5 May 2011 development release(s)

[Magnate]

Noticed this in the dungeon now too; I found !CCW that won't stack with my inventory, and also a spellbook that similarly won't stack. It seems not to be related to inscriptions (my first though was hmm, these are both auto-inscribe items) - I tried removing the inscriptions and removing the auto-inscribe setting, no effect.

My character is a CL27 Mage, and this only started happening recently - I'm not sure what changed. The savefile and pref files were copied over from the previous release (Apr 23) if that is relevant. Should I open a ticket for this, even though I'm not a developer? I'm not sure what the correct process is here.

No, please don't open a ticket - we know what the problem is, but not why it's happening.

When a savefile is loaded, each object is read into memory using a function called rd_item_X, where X is the version number of the savefile. Object flag handling has now changed, so X was incremented to save and load the new flags properly using rd_item_3. I added code to rd_item_2 which should convert the flags of objects in old savefiles so that they stack properly with new objects, but for some reason this isn't working. The two relevant lines in rd_item_2 are

of_copy(o_ptr->flags, o_ptr->kind->base->flags);
of_union(o_ptr->flags, o_ptr->kind->flags);

We saw this bug in staging but couldn't see why it wasn't working, and assumed that it must have been an artefact of us all using savefiles we'd played in the staging branch, where things tend to get a bit muddled. I couldn't reproduce it with a "proper" old savefile.

But the assumption was wrong, and it is clearly a problem with the changes to object flags (ticket #120) and the rd_item_2 code.

All patches and suggestions welcome. In the meantime, apologies for the inconvenience w.r.t. stacking.

[Magnate]

The was a failure to ID wands and staves by use bug a little while back. It was related to sleep / confuse / slow monsters I think. Can't find the ticket or thread right now, but pretty sure it was fixed in the last build I played.

This was #1366 and was indeed closed about four weeks ago. Like d_m I am unaware of monsters getting additional saving throws for anything, but as Eddie says this could be an unintended side effect of something else. There has been a lot of refactoring of *player* saving throws to monster spells and breaths, but AFAICT that shouldn't yet have had any impact at all on monster saves. Definitely bears further observation though.

[Magnate]

I was ready to port some code, but there were blocking(*) bugs. I think the first was the invisible purple monsters, but I don't really remember any more. Then a long progression in which a new blocking bug was introduced before the previous one was fixed. The dInvis bug is merely the last one.

You folks teased me a few times by closing all of the trac issues that bothered me, and then I'd find out something else got broken but hadn't been noticed yet. This better not be a repeat!

I don't mean the above as a complaint. You have to expect that sort of thing given the pace and nature of V development. I've just been waiting for a long time.

No worries - I'll be glad if there aren't any issues in this nightly that prevent you from porting.

What bothers me about this is that I don't have any real idea which bugs/issues you (and other forks) consider intolerable and which are just irritants. IMO it might be worth adding a "severity" field to trac so that we can distinguish tickets in this way, and focus on fixing the top-rated ones.

[scud]

Previously I was under the impression that Enchant Weapon/Armour only got you as far as +10 before failing (or possibly being so unlikely to succeed that it was effectively 'impossible'). I've just dragged some arrows and speedy boots up to +15 levels. Nice.

Doesn't quite make up for losing my stock of books and scrolls and potions, though...

[Derakon]

Yeah, the difficulty of enchanting was reduced awhile back. I couldn't tell you why, but at least in the case of armor it helps make up for the fact that you now need more AC than you used to.

[PowerDiver]

What bothers me about this is that I don't have any real idea which bugs/issues you (and other forks) consider intolerable and which are just irritants. IMO it might be worth adding a "severity" field to trac so that we can distinguish tickets in this way, and focus on fixing the top-rated ones.

Some examples that come to mind:

Dungeon areas with no stairs, which is a killer for ironman or disconnected_stairs. Pits missing a wall. Invisible purple monsters. Since I focus on id-by-use issues, failure of dInv is a much bigger deal to me than to others. The newest one is the failure of weak wands like -sleep to affect even cutpurses. I haven't made it to testing if that was fixed or is still broken.

I wouldn't be surprised if half the issues I consider severe no one else find even serious, and presumably I am not the only one with a specific personal viewpoint, so I don't know if a new severity field is worth the effort.

