[Un] Unangband 0.6.3a released

[rkedia]

okay the dload worked finally and been playing it for a bit. I need to gripe about the flavored terrain , it is making this variant nearly unplayable for me. i.e all the **** trails , *** covered walls etc for which the tileset uses ASCII characters . There's just too many ! makes it difficult to distinguish between terrain , monsters and objects . Would be fine if there were actually drawn tiles used , but the dots,semi colons ,numbers don't enhance but severely impede gameplay for me. It would still be okay if these tiles actually impacted the game in any way (lava ,water , spreading fire etc) , but as pure cosmetic tiles , serve as nothing but an eyesore. Looks like a good variant , had tried the previous release briefly , but don't think can make it past all the ASCII clutter :-(

[andrewdoull]

makes it difficult to distinguish between terrain , monsters and objects

Use the monster and/or object list windows or monlist options to display these to start with, to help you distinguish these from terrain.

. Would be fine if there were actually drawn tiles used , but the dots,semi colons ,numbers don't enhance but severely impede gameplay for me. It would still be okay if these tiles actually impacted the game in any way (lava ,water , spreading fire etc) , but as pure cosmetic tiles , serve as nothing but an eyesore.

There are tiles, but not all of these are drawn or assigned yet. Feel free to assign these out as required using the knowledge menus (~) option.

And you will be encountering tiles which impact the game more significantly. It also sounds like you haven't found useful ways to use slime/blood etc trails.

Andrew

[baddog73]

- My daggers (1d4) {+0,+0} are not stacking in the quiver?

- After recalling from dl 17 in the Barrow Downs, when I travel back to them from town the dlvl range is listed as max 17 when I know they go to 26. EDIT: Wtf, I just realized the Downs got nerfed. Where's the Emperor Wight now?

If I could ask for a little advice; how do you effectively deal with gravity breathers? I've been losing more ~clvl 30 characters to those than anything else.

Hey, I figured out the embedded heads-a-wall bug. Heads refuse to stack more than one or on piles, so when there's no room on the ground nearby it drops in the wall.

- When a gravity breather breathes at me, I get hit by gravity twice per breath. Intended?

- When items are stolen, you never get them back even if you kill the perp.

- Broken weapons almost always have {of something} tagged on them. I'm guessing this is not right.

[andrewdoull]

- My daggers (1d4) {+0,+0} are not stacking in the quiver?

- After recalling from dl 17 in the Barrow Downs, when I travel back to them from town the dlvl range is listed as max 17 when I know they go to 26. EDIT: Wtf, I just realized the Downs got nerfed. Where's the Emperor Wight now?

There's an earlier wight for you to fight there - the Emporer Wight crops up in the downs after Dol Guldor has been visited.

Hey, I figured out the embedded heads-a-wall bug. Heads refuse to stack more than one or on piles, so when there's no room on the ground nearby it drops in the wall.

You've figured out the behaviour - it still doesn't explain the bug.

- When a gravity breather breathes at me, I get hit by gravity twice per breath. Intended?

- When items are stolen, you never get them back even if you kill the perp.

- Broken weapons almost always have {of something} tagged on them. I'm guessing this is not right.

I'll add the above as bugs.

Andrew

[pfloom]

This seems common enough that I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned: I get a crash every time I try to appl'y' a potion/flask and then switch to equipment with /. This can be circumvented by pressing * first so that the equipment list doesn't display (and remembering which letter to push), but it's quite annoying all the same.

Source build, 0.6.3a on Ubuntu 9.04.

Do any others get this, or am I just special?

[Seany C]

Hmm, the berlios server seems to be down again. Anyone got an alternative server for the new 0.6.3a version? Ta.

[Seany C]

Ah, it's up again now. Hurrah.

[Arralen]

[ Bug #16492 ] Same items refuse to stack

savegame for 2)

[andrewdoull]

[ Bug #16492 ] Same items refuse to stack

savegame for 2)

If you activate cheat_xtra on a backup copy of the save file, you should get more debugging information when you try to stack the items again.

Andrew

[Arralen]

If you activate cheat_xtra ..

It's doing nothing for me.
Most likely I'm doing something wrong - I would expect some kind of warning message like "You really wanna cheat, loser?", but I can switch yes/no and reload the save all day long without any reaction from the game ?!

[Derakon]

Here's my feedback on the game, having not played any Angband in quite some time now. My current character is a CL15 Dunadan Warrior, for reference, so I'm missing all of the mid- to high-level content.

