Angband 4.2.5

[mrfy]

Minor typo probably, but when battling a silent watcher (from afar) I got this message a few times:

"The baleful presence of $the silent watcher inspires your enemies."

I'm assuming this is from it shrieking for help? Anyway, the $ probably shouldn't be there.

[Nick]

But did you buff the illusionist?
It looks like not only does it haste self, slow you and paralyze you, but it starts off quick now.
I've had a couple of @'s die at ~500' bc of illusionist paralysis.

Nope, unchanged.

[sffp]

Congrats on the new version.
I do see some improvements.

But did you buff the illusionist?
It looks like not only does it haste self, slow you and paralyze you, but it starts off quick now.
I've had a couple of @'s die at ~500' bc of illusionist paralysis.

[bio_hazard]

Perfect, thanks!

[backwardsEric]

I'm probably missing something obvious, but how does one run the Borg? I'm on MacOS if it matters.

Control-z (^z if you're using a frontend where Control-z gets intercepted) gets you to the prompt for the borg command. If you haven't used a borg command for that character yet, you'll first get a confirmation prompt for whether you really want to run a borg command. Once at the prompt for the borg command, entering z at that will have the borg run until it dies (to have it automatically respawn instead either set the standard option to cheat death before running the borg or from the borg command prompt use 'c' followed by 'd' to toggle its own option for cheating death) or is interrupted by a keystroke from you. There's other commands available, you can press ? at the prompt for a borg command to get a list of them with brief descriptions. The first time a borg command is issued, it will set up a borg.txt file in Angband's user directory (~/Documents/Angband with the macOS front end) which can be used to customize the borg's behavior.

[bio_hazard]

I'm probably missing something obvious, but how does one run the Borg? I'm on MacOS if it matters.

[backwardsEric]

My biggest headache at the moment is the manual. Is the person who wrote the manual generation code still around and can someone please put me in touch?

According to the commit history, takkaria set up the docs directory in much of its current state. This procedure is what the release workflow uses in the top level of the Angband directory tree to build the HTML documentation on Ubuntu 22.04 (in the GitHub repository this is from https://github.com/angband/angband/b...s/release.yaml ):

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake gcc make sphinx-common git
use_python3=`python --version 2>&1 | awk "/^Python 3\\./ { print \"YES\" ; exit 0 ; } ; { print \"NO\" ; exit 0; }"`
if test X$use_python3 == XYES ; then
    sudo apt-get install python3-pip
else
    sudo apt-get install python-pip
fi
pip install sphinx-better-theme
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-no-install --with-sphinx
make manual

The generated HTML files then end up in docs/_build/html . In case you had not already seen it and found it less than helpful, there's a bit of information about how to build the documentation here, https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/la...#documentation , which skips using configure.

To change the theme used when building the documentation, you can either edit docs/conf.py (look for the section there called "Options for HTML output"), or if going through configure and want to use one of Sphinx's builtin themes, you can set the environment variable, DOC_HTML_THEME, to the name of the builtin theme when running configure, i.e.:

    ./configure DOC_HTML_THEME=name_of_theme_to_use --with-no-install --with-sphinx

[Magnate]

Congrats Nick, this is fantastic news. After several years absence, I have returned to have one final go at packaging 4.x for Debian (which is still using 3.5.1!). If I don't manage this I'm going to give up and orphan the package.

My biggest headache at the moment is the manual. Is the person who wrote the manual generation code still around and can someone please put me in touch?

[smbhax]

Don't forget to let Pav know 4.2.5 is out so he can update the News page ( http://angband.oook.cz/index.php ). : )

[Gwarl]

The borg is only compiled in if the preprocessor macro, ALLOW_BORG, is set. There's currently no formal switch via configure or cmake to turn on or off compilation of the borg. Builds via configure, Makefile.nmake, and Makefile.osx all build the borg by default (remove the setting of ALLOW_BORG in src/Makefile, src/Makefile.nmake, or src/Makefile.osx to disable that).

If I'm reading the code correctly, borgs are only scored if the preprocessor macro, SCORE_BORGS is set. That macro is not set by default in any standard build.

Okay thanks for clarifying

[tom]

How about flagging bots in highscores instead of banning them ?

That's a good idea. Recording some other player setting in the highscores would be cool, too (like randarts, forced descent, etc). The scores.raw format, which I think hasn't changed in eternity, needs some new fields to do this though.

[Estie]

How about flagging bots in highscores instead of banning them ?

[backwardsEric]

Can we have some compilation flags for the borg? (or even better configuration switches like --disable-borg) like there used to be ALLOW_BORG, and there was some mechanism to prevent borg characters from showing up in the highscores (like wizard characters) are those implemented?

The borg is only compiled in if the preprocessor macro, ALLOW_BORG, is set. There's currently no formal switch via configure or cmake to turn on or off compilation of the borg. Builds via configure, Makefile.nmake, and Makefile.osx all build the borg by default (remove the setting of ALLOW_BORG in src/Makefile, src/Makefile.nmake, or src/Makefile.osx to disable that).

If I'm reading the code correctly, borgs are only scored if the preprocessor macro, SCORE_BORGS is set. That macro is not set by default in any standard build.

[Gwarl]

Can we have some compilation flags for the borg? (or even better configuration switches like --disable-borg) like there used to be ALLOW_BORG, and there was some mechanism to prevent borg characters from showing up in the highscores (like wizard characters) are those implemented?

I'm thinking of disallowing the borg but also of having a permanent borg running in the background

[tom]

Great work, everyone. The ghost of Ben Harrison will be pleased with the return of his beloved Borg.