Bugs and issues in 4.1.0

[Estie]

I actually tried this; I unsquelched search jewelry, found an amulet of searching +3, inscribed it and my current amulet with @w1, mapped s -> w1 and carried the amulet along in my inventory. Eventually opportunity arose when Harrowen created traps. After I killed him, I swapped amulets a couple times in the room with the new traps, but alas, no new traps became visible.

Bit of a waste of time, but in principle it works.

[Nick]

I actually tried this; I unsquelched search jewelry, found an amulet of searching +3, inscribed it and my current amulet with @w1, mapped s -> w1 and carried the amulet along in my inventory. Eventually opportunity arose when Harrowen created traps. After I killed him, I swapped amulets a couple times in the room with the new traps, but alas, no new traps became visible.

Bit of a waste of time, but in principle it works.

Doesn't work in current master, unless you step out of LoS and then back in. I've just finished making it so it will work; will be in the next build.

[Nick]

New build is up on the nightlies page with the following changes:

• Correct damage now shows in monster spell descriptions (notably cause mortal wounds)
• Quiver header shows numbers for slots instead of letters
• Bailing out of stepping into lava no longer means you learn the RFire rune
• Wielding (or taking off) gear leads to a check for if any new traps are detectable
• All traps have a 1/3 chance to be destroyed on activating

There was also some removal of unnecessary code.

[dreembeard]

(...) I think the correct way to deal with it in the current setting is for the player's field of view to be re-scanned when they change their equipment.

I knew it! You really have a piece of gum stuck under that 's' key, don't you?

But that would definitely be an improvement, to let a change in search skill trigger a re-scan.

[dreembeard]

New build is up on the nightlies page with the following changes:

• (...)
• Wielding (or taking off) gear leads to a check for if any new traps are detectable
  (...)

Wow. A Maintainer of Lightning. I wish I were so speedy...

Well, here's another bug then (in the next post)

[dreembeard]

randomization of object kind flags after editing object.txt

After editing gamedata/object.txt, I loaded a savefile of a char in town. He immediately dropped some inventory (suddenly) labeled with "ignore", and it turned out that several flavors of known items were now unknown, and lots of flavors of never seen items were known. In other words, it looked like the ignore and aware flags in object_kind info were randomly redefined.

I vaguely recall that I experienced sudden changes in aware flag settings before, while testing some things with another character in debug mode. I did not pay much attention to it, since it had already been reported that there was a bug in the debug menu (ah, that sounds poetic ).
But now it occurred during normal gameplay.

In the game modding section of the online help, there's a warning that you may destroy savefile compatibility if you add or delete objects to/from object.txt. But I did not do that.
[Edit: Oops. It seems that I did add an object after all. But now that I moved that new (food) object next to some junky mushroom, and commented the latter out, things are back to normal again (and the new item has the ignore setting that the deleted item had.)]

Question 1: It seems that I can avoid trouble like the above "flag randomization" by ensuring that the "index" of the (other) objects in the file is preserved. So all is well as long as I do not change the number of objects, or the order in which they occur. But for the rest I can change anything, even the object name and type. (provided that i make sure that the old name does not occur in another gamedata file). Is that correct?

Question 2: Am I still safe if I add a new object at the end of the file?

[PowerWyrm]

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)

Seems fine for phase and teleport items. For teleport spells, I'd add a minimum distance for low level characters so Teleport and Portal are still better than Phase. And increase max distance, so high level characters get a distance similar to the old values of level*3 (Portal) and level*5 (Mage Teleport -- Priest teleport with x8 multiplier was silly). Something like:
- teleport: 10 + 2 * level + d(2 * level)
- portal: 5 + 3 * level / 2 + d(3 * level / 2)

[Gwarl]

Hi Gwarl,

I presume that with "trap-associated tedium" you mean the trap detection on the green band. I do acknowledge that a system like the one you proposed gets rid of such tedium without sacrificing traps. I just don't believe in the necessity to give up search. And I understood that you and other posters on the forum did. Based on what experience? Your search for hidden doors? For at least since vanilla 3.0, I don't believe I ever searched for traps (other than on chests). Very now and then in the early game perhaps. But in my recollection, that was hardly gamewrecking.

Because of my dislike of the green-band routine, I have been pondering about detectionless perception+searching for traps for my own (future) variant. And I think that what I have in mind (basically probabilistic short-range perception depending on distance plus search that is simply boosted perception) has a good chance of being workable, IF the location of traps can be made so that players gradually learn where to expect them. Which is yet to be seen of course; the proof is in the pudding. But that is what I had in mind.

And then I come across the new trap spotting system in V 4.1.0, from which search is completely removed. Without much explanation. At least not in the changes.txt file. And up to this point, all I have seen in the forum discussion are arguments that lay down a conviction that search is bad. Without proof or reference to concrete experiences. Moreover, without any hint that a system based on perception+search has ever been tried out. And the phrasing of the "problem with search" refers to classic gametheoretic optimaility. Which, in my conviction (and that of many others) only applies to very constrained games, which angband is clearly not.

