Issues on current master

[Nick]

The last few games I played felt like artifactless games. Have you nerfed the randarts substantially or was I just very unlucky ?

There have been a succession of hacks to try to get the distribution right, which may have had the effect of nerfing. The latest build has removed all those hacks. I have tested a few sets of randarts with the new system, and they look reasonable to my eye, but I would like to have them tested by people with more experience.

[Estie]

The last few games I played felt like artifactless games. Have you nerfed the randarts substantially or was I just very unlucky ?

I dont really feel like playing atm, after my 3rd character ended up wearing ego dragon mail, MoD of slay evil, "trickery and rings of damage and speed, I got very very bored.

[Nick]

OK, new builds up on the nightlies page; these probably break savefiles.

The big change is a new randart generation algorithm, which is much more efficient (no more waiting forever for randart generation to finish). There are some significant changes, the biggest of which is that randarts are no longer "based on" standard artifacts; for the most part, though, the actual creation of individual new randarts is the same. Given that the chief relationship between the randart and the standart it was based on was the power - there was no influence on actual properties - I don't think this will cause any problems. Do please report any concerns with the new randarts as used; there is a lot of scope for adjustment of the new algorithm.

There is not a fix for the crash on descending to DL100, as I could not replicate it. If this still seems to be occurring with the latest build, a savefile (and randart file if playing with randarts) would help.

[Sky]

if that is what you want, you simply need to change how far TO teleports mobs. basically, turn it into a "Blink Other' rod. it will give you time to quaff some potions, but basically you can't just say "i dont want to fight this mob".

however, this will make the game substantially more difficult, and slower.

[Philip]

Yeah, I feel like if you want to send someone away, they should be capable of getting back. Having monsters stay in the place they were teleported to makes them pretty dumb. You can always walk away from the place you teleported the monster from. That should prevent most monsters from tracking you down.

[Pondlife]

That sounds like an improvement to me. I think TO is/was too powerful: no saving throw or resist, and the monster will probably end up bottled up somewhere bashing it's head against the wall.

If better path finding changes TO into just a bit of breathing space, then I think that's a good thing.

[Sky]

@Nick, mob pathing looks much better now, maybe .. too good? I've more than once TO some unique, only to find them coming back before i finished resting.

[Nomad]

has anyone else experienced this bug? i'm starting to think it might be something on my end.

Yes, I experienced this with my last almost-winner, way back in the March 16th nightly (a016a4c), which I think was the first one with the new randart system. He's stuck sitting on the steps at dlevel 99 after killing Sauron, and descending causes a crash.

[Sky]

well i looked at that debugger but i have no idea how to run it.

@Nick letting you know that angband-4.0.3-720-gb057135 ALSO has the DL99 bug.

has anyone else experienced this bug? i'm starting to think it might be something on my end.

[Gwarl]

Just want to say I played a bit of 4.0.5 today experimenting with ttyrecs and it seemed terrible after all the new conveniences of master. That's the opposite of an issue but I thought I'd post it here anyway.

[Pete Mack]

If you run a debug build* in the gdb debugger, you can get a stack trace with 'backtrack' command. Just repro it in the bar and the bug is likely to be easy to figure out. (unless it fails with a memory error.)

* replace "-O2" with "-O2 -g" in the CFLAGS options in makefile.win (or other appropriate makefile.) You can use plain "-g", but it'll run horribly slowly, rather than just a bit slowly.

[Sky]

ok, if you mean the crown and grond, i can say no because i wizarded them as well and it didnt prevent me from doing DL99->100.

as for the crash dump, how do i go about generating one? all i get is the windows error message that a app has crashed with a very vague set of addresses.

[Pete Mack]

@Sky--the usual cause is failure to generate the special artifacts. It really helps to get a debug build and a crash dump (running under the debugger if necessary) when something like this happens. Just knowing the subroutine and line number usually is enough to figure out the bug.

[Sky]

i have re-tested it now. i wizarded a new randart character, and i managed to do DL99 -> sauron -> DL100 -> morgoth, so the build works, in a way.

it must be a bug that occurs over time, something that i do during normal gameplay creates a overflow which then causes the bug ..
which is *possibly* an issue with the dungeon level number-character allocation, or with morgoth, because as far as i know those are the only things which change at DL100.

possibly turn count? my turn counts are always very high ..

[Nick]

... pfftt...

ok, so i downloaded the last nightly you posted, angband-win-4.0.3-712-gbcd30cf, and i judiciously played the whole thing, i just beat sauron, went back to refill, then down to DL99, stairs .. and crash.

what i did before, because the same thing happened in the *previous* nightly, is that i started the game, wizarded a lev 50 warrior, jumped to DL99, beat sauron senseless, and went down the stairs successfully to DL100.

so something must have happened to the file between turn 1 and now that made it impossible to reach DL100, because it's not a problem with the build itself.

OK, thanks. I haven't looked at that problem yet; Ill let you know when I do a build with a fix in it.