Gumband 2.3.1 Announce

[rdanhenry]

Gumband 2.3.1 is available at http://angband.oook.cz/gumband/

After a long wait, this is a relatively minor update after the much larger changes in 2.3.0. In part, this is because it only draws on one novel for material, but also because I have been kept very busy with other things.

So what is new? Some bug fixes. Some tweaks to play, including some attempts to reduce pointless deaths: deadliness of Change Self has been reduced and paralysis cumulativeness vastly reduced. Two new artifacts and one old artifact upgraded. Nine new monsters, one with a new attack. I can't claim this is the big, exciting new Gumband you have to try. But if you haven't tried 2.3.0, this version should be a better presentation of the changes that were there (new and revised races, a good number of monster and item changes, overhaul of mutations and increased number of mutations possible, etc.). I do feel this minor nature of this release has allowed it to be the most polished Gumband I have yet produced and I hope its appearance will renew some interest in this variant.

[Nick]

If you suggest a race/class combination, or (preferably) send me a savefile (nckmccnnll@yahoo.com.au), it can be the next comp - unless it gets bumped by V3.1.1.

[rdanhenry]

Well, there are no race/class changes from 2.3.0, so let's see...

Beastmen and Chaos Warriors are attractive to get more experience with the mutations.

Races directly changed or added in 2.3.0 are: Eldren, Vampires, Oager Uv, and Halflings. The synergy of Half-Giant Archers was finally complete in 2.3.0, so that specific combination would be good. In theory, a Half-Giant Archer should be a god with missiles by the endgame.

Bugfix of humans in 2.3.1 gives them intrinsic Heroism ability and 2.3.0 saw Melnibonean demon-summoning improved, but I don't think either has enough new to want to make a centerpiece.

If I happen to get a character I think is interesting, I'll try to remember to save the savefile for competition submission. Otherwise, I would suggest:

Oager Uv, Halfling, or Half-Giant Archer character in a "normal" game only. The first two have powers that are not very interesting in Astral mode, whereas Astral is not as rewarding for Archers as the melee/magic types. For Oager Uv, I would suggest either a fighter type or the other extreme of a true wimpy mage class (even a High Mage), which can accept the Strength/Constitution boost as covering the weaknesses. Halflings are probably best as spellcasters, although a Beastmaster could be good as well. For Half-Giants, either an Archer or Ranger to exploit missile skills.

For either a normal or Astral game, the other races mentioned can be used. Eldren are good if you are going for the win (i.e., for players better than I), since their Resist Time is unobtainable from items and most useful late in the game. They are not heavily biased to any class, but best suited to religious magic (Priest, etc.). A Vampire is suited to life as a warrior or mage type, although a Vampire Monk could be interesting. For a Beastman, I would choose Chaos Warrior (for maximum chaoticness) or a Monk (in hopes of picking up some nice extra body part mutations - barehanded Monks do more damage with them).

[Arendil]

Well, I didn't have time to read documentation, but can't run this one on the fly. All I got are some fatal system exceptions from my WinXP. Will try again later.

[rdanhenry]

I just downloaded and unzipped the compiled DOS version. Ran fine in WinXP here. Probably a problem downloading, but let me know if you can't get a good copy and we'll try to figure it out.

[Nick]

If I happen to get a character I think is interesting, I'll try to remember to save the savefile for competition submission.

OK, if I haven't had a savefile from you (or someone else) when I'm ready to run a competition I'll make one up from one of your suggestions.

[Arendil]

Re-downloaded. I can't even properly write those errors down, localised version of XP, something about:

NTVDM CPU: instruction not allowed?

Then plenty of numbers like:

CS:a700 IP:9002 OP:ff ff ff ff ff.

I don't know what happens later, I gave up after twenty "Ignore"'s or so...

Never seen anything like this before...any ideas?

[rdanhenry]

Okay, based on a quick Google... if you're getting NTVDM errors, you'd better check that your machine is secure. Problems due to malware seem to be a pretty common source of this error. Run your anti-virus through a full scan and see it turns up anything.

[zaimoni]

Re-downloaded. I can't even properly write those errors down, localised version of XP, something about:

NTVDM CPU: instruction not allowed?

Then plenty of numbers like:

CS:a700 IP:9002 OP:ff ff ff ff ff.

I don't know what happens later, I gave up after twenty "Ignore"'s or so...

Never seen anything like this before...any ideas?

If AV/malware scan finds nothing, check out the graphics card drivers and graphics acceleration levels. I'd go with full-disk scan, then Microsoft or McAfee stinger in parallel with the main antimalware programs.

A stinger in parallel with the main AV can flush out buggy malware (sometimes the rootkit stuff can hide from your main AV program, but can't hide from both a stinger and the main AV program at the same time.)

(My Win95 system is set to no graphics acceleration at all to work around an NVidia driver issue.)

[pav]

Win95 system at work? Holy macaroni, where you work?

[zaimoni]

I'm self-employed. Commute time is almost nil (just enough to allow filing for the home office deduction with the U.S. IRS).

The Win95 install is to allow me to study some really archaic games for reverse-engineering (the ones that refuse to run in Win2000 outside of a DOS emulator), and to provide a backup in case the Win2000 system goes unstable. MingW32 GCC means that about the only things I can't do in Win95 for work are broadband, Flash, and PDF editing.

[rdanhenry]

Okay, I submitted a Beastman Warrior for use as a competition character.

[rdanhenry]

And if anyone could get some ports of Gumband 2.3.1 done for various platforms, it'd probably make for a livelier comp.

[Nick]

Received, thanks. The game compiles nicely for me in linux going into the src directory and using

make -f makefile.std

The only trap is that the first time through it complained of not being able to prepare a display module; this is fixed by removing the leading #s from the first CFLAGS and LIBS lines in makefile.std, so they read

CFLAGS = -Wall -O1 -pipe -g -D"USE_X11" -D"USE_GCU"
LIBS = -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lcurses -ltermcap

As to other platforms, I will try to do a Windows compile at some point, but it looks as if the Mac port is fairly old and beyond my capabilities. The last couple of comps have been a bit quieter, but we can certainly hope for a livelier one.

[Nick]

OK, windows version is here.