* Word of Recall seems a bit annoying to use -- it always takes you to the dungeon appropriate for your current location, instead of the dungeon you were last in. So for example, if I'm using Bree as my base of operations while exploring the Barrowdowns, it's annoying having to travel overland to the Barrowdowns before I can use Word of Recall to actually get to the dungeon.

* Monster breath frequencies seem out of whack. Specifically, I was trying to take down a room full of dragon bats (at around 550'), and any of them that were awake were breathing every round, instead of the 1 in 3 in their descriptions. Two enchanted pieces of armor got utterly destroyed by black dragon bats...

* Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I'm not seeing any !Heroism getting sold by the temple. This makes dealing with the constant fear-casting fairies a major pain, especially since my character (Dunadan warrior) is useless with ranged weapons...plus they'd just dodge missile attacks anyway, like they do melee strikes 95% of the time. This is especially aggravating when there are invisible walk-through-walls fear-casting enemies (presumably Poltergeists, but I have no SI and thus cannot tell) wandering around. How am I meant to play a melee character in these conditions? Just leave the level as soon as I encounter an enemy that can fear me? I certainly can't kill them. Or anything else, as long as they're around.

* I have no idea what runestones do. I can't seem to find any documentation for them. I've managed to apply a Runestone of Flame to my broadsword, which put "<Flame>" into its name but doesn't seem to have had any other effect.

* I got killed a half-dozen times in Farmer Maggot's cellars before deciding to skip it. Little did I know that apparently the cellars are for advanced players only. How was I supposed to recognize this?

* How does selling runestones and spellbooks to stores get them to provide more services? It hasn't accomplished anything in my limited experience.

* The splitting up of different ID scrolls doesn't really accomplish anything interesting, in my opinion. You just have to carry a bunch of different kinds of items if you want to ID stuff but can't afford to buy regular ID scrolls.

* While I'm at it, while instant pseudo-ID is nice, the fact that a bunch of items get tagged with "unusual" (i.e. one of {good}, {cursed}, or {broken}) isn't very helpful. But then, I'm a big proponent of doing away with ID of non-flavored items altogether, since I don't think it adds anything of interest to the game

* My Rod of Detect Life detects plants on walls. This is fine, and indeed a neat feature...but it also reveals the fact that e.g. vine-covered granite walls can exist when completely surrounded by other granite walls. Where exactly is the vine growing?

* Some areas are very dusty, resulting in "there's a lot of dust here" message spam whenever you run somewhere.

* Several of the options mentioned in the "how does the game differ from Vanilla?" document aren't available. In particular, I'd like to be able to turn off the view_player_lite option, but AFAICT it doesn't exist any more.

* I noticed that Tom, Bert, and Ernie (er, Bill...) can melee-attack me from more than one tile away. Shouldn't this be reflected in the monster memory?

* I was able to clear the troll glade dungeon before killing whichever of the guardian trolls was on the surface level. Is that intentional?

* You can't run along open vents.

* Room descriptions are neat, but I often accidentally skip them, and they go off the edge of the screen in the message recall. Yeah, I can scroll the recall to the right...but it'd be nice if this weren't needed.

Don't get me wrong; on the whole, I see a lot of neat things in this variant. I like the room descriptions and the new room types, the store services, the themed dungeon levels, finding stacks of potions and scrolls, and a bunch of other nice touches. Keep up the good work!

[andrewdoull]

Here's my feedback on the game, having not played any Angband in quite some time now. My current character is a CL15 Dunadan Warrior, for reference, so I'm missing all of the mid- to high-level content.

* Word of Recall seems a bit annoying to use -- it always takes you to the dungeon appropriate for your current location, instead of the dungeon you were last in. So for example, if I'm using Bree as my base of operations while exploring the Barrowdowns, it's annoying having to travel overland to the Barrowdowns before I can use Word of Recall to actually get to the dungeon.

This is to save you having to climb down lots of stairs in order to get to the level you would normally be at when you encounter a new dungeon...

* Monster breath frequencies seem out of whack. Specifically, I was trying to take down a room full of dragon bats (at around 550'), and any of them that were awake were breathing every round, instead of the 1 in 3 in their descriptions. Two enchanted pieces of armor got utterly destroyed by black dragon bats...

What's your charisma? This can influence the frequency of ranged attacks. Having said that, I'll note this as a possible bug and do some checking.

* Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I'm not seeing any !Heroism getting sold by the temple. This makes dealing with the constant fear-casting fairies a major pain, especially since my character (Dunadan warrior) is useless with ranged weapons...plus they'd just dodge missile attacks anyway, like they do melee strikes 95% of the time. This is especially aggravating when there are invisible walk-through-walls fear-casting enemies (presumably Poltergeists, but I have no SI and thus cannot tell) wandering around. How am I meant to play a melee character in these conditions? Just leave the level as soon as I encounter an enemy that can fear me? I certainly can't kill them. Or anything else, as long as they're around.

