Angband 4.0beta status

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445

Just had a crash when picking up some newly fired, magical but not yet fully identified arrows. Not easily duplicated, so no save file. The nearest I can figure, the crash occurred when at the same moment @ picked up the newly fired arrows pseudo-id was kicking in on the same type arrows still in the quiver. The program was confused about the picked up arrows stacking with the same pseudo-id' arrows. At least that's my surmise, since when I replayed nearly the same keystrokes, but pseudo id kicked in the turn before picking up the newly fired arrows everything went fine.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445

Just had a crash when picking up some newly fired, magical but not yet fully identified arrows...

Belay my last. It is something else entirely. Another mimic or item crush bug, perhaps? I can't nail it down exactly, but play a little in this vault and see if you don't get a crash. This is on OSX. Ninya.zip

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445

Firing missiles from the floor. In 3.5.1, when a missile rolled under feet during melee, @ could fire the missile from the floor, then, if more missiles were still underfoot or the fired missile rolled under foot on the turn, you could use the [n] repeat last action command to again fire a missile from the floor.

In 4.0 the [n] repeat last action command does not work for firing missiles from the floor.

[Nomad]

Quiver reshuffling behaviour is, frankly, baffling. (I was writing up a whole detailed description of how it acts differently to how I'd expect, and then it didn't do what I'd anticipated based on the 'rules' I'd worked out, so now I'm even more confused.)

Basically, when you pick up new ammo, the quiver completely reshuffles itself in utterly bewildering ways. I think it's sorting itself into bolts/arrows/shots order with standard/seeker/mithril order within the subgroups, then sticking the new ammo in the appropriate slot, bumping whatever's there to a new slot, bumping what's in that slot elsewhere, and ending up with things reshuffled all over the place. But honestly, it's very hard to tell what it's doing.

It's so baffling I can really only hope to describe by demonstration. Okay, so you've got some iron shots in slot a, and you pick up some bolts. You get this:

a) bolts
b) iron shots

Then you pick up some arrows, and get this:

a) bolts
b) arrows
c) iron shots

Pick up some rounded pebbles, you get this:

a) bolts
b) arrows
c) rounded pebbles
d) iron shots

So far, so much like it's sorting itself, right? But then, pick up some mithril bolts, and you get this:

a) bolts
b) mithril bolts
c) rounded pebbles (these stayed where they were)
d) arrows (I guess these were bumped out of b, but why to here and not the end?)
e) iron shots (unlike the rounded pebbles, these did move down. Why?)

Follow this up with some seeker arrows, and you get:

a) bolts
b) mithril bolts
c) seeker arrows (why did these go ahead of the regular arrows???)
d) arrows
e) rounded pebbles (bumped out of c to the penultimate slot, but why not the end?)
f) iron shots

Add seeker bolts to the fun:

a) bolts
b) seeker bolts
c) seeker arrows (didn't move)
d) mithril bolts (bumped from slot b, but why are they here???)
e) rounded pebbles (didn't move)
f) arrows (...whut?)
g) iron shots

(It gets even more fun when you drop things, and the slot is refilled sometimes by the last ammo on the list but sometimes by something else instead!)

I think what might be happening is some sort of very complicated shell game where the quiver is first re-sorted, then the new ammo goes into the appropriate slot, which bumps the ammo from there to the end of its subgroup, which bumps the ammo that was there to somewhere else... But it's basically incomprehensible and impossible to predict where any of your ammo will end up any time you drop or pick some up.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445

Amulet of Trickery strangeness. Used to be in 3.5.1 an Amulet of Trickery was identified with 3 bonus numbers, although a couple of those numbers were used twice. Speed, Stealth, Searching, Dexterity (was Infravision part of it in 3.5.1, I don't remember, if so, I believe it was combined with the Search number). Now, in 4.0, each of these gets it's own separate bonus number. That's just fine. BUT: the headline only lists 4 modifiers.

Amulet of Trickery <+5,+2,+4,+7>
+5 dexterity.
+2 stealth.
+4 searching skill.
+7 infravision.
+3 speed.

Where is the speed modifier in the headline?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445

Item ignoring flavor strangeness. @ found a "Gold" ring (not to be confused with the "Plain Gold" ring. The "gold" ring was identified as the Ring of Tulkas and was LOST when @ left it behind. However, on the item ignore menu for rings a "Gold" flavored ring is still listed as unidentified.

[d_m]

I think what might be happening is some sort of very complicated shell game where the quiver is first re-sorted, then the new ammo goes into the appropriate slot, which bumps the ammo from there to the end of its subgroup, which bumps the ammo that was there to somewhere else... But it's basically incomprehensible and impossible to predict where any of your ammo will end up any time you drop or pick some up.

It sounds to me like two different sorting strategies could be being run in (sometimes) different orders?

Are any of these ammo tagged? The "old" quiver would try to honor @f0, @f1, etc. I could imagine that maybe that prioritization scheme (or a similar one based on bonuses) might be conflicting with a new type-based scheme.

[Nomad]

It sounds to me like two different sorting strategies could be being run in (sometimes) different orders?

Are any of these ammo tagged? The "old" quiver would try to honor @f0, @f1, etc. I could imagine that maybe that prioritization scheme (or a similar one based on bonuses) might be conflicting with a new type-based scheme.

