Unangband 0.6.4-pre3 released

[andrewdoull]

This is probably the final prerelease before the Unangband 0.6.4 release.

You can download the source code from http://prdownload.berlios.de/unangba...4-pre3-src.zip. You can download a precompiled Windows build from http://prdownload.berlios.de/unangband/unangband-064-pre2-win.zip or or a precompiled OS/X build from http://prdownload.berlios.de/unangba...4-pre3-osx.dmg. If someone could compile a Linux build for me would be much appreciated.

Changes follow:


### Game Play ###

- Allow the familiar to spy for the player if the player is blind.

- Add further tweaks to familiars and allies spying for you.

- Allies capable of detecting scents now track and chase nearby monsters even out of line of sight.

- Add more familiar types.

- Familiars now always get an attack when the player reaches 10th level, plus an additional ability depending on the type of familiar.

- Increase length of time allies, neutral monsters hang around.

- Try to make familiars without blows at least somewhat useful by improving spying and making them fetch objects for you.

- As mana and hp regeneration have been separated, they should only affect food consumption half as much each.

- Reduce time required to control an uncontrolled object.

- Allow player to notice when their equipment doesn't activate uncontrollably.

- Make resist blindness flag consistently allow monster to see invisible.

- Prevent allies walking into traps.

- Prevent allies evading your attacks if you target them directly (This allows you to use a Wand of Heal Monster on your familiar reliably).

- Sleeping using the 'Rest until Dusk / Rest until Dawn' service now recovers stats somewhat.

- Reorganise bard spell books so they have 4 basic books instead of 3.

- Provide additional documentation during character creation for
magic, prayer and song book specialisation and school choices.

- 'M'ap command in town reveals 'hand-drawn' map of Middle Earth.

- If a multiplying monster is poisoned, their spawn will be likewise
poisoned. This makes Stinking Cloud and Dust of Sneezing & Choking
much more effective against breeders.

- Make water created by Find Water more fountain like.


### User Interface ###

- Include depth of deepest unique in order to provide rankings for competition (Requested by pav).

- Add additional categories for new tip files in tip knowledge menu. Oops. Didn't realise these were visible - they might have to be somewhat
renamed.

- Ensure visible traps have visible trap regions.

- Skip allied monsters when looking to steal.

- Improve formatting of spoiler table for very long object names somewhat.

- Add tips for wizards, master and druid players.

- Add tips file for Find Familiar spell.

- Add game statistics option to knowledge menu and included in
character dump. At the moment, just statistics about monsters killed
are included.


### Bug fixes ###

- Fixed Call Lightning.

- Fix bug where monsters would take damage if a feature was created under them (reported by thorgot).

- Fix/workaround for duplicate tips appearing.

- Fix problem with familiar improvements being delayed by one or more levels.

- Fix assembly and body part descriptions.

- Fix shadow fairy mana regeneration.

- Fix bug preventing uncontrolled objects becoming controllable.

- Fix bug where equipment making the player hungry could incorrectly mark them as a dwarf.

- Fixed wasn't scaling distance by scale factor when checking whether allies could see invisible monsters.

- Fix conditional test to check whether 'Rest' services could be used at day/night.

- Fix bug in poly room generation code (Thanks to SaThaRiel).

- Fix crash bug when displaying object descriptions which included a range.

- Fix scattering bug that prevented scattering more than 1 square distance.

- Fix region projection bugs that prevented automatic regions having any effect.

- Clear targets for monsters you successfully ally through offering.

- Fix for Sting not working (Reported by thorgot).

- Fix to output of monster spoilers.

- Fix detection spells so that they update the display immediately.


### Build / Platform ###

- You can now add tip files for spells, if a player studies the individual spell. These are of the form spellnn.txt.

- Wasn't treating evasive as as powerful as it really should have been for monster power calculations.

[Arralen]

On startup, it says ... :

Error at line 14 of 'limits.txt'. Record -1 contains a 'obsolete file' error. -m
Parsing 'V:0.6.3'. -more-

=> Popup: Error in limits.txt file OK
... and shuts down ...
And it didn't do so properly - it left the 6x10.fon file 'in use', so I can't delete the 064pre3 folder. (Yeah, I know the tricks. Just wanted to mention. Maybe you can do something 'bout the shutdown procedure ...)