You can throw potions and spores at walls near enemies to hit them with the explosive radius. This cannot be dodged by faeries, for instance, and is also helpful with trying to locate poltergeists... it is also harder to miss a wall than the monster next to it.

* I have no idea what runestones do. I can't seem to find any documentation for them. I've managed to apply a Runestone of Flame to my broadsword, which put "<Flame>" into its name but doesn't seem to have had any other effect.

Items often require multiple runes of the same type to have an effect, depending on the item. You are supposed to experiment with them... don't worry especially about them at this stage.

* I got killed a half-dozen times in Farmer Maggot's cellars before deciding to skip it. Little did I know that apparently the cellars are for advanced players only. How was I supposed to recognize this?

The flavour text in Hobbiton clues you in to this. The dungeon levels are also displayed in the travel menu.

* How does selling runestones and spellbooks to stores get them to provide more services? It hasn't accomplished anything in my limited experience.

The hint text is now incorrect for runes. I'll amend this. The services added depend on the spell book - and whether the store has previously stocked it (if so, the service will have already been added).

* The splitting up of different ID scrolls doesn't really accomplish anything interesting, in my opinion. You just have to carry a bunch of different kinds of items if you want to ID stuff but can't afford to buy regular ID scrolls.

* While I'm at it, while instant pseudo-ID is nice, the fact that a bunch of items get tagged with "unusual" (i.e. one of {good}, {cursed}, or {broken}) isn't very helpful. But then, I'm a big proponent of doing away with ID of non-flavored items altogether, since I don't think it adds anything of interest to the game

{unusual} tells you it might be worth spending an id item on it, or risking trying it on to get a more detailed ID.

* My Rod of Detect Life detects plants on walls. This is fine, and indeed a neat feature...but it also reveals the fact that e.g. vine-covered granite walls can exist when completely surrounded by other granite walls. Where exactly is the vine growing?

The light from the faerie wings common to most dungeons penetrates the rock on frequencies not visible to your eyes, but which this particular dungeon dwelling vine is able to collect using a scandium-based chlorophyll analog. It is able to grow slowly through microscopic cracks in the rock left by a particular species of ant, which then taps the vines for sap in addition to the nest's regular food. Orcs enjoy a vitrolic brew made from the ants which they collect with long sticks by pulling the vines from the rock and inserting the stick in the remaining cavity. Unfortunately, orcs are quite clumsy at this process, which accounts for the number of broken sticks you find.

* Some areas are very dusty, resulting in "there's a lot of dust here" message spam whenever you run somewhere.

Will work on the message consolidation at some point.

* Several of the options mentioned in the "how does the game differ from Vanilla?" document aren't available. In particular, I'd like to be able to turn off the view_player_lite option, but AFAICT it doesn't exist any more.

The options were tidied up without amending the docs. Sorry.

* I noticed that Tom, Bert, and Ernie (er, Bill...) can melee-attack me from more than one tile away. Shouldn't this be reflected in the monster memory?

All huge monsters can do this. Will make this clearer in recall.

* I was able to clear the troll glade dungeon before killing whichever of the guardian trolls was on the surface level. Is that intentional?

The only monster you have to kill in a dungeon is the guardian on the bottom level. It wasn't IMO worth complicating the code for this one case where it may make sense to require all of them killed - will fix when the more general quest code goes in.

* You can't run along open vents.

Bug... or feature. I haven't decided.

* Room descriptions are neat, but I often accidentally skip them, and they go off the edge of the screen in the message recall. Yeah, I can scroll the recall to the right...but it'd be nice if this weren't needed.

When I come up with a good solution for this, I'll fix it.

Don't get me wrong; on the whole, I see a lot of neat things in this variant. I like the room descriptions and the new room types, the store services, the themed dungeon levels, finding stacks of potions and scrolls, and a bunch of other nice touches. Keep up the good work!

You're welcome.

Andrew

[Derakon]

This is to save you having to climb down lots of stairs in order to get to the level you would normally be at when you encounter a new dungeon...

Hmm...while I can see some utility in that, I think that not having to walk overland to the dungeon site every time would be more valuable to me than skipping a short powerdive session each time I go to a new location.

Alternately, there's plenty of ways to make WoR smarter so you don't have either problem.

What's your charisma? This can influence the frequency of ranged attacks. Having said that, I'll note this as a possible bug and do some checking.

