Auto Scum Removed in 3.1.0?

[dfreer]

I fired up the newest Angband today, only to find auto scum birth option is no longer available. I checked the bug reports section and only saw a ticket/patch *removing* auto scum but it gave no reasons as to why.

Is it being revamped or was it nuked? I see that some players consider auto scumming as cheating, but instead of nuking it wouldn't it be better to move it into the Cheat section?

[Pete Mack]

You really don't need autoscum in 3.1x. Once you reach 1500', you will notice plenty of loot...

[dfreer]

I don't think I've ever made it past 1000' lol. Thanks for the information though!

I've just noticed as well, during the character creation screen, that pressing the "?" key to enter the help menu no longer works (even though it is still listed in the first paragraph containing the words "Use movement keys to scroll the menu, Enter to select... '? for Help"). Regression bug? Running on Windows Vista on a non-full size keyboard.

[takkaria]

I don't think I've ever made it past 1000' lol. Thanks for the information though!

I've just noticed as well, during the character creation screen, that pressing the "?" key to enter the help menu no longer works (even though it is still listed in the first paragraph containing the words "Use movement keys to scroll the menu, Enter to select... '? for Help"). Regression bug? Running on Windows Vista on a non-full size keyboard.

It's been fixed for 3.1.1.

[rhutson]

Autoscumming history

For "historical reference", "autoscumming" was my doings, but I never intended for it to be "popularized."

Ben released a new version of Angband. Something changed, and "exciting levels" were not being generated for my character. I studied the release diffs and saw nothing which would account for the lack of "excitement." I reported this issue to Ben, who confirmed that the issue was indeed a "phenomena." Being escalated to a "phenomena", I was obliged to investigate the matter.

I stuck a "for loop" around the level generation code which would only "break" when an "exciting" level was generated. The game was making "random(5000)" attempts to generate an "exciting" level. My code was very hacky, but it worked. I released patches on Usenet which publically advertised autoscumming to the game. I meant for the autoscumming patches to be a temporary workaround, not a new feature. However, autoscumming was very popular with players, and Ben added autoscumming to the game in a less hacky manner as an option.

The best explanation that I have for the lack of "excitement" in that release was/is that an at least slight change in code must have evoked a bug in GCC on my 486 Linux box. (GCC was undergoing many changes at that time as well, and subtle bugs were common.)