Nightlies embark on long journey towards 3.3

[takkaria]

Squelching money and mimics is just a problematic issue all round. I don't think having them be invisible lurker-style is a great solution because then they suddenly pop into existence where you had no reason to suspect anything threatening might be. Not that Vanilla's creeping coins are especially threatening, but if we were to import NPP's set then they would be. On the other hand, as you noted, if all money is squelched then it becomes immediately obvious that you have a mimic to deal with.

On the gripping hand, we could get rid of money squelching, which is AFAICT only really there so that we don't have to deal with screen clutter once money becomes a non-issue (and also don't have to worry about reflexively taking turns to pick up money we no longer need). But it's a nice feature and it'd be a shame to get rid of it.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I guess.

Squelching is there as a user interface feature—it shouldn't reveal any more information than you would have access to usually. So, we should get rid of money squelching, IMO.

[CunningGabe]

I'm working right now on making Lurkers and Mimics actually be hidden. It's not clear to me, however, that creeping coins were meant to be mimics in the same sense (i.e., that they were meant to fool the player). Mimics have the unimplemented CHAR_MULTI flag to indicate that they appear as items, and Lurkers have the CHAR_CLEAR flag so that you always just see what is underneath the Lurker. Creeping coins have neither of these.

[bulian]

Squelching is there as a user interface feature—it shouldn't reveal any more information than you would have access to usually. So, we should get rid of money squelching, IMO.

Please don't. It only adds to TMJ. If a player is past the point of worrying about gold on the floor, they can no doubt kill mimics quite easily. The minor metagaming issue is not worth the additional hassle of having to wade through tongs of gold piles.

Plus, I believe mimics show up on the monster list. I know lurkers/trappers do with see invisibility.

[CunningGabe]

Plus, I believe mimics show up on the monster list. I know lurkers/trappers do with see invisibility.

This will change very soon

[Timo Pietilä]

Not that Vanilla's creeping coins are especially threatening, but if we were to import NPP's set then they would be..

Slight side-note: if we do that people will be getting killed a lot more, especially if we add money pits. "money, money, money, drool, can't think straight, what's that? RIP?".

That thing was the single most dangerous feature into game, not because it wasn't difficult to avoid, but it was difficult to avoid getting tempted too much.

[Derakon]

Individual creeping coins in NPP are legitimate threats but not overpoweringly so, especially if you have sources of magical attack (their main threat is their incredibly high AC). Coin pits are, as you said, a dangerous temptation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[PowerDiver]

Who is the genius who decided to reorder the spells again?

I am making mistakes modifying the code because of the way savefiles are being "corrected" when they are read in. There are also bugs being introduced, such as recreating the town every time because xmax and ymax are diff from dungeon levels. I think the whole idea of correcting on read might be a bad idea, even though I see the possible benefits.

I cannot see the color L_PURPLE on my system, using X11. Cave spiders and lesser balrogs are written in the same black as the background. I don't know if my monitor colors are off or it is something else. When I change the color through the visuals I can then see the monsters, but that info does not survive the save/reload process.

[camlost]

When I change the color through the visuals I can then see the monsters, but that info does not survive the save/reload process.

Don't you have to save that info off explicitly into a .prf file somewhere?

[Timo Pietilä]

Don't you have to save that info off explicitly into a .prf file somewhere?

I'm not sure if this is still the case in nightly editions, but in 3.2 saving visual preferences is in different place than editing them (one is in options - interact with visuals, other is in knowledge menu). This is a flaw in current vanilla UI that should be fixed.

[takkaria]

Who is the genius who decided to reorder the spells again?

I am making mistakes modifying the code because of the way savefiles are being "corrected" when they are read in. There are also bugs being introduced, such as recreating the town every time because xmax and ymax are diff from dungeon levels. I think the whole idea of correcting on read might be a bad idea, even though I see the possible benefits.

I think correcting on read is a bad idea too, but I try to avoid touching the savefile where possible for the fear of introducing accidental bugs.

I cannot see the color L_PURPLE on my system, using X11. Cave spiders and lesser balrogs are written in the same black as the background. I don't know if my monitor colors are off or it is something else. When I change the color through the visuals I can then see the monsters, but that info does not survive the save/reload process.

Does that still happen with the latest git version?

[PowerDiver]

I think correcting on read is a bad idea too, but I try to avoid touching the savefile where possible for the fear of introducing accidental bugs.



Does that still happen with the latest git version?

The question is whether, when you read in a trident (1d8), should it be changed to a trident (1d10)? That's the sort of thing introduced into load.c.

IMO only changes that will cause errors should be changed. If the damage sides were negative, that would be worth fixing. If a dungeon level is too large, sure fix it, but why do anything if it is a little small?


The L_PURPLE problem is still there in the git clone I just did. I changed the color_table line in variable.c to copy the pink line to no effect. It appears to be the line number rather than the values that is the problem. Perhaps it is related to the x11 font error I reported. It's not hard for me to get around, but people should watch out for similar problems. I should have mentioned walls changed from blocks to hashes too. I figured that was related to fixing blank walls in windows, but maybe it is related to my problem.

[d_m]

The L_PURPLE problem is still there in the git clone I just did.

I fixed this in staging at noon today... it should get merged to master in the next day or two, I expect.

EDIT: I just pushed staging to master, so the next build should be fixed.

[PowerDiver]

I fixed this in staging at noon today... it should get merged to master in the next day or two, I expect.

EDIT: I just pushed staging to master, so the next build should be fixed.

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

EDIT: I just checked, and the font error is gone, and I have blocks instead of hashes, but the invisible cave spiders remain. Now that I have evidence it's not the x11 problem, I'll try again to debug it myself.

I diffed vs what I tested less than a day ago, and the changes are ENORMOUS. You guys are crazy.

[Magnate]

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

EDIT: I just checked, and the font error is gone, and I have blocks instead of hashes, but the invisible cave spiders remain. Now that I have evidence it's not the x11 problem, I'll try again to debug it myself.

I diffed vs what I tested less than a day ago, and the changes are ENORMOUS. You guys are crazy.

We are lucky. At the moment we have five active devs, plus takkaria, plus patches and fixes supplied by others. I don't think it's been this busy since 3.0.9 - definitely not since I joined.

EDIT: er ... that's not meant to imply that takkaria is not active! I just meant five devs *plus* the actual maintainer ...

[buzzkill]

Please fix 32x32 tile mode

I assume that none of the dev team plays with tiles so this be off your radar even though I've brought it up before.

Prior to 3.2 the 32x32 tileset displayed perfectly in Vanilla. Since 3.2 there are a few graphic bugs that were, prior to 3.2, strictly limited to variants that didn't have big tile/double tile support (that's all of them except FA). I believe Nick acknowledged that it's something he did to big tile/double tile, though I could be mistaken.

My point is, I like it to be fixed for 3.3 before it spreads further (it's already been carried forth into RePos). If nothing else just revert to pre 3.2 status as constantly having to ctrl-r is cumbersome to the point of not bothering to do so, which results in flawed information (monsters, walls, etc) being displayed on the screen, which results in (probable) death.