Sil 1.1

[fizzix]

At the very least, halve their frequency. This is how I used to play V (after my first couple of wins). They had been *clearly* too common in V, and only some kind of traditionalism stopped some people from noticing this. It was bizarrely Angband, the game of Hounds. Hopefully FA has already reduced the frequency from the V levels...

I think it's the opposite. V reduced the frequency but FA has the old levels.

[buzzkill]

I think it's the opposite. V reduced the frequency but FA has the old levels.

Ahh, hounds in the wide open wilderness. No place to hide. Good times.

[Nick]

Sorry about that: we appear to have accidentally swapped threads!

No problems

[Nimaniel]

Sil

I'm new on this forum, but an old angband player. Every few years I like to check how some of the more active variants are doing. Over the past week or two, I have played FA, Sil, Cheng, Sang, Steam and Halls of Mist. Skipped ToME this time, only because I played it quite a bit last time around.

Anyway.. Sil is amazing! You guys stand on the shoulders of giants, but you strike an impressive pose. So impressive that you have set the bar for variants.

Sil was clearly designed by someone(s) who understand game mechanics, and put a lot of thought into creating a well balanced, interesting, and fun game (as balanced as can be expected for a game so young [Yeah, I'm looking at you, stealth archer balrog hunters!] :-)

I love the attention to detail in Sil, from the simle things like longbows having a -1 to evade, to the interface that is more smooth and intuitive than any other variant to date, the transparency in combat rolls and the skill system, the ability to create skill combos (not just the classic Dodge + Flanking, but many less obvious combos as well). There is just so much awesomeness here that it can't fit into a single post without creating a text wall. Oh, and the AI. Great stuff!

I hope we will see some high magic variants based on Sil, with a larger scope and further expanded skill system. This may require some serious thought put into how to scale Sil's mechanics to a game with a larger scope, but I'm confident Half and his partners in crime are up for the challenge.

Great work so far guys!!

[half]

Anyway.. Sil is amazing! You guys stand on the shoulders of giants, but you strike an impressive pose. So impressive that you have set the bar for variants.

Thanks for all the warm words Nimaniel! Scatha and I put a ridiculous amount of time into designing all these mechanics (many of which were overhauled multiple times before release...) so it is great to find people who think in a similar way and appreciate all the fine details.

There is a lot of discussion of Sil characters and different aspects of the game in the ladder section of this website -- do upload some of your characters there, and you will get lots of comments.

I hope we will see some high magic variants based on Sil, with a larger scope and further expanded skill system. This may require some serious thought put into how to scale Sil's mechanics to a game with a larger scope, but I'm confident Half and his partners in crime are up for the challenge.

It'd be great to see many of Sil's systems appear in other games, though I scarcely have time to just maintain Sil. Other people are welcome to design such things, and Scatha and I could probably make some useful comments. See this thread for an example.

[Scatha]

I pretty much agree with everything half said. I've no plans to build a Sil variant myself, but very happy for others to do so and I can probably advise somewhat on adapting the mechanics (I set out some general thoughts in that thread).

[fizzix]

I pretty much agree with everything half said. I've no plans to build a Sil variant myself, but very happy for others to do so and I can probably advise somewhat on adapting the mechanics (I set out some general thoughts in that thread).

Once pyrel gets done (2 years?) I am strongly leaning towards adapting the Sil combat mechanics for a new variant I'll create based off the pyrel code. I'm thinking 25 angband-ish sized levels, so Sil scaling should fit right in.

Of course, everything will be multiplied by 2 or 3 so I can add extra resolution.

[Starhawk]

So is there a way to set up character generation so that it retains how I spend my initial 5000 xp?

Currently the system retains race/house/stats, all I have to do is press enter, and that's great. But I churn through a LOT of characters (I play impatiently) and it gets kind of old having to redo the initial 5000 over and over.

[nryut]

There is a trivial bug that I've found, and I want to share a fix.

During character creation, when you roll age/weight/height, you can press 'm' and it allows you to input custom values.
But ranges for this values are all wrong: age range, for example, is hard-coded, so you can create a 4000-year-old Naugrim, which is not right.

I attach a patch that solves this, setting min and max values to what a random roll (get_ahw_aux() function) can return.

[half]

Actually this is something that Scatha convinced me to allow, as some players might want to be a 14 year old or something and there is no real harm in letting them be (I originally had it your way, I think). Incidentally, I think there was a dwarf that was more than 4,000 years old at that point! (Durin I).

[nryut]

some players might want to be a 14 year old or something

[UPD] Well, apparently, what I wrote below doesn't apply to the current version, so disregard this. [/UPD]

Okay, but then you are being too restrictive on height: you can't manually set to be a 7'1" male elf, while a random roll can go higher than 8'.
(I wanted to replicate a character that I had and I couldn't -- because of this. Kind of OCDish, I know...)

[Starhawk]

Speaking of character generation... is there a way to have the system remember how you spend your first 5000 xp, just as it does with your stat points?

I burn through a LOT of characters (I play quickly and heedlessly) and would love this option.

[Scatha]

Speaking of character generation... is there a way to have the system remember how you spend your first 5000 xp, just as it does with your stat points?

I burn through a LOT of characters (I play quickly and heedlessly) and would love this option.

No, there isn't. (I suppose you could save-scum a character at the start, but then the first level would always be the same, and in any case it's probably more effort than reallocating the experience.)

We did talk about this in development, but experience allocation doesn't feel like an intrinsic part of the character in the same way that stats are. And we thought that by leaving this step non-automated we were more likely to get people to try variations on their build.

I don't have a strong feeling about what the right decision here is, because weighing against the factors I list above, it would improve user interface. Is there a lot of call for this feature? I don't think this would be high priority even if we wanted to add it.

[fph]

Is there a difference between allocating XP points at character generation, or immediately after it at turn 1 when you start your game? The second method is more powerful since it lets you assign your initial 5000 xp's to special abilities as well.
If there is really no difference, I would suggest removing the possibility to assign XP points during character generation.

[half]

Is there a difference between allocating XP points at character generation, or immediately after it at turn 1 when you start your game? The second method is more powerful since it lets you assign your initial 5000 xp's to special abilities as well.
If there is really no difference, I would suggest removing the possibility to assign XP points during character generation.

An interesting idea, but I don't think we'll do it. There is no gameplay difference, however doing it in character creation has two advantages:

1) Thematically it feels like you are playing a character who already had certain skills before they entered the dungeon, instead of being a blank slate who quickly gains some skills
2) It means that new players will allocate all or most of their experience. Otherwise there would be an awful lot of people getting killed at 50 ft who hadn't thought to allocate experience.

If you want some abilities, just leave some points unallocated. You can't get abilities without skill points anyway, so just think of it as the first phase of experience point allocation.