Yes, it's a matter of opinion.

They 'll drop a scroll on the tile, and as they see it float sideways to a neighboring one, they will retreat in the hope that they find a wand of stone-to-mud to bypass the trap that is apparently there.

To my mind this is an exploit of game mechanics. Way back when only a single object could appear on each tile and apparently traps were included here, and then eventually someone let items stack on a single tile, but traps were still treated differently. IMO the fix is to let items appear on trap tiles, but this introduces the problem of what symbol to use to inform the player of a trap and a pile of items on the same square.

Heck, even deterministic perception as it is now employed in vanilla would be significantly better with search than without , if you define search as slightly boosted perception (which seems realistic). Because that brings player savviness back into the equation. In such a system, searching twice is still pointless, but searching once, at the right spot, may pay off. That does mean that it should also cost something., so let it slow you down for 1+d2 turns.

Traps nearly always appear now where doors would have been before. If you're in a t-junction it's quite likely that's a trap. If anything trap placement has become vastly more predictable since the trap changes came in.

Honestly doing away with searching has been a huge relief to me. When I went from playing 4.0.5 to playing with the new traps I hardly noticed the difference, but when I tried playing another game of 4.0.5 it was awful.

Traps actually seem to matter more now, previously one would search then disarm, I actually find myself looking for alternate routes now or considering whether that is the corridor I want to spend my time exploring in the infinite dungeon.

I will also note that rods and wands of disable trap exist and can presumably be used on undetected traps if the plyaer notices themselves in a corridor junction without doors.

Perhaps there is a time in your characters life where they can't properly deal with a trap because they don't have the class skills or devices to deal with it. I'd argue that's a good thing.

[passer_by]

[*]Bailing out of stepping into lava no longer means you learn the RFire rune

Speaking of bailing out, I just bailed out of quaffing an unidentified potion at the "Direction?" prompt and didn't learn its identification. I think either I should learn that it's !Dragon's Breath (what other potion requires a direction?) or I shouldn't be allowed to bail out.

[Sky]

speaking of Teleport Self;

TS works by sending you X distance away from your current location, where X is based on your CL.

Now, as i understand it, this means that the higher X, the better. However, when you are CL50, the spell tends to cycle you through a set number of teleport results.

I assume this is because the X value exceeds [a parameter i'm not sure of] and therefore only so many spots in the map qualify. However, when you are lower level, you actually teleport a smaller X away, thus making the spell BETTER when your CL is lower.

[Derakon]

New build is up on the nightlies page with the following changes:

• Wielding (or taking off) gear leads to a check for if any new traps are detectable

I don't think this is desirable. As you can see it's leading people back into the tedium of searching for traps, just by abusing quirks of the game mechanics rather than by using standard, well-documented tools like a search command. IMO you should get one chance to see each trap, period. If you want a higher chance, you have to be wearing your search gear while you're exploring (or while fighting trap-summoners).

Well actually IMO we should just remove traps because I don't think they're fun, but that's a whole 'nother conversation that we've had a few dozen times.

[dreembeard]

(...)

They 'll drop a scroll on the tile, and as they see it float sideways to a neighboring one, they will retreat in the hope that they find a wand of stone-to-mud to bypass the trap that is apparently there.

To my mind this is an exploit of game mechanics. (...)

Yes. And my troll feels that it's a fitting response to the exploit that forbids him to search.

Btw, it 's not always an exploit: I find it conceivable that summoning runes would cause a magic scroll to float/roll to the side if you drop it there. By way of electro-magic repulsion.
A scroll on a mechanical trap is another matter, of course. But if I drop (ie, throw) a heavy chest on a hidden trap door, the most realistic outcome would be that the trap is triggered. And possibly destroyed, leaving a chasm. Which is not an existing terrain feature in vanilla, but I do plan to incorporate them in my own variant. Chasms spanning multiple levels will be the common (viz., only) pathways for speed divers. Who will all wear feather-fall gear. A matter of natural selection.

Traps nearly always appear now where doors would have been before. If you're in a t-junction it's quite likely that's a trap. If anything trap placement has become vastly more predictable since the trap changes came in.

Vastly more predictable, yes, but still not predictable enough for the system I have in mind. Having to search at every t-junction for traps would be tedium indeed.
But when you enter a room, and see two heaps of gold with 1 tile inbetween (see below), THAT should make you think twice, before you doggedly walk over there to pick 'm up.

