Curses feature branch

[Derakon]

Maybe it's just me, but the iconic "Oops! It feels deathly cold!" message constantly makes me think of a sticky curse. Maybe that message should be reserved to only those. Maybe a non-sticky curse could say something like "It feels sinister!" or "There's something not right with it!" or "You have a bad feeling about it!"

I agree with this, especially since the other curses aren't much of an "oops" when you can immediately remove them.

[Nick]

Maybe it's just me, but the iconic "Oops! It feels deathly cold!" message constantly makes me think of a sticky curse. Maybe that message should be reserved to only those. Maybe a non-sticky curse could say something like "It feels sinister!" or "There's something not right with it!" or "You have a bad feeling about it!"

Indeed - I just hadn't got around to removing the message.

[PowerWyrm]

2. Object indicator ("*") of previously found and ignored items reappearing when within a new detection radius. Savefile was provided. This is definitely still happening.

Commit 55c484c removed a call to square_light_spot() in object detection routine. Probably the cause. I'm sure all other object related bugs are issued from this commit too.

[PowerWyrm]

Maybe it's just me, but the iconic "Oops! It feels deathly cold!" message constantly makes me think of a sticky curse. Maybe that message should be reserved to only those. Maybe a non-sticky curse could say something like "It feels sinister!" or "There's something not right with it!" or "You have a bad feeling about it!"

I would keep the message myself...

[spara]

Oh boy, the game really was missing something when the curses were on-hold.

I found my first sticky curse item and the message ordering feels a bit off.

You have learned the rune of stuck on.
You have learned the rune of sticky curse.
You are wielding a Flail (2d6) (+3,+6) {cursed}
Oops! it feels deathly cold!

That Oops... message should probably be the first.

Also, the item appears to be fully IDd and the only downside seems to be to the curse. Is this correct? Should there be some negative effect in addition to the apparent sticky curse? I'm not complaining though, I'm just a bit surprised of there not being some random undead summoning or something in addition.

[Nick]

Commit 55c484c removed a call to square_light_spot() in object detection routine. Probably the cause. I'm sure all other object related bugs are issued from this commit too.

Restoring that call doesn't seem to fix the bug - I will actually have to think, rather than slavishly following instructions

[Nick]

Bug: Items previously found and ignored being redisplayed as unknown objects after another treasure detection within their range. Note the two red asterisks to @'s left. These were previously ignored objects, but now show again after use of treasure detection. [Edit: Doesn't show on reload, so just zap the treasure detection rod again and you will see the unknown but previously ignored objects displayed.]

After a bit of testing, this looks like it is a bug with how ignored objects get saved. Is it only after saving and reloading that you are seeing this behaviour? If not, exactly when is it? I can reliably reproduce it on save and reload, but not otherwise.

[Bogatyr]

Coming a bit late to the thread, but I haven't missed the old cursed items "game" AT ALL. "But with runes you only have to experience each curse once before you know them all!" in no way ameliorates this -- my play style is "avoid risk, explicitly identify everything, no ID via use, period." Especially considering how very time consuming and boring dealing with just a single curse was (stair scumming the town for a remove curse scroll). Now we'd have to do it N times per game? Boooo, no!!!!!!

But for some reason the "rune ID" game has gotten traction, so I guess people think the "ID game" and "the curse game" are fun. I don't, but I suppose I'm in the minority.

[Huqhox]

The old curse mechanism was never fun but the concept of items being cursed is the flipside of them having bonuses. With just the one sticky curse cured items were a pain the first couple of times you found one and then they enforced a conservative play style (read: slow also read: not fun) unless playing a mage, then when you squelched bad items the problem went away (with the exception of the cursed artifacts). And yes you had to stair scum for ?remove curse because the sticky curse was so detrimental.

Curses were always going to come back and the rework has an important change: you don't *have* to remove the curse. If the item is otherwise good enough to put up with whatever the curse is then use it, otherwise you can always unequip it and store at home until the curse can be removed, or discard it. Only the sticky curse needs to be removed and as the item probably won't have any other malus attached to it then even that's not the pain it used to be.

Angband is never going t please everyone - that is why there are so many variants - but the core game is certainly richer for having the curses *game* restored to it in a much improved way - even if that part is boring to some it adds a lot of flavour.

And the rune system takes the pain out of ID by use and also seems more logical. Remember not everyone plays as a mage

That's my 2p anyway

[Bogatyr]

Remember not everyone plays as a mage

If it were carried forwards as a birth option that would be great, but it probably won't. Not everybody plays as a mage, but that's not a reason to gut a major advantage of the mage.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

After a bit of testing, this looks like it is a bug with how ignored objects get saved. Is it only after saving and reloading that you are seeing this behaviour? If not, exactly when is it? I can reliably reproduce it on save and reload, but not otherwise.

I don't recall exactly, but will refind the bug once I'm done with the FA comp. Some bastard made FA very tedious in comparison to what Vanilla now is.

[Bogatyr]

New curses stuff adds some flavor, but I'd like to see more tradeoff curses like steelskin rather than simply negative ones. Purely negative curses do not introduce any interesting play decisions (unless on an otherwise really great item, but I haven't found any like that yet), they're just to be avoided.

[Nick]

New curses stuff adds some flavor, but I'd like to see more tradeoff curses like steelskin rather than simply negative ones. Purely negative curses do not introduce any interesting play decisions (unless on an otherwise really great item, but I haven't found any like that yet), they're just to be avoided.

Feel free to design more interesting curses!

The curses are really quite immature so far. Once they are added to randarts, better curses are added, and generation is improved, they should be better.

[Bogatyr]

Some quick ideas:

"curse of the vampire": increased strength and/or speed, but take damage from all light sources (stronger the source the higher the damage) and when stepping on to lit squares (gives staff of darkness a use!)

diamondskin: higher AC but amplified damage from sound/cold

insane metabolism: increased speed but food consumption exponentially higher (no time even to rest fully without getting hungry/weak, must eat constantly).

shadow curse: increased stealth but reduced visibility.

[PowerWyrm]

YAML: the "available" memory array is not freed in curse_menu().