Z+Angband 0.3.0 beta released!

[Mangojuice]

I'm trying out Z+ 0.3.1 now, but I constantly run into a bug that makes the game segfault sometimes when I try to sell items. Here's a backtrace:

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
object_dup (o_ptr=0x7fce00000000) at src/object2.c:43
43		COPY(o_ptr, j_ptr, object_type);

I have a savefile that I can realiably crash the game with too, if you want it. I suspect though that it's because of my a bit unusual platform (64-bit linux) that the bug shows itself, since noone else seems to have any problems.

Send me the savefile; I may not be able to do anything other than confirm that it doesn't happen on my computer. This is certainly the first I'm hearing of it.

Also, it's still not possible to repeat commands with the roguelike keyset. Just a reminder

Sorry, I thought I had done that. You can actually define your own keymaps via the '@' command; create a keymap (enter 'n' for the Action) and you can then Append keymaps to a file to save your keymaps so they always get loaded automatically. What command was supposed to be repeat in roguelike?

[perost]

Send me the savefile; I may not be able to do anything other than confirm that it doesn't happen on my computer. This is certainly the first I'm hearing of it.

Ok, I'll do that later today.

Sorry, I thought I had done that. You can actually define your own keymaps via the '@' command; create a keymap (enter 'n' for the Action) and you can then Append keymaps to a file to save your keymaps so they always get loaded automatically. What command was supposed to be repeat in roguelike?

Yeah, I usually just edit one of the pref-files so that ctrl+V is repeat, like in vanilla. But it's kind of annoying to have to do it for every new release, so it would be nice if you could make it permanent. It doesn't really matter much which key is used though.

[Mangojuice]

Ok, I'll do that later today.


Yeah, I usually just edit one of the pref-files so that ctrl+V is repeat, like in vanilla. But it's kind of annoying to have to do it for every new release, so it would be nice if you could make it permanent. It doesn't really matter much which key is used though.

OK, it's in there now. Will be included in future versions.

[Skelwing]

Another question,

What exactly do the auto_destroy_xxx options do? From what I've seen, they appear to destroy all items of that type on the ground, regardless of pseudo-id. Is that supposed to happen?

A lot of the options, including these, aren't in the documentation yet...

[buzzkill]

Annoying cave spider quest

Z+ 3.1 - Having some trouble with a Level 1 quest (cave spiders). It seems that once a spiders flee, it never comes back to fight, even after it recovers it's courage. They don't run far away, but they keep their distance, usually by moving around an obstacle in the room in a set pattern (possibly trying to avoid line of sight). If I'm on a particular grid, then the spider will be on a particular grid (2 squares away). They are fast, and I'm not, and I can't catch them. And, even though it is fully healed, it won't approach me. I can't knock the AI, because it's going to die if it does approach, but it's annoying behavior for a quest monster. Not every spider does it, or maybe it's just that not every spider is in a room with the proper obstacles. Although, I'm now CL10, I still can't kill these little buggers (no missile weapon). HELP.

Edit: Yes, 1000,s of turns later it did flee elsewhere and die. Still, very annoying, esp. for a lev 1 quest.

[Mangojuice]

Z+ 3.1 - Having some trouble with a Level 1 quest (cave spiders). It seems that once a spiders flee, it never comes back to fight, even after it recovers it's courage. They don't run far away, but they keep their distance, usually by moving around an obstacle in the room in a set pattern (possibly trying to avoid line of sight). If I'm on a particular grid, then the spider will be on a particular grid (2 squares away). They are fast, and I'm not, and I can't catch them. And, even though it is fully healed, it won't approach me. I can't knock the AI, because it's going to die if it does approach, but it's annoying behavior for a quest monster. Not every spider does it, or maybe it's just that not every spider is in a room with the proper obstacles. Although, I'm now CL10, I still can't kill these little buggers (no missile weapon). HELP.

Edit: Yes, 1000,s of turns later it did flee elsewhere and die. Still, very annoying, esp. for a lev 1 quest.

