Angband 4.0beta status

[Nomad]

What's really needed is more guidance as to difficulty in the info text for each race and class. Mage needs to have text to the effect of "is utterly rubbish in the early game and requires a lot of very careful play due to his poor physical stats." I suspect that simply reordering the options is too subtle a form of guidance.

Well, I think there's actually more room for text now that player gender options are gone, so how about adding a short 'difficulty' line for each type, highlighted in a different colour to the rest of the info text? (Maybe even colour-coded red/yellow/green for difficulty.) Something along the lines of:

[bc=black][color=white]                                                       
 Human       [color=#ff3333]Hard! No bonuses or special abilities.[/color]    
 Half-Troll  [color=#00ff00]Easy. Very strong and tough, regenerates.[/color] 
 Kobold      [color=yellow]Moderate. Weak but resists poison.[/color]        
                                                       
[/color][/bc]

And maybe the class descriptions could have suggested choices for races as well:

[bc=black][color=white]                                                       
 Warrior     [color=#00ff00]Easy.[/color] Suits: Half-Troll, Half-Orc, Dwarf  
 Mage        [color=#ff3333]Hardest![/color] Suits: High-Elf, Hobbit, Gnome   
                                                       
[/color][/bc]

(Although I foresee much arguing over difficulty levels and which races actually are best for which class...)

[Derakon]

Lockpicking. You asked for continued reports. Just took 37 turns to pick a lock on DL1. Half Troll Warrior. Dex is 16. But, maybe it took so long because @ is really stupid. Int 4.

This doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Young half-troll warriors can very frequently dig through doors faster than they can pick them.

This is a suggested change rather than a beta bug, but several recent threads asking for beginner advice have made me wonder if it might not be more newbie friendly to reorder the character races so that 'easy' races are first? The way it's set up now leads to the assumption that humans are the standard default when they're actually a really terrible choice for a beginner.

What's really needed is more guidance as to difficulty in the info text for each race and class. Mage needs to have text to the effect of "is utterly rubbish in the early game and requires a lot of very careful play due to his poor physical stats." I suspect that simply reordering the options is too subtle a form of guidance.

Part of the problem is that for some reason most newbies insist on playing caster classes and rangers. We need to encourage them to play warriors, paladins, and rogues (and especially warriors), because those are the classes that are actually going to survive long enough for the newbie to see what the game's like. Similarly, we want them to pick races that are suited to those classes. Nobody wants to play half-trolls for some reason, despite the fact that they are amazingly good and probably the best newbie race in the game.

Maybe we should just have a "newbie character" that's an appropriately-statted warrior, rogue, or paladin, and say "until you can get this guy to character level 15, you probably shouldn't spend much time on other builds, because they're just going to be harder."

[Zireael]

I like Nomad's reordering idea.

[Nick]

Update c43b1a4 fixes:

• Mimic tile now changes immediately the player is aware
• Prevent leaking mimic info by reading object info
• Typos in graf-shb.prf
• Second attempt at making Windows port quit properly from the File menu

Lockpicking - any character should have a minimum 2% chance of successfully picking the lock on any give turn. So 37 for a Half-Troll warrior is probably OK - it was reports of getting into the hundreds of turns that was worrying me.

[Thraalbee]

I can't repeat this - the AC switches between 115 and 182 exactly as expected for me, both in Windows and Linux.

It only happens with main window maximized.

[Nomad]

This is a suggested change rather than a beta bug, but several recent threads asking for beginner advice have made me wonder if it might not be more newbie friendly to reorder the character races so that 'easy' races are first? The way it's set up now leads to the assumption that humans are the standard default when they're actually a really terrible choice for a beginner.

What would you think about reordering the races according to their combined bonuses to STR + CON? That would yield:

a) Half-Troll
b) Dunadan
c) Dwarf
d) Half-Orc
e) High-Elf
f) Kobold
g) Gnome
h) Hobbit
i) Human
j) Half-Elf
k) Elf

Which seems like a decent ranking in rough order of fragility to me. And for that matter, if you did the same with classes you'd get:

a) Warrior
b) Paladin
c) Rogue
d) Ranger
e) Priest
f) Mage

Having the options in this order would hopefully lead new players to start their first game as a Half-Troll Warrior, and be less inclined to immediately try playing as an Elf Mage. (Which sounds like a perfectly good choice if you know nothing about Angband!)

I don't know if changing the order up like this would involve some catastrophic shattering of savefile compatibility, but if so, the changeover to 4.0 would seem like the best time to do it.

[tumbleweed]

angband-win-v4.0beta-233-g5052b03

• On the title screen, Ctrl+X and menu File->Exit have stopped working entirely. As in, they don't do anything.
• Attempting to load a pre-233 savefile results in an assertion failure (File: savefile.c; Line: 205; Expression: buffer_pos < buffer_size). Not exactly graceful, does the game not store and check any kind of savefile format version?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev5052b03

Lockpicking. You asked for continued reports. Just took 37 turns to pick a lock on DL1. Half Troll Warrior. Dex is 16. But, maybe it took so long because @ is really stupid. Int 4.

[Nomad]

• Monster memory being forgotten when exiting Windows port via the file menu (still happens if you just close the window with the 'X' in the corner - don't do that)

Something's gone slightly wrong with the exit procedure here, I'm afraid. When you exit with ^X you get the message "Saving game... done. Press Return (or Escape)". Now when you exit through the Windows file menu, you only get the "Saving game... done" part and have to hit a key before the "Press Return (or Escape)" message appears and you can proceed with exiting. (On the plus side, the lore.txt file does now update!)

[maboleth]

I'm more than happy to be back and thrilled to see that V4.0 will soon be released!! Well done guys, I'd test beta myself!

Cheers!

[nppangband]

Here is a typo I just noticed. Fortunately savefile compatibility is not involved:

In the graf-shb.prf file, it says in various places:

"Graphics are sourced from flavor entries in flvr-dvg.prf"

should be "flvr-shb"

[Nick]

Update 5052b03 fixes:

• Monster memory being forgotten when exiting Windows port via the file menu (still happens if you just close the window with the 'X' in the corner - don't do that)
• Uniques (notably Sauron and Morgoth) not reappearing until a save and reload
• All mimic crashes! (I hope)
• Rings swapping hands on save and reload

Note that this update breaks savefiles - that was necessary both for the ring fix and the mimic fix. The uniques not reappearing fix will also fix a few other things - I don't know if anyone noticed, but after having played for a while without quitting and reloading, breeders probably stopped being generated. I'm amazed that this error was causing so little trouble.

[Nick]

Attached savefile contains Sind. Switch between body armours and AC display is not updated correctly. Save and reload and always ok.

I can't repeat this - the AC switches between 115 and 182 exactly as expected for me, both in Windows and Linux.

[tumbleweed]

Regarding the mimic crashes, I'll shamelessly use this opportunity to once again advertise the two saves I provided for investigating the mimic issue, one when entering the level, the other right in front of the mimic. Just in case Nick missed them.

Click me.

[Derakon]

Might it conceivably also speed up stats gen?

And while we're at it, I'd like a pony...