5 May 2011 development release(s)

[Magnate]

Downloaded from staging branch and compiled just minutes ago (version v3.2.0-820-g49911e7-dirtybash-4.1). By inserting debugging messages, I have traced the crash to the exit of function get_attack_colors in monster1.c but don't know enough about the code to see exactly why it crashes. It is not savefile-related; you can get the crash by starting a brand new character, targeting a townsperson, and pressing "r" to see the monster recall.

Please don't use the staging branch. But that crash should now be fixed ...

EDIT: actually, please use the staging branch all you like - but please don't post about it here, as it will confuse things. If you have a question or comment about anything in staging, please come to #angband-dev on IRC.

[Max Stats]

Crash using monster recall in very latest dev code

Downloaded from staging branch and compiled just minutes ago (version v3.2.0-820-g49911e7-dirtybash-4.1). By inserting debugging messages, I have traced the crash to the exit of function get_attack_colors in monster1.c but don't know enough about the code to see exactly why it crashes. It is not savefile-related; you can get the crash by starting a brand new character, targeting a townsperson, and pressing "r" to see the monster recall.

[Derakon]

Nice idea - feel free to open a ticket for this. I suspect it's not too hard, though it might take a while to get around to it. Note that if you were playing Sangband or Crawl the designers would say that this is precisely the kind of info players should not have ...

Well, then they can not implement it. Vanilla's been going towards maximal transparency for awhile now, and this is just one more step along that route.

Ringwraiths have been overvalued for a long time, and I don't think the original designer (JLE?) knew how tough Maeglin would be. IIRC JLE's monsters were tougher for their xp than most of their predecessors. Ultimately monster xp should be based on monster power, but I want to do a bit more work on power first. (d_m is still keen to implement a situational power rating.)

Fair enough. It's not a huge deal; just a bit jarring. Uniques don't account for a significant proportion of gained XP anyway.

Shucks ;-) It doesn't re-set the duration, but it adds to it - so you can cast multiple times for a longer spell

Looking at the code, if you aren't currently hasted, then you get 1d(clvl + 20) added to the haste timer. Otherwise you get 1d5. Functionally the latter behavior is useless. I'd rather get "timer = max(cur timer, 1d(clvl + 20))". The goal after all is to guarantee that a casting will last you through the next fight, and the next fight is almost certain to exceed 50 game turns.

...Yes, this is WAD. Though in fact I would happily go for all bolt projections to wake all creatures they pass.

Fine by me. The disparity just generally seems weird.

No, I don't think so, but d_m is our LOS guru ...

Here I'd go for "visible doesn't mean targetable", NPP-style. But that's just me.

Thank you - a perfect use for multiple pvals. 1-4 stealth and 3-6 speed sounds fine. I'd even go 4-8 speed, maybe. Most ppl would wear +9 or +10 speed boots in most cases, so they'd still struggle to compete.

Looking at egos.txt, current Elvenkind is +d6 speed; I think it's just that the only two examples I've found in-game have both rolled poorly. They're rarity-30 while Speed is rarity 24; I don't know how relative rarities affect drop rates but I'd guess they're on the order of four or five times less common than boots of speed. At that rate you're very likely to have found good speed boots by the time you find elvenkind, so it's low odds that they'd be worth using.

What if Elvenkind were more like rarity 14, and gave 3+d3 stealth and d4 speed? As an intermediary step between the "low" boots (FA, Stealth, Stability) and speed boots?

My suggestion is to crank up the damage-per-monster from banishment. It could again be dependent on monster power - or we could use monster hp in the meantime.

I can't really see that making a difference unless trying to use banishment against a graveyard could kill you from max HP...and since graveyards are full of differently-symboled monsters, that could be problematic. Should you die for banishing 10 Black Reavers? What if you want to remove the one in this vault that's letting all the monsters out and Feagwath's on the other side of the level where you haven't seen him yet?

[Magnate]

* The damage boosts for wands from magic device skill should be reflected in their descriptions (if only as "You get a 1.35x multiplier to this damage").

