Plans for Sil-Q 1.4.1 patch

[Quirk]

There's going to be a 1.4.1 patch in the not too distant future. There are a couple of bugs I have addressed locally and not released - most notably that I broke some of the dependencies of Opportunist when switching it with Exchange Places so e.g. Rapid Attack depends on Exchange Places now (I did not intend this).

(I still however think Opportunist being so good people invested in Stealth just to take it indicates it was a little too cheap - I'm concerned with the implementation being wrong, not the idea).

There are one or two other things I will probably tweak as well. wobbly has suggested a buff to Song of Staying, and I might strengthen or change Thresholds and/or Overwhelming since nobody seems to have been tempted very much by them as yet.

I have a couple of directions I might also look at; one is taking a look at porting Sil-Q to Android using Shaosil's code, the other is trying to make 50' a bit more interesting - currently it's quite basic rooms and wolves and feedback on Sil I've had elsewhere indicates it's turning some people off.

I'm willing to listen to other suggestions if people have things to say, or if people have strong opinions on Android or the game start, that would be good to know too.

[wobbly]

If you want to nerf opportunist make it more like controlled retreat where you don't get the freebie if you move. That takes away flank/dodging & the constant free hits chasing.

[Infinitum]

For 50'; what about Snaga slave gangs with an Orc leader, similar to orc captains? The Snagas flee if the (larger) Orc is killed. Would introduce the player to some morale/ai interactions early on.

Remove thorn monsters. They're more thematic than Molds granted, but having ancient heroes of old fight shrubbery is still odd (as are plants growing underground). Alternatively, have them be immune to non-slashing melee damage (or fire arrows), remove their attacks and have them attempt damage/confuse the player on turns @ tries to hit them in melee (or possibly have them blocking LOS but not the player, instead damaging the player as @ moves through them).

Have enemies fleeing down stairs count the same as killed enemies for xp purposes. Change "you have killed X.." to "you have defeated X.." for non-Uniques to clarify this.

Starting with a set amount of torches and a set weight on the curved blade spawned. Not that people scum this, but the possibility is there.

Change light source progression from torch -> Lantern -> Feanorian Lamp to Lantern -> Jewel -> Feanorian Lamp. Burning pitch-on-a-stick is a poor choice of indoor illumination unless you literally want to put the place to the torch and not historically accurate.

[Quirk]

If you want to nerf opportunist make it more like controlled retreat

I don't mind it being quite powerful, I just feel that the power level was such that it was often being taken as the only investment in Stealth, and Exchange Places was more expensive and more rarely useful.

For 50'; what about Snaga slave gangs with an Orc leader, similar to orc captains? The Snagas flee if the (larger) Orc is killed. Would introduce the player to some morale/ai interactions early on.

This is a good general idea, but Snaga I think in the books is the name of a particular orc, and we don't have much orc differentiation in the first age IIRC - the Uruk-hai don't turn up until the third age. More distressingly, I think all the basic colours for the 'o' symbol have been used. Morgoth's slaves were IIRC also men and elves rather than orcs - I have considered representing this, but doing it justice is a substantially larger job. Also I think it's a bit too similar to the way things play out later with orc captains. I am quite pleased with the way the brood spiders have added a different dynamic, and I'd like something that provides a different set of challenges for the starting player without being too dangerous.

I was toying with the idea of some kind of weak shade or shadow, perhaps one that saps light (along with a greater abundance of light sources including e.g. rooms which have removable lights).

Remove thorn monsters. They're more thematic than Molds granted, but having ancient heroes of old fight shrubbery is still odd (as are plants growing underground). Alternatively, have them be immune to non-slashing melee damage (or fire arrows), remove their attacks and have them attempt damage/confuse the player on turns @ tries to hit them in melee (or possibly have them blocking LOS but not the player, instead damaging the player as @ moves through them).

Your points are reasonable but I fear that this makes 50' and below look barer than it already is, and there would need to be even more new additions to bridge the gap.

Have enemies fleeing down stairs count the same as killed enemies for xp purposes. Change "you have killed X.." to "you have defeated X.." for non-Uniques to clarify this.

I tried this in October last year, but testers came back claiming this was probably too good. You still get some experience for chasing non-unique enemies off the level, but it's lower than killing them.

Starting with a set amount of torches and a set weight on the curved blade spawned. Not that people scum this, but the possibility is there.

I have actually been tempted to make the starting loadouts vary by race e.g. shortbow, dagger and a scarce few arrows for Sindar Falathrim, or a couple of throwing axes and a helm for Naugrim. I'm not very worried by start scumming though.

Change light source progression from torch -> Lantern -> Feanorian Lamp to Lantern -> Jewel -> Feanorian Lamp. Burning pitch-on-a-stick is a poor choice of indoor illumination unless you literally want to put the place to the torch and not historically accurate.

This leads into the more awkward question in level generation as to what sort of rooms these are even meant to be - with wolves and serpents and bats and giant spiders wandering around we might anticipate something more organic and cavernous, but forges and organised troops suggest something more deliberately fashioned. Really it would be good to have different level generation for different parts of Angband, inhabited by different sorts of enemies, but this is a big task and the result would be quite a different game from Sil.

But broadly, with regard to carrying torches down tunnels, this may or may not be historical, but it is certainly Tolkien-canon - Bilbo and the dwarves explore Smaug's lair with torches for instance.

[wobbly]

Re: Exchange places. Strong now. Since you made Morgoth hard to kill it's been my go to for removing a Sil from the throne room the easy way. Honestly archery does what opportunist does better just less conveniently.