  
  ########+#########
  #.........$......#
##.................+
..p.........$......#
##...../.......?...#
  #####@############

Whoever places traps has no way to predict which route you will take, except that any unwary adventurer that loves gold (and who doesn't?) will go from one heap to the other one via the shortest route: the tile inbetween. So that is a *nice* spot for a (stealthy) summoning trap. Another spot that is nearly as good would be the tile between the topmost heap and the door. So a character with a mediocre or low perceptive skill does wise to avoid those tiles, or to search for traps, before picking up the heaps of gold.

Honestly doing away with searching has been a huge relief to me. When I went from playing 4.0.5 to playing with the new traps I hardly noticed the difference, but when I tried playing another game of 4.0.5 it was awful.

I believe you (I never played 4.0.5 myself), but you might well have felt equally relieved if search were seldom necessary instead of completely removed.

Traps actually seem to matter more now, previously one would search then disarm, I actually find myself looking for alternate routes now or considering whether that is the corridor I want to spend my time exploring in the infinite dungeon.

There you have a point. I noticed too that, while playing 4.1.0, I was more often trying to circumvent traps. Which, of course, is not surprising with traps occuring predominantly at chokepoints. So maybe I will allow some easy-to-spot traps at random chokepoint locations. But less often than in 4.1.0.

Perhaps there is a time in your characters life where they can't properly deal with a trap because they don't have the class skills or devices to deal with it. I'd argue that's a good thing.

I can accept that some challenges are best avoided or postponed, such as Smeagol without see_inv, or Mim without the proper resistance or immunity. But even in those cases my character always has some chance. I find it hard to swallow that it has zero chance to recognize certain traps (and hence zero chance to disarm them). That just does not feel right. Especially for rogue characters.

But of course, rogues do get that spell of trap disabling. And other classes can use digging or stone2mud to circumvent unrecognized traps. So there is (literally) ample room for avoidance. Not really a serious problem.

----------------------
Melee is for warriors.
We paladins prefer mêlée.

[dreembeard]

I don't think this is desirable. As you can see it's leading people back into the tedium of searching for traps, just by abusing quirks of the game mechanics rather than by using standard, well-documented tools like a search command. IMO you should get one chance to see each trap, period. If you want a higher chance, you have to be wearing your search gear while you're exploring (or while fighting trap-summoners).

Well actually IMO we should just remove traps because I don't think they're fun, but that's a whole 'nother conversation that we've had a few dozen times.

I don't get this, Derakon. What "well-documented search command" are you talking about? And where is the "tedium" if I choose to put on a ring of searching for a better look, because I just spotted a trap 2 tiles away, and noticed earlier that these traps tend to come in pairs or triples?

I think that Nick came up with a very elegant solution to accomodate such perfectly natural behavior while preserving the moratorium on active search. Which, btw, avoids the tedium of having to get out of LoS of the suspect tile (or quaffing !blindness followed by !clw).

And whence this indignation about other players "abusing" quirks?

Nearly all players make use of game quirks now and then. Such as "selling" potentially harmful consumables for 0 gold, wasting a quylthulg from "around the corner" (using the quirk that Q can only teleport or summon with you in LoS), and reading unknown scrolls on a stairway (using the quirk that monsters cannot follow you onto the stairs).

Would you like to forbid all of these?

[Derakon]

I don't get this, Derakon. What "well-documented search command" are you talking about?

I meant the old s/S commands, which searched once or toggled search mode. They were removed when the new traps system was created, but swapping around your equipment seems to nearly-exactly duplicate their functionality, if I understand the exploit correctly.

And whence this indignation about other players "abusing" quirks?

Nearly all players make use of game quirks now and then. Such as "selling" potentially harmful consumables for 0 gold, wasting a quylthulg from "around the corner" (using the quirk that Q can only teleport or summon with you in LoS), and reading unknown scrolls on a stairway (using the quirk that monsters cannot follow you onto the stairs).

Would like to forbid all of these?

There's a difference between quirks and game mechanics, in that the latter is intentional. Your list is a mix of quirks and mechanics; for example, selling for 0 gold is absolutely a mechanic, not a quirk. But more importantly, there's a difference between fun quirks and tedious quirks. Fun quirks are fine! Let's codify them into mechanics wherever possible. But we should be seeking to eradicate unfun or tedious quirks, or at least turn them into something that is fun/flavorful.

Putting searching gear off and on is a tedious way to detect traps. I don't think anyone really wants to go around constantly switching their gear around to improve their odds of detecting traps. What they really want is to not be surprised by a trap. To the extent that the game is rewarding constantly swapping gear around, the game should be changed so that said gear-swapping is not necessary, in an attempt to make the game more fun (by eliminating a source of tedium). The easiest way to do that is to make gear-swapping unrewarding, which can be done by giving the player exactly one chance to see each trap.

[Gwarl]

I realise this is controversial but I would like to unify the various kinds of lines and corners in angband so that if you can see it, it can see you and you can target it, and if you can't see it, you can't target it. But I'll probably just leave that on the feature list of my imaginary variant.