[Announce] Cthangband 6.5 Release

[Dean Anderson]

The title says it all, really.

I've released Cthangband 6.5 and you can download it from here.

The changes in this version are mostly cosmetic - and are immediately obvious, since I've added ambient music and sound. That's not the only change, though. The full change log includes various bugfixes and tweaks too and is:

• Fixed rounding error in character viewer where a Con of 6 was showing +0.5 hits per level rather than the -0.5 hits per level it actually gives.
• The ‘Restoration’ service has been moved to the Alchemists.
• The ‘Research an item’ service has been moved to the Magic Shop, to replace the Ritual of Recall (which has been removed).
• Chosen Ones have been rebalanced (mostly a reduction in combat skills and hit points).
• Fixed bug where tall but narrow levels caused LOS glitches near the bottom of them.
• Base ability scores are now generated in a new manner on character creation.
• Fixed bug where characters with the ‘other’ gender weren’t being given a height and weight.
• Added atmospheric background music (don’t worry, you can turn it off if you don’t like it).
• Added Amulet of Anti-Theft as a useful low-mid level item.
• A Potion of New Life will now restore you to your original birth race as well as curing all mutations.
• A new character based on the previous one will use the race the old character was born as rather than their race at the point of death (in case they had been polymorphed into a different race at any time).
• Fixed rare hang condition when generating world map after character creation.
• Replaced in-console splash screen with a proper one that includes game options, making them more visible.
• Replaced most background textures.
• Level feelings are now given separately for danger and treasure.
• The slime molds are no longer revolting!
• If players Word of Recall without ever having entered a dungeon, they will now end up on level 1 of the dungeon instead of returning to their starting town.
• Kill count moved to end of monster description so that basic ‘what is it’ text comes first.
• Corrected class documentation to properly include the Globe of Invulnerability spell on the various spell lists.
• You no longer have to kill all the monsters in a multi-monster quest in one go. You can kill some, leave the level, then return later and kill the rest to finish the quest.
• Wizard Bolt can no longer be reflected back on you by monsters.

If anyone has any issues or bugs, report them in this thread!

[klassik]

i like the music, and the effects.

[tangar]

it will be fun to have .zip archive with release too.. I've tried to unzip .exe, but it fails

[klassik]

i had trouble just downloading it because of win10. but after that, an install wizard popped up.


i hate win10

[Dean Anderson]

it will be fun to have .zip archive with release too.. I've tried to unzip .exe, but it fails

I'm not sure what you mean.

That .exe is an installation wizard, not a self-extracting zip file. I wouldn't expect you to be able to unzip it.

I didn't bother zipping it up, because the installation wizard already compresses everything and zipping it doesn't make it any smaller.

[tangar]

Yep, I've noticed that it's installation file. But a lot of people don't like such huge installation .exe files as it could contain malware which is hard to detect... so as I said it will be fun to have common archive. I wanted to check the game, but as I'm a bit paranoid about such stuff - I can't do it atm.

[alaras12]

If anyone has any issues or bugs, report them in this thread!

Yeah, how do I access the options menu? I can't find a command for it and there are no console windows to use for it!

[Dean Anderson]

Yeah, how do I access the options menu? I can't find a command for it and there are no console windows to use for it!

The options (window size/fullscreen, font choice, and volume for sound and background music) have been moved from the main menu to the splash screen in 6.5. It makes them more obvious for someone starting the game rather than having to notice the menu command to bring up the page and then use a clunky ASCII interface.

Although if (as I suspect) you're not talking about Cthangband's options but about the six or so pages of general Angband options that you used to toggle on and off, they went the way of the dodo back in 2015, three years before the .NET rewrite - at the same time that I modernised the front end so you didn't need to re-start the whole program to start a new game after your character died.

The presence of so many toggles (most of which no-one ever touched) was mostly just the legacy of the way older versions of Angband were developed; with almost every new feature added to the game being implemented as an option so people who didn't like it didn't have to use it.

The mass of options was confusing for new players (who wouldn't understand what most of them did) and it made the code a mess because of all the constant checking for what's turned on and off (and every option needing to work with every combination of other options).