Sil 1.0.2

[Psi]

I've come across a bug with the lantern of shadows twice now. I will see a special lantern, wear it, it will identify as a lantern of shadows, but the regular lantern I was using also becomes branded a lantern of shadows with the exact same amount of fuel. Apologies if this has been mentioned previously, or was already known. I did a quick search but didn't see anything about it.

I've had this too now.

[Philip]

Dug up an old idea for V and thought it would fit well into Sil.

Perhaps it's just that I've watched too many Woody Allen movies, but lately I've been thinking that what Angband needs is a feeling of anxiety. Allow me to explain.

Level feelings are currently broken. I never liked them anyway, so I would prefer to see them replaced rather than repaired. And what I would like to replace them with is anxiety. Here is how I envisage it working.

There would be an indicator of your character's current level of anxiety. Perhaps the best one would be the color in which his name is displayed. Green for calm, red for extremely anxious, and various shades of yellow and orange in between.

Everything potentially bad would induce a certain amount of anxiety: out of depth monsters, traps, cursed items. The closer the danger, the greater the effect.

This would be pretty much useless in the middle and endgame, when you have detection, but it would be helpful for low level characters.

Anxiety would be a "special ability". Some races and classes would be more anxious than others. In general, the more fragile races and classes would be more anxious, understandably. This would have a mild balancing effect.

What would more anxious mean? Several things. Greater range. A greater range of anxiety levels. Better adapted to the character, e.g. checking for resistance holes and matching attacks. Faster response time.

Of course, level feelings depend on good things as well as bad, so maybe there should be a second attribute, excitement, which would respond to out of depth items, artifacts, etc.

I might try to code something like this during the summer vacation if people think it is a good idea. So what do you think? Do you want to feel anxiety?

While there are a couple things here that do not fit, an anxiety ability based on perception score and a couple other things could would inform the character that something is up. Anxiety and excitement should be merged.
I think it would fit into the theme. Maybe a margin of error to prevent scummy tactics? Anxiety should be a warning: go there at great risk, but you could get some nifty item out of it. Also, given the age of this post, the summer vacation offer is probably not valid.

[HugoVirtuoso]

On the topic of Sil bugs:

I encountered a strange and very annoying Sil crash-to-desktop bug.

On Windows XP SP3 x86, Sil (1.0 -1.0.2) crashes to desktop when I resize any of the extra windows (Equipment, Inventory, Combat Rolls, OR Recall). However, the crash never occurs when I use Windows 7 SP1 x64. Has anyone encountered this crashing bug before?

To workaround this, I have to either close all windows except the main Sil window or NOT resize the extra windows. And then, the game can run normally without crashing. On Windows 7, I can resize all windows, without crashing, no problem.

My setup is a WinXP SP3 (x86) and Win7 SP1 (x64) dual-boot, 320GB Hard drive, 4GB RAM, AMD Turion Dual-Core M500 @2.2GHz.

Thanks in advance,
HugoTheGreat2011

[HallucinationMushroom]

The problem with Sil and anxiety would be that your character would always be anxious! Early game, deadly. Middle game, deceivingly not easy. End game, deadly. Any corridor, any room, any place... oops!

Besides, I doubt characters who willingly walk into Morgoth's lair to try and steal a silmaril off of the crown he never removes have the ability to appropriately diagnose danger to allow for the 4th-wall breaking concept of, "hey, this a situation I maybe can't handle, I'm nervous." It's an interesting idea, but I guess as a player I prefer the 'you die - you learn' way of things. It's brutal yeah, especially so in a marathon 100 level angband game, but Sil is maybe ten hours tops, probably 5-6 hours on average.

[Fendell Orcbane]

The problem with Sil and anxiety would be that your character would always be anxious! Early game, deadly. Middle game, deceivingly not easy. End game, deadly. Any corridor, any room, any place... oops!

Besides, I doubt characters who willingly walk into Morgoth's lair to try and steal a silmaril off of the crown he never removes have the ability to appropriately diagnose danger to allow for the 4th-wall breaking concept of, "hey, this a situation I maybe can't handle, I'm nervous." It's an interesting idea, but I guess as a player I prefer the 'you die - you learn' way of things. It's brutal yeah, especially so in a marathon 100 level angband game, but Sil is maybe ten hours tops, probably 5-6 hours on average.

Actually I think SIl is pretty easy once you get that Sil. But its hard to get to that point...real hard.

[Psi]

On Windows XP SP3 x86, Sil (1.0 -1.0.2) crashes to desktop when I resize any of the extra windows (Equipment, Inventory, Combat Rolls, OR Recall). However, the crash never occurs when I use Windows 7 SP1 x64. Has anyone encountered this crashing bug before?

I get it on XP during character creation, however once the game has started I can happily resize them.

[awldune]

The mistake here is imagining that your character can do everything. Most characters are bad at picking locks

(...)

In general, if there is a skill for something and that thing is too hard, then it is too hard *at your current skill level*.

