Bugs and issues in 4.1.0

[Estie]

ok, BIG bug in angband-4.1.0-27-g58c7a0a5
i'm getting breathed on by dark hounds but my HE mage is not being blinded. i do not have rBlind.

No resistance to dark either ? Possibly un-identified.

[Sky]

ok, BIG bug in angband-4.1.0-27-g58c7a0a5
i'm getting breathed on by dark hounds but my HE mage is not being blinded. i do not have rBlind.

[Nick]

The improved pathfinding has changed the game dramatically. I have been adapting, trying out new things and thinking about it, but on the whole, I like the new gameplay less. The short tldr is: it makes the dungeon small and reduces tactical options.

Thanks for starting this discussion, and describing the problem so well. It could be just numbers need tweaking, or it could be other ideas are needed, perhaps along the lines of what Derakon is suggesting.

[Derakon]

I haven't played much with latest Angband -- my time has been spent on other things. But what Estie says reminds me of trying to explore the Moria dungeon in ToME2. That dungeon had a very aggressive spawn rate and seemingly easily-awakened enemies, so lingering on any given floor would mean getting constantly interrupted by new monsters to deal with. It was exhausting, and not very fun, so I eventually got used to avoiding the dungeon until I had the resources to just dive straight through it.

One possible "quick fix" would be to add a third state between sleeping and awake, where the monster is awake, but doesn't move unless they can see the player. Call the three states asleep, awake, and alert, maybe.
* Sleeping: monster takes no actions
* Awake: monster takes no actions, but if they can see the player, they transition to alert.
* Alert: as current "awake" state.

That wouldn't let you avoid monsters just because you teleported them away (though we could potentially experiment with letting monsters transition back from alert to awake), but it would mean that half-troll warriors would only be attracting aggro from relatively small groups of monsters at a time.

Some monsters would still need to be alert without transitioning from awake. I'd suggest monsters in pits (and vaults?), monsters that have heard a shriek, and zephyr hounds as a good starting point.

[Philip]

Sounds like some fine-tuning of new pathfinding is necessary. Maybe introduce error? If I understand the current system correctly, it works off of a heatmap centered around the player (sound or smell, with smell tracing the path of the player and sound creating immediate maps). What if the player weren't the only one visible on the map? Occasionally monsters would get lost for a little bit, maybe even lose track of you entirely, and the less sure of your location, the more likely they get lost, which sounds about right to me. Also keeps monsters moving around, which is always good.

Do monsters who are awake but have no idea where the player is still sit around doing nothing? If so, this would be one change to reduce the frequency of that. Doesn't make sense for everything to just be sitting around until a player drifts by.

The only exception to this should be when the monster has a specific idea of where to go - telepathy and returning to a place they were TO'd from come to mind.

As for what Estie said, while I couldn't be happier that the distinction between high and low stealth is getting bigger, and a Half-Troll warrior should expect to fight everything in a fairly large radius, that does have limits.

[Estie]

The improved pathfinding has changed the game dramatically. I have been adapting, trying out new things and thinking about it, but on the whole, I like the new gameplay less. The short tldr is: it makes the dungeon small and reduces tactical options.

A few points in detail:

Teleport other has been a feature of Angband since the start; it got nerfed more recently and that was fine, with the new pathfinding it became even worse and that is too much. Similar with telport self.

The power of stealth has been multiplied manifold by the changes. The stealthy diving approach to the game was working fine before, there is no need to cut off other ways of playing and basically enforce stealth. When playing a halftroll warrior, I am seriously considering mouse rings (bad ones which reduce my damage) which is not as it should be imho.

The situation before was that you could detect and gain an overview of the level layout, and if there was an opportunity for gain, a treasure room or small vault or some good kill targets, you could approach that and deal with it locally. Sometimes something nasty might make its way over to you and disrupt the party, driving you off the level or requiring a teleport other charge.
Now it is almost impossible to spend any length of time on a level unless the character has high stealth.

The feeling has changed from exploring hostile territory to surviving a sustained assault. I prefer the former gametype.

[Philip]

Considering that V gives Priests portal at around clvl 9 (7?), that would be reasonably likely to get you within LOS of the thing, so removing the scaling seems reasonable. Priests already have scaling through replacing Portal with Teleport, after all. Mages don't, though they totally could, there's a book it would be perfectly appropriate for. If all teleports become short-ish range then Mordenkainen could provide a reliable long teleport, giving Mages another tiny bit of specialness.

[Derakon]

Sounds like the distance on a low-level Priest might be a bit low? Possibly even on an early Mage. Especially with strong pathfinding. If I teleport, I don't want anything except maybe Morgoth to be able to find me.

Mm, I'd say the use case for Teleport / Portal is "I want to get at least a few turns' respite from this situation", so having it have a potentially short range is fine so long as it's not so short that the player is still in LOS of the thing they were trying to get away from.

That said, I'm not sure that scaling ranges is really appropriate for Teleport / Portal at all? Why can't they just have a range of, say, 30-100?

[Philip]

Sounds like the distance on a low-level Priest might be a bit low? Possibly even on an early Mage. Especially with strong pathfinding. If I teleport, I don't want anything except maybe Morgoth to be able to find me.

[Nick]

The new teleportation system doesn't work at all for teleportation spells. The distance being 250 (mage) or 400 (priest) is too big, the code places @ the farthest away from its starting position, always back and forth from the two same corner spots.

OK, that figures. Used to be that the teleport code randomised distances in a fairly hidden way - now we have a chance to do it explicitly. How about

• ?Phase - 5+d5
• ?Teleport - 50+d50
• _Teleport - 50+d50
• Spell Phase - 5+d5
• Spell Teleport - 2*level + d(level)
• Spell Portal - level + d(level)

[PowerWyrm]

The new teleportation system doesn't work at all for teleportation spells. The distance being 250 (mage) or 400 (priest) is too big, the code places @ the farthest away from its starting position, always back and forth from the two same corner spots.

[PowerWyrm]

Option "Display map" and "Display overhead" are reversed in the Subwindow setup menu.

[Pondlife]

Ah, I think that explains it. I've detected objects (with arkenstone) and traps (with spell); and the chest is both an object and a trap.

[Nick]

Somehow I know what one of the objects in an unopened vault is. Playing a Gnome Mage. See attached screenshot.

I've activated the arkenstone, but I've not got line of sight to any of the objects in the vault. Yet somehow I know what one of the objects is.

OK - looks like you've detected objects, and detected traps. I'm not sure what to think about this.

[Pondlife]

Somehow I know what one of the objects in an unopened vault is. Playing a Gnome Mage. See attached screenshot.

I've activated the arkenstone, but I've not got line of sight to any of the objects in the vault. Yet somehow I know what one of the objects is.

Character details (updated just after this behaviour was noticed):

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21122

Note: I'm playing the released 4.1.0 version, so this might have been fixed in the nightlies.