Angband 3.2 released!

[takkaria]

Hello and welcome,

Once again, for what is something like the fifth-eighth time, there is a new Angband for you all to play! It's literally like Christmas came early. Like any release of the game, this one is different from the last, and contains a host of gameplay changes alongside significant internal rewrites.

From here, things will start to look a bit different: the next major release (3.3) is being planned, and you can expect a more difficult (but also more interesting) game. In the meantime, download, play, and enjoy! I hope that the winter holiday season brings you joy, mulled wine (if you drink) and clementines (if you don't) or something else entirely (if that would be more to your taste).

I would like to thank Aerdan, Antony Sidwell (ajps), Eddie Grove (who always challenges us to do better and helps us get there), Erik Osheim (d_m), elly, Aaron Bader (fizzix), Lebannen, Chris Carr (magnate), William Moore (MarbleDice), and Peter Denison (noz), without whom this release would not have happened.

Downloads, as ever, from the front page of rephial.org.

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Changes:

Gameplay changes

#527 Add monster light
#716 Improve rings of Mouse and Dog
#731 Add no_selling option with triple gold drops
#759 Enable multiple barehand blows (to see effects of STR/DEX at birth)
#951 Increase base AC on armour; differentiate DSMs; allow ego DSMs
#987 Melee blows now determined by "energy per blow" instead of "blows per round", aka "fractional blows"
#1008 Resistances reduce inventory damage (also #1183)
#1072 Remove CLW spell from rogues and magi
#1088 Chests can no longer contain chests
#1132 Brightness property preserved when refueling torches
#1140 Allow selling unidentified weapons to the temple so long as they are known blessed
#1140 Make Free Action on gloves obvious to magical casters
#1183 Allow resists to protect inventory items from damage
r1947 Slightly more intelligent monster casting (don't heal if full hp etc.)
r1963 Increase rarity of zephyr hounds
r1969 Improve pseudo-ID
r1982 Ranged multipliers add (x3 bow with x3 slay is x6 not x9)
r1984 Maximum device failure rate lowered to 75%
r1985 Items in the quiver can now be destroyed by acid/fire
r1986 DSM activation times reduced to 50
r2024 Significantly improved balancing of item drops
r2030 Remove birth_money option
Various changes to randarts: off-weapon blows/shots/slays/brands less
common, speed more common on boots, multiple brands/slays rated higher, speed rated consistently
Significant changes to vaults and special rooms (pits, nests etc.)
Caster level and spell level now affect casting speed a little bit

User interface

#256 Allow review of store and home contents via the knowledge menu
#865 Add a pager for viewing output longer than one screen
#1092 Added option to display unique monsters in pale purple
#1119 Display burden in the inven term window, and show lbs remaining instead of percent capacity
#1140 Money is type squelchable through the squelch menu (= s o)
#1140 Add direction/distance to the visible item list ']'
#1207 Show melee to-hit chance in monster recall
r1971 Make summoning traps light blue
r1981 Coloured messages
r1999 Make ATTR_MULTI use the full range of colours
r2003 Add ATTR_FLICKER to make monsters shimmer in real time (optional!)
r2026 Allow quality squelching of DSM
Added support for extended character sets ("xchars")
Added support for expanded graphics tiles ("bigtile")
Revised monster colours
Added warning that -n switch will lose existing character unless -u is used in conjunction with it
Added Nomad's 8x16 tiles
Various improvements and fixes to the GTK port
Occasional hints on entering stores during early character levels

List of bugs fixed

#862 Fix inscription parsing in stores
#938 Fix non-maximise mode
#979 Prevent leakage of information about artifact flavours
#1058 Fix energy problems on game loading
#1071 Do not allow unIDd items to stack with identical IDd items in the object list
#1075 Make -r option work properly again
#1106 The psychic warriors bug (mana displayed for warriors)
#1122 Fix a display bug with the number of dropped items in the home
#1123 Fix an update bug with the monster list subwindow
#1129 Fix shooting power display in stores
#1130 Prevent the casting of forgotten spells
#1131 Fix squelch worthless so non-salable items are squelched, salable items are not squelched, and the object knowledge menu indicates worthless items which are squelched by the option with Yes*
#1133 Do not mark object flavors {tried} on device activation failure
#1138 Fix the cost and nutrition on Potions of *Healing*
#1139 Fix repeating actions from actions menu
#1140 Allow selling of Potions of Dragon Breath
#1140 Do not display pvals for known flavors before use/ID
#1142 Fix 100% CPU problem with x11 mode
#1143 Fix darkness effect
#1144 Fix timed effect increase messages
#1151 Level of chest items is now determined differently, reducing the chance of producing items below their max depths
#1154 Fix an issue with the message for addtional str/dex to get extra blows
#1160 Fix memory leak
#1167 Fix preserve off mode
#1170 Ensure history captures all clev gains
#1177 Fix duplication of slay info when inspecting weapons
#1181 Make General Store only buy known items
#1184 Fix level feelings
#1185 Print hit messages when unarmed
#1189 Show correct slay/brand damage when inspecting melee weapons
#1190 Fix "bad" quality squelch
#1195 Allow selling blessed diggers in the Temple
#1201 Prevent ammo leaking info about launcher brands/slays
#1209 Add safety check for artifacts with activation but no message
r1943 Potions of life should repair CON before hp
r1972 Fix bug when running with 100% searching
r1983 Fix divide-by-zero crash on device activation
r1996 Make remove curse affect items in the quiver
Make the -u switch work properly

