Announce: DaJAngband v1.0.97 Released

[will_asher]

- for 1.0.98: found and fixed the bug which makes it crash when identifying the sling of snowballs. (I had forgotten to add a description in use-obj.c L3123)
- About the orb of draining not always destroying cursed objects: that was an unintentional side effect of a change I made. (I wanted things like acid and fire to not automatically destroy everything it could that was on the floor). That's also fixed for 1.0.98: orb of draining will always destroy cursed objects.
- It will now show number of blows, average damage, and chance of critical hits when you examinine a weapon. Also, when you examine a launcher, it shows the true multiplier. When you pick it up, it now says a short bow (ML2) (+0 +0) instead of a short bow (x2 (+0 +0), using ML for multiplier level. I hope that's okay. I wanted to keep something obvious in there showing that a light crossbow (ML3) is better than an mini crossbow (ML2) instead of just removing the (x2).
- Soon, I'll have a page on the DaJAngband website for known bugs and changes I'm planning for future versions. EDIT: this page is now available at:

http://www.geocities.com/will_asher/MonsterDictionary/DaJAngbandplan.htm

- I'm considering releasing an unfinished test version of 1.0.98 to see what people think of what I've done with certain things like monster stealth (you'll always notice an adjacent monster, and monster stealth is slightly nerfed further from 1.0.97), hearing out-of-sight monsters, and dimly lit rooms (not being able to see the whole room when in a large lit room). Would anyone want to help me test it?
I've been working on 1.0.98 a lot recently (possibly more than is good for me..), but it's fun. Personally, I think making my own variant can be just as fun as playing it.

[PowerDiver]

And another bug, IMO, though presumably it's a change you made. Orb of Draining does not always destroy cursed objects. Being unable to assure safe testing of weapons makes priest-casters much less enjoyable, especially when wielding a morgul blade constitutes slow but certain death with your drain exp change.

[PowerDiver]

I found another bug. When I picked up Celegorm, it had pLite. The 309e code adds pLite to any artifact that is not otherwise splendid. I noticed, because I was told when I wielded it unided. After some time, including save and restore, the pLite was no longer there. I don't think my code was buggy that way, but that version is ancient and I do not know any more. In any case, artifacts should not change during the game. Choices are (1) remove the code that adds pLite, (2) fix the code so that pLite isn't taken away, or (3) change artifact.txt so that all artifacts are splendid.

[will_asher]

Oh - one more potentially serious bug - I was able to drop too many items in the home. The list kept expanding, but entries after '0' had no prefix letter to select them.

Already fixed for 1.0.98. I turned it from a bug into a feature. The home has three more slots to put stuff in, and they do (in the next version anyway) have a prefix to select them.
It's not a serious bug, in the current release you just have to take a couple other things out of the home before you can take out the last couple things.

[PowerDiver]

[You quoted me here after I put my nasty comments on my comp dump so not to insult you to a wider audience. I guess I misplayed that scenario. ]

You've got a fair number of changes, and they pretty much all make the game harder. There were not many people complaining that V309 was much too easy. You may want to change some other things to balance stuff out. E.g. you could up the multipliers to allow more blows with slightly heavier weapons, up all light radii by 1 or 2, etc.

Oh - one more potentially serious bug - I was able to drop too many items in the home. The list kept expanding, but entries after '0' had no prefix letter to select them. [This was with roguelike keyset turned off.] If you are storing too many items in too little space, something else is getting overwritten. Or maybe you have upped the storage, but didn't do the prefixes right. In any case, it made me nervous.

[will_asher]

I started to write a long comment on your character dump, but I decided to put it in a forum message instead.

The problem with monster stealth is that V starts with monsters having infinite stealth and ESP, and you are just making it worse. If you want to mess with stealth, and you want people to want to play your variant, you should be making monsters *less* stealthy [I should hear a pack of hounds from 1000' away through unobstructed corridors] and not have ESP. You are taking a bad situation and making it worse.

I really wanted to like your game, but the overall impression I have is the same as playing V at 2500' without SI, and it just isn't fun. If you lessen things, it will be like no SI in V at 2000', still too aggravating for 90% of players. One thing you could try is to make +alert much much more common. IMO you should, at a minimum, make all items that give +search give +alert as well [i.e. combine them]. Then you are forcing the char to lose a valuable ring slot just to stay alive, which I think is too harsh, but it might just barely be playable. Currently, the game is only playable if you get ESP early. I don't see how a moderate change that keeps monster stealth could fix that.

Monster stealth started because I didn't like the idea of detecting warm-blooded monsters by infravision. The idea of every race (besides humans of course) having infravision seemed silly to me. I also didn't like the idea of every other race having an additional advantage that humans don't.

