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FAangband 0.3.0, as source and windows binary, is now available from http://angband.oook.cz/faangband/ - please download, play, post dumps, discuss, complain, etc.
Thanks to: Pav for hosting; Si Griffin for discussions and bugfinding help; everyone on angband-dev, especially Andrew Sidwell, Pete Mack and Andrew Doull, for ideas and all the code I've pinched from Vanilla; everyone who has posted ideas and comments to the newsgroup and forums
Changes in a nutshell (more detail below):
- massive code cleanup and modernisation, including wholesale importing of features from Vanilla;
- resistances are now true percentages, rather than the point-based approximation; lots of follow-on changes to this including big changes to ego-items and some things getting vulnerability (negative resistance);
- powering up of randarts, rebalancing so that there are less weapons and more armour, introduction of randart rings and amulets;
- element proofing;
- cleanup of the mouse interface - this is planned to go into vanilla, and I'll post separately about it;
- lots of other small changes.
There is a known issue where the windows port registers a crash on closing the game - I haven't been able to work out why, but the only obvious effect is to pop up an error window. The game still saves fine. I suspect it's a font issue of some sort, and I'm inclined to blame Vista...
Nick.
List of changes:
Code Cleanup/Modernisation
--------------------------
Massive. Started with some cleanups provided by Christer Nyfalt, then moved
on to importing most of the low level code from Angband 3.0.9ish - z-* files,
initialisation, sdl and gtk ports, display modules, compilation process,
Pete Mack's menu code, command menus, squelch, birth process, context help,
file viewing, auto-wielding at birth.
Percentage resistances
----------------------
Resistances are now percentages, applied multiplicatively (which is really
just the old points system with increased precision). 20% resistance is now
the threshold for immunity from effects (so 20% or more RConf will mean the
player can't be confused), except poison which is 80%.
Major overhaul of items, particularly egos as a consequence:
- Armour, shields of Resist Acid, Fire, Lightning and Cold have gone, and of
Resistance now has at least one, usually low, resist, likely to be more as
you get deeper.
- Elvenkind armour (and now shields) now get RBase at least one extra resist,
although that can occasionally be extra in a low resist.
- Rings of protection give a small amount of resistance to at least one element
- cursed ones give vulnerability.
- Armour/shields of Vulnerability are the cursed versions of Resistance.
- The one extra resist of other items (Cloaks of Aman, etc) is treated as for
Elvenkind.
- All ordinary and ego resists are randomised by up to a quarter, so the
nominal 40% base resists on Elvenkind armour each end up between 30% and 50%.
- Artifacts have varying levels of resistance (and/or vulnerability), not
randomised.
Element proofing
----------------
Items can now be proofed against acid, fire, cold and electricity by scrolls
of *proofing - these are deep and fairly rare.
Random artifacts
----------------
Randarts have been overhauled and powered up a bit. Randart rings and amulets
now exist, with some of the rings being potentially very powerful - this is to
make up for the lack of the Rings of Power in FA.
Good (ie not cursed) artifacts may have elemental vulnerabilities.
Mouse interface
---------------
This has been cleaned up a lot, with the hackish clicking on words in prompt
lines replaced by a context-sensitive system of "buttons" (eg [ESC]) on the
bottom line of the screen. I'll post more details of this separately, as the
plan is to include it (or something like it) in Vanilla.
Character screens
-----------------
The character screens (from the 'C' command) have been replaced by a scrolling,
coloured version of the character dump. Player notes have been coded more
cleanly (similar to a proposal in the angband-dev mailing list), and
colourised
. Subwindow display of character details are a now a subset of
this.
Resistances -> Powers
---------------------
RBlind and RFear have become powers rather than resists, so random resist
items (like Elvenkind armour) can't get them but random power items (like
Blessed weapons) can.
Odds and Ends
-------------
- Changed some randart names to be more thematically consistent or avoid
standard artifact names.
- elven druids/rangers get their speed bonus in trees rather than on forest
levels now.
- tweaked racial properties, including removing the Dark Elf vulnerability to
light and giving humans evasion rather than a to-hit bonus in their
preferred terrain.
- gave druids some cool new spells, and better HP.
- gave trap setting and martial arts specialties to more classes
- made the "turns to fight" message only appear for monsters going from
frightened to not.
- added more speed to rings of Warfare, added Boots of Elvenkind and Amulets
of Sustenance.
- made catastrophic failure of wand recharge less catastrophic (destroys 2 of
a stack then a roll for subsequent ones rather than the whole stack)
- removed all birth options (maximise and preserve now always on, stat choice
is on the birth screen)
- made rivers weave a bit more
- made sure wilderness vaults are not too close to the player to make instakill
on entering a level less likely
- tidied up options a little
- updated the standard player ghosts (probably avoiding a defamation suit)
- prompt for destroying on pickup
Bugfixes
--------
- Monsters were mostly not trying to break runes of protection (Si Griffin)
- Some high value randart properties (like telepathy) were not possible, and
the randart generation could hang sometimes (Me!)
- some tvals in the Magic Shop were wrong, so the wrong items were being
stocked (Pete Mack)
- made Unlight stealth bonuses update correctly (Dario Saccavino)
- made {cursed} appear immediately on wielding a cursed item (ekolis)
- overhead map in mini-window wasn't working properly (someone - sorry!)