[Chud]

I added code to rd_item_2 which should convert the flags of objects in old savefiles so that they stack properly with new objects, but for some reason this isn't working.

Ah, okay. Time permitting I may try to see what's going on there (dust off my meager C skills a little). In the meantime it sounds like I should be able to solve the problem by ditching any items brought over form the previous build and just acquiring new ones in the current version then.

In the meantime, apologies for the inconvenience w.r.t. stacking.

No worries at all - such is the world of the development release.

[d_m]

I was wondering if it's completely unintentional, or a goof on something similar but intentional.

Don't look too hard. The previous nightly I have is dated 1/13, so it could have been introduced much earlier.

I can confirm that my character was completely unable to put a white icky thing to sleep with a wand of sleep monster.

This is in trac as bug #1427

[myshkin]

There seems to have been a change, as of the 4/22 stuff I have been messing with, that gives monsters saving throws when they didn't use to have them. I couldn't even ID a wand [sleep monster I think] with repeated aims at a cutpurse. Was there any change to that in this 5/5 release?

I'm having trouble reproducing this; I was able to ID-by-use a wand of confuse monster with a level 1 dwarf priest versus a small kobold at 50' on the first try. With what level character were you aiming the wand? The base resist chance for sleep monster wands versus cutpurses is 27%, minus 1% for every five player levels.

(White icky things, being STUPID, cannot be slept.)

[myshkin]

Ah, okay. Time permitting I may try to see what's going on there (dust off my meager C skills a little). In the meantime it sounds like I should be able to solve the problem by ditching any items brought over form the previous build and just acquiring new ones in the current version then.

No need to spend effort here. I believe I've found and fixed the bug. But yes, your workaround should work between now and the next development release.

[will_asher]

(White icky things, being STUPID, cannot be slept.)

So sleep monster was made even more useless than it already was?

[Derakon]

If a monster can be asleep, then it should be sleepable. Therefore either mindless monsters should be sleepable or they should always start out awake. Given how marginal sleep-monster is already I'd lean towards the former.

[PowerDiver]

I'm having trouble reproducing this; I was able to ID-by-use a wand of confuse monster with a level 1 dwarf priest versus a small kobold at 50' on the first try. With what level character were you aiming the wand? The base resist chance for sleep monster wands versus cutpurses is 27%, minus 1% for every five player levels.

I don't know, a paladin probably CL around 20 to 25. I could have been unlucky 4 times in a row before giving up. It might even have been just 3 tries, though I think it was 4 -- the only reason I tried multiple times was that I thought it might be wonder.

There didn't use to be much of a base resist. You were pretty much certain up to ML 11, and it was pointless beyond that. My original post was asking if there had been a change, rather than reporting it as a bug.

How long has a cutpurse had a save over 20%? It would surprise me that I did not notice.

[myshkin]

I don't know, a paladin probably CL around 20 to 25. I could have been unlucky 4 times in a row before giving up. It might even have been just 3 tries, though I think it was 4 -- the only reason I tried multiple times was that I thought it might be wonder.

There didn't use to be much of a base resist. You were pretty much certain up to ML 11, and it was pointless beyond that. My original post was asking if there had been a change, rather than reporting it as a bug.

How long has a cutpurse had a save over 20%? It would surprise me that I did not notice.

Good question, and I didn't know the answer until I looked it up. The change in behavior appears to have entered the codebase at the end of January, with the merge of Jeff's monster pain messages patch (with some fixes from CunningGabe). Previously, immunity to sleep was governed only by the NO_SLEEP or UNIQUE flags; saving throw was 0 until level 11, and then was (mlvl - 10) in (clvl - 10). Now, immunity to sleep comes from NO_SLEEP, STUPID, EMPTY_MIND, WEIRD_MIND, and UNDEAD. Uniques get three saving throws (I think this is supposed to be two saving throws, but some code is duplicated). The saving throw is (25 + mlvl - clvl/5) in 100. The upshot is that it is easier to sleep high-level monsters than before, but much harder to sleep low-level monsters.

Jeff, if this is not what you intended, please comment.

[will_asher]

Why would STUPID and WEIRD_MIND make a monster immune to sleep? doesn't make sense. What's the point of the NO_SLEEP flag if you use a bunch of different flags to decide what is immune to sleep? If something should be immune to sleep, it should have that flag, otherwise it should be able to be put to sleep.