The idea started when I noticed that the ranger chieftain was invisible in V. I thought, 'why would the ranger chieftain be invisible?' and from the description I figured that it used invisibility to represent stealth in which case see invisible shouldn't make you notice it because it's not really (magicially) invisible at all. (monster's don't have infinite stealth in V, just infinite 'move silently' ..or else all the characters are deaf. I think I might be able to figure out a way to implement the character hearing nearby monsters which aren't in line of sight.)

What I'll probably do is just make monster stealth much weaker and have you automatically always notice monsters that are next to you, maybe also if it's within two spaces. Also, I might reduce the number of stealthy monsters. Probably only things like ranger chieftains, master thieves, cats, and 'clear' monsters should have high stealth. Maybe, I'll even have a separate 'hide' and 'move silently' for monsters when I implement the character hearing monsters, and cats wouldn't be as good at hiding.

The thing about not being able to see the whole room even if it's lit (unless you're in a small room) because of dim lighting should work much better than monster stealth does now, I think.

so many ideas, so little time..

[PowerDiver]

I hit a nasty bug. Check out my dump in the comp section. My elvenkind armor changed from having resist poison to having sustain wisdom.

[buzzkill]

I've taken the liberty of updating the graf-dvg.prf for use with DaJAngband. This is, of course for use with the David Gervias tileset (32x32 graphics). It's far from complete. I just carried over the default monster associations from Vanilla, but it's a start. About 600 of the 900 monsters now have tiles and all monsters now at least have an entry (even if empty) in the prf file. I have not touched the items, terrain, or anything else, but everything looked good in the 2.5 minutes I spent testing it out. Enjoy!
Get it at www.mediafire.com/buzzkill in the DAJAngband folder.

You may also need the 32x32.bmp and mask32.bmp (because I don't think that they are included). You'll find them in the Z plus folder.

[PowerDiver]

PS I'm don't know exactly what you mean by "make the game feel more grounded in the player's knowledge base"

That's about your tagline, something like "do you know what a yeek is?". Putting in apes instead of unknowable beasts etc. I thought that was how you got started. Things seem a bit more familiar, so when something is counterintuitive it seems twice as disturbing.

[will_asher]

I don't much like the breakpoints either and will probably end up doing something like that. I get the idea into the game first and then test and think about how it would be better.

PS I'm don't know exactly what you mean by "make the game feel more grounded in the player's knowledge base"

[PowerDiver]

One more note, hardly even a quibble, is that I find the breakpoints on weapon weight for strength bonuses unsettling. How about maximum str bonus at most weapon weight in lbs [or some factor of that]? It's probably not important, but I remember some V warriors who got 3 swings with a 5 lb weapon, and it would be strange if your system was set up so that a 5 lb weapon is massively better than either a 4 lb weapon or a 6 lb weapon. OTOH, some people love breakpoints, and they'd be happier with what you have now.

[will_asher]

The first problem is presumably my own fault. I kept anything I thought too controversial out of the 309e release, and I must have left ?curse_weapon alone. IMO it should curse but not blast. I lost a character [well, his only decent weapon] to testing scrolls. This can be avoided by the tedium of swapping in a useless weapon every time you test a scroll. I hate bad effects that serve only to promote tedium.

I think that's a good idea and will probably change it for the next version.

Drain experience is out of control. My second game, I found some weapon with an ego like "of randomness" which seemed pretty cool, but if I took a few steps I might lose 3% of my exp. The problem is that if you make drain exp nasty enough to matter, then it forces the player to swap it out except when fighting. Every damned time. Exceptionally tedious. I stuck with it for one game as an experiment, but in the future will toss anything with that style of drain_exp, even Ringil if you put it there. I think the only type of solution that avoid the tedium issues is to have it drain *only when fighting*. Maybe a 10% penalty? I would implement that as when you hit, you lose exp proportional to the hit. So a 5 point attack on a 22 hp monster worth 8 exp would cost you (5/22) * (8 * 10%) exp. Just an idea.

Another good idea. When the game finally gets tested by experienced players is when I get the good ideas like this. I wanted to make the drain exp drawback effective enough to be a noticable drawback, but I like the idea of having it only drain while fighting.
The 'of randomness' egos (there are about five of them with the same ego name) have a random assortment of good stuff and they each have at least one drawback. I'll probably make them more rare.

It seemed to me that the point of DaJ was the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that was shattered by the "stealthy = unseeable but not invisible" paradigm. In a lit room, if something larger than a beagle is moving, I can see it no matter how stealthy [unless invisible]. If a small monster like a garter snake is close enough to attack, in a lit area, I can see it too when it moves unless it is under flora. Also, IMO there should be no stealth for sleeping monsters. If you want to set up ambush scenarios where a stealthy awake non-moving monster next to a wall waits and only gets to attack if you [try to] move into his square, that would make sense. But the way it is now, no way. This would not be a big deal, and only be a gameplay issue, except that it is completely opposed to what I see as the point of DaJ, which is to make the game feel more grounded in the player's knowledge base. My gut kept screaming "no frigging way" as I was clawed to death by the unseeable while equipped with see invisible.

