Persistent levels

[Zikke]

And for the second statement: Summoning monsters should give you enough monsters not to call opponent and experience generation finite.

Well, if you're running around dlvl 98/99, you'll clear it eventually and then have to simply spend turns wait for things to respawn. Technically it's not finite, but it sure would be boring a waste of turns.

[Sky]

so ...

if you go down a stair, and then up a different stair, do you come out of the first or second stair?

do mobs stay exactly where you left them? so, can you, like, pull Ungoliant out of a vault, go down a level, then back up from another stairs, etc? and pull her to the other side of the dungeon, then raid her lair?

if not, what if you go down a stair, and some orcs want to kill, you, and you go back up .. and basically wait to die? because you can never go down that stair ever again because there's an angry mob of orcs waiting for you ?

[Nick]

if you go down a stair, and then up a different stair, do you come out of the first or second stair?

The second one - that is, the stair immediately above the one you went up. Levels are generated so that the stairs connect.

do mobs stay exactly where you left them? so, can you, like, pull Ungoliant out of a vault, go down a level, then back up from another stairs, etc? and pull her to the other side of the dungeon, then raid her lair?

Yes

if not, what if you go down a stair, and some orcs want to kill, you, and you go back up .. and basically wait to die? because you can never go down that stair ever again because there's an angry mob of orcs waiting for you ?

Well, you could find a different stair to go down. How you handle it is up to you

[fizzix]

If you also include the option to pre-generate levels, then competitions can be even more level.

With regard to uniques. I think one option we might want to consider is to alter monster summons so that the pool of monsters also includes monsters on other levels. So you could pull a unique from another floor. This sort of makes sense intuitively. Also, it prevents "summon ringwraiths" from being equivalent to "summon greater undead"

You could even consider altering all summons like this, so that monsters that get summoned get summoned from nearby floors. Monsters that get destructed get placed on floors 1-5 levels below, etc. That would take more work.

Another option is to allow uniques (specifically) to be able to "use" staircases. Let's be honest, certain uniques are designed to show up constantly and annoy you until you devote the resources to kill them. Adunaphel and Saruman are prime examples. The game would lose a little bit if Adunaphel was stuck on the floor forever once you descended past her. If she followed you down after 100 turns or so, and spawned somewhere on the level, or on the staircase, that would be interesting.

[Sky]

i got 2 crashes out of two tries. one just crashed the app with the crash message, the other told me it failed to allocate stairs, and then crashed.

[Sky]

nope, five crashes out of 5 different characters with 5 different set of birth options.

[Nick]

nope, five crashes out of 5 different characters with 5 different set of birth options.

Any extra information or savefile would be helpful in tracking down the problems.

[Sky]

i'll have a whole bunch of saves available tonight.

[Sky]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9Xw9X2AHPJdQklwaWZwMHpVVjA

there.
this is a freshly-unpacked WIN nightly, regardless of race, class, or birth options, as soon as i try to enter the dungeon i get a crash.

[Nick]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9...klwaWZwMHpVVjA
there.
this is a freshly-unpacked WIN nightly, regardless of race, class, or birth options, as soon as i try to enter the dungeon i get a crash.

OK, thanks. That is very odd - linux build works fine, windows build fails, and the failure doesn't look remotely platform-related.

EDIT: macOS version seems to fail in the same way. Further research needed.

[PowerWyrm]

This option gives Priests a huge advantage I guess...

[PowerWyrm]

For MAngband/PWMAngband, the way levels persist is much simpler (because of multiplayer mode): there is a chunk_list array for all the levels and a players_on_depth array for the number of players on a level. When players_on_depth is not zero, the level persists, otherwise it is regenerated. The players_on_depth value is automatically increased/decreased when a player enters/leaves a level, and can be manually changed using the DM menu to static/unstatic a level.

To determine how players arrive on a persistent level, there are three fixed locations: location for players going up, location for players going down, location for players arriving randomly (usually by WoR or tele level). This is much simpler than pairing stairs, so every staircase down on level n-1 goes to the same staircase on level n, and every staircase up on level n+1 goes to the same staircase too on level n.

[Nick]

OK, thanks. That is very odd - linux build works fine, windows build fails, and the failure doesn't look remotely platform-related.

EDIT: macOS version seems to fail in the same way. Further research needed.

New build on the nightlies page that should fix the bug.

[Nick]

So even if one explored each level completely, and made notes of any uniques left behind, an OOD unique might randomly spawn carrying an artifact and the player would never know it or see them again unless they went back to that level for some reason.

Also, this means there would essentially be a finite number of monsters to kill and loot to roll in any given game (except for the randomly generated monsters as you're exploring).

I'm now thinking that saved levels should be maintained - perhaps after a set time remove 1/10 of the monsters on the level and add 1/10 of the usual starting numbers.

[kaypy]

Word of Recall seems to keep x,y location fixed, which may leave you stuck in a wall or worse yet off the valid map area for a savefile wrecking crash.

I'll go poke around in the source now and see if I can come up with a patch for it.

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I've begun looking through the code, and am now in mortal terror of how "Create Stair" might behave...

...

... Ah. I see I am not alone there then 8-)

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BTW, I am seeing a fair amount of code like

level_by_depth(p->depth + 1)

in the new code.

Does that cooperate with the stair_skip constant?

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OK, I have a somewhat hacky quickfix that randomizes the players location if they are in a bad location. It needs a bunch of work but it'll at least not crash. Should be on github shortly