Angband 4.0 beta release

[Nick]

Ooh, those interesting rooms look excellent! That's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do next with pits and room templates, so I'd be very excited to see those implemented. (My thoughts were along the lines that instead of having fixed monsters for a specific room, you might load a room layout from one edit file, and then fill it out according to a themed profile from another file like the ones in pit.txt. So one time you might come upon a given room and find the monster types at positions A, B, and C are priests and the treasures at X are priest books, but another time you might find the same layout room with the monsters at A, B and C being archers and the treasures at X are stacks of ammo, etc. Which makes it more variable and also has the advantage that you could then do an entire themed level like an orc town by giving every room the same profile.)

The other idea I had was unique-specific templated rooms, where, say, when you arrive at Mim's native level there's a chance of encountering a 'Dwarf Hall' special room/vault that contains Mim and his two sons (if they're still alive) or a ruined version of the same room if you've already killed them.

...I have all sorts of thoughts on this, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself when you're still doing the bugfixes at the moment. (Especially considering that by now I've forgotten almost everything I previously knew about the Angband code and how to use Git.)

Having forgotten the detail is probably good because a lot has changed. You probably want to look at gen-room.c (for template room and vault generation, and also new stuff which isn't appearing yet, like rooms of chambers) and gen-monster.c, which does all the stuff about placing particular monsters. There are some unused pit profiles too, and also the capacity to do entire themed levels (see the 'lair' and 'moria' levels in gen-cave.c).

The plan is for new dungeon gen to be one of the big things in 4.1, so I'm really pleased you're thinking about it. I like the ideas already

[Nomad]

You might want to have a look at some of the stuff in vault.txt that isn't actually operational yet - in particular the layout rules at the top, and the interesting rooms (starting about line 1550). In particular there's more general control over what can be put in vaults, and this could be easily extended to the template rooms. I've also tweaked the use of symbols so they're pretty much common between vaults and template rooms, and I guess in the end the two will probably become more of a continuum from template room all the way to greater vault.

Ooh, those interesting rooms look excellent! That's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do next with pits and room templates, so I'd be very excited to see those implemented. (My thoughts were along the lines that instead of having fixed monsters for a specific room, you might load a room layout from one edit file, and then fill it out according to a themed profile from another file like the ones in pit.txt. So one time you might come upon a given room and find the monster types at positions A, B, and C are priests and the treasures at X are priest books, but another time you might find the same layout room with the monsters at A, B and C being archers and the treasures at X are stacks of ammo, etc. Which makes it more variable and also has the advantage that you could then do an entire themed level like an orc town by giving every room the same profile.)

The other idea I had was unique-specific templated rooms, where, say, when you arrive at Mim's native level there's a chance of encountering a 'Dwarf Hall' special room/vault that contains Mim and his two sons (if they're still alive) or a ruined version of the same room if you've already killed them.

...I have all sorts of thoughts on this, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself when you're still doing the bugfixes at the moment. (Especially considering that by now I've forgotten almost everything I previously knew about the Angband code and how to use Git.)

[Nick]

Also, I've been meaning to say that I'm really liking the new dungeon generation: the various odd-shaped rooms seem to be much better integrated now, so instead of them just being isolated on the end of a single adjoining corridor you get interestingly messy layouts

I don't think I'm responsible for any change in dungeon gen as it's currently appearing; credit actually goes to you and the devteam.

Quite looking forward to being able to play around with the new dungeon_profile edit file and maybe actually doing something with the room type and rating fields in room_template once 4.0 has been debugged.

You might want to have a look at some of the stuff in vault.txt that isn't actually operational yet - in particular the layout rules at the top, and the interesting rooms (starting about line 1550). In particular there's more general control over what can be put in vaults, and this could be easily extended to the template rooms. I've also tweaked the use of symbols so they're pretty much common between vaults and template rooms, and I guess in the end the two will probably become more of a continuum from template room all the way to greater vault.

[Nomad]

Update 9295c63 fixes room template tvals (and also makes a number of other improvements to vault and template room code).

Thanks! The edit files are much more readable now. Also, I've been meaning to say that I'm really liking the new dungeon generation: the various odd-shaped rooms seem to be much better integrated now, so instead of them just being isolated on the end of a single adjoining corridor you get interestingly messy layouts like this:

[TT][BC=black][COLOR=white]
[COLOR="#00FFFF"]High-Elf[/COLOR]                                                                      
[COLOR="#00FFFF"]Swashbuckler[/COLOR]                                                                  
[COLOR="#00FFFF"]Warrior[/COLOR]                                                                       
LEVEL [COLOR="#00FF00"]    19[/COLOR]                                     ##########                   
NXT [COLOR="#00FF00"]     718[/COLOR]                                     #....<...#                   
AU [COLOR="#00FF00"]     4324[/COLOR]                                     #.######.#                   
[COLOR="#C0C0C0"]|[/COLOR][COLOR="#C08040"]}[/COLOR][COLOR="#0040FF"]=[/COLOR][COLOR="#C00000"]=[/COLOR][COLOR="#00FFFF"]"[/COLOR][COLOR="#C08040"]~[/COLOR][COLOR="#0040FF"]([/COLOR][COLOR="#008040"]([/COLOR][COLOR="#C08040"])[/COLOR][COLOR="#808080"]][/COLOR][COLOR="#C08040"]][/COLOR][COLOR="#808080"]][/COLOR] ##########                          #......#.#                   
STR:  [COLOR="#00FF00"] 18/30[/COLOR] .........#                       ####.#....#.###                 
INT:  [COLOR="#00FF00"]    11[/COLOR] ########.#                       #....#.####.#>##                
WIS:  [COLOR="#00FF00"]     8[/COLOR] .......#.#                    ####.##.#.###[COLOR="#9020FF"]![/COLOR].[COLOR="#C08040"]'[/COLOR]..##               
DEX:  [COLOR="#00FF00"] 18/40[/COLOR] .......#.######################.........##..###[COLOR="#808080"]][/COLOR].#               
CON:  [COLOR="#00FF00"]    13[/COLOR] .......#.....................[COLOR="#00FFFF"]"[/COLOR]!.........###[COLOR="#804000"]'[/COLOR]# ######             
             .......#.##########################.#.##..[COLOR="#C08040"]'[/COLOR].###.[COLOR="#C08040"]'[/COLOR]..##            
Cur AC [COLOR="#00FF00"]   32[/COLOR] .......#.#                        #####...#.....#.@.#            
HP [COLOR="#00FF00"] 195[/COLOR]/[COLOR="#00FF00"] 195[/COLOR] #[COLOR="#C08040"]'[/COLOR]######.#                            #######.#######            
             .........#                                  ###                  
             ##########                                                       
                                                                              [/COLOR][/BC][/TT]