...what? So the prettier you are, the less willing your opponents are to try to smash your face in, even though they're trying to kill you anyway? Okay...well, IIRC my warrior had a CHA of 12 or so. Nothing fantastic, but it's not like he's butt-ugly or anything.

You can throw potions and spores at walls near enemies to hit them with the explosive radius. This cannot be dodged by faeries, for instance, and is also helpful with trying to locate poltergeists... it is also harder to miss a wall than the monster next to it.

I did eventually encounter the note about throwing spores (after getting the note about cooking raw meat a half-dozen times).

Items often require multiple runes of the same type to have an effect, depending on the item. You are supposed to experiment with them... don't worry especially about them at this stage.

Fair enough. They're a new-to-me item with a non-obvious use, which is why I'm curious.

The flavour text in Hobbiton clues you in to this. The dungeon levels are also displayed in the travel menu.

Farmer Maggot's cellar is levels 2-6, but in practice seems to be significantly more dangerous than the same levels in Bree's sewers / the Barrowdowns. The Dunnlending Agent is also insanely badass for his dungeon level. It just doesn't make intuitive sense to me that Farmer Maggot's cellar would be more dangerous than Bree, given that in the stories, Maggot is just a farmer, while the hobbits did encounter some actually hostile characters in Bree.

The hint text is now incorrect for runes. I'll amend this. The services added depend on the spell book - and whether the store has previously stocked it (if so, the service will have already been added).

So, what -- does the store learn the spells in the book you sell them, and then make some of them available as services?

{unusual} tells you it might be worth spending an id item on it, or risking trying it on to get a more detailed ID.

The annoying thing about this compared to old-style pseudo-ID is that now I have no way of safely getting more information on these items other than spending an ID item of some type (whereas the annoying thing with old-style pseudo-ID is that I had to carry everything around for a long time before finding anything out about it). Ehhh...ID in Angband is bunk anyway. It's my biggest pet peeve with the game, to the extent that I'm seriously considering putting together a patch that would:

* Automatically tell you the modifiers for equipment items.
* Automatically tell you if an equipment item is special, excellent, good, average, cursed, heavily cursed, or terrible.
* Automatically tell you the ego-type of items whose ego types you have previously ID'd.
* Automatically tell you the number of charges a wand or staff has.

The upshot being that you wouldn't have to ID good, average, or cursed items, and you'd only have to spend ID once for each ego-type. You'd still have to deal with ID for flavor items though.

The light from the faerie wings common to most dungeons penetrates the rock on frequencies not visible to your eyes, but which this particular dungeon dwelling vine is able to collect using a scandium-based chlorophyll analog. It is able to grow slowly through microscopic cracks in the rock left by a particular species of ant, which then taps the vines for sap in addition to the nest's regular food. Orcs enjoy a vitrolic brew made from the ants which they collect with long sticks by pulling the vines from the rock and inserting the stick in the remaining cavity. Unfortunately, orcs are quite clumsy at this process, which accounts for the number of broken sticks you find.

Hah! Fair enough.

[Derakon]

Some more feedback, mostly about chargen:

* Mages have massive stat requirements. They need INT to learn spells, WIS to have the mana to cast them, and DEX to cast them reliably, and none of these appears to be a "Less than 15 and you'll be hurting, but more than that doesn't make a huge difference" kind of stat. This is of course in addition to needing STR to carry books and loot, and CON/SIZ for hitpoints. I always felt that WIS was contributing its fair share to my success just by determining my saving throw; I don't really get why it should affect mana. Needing DEX for failure rate makes a certain amount of sense, but it's still a huge nerf to the mage to have another stat they have to increase. A warrior can afford to completely ignore three stats early on (INT, WIS, and CHA); a mage can only afford to ignore CHA.

* On a related note, requiring both INT and WIS is a double whammy since most races that are good at one are lousy at the other. Humans are of course balanced, but the only races I've unlocked that are remotely good in them otherwise are Hobbits (-1/+2, but they can't play mages for some stupid reason), Dwarves (but at -4 DEX they're gonna have trouble actually casting anything...though they also apparently can't be mages), Maia (a.k.a. easy mode), and Dunadan.

* In fact...the only starting races that can play mages are the humans and the overpowered races (Dunadan, High-Elf, and Maiar). Why is this?

* Finally, judging from the point-buy screen, CON appears to determine spellpoints, not WIS. So the documentation should probably be updated. I don't really see why CON makes any more sense than WIS or INT, but at least I'll be raising it anyway...if only mages had a halfway-decent CON stat (see also: smart races tend to be frail).

* I unlocked my first new race (Half-Orc). There appears to be no way to get information on the race's intrinsics aside from making a new character and experimenting.

