feature/monster

[Nick]

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

Small bug in the monsters - when I click on mage, I get the info for dark elven mage.

[Grotug]

I hope I don't offend Nick overmuch with the criticisms in this post.

Since the current master is a work in progress, I'm going to assume the new monsters, especially the new Uniques, are going to get fleshed out descriptions? (the new ones are rather underwhelming). One thing I loved about playing Angband in my early days of the game was all the great descriptions all the monsters and artifacts have. It always impressed me so much how every monster could sound like it was the most terrible thing to ever walk the world. Each Unique's description managed somehow to be more terrible than the next! Now, when I came across some new Uniques I was a bit skeptical, since I am so familiar with the bestiary of the official version and it's just hard to imagine the new monsters being cooler than the ones they are replacing. When I looked at a new unique's description, being skeptical seemed warranted: "A servant of Orome; hunter of servants and fell beasts." Sure, the language is good, but this is not a foe that instills ... anything in me, neither fear nor wonder; a bit generic without the interesting specific details of Osse. Osse may have been a bit random in his lore (some kind of Poseidon knock off) but, man, he has a great description! I don't know who wrote the original descriptions for the artifacts, monsters and Uniques, but I fear their writing will never be matched:

"Encrusted with barnacles, slimy and dripping, the Maia of the untamed sea has dragged himself down into Angband to send you to a watery grave. Osse is the most powerful and heartless of Ulmo's servants and embodies the untamed power of the ocean. Terror grows in your heart with each squelching step of his approach." His place in Angband will become even more fitting if water is ever added to the game.

While I am on board with the proposed increased Tolkienization of Angband and removing Uniques/monsters that don't really fit (I'm fine with Arien and Radagast going, but I do hope their replacements will be as memorable!), I'm realizing that Osse is actually one of the more memorable Uniques in the whole game, and I will be quite sad for his going; not just for his description but for how terrible he is for his native depth.

And actually, thematically, Osse is quite Tolkien appropriate in a way that is very fitting to such a dangerous adventure game as Angband: the sea held special significance to Tolkien, not as a nice place to visit on vacation, but as one that was not altogether very kind; but, rather, mysterious and dangerous, (in his mind it had swallowed up an entire continent).

"This legend or myth or dim memory of some ancient history has always troubled me. In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands. It still occurs occasionally, though now exorcized by writing about it. It always ends by surrender, and I awake gasping out of deep water. I used to draw it or write bad poems about it." --J.R.R. Tolkien

I suppose in time I could come to appreciate the new Uniques, but I sure do hope they get some descriptions that match the excellent ones that will be going by the wayside. In the meantime, I am going to vote for Osse to stay!

Perhaps at this early stage of new monsters it's not very helpful of me to point out that the new giant Uniques were pretty disappointing as well: Nan, giant of the summer and the south does not give the kind of flavor I'm looking for in my bone crushing giant Uniques; being compared to a tree with friendly associations doesn't help matters, either. Just hoping the new descriptions will really grab my imagination!

I have never played a game with better writing than the beautiful and terrible lore of Angband. I hope the new descriptions, when they are finished, will be as fantastic as the rest of the monsters; and maybe we can keep Osse for his unique position as one of the most terrible-for-its-depth Uniques and his memorable description (I suppose Arien is maybe even more dangerous, but still less memorable). Also, three A uniques were removed, but only replaced by two, so might as well just bring Osse back.

Oh, and one suggestion for shapechanging (might be too difficult programming-wise): It would be really cool if there was some kind of ascii animation for when a monster was shapechanging instead of just suddenly becoming a different monster, by using something like an ascii spinner (could be used for @ as well):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93i8txD0H3Q#t=10m19s

[snip]
[*]Major rewrite of Ainur:

• lesser Maiar, greater Maiar, blue wizards and Istari are all gone
• Stole an idea (if not much of the implementation) from NPP of having Maia attached to given Valar (so Maia of Oromë, Maia of Varda, etc) - there are 8 types of these (corresponding to the High Ones of Arda), with stuff in common but thematic differences. All have shapechanges.
• Removed all existing uniques (Arien, Ossë, Radagast), replaced them with two new deep uniques (Makar and Meássë)

[*]Moderate rewrite of giants:

• Uniques (Polyphemus, Atlas, Kronos) removed, replaced with mid-level uniques stolen (in concept) from Sil (Nan and Gilim)
• Storm giants buffed and moved a bit deeper

[*]Two new monster spells - storms and balls of light (starbursts)[*]Thinking monsters which shapechange into non-thinking monsters are now still detectable by ESP and use smart spellcasting[/LIST]

This is not the last word on Ainur or giants, but we'll see how these changes play out.

[snip]

[Nick]

I hope I don't offend Nick overmuch with the criticisms in this post.

I'm fairly hard to offend; also I have asked for opinions and you have given thoughtful ones, so thanks

I have a bunch of things to say in response. First, I agree completely about the importance of language in Angband, and have been looking to improve that wherever possible (Sauron and the Witch-King are among the descriptions I've changed). I am always keen to have more opinions and contributions on this.

The description you give is from a Maia of Oromë, which is not a unique. Regarding Tolkien's feeling for the sea, I agree completely; if you look at the descriptions of a Maia of Ulmo:

A servant of Ulmo, Lord of Waters, who speaks to those who dwell in Middle-earth with voices that are heard only as the music of water.

and a great water elemental (which is something that only appears as a shapechange of Maiar of Ulmo):

A mighty column of water, terrible as a mounting wave that strides to the land.

maybe you get some sense of it?

