FAangband 0.3.6

[Psi]

One minor glitch - it's still not possible to access slots '2' and '4' in the quiver (as in 0.3.4)...

Unfortunately I don't know enough about how the inputs work to fix that. Sorry (I'd love it fixed too!).

[tigen]

I had the same compile problem I had in Oanband. I'm surprised I'm the only one who runs into this. Anyway my fix was to swap the order of OBJECTS nad LDFLAGS.

(src/Makefile)
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
-I.

faangband: $(OBJECTS)
- $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJECTS) $(LDADD) -o $@
+ $(CC) $(OBJECTS) $(LDFLAGS) $(LDADD) -o $@
@printf "%10s %-20s\n" LINK $@


Other notes from a relative FAAngband newbie:

I don't know if this is considered a problem, but starting a character in a "small" town can be a little frustrating. You can't buy spellbooks, and that general store place drives hard bargains. I couldn't get enough arrows.

The other thing that I found a bit strange is the wilderness difficulty arrangement. Depending on what you want to do, you easily end up in areas that are too hard or too easy. I'm not sure what you'd do about that though. It occurred to me that you could implement a system where the difficulty levels in the overworld scale up over time, representing a spreading of evil. But I can imagine problems with that too.

[Pete Mack]

try a lost soul character. It's either over so fast it's painless, or you get to cl 20 in no time. And you start with ESP and a little detection...

[buzzkill]

I don't know if this is considered a problem, but starting a character in a "small" town can be a little frustrating. You can't buy spellbooks, and that general store place drives hard bargains. I couldn't get enough arrows.

You'll find a larger town soon enough, Belgost is the first likely candidate IIRC. The world map never changes so once you locate it, you'll always kinda know where it is. You can move your home to a new (larger) town by pressing ctrl-h or $ while in the new town. I'm not too sure about those keystrokes. It's been a while.

FA is a hard variant. What always frustrated me (as a non-scummer) was starting in a town surrounded by high level wilderness.

[Nick]

I had the same compile problem I had in Oanband.

Yeah, this should be fixed in the next version - probably by a move to the new V build system.

I don't know if this is considered a problem, but starting a character in a "small" town can be a little frustrating. You can't buy spellbooks, and that general store place drives hard bargains. I couldn't get enough arrows.

As buzzkill said, moving to a big town is the best plan. For the low/medium difficulty races, either Belegost or Khazad-Dum are the easiest to get to (Dwarves start in Belegost; any of the other low/medium races can get there without going over difficulty level 6).

The other thing that I found a bit strange is the wilderness difficulty arrangement. Depending on what you want to do, you easily end up in areas that are too hard or too easy. I'm not sure what you'd do about that though. It occurred to me that you could implement a system where the difficulty levels in the overworld scale up over time, representing a spreading of evil. But I can imagine problems with that too.

This is deliberate. The four hard starting races (High-Elves, Grey-Elves, Druedain and Edain) either have native telepathy (Druedain) or start off with a good weapon. Starting location is as big a consideration when choosing a race as bonuses.

The other thing is that (unlike in Z and its children), you should think of the FA wilderness as an integrated part of the playing world, rather than on overworld that you have to go through to get to the dungeons. In particular, there's a lot of nice gear to be found in wilderness (particularly above level 10), and the different wilderness types (Mountain, Plain, Forest etc) will be easier or harder depending on races(and to a lesser extent class).

FA is a hard variant. What always frustrated me (as a non-scummer) was starting in a town surrounded by high level wilderness.

It is hard (to get started at least); I started playing this version last night, and went through about 8 characters in very short time.

And if you're going to play hard starting races, don't think of it as scumming. Your hometown is in a really dangerous area - your first forays into it need to be cautious. This is not Vanilla, or even O. "Stairscumming" is just the sensible thing to do to stay alive.

[Mr.Peanut]

I patiently await the next DS port. I only play roguelikes on portables so it is great to have another flavour available. It is very hard to port a roguelike to the DS. The screens are not quite big enough for a standard terminal; designing a good interface is a real challenge.

Your approach of contextual touch buttons is good, as are the keyboard and zoom toggles. However, something really needs to be done to improve diagonal movement. Most roguelikes on the DS force the use of touchpad for diagonal movement. I personally hate using the touchpad for movement because it is not always accurate(especially in Faangband when not zoomed in) and causes a handcramping awkward style of continually swapping between stylus and and button usage. The stylus also obscures the map screen.

By far the best solution to this problem was presented by Wosret on the first attempted NetHack port; a diagonal movement toggle button. When the button is held only diagonal movement is possible i.e. cardinal directions disabled on d-pad. I suggest that the right shoulder button be used as the diagonal toggle button. The zoom toggle could be changed to a combination of holding the right-shoulder button and pressing one of the four (A,B,X,Y) buttons.

Another great improvement would be the option of a third zoom level somewhere in between the two present levels. Finally, the keys on the virtual keyboard should show some indication of which is being pressed. I know I have seen this feature before for this exact keyboard.

Keep up the great work.

[Seany C]

Quick notes on 0.3.6 (from char dump):

Mostly a little bit easier so far - more useful egos. speed on DSMs makes them worthwhile again and lots of Rods of Perception are ace.
Not sure from a couple of plays if they're unbalancing yet but *if* you were happy with the difficulty level for 0.3.5 and before, you might want to do something (not sure what exactly) to make the game a bit tougher again...

