Unangband 0.6.0-wip6a has been released

**will_asher** · September 3, 2007, 19:20

I just updated and brought a savefile from the last release. My character on the last release was a dwarf warrior, but for some reason it had me listed as a shadow fairy warrior, but I had the abilities of a dwarf so I didn't mind. But when I updated it gave me the abilities (skills) of a shadow fairy warrior because it had me listed that way (The character history still says I'm a dwarf). I should've just waited till between games to update. How can I send you the savefile?

**Bandobras** · September 3, 2007, 19:24

Don't you cherish the ability to be the first (and quite possibly the only) Shadow Fairy Warrior in existence? Dude, if you play it through, I'd switch from my Shadow Fairy Paladins, inspired by you, to Shadow Fairy Warriors!

**andrewdoull** · September 3, 2007, 19:38

Originally posted by will_asher

I just updated and brought a savefile from the last release. My character on the last release was a dwarf warrior, but for some reason it had me listed as a shadow fairy warrior, but I had the abilities of a dwarf so I didn't mind. But when I updated it gave me the abilities (skills) of a shadow fairy warrior because it had me listed that way (The character history still says I'm a dwarf). I should've just waited till between games to update. How can I send you the savefile?

Email it to my gmail account and I'll fix him up...

**will_asher** · September 4, 2007, 05:07

Originally posted by Bandobras

Don't you cherish the ability to be the first (and quite possibly the only) Shadow Fairy Warrior in existence? Dude, if you play it through, I'd switch from my Shadow Fairy Paladins, inspired by you, to Shadow Fairy Warriors!

Definetly the only Shadow fairy warrior who was the son of a dwarven priest..

Andrew, what is your g-mail account? That's why I asked how to send it to you. It's not in the game, or the readme file, or the changes file, or your signature.

**andrewdoull** · September 4, 2007, 10:56

Originally posted by will_asher

Definetly the only Shadow fairy warrior who was the son of a dwarven priest..

Andrew, what is your g-mail account? That's why I asked how to send it to you. It's not in the game, or the readme file, or the changes file, or your signature.

(edit) Its andrewdoull@gmail.com - as noted below, I'll erase it from this message once you've emailled me. Not sure whether I can PM you or not (have tried).

(edit 2) Just enabled email from other users on here as well...

**Fuma** · September 4, 2007, 11:05

Shhh... You could have just PM'd this info to him.

**Matthias** · September 4, 2007, 14:53

gmail has a very good spam filter

**Bandobras** · September 4, 2007, 20:09

Edit: FIXED: Goldberry's gifts are still open to newbies, as is Tom's house.

(and his potions and scrolls still get unIDed and all locations are 'near', etc., etc., as in my report elsewhere). A new one: starting priests gets a +0 amulet of charisma --- it can be somewhat hacked, I remember I did it for ringbearers...

I'm thinking about your multiple religions preparations...

Not that I am a purist, but I wonder, do you know any priests in Middle Earth? Anything close? I guess Numenorean kings, the good and the bad ones, I guess lots of evil men, if you want evil religion, anything else? I seem to remember Silmarillion and other unfinished tales have more magic and more religion in them. In LOTR and Hobbit it is all but absent. Frodo calls Varda, anyting else? I've heard something about a dwarven (secret?) religion, or was it Silmarillion?

I guess the angels (gods) were much easier accessible to the people in Middle Earth. Just over the Sea and often visible, so this may be why there was less rituals and more cooperation (or at least the memory of cooperation). They were better known so it was obvious they cannot be bribed on one hand and do not persecute for lack of worship, on the other hand.

It was obvious they are not The One, so they were not worshiped as autonomous God/Gods, but as servants of The One. It was useless to try to get their help in opposing the justice/song/fate of The One. They didn't try to be self-sufficient, so a worship of one Vala exclusively would be foolish, because every Vala was weak in very many vital areas and strong only in his chosen ones. The One has not shown his face to the people back then, nor revealed himself in any other way than through world and Valar (though some say he was Tom Bombadil, etc., or that he was yet to come to Middle Earth). So it was quite hard, abstract and impersonal to worhip The One (but there are the Numenoreans, I wonder why them of all).

Hmm...

**Nick** · September 4, 2007, 21:59

Originally posted by Bandobras

Not that I am a purist, but I wonder, do you know any priests in Middle Earth? Anything close? I guess Numenorean kings, the good and the bad ones, I guess lots of evil men, if you want evil religion, anything else? I seem to remember Silmarillion and other unfinished tales have more magic and more religion in them. In LOTR and Hobbit it is all but absent. Frodo calls Varda, anyting else? I've heard something about a dwarven (secret?) religion, or was it Silmarillion?

