feature/monster

[Pondlife]

I think low level monsters should stop appearing at a certain level. When I last played, I remember seeing weak monsters like small kobolds and snagas quite deep in the dungeon.

[wobbly]

I suspect you can get a better effect then random by having a huge monster database and making most of the padding monsters rare enough that you only start to see them after multiple playthrough. Say the size of CPBs list but monsters are rarer rather then the game just throwing all of them at you. I actually started playing with this is my own list. It's interesting but it does get increasingly hard to manage.

Also check out Tome 4 if you haven't and want to see how random monsters play out in a roguelike. That has random uniques. I'm not sure I liked it. It had it's good & bad moments.

[Adam]

I said that some randomness in the monster list would make the game more replayable because by now most players know things like acid brand will be useful against Sauron, if I have no rShards I just need to avoid those 3-4 monsters but otherwise I'm good etc. Which just does not look good to me.
But of course I accept your arguments. Tbh I'm not a hardcore player, just pick up the game for a few weeks every year (and don't play other roguelikes) so I probably look at the game from a different point of view.

[Philip]

See the way I see the game, the predictability of monsters is a large part of what gives the game replayability. I'm not going to rehash my entire metanarrative concept here (I made an entire thread about it) but effectively, monsters being constant and monster memory being transferred, as well as just memory, means that players can learn and develop their gameplay as they play, creating a sort of personal narrative of a player's relationship with the game. This has many implications beyond monster design, and isn't even originally about monster design, but that's all in the thread.

I think the metanarrative could survive random monsters, and possibly even game balance could, though given that randarts still aren't balanced, who knows. It certainly doesn't feel like it's worth the risk or the effort (which would be significant even before taking into account balance).

This is also why I'd be fine with specific monsters having some abilities randomized within a pool. It would expand the amount of stuff players could learn, rather than contracting it.

[Nick]

New branch now available for testing

There is now a builds page for the new feature/monster branch, with the initial builds for Windows and macOS on it (source code is here).

The changes are as follows:

• New attack type SPIT, which allows monsters to spit various stuff at the player from a distance of up to 3 grids. Monsters affected so far: king cobra
• New attack type WHIP, where monsters up to two grids away can lash the player with a whip, possibly of some type (usually fire). Monsters affected so far: greater Balrog.
• More complex group behaviour, mostly:
  • If a group monster is awake, they may wake other monsters in their group that they can see. Monsters affected so far: anything that comes in any sort of group.
  • Summoned non-living monsters will vanish when the summoner is killed. Monsters affected so far: undead, elementals, golems, vortices.
  • Monsters in groups are less likely to be scared. Monsters affected so far: Anything that comes in a group, but especially those markes as servants, or bodyguards (which can't be scared while the monster they guard is alive).
  • Monster marked as bodyguards will try and group around the guarded monster. Monsters affected so far: bodyguards.
• Monster shapechanges. Shapechange is now a monster spell, and the casting monster will change shape for 5-15 turns and then change back. Monsters affected so for: druid, enchantress, Beorn the Shape-Changer (duh).
• Separation of frequencies for "innate spells" (breaths, arrows, boulders, shrieks, whip and spit) from actual cast spells. Related to this is an upgrade to archery for some monsters, which will be able to shoot more frequently and intelligently. Monsters affected so far: All monsters with "spells" really, but notably so far scouts, kobold archers and ranger chieftains.
• High resists have been made more uniform and reliable, with all high elements (aside from poison) now giving randomly between 1/3 and 1/2 resistance. There is also some tweaking of damage caps, with light and dark now capped at 500, and nether and chaos at 600. Monsters affected so far: everything that breathes or casts ball spells.
• Some additional effects have been added for breaths and ball spells from powerful monsters. Powerful fire, cold and poison attacks which are only singly resisted, and unresisted powerful nether and dark attacks, can now have extra unpleasant side-effects. Monsters affected so far: Anything with the POWERFUL flag, and for ball spells also monsters level 80 or deeper.
• One change which didn't happen was to make monsters capable of being awake but unaware of the player. I started implementing this, and then decided that it was affecting monster behaviour in a way I didn't like. I haven't completely ruled out having another go, but not for now.