Monster stealth / alertness was not well tested. I probably shouldn't have had a DaJAngband competition until I had monster stealth worked out better (but I was eager to have my game played & tested by more people). In the next version, you will automatically notice a monster whenever you hit it or it hits you.
Besides that, you also have to imagine that these rooms are dimly lit and not completely empty. There's bound to be rocks, old adventerer's skeletons, and other junk that's there in the dungeon. You don't want to actually see it in game because it's just junk. (Although I'm considering letting you be able to see them and just not be able to pick them up, so players will remember that it's there). Small monsters can hide in the junk on the floor. Enemy rangers and thieves can hide in a shadowy alcove. You really shouldn't be able to see the whole room in the large room because the lighting is always dim in this kind of place, but I'm not sure I can figure out how to do that. ..Actually I just thought of something. When the player is in a lit room, instead of actally having the room lit, I can just increase the player's light radius while he's in that room. But then you'd be able to see too far into the dark halls. hmm.. I'll probably think of something.
Some monsters (like mushroom patches) have stealth simply because they're very small and someone who isn't very alert (like the typical half-troll paladin) isn't going to notice them a lot of the time.
I'll probably do something like have sleeping monsters get a significant penalty to stealth. Also, I don't like how all monsters who haven't noticed you yet are considered to be asleep. I'm thinking about changing that. I'll be thinking about this stuff. Ideas are welcome.

[PowerDiver]

I tried a few games for the comp, and figured I should report what I can't stand.

The first problem is presumably my own fault. I kept anything I thought too controversial out of the 309e release, and I must have left ?curse_weapon alone. IMO it should curse but not blast. I lost a character [well, his only decent weapon] to testing scrolls. This can be avoided by the tedium of swapping in a useless weapon every time you test a scroll. I hate bad effects that serve only to promote tedium.

Drain experience is out of control. My second game, I found some weapon with an ego like "of randomness" which seemed pretty cool, but if I took a few steps I might lose 3% of my exp. The problem is that if you make drain exp nasty enough to matter, then it forces the player to swap it out except when fighting. Every damned time. Exceptionally tedious. I stuck with it for one game as an experiment, but in the future will toss anything with that style of drain_exp, even Ringil if you put it there. I think the only type of solution that avoid the tedium issues is to have it drain *only when fighting*. Maybe a 10% penalty? I would implement that as when you hit, you lose exp proportional to the hit. So a 5 point attack on a 22 hp monster worth 8 exp would cost you (5/22) * (8 * 10%) exp. Just an idea. You don't want to do it only at death, or else you reintroduce tedious aspects like fighting for 20 turns then swapping out the weapon just before the kill.

It seemed to me that the point of DaJ was the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that was shattered by the "stealthy = unseeable but not invisible" paradigm. In a lit room, if something larger than a beagle is moving, I can see it no matter how stealthy [unless invisible]. If a small monster like a garter snake is close enough to attack, in a lit area, I can see it too when it moves unless it is under flora. Also, IMO there should be no stealth for sleeping monsters. If you want to set up ambush scenarios where a stealthy awake non-moving monster next to a wall waits and only gets to attack if you [try to] move into his square, that would make sense. But the way it is now, no way. This would not be a big deal, and only be a gameplay issue, except that it is completely opposed to what I see as the point of DaJ, which is to make the game feel more grounded in the player's knowledge base. My gut kept screaming "no frigging way" as I was clawed to death by the unseeable while equipped with see invisible.

[Cave Man]

On reflection, I think I like the idea of giving priests/paladins a blink prayer (which I agree must be in a town book to be useful - probably the second book), and changing the mage blink spell to a blink-range targetted teleport (still in book 1) with a Clvl/50 chance of success (and destination square is open), else blink as normal.

[Cave Man]

I'm not particularly concerned with the blink spell for any class, simply because the scrolls are always cheap and available in large quantities. All classes can carry them, and throw them away in the dungeon if they require the inventory slot. I tend to use them a lot in the early game, and again right at the end, with comparatively little use in between.

With regard to Haste, you can construct a cogent argument to give it to either mage or priestly magic realms. I would just prefer not to see the same spell in both realms, and “tradition” has deemed this to be a mage spell. If you think paladins are a bit short-changed by this (and I must admit I’m not a big fan of the paladin), then they could be given a +1 attack spell or some such. Priests could be given a prayer that halves the energy required to caste a healing spell. Certainly, there should be scope for more differentiation of speed-related effects for different classes.