[wobbly]

The orc falls asleep.
The orc turns to fight!

Ok, you can not fix that 1. That's hilarious

[Bill Peterson]

I just picked up the latest Sil-Q thinking I would take a look at the graphics again and you've disabled the menu items. Was that really necessary? Were people getting confused by choosing graphics tiles and seeing that they weren't correct?

Never mind, I remembered that you have to create a character before the graphics get enabled. Tried to delete this message to no avail.

[Quirk]

I just picked up the latest Sil-Q thinking I would take a look at the graphics again and you've disabled the menu items. Was that really necessary? Were people getting confused by choosing graphics tiles and seeing that they weren't correct?

Haven't touched it. I note the graphics menu does have all the options greyed out on Windows, but the same is true of Sil 1.3.

You can however modify the tiles being used via the INI file, setting it from 0 to 1, 2 etc.

[wobbly]

I guess all the tiles exist from V? The only thing I can think of that doesn't are the plants.

[Bill Peterson]

I guess all the tiles exist from V? The only thing I can think of that doesn't are the plants.

Yes, all the graphics files and code from Vanilla are still in place. Unfortunately, the person who developed Sil wasn't interested in graphics and didn't follow the protocols for defining the images.

I did some work on the Gervais graphics for Sil-Q a few months ago. Sometimes it was as simple as changing the .prf files to point to the proper image, but some ASCII characters were defined in other files. I was reluctant to change these new files while they were changing.

[ripforareason]

I don't think Opportunist is overpowered, but I think Kemen and Cat Assassins are annoying enough to justify getting it and it's certainly not BAD...

[Quirk]

So I should update, it's been a little while. As usual I'm on the verge of getting a little carried away.

To address the Opportunist / Exchange places conversation: I feel that Exchange Places is a niche skill on the descent, more likely to be picked up out of necessity than strategy, whereas Opportunist is very generally useful for melee characters. As something that's most useful in an emergency, it benefits more from being a little cheaper. Opportunist requiring a little more Stealth investment hopefully will make it less tempting compared to the Melee tree skills for characters with no real Stealth investment.

Moving onto the new developments:
- The first entry to 50' now has places where the rock has fallen in and sunlight streams through from above. I guess the long siege of Angband did some damage. Creatures vulnerable to light and undead won't enter sunlight, and there are the expected light bonuses when fighting from it.
- New enemy at 50' with a new attack also shared by Mewlips (who've lost their Blind) - some other enemies have been weakened a little to reduce early game unfairness
- Curved swords start equipped (I considered stripping elves back to shortsword and bow with a few arrows, dwarves throwing axes and helm, humans spear and cloak, but this definitely increases elf difficulty again)
- Song of Staying improved as earlier discussed - I think Majesty is perhaps most impacted by this, but given the issues with fear builds tend to be related to horrors and things that can't be made to flee I'm not sure the Majesty boost will greatly imbalance it
- Song of Overwhelming improved - now it stuns surrounding enemies without you needing to hit them
- Quarterstaff egos improved, made more common, cheaper to craft
- Bugfixes - Opportunist, archers firing when blocked from moving when other reasons should prevent them from doing so, various others.

Things I'm looking at doing:
- Song of Thresholds never really found its place. I'm contemplating a couple of possible replacements:
-- Prelude - a song that allows you after a short period of singing to switch to any other existing song, whether you have the skill or not. Probably Overwhelming and Mastery would move down a slot and it would move up to Mastery's place.
-- Song of Changing - a song that would allow you to assume different shapes; currently I'm thinking of orc, wolfhound and bear. This would be potentially a nightmare to debug, tempting and cool though it sounds, so I may hold off for my own sanity, though I've intricate detail planned in my head (wolfhounds get Leaping, Sprinting and Wolfs'-Bane, bears Charge, Crowd Fighting and Knockback; orcs are essentially a stealth option that lets you continue to use your inventory; the shapes are very strong early game and provide utility but not combat prowess late game).

- I'm considering changing Archery. Flaming Arrows and Rapid Fire allow very substantial damage output (while eating up your arrows), but Archery is tediously slow to do damage in the early game. Having reduced the U-shape of Smithing, I have a few skills in mind to try to balance the Archery tree so it's easier at the start and less overwhelming by the end. Thoughts from keen archers are welcome.

[Derakon]

For Prelude, have you considered letting it give you a boost to your song skill that gradually decays once you switch away from it?

Either way, I'd be a little worried about this meaning that people spend some time hiding around a corner singing themselves up, before they switch to the song they really want.

Perhaps another possibility would be some kind of dance or self-accompaniment ability. Like, say, you can toggle half movement speed (because you're moving to the rhythm of your song) in exchange for increased skill / longer-lasting voice. Or you can clash your weapon on your shield, etc.

[Quirk]

For Prelude, have you considered letting it give you a boost to your song skill that gradually decays once you switch away from it?

Either way, I'd be a little worried about this meaning that people spend some time hiding around a corner singing themselves up, before they switch to the song they really want.

I was actually thinking of a fairly short delay e.g. the immediate next turn you have access to Elbereth and Challenge, the turn after Silence and Freedom, then Trees and Delvings, then Staying and Lorien, then Overwhelming and Mastery. Perhaps faster than that. It should be just enough delay to be very slightly worse than having the song, and drain a little bit of Voice off at the beginning.

Getting players to take the top end of the Song tree is hard. Sharpness was taken because getting Sils was difficult without it. Anything that lives up there has to be very strong, though preferably not in a way that combos too nicely for Lorien sneakers or melts Morgoth. This might be too good, though at least that would hopefully inspire somebody to try it.