V 3.5 now in feature freeze

[Antoine]

Thanks Nomad for your comments on the new monster and unique groups.

If anyone else had comments on these I would be interested to hear them...

A.

[ekolis]

The shop interface seems a bit confused. You scroll through the items with the arrow keys, but "g" and "l" don't buy/examine the selected item; instead, they prompt for an item as in old versions of Angband. Still, certain letters used for commands don't have items associated with them, and the help for the shop interface says the "g" and "l" buy/examine the selected item, rather than prompting.

Also, pressing 0/Insert on the numpad with numlock turned off no longer triggers the count prompt for the next command; I have to press the 0 above the O/P keys.

When I died, examining my starting dagger said it did a LOT less damage than it said it did when I was alive...

[Nomad]

Having played a few games and got a character down to 2000' before he died to a mana bolt from Gorlim, I'm definitely very impressed with 3.5 so far. Much more fun to play than 3.4 (which I got frustrated with because the dearth of ego weapons and armour made it hard to keep my warriors alive past about 1500'). The new drop rates seem a lot better, and I like the elemental rings appearing earlier too - I got a fair bit of use out of a ring of ice before I found a good damage ring to replace it.

The levels are far more varied and interesting to explore as well. I really like the new smaller nests and pits; they're a much better size for characters to risk taking on in the early game. (I even cleared a jelly nest.) The rooms full of themed items are great too - it's very cool to come across a little stash of consumables in one place. I find I'm actually diving faster and running away from dangerous locations more often, because there's more a of promise that if you flee an interesting area you'll find something equally worthwhile later.

And I love the new smaller and more varied monster groups - far less boring than battling through great hordes of the same type of monsters. Themed uniques appearing together is fun too. (For values of "fun" that sometimes involve, "Aargh, run away, run away!") I came across Bolg and Azog as a pair, and the trio of stone trolls.

I can't speak for how balanced it is, but it definitely feels like a big leap forward over 3.4 in terms of fun and interest. Really enjoying it!

[takkaria]

Well, they can't crash anything (I hope) but they can certainly give you a pretty mangled layout if you get the spacing wrong in the edit file. But I did some level scumming with cheat_room on and they all seem to display okay. Here's the updated edit file, which adds another 20 room types.

Included, thanks!

[Nomad]

More room templates would be excellent. I think they could comfortably go in now, it's not like they can cause crashes or bugs or anything. (Famous last words...)

Well, they can't crash anything (I hope) but they can certainly give you a pretty mangled layout if you get the spacing wrong in the edit file. But I did some level scumming with cheat_room on and they all seem to display okay. Here's the updated edit file, which adds another 20 room types.

[takkaria]

Just found my first mini ant nest at 500'. Good fun, and about the right size for my character to tackle, though I did get spammed by a ridiculous number of "Something slams against a door" messages from the ants trying to get out while I was exploring the area around it and looking for a way in. (Literally over 100 messages in a row, without the ants succeeded in breaking through - seems like something must be amiss with the bashing mechanic there?)

Yeah, it should be a bit better as of today's build, thanks to PowerWyrm.

The dungeon levels are definitely looking a lot more interesting now. Just stumbled on the first of my templated rooms on the same level, and the layout seems less sparse and empty in general. (Incidentally, I don't know if you'll want to add them now we're in feature freeze, but I designed another dozen or so room templates a while back that I could upload.)

Oh, please do! More room templates would be excellent. I think they could comfortably go in now, it's not like they can cause crashes or bugs or anything. (Famous last words...)

And I like the decision to push the early rings a bit deeper. The first time I spotted one there was a little moment of, "Hey, a ring!" that you don't get when you're finding all the items right at the beginning.

I'm glad it's working.

[Nomad]

Just found my first mini ant nest at 500'. Good fun, and about the right size for my character to tackle, though I did get spammed by a ridiculous number of "Something slams against a door" messages from the ants trying to get out while I was exploring the area around it and looking for a way in. (Literally over 100 messages in a row, without the ants succeeded in breaking through - seems like something must be amiss with the bashing mechanic there?)

The dungeon levels are definitely looking a lot more interesting now. Just stumbled on the first of my templated rooms on the same level, and the layout seems less sparse and empty in general. (Incidentally, I don't know if you'll want to add them now we're in feature freeze, but I designed another dozen or so room templates a while back that I could upload.)

And I like the decision to push the early rings a bit deeper. The first time I spotted one there was a little moment of, "Hey, a ring!" that you don't get when you're finding all the items right at the beginning.

[DaviddesJ]

Yes. One fun part of the game is to find out what things do.

