22 May 2011 development release

[myshkin]

A new build of the development version of Angband will be on rephial shortly. Changes since the second 5 May 2011 build:

• Bugfixes
  • Meteors from meteor swarm now travel like bolts
  • Sauron and Morgoth can appear on cavern levels
  • Origin crash for no-longer-valid monster entries fixed
  • Priests no longer get Study(1) after learning all spells
  • Monster recall only uses state known to players
  • Object recall subwindow can now display first item of inventory
  • Traps and treasure veins retain their color at the trap detection border
  • Squelch menus no longer display artifact base kinds
  • Memory over-read bug in cmd0.c fixed (thanks to david3x3x3)
  • Thrown objects now always require aiming
  • Game correctly presents a 'bad' squelch level for some bad items
  • Multi-hued and flickering monsters now start off as their base color
  • Summoning of kin summons kin correctly
  • Generating randarts from a dead savefile with standarts and keep_randarts on now works properly
  • Monster spellcasting failure rate is now nonzero with birth_ai_smart off
• Scared monsters have an increased failure rate for spellcasting
• Poison resistance now prevents poisoning and reduces damage from poison melee attacks. Master and grand master mystics have a second PARALYZE attack instead of a POISON attack.
• Better wording for weak brands
• In standard artifact set, +dam and +speed toned down on nonweapons
• Target-out-of-range message shows distance (thanks to ChodTheWacko)
• Artifacts carried by deleted monsters are now preserved in preserve-off mode
• New birth_keep_randarts option
• The note command takes /me and /say
• Cleanup of pluralization and capitalization behavior
• New TMD_BOLD player timed status
• Refactoring: monster spells, ego generation/ID, m_ptr->known_pflags, check_state() takes a flagset, trap effects, feature accessors

Please note that the pointy penalty removal is not in the list above. We decided to revert the removal in favor of further consideration.

Please follow up in this thread with any reports you may have.

[Antoine]

A new build of the development version of Angband will be on rephial shortly.

Good work!
A.

[Timo Pietilä]

A new build of the development version of Angband will be on rephial shortly. Changes since the second 5 May 2011 build:

• In standard artifact set, +dam and +speed toned down on nonweapons

Please follow up in this thread with any reports you may have.

I hope this doesn't mean Feanor and Rings of Power? (still not upgraded, had not got the right state of mind for rewriting all 30 or so / class macros).

[Derakon]

I took a quick look at a diff of artifact.txt, and here's the changes I'm seeing:

Narya at (+1, +1) (was +6)
Nenya at (+3, +3) (was +8)
Vilya at (+5, +5) (was +10)
All three have also lost the minor speed boosts they used to give (+2, +3, +4, respectively)

Elessar at (+7, +0) (was (+7, +7)); lost its speed bonus

Hammerhand at (+3, +3) (was +9)
Cambeleg at (+6, +6) (was +8)
Cammithrim at (+2, +2) (was +5)
Paurnen at (+3, +3) (was +4)
Fingolfin at (+8, +8) (was +10)
Haradrim at (+0, +0) (was +5)

Gondor, Numenor, and Holcolleth lost their speed bonuses

Colannon's pval reduced from 3 to 2

Luthien's speed bonus reduced from 4 to 2 (other modifiers remain at +4)

Looks interesting; should make the game harder too. Though, I'm not certain Hammerhand is worthwhile any more.

[Timo Pietilä]

I took a quick look at a diff of artifact.txt, and here's the changes I'm seeing:

Narya at (+1, +1) (was +6)
Nenya at (+3, +3) (was +8)
Vilya at (+5, +5) (was +10)
All three have also lost the minor speed boosts they used to give (+2, +3, +4, respectively)

Those used to be +1, +2 and +3 (PVAL). If they were +2, +3 and +4 then they were only in dev versions.

Elessar at (+7, +0) (was (+7, +7)); lost its speed bonus

I would prefer keeping speed, losing combat bonuses completely. Now it is weaker than Trickery (unless you tweaked trickery as well).

Hammerhand at (+3, +3) (was +9)
Cambeleg at (+6, +6) (was +8)
Cammithrim at (+2, +2) (was +5)
Paurnen at (+3, +3) (was +4)
Fingolfin at (+8, +8) (was +10)
Haradrim at (+0, +0) (was +5)

Cambeleg and Fingolfin were unaltered old artifacts with +8 and +10 respectively. they need to retain those, because ego handgears are so powerful. Same for Cammithrim. without good damage bonuses it is just weak slaying ego with FA. If you look at damage bonus STR gives and find Cestus of Power (+5,+8) (+5) you have handgear that beats all of the above artifacts in damage if you actually need that +5 to STR. Cambeleg could still be preferred because of +2 CON, or Fingolfin because of +4 DEX, but if you have max blows and don't need CON that ego is better than any of the artifacts.

Haradrim has lost its extra blow as well, I take? Extra blow is much worse than damage bonuses. In shields damage bonuses actually make sense too, shield bashing is part of the medieval martial arts. If something shields would make it harder to hit multiple times, not easier.

Gondor, Numenor, and Holcolleth lost their speed bonuses

These are all good

Colannon's pval reduced from 3 to 2

Didn't lose speed?

Luthien's speed bonus reduced from 4 to 2 (other modifiers remain at +4)

Looks interesting; should make the game harder too. Though, I'm not certain Hammerhand is worthwhile any more.

