22 May 2011 development release

[Timo Pietilä]

It seems that shimmering critters interfere with the new targeting indicators. And they make hallucination *seriously* disturbing, but that's not necessarily as much of an issue.

Is there some way to make the screen just refresh those critters, rather than redrawing the entire screen each animation frame?

I believe that this is the reason for flickering overhead term window. Each time flickering monster changes color, entire overhead screen gets redrawn.

[kaypy]

It seems that shimmering critters interfere with the new targeting indicators. And they make hallucination *seriously* disturbing, but that's not necessarily as much of an issue.

Is there some way to make the screen just refresh those critters, rather than redrawing the entire screen each animation frame?

[Timo Pietilä]

I thought mithril gear only ignored acid. Has it traditionally ignored fire as well?

It is metal. Anything metal should ignore fire, as no other metallic gears burn except apparently gauntlets and boots. Bodyarmor, shields and helmets made from metal ignore fire I think (can't remember for sure just now and too tired to check).

[Magnate]

I just thought the same. I just lost Mithril gauntlets of Agility +5 to plasma vortex blast because I didn't pick it up (didn't have inventory space, had still three scrolls of ID to burn to the loot from previous fight and one still un-pseudo-ID weapon that was highly unlikely to be better than what I was using at the moment in inventory). I thought that it is immune to fire, but it wasn't.

I thought mithril gear only ignored acid. Has it traditionally ignored fire as well?

[Magnate]

If something out of view uses a spell or breath, you get the anonymous message. However, if you can see yourself, you should know what the attack was.

"Something breathes. You are hit by something." is a bit *too* anonymous, unless the player is completely blind.

This is a bug. The second part of the message should only be generic if @ is blind. I will look into this - thanks.

[Timo Pietilä]

A variety of items seem a little more flammable than I'd expect

Gauntlets, Mithril Gauntlets, and maybe the various metal shod boots could probably use the IGNORE_FIRE tag

I just thought the same. I just lost Mithril gauntlets of Agility +5 to plasma vortex blast because I didn't pick it up (didn't have inventory space, had still three scrolls of ID to burn to the loot from previous fight and one still un-pseudo-ID weapon that was highly unlikely to be better than what I was using at the moment in inventory). I thought that it is immune to fire, but it wasn't.

[kaypy]

A variety of items seem a little more flammable than I'd expect

Gauntlets, Mithril Gauntlets, and maybe the various metal shod boots could probably use the IGNORE_FIRE tag

[Antoine]

"Something breathes. You are hit by something." is a bit *too* anonymous, unless the player is completely blind.

Could be worse. "It does something! It hurts!"

A.

[kaypy]

If something out of view uses a spell or breath, you get the anonymous message. However, if you can see yourself, you should know what the attack was.

"Something breathes. You are hit by something." is a bit *too* anonymous, unless the player is completely blind.

[Max Stats]

Assert failed

Got this message in a fairly recent nightly. I tried pulling the latest nightly and seeing if it was still there, and it was:

angband: cave.c:837: map_info: Assertion `(int)g->m_idx < cave->mon_max' failed.

Savefile attached.

EDIT: I got the error by casting Detection.

[Magnate]

Shards do not appear to cause cuts at the moment

Might just be Earth hounds. They appear to try to run the timed effect, but with duration 0

Ah, the shards cut effect appears to have a base duration of 0d100

No, the *first* RV is the base duration. The second is the damage-dependent duration, so it should be 1d(100% of the damage number). But your fix is correct- it does need the 1 in the second field of the second RV. Thanks for the catch - it'll be fixed in the next dev version.

[Magnate]

If the power calculations you are using are similar to the ones in the spreadsheet at (http://www.terminalarrogance.com/mon_pwr.xls) then one real problem is that those power levels are qubic in dlvl for many of the levels. In your code you divide it with dlvl, a factor that is linear in dlvl. There is no way that it can give similar results over the whole dungeon.

Some suggestions, and all of them are unrelated, so if you dismiss one of them, please still consider the rest...

Suggestion 1: Lower the thresholds, and increase the divisor to dlvl*dlvl (but maybe removing the division by 20).

This. Thank you for pointing it out - I had noticed that the monster feelings were far less well distributed than the object feelings, and this is the reason.

Your third suggestion is good, but further off. I am working with myshkin on some really serious improvements to stats, after which it might be possible.

[kaypy]

Shards do not appear to cause cuts at the moment

Might just be Earth hounds. They appear to try to run the timed effect, but with duration 0

Ah, the shards cut effect appears to have a base duration of 0d100

list-spell-effects.h should have

RSE(5,	0,				GF_SHARD,	TRUE,	TMD_CUT,		RV(0,0,0,0),	RV(0,[COLOR="DarkOrange"]1[/COLOR],100,0),	0,		FALSE,	0,				RV(5,125,0,0))

[kaypy]

As well as seeing stuff that doesn't seem to be triggering feelings properly, I am starting to think that there is something screwy with the OOD items mechanism- either that or the RNG wants to have my characters' babies.

Lets see, _Magi, _Dispel (at least that gave a feeling, but dl2??), 287 power artifact (that's more than the palantir-alike for my radarts). I was going to add ?Acquire, but apparently that is supposed to turn up all over the place these days.

_*destruct*,...

[jens]

Level feelings

If the power calculations you are using are similar to the ones in the spreadsheet at (http://www.terminalarrogance.com/mon_pwr.xls) then one real problem is that those power levels are qubic in dlvl for many of the levels. In your code you divide it with dlvl, a factor that is linear in dlvl. There is no way that it can give similar results over the whole dungeon.

Some suggestions, and all of them are unrelated, so if you dismiss one of them, please still consider the rest...

Suggestion 1: Lower the thresholds, and increase the divisor to dlvl*dlvl (but maybe removing the division by 20).


Suggestion 2: Lower the number of feelings
Previously we had 9 feelings (excluding special and stairscuming)
Now we have 81 feelings (9 mon * 9 obj). I suggest we reduce that to 16 = 4 mon * 4 obj.

Then the formulas only need to check if a level is: Below average, about average, above average, way above average. for both monster and object feelings, which would be easier to get right, and would be easier for players to distinguish.


Suggestion 3: Another algorithm for feelings
Run some stat collection, determine average power levels for each level (for both monsters and objects), including stdev. Hardcode two tables with these values (or have them in a text file), and then use the values at the given dlvl and the stdev to determine what the feelings should be.
Problems: More work intitially. Would need to rerun the stat collection whenever major changes have been made, maybe every major release.
Upside: Would work very well when in place.