I would greatly appreciate playtesting of this branch. I know of two bugs which I haven't tracked down properly - some misordering of messages following shapechanges, and a nasty one where the game closes correctly and writes a savefile, but it then can't be opened.

So next steps here are to fix those bugs, and to start in the monster list rewrite (changes so far have been principally to test the new mechanics). My plan for the rewrite is to do a monster base at a time (possibly alphabetically - ant, bat, centipede, ... - and possibly in whatever order takes my fancy).

All feedback of any sort is welcome.

[Sky]

Impressive!

[Pete Mack]

Why make this change?
High resists have been made more uniform and reliable, with all high elements (aside from poison) now giving randomly between 1/3 and 1/2 resistance. There is also some tweaking of damage caps, with light and dark now capped at 500, and nether and chaos at 600. Monsters affected so far: everything that breathes or casts ball spells.

That is a huge change that I don't recall being discussed. Making the game easier or more predictable seems questionable. It is worth noting that dark and light resist already have similar behavior to this. But why make resistances so good?

[Nick]

Why make this change?
High resists have been made more uniform and reliable, with all high elements (aside from poison) now giving randomly between 1/3 and 1/2 resistance. There is also some tweaking of damage caps, with light and dark now capped at 500, and nether and chaos at 600. Monsters affected so far: everything that breathes or casts ball spells.

That is a huge change that I don't recall being discussed. Making the game easier or more predictable seems questionable. It is worth noting that dark and light resist already have similar behavior to this. But why make resistances so good?

Dark and light resistances are now actually worse, sound is about the same, and the others are better (note the increases to the damage cap, too).

Reasons for the changes include:

• Simplification of what the player has to remember. Not such a problem for people who have been playing forever, but it reduces the amount of critical knowledge to learn.
• Makes getting the resist or not a clearer choice - you can still decide to do without RNether if you want, but the downside is bigger.
• Works in conjunction with the adding of extra effects for powerful balls and breaths to give room for a bigger gradient of monster difficulty toward the bottom of the dungeon. This isn't really showing yet, but will be more apparent when as the monster list changes.
• It's an edit file change that's easy to reverse, and I want to see how it plays. This seems like a reasonable starting point, but we could end up somewhere else.

This is an experimental branch, and specifics can be changed at any point (note how much this has happened, and is still happening, with classes). Thanks for questioning, it has made me justify something that was partly gut feeling

[mrfy]

[*]New attack type SPIT, which allows monsters to spit various stuff at the player from a distance of up to 3 grids. Monsters affected so far: king cobra

Killer fire beetles can spit to burn, I assume they'll get this attribute too.

[wobbly]

The changes are as follows:

• New attack type SPIT
• New attack type WHIP

I like both these changes. I'm idly hopeful that the new infrastructure is setup to take other verbs? In the same way that you can currently add new attack types to monsters that just use different verbs/nouns/adjectives?

[PowerWyrm]

"New attack type WHIP, where monsters up to two grids away can lash the player with a whip, possibly of some type (usually fire). Monsters affected so far: greater Balrog."

PWMAngband has "Succubus". Will definitely get this.

[Nick]

I like both these changes. I'm idly hopeful that the new infrastructure is setup to take other verbs? In the same way that you can currently add new attack types to monsters that just use different verbs/nouns/adjectives?

WHIP and SPIT are monster spells (see monster_spell.txt) that both use the (new) LASH effect. Spells using existing effects only need changes to the data files; if you want to make a new effect, that requires changes to the actual C code.

[Monkey Face]

It's not a spell, but how about monsters with long tails being able to WHIP you with them from two grids away?

[Nick]

Quick note of warning here. I seem to have found another crash bug on this branch to do with monster groups (killing a monster sometimes crashes the game). I will be trying to track down this bug and the save-but-can't-reload bug (also group-related), but until then testing this branch is not for the faint-hearted.

[jevansau]

I've had a couple of crash on descends with this build.