Yeah, that's the monster group AI. They try to stay out of line of sight, and they only really attack you if they think they can surround you. When they have the right obstacles in the room it can be very annoying, I agree. But even from very low levels you should have some way of attacking monsters at range, even if it's as pathetic as throwing things at them. I recommend flasks of oil for very low-level characters, they explode and do small amounts of fire-based damage in a ball. Good enough to take out a couple cave spiders, anyway.

What I find even more irritating are the low-level wolf/dog quests, where the monsters tend to disappear into the trees, and you can't even see them.

BTW, Cave Spiders (the ones you are probably complaining about) are vulnerable to light, if that helps.

[Mangojuice]

Another question,

What exactly do the auto_destroy_xxx options do? From what I've seen, they appear to destroy all items of that type on the ground, regardless of pseudo-id. Is that supposed to happen?

A lot of the options, including these, aren't in the documentation yet...

Auto_destroy_xxx will automatically destroy all objects of the given type you encounter. Use this, for instance, if you have a good artifact shield and aren't interested in non-artifact shields. The "quick_destroy_xxx" options let you bypass the "Y/N" confirmation for certain objects you choose to destroy. They do take pseudo-id into account, and they understand the difference between weak and strong pseudo-id, so "quick_destroy_good" will let you destroy {good} objects without a query only if they were strongly pseudo-id'ed.

[Asgoth]

Hello,

first of all: great work for keeping the ZAngband spirit alive. Me too saw that no more new versions of ZAngband came out. So I am very pleased somebody is continuing it (in its own way).

However I have a few remarks/questions:

1) I found this variant (ZPlusAngand) only by accident. Like I said, until now I was still playing some version of ZAngband. If I would know earlier... It would be great if your site would be easier accessible by searchbots like googlebot, ... Maybe you should add a metadata tag in your page header and a sitemap.

2) I read spell casters can only study a limited number of spells. Is/will be there a possibility to "unlearn" a spell?

3) In Zangband Vampires got damage when walking in the sun/ wearing lights, ... Now it seems to be switched off. Is this how it is intended?

4) The spell 'Ray of Front' (Chaos) uses 0 mana. Bug?

5) The autosave is quite buggy. When autosave occurs, a filename playername.auto is saved (normal). When I close the game and open playername.auto and the game autosaves again, then a filename playername.auto.auto is saved. And so on.

Greetings,
Asgoth

[Mangojuice]

Hello,

first of all: great work for keeping the ZAngband spirit alive. Me too saw that no more new versions of ZAngband came out. So I am very pleased somebody is continuing it (in its own way).

However I have a few remarks/questions:

1) I found this variant (ZPlusAngand) only by accident. Like I said, until now I was still playing some version of ZAngband. If I would know earlier... It would be great if your site would be easier accessible by searchbots like googlebot, ... Maybe you should add a metadata tag in your page header and a sitemap.

2) I read spell casters can only study a limited number of spells. Is/will be there a possibility to "unlearn" a spell?

3) In Zangband Vampires got damage when walking in the sun/ wearing lights, ... Now it seems to be switched off. Is this how it is intended?

4) The spell 'Ray of Front' (Chaos) uses 0 mana. Bug?

5) The autosave is quite buggy. When autosave occurs, a filename playername.auto is saved (normal). When I close the game and open playername.auto and the game autosaves again, then a filename playername.auto.auto is saved. And so on.

Greetings,
Asgoth

1. I'll look into it.

2. Studying a spell is permanent, so choose wisely! But on the other hand, you don't have to ultimately pass up very many spells.

3. It's intended, but I'm not sure if I like it. Vampires heal very slowly in daylight, but aren't constantly hurt by it. This, I felt, was important to make Vampires even playable given the need to explore wilderness in Z+. (It's much worse exploring the wilderness at night, very very dangerous.)

4. Not a bug. It's 0 mana but it's fairly wimpy.

5. Not a bug. The .auto file is not there for real play, it's there so you have a backup of your game in case a crash corrupts something. So if you're playing "Joe", open "Joe." Both copies should be the same.

