[announce] Sangband 1.0.1 released

[camlost]

I guess I should be pleased with all the bug reports -- it means people are playing

Hi Joshua - didn't you like *any* of these? :-(

Yes, I'm working on:
1) The framework for more skills, separating out warrior skills from other skills, in order to fit more on the screen(s).
2) Some other warrior skills that require a little less work (hopefully), especially to balance.

Of those listed, I'm most interested in hamstring/disarm and throat slash. Both will require some work to balance better.

Regarding spell resistance, I've bundled some spell resistance into the class and made the skill commensurately cheaper. Application of domain skills against appropriate is a good idea. I'll look into it.

I haven't given any real thought to set items. I feel like the drop rate on low level artifacts is low enough that they've almost never been useful to me. I guess more is better. Any thoughts on which to pair/triple up?

It would be good if there were other effects that required a combination of skills to trigger. Parry for example could require weapon skill and Dodging; hamstring / throat slash could require Nature Lore etc.

I also think it would be good if the three different weapon skills brought quite different effects. So high blunt skill does more maiming / stunning type effects, high swords maybe does more blows/damage type effects, and high polearm skill more parrying / disarming stuff.

I completely agree with you here.

Is it just me, or does drinking a potion of infravision when you have innate infravision from your race cause your infravision to PERMANENTLY increase by +5?

It's just you, or at least I can't reproduce it.

Speaking of bugs, one old legacy bug: the uncast spells indicator on the main screen only reflects uncast spells from the first book.

Not terribly important now that you don't get exp from casting spells, but noted.

[ekolis]

Is it just me, or does drinking a potion of infravision when you have innate infravision from your race cause your infravision to PERMANENTLY increase by +5?

[Magnate]

That's a good idea: cheat_skills removes the cap. I really don't like the "forgetting" / re-spec approach. It just feels totally wrong to me and would ruin the atmosphere - but of course I don't have to use it if it's implemented. I do think it's the only serious alternative to fixing the number of skills, and if you don't want to do that, forgetting may be the only solution to people's builds getting screwed by the cap. One other possibility would be a calculator in the skills screen: mark each skill you want to max, and have the game tell you the resulting power level, with a warning if you hit the 100 limit.

Some ideas for warrior skill effects or talents (I particularly like your Pin idea, btw):

hamstring (for natural creatures) / disarm (for weapon-wielders): monster attack skill (and/or physical damage) halved for rest of combat

fury: attacks increase in speed but slowed at end of combat (from Oangband)

parry: chance to deflect a successful physical attack (in addition to evasion chance from dodging skill)

riposte: a free blow at the end of a monster's unsuccessful attack

throat slash: monster cannot use breath weapon any more

I do think it's important that not all these are restricted to OoI characters: non-oath characters need some love too. Oangband provides us with a particularly good opportunity for a skill effect that relies on both high weapon skill and magic skill:

mana burn: damage drains monster mana (instead of physical damage - or at very high skill, as well as)

It would be good if there were other effects that required a combination of skills to trigger. Parry for example could require weapon skill and Dodging; hamstring / throat slash could require Nature Lore etc.

I also think it would be good if the three different weapon skills brought quite different effects. So high blunt skill does more maiming / stunning type effects, high swords maybe does more blows/damage type effects, and high polearm skill more parrying / disarming stuff.

You made a point about warriors supposedly benefiting from domain skills: these are supposed to provide semi-ESP at high levels for that type of monster (animals / demons / undead - I can't remember if Wizardry does anything). If this effect was beefed up, and maybe made less dependent on Perception, those skills would be more useful to warriors. Or does everybody always end up with ESP anyway?

I completely agree with Bostock that NO skill should be mandatory, so I'm very keen to help solve the Spell Resistance problem. Ideas include:

- increase stat bonuses to saving throws. Not just WIS, but perhaps allow a bonus from high CON for certain saves affecting the body rather than the mind, and/or from high DEX for some targeted effects which might be avoided.

- increase the occurrence of +save on ego items and randarts and forged items. This needs careful balancing lest it render the skill useless, but for example at the moment there's an ego type "of Magical Item Mastery" - if you added a similar one "of Spell Resistance", with a chunky x5 pval, that would offer characters a choice between using up an equipment slot (or two) instead of pumping the skill. Better to have high bonuses on items which have no other properties, rather than add +save to items people would want to wear anyway. Maybe create a standart amulet with an enormous (+10 x5) bonus or something ...

- allow saving throw bonuses from other skills in certain situations: domain skills could boost saves vs. animals / demons / undead, for example

- introduce consumables which temporarily boost saving throw - or add that effect to existing ones (heroism, PfE, etc.).

One other thing I forgot to mention was that one of my favourite things in Sangband is the existence of set items, which provide bonuses when you wear them together. Diablo II and Titan Quest stole this concept and developed it really well. I'd like to see more sets in S: in all the games I've ever played, I've only ever found one pair of artifacts which made a set (no, it wasn't Sting + The Phial). It makes weak standarts suddenly worth keeping if they can form part of a set (hey, I should implement this in V!).

Hi Joshua - didn't you like *any* of these? :-(

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I now tried the curses version, and it also crashes (hangs) after naming the character.

