[Un] Unangband 0.6.3 prerelease 2

[Bandobras]

Peace! Peace! The powers of darkness rejoice seeing us quarrelling instead of fixing bugs^H^H^H^Hevil done by Morgoth!

I won't join the flamewar, though, because I agree with both sides. Yes, the bugs are very ugly and reporting them is extremely important and sighing and being angry at them is as natural for me as for the players. OTOH, being partially responsible for some of the bugs, I sometimes cannot help but mistake the woe and disappointment as directed at me, not at the nature of software engineering, tainted by Morgoth, nor at the lack of volunteers that would help with the coding. Also, while I indeed read color-coded text much more efficiently, being guided by the marking, I detest color-coding, nevertheless, precisely because I don't like being guided and because I cherish my inefficiency, aided by text search, if really needed.

I hope that was 100% neutral. Down with Morgoth!

[ekolis]

Hmm, found a divide by zero exception when applying a potion of intelligence and wisdom to the character's hands...

[baddog73]

Bug? Torches from dungeon walls stack and average their energy, but not with torches bought from stores.

[andrewdoull]

Hi,

Since there has been a question raised about bug reporting, ideally I prefer bugs to be reported to http://developer.berlios.de/bugs/?group_id=331 so that I can track these. I appreciate this is additional effort and it is often easier to post a bug in the release thread so I try to track bugs reported here. However, as the thread gets longer, it makes it harder for me to track bugs here and I end up manually copying them to the Berlios bug database anyway.

Regards,

Andrew Doull

[andrewdoull]

I was mostly just having some fun with it. But wouldn't it be cool, or really horrible, if curses could become stronger, or spread from one piece of equipment to another if left unchecked long enough.

I'm trying to make it a viable choice to consider wearing cursed equipment. The next step will be binding demons/dragons/undead to cursed items to make them obey your commands...

Andrew

[baddog73]

I'll keep posting bugs here for comment, but I'll also put 'em up on berlios.

- Open small wooden chests have are represented by ACSII "space", or blank.

- A service of "feedback" in Gandalf's shop seems silly.

- Something for discussion: Are potions of water any use whatsoever?

[Arralen]

I'll keep posting bugs here for comment, but I'll also put 'em up on berlios.

That was my intention when I asked if a list of "issues" could be in fact working as designed: ideally, someone knowledgeable would only reply "No", "Yes" etc., and I would put a proper report up on Berlios in case I actually found a new bug.

But this can work the other way round, too - sometimes there are feature requests/ bug reports which one could discuss here in the forum if someone comes up with a new idea ...

[Arralen]

Monsters, Traps and 0.6.3.pre2

Andrew Doull at [ Berlios #15580 ] Odd trap disarming:
[Monsters] are disarming traps that the player knows about. I pretty much have to do this, unfortunately, because otherwise monsters end up killing themselves on traps.
The distinction is between undetected traps, which can't hurt monsters and they quietly ignore, and detected traps, which monsters disarm and get damaged by.
As for the Mirkwood wolf problem - any SMART creature can disarm a trap...

Obviously, the combination of area effect/trigger traps and monsters that get damaged by random traps (opposed to player-set ones) results in some troubles:

- Having a wolf disarm a trap is a bit strange, so I would suggested to check for SMART and not ANIMAL; guess there are not that many smart animals, so this change would be mostly cosmetic - great for the look and feel, but without causing additional troubles ...

- Checking for SMART leaves all the non-smart monsters as trap fodder: Using a Rod of Trap detection, the player can easily turn all the traps on the level against the monsters ... I witnessed a drove of centipedes get trapped by a gas trap in the middle of a Barrows Downs room ... they got confused again and again and only managed to leave the trap area after a long time by chance, if at all.
Therefore, a non-smart or animal monster should have a %-chance to (try to) leave the trap area out of instinct, if possible. This may mean, though, that they get seperated from the player and become easy prey for ranged attacks.

- Obviously, 100% secure trap detection, as it provided atm. by scrolls, rods and spells does not work well with monster-enabled area traps. Therefore, the detection radius should be reduced, or there should be a chance (maybe depending on distance/trap type) that the trap goes undetected. Remember that "searching" is pretty much restricted in range, and does never give 100% results - and normally is pretty much obsolete as soon as there's enough gold/XP available to use on of the other options.
As a side effect, therefore, making the magicals detections more rare/unreliable, or much more expensive, an otherwise seldomly used game mechanic would become more useful again, what IMHO would be a good thing.

[baddog73]

It seems entirely reasonable that "dumb" creatures would be done in by traps. What doesn't quite work is that only detected-by-player traps do this.

Imagine this: a wolf within view gets hit by a previously undetected trap, cluing the player in that a trap is present. Trap triggering by monsters within view could be a valid trap detection mechanic.

Killed by a trap out of view, a recent corpse could serve as a warning that something happened here. Also you might hear the sounds of monsters being hurt by a trap out of view.

The only downside I see with it is that reliable trap detection is available pretty early, which makes traps sort of a moot point, unless they block your way or you just forget to detect.

