FAangband 1.1

[Arralen]

Evil Nick, did I mention I really hate you, yes?

How can you dare to do THIS to anyone playing a mage?!



Actually, I really like that new jewelry.

And thinking 'bout it (and doing some savescumming to try things out), I actually like the fact that one only learns about the curses by them going active.

To make things perfect(ly evilish), though, IMHO you should do the following:

- make curses highly variable, as the boni are now (up to the point of non-existant, so sometimes the player just might get lucky, or the opposite *evil laughter*)
- keep them detectable only via "detect curse" and going active
- make only detected curses removable, if at all. Maybe have items re-curse themselves over time - not necessarily with the same curse *more evil laughter*
- make "detect curse" only work on one at a time, with a definitly non-100% chance ("you don't detect any curses" shouldn't mean there aren't any ...)
- make those items only show up in the BM - whoever buys there should know the risks; the BM IMHO doesn't really make sense otherwise anyway

[Arralen]

This "ID the curse" bug is more weird than it first appeared:

I descended into Amon Rűdh, and found:

"3 Well-balanced Darts (1d5) {dubious}", which IDed as "of the Hunter (+4,-4)", with .. :

It slays animals. It can be thrown hard and fast. It is cursed; it speeds your digestion.
It cannot be uncursed. You know all about this object.
Pole-mounted weapons are often cumbersome and may require two hands to wield,
but some offer both a high degree of protection and powerful attacks."

Later, I stumbled upon "a Pair of Leather Sandals {dubious}", which IDed as
.. :

a Pair of Leather Sandals of Pitiless Torment (-12,-17) [1, -53] <-9 to speed>
...
I t gives -9 to your speed. It is cursed; it aggravetes nearby creatures and sticks 
to you if wielded. You know all about this object.
Footwear protects ..."

Note ...

... both items fully IDed (incl. curses) while I used the mage's ID spell in the dungeon, while all items IDed with this spell, scrolls or _oPerception in town or wilderness didn't show any curses!

... it says "you know all about", instead of "you know all enchantments"!

... the wrong weapon class description on that darts!


Thanks again for making this most interesting and entertaining variant!

[Nick]

... both items fully IDed (incl. curses) while I used the mage's ID spell in the dungeon, while all items IDed with this spell, scrolls or _oPerception in town or wilderness didn't show any curses!

... it says "you know all about", instead of "you know all enchantments"!

Yes, that's when you know all the curses as well.

... the wrong weapon class description on that darts!

Darts are technically polearms, even if the description does look a little odd.

[buzzkill]

Love the graphic support (32x32) but whenever I hallucinate, which is often thanks to the new curses, all monsters and items (everything except my character and the terrain)revert to ASCII be they real or imaginary.

[LostTemplar]

How chaos damage spells are supposed to be used ?
There is no reason to use them on monsters due to terrible side effects, or maybe I do something wrong. Have somebody found reliable use for such spells ?
IMHO this spells are not just ineffective but simply bad, and should be used as a random activation curse maybe.

[Nick]

Love the graphic support (32x32) but whenever I hallucinate, which is often thanks to the new curses, all monsters and items (everything except my character and the terrain)revert to ASCII be they real or imaginary.

OK, that needs fixing.

[Nick]

How chaos damage spells are supposed to be used ?
There is no reason to use them on monsters due to terrible side effects, or maybe I do something wrong. Have somebody found reliable use for such spells ?

They are not ordinary damage spells, because of the chaos effects. The intent was, though that there would be times when they would be useful - more likely to break up line of sight, for example.

[LostTemplar]

Chaos ball may be used on a terrain, yes, but still miss any use of chaos bolt.
Maybe if chaotic effects have about 5% chance it can be used as damage with
possible dangerous drawback but now it seems impossible to kill monsters with it
they just polymorph or teleport away, and uniques heals and hastes.
It seems for me that bad things, that may happen are too bad to ever use chaos bolt in a game. I miss good old usefull necromancers manabolt badly.

[Nick]

OK, I think you're right - I've made the chaotic effects on monsters happen too often (in fact, always...). I'll scale that back - maybe one time in ten.

[LostTemplar]

Strange bug found, after killing Morgoth, Sauron reincarnates, killed him again, but he still is shown alive in monster memory.
Also no down staircase appear on dlvl100 and no ***WINNER*** status.

[Nick]

Well, Sauron was not destined to die in the first age, maybe the game has become sentient.

Lots of fixing needed.

[Arralen]

CRASH !!

I was running to the left, when after 4 or 5 steps FAangband just hang with 99% CPU.
Menue bar was blank (see below), term 2-5 not showing anything either.

Might be that a Ghost or, more likely judging from re-doing everything from a savegame, a White Wrath was coming through the upper wall.

Wasn't able to reproduce the crash, but I wasn't able to get the WW to attack me while running to the left ...

What is strange, btw., is that FAA shows the doors in the lower vault as closed, while I'm pretty sure I opened them to get the potion from the center, and didn't close them properly behind me

[Nick]

I was running to the left, when after 4 or 5 steps FAangband just hang with 99% CPU.

Probably a problem with shop item generation - I certainly had issues with the new jewellery early on, and it looks like it's not quite fixed.

[LostTemplar]

I also had a crash like this sometimes, had to kill FAA process, but game saves and then loads correctly without any more problems.

[Arralen]

Probably a problem with shop item generation - I certainly had issues with the new jewellery early on, and it looks like it's not quite fixed.

? A problem with jewelry from the shops ?

.. dunno .. doubt it somehow:

First, IIRC, I don't use jewelry from the shops, but a helmet only.
Second, actually, when FA crashed, I had used the very same jewelry for the whole dive, clearing out the level, and maybe even before.
I replayed from the savegame and did pretty much everything the same (including using activations on ring and amulet, which I had used for several hundreds, maybe even thousands, of turns already) - only difference was : I killed the ghost lurking to the left of the lower vault, before entering the outer part of it. On the first try, the ghost seemingly didn't wake up when I passed it.
Btw., I just realized the Wraith cannot pass through walls (I'm getting really confused with those different monsters in different variants some times ) ... and I didn't detect anything else that could, so maybe it was the ghost which I had killed early on the 2nd try which made the game crash?!

Or maybe it was just a cosmic ray ?

Oh my, me dumbass should have zipped up that savegame for further tries ...