Coding changes

#55 Introduction of unit tests
#1102 Major bitflag rewrite
#1121 Remove spurious bools from main-sdl.c
r2005 Allow wizmode tweaking to specify artifact or ego type (name1/name2)
Destroy init1.c and salt the earth around its cities
Completely rewritten edit file parsers
Significant refactoring, removing or consolidating many globals
Partial rewrite of input layer and command handling
Added new WELL1024 RNG
Move to C99 compilation standards
More flexible quantity specification in edit files (A+BdCMD)
Remove the RISC OS port

Documentation changes

r1973 Remove obsolete references to class restrictions
r2012 Include power rating in artifact spoiler
Substantial rewriting and update of in-game help files

[will_asher]

Out of curiousity, what are the details of this:
> Significant changes to vaults and special rooms (pits, nests etc.)

[Timo Pietilä]

Out of curiousity, what are the details of this:
> Significant changes to vaults and special rooms (pits, nests etc.)

Medium vaults introduced, pits can contain items, some special rooms can be mini-vaults (especially nice is the one pit-like with four rooms in middle with one door each opening to moat). Many lesser vaults have now spots with much deeper monster/treasure possible.

Good changes.

[fizzix]

Medium vaults introduced, pits can contain items, some special rooms can be mini-vaults (especially nice is the one pit-like with four rooms in middle with one door each opening to moat). Many lesser vaults have now spots with much deeper monster/treasure possible.

Good changes.

In addition, nests now have some items generated in them so that they are not complete wastes. The only time I've ever found the one was lying in a graveyard, forcing me to actually deal with a graveyard if I wanted it. That was fun.

[Therem Harth]

Fractional blows, awesomeness!

And on Christmas too... Thank you very much guys!

[Lord Fell]

@Timo
Does your edit to change # walls to filled in blocks work with 3.2? And can you repost that?

[Feloniousmonk]

Thank you very much, it's just what I wanted for Christmas.

[Timo Pietilä]

@Timo
Does your edit to change # walls to filled in blocks work with 3.2? And can you repost that?

Yes. No problem whatsoever.

Just remove comment in font.prf that is preventing reading the font-win.prf, that's all. You might want to change colors for permanent walls too.

[Magnate]

Thank you very much, it's just what I wanted for Christmas.

Just wanted to say I think yours is my favourite forum nick ever.

[will_asher]

Medium vaults introduced, pits can contain items, some special rooms can be mini-vaults (especially nice is the one pit-like with four rooms in middle with one door each opening to moat). Many lesser vaults have now spots with much deeper monster/treasure possible.

In addition, nests now have some items generated in them so that they are not complete wastes. The only time I've ever found the one was lying in a graveyard, forcing me to actually deal with a graveyard if I wanted it. That was fun.

sounds cool, I'll have to look at it for DAJ

What do you mean that some special rooms can be mini-vaults? Does that mean they get CAVE_ICKY?

[Feloniousmonk]

Not quite sure if this is a bug. I've imported an old save file from 3.12v2. The stores were out of WOR, so I did what I always do. Go down one lvl and rest for a while until the store is restocked. But everytime I checked what the stores were selling under the new handy-dandy option it never changed, even after resting a ridiculous amount of time. It was only when I came back to the the town that the inventory of the stores changed. Normal? Not normal?

[d_m]

Not quite sure if this is a bug. I've imported an old save file from 3.12v2. The stores were out of WOR, so I did what I always do. Go down one lvl and rest for a while until the store is restocked. But everytime I checked what the stores were selling under the new handy-dandy option it never changed, even after resting a ridiculous amount of time. It was only when I came back to the the town that the inventory of the stores changed. Normal? Not normal?

This is working as expected.

The option reminds you what was in town the last time you checked--it isn't a magical portal into what the shopkeeper is selling at this exact moment.

Sorry for the confusion.

[fph]

If I am not mistaken, the new handy-dandy option is only a "reminder". It does not reflect the real content of the stores, it just records their content the last time you've hit them. It's functionally equivalent to writing down the content of the stores on a sheet of paper every time you visit them.

[Magnate]

If I am not mistaken, the new handy-dandy option is only a "reminder". It does not reflect the real content of the stores, it just records their content the last time you've hit them. It's functionally equivalent to writing down the content of the stores on a sheet of paper every time you visit them.

Exactly - this is noted in the new help document along with the other main changes (320.txt).

[Timo Pietilä]

sounds cool, I'll have to look at it for DAJ

What do you mean that some special rooms can be mini-vaults? Does that mean they get CAVE_ICKY?

It looks like those are in vault.txt, so they are ordinary vaults that just look like ordinary special rooms, no code to change special room to vault.