Nice idea - feel free to open a ticket for this. I suspect it's not too hard, though it might take a while to get around to it. Note that if you were playing Sangband or Crawl the designers would say that this is precisely the kind of info players should not have ...

* Maeglin gives less experience than Khamul. What.

Ringwraiths have been overvalued for a long time, and I don't think the original designer (JLE?) knew how tough Maeglin would be. IIRC JLE's monsters were tougher for their xp than most of their predecessors. Ultimately monster xp should be based on monster power, but I want to do a bit more work on power first. (d_m is still keen to implement a situational power rating.)

* Recasting Haste Self doesn't reset the duration. Very irritating, since if you cast it awhile back and are about to start a big fight, you need to wait for it to expire before recasting.

Shucks ;-) It doesn't re-set the duration, but it adds to it - so you can cast multiple times for a longer spell ...

* Stone to Mud wakes enemies that it passes through; Trap-Door Destruction doesn't. I guess because StM has the potential to harm enemies?

Yes, this is WAD. Though in fact I would happily go for all bolt projections to wake all creatures they pass.

* Glaurung is able to breathe on me from here. Intended?

No, I don't think so, but d_m is our LOS guru ...

* Boots of Elvenkind seem not very worthwhile now for how rare they are, since they consistently have bad speed boosts. More common or more speed (3-6?), one of the two.

Thank you - a perfect use for multiple pvals. 1-4 stealth and 3-6 speed sounds fine. I'd even go 4-8 speed, maybe. Most ppl would wear +9 or +10 speed boots in most cases, so they'd still struggle to compete.

* Qlzqqlzuup drops various ordinary items (i.e. not guaranteed good). Intended?

Don't think so - not sure how this happened.

* Being able to cast Banishment renders graveyards and zoos trivially plunderable for their floor items. Of course this is only an endgame mage trick, so I don't know that it's worth fixing. NPP handles this by giving the items to the monsters in the nest, but then there's less temptation to try to clear the thing out.

My suggestion is to crank up the damage-per-monster from banishment. It could again be dependent on monster power - or we could use monster hp in the meantime.

* Morgoth really can't handle permanent walls at all; he got stuck ludicrously easily in a Bubbles vault. I'm guessing this has something to do with wall-eaters ignoring walls for purposes of pathing; shouldn't they not ignore permanent walls?

Agreed. Pathfinding needs some serious love.

[Timo Pietilä]

* Glaurung is able to breathe on me from here. Intended?

Asymmetric targeting works both ways. You just got hockey-sticked.

IMO asymmetric targeting is not big problem if it would restrict to grids you really see. Glaurung doesn't see you from that position and you wouldn't be able to see Glaurung if things were reversed, so that should not be possible.

[Derakon]

Here's my comments from my previous character, who was running...hm, not sure what version, but I'll try to trim out stuff that I know has been fixed. Of course, much of this is irrelevant to the nightlies and more just musings on game balance.

* If you have a stack of two different kinds of money, it shows up as &. Seems like money could be consolidated, or just show as the most valuable of the resident types

* Lesser Recharging sucks. At clvl 35 you have odds of 1 in 3.27 of destroying a Wand of Firebolts with 3 charges in it; 1 in 5.26 if it's empty. Those increase to 1 in 8.3 (for an empty wand at that character level) for Greater Recharging.

* When you ignore torches, one of your options is "Ignore: All Wooden Torch".

* The various elemental wands have wildly varying damage ratings. Fireball wands are 2.25x better than lightning ball wands. That seems excessive at some level.

* I've seen numerous times that walls aren't present. E.g. an entire row taken out of a vault (replaced by empty space), or cross-shaped rooms whose inner room has holes in the corners.

* Monsters can teleport into vaults, e.g. via Rift or Teleport Away.

* Comments get truncated when saved to file. E.g. I have a comment "Well, it *was* guarded by water trolls, so I guess I got what". The line limit when writing a comment should be adjusted to suit the line limit in the file, or vice versa.

