Making the game harder, take three

[Antoine]

Yes, this. One of the first things I did when making my own variant was remove angels, because they completely don't make any sense to be in Angband. Ainur fits in the Tolkien theme and even fits the letter symbol. (DAJ replaced angels with apes which I don't suggest for V. Obviously, it doesn't fit as well as Ainur, but I didn't remember what Ainur were and didn't feel like doing the research.)

I found a recent thread where Jeff was even offering to update the monster.txt...

A.

[will_asher]

As long as V is borrowing stuff from NPP, is there any chance that V could get NPP's Ainur in place of Angels?

I think the NPP guys have put actually quite a lot of work into developing Ainur (both thematically and gameplay).

And I cannot get my head around killing the Archangel Gabriel anywhere let alone in the Pits of Angband.

Yes, this. One of the first things I did when making my own variant was remove angels, because they completely don't make any sense to be in Angband. Ainur fits in the Tolkien theme and even fits the letter symbol. (DAJ replaced angels with apes which I don't suggest for V. Obviously, it doesn't fit as well as Ainur, but I didn't remember what Ainur were and didn't feel like doing the research.)

[Philip]

As long as V is borrowing stuff from NPP, is there any chance that V could get NPP's Ainur in place of Angels?

I think the NPP guys have put actually quite a lot of work into developing Ainur (both thematically and gameplay).

And I cannot get my head around killing the Archangel Gabriel anywhere let alone in the Pits of Angband.

A.

Yeah, this would be nice, and O has put a lot of work into cleaning up the monster list as well, so maybe incorporating some of this could be nice. O removed angels completely, but maybe ainur could work nice. O also added a very fun monster: Crows of Durthang. Ever met these?

The Crow of Durthang (L.Dark 'B')
=== Num:114 Lev:7 Rar:3 Spd:+10 Hp:3d7 Ac:16 Exp:20
 A crook-beaked bird with bedraggled black feathers. It mocks you, and you realise that its scorn can kill. This natural 
creature moves normally. It usually appears in groups. It is magical, casting spells which cause light wounds; 1 time in 9. 
It takes quite a while to see intruders, which it may notice from 250 feet. It can bite to attack with damage 1d3, and claw
 to attack with damage 1d2. (OAngband 0.6.1)

I could swear I find them on dlevel 1 all the time, with a superb feeling. 3d7 hitpoints doesn't sound like much, does it? That's around 3 or 4 magic missiles on average. On the other hand, this also means it would take around 35 mana to take them down. Also, you'd have been cursed to death by then. A warrior might have a chance, but he'd be worn down even if he were behind a corner. So you need a level 10 warrior to deal with these, at least. With a lot of CCW. A mage? level 20. This can appear on dlevel 1. But O deals with monsters fairly well. Npp probably does as well. V is not so good, mostly with angels, which can be stolen from NPP.
EDIT: Had to edit because the post was looking weird because of the CODE tags.
EDIT2: The last sentence about the V monster list was harsh, didn't mean anything bad, just that I prefer the O monster list.

[Antoine]

As long as V is borrowing stuff from NPP, is there any chance that V could get NPP's Ainur in place of Angels?

I think the NPP guys have put actually quite a lot of work into developing Ainur (both thematically and gameplay).

And I cannot get my head around killing the Archangel Gabriel anywhere let alone in the Pits of Angband.

A.

[camlost]

Yes. In target.c, two static functions called draw_path and load_path. Each one is called twice, in various parts of target_set_interactive. I lied above. It might be 50 lines of code and about a 6 minute task to make a patch, far greater than than my earlier estimate.

For Sangband, you are probably better off taking it from NPP 050 than the current version. I had to make a couple changes to make it work when I updated the NPP codebase to Angband v.3.1.2.

Thanks, I'll do that.

[nppangband]

Dream on - If anything I'd expect Takkaria to want to add (more) quests before more spell realms. But that's not based on any solid evidence.

Codewise, I am close to adding support to have additional fixed quests. It would be a birth option, that, when true, would prompt you to add up to 98 additional fixed quests, and possibly 27 additional randomly chosen quests after Morgoth as well. Instead of going through the advanturer's guild, you just go down to the level and you couldn't dive anu further until you finish the quest. A quest reward will also be dropped at your feet as well.

That will be an NPP 060 feature, but it should happen within the next year. I would be amazed if the adventurer's guild & EY/NPP style quests ever made it into Vanilla, but if you all want random fixed quests of that nature, after I complete this feature for NPP I could send a patch for vanilla if it ever does become part of the V to-do list.

[takkaria]

I dont' have that feature, but I will happily steal it from you all when you do close that ticket.

I was actually thinking of making the additional windows interactive, however. What I had in mind was the player activating the monster list window, and when they click on or scroll through the monsterlists the monster recall window displays that monster. Same thing with objects, through the object list, the inventory or equipment list. They should display in the object recall list. Is there any variant that has attempted to make the additional windows interactive?

No, not as far as I'm aware. You'll run into problems; I think a lot of the frontends only pass on events to the main window, and the UI code certainly isn't written to make up multiple input queues easy. Good luck, if you do it then we'll steal it.

[nppangband]

Thanks Jeff - very kind of you - that's our second-oldest non-help ticket. You don't happen to have find-as-you-type monster recall in NPP yet, do you? ;-)

I dont' have that feature, but I will happily steal it from you all when you do close that ticket.

I was actually thinking of making the additional windows interactive, however. What I had in mind was the player activating the monster list window, and when they click on or scroll through the monsterlists the monster recall window displays that monster. Same thing with objects, through the object list, the inventory or equipment list. They should display in the object recall list. Is there any variant that has attempted to make the additional windows interactive?

[Magnate]

Thanks Jeff!

There were some changes between 3.2 and HEAD that I had to take care of, but your patch is now applied and in staging... hopefully it'll be in the nightlies soon.

Thanks Jeff - very kind of you - that's our second-oldest non-help ticket. You don't happen to have find-as-you-type monster recall in NPP yet, do you? ;-)

[d_m]

Here it the patch. Based on the final Angband 3.2 release, and the only changes are in target.c. In the zip file there is a target.c with the updated code, and a diff file as well.

http://download.nppangband.org/Target patch.zip

Thanks Jeff!

There were some changes between 3.2 and HEAD that I had to take care of, but your patch is now applied and in staging... hopefully it'll be in the nightlies soon.

[nppangband]

Here it the patch. Based on the final Angband 3.2 release, and the only changes are in target.c. In the zip file there is a target.c with the updated code, and a diff file as well.

http://download.nppangband.org/Target patch.zip

[nppangband]

Any chance you could point me to that code in NPP? I'd like to port it to S also.

Yes. In target.c, two static functions called draw_path and load_path. Each one is called twice, in various parts of target_set_interactive. I lied above. It might be 50 lines of code and about a 6 minute task to make a patch, far greater than than my earlier estimate.

For Sangband, you are probably better off taking it from NPP 050 than the current version. I had to make a couple changes to make it work when I updated the NPP codebase to Angband v.3.1.2.

[Max Stats]

I am just happy haggling is a think of the past. I frequently get nostalgic for moria features, but never once have I missed that one.

Haggling has just moved from the game to the forums in the form of feature requests.

[camlost]

That's about a 20 line patch that will take 5 minutes to create. I will send it along.

Any chance you could point me to that code in NPP? I'd like to port it to S also.

[Derakon]

That's about a 20 line patch that will take 5 minutes to create. I will send it along.

<3

You guys are awesome.