Nope, this is all uninscribed. (I was generating ammo with the debug commands to try and figure out what was happening, so it was all newly created, and individual bolts/arrows/shots rather than different-sized stacks.) For what it's worth, the sequence above is fully reproducible by picking up the same types of ammo in the same order, so whatever it's doing, it is at least doing it consistently.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I know it's not strictly an Ego type, but would it be possible to add the types of Dragon Scale armor to the ego ignore list? E.g., I'd like to ignore all Red, Black, White, Dragon Scale Armor, since no matter what Ego, if any, it carries I just don't want it. But I do want to see Chaos Dragon Scale Mail, for instance.

[Nomad]

I know it's not strictly an Ego type, but would it be possible to add the types of Dragon Scale armor to the ego ignore list? E.g., I'd like to ignore all Red, Black, White, Dragon Scale Armor, since no matter what Ego, if any, it carries I just don't want it. But I do want to see Chaos Dragon Scale Mail, for instance.

You can do that from the object knowledge menu with autoinscriptions - set DSMs to a given quality squelch level but then have Chaos and other types you do want to keep set up to be autoinscribed !k. (I do that for Caestus as well so they don't squelch with all the other gloves.)

[Nick]

Belay my last. It is something else entirely. Another mimic or item crush bug, perhaps? I can't nail it down exactly, but play a little in this vault and see if you don't get a crash. This is on OSX. [ATTACH]1258[/ATTACH]

Thank you, savefile was very useful. The problem was that an arrow was dropping and getting absorbed, and then the description routine was getting called, but nothing was left to describe. Solution - describe the thing before it gets dropped, which is kind of obvious logically anyway. Funny how that keeps happening. Next update will have a fix.

As for the quiver re-ordering - I keep getting that logic wrong, too. Will try again.

[debo]

Would it be better UI if we instead said something like?

t) 49 missiles in 2 Quiver slots
u) ...

I don't really care how it works, I just wanted to make sure it was WAD I didn't realize that quivers in vanilla could hold mixed ammo types.

Angband 4.0 dev 6dc5445
Amulet of Trickery strangeness... the headline only lists 4 modifiers.

Amulet of Trickery <+5,+2,+4,+7>
+5 dexterity.
+2 stealth.
+4 searching skill.
+7 infravision.
+3 speed.

Where is the speed modifier in the headline?

Different question: Why are these amulets so ridiculous??? They could be rPois (iirc they usually are?), +stealth, +speed, and that would already be sort of insane for the amulet slot.

[Timo Pietilä]

Different question: Why are these [Trickery] amulets so ridiculous??? They could be rPois (iirc they usually are?), +stealth, +speed, and that would already be sort of insane for the amulet slot.

rPoison and rNexus. Those are fixed. I would not miss searching, infra and stealth, but I would like to keep speed and DEX.

Usually by the time you get one of these you have found ESP and ESP trumps infra with so big margin that infra becomes pretty much useless.

Currently searching is useless. Even with amulet of Seaching at dlvl 1 with bonus of bazillion it would still be useless. We really would need some real use for that skill in order to make it useful again.

Stealth you can get elsewhere. I think this is only jewelry giving stealth. At least can't remember any other jewelry giving stealth (and IMO stealth should be clvl and class dependent skill more than something fixed you get from items and race anyway).

[Nick]

Update 3a93c47 fixes:

• Crash on dropping an item that merged with a floor item
• Quiver sorting (I hope)
• Quiver showing as empty when it isn't
• Quiver command not usable in stores
• Use | instead of . for quiver selection from other object menus

The reason for only 4 modifiers in "Trickery is that the description code needs a maximum number of modifiers to display - I chose 4. Probably should be 5, or rewritten so it doesn't need a maximum. In fact, I suspect a gameplay change has snuck through here, because in 3.5.1 IIRC there would have been a max of 3 different modifiers.

debo - these things are ridiculous only if you think the number of resistances, properties etc on Angband are ridiculous (which I guess is a yes for you).

[debo]

rPoison and rNexus. Those are fixed. I would not miss searching, infra and stealth, but I would like to keep speed and DEX.

Usually by the time you get one of these you have found ESP and ESP trumps infra with so big margin that infra becomes pretty much useless.

Currently searching is useless. Even with amulet of Seaching at dlvl 1 with bonus of bazillion it would still be useless. We really would need some real use for that skill in order to make it useful again.

Stealth you can get elsewhere. I think this is only jewelry giving stealth. At least can't remember any other jewelry giving stealth (and IMO stealth should be clvl and class dependent skill more than something fixed you get from items and race anyway).

I just thought stealth fit better with the theme of trickery than the other things. Any trimming that kept it to <= 3 individual bonuses would be a better idea than changing the rendering to allow >4 of them imo!! Especially since a couple of them really do seem quite useless (infra, searching.)

Update 3a93c47 fixes:

debo - these things are ridiculous only if you think the number of resistances, properties etc on Angband are ridiculous (which I guess is a yes for you).

Not really -- my most-played variant is probably poschengband, so...

I've always thought this particular ego seemed excessive. I'm not sure how far back the change goes (possibly it's a Z thing), but poscheng trickery amulets seem a lot more reasonable (how often do you hear that???), might be worth checking those ones in the future.