Quite looking forward to being able to play around with the new dungeon_profile edit file and maybe actually doing something with the room type and rating fields in room_template once 4.0 has been debugged.

[krazyhades]

On the other hand, there are two new bugs, so we're minus 1 for today.

That's an unfair way to think of it and you know it <3

[Nick]

Update 9295c63 fixes room template tvals (and also makes a number of other improvements to vault and template room code).

On the other hand, there are two new bugs, so we're minus 1 for today.

[Nomad]

With selling on, the temple will happily buy sharp-edged weapons from you as well as priest-appropriate blunt/blessed ones.

[Nomad]

If you use shift+direction to run and there's a trap in your path, instead of stopping in the square before the trap, you automatically attempt to disarm it and then stop.

[Nomad]

If you meant that 37cfc4c fixes the squelch crash bug then I'm afraid it doesn't. Sorry.
(I'm now doing a union jack vault and I've crashed 5 or 6 times so far)

Yes, I'm afraid I'm still getting squelch crashes too, though it seems to be a fair bit less frequent than before. It's unfortunately very difficult to anticipate or reproduce, but generally seems to be triggered by an auto-squelched item falling on top of a pile. I feel like ammo often seems to be involved, so possibly it's got something to do with auto-squelch interrupting auto-pickup?

I'm wondering if fixing this will potentially fix it:

Not sure if this is related to the main squelch crash, but there's also a problem with using 'g' on a stack of items - it just automatically picks up the first item instead of prompting you to pick from a list, and sometimes this will cause you to actually pick up a squelched item. (The item is immediately recognised as on the ignore list and dropped again, which I assume returns it to the bottom of the stack, because if you press 'g' again you pick up something different. Although sometimes that turns out to be yet another squelched item.)

It does seem like there's something not quite right about the intersection of squelching, pickup and piles of multiple items.

[MattB]

So what is happening right before the crashes, exactly? Any chance of a savefile?

It's actually quite hard to get a savefile because it doesn't reliably reproduce. That is to say, you save, pick something up, autosquelch and drop it, crash. Reload, pick same something up, squelch and drop it fine.

[Nick]

OK, I guess that's fair enough -- I'm certainly not asking for any pre-commitment to merging a CMake-based build system, but it'd be nice to have some idea of whether it's going to have any chance if I'm going to spend time on a proof of concept .

Where is the discussion happening? (I.e. bug tracker or somewhere else...?)

Um, here, plus the brief update discussion on IRC (log here).

[Nick]

If you meant that 37cfc4c fixes the squelch crash bug then I'm afraid it doesn't. Sorry.
(I'm now doing a union jack vault and I've crashed 5 or 6 times so far)

So what is happening right before the crashes, exactly? Any chance of a savefile?

[MattB]

It's not all progress - looks like I introduced the current squelch bug a few updates ago trying to make the quiver subwindow update properly

So 37cfc4c fixes that, and also stops traps from persisting in walls after earthquakes, etc.

If you meant that 37cfc4c fixes the squelch crash bug then I'm afraid it doesn't. Sorry.
(I'm now doing a union jack vault and I've crashed 5 or 6 times so far)

[AnonymousHero]

Yes, I did, but I'm a bit much of a n00b to make an informed comment. There's also been some chatter about updating the current buildsystem; I'm inclined to say "not yet" to both and wait for more clarity from discussion among the knowledgeable.

OK, I guess that's fair enough -- I'm certainly not asking for any pre-commitment to merging a CMake-based build system, but it'd be nice to have some idea of whether it's going to have any chance if I'm going to spend time on a proof of concept .

Where is the discussion happening? (I.e. bug tracker or somewhere else...?)

[Nick]

This morning I decided some more structure to this process was needed, and filed (I believe) all the outstanding bugs from this thread on the bug tracker. That was 37 new ones, for a total of 60 which need fixing before we have a final product (some of those are negotiable). Feel free to let me know if I've missed or misrepresented something.

Btw, did you see my post about CMake? I mention it only because it was a complete nightmare to get "-fsanitize=..." and Clang working with the Vanilla build system, during which I had to hack the Makefile rather badly... and yet with CMake it works rather trivially.

Yes, I did, but I'm a bit much of a n00b to make an informed comment. There's also been some chatter about updating the current buildsystem; I'm inclined to say "not yet" to both and wait for more clarity from discussion among the knowledgeable.

To everyone else, thanks again for all the excellent testing. There should certainly be at least one update this weekend, probably including a smallish rewrite of vault and template room handling, inspired by Nomad's observation that template tvals are broken. I also have a 4-day weekend coming up, so I have a vague working plan of trying to re-re-write object selection then and fixing the inscription and other issues.

Please note that none of the above is legally binding