Z+Angband 0.3.2 prerelease!

[Mangojuice]

Hey folks.

Z+Angband 0.3.2pre1 is now available, at

http://tinyurl.com/5pq2bd

The new version is savefile-compatible with the old one. This is
a "prerelease" version; release version 0.3.2 will be out by the
new year. Again, there's a .tar.gz source package and a .zip
Windows executable, and I'd love it if anyone could compile on
other systems, but this is all I've got.

The most exciting feature of this revision is the inclusion of monster
"heroes" that are, basically, randomly generated unique monsters.
Heroes persist from game to game with the same savefile, but they
will eventually be overwritten when space is needed. Quests in
which you must kill a specific monster will usually have a hero
version you must kill instead of a standard monster.

Another significant feature of the new version is that for new games,
quest difficulty will roughly match wilderness difficulty. So, towns
in safe areas will have low-level quests, while towns in dangerous
areas will have higher-level quests.

This version includes an updated pref file (and 32x32.bmp file) for the
David Gervais tileset. It has been refined since the last release but
it's still a work in progress. Thanks to Buzzkill from the Oook forums
for his work on this.

Please let me know any issues you have with the new release, but do
check the changes file so you know what I intended to fix. Hope you
all like it!

As always, thanks very much to all those who have been playing, and
thanks for the bug reports and other feedback, it's been very helpful.

[Satyr]

Just a quick yet-another-quest-bugreport: I have a quest for Freesia and minions (level 9). When trying to enter the quest dungeon (labeled as "lair of a player") the game crashes.

[Mangojuice]

Just a quick yet-another-quest-bugreport: I have a quest for Freesia and minions (level 9). When trying to enter the quest dungeon (labeled as "lair of a player") the game crashes.

Lair of "a player" is a bad sign; expect the game to crash on any such quest. Also, Freesia and minions is a bad one, since Freesia is the first feline in a dungeon.

[Asgoth]

Hi,

is there a reason why priests can't choose (100%) which spell(s) they want to learn (G)? Other classes can choose a specific spell to learn, but with priests all it says is "Learn xxx y/n". When choosing "n", it chooses some (lower level) spell at random it seems.

Since there is only a limited number of spell slots, this is kinda annoying.

[Asgoth]

A crash while creating a chaoswarrior half-titan (see screenshot).

When trying a 2nd time, it didnt crash anymore.

[Mangojuice]

Hi,

is there a reason why priests can't choose (100%) which spell(s) they want to learn (G)? Other classes can choose a specific spell to learn, but with priests all it says is "Learn xxx y/n". When choosing "n", it chooses some (lower level) spell at random it seems.

Since there is only a limited number of spell slots, this is kinda annoying.

Yes, it's because as is traditional, priestly types do not get control over the spells they learn. You do get to decline one choice if you don't like it, but you get stuck with the second one. And you don't always get a choice, if both randomly selected spells happen to be the same. This is more choice than you used to get.

Also, the game will not "downgrade" a spell slot when learning as a priest, unless you can't learn any spells out of the book without downgrading, and in that case, it confirms with you first.

This does present a disadvantage for Priestly types. I have been pondering, in a future version, changing things so that fewer spells are available to priests, and as a consequence they can learn all of them. But I haven't decided yet and that isn't done yet. Part of me doesn't feel bad because I always felt like priests were, for no good reason, much better than mages; their spellcasting is only slightly worse but their HP and combat skills are much better... and the weapon restriction is not such a horrible disadvantage.

EDIT: My advice for priest spell selection is this: don't try to learn the one spell you want. Instead, use your ability to decline spells to decline only spells that you NEVER want to learn. So for instance, if you're a Kobold Life Priest, and you want to learn Detect Evil, don't say no if the game offers you Call Light, because you will probably want to learn that at some point. But do say no if the game offers you Neutralize Poison, which you'll probably never want. If you say no to Call Light you could get Detect Evil (which means you learned what you wanted sooner, slightly beneficial), or you could also get Neutralize Poison (which is a permanently wasted spell slot). The risks outweigh the rewards.

[Mangojuice]

Two live fixes

A new version is up on the website. It prevents the creation of lairs of "A player", and fixes (well, removes) such quests in an imported game. It also, I think, avoids that crash on Character Generation. At least, I couldn't get the game to crash again, but there may be another bug I didn't fix.

For this version, I'm going to continue to do live fixes of big bugs as they come up; the "Changes list" on the website will give the most recent live fixes and what was changed.

BTW, for those who are going to update and are on Windows, you may find that copying the "z+angband.ini" file over to the new directory makes it less of a pain.

[perost]

While I appreciate the effort, it seems that the repeat command still doesn't work with the roguelike keyset. At the bottom of pref-key.prf you have

# Hack -- Commit suicide

A:t

C:1:^V

Besides the somewhat puzzling comment, A:t should be A:n.

[Jungle_Boy]

Are artifacts supposed to be able to show up in stores? And if they do and I don't buy it does it disapear forever? I saw the steel helm 'Elenmen' in an Arcane Milliner store, cost is 315k. Unfortunately I'm only level 6 with 1200 AU. The helm is nice enough that I will be really sad if it's gone forever.

[Mangojuice]

Are artifacts supposed to be able to show up in stores? And if they do and I don't buy it does it disapear forever? I saw the steel helm 'Elenmen' in an Arcane Milliner store, cost is 315k. Unfortunately I'm only level 6 with 1200 AU. The helm is nice enough that I will be really sad if it's gone forever.

Yeah, only in some stores, and only random artifacts. That specific artifact will be gone forever but "Arcane" and "Unique" stores will often have highly enchanted stuff, including artifacts.

[Jungle_Boy]

I think I found a bug or at least a typo.

The description for dispel traps (Arcane, Book 2, Spell b) says "Destroys all doors and traps within radius 1 of you" I haven't tried it on doors but it makes a beam rather than a radius when destroying traps, also it does not work 100%, not sure if that is intended or not.

[Mangojuice]

I think I found a bug or at least a typo.

The description for dispel traps (Arcane, Book 2, Spell b) says "Destroys all doors and traps within radius 1 of you" I haven't tried it on doors but it makes a beam rather than a radius when destroying traps, also it does not work 100%, not sure if that is intended or not.

The behavior is intended, the spell description is wrong. Thanks.

[pndrev]

Somehow ^E (switch choice window) doesn't seem to work on my system, I get the 'type ? for help' message when trying to toggle between inventory and equipment in one of the windows. This is both in the old 0.2.3 and 0.3.2 pre1.

Is there a keymap missing somewhere? All other keys (tested it with ^T) work fine.

[Mangojuice]

Somehow ^E (switch choice window) doesn't seem to work on my system, I get the 'type ? for help' message when trying to toggle between inventory and equipment in one of the windows. This is both in the old 0.2.3 and 0.3.2 pre1.

Is there a keymap missing somewhere? All other keys (tested it with ^T) work fine.

I had no idea what "switch choice window" even referred to.

You can toggle between inventory and equipment in a window by pressing Tab. But since ^E is in the help file, I will add it to the keymaps.

[Mangojuice]

I had no idea what "switch choice window" even referred to.

You can toggle between inventory and equipment in a window by pressing Tab. But since ^E is in the help file, I will add it to the keymaps.

Edit: Actually, before I do that.. is this a command other roguelikes use? ^E doesn't map to anything right now, so perhaps this really needs a fix to the help file more than anything else.