Preparation for 4.1 release

[Nick]

Somewhere along the way in the latest few batch of nightlies, the "drain charges" mechanic in monster lore got changed. Now, even though @ has no wands or staves to drain, looking at Feagwath the lore says touch to drain charges in red. Previously, if the @ had no wands or staves to drain, the lore would show the information "drain charges" in green.

The monster lore code got cleaned up considerably a few months ago, and some details were moved out into monster_spell.txt. In the process, I decided that scanning through the inventory for vulnerable items (for draining, eating, disenchantment etc) was probably unnecessary, and I would just colour the spells as if the player did have such items. This both simplifies code, and forces the player to take a little more responsibility for their own well-being

[Nick]

OK, new builds will be up on the nightlies page shortly, changes are:

• Randart jewellery is now started from scratch and given random properties, rather than being based on an existing ring or amulet kind
• Pile crash bug fixed (pickup when blind)
• Artifact lanterns and torches are no longer generated (charging) for large times
• Nomad's bug about weird descriptions of cursed torches is fixed; please report if there's any new weirdness with ID gained on wielding
• Crash bug on using mouse in MacOS for targeting probably fixed
• Looking at unknown egos in the home no longer gives away the ego name

The list of outstanding bugs is getting shorter, although there are still some in the Comp 205 thread (mostly brought up by bron) which are not listed. Please report more bugs, or if there are things you are still not happy with.

[Nick]

Following up on an old report:

if i try to squelch a cursed weapon, such as Sword (+0,+0) [cursed] i will get the message "squelch all non artifact swords?" because the game sees the cursed sword as an Ego weapon.

What is actually happening here is that when an item isn't completely known, the only options given are "this item only" and "all non-artifacts". So this is correct behaviour.

[Sky]

i get what you mean, but from a practical point of view, this doesn't really work?

before, you had

Artifact
Great
Good
Average
Cursed

i know there's also Bad but they are irrelevant

Now what you have is

Artifact
Possibly an artifact
possibly also an artifact
again, possibly an artifact
boring old standard sword

because the game can't tell the difference between a Short Sword {cursed} and The Short Sword of Beruthiel {cursed}.
ideally the squelch would understand that we mean:

Artifacts of all kind including cursed ones
Non-cursed stuff
anything else with a curse

all i'm saying is that, in the instance i described, i was expecting a message such as "squalch all cursed items", or "squelch all average/bad cursed items", or "sq all cursed good" or "cursed ego" , or simply "squelch everything cursed except artifacts", because that is exactly what i wanted.

Does it have {cursed} in the name? Is is NOT-AN-ARTIFACT? Ok then, squelch it.
I can squelch stuff of -Slay Orc, why can't i squelch stuff of -{curse} ?


You have an issue with the new Rune system, i understand that. I supposed you could easily implement a system of "squelch all Air Swing" or "all Siren". But since we can see what effects are in red text, and so can the game, it shouldn't be a problem to have a "squelch anything with ANY curse run on it, IF YOU CAN" which still leaves artifacts unsquelched.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

....This both simplifies code, and forces the player to take a little more responsibility for their own well-being

I'm not sure how one draws a philosophical line to decide "this" information known by @ will be made easily accessible to player, but "that" information known by @ will not be made easily accessible. Why is draining less important than any other thing in the lore file?

[Nick]

I'm not sure how one draws a philosophical line to decide "this" information known by @ will be made easily accessible to player, but "that" information known by @ will not be made easily accessible. Why is draining less important than any other thing in the lore file?

I think you're putting too much emphasis on the second part of my explanation and not enough on the first...

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I think you're putting too much emphasis on the second part of my explanation and not enough on the first...

You decided it was unnecessary ..., it simplifies the code..., it's just too hard?

I don't code, so who am I to say. More hard than damage calculation, blow information, to-hit chances, or any number of other things in the lore/monster code? It's odd that it used to give the information, but now it doesn't. Given the infinite complexity of all the other things you've coded to make the game better, I found this step backward surprising.

I'll just get used to panicking when I look at a monster and see those red flags in the information.

[Werbaer]

[...]because the game can't tell the difference between a Short Sword {cursed} and The Short Sword of Beruthiel {cursed}.
[...]
Does it have {cursed} in the name? Is is NOT-AN-ARTIFACT? Ok then, squelch it.
I can squelch stuff of -Slay Orc, why can't i squelch stuff of -{curse} ?

You're ignoring the possibility of cursed ego items.

Until it is fully idenitfied, you sword could be (for example) a Sword of the Nazgul (ESP, cold immunity, drain experience). Only thing you know for sure is that it isn't an artifact, so the game only offers you to squelch this item, or all non-artifact swords.

[luneya]

You're ignoring the possibility of cursed ego items.

Until it is fully idenitfied, you sword could be (for example) a Sword of the Nazgul (ESP, cold immunity, drain experience). Only thing you know for sure is that it isn't an artifact, so the game only offers you to squelch this item, or all non-artifact swords.

That's not true at all. We also know that IT'S CURSED! We haven't identified which curse yet, but generically {cursed} is a pseudo-id class that ought to be just as valid a target for squelching as {good} or {ego}. What should happen when we attempt to squelch the {cursed} sword is a "What do you want to squelch?" prompt with three options:

1. This item only
2. All non-artifact edged weapons
3. All cursed non-artifact edged weapons

Sure, for implementation, this will require us to double the size of the squelch-check table, as we'll need to store different squelching preferences for cursed and uncursed items in each category, but we're well past the era when that sort of thing mattered.

[Nomad]

Got an error descending some stairs in the latest nightly:

File: gen-util.c, Line 441

Expression: square_in_bounds(c, y, x)

Not a complete crash: clicking "ignore" successfully rescued it and a new (standard layout) level loaded afterwards.

[Nick]

I'll just get used to panicking when I look at a monster and see those red flags in the information.

I guess it wasn't that hard. It will be in the next build

[Pete Mack]

Silver jelly should be immune to light (or even healed.)

[bio_hazard]

I can't remember if I asked for this before, but any thoughts on changing the elemental rings such that:

Ring of Flames gives rCold instead of rFire
Ring of Ice gives rHeat instead of rCold
Ring of Lightning gives rAcid
Ring of Acid gives rLightning

I find it annoying to have the damage activation be worse than useless when I need a specific temporary resistance. If I need rFire, the best a fire ball is going to do is nothing, with wake-up things I didn't want woken up being a likely effect. If I want the extra elemental damage of a fireball vs a monster susceptible to fire, it is unlikely to have a fire attack that would be mitigated by the rFire. "cross-type" effects would be more useful in most circumstances.

[Pete Mack]

@Biohazard -- when I want a double resistance, the 80 or so damage from the ring won't make a big difference in a fight. By the time I reach Smaug, I'm usually doing as well or better with ego ammo--and if I'm not, I won't fight him.

[Derakon]

@Biohazard -- when I want a double resistance, the 80 or so damage from the ring won't make a big difference in a fight. By the time I reach Smaug, I'm usually doing as well or better with ego ammo--and if I'm not, I won't fight him.

bio_hazard is pointing out that the two effects from the elemental rings are at odds -- enemies that would be hurt by a fireball are unlikely to be attacking you with fire damage (so the temp resist is useless), and vice versa. There's a point to be had there, but I think it's fine to only have one or the other effect be useful in a given situation, and I've always found elemental "inversion" (fire means cold damage, etc.) confusing. Especially if you want to posit that lightning and acid are somehow opposites.

In any case, I'd be somewhat worried if I were still using a Ring of Fire by the time Smaug came around!