Notable findings:
* Lots more high-value items turning up around Anf 58 with autoscum on - monsters don't seem that much different from 0.3.5;
* Shields of Preservation - lovely but almost over-powered;
* Boots of Elvenkind - seem a lot more common than before - or just the RNG being nice?
* Haven't tried archery enough to appreciate the differences - for non-Rangers, probably more relevant for non-thralls;
* Ds are *nasty* - I thought I was safe with a Storm D and Taratol until it started to breathe Storm on me...
* Thralls without Unlight (or very quick finds of stealth items) are still mega-difficult (as in previous versions) - Rogues/Necros/Assassins are way easier than other classes as thralls for that reason...
* I've lost 29 thralls to Will'O'the'Wisps - nothing else close to double figures yet.

[Seany C]

V minor glitch: storekeeps ask the same amount for 1d4 and 2d4 daggers...

[takkaria]

By far the best solution to this problem was presented by Wosret on the first attempted NetHack port; a diagonal movement toggle button. When the button is held only diagonal movement is possible i.e. cardinal directions disabled on d-pad. I suggest that the right shoulder button be used as the diagonal toggle button. The zoom toggle could be changed to a combination of holding the right-shoulder button and pressing one of the four (A,B,X,Y) buttons.

V has a "lazy move" option, which adds a tiny pause when getting a direction from the player, and if you press down + left in quick succession, it moves diagonally. I imagine it'd be useful on the DS, though it was designed for laptops.

[Nick]

Mostly a little bit easier so far - more useful egos. speed on DSMs makes them worthwhile again and lots of Rods of Perception are ace.
Not sure from a couple of plays if they're unbalancing yet but *if* you were happy with the difficulty level for 0.3.5 and before, you might want to do something (not sure what exactly) to make the game a bit tougher again...

Notable findings:
* Lots more high-value items turning up around Anf 58 with autoscum on - monsters don't seem that much different from 0.3.5;

I suspect this may mostly be relevant to thralls - it will be interesting to see if the impression is the same for non-thrall characters. Given what you say about Unlight, I think thrall mode requires a little thought.

* Shields of Preservation - lovely but almost over-powered;
* Boots of Elvenkind - seem a lot more common than before - or just the RNG being nice?

Psi found a bug in level feelings, which the game has probably been optimised to work around, so that might need some tweaking too.

* Ds are *nasty* - I thought I was safe with a Storm D and Taratol until it started to breathe Storm on me...

Oh, good

V minor glitch: storekeeps ask the same amount for 1d4 and 2d4 daggers...

Store price calculations are going to have to change markedly for 040 anyway. There will be more variation within ego types, so prices will need to be calculated on actual item properties (like dice). So this should be fixed then - I don't think it's really a gamebreaker for 036.

[Arralen]

My quick notes on 0.3.6:

* A dwarven ranger can one-shoot below-level monsters with his crossbow now. That's good.

* Overall, life for that dwarven ranger seems easier than it would have been in earlier versions. There was one tense moment after he stepped out of Belegost, and that took him to clvl 5 and mostly out of danger ... .

* Would it be possible to start dwarves with picks, hammers or axes (of Nogrod) instead of short swords ??

* There are way to many wands of stinking clouds around lvl 10 ...

* "detect doors/stairs" detects wilderness exits now .. IIRC this was'nt the case before.

[Nick]

* A dwarven ranger can one-shoot below-level monsters with his crossbow now. That's good.

Yes, archery is meant to have become better in the early game and worse in the late game than before.

* Would it be possible to start dwarves with picks, hammers or axes (of Nogrod) instead of short swords ??

Interesting question. Currently weapon type is class based only, and I don't know if I want to change that. Any opinions?

* "detect doors/stairs" detects wilderness exits now .. IIRC this was'nt the case before.

Correct. We decided there wasn't really a good reason not to.

[Arralen]

More quick notes from 0.3.6:

* "The Village idiot picks up a Ring of Skill (-8) {cursed} (squelch)."

* Option "use old target by default" actually fires at that target automatically, instead of waiting for the confirming "t" which is need if targeting some monster manually. Makes it impossible to target another monster as long as the first is in range ...

* Typos:

N:61:& Bastard Sword~
D:Also known as the hand-and-a-half blade.__A larger-than-normal straight-
D:sided (bladed?) sword with two cutting edges.
.. that double-space is found in quite some descriptions, so I wonder if it's deliberate ?

N:106:& Broad Axe~
D:A simple, single-bladed war axe capable of chopping through limbs or armour.

[PaulBlay]

[INDENT]N:61:& Bastard Sword~
D:Also known as the hand-and-a-half blade.__A larger-than-normal straight-
D:sided (bladed?) sword with two cutting edges.
.. that double-space is found in quite some descriptions, so I wonder if it's deliberate ?

It is a common, although deprecated, practice to use double space after a period. The theory being that it makes it easier to notice sentence breaks. Personally I like it.

Nowadays you're supposed to use proportional fonts and formatting - but obviously that is not possible in an old-style roguelike game.

[pav]

It is a common, although depreciated, practice to use double space after a period.

It's common, and it surely is not deprecated...