Hammerhand could keep the +9 until we have some other solution to aggravation, however "Hammerhand being useless" is tradition

[Derakon]

Cambeleg and Fingolfin were unaltered old artifacts with +8 and +10 respectively. they need to retain those, because ego handgears are so powerful. Same for Cammithrim. without good damage bonuses it is just weak slaying ego with FA. If you look at damage bonus STR gives and find Cestus of Power (+5,+8) (+5) you have handgear that beats all of the above artifacts in damage if you actually need that +5 to STR. Cambeleg could still be preferred because of +2 CON, or Fingolfin because of +4 DEX, but if you have max blows and don't need CON that ego is better than any of the artifacts.

+5 Cestus of Power with max damage bonus is such an implausible outlier that IMO it's not worth considering. And glove artifacts don't need to beat out glove egos. They can do things that glove egos don't do; personally I find that more interesting. Then you have to decide if e.g. the gloves that give you +3 WIS/DEX and resistance to darkness are better than the gloves that make you better at melee. Right now most of the standart gloves are combat-oriented -- three of the Paur* gauntlets and Eol aren't, but the Paur*s are wimpy and Eol aggravates. I'd rather replace Cambeleg with late-game non-melee-oriented gloves, to contrast with Fingolfin. Fingolfin only had trouble competing because +4 DEX and +2 damage wasn't generally worthwhile compared to +2 STR/CON; take that away and Fingolfin becomes the ultimate melee gloves (barring lucky Cesti of Power) while Cambeleg can do something else.

Cammithrim doesn't have a slaying ego (it might have earlier, but it doesn't now); it's basically supercharged gloves of Free Action. Its competition when you find it is likely to be Gloves of Slaying (which it might or might not beat through non-combat-boost abilities) or Gloves of Free Action, which it is strictly better than. Of course if you find it later after the better glove egos show up it's useless, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Also, Haradrim still has +1 blows.

[Timo Pietilä]

+5 Cestus of Power with max damage bonus is such an implausible outlier that IMO it's not worth considering. And glove artifacts don't need to beat out glove egos.

I disagree on both counts. Even +5 to dam +5 power beats both Fingolfin and Cambeleg. Cestus having innate combat bonus is new addition. They are also relatively common, common enough that you find several during single game. Cambeleg/Fingolfin needs to be able to compete with those and they both do that by doing just what you said, Cambeleg giving +2 to CON and Fingolfin giving +4 DEX as well as FA. However they also need to have big combat bonuses, otherwise they are not worth using. +8 and +10 are good numbers for both of them, less makes them too inferior to high-end egos. If something you could make them a bit more rare (not much though, that too is pretty on spot currently).

These two artifacts are top artifacts, so they need to beat egos in most combinations. And be relatively rare. Otherwise there is no "Wohoo!" -effect. Other artifact gloves are not that important.

[jens]

Assertion failed

Encountered a real bug!

I've started a HE mage, and was down at dlvl 3. Had just tried out like 4 different potions to ID them. Then a while later I was fighting a snake, when something offscreen mumbled, and there was an assertion crash.

I have a save file from less than 100 turns before, but don't believe it's helpfull (I've tried twice to reproduce the crash but no success). However I did find out that there was a kobold shaman lurking out of sight.

[Magnate]

Encountered a real bug!

I've started a HE mage, and was down at dlvl 3. Had just tried out like 4 different potions to ID them. Then a while later I was fighting a snake, when something offscreen mumbled, and there was an assertion crash.

I have a save file from less than 100 turns before, but don't believe it's helpfull (I've tried twice to reproduce the crash but no success). However I did find out that there was a kobold shaman lurking out of sight.

Excellent - thank you. This is a real bug - something is going wrong with a spell that the kobold shaman is trying to cast. (I presume it was the shaman - were there any other casters lurking just out of sight?) Please post the savefile and I will try to reproduce.

[kaypy]

The Alter command doesn't seem to be working on some terrains. I am having to manually dig through veins and treasure.

--
My dev-release summoning ritual worked!
1) Start a new character
2) A new dev-release will immediately become available

[jens]

Tinkered a bit more with this, seems the crash occurs whenever the kobold shaman casts a magic missile.

Made a new save just before the encounter. In the save file just walk north and walk around in the room until the kobold casts a magic missile. Have a bunch of the new and improved CLW, so it's quite safe :-)

[Magnate]

Tinkered a bit more with this, seems the crash occurs whenever the kobold shaman casts a magic missile.

Made a new save just before the encounter. In the save file just walk north and walk around in the room until the kobold casts a magic missile. Have a bunch of the new and improved CLW, so it's quite safe :-)

That's odd, because I fixed a crash on magic missile earlier on in the spell refactor. Either I messed up and regressed somewhere, or it's a coincidence and it's a completely different problem.

Thanks for the savefile - I'll have a look this evening.

[jens]

So far it's crashed for me each time someone cast a magic missile on me, so guessing it is still buggy...

[kaypy]

I'm getting about the same: magic missile = destroy the world

I have seen it occasionally get the spell off without crashing, but it's 80% crashing so far...

[Magnate]

I'm getting about the same: magic missile = destroy the world

I have seen it occasionally get the spell off without crashing, but it's 80% crashing so far...

Hmmm. Inconsistency makes bug hunting much harder, but if it happens 80% of the time it's probably going to be easy enough to find and fix.

Looks like there will be a new nightly out soon, as there's not much testing that can be done if magic missiles crash the game ...