Class/magic feature branch

[Estie]

I appreciate the diplomacy and genuineness, but would be happier still for a maybe less diplomatic but more informative response. You say my playthrough was helpful - in which way ?

You intend, if I understand correctly, for shapes to not be increasingly superior ways for applying melee damage, but rather niche solutions to specific problems.
If that is so, there must exist a reason to leave a given shape, besides the global "you cant use magic while shapeshifted" that applies to all shapes. In the case of the fox, I can see the possibility for such a design if the fox damage output is actually lower than unshifted. The druid would turn into a fox for a stealth bonus while exploring and unshift for combat. While a speed bonus is thematic, it directly affects damage, so if you insist on including it, maybe remove all attack abilities from fox.

Leaving the bear aside for now, what would be a reason to use pukelman ? And what would be one to stop using it ?

If the reason for pukelman and fox is not superior damage, then you need to make sure that those forms actually do less damage than whatever you intend for the default druid combat - probably the spells (?). That is not "just balance", it has to be in the right ballpark otherwise the niche concept breaks apart.


Currently, I dont have much time for Angband either, but I will try and stay on track as much as possible.

[Nick]

You say my playthrough was helpful - in which way ?

Mainly for the info that the 3rd book spells were all rubbish, but also the feedback on the shapes.

You intend, if I understand correctly, for shapes to not be increasingly superior ways for applying melee damage, but rather niche solutions to specific problems.
If that is so, there must exist a reason to leave a given shape, besides the global "you cant use magic while shapeshifted" that applies to all shapes. In the case of the fox, I can see the possibility for such a design if the fox damage output is actually lower than unshifted. The druid would turn into a fox for a stealth bonus while exploring and unshift for combat. While a speed bonus is thematic, it directly affects damage, so if you insist on including it, maybe remove all attack abilities from fox.

Yes, your understanding is exactly correct, and the intent was for the fox damage to be lower. I don't want to completely remove combat, but to make it noticeably worse - so you can still deal with weak enemies while exploring, but need to change back for anything serious.

Leaving the bear aside for now, what would be a reason to use pukelman ? And what would be one to stop using it ?

OK, I think the fox is more or less explained; I'll just run through the other shapes in some detail.

• Pukelman - its a statue, so should be slow but hard to damage . The way I've done this is be a minus to speed (currently -5) and stealth (-2), and then a whole bunch of buffs:
  • Sustain STR and CON
  • PStun
  • Regen
  • Hold Life
  • +4 STR and CON
  • Poison immunity
  • RShards
  • immediate healing of poison and stunning on changing
  • can't get cut, and any existing cuts get just frozen at the current level until changing back
  • Direct reduction (currently by 10) of damage by any individual attack
  
  This last one is incredibly powerful, and I think the main art here is going to be balancing that against the speed reduction.
  The use case is fighting multiple medium-strength enemies - trolls, middling hounds, any infestation. The big weakness is against things that deal a lot of damage at once, so big breathers and cursers. I tested it a little, with the notable things being dying to a breath from an 11-headed hydra, and having a long slow losing melee battle against Uvatha.
• Bear - pretty simple, good at bashing stuff. PFear, plus to STR, CON, to-hit, to-dam and melee skill, and negative to stealth, INT and disarming. Main reason for changing back is inability to heal and pick up items.
• Eagle (the new one) - the eagles in middle earth were in practice mainly useful for getting people out of sticky situations (Gandalf, Bilbo, Sam, Frodo, Dwarves, Fingolfin). Mostly this is achieved by teleporting in Angband, but there are some cases where you don't want to do that - the big one being when there's gear you want to pick up. So eagles get survival skills - PBlind, PConf, PFear, SI, FA and complete immunity to traps - and quadrupled movement speed (this works like extra shots - moving a step only costs a quarter energy). So eagle form becomes viable in some cases for running away instead of teleporting, and also for raiding vaults.

Come to think of it, the correct thing to do with the fox is probably to give it extra movement speed instead of regular speed. Note that with the shapes I'm trying to satisfy both gameplay and thematic goals, and so there's an extra balancing act there.