[buzzkill]

The dagger Nimthank. The description states that it can be activated... if it is being worn. How does one wear a dagger? Shouldn't it be wielded?

Z+ 3.1

also... The death spell Maldection states... 'evil monsters take double damage from unholy fire'... is this correct? Shouldn't evil monsters take more damage from 'holy fire' and good monsters take more damage from 'unholy fire'?

[ekolis]

What, aren't you up on the latest emo fashions? Just stick the pointy end of the dagger into any convenient soft spot on one's body...

[Mangojuice]

The dagger Nimthank. The description states that it can be activated... if it is being worn. How does one wear a dagger? Shouldn't it be wielded?

Z+ 3.1

also... The death spell Maldection states... 'evil monsters take double damage from unholy fire'... is this correct? Shouldn't evil monsters take more damage from 'holy fire' and good monsters take more damage from 'unholy fire'?

Yeah, "worn" should probably say "weilded" for weapons.

Unholy fire: no, that's correct. The way I see it is, it's hellfire -- meant to punish the evil in hell, so it hits them extra hard. Holy fire also hits evil things extra hard but doesn't hurt neutral or good things so much.

[buzzkill]

Odd recall/stair behavior/bug

While fleeing for my life, while attempting a 22nd level quest (clear 2 levels of an underground city), with a CL8 ghoul/rogue, I read a WoR. Before the recall kicked in, I made it to the stairs and took them to the surface. Lucky to still be alive, I immediately headed for town. About 10 turns later, the recall kicked in a sucked me back into the dungeon (doogh). That's not the odd part.

So, still weak from my earlier brush with death, I now find myself in a large cavernous room with plenty of half orcs and mongbats, luckily all asleep. Still fearing for my life, I went through the nearest doorway and closed it behind me. I rested up and detected doors/stairs. I did detect stairs, but to get to them I'd had to have walked back through that cavern again (doogh). So I opened the door and killed a few half orcs that had woke up. By that time the half orcs were dead, the mongbats were waking and I knew that I would never make it to the stairs alive. Well, to make a long story slightly shorter, I did manage to, with just a single phase door and a lot of luck, make it to the stairs 1000's of turns later.

I was surprised to find that when I took the stairs to the surface, I did not appear on the stairway. Instead, I appeared at the point, some 10 spaces away from the stairway, where the original recall sucked me back down at.

[Mangojuice]

While fleeing for my life, while attempting a 22nd level quest (clear 2 levels of an underground city), with a CL8 ghoul/rogue, I read a WoR. Before the recall kicked in, I made it to the stairs and took them to the surface. Lucky to still be alive, I immediately headed for town. About 10 turns later, the recall kicked in a sucked me back into the dungeon (doogh). That's not the odd part.

So, still weak from my earlier brush with death, I now find myself in a large cavernous room with plenty of half orcs and mongbats, luckily all asleep. Still fearing for my life, I went through the nearest doorway and closed it behind me. I rested up and detected doors/stairs. I did detect stairs, but to get to them I'd had to have walked back through that cavern again (doogh). So I opened the door and killed a few half orcs that had woke up. By that time the half orcs were dead, the mongbats were waking and I knew that I would never make it to the stairs alive. Well, to make a long story slightly shorter, I did manage to, with just a single phase door and a lot of luck, make it to the stairs 1000's of turns later.

I was surprised to find that when I took the stairs to the surface, I did not appear on the stairway. Instead, I appeared at the point, some 10 spaces away from the stairway, where the original recall sucked me back down at.

That's a great story!

I had a similar experience to yours but I died; I had read a WoR scroll, then made it to the stairs in a quest that was over my head. The thing that sucked: the starting position in the quest had been quite dangerous... when I WoR'ed back in, I landed in the same spot... only now there were no stairs up there, so the orcs murdered me.

The bug will be fixed. And also, I think I should make it so that reaching the surface cancels any WoR effect.

[EricCamp]

Good stuff. Enjoying all the quests, map is huge. What is the recommended lvl for starting to 'really' flesh out one's map?