Well, to each his own. All the more reason to have different choices for the different types of players. Which we do have now, so that's good. I just think labeling half of the players as "cheaters" because they have different preferences from the other half is not good. Save the "cheat" label for those things that really change gameplay.

[takkaria]

Any chance getting external monster memory not tied to savegame used? You do get old memories by using same saved game. Any veteran player that uses same savegame for all his/her games have that full memory from the start, but every now and then savegame compability breaks or saved games get lost or corrupted or something like that.

I agree with the suggestion but no-one's come forward to code it yet. It wouldn't be that difficult, but there's always a tonne of stuff to do and it's not high on my personal todolist, at least. My priority with V is trying to fix as many bugs as possible so that 3.5 is a polished release worthy of being played for years to come.

[Timo Pietilä]

Are there really people who go into greater vaults with no idea what any of the enemies in them can do?

Yes. One fun part of the game is to find out what things do.

[Timo Pietilä]

I sympathise with your point and it's something I've thought about doing. But haven't done yet. I guess I worry that newbies will just turn full monster memory on straight away and lose the fun of discovering what monsters do a bit at a time.

Any chance getting external monster memory not tied to savegame used? You do get old memories by using same saved game. Any veteran player that uses same savegame for all his/her games have that full memory from the start, but every now and then savegame compability breaks or saved games get lost or corrupted or something like that.

[DaviddesJ]

I sympathise with your point and it's something I've thought about doing. But haven't done yet. I guess I worry that newbies will just turn full monster memory on straight away and lose the fun of discovering what monsters do a bit at a time.

I'm not sure that's really that much fun. How many people really want to climb all the way down to dl40, discover that some monster has paralysis, start over, climb all the way down to dl40, discover that some other monster has poison breath, start over, etc.? I think most people who stick with Angband for any length of time use one kind of spoiler, or another. The design of the game, where if you don't know what you are doing you tend to die suddenly and unexpectedly, sort of dictates that. Are there really people who go into greater vaults with no idea what any of the enemies in them can do?

The general philosophy of improvements to the game seems to be, if people can do something, you might as well make it easier for them. Macros rather than forcing people to type the same keystrokes over and over. Squelching superfluous items. Looking up stuff easily that people can look up if they want seems to fit squarely into this category.

[takkaria]

Does this mean that resistances are useless? If I'm reading this correctly, it means that if you resist fire, any fire damage you take will be converted to pure damage since the HP you lose from X points of fire damage is less than the HP you lose from X points of pure damage...

Uh, maybe this point isn't so well explained. This change only applies for elemental melee attacks, not for breaths. Also, there is no physical attack damage from the following attack types (the ones that don't use physical force):

   if (method == RBM_TOUCH  ||
        method == RBM_ENGULF ||
        method == RBM_DROOL  ||
        method == RBM_SPIT   ||
        method == RBM_CRAWL  || 
        method == RBM_GAZE   ||
        method == RBM_WAIL   ||
        method == RBM_SPORE  ||
        method == RBM_BEG    ||
        method == RBM_INSULT ||  
        method == RBM_MOAN){

So only things like hitting, clawing, punching, etc. will be affected.

In addition to or replacing their thematic class weapon? Why?

Replacing. Because it sucks to have to explain to newbies that they should sell their weapon and get a dagger instead.

What exactly is the point of multiple food types, anyway? I always go for rations...

To add flavour to the game, both literally and metaphorically.

Hopefully not just the sucky ones can be found at DL10? I always thought it was dumb that early rings were a noob trap, since they were always Weakness or Aggravate Monster...

I think I just shifted the earlier less interesting rings down to dl10, without changing the ones already there. The idea was to add more of a 'discovery curve' e.g. instead of starting to find everything all at once, new item types appear as you dive. I did this because I think it's going to be more fun for new players to discover things like that.

Cool. Why only melee?

Because it's the easiest place to do it. Ideally it would include monster damage and player melee and spells as well, but I have limited coding energy and it's better than nothing.

I might actually play Angband with sound on now!

Yeah, I do sometimes; against some background music it can actually be pretty great.

[takkaria]

Any hope of moving full monster knowledge from a "cheat" option to a "noncheat" option? I don't see the point in penalizing people for looking up in game what they could look up in their browser next to the game. I'm going to play with it on either way, but I don't see the point in marking such games as "cheaters", in the same way that, say, infinite resurrection does.

I sympathise with your point and it's something I've thought about doing. But haven't done yet. I guess I worry that newbies will just turn full monster memory on straight away and lose the fun of discovering what monsters do a bit at a time.

[takkaria]

Why can't no-selling just *prevent* selling, not rip off the player???

Ideally we'd add a store service that would allow you to identify items for free, and then actually prevent selling. But no-one coded that yet.