Religion as we understand it was pretty much absent. There is mention of priests in Numenor; they used to offer "first fruits" to Iluvatar on the Meneltarma (the mountain at the centre of Numenor, wnich was described as a "hallowed place"). But this, like the Gondorians always looking to the West before they ate, was more a givnig of due respect than a prayer - there was no real concept of faith.

As you say, though, there was considerable worship of Sauron and Morgoth, but it was something that they tricked or forced their followers into. As you also say, calling out certain names seems to have had an effect, particularly on evil things - "Elbereth" was supposed by Aragorn to have hurt the Ringwraiths, not just frightened them.

I find myself feeling better about the existence of priests now

**rich!** · September 5, 2007, 08:42

New Spell Experiiences

Moved my L20 Maia (don't ask) Mage over from wip5 to wip6a, got to L21, picked up a couple of spells from Wizardry and Bushcraft, cast them and got no experience.

Is this a policy change?

**andrewdoull** · September 5, 2007, 09:44

Originally posted by rich!

Moved my L20 Maia (don't ask) Mage over from wip5 to wip6a, got to L21, picked up a couple of spells from Wizardry and Bushcraft, cast them and got no experience.

Is this a policy change?

Yes. I can't justify to myself giving out additional experience for casting spells that you would learn normally...

**andrewdoull** · September 5, 2007, 10:11

Originally posted by Bandobras

Latest SVN: Goldberry's gifts are still open to newbies, as is Tom's house (and his potions and scrolls still get unIDed and all locations are 'near', etc., etc., as in my report elsewhere). A new one: starting priests gets a +0 amulet of charisma --- it can be somewhat hacked, I remember I did it for ringbearers...

All locations are 'near' because they are near, for the moment - unless you have a map, which means that you'll see 'via map' instead.

Re: priests & amulet of charisma. This has existed for a little while. Its deliberate, in that I wanted them to have an amulet of sustain charisma and this was the easiest way of doing it...

Unfortunately, while I might be able to fix this in SVN, I'm not going to be able to release an updated Unangband for a little while. I've got a much delayed honeymoon to attend to, then I'm emigrating to Australia. So I'm going 'dark' for a little while...

I'm thinking about your multiple religions preparations...

Not that I am a purist, but I wonder, do you know any priests in Middle Earth? Anything close? I guess Numenorean kings, the good and the bad ones, I guess lots of evil men, if you want evil religion, anything else? I seem to remember Silmarillion and other unfinished tales have more magic and more religion in them. In LOTR and Hobbit it is all but absent. Frodo calls Varda, anyting else? I've heard something about a dwarven (secret?) religion, or was it Silmarillion?

(more stuff snipped) Thanks for the discussion. I was trying to put in religions as the priest version of mage schools. Think of them more as 'favours' or 'dedications' than formal religions - I know Tolkien deliberately eschewed mentioning of any formal religions in Middle-Earth. Maybe renaming religions.txt as favours.txt and discussing 'favours from higher powers' as opposed to religions will help in this regard.

Having said that, I'm really not happy with what I've currently done with 'religions' from a game implementation point of view. There's not enough to differentiate the various religion startups. At the moment I have 9 1st level and 9 3rd level priest spells that are viable for the first book. Each religion has 5 of each these in their starting book. And each 3rd level spell has (usually) 1 1st level spell as a pre-requisite.

The intention was that you'd pick a religion to try and sway which spells you ended up getting 'randomly assigned'. That suggests I should probably cut down the number of starting spells per book to 4 1st /4 3rd or even 3 1st / 3 3rd for the various religions.

However, there's certain spells that are pretty much mandatory. Like the mage schools, priests need a starting healing spell, and a starting detect creature spell to be playable. This is not a requirement: I could see Tulkas not granting a detect creature spell for instance, but any priest without a starting healing spell is going to die pretty quickly.

The problem is, is that if I go down this path, the religions/favours are going to end up looking like mage schools. In which case, what's the point of distinguishing the two, or having separate priest and mage classes for that matter?

I definitely picked too many religions to start with as well (9) instead of growing the mage schools organically up from 3 to 7.

So I've disabled all the religions except Mandos for the moment, and am going to feel out this one.

Probably in the same way I'm going to end up rolling back the MALE | FEMALE changes I just did (which don't really work either and are too hacky).

Andrew

**rich!** · September 5, 2007, 11:05

Originally posted by andrewdoull

Yes. I can't justify to myself giving out additional experience for casting spells that you would learn normally...

Drat. That spoils my "raise INT, go from level 5->8 and 10->14 by casting spells" strategy

**Nick** · September 5, 2007, 13:16

Originally posted by andrewdoull

then I'm emigrating to Australia.

Excellent

Unangband 0.6.0-wip6a has been released

Unangband 0.6.0-wip6a has been released

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