Preparing for 4.2 release

[Saplaran]

[*]Saplaran's disappearing sidebar weirdness.

It seems to have something to do with -more- prompts and/or lots of fighting in one turn.

edit:
Not only texts in the sidebar seem to vanish but messages too.



edit2: "You hear an acrid roar." and again text in the sidebar disappeared... I got the text message but the cone effect didn't show up!
edit3: I cast a frost bolt from a rod and text disappears. Not always, but sometimes...
edit4: I cast Orb of Draining and.. oh well...




edit5: *** IMPORTANT: The bug doesn't seem to appear in ASCII-Mode! I played for quite a while and no missing texts. ***

[Nick]

Today I did a thorough trawl through the forums to see what had been discussed about the upcoming changes for 4.2.0 and whether I'd missed anything. I found three suggested changes that were never implemented:

• Adding water
• Adding chasms
• Making stunned players have decreased vision

and one possible bugtwo possible bugs:

• A fairly recent unexplained crash in Single Combat and
• Saplaran's disappearing sidebar weirdness.

I don't think any of the three features will make it into 4.2.0; it's conceivable they could be added in 4.2.n for some n > 0.

The bugs I will be trying to track down this week.

Feel free to remind me of anything else I've missed.

[Nick]

Every few dozen turns parts of the statistics in the main window get removed until I ^redraw the interface. This might not be a gamebreaking bug but it's really annoying.

OK, that's bizarre. Anyone else seen this?

[Saplaran]

If there are other bugs or problems, please tell me now.

Every few dozen turns parts of the statistics in the main window get removed until I ^redraw the interface. This might not be a gamebreaking bug but it's really annoying.

AC, HP and Gold missing:


AC and part of HP missing:


Gold an AC missing:


Sometimes race/class go missing, too.

edit: fixed links

[wobbly]

I spell blasted on mine & it seemed sufficent with the last book. Haven't played a druid since comp but I don't think their spell set changed since then.

[Sphara]

Early game and midgame play beautifully for druid. It's relatively easy class to start right after you get Stinking Cloud. Lighting Strike is a great crowd control spell and its possible stunning effect further helps when you need to melee. Earth Rising is druid's obvious all-around spell. Utility spells are a good mixture of minor detection, backups and environment manipulation. Slow Monster is especially strong and allows really early kiting. I could consistently reach dungeon level 15-20 with just the first book, even if it doesn't have any translocation spells. Druids moderate firepower and utility spells justify that nicely.

Didn't make it to the endgame but at CL34, druid already lacks big-damage crowd control spells and certainly wants either a good melee weapon or a launcher. As I looked at the late spells, I can imagine late-game druid play a lot like priest, whose near-invulnerability has been turned off.

IMO, early to midgame druid, needs very little to zero changes.

[Nick]

I'm running a late game druid at the moment -- no complaints worth holding up a release for.

Still, in general it feels to me like spell-based damage output for primarily casting classes is weak in the end game; it doesn't really seem right that a primarily spell-casting class should be better off in melee than relying on spells, and yet in the late game it seems to often come to that with good gear.

Druids are kind of expected to fight a bit, or at least to have it as an option - their shapechanges and timed healing allow for some melee, in a similar way to how priests can win by melee + healing or by OoD or a combination. Let me know if the spells are really too weak, though, or the melee really too superior.

[mrfy]

I think so. There has been no real complaint for a while, and some positive feedback on balance, especially for necros.

Also, some race heights modified in development

I've been playing a high-elf ranger for a bit and it doesn't seem overpowered. For bow so far I've only found a Short Bow of Lothlorien. I've found plenty of artifact weapons but no bows. Once I found the dungeon book and could create arrows it's been easier.

It appears that it maxes at 2.6 shots per turn. Which seems fine.

[Chud]

I seem to recall that there were balancing issues with the necromancer and the druid (esp. melee-oriented) a while back. They may have got fixed since. Has anyone played through with these classes recently? Are they fine and happy to go to 4.2.0?

I'm running a late game druid at the moment -- no complaints worth holding up a release for.

Still, in general it feels to me like spell-based damage output for primarily casting classes is weak in the end game; it doesn't really seem right that a primarily spell-casting class should be better off in melee than relying on spells, and yet in the late game it seems to often come to that with good gear.

[Nick]

I seem to recall that there were balancing issues with the necromancer and the druid (esp. melee-oriented) a while back. They may have got fixed since. Has anyone played through with these classes recently? Are they fine and happy to go to 4.2.0?

I think so. There has been no real complaint for a while, and some positive feedback on balance, especially for necros.

Also, some race heights modified in development

[Voovus]

If there are other bugs or problems, please tell me now.

I seem to recall that there were balancing issues with the necromancer and the druid (esp. melee-oriented) a while back. They may have got fixed since. Has anyone played through with these classes recently? Are they fine and happy to go to 4.2.0?

[Chud]

10 ft tall high elves

That's the "high" part.

[gtrudeau88]

10 ft tall high elves

New builds on the nightlies page and angband.live with the following changes:

• A few monster colours that I missed earlier have been reverted to their originals
• Problems with curse (mainly) ID which resulted in unremovable {??} on items apparently fixed
• Some small changes to help
• Stop monster memory for undead saying that they don't resist nether (thanks clouded)
• Add a light meter at the bottom of the map indicating the light level of the player's grid

This last one is in place of clouded's suggestion for warning necromancers when they wielded a lantern, which had potential for annoying message spam no matter how it was done.

I now expect no more changes before 4.2.0 is released apart from documentation (oh, and a few tile fixes).

The only outstanding issues I could find in this thread are Ingwe's not-picking-up bug, which I have never managed to find or reproduce; and a comment about wands of darkness not doing damage which I never answered, the answer being they're not meant to, they're an equivalent utility for necromancers as wands of light are to other players.

If there are other bugs or problems, please tell me now.

[Nick]

New builds on the nightlies page and angband.live with the following changes:

• A few monster colours that I missed earlier have been reverted to their originals
• Problems with curse (mainly) ID which resulted in unremovable {??} on items apparently fixed
• Some small changes to help
• Stop monster memory for undead saying that they don't resist nether (thanks clouded)
• Add a light meter at the bottom of the map indicating the light level of the player's grid

This last one is in place of clouded's suggestion for warning necromancers when they wielded a lantern, which had potential for annoying message spam no matter how it was done.

I now expect no more changes before 4.2.0 is released apart from documentation (oh, and a few tile fixes).

The only outstanding issues I could find in this thread are Ingwe's not-picking-up bug, which I have never managed to find or reproduce; and a comment about wands of darkness not doing damage which I never answered, the answer being they're not meant to, they're an equivalent utility for necromancers as wands of light are to other players.

If there are other bugs or problems, please tell me now.

[Nick]

New builds on the nightlies page and angband.live with the following changes:

• Temporary brands and slays are now included in weapon damage calculations
• Being teleported wakes monsters
• Problem with mana not being shown when increasing from 0 is (I believe) fixed
• Classes with innate object flags (only example - blackguards with ImpairHP) now show on the birth screen
• Webs cleared while the player is out of LoS now don't update until the player sees the grid again (as was already the case for terrain changes)

Please let me know of any issues, especially with traps/webs/glyphs/decoys as a result of the web fix.