Trap/door feature branch

[PowerWyrm]

Disarming has been reworked, so there are now magical and physical traps, and two disarming skills (which are boosted by high INT and DEX respectively). Class aptitude for disarming has been changed to fit this, so for example mages are good at disarming magical traps and poor at physical ones, and warriors are the opposite.

Looking at that change, there are a lot of things I don't understand:
- warriors are still bad at disarming physical traps
- rangers are very bad at disarming magical traps
- mages which are supposed to be poor at disarming physical traps had their physical disarming... increased
- overall disarming skills have been greatly increased, reaching 100% very easily very quickly
- "gas" traps are considered physical
- skill divided by 10 in do_cmd_disarm_aux() when blind/confused... while divided by 100 elsewhere in the same conditions
- using (randint0(100) < chance) everywhere except in do_cmd_lock_door() where the old ((i > 5) && (randint1(i) > 5)) formula is used
- adj_dex_dis has been modified, but not adj_int_dis (skill was added, now split -- but checked against the same value, so both values should probably be increased to the sum of the two old values)

Concerning the skills, I would simply increase/reduce magical/physical disarm of mages, do the opposite for warriors and leave all the other classes alone. And make the other changes consistent.

[PowerWyrm]

Currently reviewing the new template rooms with placed traps. The "Split oval with round room" has an error:

D:      #%%#%%%%%#%%#      
D:   #%%#..(.....(..#%%#   
D: #%#.....###1###.....#%# 
D:%#.....###.^.^.###.....#%
D:%......2...#2#....2......%
D:#2####1#...181...#1####2#
D:%......2...#2#...2......%
D:%#.....###.^.^.###.....#%
D: #%#.....###1###.....#%# 
D:   #%%#..(.....(..#%%#   
D:      #%%#%%%%%#%%#

should be:

D:      #%%#%%%%%#%%#      
D:   #%%#..(.....(..#%%#   
D: #%#.....###1###.....#%# 
D:%#.....###.^.^.###.....#%
D:%......2...#2#...2......%
D:#2####1#...181...#1####2#
D:%......2...#2#...2......%
D:%#.....###.^.^.###.....#%
D: #%#.....###1###.....#%# 
D:   #%%#..(.....(..#%%#   
D:      #%%#%%%%%#%%#

[Pete Mack]

Rogue detect object spell make ego items known on detection (you can see all IDed runes.) Artifacts and ordinary objects are not known from a distance.

[Pete Mack]

Back to trying the angband master branch. I really like rune-based ID.
I have had no difficulty with enough ID: I have 4 scrolls at home, and the only time I didn't ID-by-use was when I happened to have a couple scrolls in the backpack, and too much stuff to carry home. Everything else is ID by use, with a few wands and the like IDed by selling.
5 flags left:
Aggravation, pConf, pStun, hLife, curse. (Even managed to positively ID earthquake brand, when a mystery mattock turned up. Whacked a nearby jelly and the dungeon shook.)
The one thing I miss is *Remove Curse*. Without it, any potentially cursed jewelry is impossible to remove. I now have 50% fail on enchant armor and weapon, so I am fully safe to try un-ided weapons. (Though the way randarts are generated, it is extremely unlikely to get a cursed item without a negative to-hit and to-damage.)

Contemplation and intellect are a bit of a downer, but there are enough swap stat potions to reverse them fairly quickly. What did get hammered was the magic stat on a half-caster. (Base stat got down to 8. Intellect turned out to be a useful find at that point.)

As an aside, here is a clean way to bind the event handler functions to the values in the edit files.

http://www.dyncall.org/

effects.c is the last remaining giant case block. (And in a somewhat more modern language, it would by a dynamic call by name. That's what lua used to be for.)

[PowerWyrm]

Also all the new allocated stuff (effect_xtra, msg, msg_good, msg_bad, msg_xtra) is not freed in cleanup_trap().

[PowerWyrm]

No idea if it's been reported before, but the message you get when dying from a trap has a typo: "a acid trap", "a open pit"... This is because effect_handler_DAMAGE() uses "a" + the trap description directly without the "is_a_vowel()" check.

[Nomad]

As a warrior I always squelch scrolls and rods of Trap Detection now because it's just not necessary to bother with detecting and they're a waste of inventory space. I'd say keep the trap detection aspect bundled into rods of Detection but scrap the standalone rods and scrolls.

[Huqhox]

I'm still unsure of the usefulness of trap detection, particularly - what do you think?

Playing a dwarf paladin (now he does set traps off) I don't cast detect traps, which is making a suprisingly real difference to playing, especially after decending as I don't need to spend the first turn automatically detecting for traps I can just head off.

One thing I do use detection for (and will do as I get deeper) is locating vaults, particularly the ones that don't connect to the rest of dungeon. Since these (especially the greater ones) tend to have a concentration of traps they show up; now I could use mapping for that but I prefer to play without mapping (at least before the Arkenstone) as it's more thematic to not know what is down that unexplored passage.