0.6.4. pre2 seemed to work flawlessly with 0.6.3a savegame, at least in this regard ...
Using "limits.txt" from 0.6.4pre2 in pre3 didn't work, though.


PS: Did I say I hate you, hate you, HATE YOU ?!? I don't have any time to spare atm, but you're churning out new versions with cool-sounding features like there's no tomorrow ... what can I do, weak as I am ?!?!
Must not play, must not .. must ... play .. must play ...
I'm doomed!

[Bandobras]

Got the same with the newest SVN source. Yesterday SVN was OK. Will try fixing.

[Bandobras]

OK, it's enough to change v:0.6.3 to v:0.6.4 in lib/edit/limits.txt and numerous other files it complains about later. Lots of work, but no recompilation needed.

Edit: here's the patch.

Edit2: BTW, a trivial bug in this version: The spell of Lightning Spark. (a-i, ESC) Browse which spell:
When cast, it shoots of range 3 to electrify a beam for 5d5 damage.

Edit3: possibly related (both from the compo Druid save game): an Orange Capped Mushroom of Haste
This Mushroom weighs 0.4 lbs. When easily thrown, it does 1d1 blunt damage.
to attacking monsters, if they hit the applied regionWhen eaten, it makes you
faster.

[Arralen]

I'm sooooo dooooomed !!!

[andrewdoull]

I'm sooooo dooooomed !!!

Fixed now. As mentioned, entirely stupid mistake on my part...

At least it wasn't the 'official' 0.6.4 release...

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

Edit2: BTW, a trivial bug in this version: The spell of Lightning Spark. (a-i, ESC) Browse which spell:
When cast, it shoots of range 3 to electrify a beam for 5d5 damage.

Edit3: possibly related (both from the compo Druid save game): an Orange Capped Mushroom of Haste
This Mushroom weighs 0.4 lbs. When easily thrown, it does 1d1 blunt damage.
to attacking monsters, if they hit the applied regionWhen eaten, it makes you
faster.

The last thing I'm going to do before 0.6.4 final is try to improve the description of spells/regions/rooms.

Andrew

[Arralen]

"Snow in the Shade" - alive ?
Zapping a Rod of Detect Life reveals the terrain "snow in the shade"?!
While I'm at the feet of Charadhras, I dare to guess that that snow is not really alive, .. is it?

"Tiled Floor" - on Redhorn 7 ?
At the base of Charadhras, lowest level of Redhorn Pass, I found "tiled floor" in the wilderness .. strange, isn't it?

[andrewdoull]

"Snow in the Shade" - alive ?
Zapping a Rod of Detect Life reveals the terrain "snow in the shade"?!
While I'm at the feet of Charadhras, I dare to guess that that snow is not really alive, .. is it?

But the branches that are shading the snow are alive.. there should have been a tree directly next to it.

Andrew

[Arralen]

But the branches that are shading the snow are alive.. there should have been a tree directly next to it.

Will check that.
Might very well be the case. Appears somewhat odd at first nevertheless.


Can't set traps on "Wooden Deck", "Grass" and "Open Trail".
At least in high grass I would expect I'm able to set traps?!
Setting traps is of limited value anyway, so restricting it to "Open Floor" makes things really worse - and the skill next to useless, as damage from various flasks is generally low (and one-time), and there are no "secondary effects" (fire etc.) from "Open Floor" ... I tried a poisoned dart once, but it only said "the dart dissappears" .. maybe the Grey Orc wasn't hit? Loading one-shot traps with weapons doesn't seem a wise thing to do, anyway.

Grey Orcs cast Blink-Self ?!
Come on, really, a simple lvl-8 orc is casting spells ?!?!?

[andrewdoull]

Grey Orcs cast Blink-Self ?!
Come on, really, a simple lvl-8 orc is casting spells ?!?!?

I'm a little surprised as well... at one point they could make themselves invisible. That may have been even more unfair - so I nerfed it to blink self.

Andrew

[andrewdoull]

Can't set traps on "Wooden Deck", "Grass" and "Open Trail".
At least in high grass I would expect I'm able to set traps?!
Setting traps is of limited value anyway, so restricting it to "Open Floor" makes things really worse - and the skill next to useless, as damage from various flasks is generally low (and one-time), and there are no "secondary effects" (fire etc.) from "Open Floor" ... I tried a poisoned dart once, but it only said "the dart dissappears" .. maybe the Grey Orc wasn't hit? Loading one-shot traps with weapons doesn't seem a wise thing to do, anyway.