What about this possible solution: traps have a trap_level, the higher of which is more likely to avoid detection? Casting skill could increase the chances of detection with a spell (off the top of my head), but some combination of attributes and skills might also be figured into it. This would preserve the usefulness of searching, especially as some player classes won't have much magical ability.

Edit: also, as an additional idea, it would make sense if traps would have a limited lifespan. Dart traps have a limited amount of darts; Gas traps have a limited amount of chemicals; Magic traps have a limited amount of energy. Some nasty traps might only fire once. What do you think?

[baddog73]

Something is going on with BerliOS. I registered and did not get the confirmation email. When I go back and try to login, it states that the account is pending verification, but when I ask it to resend the email it says the account doesn't require verification. Any idea what's up?

So until I get that figured out I'll have to post bugs here.

- Possible bug: I never see mushrooms of restore dex and agility in the Hobbiton mushroom shop. I see everything else commonly.

Funny thing that happened: killed a crow in Maggot's cellars. Without thinking I picked up a crow head that was embedded in the passage wall because it looked like a walkable grid.

[andrewdoull]

- Having a wolf disarm a trap is a bit strange, so I would suggested to check for SMART and not ANIMAL; guess there are not that many smart animals, so this change would be mostly cosmetic - great for the look and feel, but without causing additional troubles ...

Except those damn monkeys and their pointy sharp sticks... I think there is much more strangeness in Angband than having a trap disarmed by a wolf.

- Checking for SMART leaves all the non-smart monsters as trap fodder: Using a Rod of Trap detection, the player can easily turn all the traps on the level against the monsters ... I witnessed a drove of centipedes get trapped by a gas trap in the middle of a Barrows Downs room ... they got confused again and again and only managed to leave the trap area after a long time by chance, if at all.
Therefore, a non-smart or animal monster should have a %-chance to (try to) leave the trap area out of instinct, if possible. This may mean, though, that they get seperated from the player and become easy prey for ranged attacks.

I'll actually use MFLAG_WARY for this - to allow non-smart monsters to only get fooled once by a trap. STUPID monsters, like centipedes, deserve what they get.

- Obviously, 100% secure trap detection, as it provided atm. by scrolls, rods and spells does not work well with monster-enabled area traps. Therefore, the detection radius should be reduced, or there should be a chance (maybe depending on distance/trap type) that the trap goes undetected. Remember that "searching" is pretty much restricted in range, and does never give 100% results - and normally is pretty much obsolete as soon as there's enough gold/XP available to use on of the other options.
As a side effect, therefore, making the magicals detections more rare/unreliable, or much more expensive, an otherwise seldomly used game mechanic would become more useful again, what IMHO would be a good thing.

While I like the idea, I'm not comfortable with the reaction by taking away people's toys (I've been burnt before - by making identify harder). Especially since I've created such a nice trap detection radius UI.

What I've actually done is create non-detectable rooms, usually vaults, deeper in the dungeon which completely block detection magic. These are intended to provide the challenge relying on searching - while making it an optional choice, rather than a mandatory one.

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

It seems entirely reasonable that "dumb" creatures would be done in by traps. What doesn't quite work is that only detected-by-player traps do this.

It's an quirk of the way hidden traps are currently implemented. There are hidden traps that will affect monsters, just not all of them (and at the moment, not the ones that are randomly placed throughout the dungeon).

Edit: also, as an additional idea, it would make sense if traps would have a limited lifespan. Dart traps have a limited amount of darts; Gas traps have a limited amount of chemicals; Magic traps have a limited amount of energy. Some nasty traps might only fire once. What do you think?

There's support for that in the code, but allowing a player to just sit out a trap is frankly boring and just encourages grinding.

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

Something is going on with BerliOS.

Thanks for supplying the subtitle for the next version of UnAngband.

My apologies for the rubbish free hosting.

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

Funny thing that happened: killed a crow in Maggot's cellars. Without thinking I picked up a crow head that was embedded in the passage wall because it looked like a walkable grid.

Congratulations. You've found a bug that I've been unable to figure out for the last 5 years. I must stare at the code harder.

You win a prize of one crow head.

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

- Missing info upon (I)inspection: IDed (shop service) "Tabard (Spiderthread) worth 3035 gold pieces [3,+7]" shows only "... weighs 7.5 lbs. When thrown, it does 1d1 blunt damage. It increases your armor class by 10. It is a useful ego item. You can apply runes to it or enchant it with additional powers. It was lying on the floor on dungeon level 7".
I thought I'd cheat and according to the edit file, it should have IGNORE_ACID | IGNORE_ELEC | IGNORE_FIRE | IGNORE_COLD | RES_SHARD | ANIMAL | ... shouldn't that show up when IDed ?
Btw., Res_Shard does not show up on the char info, either ...

edit 2: Actually, reading ?oLegendLore seems to give me the missing info piece by piece. Is this intended, and am I confusing variants again ???

Feature. You missed out a bit which I've highlighted in bold.

Andrew