Borg bugs and feature requests

[Estie]

There is code to change the amount of time a borg will explore levels based on the level feeling. It doesn't work great because there are so many reasons a borg might decide to hang out, scumming money, lacking certain traits, etc.

You can scum for money on a different level, with increased chance to find something good.

Whatever the reason is to be on the particular level, if the level feeling is inferior and there is no emergency, go to the next staircase and change level. Continue with whatever you were doing on the new level. I might be underestimating the difficulty of making him do this, but if its being done, it must improve the borg's performance.

[agoodman]

testing dimension door was also an issue... fixing

[agoodman]

Null pointer use - borg6.c:6526

It looks like the borg was launching an attack at something it hadn't encountered yet (kind is null). I can add a check for that.

[agoodman]

A quick way to vastly improve the borg perfomance:

Once the item feeling is disclosed, leave the level if its not high enough.
High enough would be something like
3+ for dlvls 1-10
5+ for dlvls 11+

There is code to change the amount of time a borg will explore levels based on the level feeling. It doesn't work great because there are so many reasons a borg might decide to hang out, scumming money, lacking certain traits, etc.

[Estie]

A quick way to vastly improve the borg perfomance:

Once the item feeling is disclosed, leave the level if its not high enough.
High enough would be something like
3+ for dlvls 1-10
5+ for dlvls 11+

[Pete Mack]

There is no location zero in the quiver. It starts at 1, unless you have inscribed ammo.

[backwardsEric]

Null pointer use - borg6.c:6526

With 4.2.4-325-ge46382202 compiled from source on macOS with OPT set to "-g -O0 -DUSE_STATS -fsanitize=address -fsanitize=undefined", had the borg stop on a null pointer use exception from the undefined behavior sanitizer. The call stack at the point of the exception was

1. borg_launch_bolt_aux(y=46, x=77, rad=2, dam=144, typ=6, max=20, ammo_location=0) at borg6.c:6526:32
2. borg_launch_bolt(rad=2, dam=144, typ=6, max=20, ammo_location=0) at borg6.c:6633:51
3. borg_attack_aux_rod_bolt(sval=9, rad=2, dam=144, typ=6) at borg6.c:7333:11
4. borg_attack_aux(what=63) at borg6.c:8725:13
5. borg_attack(boosted_bravery=false) at borg6.c:9277:13
6. borg_think_dungeon at borg8.c:4766:9
7. borg_think at borg9.c:643:13
8. borg_inkey_hack(flush_first=0) at borg9.c:3180:13
9. inkey_ex at ui-input.c:228:12
10. textui_get_command(count=0x00007ff7bfefd820) at ui-input.c:1759:8
11. textui_process_command at ui-game.c:518:15
12. textui_get_cmd(context=CTX_GAME) at ui-game.c:594:3
13. play_game(mode=GAME_LOAD) at ui-game.c:921:4

At the point of the exception, k_ptr was NULL, *ag was { feat = 1, info = 1, glyph = false, store = 255, take = 1, kill = 0, hmmm = 0, xtra = 0 }, and *take was { kind = NULL, known = false, seen = false, extra = false, orbed = false, x = 0, y = 0, when = 0, value = 0, tval = 0 }, (rx, ry) was (75, 46), (x2, y2) was (77, 46), and the player's grid was (77, 36). There was a cutlass (tval = 11; sval = 5) at (75, 46) in both cave and player->cave. I've attached a clipped screenshot at the point of the crash though the grid in question is just outside what's displayed.

[agoodman]

speaking of dynamic calcs in borg.txt

I really dislike the design of this stuff right now (I can say that without fear of insulting the designer... I did it years ago. Not sure what younger me was thinking). I was considering something like

AnyClass
[
    Power
    [
        value(trait, afuel): range(0, 6): reward(60000)
        value(trait, afuel): range(7, 10): reward(6000-(count()*100))
	value(trait, food): range(1, 1): condition(value(trait, ishungry) or value(trait, isweak)): reward(100000)
    ]

    Depth Requirement
    [
        depth(10): condition((value(potion, Cure Critical Wounds) + value(potion, Cure Serious Wounds)) > 2 or value(trait, clevel) > 30)
    ]
]

Warrior
[
    Power
    [
        value(trait, afuel): range(0, 6): reward(60000)
    ]
]

one major problem is formulas. Right now the are in reverse polish notation. RPN is really easy to parse and code for but a PITA to write and support. An example is

FORMULA072=_ITEM324 _ITEM327 + 3 >= 3 * 500 *
so, converting that to the new variables (same RPN) would be
Formula072 = value(staff, power) value(staff, holiness) + 3 >= 3 * 500 *
or, in a format people understand
Formula072 = ((value(staff, power) + value(staff, holiness)) >= 3) * 500 * 3
so if the total number of staffs of power + staffs of holiness is 3 or more, you get 1500 power points.
The problem is that parsing and calculating the formula written common algebraic notation is not so easy, especially if I try to take order of operations into account.

and when it comes to the general format of the values, I started considering JSON or something similar but the parsers for those are big and complicated and it seems like a bad idea to make angband dependent on an outside library just for the borg. Seems like a non-starter.

I am still thinking on this but welcome ideas both on formula formatting and parsing and on the general format of a "dynamic borg power language"

BTW, this got bumped in priority in my eyes because one of the first posts when I announced the resurrection of the borg was @Siemelink asking about editing borg.txt. Gotta give the users what they want.

[agoodman]

Hey, I figured I would create a thread to track borg bugs and give an update on bugs that have been worked on

The following is checked into the borg_4x fork and a merge request has been created for V.
1) a fix to eating so more things, including potions of slime mold juice, will be snacked on when just "hungry"
2) a fix to eating when starving to include more things as above
3) a fix to making a hole in the inventory to not overflow integers
4) a fix to making a hole in the inventory to prioritize heavy objects
5) a fix to casting a glyph when just "playing with spells"

being worked
1) stepping on lava
2) dynamic calculation