Any analysis and recommendations around pumping up the effect of set traps is more than welcome. The limitation to open floors is 'hard coded' for a variety of reasons: but none of which apply to player created traps. They may just look a bit weird when they get replaced by a roof graphic when you walk indoors while the trap is outside.

Andrew

[Arralen]

Any analysis and recommendations around pumping up the effect of set traps is more than welcome.

Ok - here some thoughts:

- player traps are way inferior to monster traps. It's much more fun to lure monsters on their own traps. And those last indefinitly

- players one-shot traps are seldomly usuable with weapons; one would have to carry several spare weapons to be able to build traps in a sensible way, at least for some time if one uses those picked up from loot - but inventory space is always precious. That only leaves potions as "ammo" as viable choice, especially considering that those can be stored in magical bags ... .
Darts and arrows are not an option, as their damage is pathetic ...

- restricting player traps to "open floor" can make it really hard to find a place for a trap on some dungeon levels. Combined with the limited effectuality this discurages trapping very effectivly


=> make player traps multiple-use
Darts and arrows would be the logical choice here ... but doing quivers for players traps which can only be used by a small numbers of characters anyway isn't worth the effort, I think. Simply giving the traps a chance of 10-15% of disappearing "on use" would have a very similar effect ..

=> make player traps always do maximum/critical damage
.. at least, if weapons are used ..

=> let the player place traps anywhere as long as it is "indoors"
... see below ...

The limitation to open floors is 'hard coded' for a variety of reasons: but none of which apply to player created traps.

??
I'm pretty sure I can only set traps on "open floor".
While, actually, "open floor" would be the last thing I would try to set up a trap on ... "grass", "tree" etc. would be much more suitable for this, wouldn't it?

Maybe you could add a check for wilderness/dungeon level, and allow additional traps away from the surface, to get around the roof problem?


Stefan

[Arralen]

Trouble with the gen code for Redhorn Pass Orc Camp:

- On some levels, the code generates a big cave with several stairs in it. (and it's always the cave the player lands in after going down the stairs..)
Those stairs, and 2 traps, and some loot/gold piles are always in a straight line, most times horizontally (see pics Redhorn-8A, -8B), sometimes vertically.


- On some levels, there are normal dungeon rooms, around which grassy caves seemed to have "grown", which looks a bit odd, as the dungeon rooms turn into kinds of buildings. And then there is some icy streamer, which divides up the whole level in several parts, as it does not generate doors to the normal/grassy tiles. See attached pic (Redhorn 13-D): normal/grass on the left, icy streamer in the middle, without any doors - had to dig through .., normal/grass on the far right.
This can be especially annoying, if the only stair down (is it always only 1 stair downwards in the orc camp?! Seems to be at least in exactly those cases ) is generated in a cut-off part of the dungeon, and there's little hint that there actually is such part at all ...

EDIT: Please look further down for new link to BIG pic

Stefan

[andrewdoull]

Trouble with the gen code for Redhorn Pass Orc Camp:

- On some levels, the code generates a big cave with several stairs in it. (and it's always the cave the player lands in after going down the stairs..)
Those stairs, and 2 traps, and some loot/gold piles are always in a straight line, most times horizontally (see pics Redhorn-8A, -8B), sometimes vertically.

This is a known bug. It's on my list...

- On some levels, there are normal dungeon rooms, around which grassy caves seemed to have "grown", which looks a bit odd, as the dungeon rooms turn into kinds of buildings.

That's deliberate.

And then there is some icy streamer, which divides up the whole level in several parts, as it does not generate doors to the normal/grassy tiles. See attached pic (Redhorn 13-D): normal/grass on the left, icy streamer in the middle, without any doors - had to dig through .., normal/grass on the far right.
This can be especially annoying, if the only stair down (is it always only 1 stair downwards in the orc camp?! Seems to be at least in exactly those cases ) is generated in a cut-off part of the dungeon, and there's little hint that there actually is such part at all ...

I'll have a look in this in more detail: I think the pic you've attached has turned into a thumbnail which I can't seem to expand.

Andrew