Sil 1.0.2

[debo]

Speaking of artifacts, I have a few questions. How true does the game stay to Tolkien's writings? Are there any artifacts that did not exist during the First Age that are in Sil? Are there artifacts that were made for the game only? In general, how true to Tolkien is Sil?

If you look in artifacts.txt or whatever it is, they actually documented the origins of each weapon quite thoroughly. It's fun to read

There were non-canon artifacts added, with Delmereth being my favorite of the bunch lol

[Scatha]

Speaking of artifacts, I have a few questions. How true does the game stay to Tolkien's writings? Are there any artifacts that did not exist during the First Age that are in Sil? Are there artifacts that were made for the game only? In general, how true to Tolkien is Sil?

In general, the game tries hard to stay as close as possible to the world Tolkien describes, subject to providing a good game (I'm not sure whether it's quite in fitting that a hero would gain so much power while descending through Angband, but starting out strong and having your resources slowly eroded would be a very different game, and I suspect less enjoyable).

There aren't any unique monsters or artefacts which are known not to have been around at that time. There are some where it's unclear whether they were around, and these have generally been put in but are rarer. On the other hand almost everything which Tolkien does mention as having been around is in the game, including some which are only mentioned in a single line of a poem.

There is a general issue there isn't quite as much canonical material as the game wants, so we have stretched it, trying to keep things in fitting with the world. Many (most?) of the artefacts are in some sense invented, in that they weren't mentioned explicitly by Tolkien, but they are attached to a particular canonical character or place. Without this, there would be a dozen artefact swords and very little else! There are also a handful of other inventions; as debo says, the origins are in comments in artefact.txt.

Similar things are true of the monsters generally and the unique monsters. So far as possible, they are taken straight from Tolkien, but some of his descriptions are vary vague so we've filled in some gaps, and there are some minor additions.

I've been saying "we", but I should say that a large majority of this had been done by half before I ever saw the game and started helping development.

[T-Mick]

That's good to hear. Grabbing Anduril to fight Morgoth always feels wrong.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Question about criticals in example form:
So, let's say I have a 1.9lb spear and a 2.0lb spear.
Does this mean the 1.9 spear criticals in increments of 8, and the 2.0 lb in 9?

[Scatha]

Question about criticals in example form:
So, let's say I have a 1.9lb spear and a 2.0lb spear.
Does this mean the 1.9 spear criticals in increments of 8, and the 2.0 lb in 9?

No, you'll need to hit by (8.9)*n for the nth critical with the lighter spear, and 9*n with the heavier one.

There's a question about what's done with these numbers when they're not integers. They used to be rounded up, which is the most natural rule but gave strange behaviour -- a (+0) 2.0lb longsword was almost as good as a (+1) 2.1lb one. They're currently rounded to the nearest integer.

Suggestion for half: looking at this again now, it seems rounding down might be more natural but without the bad gameplay. I don't remember discussing this as a possibility, but I'm not sure why not!

[HallucinationMushroom]

Oh okay, so there is basically negligible critical difference between the two. The only real difference is that a one-handed spear will get +2 from 2lb and +1 from 1.9 lb, and the same +1 when two-handed. That helps clear up the issue for me.
thanks!

So, if I were going one-handed spear, it would be better to wield the 2lb weapon since I would need to roll the same score to critical anyway at least up until the 10th critical, which I won't ever achieve anyway!
9x10=90
8.9x10=89

[Scatha]

Oh okay, so there is basically negligible critical difference between the two. The only real difference is that a one-handed spear will get +2 from 2lb and +1 from 1.9 lb, and the same +1 when two-handed. That helps clear up the issue for me.
thanks!

So, if I were going one-handed spear, it would be better to wield the 2lb weapon since I would need to roll the same score to critical anyway at least up until the 10th critical, which I won't ever achieve anyway!
9x10=90
8.9x10=89

This is almost right. There's a pretty negligible difference, but it shows up on the 6th critical (53.4 is rounded to 53) rather than the 10th.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Ah! Fair enough.

[WaveMotion]

My character had a status effect called "weak" that was reducing his strength by one. It didn't seem like a stat drain thing, since the strength number just decreased instead of turning yellow. How did I get it, and did it just go away with time?

[ekolis]

Isn't "weak" one of the hunger states? Try eating some food and see if it goes away!

[HugoVirtuoso]

My character had a status effect called "weak" that was reducing his strength by one. It didn't seem like a stat drain thing, since the strength number just decreased instead of turning yellow. How did I get it, and did it just go away with time?

Getting 'weak' decreases STR by 1. This doesn't go away with time, unless you eat some food.

[WaveMotion]

Oh, I had no idea 'weak' was a hunger state. I eventually hit Starving, so I popped a lembas and was fine.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I just wanted to put a question out there... have you considered adding flavors, or additional flavors, to weapons and armor? Perhaps runes? Once I identify an item of a particular type, like slay orc, every instance of a weapon of slay orc auto-identifies from then on. It's an awesome feature, but leads me to believe that there is some sort of flavor my character can see to allow them to make this distinction, that I cannot. The only gameplay instance I recall that this could be helpful would be when I've got a string of special weapons in my inventory, and when one gets identified, perhaps I was holding three items of the same type. My character probably realized they were a set of three, but I had no way to tell. Anyway, maybe this would muddy up the nice minimal effect Sil has going for it. But, maybe a rune or string of runes on weapons and armor would look neat and maybe be in theme? Or maybe just a way to manually inscribe special weapon attributes that link to the attribute and not the weapon-type. The game asks me if I want to inscribe all longswords a particular way, and not whatever attribute I think makes it a weapon of slay orc. Just a random thought I thought I'd throw into the ether.

[Jungle_Boy]

I've had a couple characters now who have been blocked by rubble from the forge on the second level I visit. That seems a little early to require a character to have found a digger, is there perhaps anyway to stop that from happening? Maybe make rubble not show up til 150'?

[WaveMotion]

Hey guys, still having fun with this game—haven't played any other since I found it a couple of months ago.

I find myself occasionally annoyed by Mewlips' map-amnesia effect, which I believe to be an interface problem. A similar effect was removed from Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup because it made it optimal to take screenshots of the level in order to negate the in-game effect. Although I wouldn't suggest that Sil devs should do something just because Crawl did it, the same argument applies equally well for both games, since it's simple for me to take a screenshot of the level whenever I encounter an amnesia-causing creature. Removal of the amnesia effect would improve Sil's interface, and I don't think the game would suffer much from the loss of a feature. Mewlips are more interesting for their fear effect anyway. Thoughts?