feature/monster

[mrfy]

Changes are:

• Yeeks: brown yeeks replaced by terrified yeeks, which do nothing but run away screaming
• Jellies: decided that five different types of moving, acid-attack jellies was too many, and removed ochre jellies, gelatinous cubes and black puddings (as the most generic)

I like the yeek change, looking forward to encountering terrified yeeks. Disappointed with the change to jellies, I will miss gelatinous cubes and surprisingly ochre jellies as they were easy to kill with frost. Other changes sound good, IMO.

Btw, save file wasn't compatible again. No big deal.

[tangar]

I do not know why, but it feels pretty painful changes. It's like moving to new version of software or new interface, when previous one was perfect an you loved it... I hate to migrate on new UI. And this is much worse than this - as new UI got (at least sometimes) certain reasons to appear, and this changes isn't really necessary.

Ravens replaced by crows of Durthang (from O)

Nighthawks replaced by blood falcons (new monster, possibly OP)

Why not just add new monsters: crows of Durthang and blood falcons? It would bring something new to the game, make it more interesting. Players likes to have new monsters. Why to remove mobs which people get used to..

Yeeks: brown yeeks replaced by terrified yeeks, which do nothing but run away screaming

I like brown yeeks. Why just not to add terrified yeeks as new monster in addition to brown yeeks?

Jellies: decided that five different types of moving, acid-attack jellies was too many, and removed ochre jellies, gelatinous cubes and black puddings (as the most generic)

I love ochre jellies, gelatinous cubes and black puddings. Especially gelatinous cubes who are classic of the classic

It doesn't feel as enhancement, but as 'cutting' parts of the living body, sorry.

[Nick]

New builds of this branch for Windows and macOS are now upon the build page (source is here). Changes are:

• Birds:
  • Ravens replaced by crows of Durthang (from O)
  • Nighthawks replaced by blood falcons (new monster, possibly OP)
• Yeeks: brown yeeks replaced by terrified yeeks, which do nothing but run away screaming
• Jellies: decided that five different types of moving, acid-attack jellies was too many, and removed ochre jellies, gelatinous cubes and black puddings (as the most generic)
• Hydras:
  • Now range from 2-headed to 9-headed
  • Each one is like the previous one with an extra head and an extra blow (yes, that is what I mean)
  • Higher level ones also get breaths
• Sauron: The aim here is for the Sauron fight to be less annoying and more dangerous. He gets shapechanges, his spells are more powerful, and he has fewer hitpoints. Possibly he should lose most of his teleport spells as well.
• Morgoth - now gets the new SMASH_WALL flag (similar to FA, but nerfed slightly) where when he tunnels he removes not just the grid he's moving to, but also most of the wall grids adjacent; also a couple of changes to the hit to shatter attack
• Fixed a bug where necromancers couldn't read (thanks wobbly)
• Fixed a couple of fairly rare crash bugs with monster groups; there's still at least one unfixed, though.
• Sundry tweaks to monster spells necessitated by some of the changed monsters

This is now close to the end of the pass through the list by monster base. There's a few more things to do, then I'll be looking at the list from other perspectives (appropriate distribution through the dungeon, where all the spells turn up, what monsters are difficult for particular classes, etc). But before that I plan to pull the branch into master, probably in about a week.

Opinions welcome as always.

[Nick]

My necromancer's fail rates are indeed better without a light, except for the bit where the game tells me I can not see if I try to cast without it. I can't read scrolls either.

Hm, OK. This must be a bug from the light revamp. I'll look into it.

[wobbly]

You should be able to see just as well without the lantern, and carrying a light hurts your spell failure rates

My necromancer's fail rates are indeed better without a light, except for the bit where the game tells me I can not see if I try to cast without it. I can't read scrolls either.

[Nick]

if Nazgul are meant to vary a lot in power, it would be good to give them different colors, otherwise it's easy to mix them up. (Which of them was the easy one again?)

They're not and there isn't one

[Nick]

Energy hounds used to be lit right? They are now not. Deliberate?

Monsters lit or carrying light used to get a standard intensity of 2 (so they would light their own grid, and the grids immediately next to them). With the introduction of variable light intensities, I had the choice for each monster, and I basically went with

• Really light intensive monsters (eg shimmering vortex) get an intensity of 3 (so radius 2)
• Monsters that carry light (eg apprentice) or are fire-based (eg fire spirit) get an intensity of 2 (radius 1, like the old monster lights)
• Monsters which are electricity based (eg energy hound) get an intensity of 1 (radius 0, but they are lit)

[Thraalbee]

In my imagination they all look alike.

[fph]

if Nazgul are meant to vary a lot in power, it would be good to give them different colors, otherwise it's easy to mix them up. (Which of them was the easy one again?)

[wobbly]

Energy hounds used to be lit right? They are now not. Deliberate?

[Nick]

Windows 10 & notepad if it matters.

Ok, tested something. Opened it in notepad, changed nothing, hit save, same error.

Yes, notepad is not the editor you want for any sort of code. I have heard good things about notepad++ (and I have occasionally used wordpad successfully).

[wobbly]

Hmm, if I try & change this in my own copy (pre-compiled but not yet run & in a fresh directory) I get a parser error, what's the deal here?

I don't know, that should work fine. What was the exact error?

Parse error in monster line 1 column 1

Same error if I change the depth back again.

Windows 10 & notepad if it matters.

Ok, tested something. Opened it in notepad, changed nothing, hit save, same error.

[Nick]

Hmm, if I try & change this in my own copy (pre-compiled but not yet run & in a fresh directory) I get a parser error, what's the deal here?

I don't know, that should work fine. What was the exact error?

As for the Ringwraiths, here is my reasoning:

1. They were meant to be Sauron's most powerful servants
2. The only one that was distinguished in any way was the Witch-King, so spreading them out seems artificial
3. Uvatha is currently at the same level as spirit trolls

If anyone can point out the flaw in that, let me know

More generally, once I've had a go at all the monster bases, it will be time to assess how the overall balance is. Things may then get moved around considerably relative to each other. Some of the ideas I'm having may not be viable (wait until you see blood falcons...), but I figure better to throw them all out there and then moderate later.

[Thraalbee]

No more changes planned for monster view. But I am open to suggestions, it's easy to add stuff now that all data is in an internal SQL database.

I just started with a similar page for artifacts and randarts

[Nick]

Added ability to switch between plot and table once datafiles are uploaded. You can also alter groups or filter and then click Plot or Tabulate to look at subsets of the data

https://thraalbee.azurewebsites.net/monview/

That is AWESOME