* The damage boosts for wands from magic device skill should be reflected in their descriptions (if only as "You get a 1.35x multiplier to this damage"). Drain Life and Annihilation are awesome wands -- Drain Life beats everything in Raal's, and Annihilation beats Mana Storm.

* ?Acquirement can generate squelched items (e.g. dungeon books), making it look like nothing happened. Of course, it shouldn't be guaranteed to generate non-squelched stuff...

* Maeglin gives less experience than Khamul. What.

* Recasting Haste Self doesn't reset the duration. Very irritating, since if you cast it awhile back and are about to start a big fight, you need to wait for it to expire before recasting.

* Stone to Mud wakes enemies that it passes through; Trap-Door Destruction doesn't. I guess because StM has the potential to harm enemies?

* Glaurung is able to breathe on me from here. Intended?


* Boots of Elvenkind seem not very worthwhile now for how rare they are, since they consistently have bad speed boosts. More common or more speed (3-6?), one of the two.

* Qlzqqlzuup drops various ordinary items (i.e. not guaranteed good). Intended?

* Being able to cast Banishment renders graveyards and zoos trivially plunderable for their floor items. Of course this is only an endgame mage trick, so I don't know that it's worth fixing. NPP handles this by giving the items to the monsters in the nest, but then there's less temptation to try to clear the thing out.

* Randart names: Iron-Shod Boots of Gondolin; Quarterstaff 'Moron'.

* Morgoth really can't handle permanent walls at all; he got stuck ludicrously easily in a Bubbles vault. I'm guessing this has something to do with wall-eaters ignoring walls for purposes of pathing; shouldn't they not ignore permanent walls?

[myshkin]

3) Minor issue: accents in item (artifact) descriptions still don't display right on my Mac version, and lack of spaces between some words has now cropped up. I notice the Mumakil plural and Craban/Crebain singular/plural thing hasn't yet been addressed. Trying to get you a screenshot example: OK attached the description of Dor-Lomin illustrating accent problem as well as spacing problem.

The spaces are my fault; I failed to add them in some cases when I edited the artifact descriptions. Thanks for the report. I've fixed them in development.

I am aware of the plural and accent issues, and fixing them is on my to-do list.

[SSK]

There is a new build of the development version of Angband. (I am trying to avoid the term "nightly," for reasons that should be clear.) I've started a new thread for it so that we can retire the very lengthy old one. Changes since the 23 April 2011 build:

• Bug fixes: Curlicues Vault layout corrected; out of depth items can no longer reduce level feelings; out of depth item creation deep in the dungeon no longer crashes the game; ego item creation now recognizes when flags are already attached to a pvals; detect invisible now detects monsters again
• Targetting displays a path from the player to the target.
• Monster drops are created when the monster spawns.
• Level feeling boosts from artifacts and ego items are more consistent.
• The game records more specifically the origin of objects lying on the floor (special room, labyrinth, cavern, pit, vault, rubble).
• Refactoring related to object flags, to the test harness, and to the stats module
• Code cleanup and a function length utility
• Artifact description edits

The teleport other description change is not in the version currently up on rephial (sorry, SSK!), but I do have a change committed, and hope to have that change in a new version on rephial later today.

Thanks for all of the feedback. Please follow up in this thread with any reports you may have.

Been playing a later version I guess

1) The description of the teleport other BOLT is now correct and not misleading. THANK YOU MYSHKIN (BTW my new character hasn't located Eonwe, but just found AULE HELLO! With Dor-Lomin, Dal-i-Thalion, ring o' speed, and other goodies, I think he's going to the bottom--carrying LIBERAL teleport level and some *destruction* now. TO is for losers without beaming). Playing more conservatively as well. I hope he doesn't go bye-bye due to a program bug.

2) Aha! now I understand why monsters are now dropping artifacts on superb levels rather than on-floor.