Let me know if there are obvious flaws in that, or if anything isn't clear. My hope is that druids will be played in at least two possible ways (pure spellcaster or bear-form melee fighter, or some combination) depending on gear and player choice.

[Nick]

There are new builds up on the build page, but not a lot of obvious change - mages get a room-lighting spell, and druids' fox form has been tweaked (worse combat, +5 speed replaced by doubled movement speed).

I have spent considerable time rewriting the effect code, though, to try and improve the readability both of the actual code and of the data files. I am also working on getting the Necromancer class ready. So I thought I'd at least get the latest code out there, but it's not all that exciting.

[Ighalli]

+5 speed replaced by doubled movement speed

Does it make sense to break the speed display out to have movement listed separately when there is a bonus or penalty? Should multiple blows/shots end up showing effective melee/shooting speeds? How about spellcasting? One could imagine a necromancer spell that increases spellcasting speed while causing HP drain or bleeding.

[PowerWyrm]

Banishment before: 1 cast, everything gone. Banishment now: lure stuff outside of vault, banish, repeat. Does that change anything? Nope, except increasing the turn count of your game...

[Estie]

When trying to start the game, I get an error message about libpng12.dll missing.

Edit: Nm, redownloading fixed.

[Estie]

OK, I accidentally entered a shop in fox form. Now all shops are closed. What am I supposed to do ?

[Tibarius]

agile development

The development of the 'new' classes reminds me a lot of agile development.

Meanwhile i consider it vastly inferior to the classis software development. And i think this threat is a shining example of why that is the case.

Either unwillingness or unableness to define goals and aims first leads into several development circles which require a lot more ressource investment than the other way around.

After thinking about it, i consider 'agile development' a clever method to increase total amount of required ressources without having a single person involved being able to be identified as cause for this, because it is method inherent.

So applaus to the consultant whoever came first to this wisdom and makes corporations pay a lot more money for software development than realy being required.

[Thraalbee]

Well, the intent as far as I understand it is to simplify testing new ideas and I for one love this. After many years thinking about it, finally it's easy enough for me to work on a new variant or possibly just a new class. I can't see how greatly simplifying for the community (including dev's) to test new stuff can be a bad thing. At least not unless the goal is to come up with an interesting new version of Angband in very short time.

[Nick]

OK, I accidentally entered a shop in fox form. Now all shops are closed. What am I supposed to do ?

Oops, that's bad. Save and reload seems to be a workaround, I'll look into that and get a fix out.

[Nick]

OK, there's a fix pushed; new builds should be up shortly.

[Estie]

I used the save-load solution, havent downloaded the fixed version yet.

1. When mana goes down to zero, it sometimes displays zero even after resting.

2. Trying to cast sense surroundings crashes the game

save file: http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=...60929999261991
randart file: http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=...54288393669695

Edit: it seems browsing/casting from book 2 causes the crash; unfortunately, it is persistent and I cant play that character anymore.

[jevansau]

Got the same issue with the game crashing - seems to be caused by browsing book Gifts of Nature when the spell Earth Rising is known and has been cast. This is on the build 82.

[Nick]

Fix has been pushed for the crash in browsing book 2 - should be on the build page soon.

The mana display bug is confirmed and annoying, thanks to everyone who reported. Not fixed yet, will be when I get around to tracking down which vital refresh instruction I apparently deleted accidentally. Temporary workaround is to manually refresh any time you notice SP at 0.

[Tibarius]

mage playtrough in 4.1.2

So what are the most annoying properties of a mage?

a) needs endless resting for new mana ...
so i either think maximum mana should be calculated like hit points OR give them a spell that restores some mana, so you can 'restore' mana within let's say 5-6 turns

b) that mana storm has failure rate > 0% when maxxed out with int, CL and gear ... it doesn't change gameplay just annoys the player, please reduce the fail % so that a maxxed out mage has 0%

Anything else was basically great and doesn't require any tweaking in my eyes.