This place seems reasonably safe.

[Magnate]

As an aside on this thread: I just started a ranger game and got a superb feeling on level 1. I haven't finished exploring, but I think it's the copy of "Wrath of God" lying on the ground.

Of course this has to be an ironman game!

Priceless. Literally.

[Magnate]

I think this level feelings are just fine the way they are.

With the small thermonuclear caveat that jelly pits generating superb or special feelings is just utterly gut-wrenchingly rubbish ... otherwise yeah, they're fine.

Actually no - even if you take jelly pits out of the picture completely, they still need work.

[Hariolor]

I think they work the way a honda civic works - reliable, functional.

But we can always hope to trade in our Honda for a Lambo, can't we?

[Bill Peterson]

If you really want to eliminate jelly pits from the level feeling equation someone needs to put some moderate work into the formula. I'm not an expert on the code but it appears to me that any pit generated on a level contributes to a higher feeling. Yes, jelly pits are a nuisance, but dragon/wyrm pits give drops and undead pits are mega dangerous. I'd vote for keeping pits as they are, finding a jelly pit at DL10 is no more of a disappointment than an animal pit at DL50.

Whoever changes this will have to put in code to distinguish between each of the types of pit and whether the DL and pit type warrants boosting the feeling score. Seems like a lot of work to change something that most are used to by now.

The level feeling logic was only broken recently, V2.9.x and, I believe V3.0.x were pretty reasonable. If no one actually changed the formula in generate.c then the likely culprit is the changes in drops, like more artifacts being dropped or less good drops from generated monsters. And most of the complaints I've read have been of finding artifacts on a level with a low feeling.

[Magnate]

If you really want to eliminate jelly pits from the level feeling equation someone needs to put some moderate work into the formula. I'm not an expert on the code but it appears to me that any pit generated on a level contributes to a higher feeling. Yes, jelly pits are a nuisance, but dragon/wyrm pits give drops and undead pits are mega dangerous. I'd vote for keeping pits as they are, finding a jelly pit at DL10 is no more of a disappointment than an animal pit at DL50.

There is a world of difference. Zoos can contain time, gravity and ethereal hounds, and should definitely boost the danger level. Jelly pits can contain nothing worse than acidic cytoplasm, and even those are very unlikely to get out unless you do something stupid.

Whoever changes this will have to put in code to distinguish between each of the types of pit and whether the DL and pit type warrants boosting the feeling score. Seems like a lot of work to change something that most are used to by now.

IMO this would be wholly worthwhile - people may be used to it, but this thread alone tells you that most people believe there is plenty of room for improvement.

The level feeling logic was only broken recently, V2.9.x and, I believe V3.0.x were pretty reasonable. If no one actually changed the formula in generate.c then the likely culprit is the changes in drops, like more artifacts being dropped or less good drops from generated monsters. And most of the complaints I've read have been of finding artifacts on a level with a low feeling.

This is simply wrong - jelly pits have caused erroneous special/superb feelings since well before 2.9.x, and level feelings have never properly distinguished between monsters and loot.

[Sirridan]

I'd like to volunteer doing some work on level feelings, I've gotten the code to compile quite easily thanks to the included nmake.

[Bill Peterson]

There is a world of difference. Zoos can contain time, gravity and ethereal hounds, and should definitely boost the danger level. Jelly pits can contain nothing worse than acidic cytoplasm, and even those are very unlikely to get out unless you do something stupid.

I could argue that none of the pits are a problem unless you "do something stupid". My point is that getting a superb feeling and finding any pit with no possibility of loot is a disappointment.

IMO this would be wholly worthwhile - people may be used to it, but this thread alone tells you that most people believe there is plenty of room for improvement.

Most people replying to this thread maybe. But... if someone does a good job of revising the level feeling code, how it scores and how it's presented to the players, I'll be among those thanking them.

This is simply wrong - jelly pits have caused erroneous special/superb feelings since well before 2.9.x, and level feelings have never properly distinguished between monsters and loot.

Not "erroneous", higher feelings have always meant either a monster pit, a vault, dangerous monsters, or some high value loot. AFAIK the situation that the OP had, namely finding an artifact on a low DL and with a low feeling, did not occur prior to V3.1.x. That's the actual bug. The complaints about jelly pits are a request for change.

[Magnate]

I could argue that none of the pits are a problem unless you "do something stupid".

You could, but it wouldn't get far. Most of the denizens of jelly pits are immobile, and none of them have KILL_WALL, PASS_WALL, KILL_BODY or MOVE_BODY, so there is a high chance that any mobile jellies will be blocked in by three immobile jellies around the entrance. The same is not true of any other pit - zoos and graveyards have a high proportion of monsters who ignore walls, and orc/troll/giant/dragon pits start with all monsters awake and able to get out of the door as soon as you're within detection range (which is long, i.e. they start coming out well before you do anything stupid).

AFAIK the situation that the OP had, namely finding an artifact on a low DL and with a low feeling, did not occur prior to V3.1.x. That's the actual bug.

I don't know what you think was changed, but to my knowledge it's always been there. I remember having exactly the same experience back in 2.9.2

[Magnate]

I'd like to volunteer doing some work on level feelings, I've gotten the code to compile quite easily thanks to the included nmake.

That would be cool. Best way to go about it is to check out svn trunk and send a patch to the angband-dev mailing list.

[Sirridan]

That would be cool. Best way to go about it is to check out svn trunk and send a patch to the angband-dev mailing list.

Already have the checkout part, still working on learning the band code so I can continue work on the savefile project I have going. Quick question, how does one make a patch? I've seen the files but I don't know if I have the utility installed. I do have cygwin on this comp and a machine with linux I can ssh/xming into

[Nick]

This is simply wrong - jelly pits have caused erroneous special/superb feelings since well before 2.9.x, and level feelings have never properly distinguished between monsters and loot.

It's worse than that:

	/* Increase the level rating */
	rating += 10;

	/* (Sometimes) Cause a "special feeling" (for "Monster Nests") */
	if ((p_ptr->depth <= 40) &&
	    (randint1(p_ptr->depth * p_ptr->depth + 1) < 300))
	{
		good_item_flag = TRUE;
	}

This is from the monster nest loop. It means that every jelly pit at level < 30 (and for those depths jellies are the only things that appeared in nests (unordered pits)) will cause a special feeling if you are playing with preserve off.

[d_m]

Already have the checkout part, still working on learning the band code so I can continue work on the savefile project I have going. Quick question, how does one make a patch? I've seen the files but I don't know if I have the utility installed. I do have cygwin on this comp and a machine with linux I can ssh/xming into

So, I'm not sure how one does things on Windows. Here is how I make patches from SVN on Linux:

Update my checkout: svn up
<edit some code>
<make sure it works>
Make a patch: svn diff -x -w > changes.patch
<inspect the patch to make sure it seems sane>

The "-x -w" arguments to SVN tell it to ignore all whitespace changes. This is useful to avoid accidentally sending random, non-meaningful whitespace changes, which some editors will make to files. YMMV.

[Sirridan]

So, I'm not sure how one does things on Windows. Here is how I make patches from SVN on Linux:

Update my checkout: svn up
<edit some code>
<make sure it works>
Make a patch: svn diff -x -w > changes.patch
<inspect the patch to make sure it seems sane>

The "-x -w" arguments to SVN tell it to ignore all whitespace changes. This is useful to avoid accidentally sending random, non-meaningful whitespace changes, which some editors will make to files. YMMV.

Ah thanks, my svn client on windows should work fine, if not I'll move it over to linux and do it.