The actual new Ainu uniques are Makar:

A battle-hungry spirit from amongst the Ainur, who built a grim hall in the early days of Arda to host endless battles. When not at home, he and his sister Meássë hunt and seek out the turmoils caused by Morgoth.

and Meássë:

Sister of Makar the Warrior, she would shout encouragement to the warriors of their hall and heal their wounds so they could battle on, until her arms were reddened to the elbow. Meássë is delighted by all violence, and recruits any beings of like abilities to her service.

The giant descriptions (as well as the basic ideas) I took straight from Sil; they possibly could be fleshed out a bit.

All that said, you do make a decent case for restoring Ossë - although I would want to take away his nether breath. What do others think?

Finally, I like your shapechange flicker idea - I will at least look into how easy it is to implement.

[Pete Mack]

I agree that picking one each from ochre jelly/acidic cytoplasm and gelatinous cube/black pudding is the right move. However, Ochre jelly + black pudding is the better choice. OJ, because it is first, and you are less likely to be ready. BP, because it sometimes is worth killing.

Edit: that said, I also understand why GP isn't a bad idea: an early high-HP acidic wrecker is not without merit. I agree AC is worthless. It is functionally indistinguishable from OJ.

So bring back ochre jellies and gcubes and ditch acidic cytoplasms? Fair enough.

Hydras apparently fine then

[Pete Mack]

@grotug:
I fully agree with your analysis except for one minor detail. Osse corresponds better to Proteus than Poseidon.

[wobbly]

If you're getting rid of one of the gelatinous cube/black pudding pair can we have something else that picks up item? It can lead to fun situations & I'd like to see more of it, rather then less.

[Thraalbee]

Small bug in the monsters - when I click on mage, I get the info for dark elven mage.

Thanks. Small mistake in the SELECT statement. Fixed now.

[Philip]

Osse having nether breath seems to be an artefact of him being a reskin of Azriel. There is no good reason for him to have it that I can find, aside from possibly him having briefly allied himself with Melkor. However, given that even then he spent his time raising the massive waves that Tolkien found so dreadful, it seems obvious that Osse should get water bolt, ball, and breath, which, conveniently, are absolutely terrifying to deal with. Given his affinity for storms, perhaps some electricity powers would not be out of place as well, though that could actually weaken him by diluting his powerful spells.

[Grotug]

What if Osse breathed lightning instead of Nether?

Why are we getting rid of those jellies that I love to hate? I love to hate them, and if you remove then I will no longer have that aggravating displeasure of smashing my keyboard when they get in a nasty bout of acidic destruction; nor will I get to come here and complain about them.

Acidic cytoplasm is a straight upgrade to ochre jelly; I don't see what's wrong with this? Big brothers are a big theme in Angband.

[Hounded]

What if Osse breathed lightning instead of Nether?

Why are we getting rid of those jellies that I love to hate? I love to hate them, and if you remove then I will no longer have that aggravating displeasure of smashing my keyboard when they get in a nasty bout of acidic destruction; nor will I get to come here and complain about them.

Acidic cytoplasm is a straight upgrade to ochre jelly; I don't see what's wrong with this? Big brothers are a big theme in Angband.

Yeah... I have to say I'll be disappointedly relieved to see the jelly family shrunk. A jelly pit is the one thing in the game that makes me close the door and walk away (unless I know there's something unidentified in there of course).

[Nick]

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

• New monster type added, trees/ents, with five monsters:
  • old forest tree
  • Old Man Willow (from ToME)
  • huorn
  • black-hearted huorn
  • hasty ent
• Ochre jellies and gelatinous cubes return, acidic cytoplasms leave, we'll see if that's the end of the jelly story...
• Remember how I nerfed summoning by making nonliving summons evaporate? Well, the more I thought about that the less sense it made, and it was a never-ending fountain of bugs, so it's been reverted
• Some changes to people, specifically player-class monsters:
  • Healer replaced by tamer (novice druid)
  • Bandit replaced by ruffian (novice blackguard)
  • New monster witch (novice necromancer)
  • Easterling warrior renamed warrior
  • Master rogue renamed rogue
  • Black knight tweaked and renamed blackguard
  • All player class monsters' spell lists examined, and made more like the spells the actual player classes use

I still intend to make more changes to people and humanoids (as discussed in this thread), but I feel that they still require some thought and discussion.

I am considering this as the last update to this branch before pulling it into the master branch. This doesn't mean "no more changes to monsters", it means that the major surgery is done, and it's mostly balancing and tidying up now.

Any opinions on this update, or the whole branch, or the plan are most welcome.

[Pete Mack]

Nick
If you are adding trees, make them vulnerable to axes (and halberds, maybe SoS.) They should be invulnerable to blunt weapons, too...

Also: black-hearted huorn should be evil. All should be fire vulnerable (and maybe electric.) Probably resist cold.l and certainly poison.

[Thraalbee]

Nice! Need to find time to do another test run.

NOTE: Old Man Willow has no AC defined and none inherited from the monster_base either.

[Nick]

NOTE: Old Man Willow has no AC defined and none inherited from the monster_base either.

Thanks! He'll be easy to hit until I fix that, then.

[MattB]

Slight oddity, but admittedly from a few nightlies back, so may have been fixed by now.
If I kill Beorn as one of his shapes, the other ones still shows on my tilde list as alive. Presumably I don't have to kill him twice. Or do I?...