* My "cast Magic Missile at the closest enemy" macro (*tm1d) actually hits me if there are no valid enemies in range. Combine that with the change to symmetric LOS that I'm still adjusting to, and I just suicided a mage by trying to zap a jackal. Why do my own bolt spells hit me?

* I discovered the same note twice, while resting. I now have multiple entries for the note in the ~ screen.

* The overhead view doesn't redraw until one turn after detection spells are cast.

* "Gnome priestesss" has an extra 's' in the monster recall (but, strangely, not in the message history)

* "The Night willow stares deeply into your muscles" -- is this message intentional?

* The Brandywine Ferry should probably provide access to the East Road, mainly because people who have somehow managed to beat the Dunnlending Agent (perhaps with a combination of Mushrooms of Haste, Mushrooms of Mana, Confuse Monster, Cure Light Wounds, Phase Door, and Magic Missile, like I did) but still want to take the easy route otherwise have to head back to Hobbiton. Slightly non-intuitive.

[Bandobras]

Hi!

You seem to be quite confident for a newbie in an UnFamiliar and UnForgiving variant. You also seem to take a lof of V feature and balance decisions for granted, while Un takes similar problems and solves them differently (though perhaps UnPerfectly or with Unnoying bugs). I'm afraid, even if you are good at V, just to survive in Un you have to think hard, not only hack and slash. :P I'll try to answer all your questions, marking when I can't give a good answer.

* Mages have massive stat requirements.

Sure, but you gain stats from the start and you can choose which requirements are most important for your early survival strategy and which to raise later on. e.g., you may choose to totally disregard the stat that decides how many spells you get and settle on 50% failure on magic missile, but pump enough spell points to cast it at will. Or something (haven't played in a long time, but it's been tested with different strategies).

A warrior can afford to completely ignore three stats early on (INT, WIS, and CHA); a mage can only afford to ignore CHA.

Not really. In Un you really have a lot of different, good choices. E.g. CHA is not a throwaway, SIZ is rarely useful to mages, while warriors may rather ignore CON and choose SIZ because of charging multiplier, etc.

Hobbits (-1/+2, but they can't play mages for some stupid reason)

Everybody can play everything. At least in the adult mode. Greyed out choices just show that some stats will be _very_ low, which requires nontrivial character design decisions.

* Finally, judging from the point-buy screen, CON appears to determine spellpoints, not WIS.

Both do.

(see also: smart races tend to be frail).

Sure, but they also tend to have good skills, e.g. ranged attack or magic devices skills (think: abundant cheap low-level wands), which is yet another source of survivability.

* I unlocked my first new race (Half-Orc). There appears to be no way to get information on the race's intrinsics aside from making a new character and experimenting.

No answer here.

* My "cast Magic Missile at the closest enemy" macro (*tm1d) actually hits me if there are no valid enemies in range. Combine that with the change to symmetric LOS that I'm still adjusting to, and I just suicided a mage by trying to zap a jackal. Why do my own bolt spells hit me?

Wretched apprentice wizard fate. I don't remember exactly which macro I did use (probably 'm1d0'?) nor how to define this one safely. I only remember I used to target an enemy and then just press one key repeatedly, being sure that when I'll pummel him as long as it takes to kill him, instead of alternating between enemies, as our distances change. Also, when he was dead or out of sight or I had HP warning, I was interrupted, so even leaning on the key wasn't that disastrours.

* I discovered the same note twice, while resting. I now have multiple entries for the note in the ~ screen.

Could you compare their content in the ~ screen? Some have similar titles but different content. Or it's a bug...

* The overhead view doesn't redraw until one turn after detection spells are cast.

Is it good or bad? If bad, why?

* "Gnome priestesss" has an extra 's' in the monster recall (but, strangely, not in the message history)

Yes, my presioussss.

* "The Night willow stares deeply into your muscles" -- is this message intentional?

Hard to say. I guess it would paralyse you if you didn't have Free Action of good save throw.

* The Brandywine Ferry should probably provide access to the East Road, mainly because people who have somehow managed to beat the Dunnlending Agent (perhaps with a combination of Mushrooms of Haste, Mushrooms of Mana, Confuse Monster, Cure Light Wounds, Phase Door, and Magic Missile, like I did)

Congratulations. You've found the 834th of 6582 solutions to that particular puzzle.

but still want to take the easy route otherwise have to head back to Hobbiton. Slightly non-intuitive.

Probably a good idea, but may be technically tricky, because either the passage should be one-way or it should appear only after you kill the fearsome Dunnlending.

Have fun!