Preparation for 4.1 release

[Gwarl]

More bugs: when playing a rogue, loading a saved game I was inexplicably overburdened. I removed/dropped all gear and inventory, still overburdened. Quit out/logged back in, naked and carrying nothing, 24lbs burden. Saving/quitting repeated the same bug later. I was STR drained at the time.

Also exp drained: however killing creatures was adding to both my current exp as well as my max exp.

I was going to include the savefile but I thought I'd just earn 500 more exp first to clear the stat drain. Ogre chieftains are quite lethal when you're at -5 speed.

[Nick]

Discovered while fiddling around with vault designs that using the ~ symbol to create chests doesn't seem to work. (Mostly there's just nothing generated, though one time there was an artefact Star in that square, so I'm wondering if the game is maybe trying to generate lights instead of chests since they share a map symbol?)

Nice catch, now fixed in development. It's not because of the symbol, it's because the code tries to generate "good" chests, and no chests are good. Remind me at some later stage to make chest contents more interesting (as in pretty much every variant).

[Nomad]

Discovered while fiddling around with vault designs that using the ~ symbol to create chests doesn't seem to work. (Mostly there's just nothing generated, though one time there was an artefact Star in that square, so I'm wondering if the game is maybe trying to generate lights instead of chests since they share a map symbol?)

[Gwarl]

I found this comment in 4.0.5's mon-move.c:

/**
* Choose a good hiding place near a monster for it to run toward.
*
* Pack monsters will use this to "ambush" the player and lure him out
* of corridors into open space so they can swarm him.
*
* Return TRUE if a good location is available.
*/

That does seem to describe typical behaviour from hounds and spiders.

[Nick]

Latest build is up on the nightlies page. Fixes to:

• Pricing errors for armour - it was a technical issue due to whether weight was treated as known
• Lack of full stop and space at end of a sentence in monster lore. Note that double spaces at the end of a sentence in monster lore are actually standard, so I fixed the real bug, which was that in a couple of instances there were single spaces...

New hound behaviour is the dumbest I've ever seen from them. You can just hide round a corner and they walk into you. Earlier versions (e.g. 4.0.5) they would hang back out of LoS and close in when the player got hurt or surrounded.

I believe the 4.0.5 behaviour was a result of two sub-optimal pieces of logic which cancelled each other out:

1. Group monsters were attempting to surround the player (fill all the adjacent squares) while still in a corridor outside the room the player was in, leading to getting a silly initial move direction;
2. At the end of all the (usually) quite clever logic about what direction to move, monsters frustrated about taking their initial step would try the directions immediately diagonal, and then perpendicular, to the way they actually wanted to go.

So hounds were choosing a silly initial direction, but then being unable to take it and getting the right direction more or less by accident.

In hindsight, I probably should have just left monster pathfinding in its 4.0.5 not-ideal-but-familiar state, and left the can of worms unopened until post 4.1; as it is, I'm going to call it good enough for now unless something else really egregious is pointed out

[Ingwe Ingweron]

New hound behaviour is the dumbest I've ever seen from them. You can just hide round a corner and they walk into you. Earlier versions (e.g. 4.0.5) they would hang back out of LoS and close in when the player got hurt or surrounded.

Partially true. The distinction for prior behavior was: they came out of a room only if @ was at least moderately injured, OR if @ was in another nearby room. You can hang round the corner in a nearby room and pick them off as they come through the door, but you have to be quick about it and with enough damage, or they stream in and surround @.

[Gwarl]

New hound behaviour is the dumbest I've ever seen from them. You can just hide round a corner and they walk into you. Earlier versions (e.g. 4.0.5) they would hang back out of LoS and close in when the player got hurt or surrounded.

[Gwarl]

Has anyone noticed this build seeming sort of.. sluggish? There's a just-about perceptible delay when running and updating LoS. I have been playing online, but I've checked with the other hosted variants and there isn't the same delay.

It's very slight but if I passed my perception check it's there.

[Gwarl]

Yeah, if hounds and orcs swapped their AIs I'd be also much happier.

Agreed.

I plan on forking 4.1 when it's released and this is going to be one of the first changes I make.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Yeah, if hounds and orcs swapped their AIs I'd be also much happier.

I've never thought that orcs were much brighter than hounds. The exceptional orc becomes a unique.

[petebull]

Yeah, if hounds and orcs swapped their AIs I'd be also much happier.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I LIKE the new Hound behavior. It makes them a lot harder to get around or kill. That said, if you go beyond one (say) 40 squares, they should start following you at a distance, and occasionally picking a new room to occupy. Cremains' never follow: like healers, they should prefer to stay in rooms with other animals.

I don't like the hound or crebain being more intelligent than Saruman or others that should be super intelligent and able to choose terrain, or not be suckered into @ chosen terrain. When my dog sees a squirrel, just try holding him back!

[Nick]

I LIKE the new Hound behavior. It makes them a lot harder to get around or kill. That said, if you go beyond one (say) 40 squares, they should start following you at a distance, and occasionally picking a new room to occupy. Cremains' never follow: like healers, they should prefer to stay in rooms with other animals.

That's interesting. I won't revert that fix (because it was happening as an unintended effect of groups trying to surround the player), but having multiple types of monster behaviour is a idea for the future.

[Pete Mack]

I LIKE the new Hound behavior. It makes them a lot harder to get around or kill. That said, if you go beyond one (say) 40 squares, they should start following you at a distance, and occasionally picking a new room to occupy. Cremains' never follow: like healers, they should prefer to stay in rooms with other animals.

[Nick]

Consider behavior of hounds, crebain, etc. @ found them in a room and they are awake and aware of @. They don't come out into the hallway, that was never their way, but @ retreated to a very close adjacent room expecting them to come after him, as they used to do before all the changes made to make pathing more effective. They just stay in their original room. Is this the desired action, especially by lower intelligence monsters?

OK, I've checked, I agree, and there is a new build up (or will be shortly) which at least partly fixes the problem (prices still not fixed).