So my feeling is leave it even though it's now a lot less required than before it still has its uses

[Estie]

what do you think?

I dont know, I havent been following the trap thread closely. At the moment I maintain trap detection and find it useful, though that may be superfluous habit; in any case, I see no great benefit from outright removing it - worst case it becomes one of the many under-used rod/spell mechanics.

Generally speaking, the situation before was like this:

Very early game you stumble on the occasional trap and receive some minor detrimental effect, without any viable option of avoidance. Late early game you get the ability to detect traps, be it by spell or device, and from then on traps are solved provided you detect rigorously.

I can see why this isnt the most exciting mechanics of Angband. However, I dont have any grand ideas of ways to improve the situation.

As for the changes done sofar, I need to play more to get rid of my habits.

[Nick]

Playing a paladin on the nightly version; the spell "Unbarring Ways" does not allow me to bypass chest traps where it used to disarm them before. Is that intentional ?

No, that's an oversight.

And nightly related: I get that, after destructing, map features and objects arent updated, but shouldnt detecting/mapping fix that ? It makes little sense as it is now.

Yes, it should - that looks like another bug. I'm still unsure of the usefulness of trap detection, particularly - what do you think?

[Estie]

Playing a paladin on the nightly version; the spell "Unbarring Ways" does not allow me to bypass chest traps where it used to disarm them before. Is that intentional ?

And nightly related: I get that, after destructing, map features and objects arent updated, but shouldnt detecting/mapping fix that ? It makes little sense as it is now.

[Nomad]

Perhaps beyond the scope of this branch, but I think certain traps could add a lot more tactically if monsters could choose to set them off, and the AI occasionally used this ability. E.g., I wake a room of orcs, and one or two of them make a beeline for the summoning trap.

That's a thought. Some variants have monster traps that the player can set; it may be possible to change the monster-trap relationship in a number of interesting ways.

How about adding some code so that when a monster with the SMART flag is fleeing or at low HP and steps into a square with a helpful trap (alarms, summoning or teleport) it activates the trap?

[Nick]

One thing that stands out to me is that I’m hardly triggering traps at all: I’ve set off just two of them this playthrough, and @ currently has both disarming skills at 100%, which I assume means I won’t be tripping any more unless I fail to detect them.

That sounds a bit low, even if you're playing a hobbit rogue.

Relatedly, I was sent away by a quylthulg and did not detect a trap next to the square where I landed, so I stepped on it unawares. Is that behavior intentional or a bug?

Bug.

When I equipped what I would eventually learn was a lantern of true sight, there were two oddities: (1) after pBlnd took effect but before I knew all of the runes, pBlnd had a “+” in the character screen but was still dark and (2) inspecting the lantern told me “No fuel required” up until the point where the lantern was fully IDed.

Inspecting a ?ID gives the ungrammatical “When read, it Identify a single unknown property of a selected item.”

Thanks for those.

Perhaps beyond the scope of this branch, but I think certain traps could add a lot more tactically if monsters could choose to set them off, and the AI occasionally used this ability. E.g., I wake a room of orcs, and one or two of them make a beeline for the summoning trap.

That's a thought. Some variants have monster traps that the player can set; it may be possible to change the monster-trap relationship in a number of interesting ways.

[Chud]

I also suspect targeted teleport is going to be way too powerful to be realistic. But, if you did want to go there, how about making it a potentially dangerous, last-resort thing to do?

Say, using it makes all forms of teleport unavailable for some number of turns (this to include teleport, phase door, blink, recall, everything, and from any source---rod, staff, scroll, spell, all will be broken for a while).

Or, maybe it reduces you to 5HP. Sure, you can heal on your next turn, but if some creature happens to have spawned within range of your destination and gets a move first, RIP...

[Ed′]

One thing that stands out to me is that I’m hardly triggering traps at all: I’ve set off just two of them this playthrough, and @ currently has both disarming skills at 100%, which I assume means I won’t be tripping any more unless I fail to detect them.

Relatedly, I was sent away by a quylthulg and did not detect a trap next to the square where I landed, so I stepped on it unawares. Is that behavior intentional or a bug?

The traps I have hit have been interesting: the first sounded an alarm right after a deep descent; the second summoned a lich that I only survived by TOing.

Also some bugs probably unrelated to the trap branch:

When I equipped what I would eventually learn was a lantern of true sight, there were two oddities: (1) after pBlnd took effect but before I knew all of the runes, pBlnd had a “+” in the character screen but was still dark and (2) inspecting the lantern told me “No fuel required” up until the point where the lantern was fully IDed.

Inspecting a ?ID gives the ungrammatical “When read, it Identify a single unknown property of a selected item.”

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Re targeted teleport, is everyone discussing the same idea? I thought when Calris introduced it, it was a targeted-teleport trap, one that would try to plop @ in a vault.

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Perhaps beyond the scope of this branch, but I think certain traps could add a lot more tactically if monsters could choose to set them off, and the AI occasionally used this ability. E.g., I wake a room of orcs, and one or two of them make a beeline for the summoning trap.