3) Minor issue: accents in item (artifact) descriptions still don't display right on my Mac version, and lack of spaces between some words has now cropped up. I notice the Mumakil plural and Craban/Crebain singular/plural thing hasn't yet been addressed. Trying to get you a screenshot example: OK attached the description of Dor-Lomin illustrating accent problem as well as spacing problem.

[d_m]

Magnate, I think this one is for you (apologies if it is not..!):

Your new cavern levels do not have a Perma-wall surrounding the edges of the level. Hence, one can cause havoc (i.e., crashes) when digging or casting stone-to-mud at the edge of the level.

That is my fault. I will fix it, thanks for reporting it!

[Spacebux]

Stone-to-Mud Crash.

Magnate, I think this one is for you (apologies if it is not..!):

Your new cavern levels do not have a Perma-wall surrounding the edges of the level. Hence, one can cause havoc (i.e., crashes) when digging or casting stone-to-mud at the edge of the level.


"Failed assertion: oidx <= z_info -> o_max at line 4281 of file object/obj-util.c"

This is the error message that pops up when you tunnel or attempt to remove the wall edge.

-SBux-

[Max Stats]

Very minor message formatting issue

Playing current nightly, after dropping artifact:

> You drop The Lucerne Hammer 'Turmil' (2d5) (+10,+11) [+8] <+4> (t).
> You no longer have the Lucerne Hammers 'Turmil' (2d5) (+10,+11) [+8] <+4> (t).

[Magnate]

I have branded a few stacks of ammo with the spell from Tensers, but when I examine them, they do not say that they are "branded" nor does the damage rating show that they do extra damage to monsters susceptible to their element. They do, however, get named according to their branding, and they can't be re-branded with another element. Ammo that is created already branded seems to function normally.

Version string is v3.2.0-820-g49911e7-dirtybash-4.1. Savefile attached (affected ammo is in quiver slots n, p, and r).

Oooh, well spotted - I think this is an obscure result of the object flags changes, because IIRC the ammo branding spell sets the ego type directly. Will check this.

EDIT: Yes - got it - thanks again. Fix will be in the next autobuilt version (but that might not be for a week or so).

[Spacebux]

Fixed!

Fixed. This fixes crashes from eating a stack of food off the floor, quaffing potions off the floor, and reading scrolls off the floor when pressing 'n' or CTRL-V when the item count reaches 0.


In cmd-obj.c, insert:

void do_cmd_use(cmd_code code, cmd_arg args[])
{

int item = args[0].item;
object_type *o_ptr = object_from_item_idx(item);
int effect;

if (!item_is_available(item, NULL, (USE_INVEN | USE_FLOOR))) {

msg("That item is not within your reach.");
return;

}
bool ident = FALSE, used = FALSE;
bool was_aware = object_flavor_is_aware(o_ptr);
int dir = 5;

Maybe that is not the best place for it, but that check prevents the code from going further, generating segmentation faults and worse.

-SBux-

[Spacebux]

Quaff crash.

BTW, I confirmed it also follows that quaffing a stack of potions off the floor will also get your the crash, since quaffing is also handled by the same generic do_cmd_use() routine.

[Spacebux]

OK, I've filed a bug using this information but it's going to take a while to fix. The correct fix is in game-cmd.c, you were right before, it needs a safety check to make sure all the relevant bits of the command are still valid when repeating it.

Thank you for doing that.. but, all my attempts to perform a NULL pointer check in game-cmd.c failed---which is what threw me off so often. The repeat command sequence is quite elusive in the code. While most of the commands are well-defined in game-cmd.h/.c, how the code handles 'n' is not trivial, in my opinion (as a weak C-coder).

Somehow, even if you put in checks in game-cmd.c, the code still circumvents those checks and repeats the command. I still haven't mastered the flow of the code yet to comprehend how "assert()" is still being called even if a I insert a check for a NULL pointer in game-cmd.c or even into cmd-obj.c ahead of that line. Maybe checking o_ptr is not the answer...?

-SBux-