I don't know if this helps, but as the game freezes it fills the screen with this (copied from terminal):



3a71bc000 ---p 00002000 08:01 234378 /lib/libdl-2.11.2.so
7f33a71bc000-7f33a71bd000 r--p 00002000 08:01 234378 /lib/libdl-2.11.2.so
7f33a71bd000-7f33a71be000 rw-p 00003000 08:01 234378 /lib/libdl-2.11.2.so
7f33a71be000-7f33a7316000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 234379 /lib/libc-2.11.2.so
7f33a7316000-7f33a7515000 ---p 00158000 08:01 234379 /lib/libc-2.11.2.so
7f33a7515000-7f33a7519000 r--p 00157000 08:01 234379 /lib/libc-2.11.2.so
7f33a7519000-7f33a751a000 rw-p 0015b000 08:01 234379 /lib/libc-2.11.2.so
7f33a751a000-7f33a751f000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
7f33a751f000-7f33a7561000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 379831 /lib/libncurses.so.5.7
7f33a7561000-7f33a7760000 ---p 00042000 08:01 379831 /lib/libncurses.so.5.7
7f33a7760000-7f33a7765000 rw-p 00041000 08:01 379831 /lib/libncurses.so.5.7
7f33a7765000-7f33a7783000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 234391 /lib/ld-2.11.2.so
7f33a7968000-7f33a796b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
7f33a7980000-7f33a7982000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
7f33a7982000-7f33a7983000 r--p 0001d000 08:01 234391 /lib/ld-2.11.2.so
7f33a7983000-7f33a7984000 rw-p 0001e000 08:01 234391 /lib/ld-2.11.2.so
7f33a7984000-7f33a7985000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
7fff3473f000-7fff34754000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack]
7fff3476a000-7fff3476b000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso]
ffffffffff600000-ffffffffff601000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vsyscall]

[Bostock]

Speaking of bugs, one old legacy bug: the uncast spells indicator on the main screen only reflects uncast spells from the first book.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm playing r135 now. Unfortunately, it still crashes on the character creation.

Another bug: the character screen has ranged Skill and Deadliness messed up somehow. It shows the Skill bonus where Deadliness should be.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I thought I fixed this in r104. Now, I think this may be solved in r135. The history was being stored internally as a size_t, but saved as a u32b. Now it's u32b across the board.

Mikko, are you running 64 bit Linux?

Yeah, 64-bit Debian Squeeze.

[camlost]

I have a similar problem, playing on Linux. The game crashes after I type a name for the new character. At the moment I have to delete the old save if I want to start a new game.

As I was manually rolling up a new character, I noticed that the game turns had not reset to zero.

I thought I fixed this in r104. Now, I think this may be solved in r135. The history was being stored internally as a size_t, but saved as a u32b. Now it's u32b across the board.

Mikko, are you running 64 bit Linux?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm having the Out of Memory problem when trying to create a new character when a savefile already exists also. Vista64. I might take a look if I can get it to build.

I have a similar problem, playing on Linux. The game crashes after I type a name for the new character. At the moment I have to delete the old save if I want to start a new game.

As I was manually rolling up a new character, I noticed that the game turns had not reset to zero.

[camlost]

Diving ridiculously fast as usual, I see. Of course I am a bad judge, being the other end of the scale -- I usually take quests and am rarely seen below 1500' without rFCEA!

    Turn     Depth   Power 
    650257   2700'   52   Killed by an Ice elemental

I was in a dark room, recalling (after teleporting to escape). I'm a little sad, because I had a light/cold brand with res cold in the house, but wasn't wielding because of the permanent light. Kind of makes testing shadowstalking difficult.

[ekolis]

I was able to find a workaround for that issue, at least on Win7... have you tried compatibility mode for XP service pack 2? That fixed it for me!

[UniqueName]

I'm having the Out of Memory problem when trying to create a new character when a savefile already exists also. Vista64. I might take a look if I can get it to build.

[Bostock]

My promising half-orc burglar died to an Ice Elemental (no cold resist). There are definitely benfits, but I think I'm happy enough with the balance myself.

Diving ridiculously fast as usual, I see. Of course I am a bad judge, being the other end of the scale -- I usually take quests and am rarely seen below 1500' without rFCEA!

[camlost]

After spending some time running a necroburglar yesterday, I have to say it's pretty much OK. Not counting the increased fail rate and the restricted scroll choices, which are usually more inconvenient than dangerous, there are still some real dangers to running around in the dark. Maybe it will change with massive Perception, but for now no light means no detection for jellies in the dark. And without telepathy it also means no detection of undead. There are other cold-blooded dangers too, but these are the two biggies, and I think they're enough - personally, I'm not going to run around with my lantern off by default anymore.

My promising half-orc burglar died to an Ice Elemental (no cold resist). There are definitely benfits, but I think I'm happy enough with the balance myself.

[camlost]

Speaking of infravision issues, is it intentional that Sense Blood has the side effect of increasing your mapping radius (since it increases infravision, which now does mapping of dungeon terrain)?

I hadn't thought about the fact that "sense blood" gives you better terrain mapping, but I'm happy enough with necromancers being able to see terrain and monsters better in the dark. If I were to do anything, I'd rename the spell, not change the effects.