It might be a better user experience if there were a message, "That lock looks too difficult" when your chance is very low. That is, you would attempt the lock and then on fail it would say "You fail to pick the lock. This lock seems too difficult."

Without a knowledge of the game mechanics it's hard for a new player to know whether they should keep trying. But from a roleplaying perspective the player character should have a feel for whether he was close to success or if he has no chance to pick the lock.

[awldune]

Has it been posted how to change keymaps in this game? I'd like to remap the 'u' and 'l' commands for the hjkl keyset but am not sure how do so.

Thanks.

[Fendell Orcbane]

If you do another version of Sil I'd make it easier to get a Sil...even with song of Sharpness I couldn't get one after at least 10+ attempts. I tried with the same character( I save scummed at 950 ft), not taking song of sharpness instead upping skill and even with the Axe of Nogrod I STILL could not get one Sil after 20+ attempts ( I led Morgoth away and vanish kicked in so I was able to get to the crown without attracting attention.

[HugoVirtuoso]

If you do another version of Sil I'd make it easier to get a Sil...even with song of Sharpness I couldn't get one after at least 10+ attempts. I tried with the same character( I save scummed at 950 ft), not taking song of sharpness instead upping skill and even with the Axe of Nogrod I STILL could not get one Sil after 20+ attempts ( I led Morgoth away and vanish kicked in so I was able to get to the crown without attracting attention.

This is surprising, IMO. I thought the Great Axe of Nogrod was strong enough to do good damage to the crown...

[half]

If you do another version of Sil I'd make it easier to get a Sil...even with song of Sharpness I couldn't get one after at least 10+ attempts. I tried with the same character( I save scummed at 950 ft), not taking song of sharpness instead upping skill and even with the Axe of Nogrod I STILL could not get one Sil after 20+ attempts ( I led Morgoth away and vanish kicked in so I was able to get to the crown without attracting attention.

Yes, that doesn't sound too good at all. I've personally never had any major trouble getting a Silmaril, and have done so without the Song of Sharpness with both heavy hitting characters and nimble ones. I'm therefore really quite surprised that this didn't work and would love to see a character dump. I'll probably have to make the first one a bit easier though.

For reference, the first Silmaril is supposed to require some kind of effort to get out of the crown, be that investment in the Song, using a weapon of sharpness (I think you can find one in 75% of games but am not sure), using a very good light weapons or heavy weapons set up (possibly with potions of Str/Dex or whatever). Ultimately it shouldn't be that hard if you do any of these things. If it is, then I should make it easier and save that difficulty for numbers 2 and 3. Otherwise there is a worry that an unspoiled player could get stuck in the Throne Room which is not too fun (particularly a Stealth specialist, Archery specialist or medium weapons melee character).

[Fendell Orcbane]

Yes, that doesn't sound too good at all. I've personally never had any major trouble getting a Silmaril, and have done so without the Song of Sharpness with both heavy hitting characters and nimble ones. I'm therefore really quite surprised that this didn't work and would love to see a character dump. I'll probably have to make the first one a bit easier though.

For reference, the first Silmaril is supposed to require some kind of effort to get out of the crown, be that investment in the Song, using a weapon of sharpness (I think you can find one in 75% of games but am not sure), using a very good light weapons or heavy weapons set up (possibly with potions of Str/Dex or whatever). Ultimately it shouldn't be that hard if you do any of these things. If it is, then I should make it easier and save that difficulty for numbers 2 and 3. Otherwise there is a worry that an unspoiled player could get stuck in the Throne Room which is not too fun (particularly a Stealth specialist, Archery specialist or medium weapons melee character).

This has happened to me twice first time : http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=12723
and the second : http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=12779

WIth the last character I save scummed at 950 ft and I went back and tested it...that is the character that I found Norgod with. At least with the second time around I had the sense to run before V made a mess of the area around the crown.
I have another character at 950 ft. I hope that the same thing doesn't happen again...

[Fendell Orcbane]

Honestly I feel like the hardest part about Sil is getting that first Sil out of the crown...because once you do that its not too hard to escape the throne room. Well at least if you have enough quickness and the exchange ability : ) Vanish can help too. I guess that some of the songs like Mastery would be awesome as well...

[Fendell Orcbane]

This is surprising, IMO. I thought the Great Axe of Nogrod was strong enough to do good damage to the crown...

It never got the 50 points needed, if I had song of sharpness it would have gotten a Sil out for sure. Keeping in mind this was the character that I save scummed. The other one DID have Song of Sharpness but not a heavy weapon.

[Fendell Orcbane]

I have a few questions about Sil. How does a monster break through a glyph of warding? Because in my last game I made a lot of use of a staff of warding in the early game to kill a lot of monsters like wargs and uniques. But in the later game the uniques that I used it on went right though the glyphs without even slowing down. Which was fine since my archery was good enough to kill the uniques anyway.

Also what inspired some of the monster names/monsters? Like the Cat warriors and the raukos( why not just call them Balrogs?) And one thing that I noticed about death blades is that sometimes you get random ones that are as good as Delmerith.

Also would you consider adding more artifacts?