that position, or engage with me on email about your issues with my contributions. I was always happy to receive emails from you and happy to debate ideas and views - I've changed my views on several occasions as a result of your arguments. Until recently it didn't even bother me that the reverse never happened. I meant what I said in the 3.2 changelog: I really appreciate the fact that you constantly challenge us to improve the game.

But I don't like the constant sniping. A lot of your views have been adopted and implemented, so to keep on about the ones which haven't is tedious. You've known for a long time that none of the devs are going to replace power-based pricing until somebody comes up with a better alternative, so to bring it up every time there's a pricing bug is unhelpful. If it's your top priority then do it and we'll commit it - but if you want to do rune-based ID instead that's fine.

It's great that you spend a long time honing your ideas and testing them with a limited audience. The current V development model takes advantage of a large user base of testers playing nightlies, and results in changes being released more quickly, with the revising or reverting happening in subsequent nightlies. Both approaches have their pros and cons.

[Timo Pietilä]

Why anyone should be bothered that I gave Takkaria a private heads-up before I publicly called out the project he heads is beyond me.

Because it wasn't takkaria who was dealing with your posts.

You two, stop now. I had my heated argument here with Magnate, and I think we have settled it out, you two can do the same.

Just stop talking about ancient past and stop ripping open old wounds. Who cares whose fault it was? I don't.

[scud]

Exciting new development...

My recent Bucky sling cost 1 GP, but I could only sell it for the same price. But now I have found a Glaive of Fury (2d6) (+15,+18) <+4,+2> which I...

a) sell to Mr Dragon-Slayer in the gun shop for 30000 GP
b) buy back from from Mr Dragon-Slayer in the gun shop for 1 GP
c) see 'a' and 'b' above

*****

Congratulations to Gabriel and parents. Fatherhood is possibly even better than my Glaive of Fury. Possibly.

*****

Update: if I sell the GoF in the black market I'm offered 1 GP, and the buy-back price is 17,109,353 GP.

[scud]

Have the druj been drugged?

I have +4 stealth adjustments and I'm told it's 'superb', but I've definitely been stealthier in the past and I don't recall ever getting even one step towards a druj without having stuff chucked at me.

In my current game I've encountered a hand and a skull, and in both cases I've been able to walk right up to them. Haven't checked if they're actually 'asleep' but they're certainly very drowsy.

[Derakon]

Loiter time has a big impact on stealth (and thus, so does your speed). The more you hang around in the vicinity of a given monster, the more likely it is to wake up. So you can't e.g. compare your experiences now with drujs that you've encountered in vaults that you had to tunnel into.

[scud]

Hmmm. Yes, I usually end up tunnelling to them, but that's only because they're already 'on' and there's too much floor to cover. In situations where it's possible to get within a move or two of a druj without tunnelling then I'll go straight to him, but I'm sure he'll be blasting me with bad stuff the moment I'm in his line of fire.

It would be 'nice' if one in ten druj actually would deign to chase you, say once it's down to 25% HP.

I'd rather that wasn't applied to death molds, though.