- Underworld had light (Arralen)
- Mountaintops didn't (Si Griffin)
Thanks to: Pav for hosting; Si Griffin for discussions and bugfinding help; everyone on angband-dev, especially Andrew Sidwell, Pete Mack and Andrew Doull, for ideas and all the code I've pinched from Vanilla; everyone who has posted ideas and comments to the newsgroup and forums
Changes in a nutshell (more detail below):
- massive code cleanup and modernisation, including wholesale importing of features from Vanilla;
- resistances are now true percentages, rather than the point-based approximation; lots of follow-on changes to this including big changes to ego-items and some things getting vulnerability (negative resistance);
- powering up of randarts, rebalancing so that there are less weapons and more armour, introduction of randart rings and amulets;
- element proofing;
- cleanup of the mouse interface - this is planned to go into vanilla, and I'll post separately about it;
- lots of other small changes.
There is a known issue where the windows port registers a crash on closing the game - I haven't been able to work out why, but the only obvious effect is to pop up an error window. The game still saves fine. I suspect it's a font issue of some sort, and I'm inclined to blame Vista...
Nick.
List of changes:
Code Cleanup/Modernisation
--------------------------
Massive. Started with some cleanups provided by Christer Nyfalt, then moved
on to importing most of the low level code from Angband 3.0.9ish - z-* files,
initialisation, sdl and gtk ports, display modules, compilation process,
Pete Mack's menu code, command menus, squelch, birth process, context help,
file viewing, auto-wielding at birth.
Percentage resistances
----------------------
Resistances are now percentages, applied multiplicatively (which is really
just the old points system with increased precision). 20% resistance is now
the threshold for immunity from effects (so 20% or more RConf will mean the
player can't be confused), except poison which is 80%.
Major overhaul of items, particularly egos as a consequence:
- Armour, shields of Resist Acid, Fire, Lightning and Cold have gone, and of
Resistance now has at least one, usually low, resist, likely to be more as
you get deeper.
- Elvenkind armour (and now shields) now get RBase at least one extra resist,
although that can occasionally be extra in a low resist.
- Rings of protection give a small amount of resistance to at least one element
- cursed ones give vulnerability.
- Armour/shields of Vulnerability are the cursed versions of Resistance.
- The one extra resist of other items (Cloaks of Aman, etc) is treated as for
Elvenkind.
- All ordinary and ego resists are randomised by up to a quarter, so the
nominal 40% base resists on Elvenkind armour each end up between 30% and 50%.
- Artifacts have varying levels of resistance (and/or vulnerability), not
randomised.
Element proofing
----------------
Items can now be proofed against acid, fire, cold and electricity by scrolls
of *proofing - these are deep and fairly rare.
Random artifacts
----------------
Randarts have been overhauled and powered up a bit. Randart rings and amulets
now exist, with some of the rings being potentially very powerful - this is to
make up for the lack of the Rings of Power in FA.
Good (ie not cursed) artifacts may have elemental vulnerabilities.
Mouse interface
---------------
This has been cleaned up a lot, with the hackish clicking on words in prompt
lines replaced by a context-sensitive system of "buttons" (eg [ESC]) on the
bottom line of the screen. I'll post more details of this separately, as the
plan is to include it (or something like it) in Vanilla.
Character screens
-----------------
The character screens (from the 'C' command) have been replaced by a scrolling,
coloured version of the character dump. Player notes have been coded more
cleanly (similar to a proposal in the angband-dev mailing list), and
colourised
. Subwindow display of character details are a now a subset of this.
Resistances -> Powers
---------------------
RBlind and RFear have become powers rather than resists, so random resist
items (like Elvenkind armour) can't get them but random power items (like
Blessed weapons) can.
Odds and Ends
-------------
- Changed some randart names to be more thematically consistent or avoid
standard artifact names.
- elven druids/rangers get their speed bonus in trees rather than on forest
levels now.
- tweaked racial properties, including removing the Dark Elf vulnerability to
light and giving humans evasion rather than a to-hit bonus in their
preferred terrain.
- gave druids some cool new spells, and better HP.
- gave trap setting and martial arts specialties to more classes
- made the "turns to fight" message only appear for monsters going from
frightened to not.
- added more speed to rings of Warfare, added Boots of Elvenkind and Amulets
of Sustenance.
- made catastrophic failure of wand recharge less catastrophic (destroys 2 of
a stack then a roll for subsequent ones rather than the whole stack)
- removed all birth options (maximise and preserve now always on, stat choice
is on the birth screen)
- made rivers weave a bit more
- made sure wilderness vaults are not too close to the player to make instakill
on entering a level less likely
- tidied up options a little
- updated the standard player ghosts (probably avoiding a defamation suit)
- prompt for destroying on pickup
Bugfixes
--------
- Monsters were mostly not trying to break runes of protection (Si Griffin)
- Some high value randart properties (like telepathy) were not possible, and
the randart generation could hang sometimes (Me!)
- some tvals in the Magic Shop were wrong, so the wrong items were being
stocked (Pete Mack)
- made Unlight stealth bonuses update correctly (Dario Saccavino)
- made {cursed} appear immediately on wielding a cursed item (ekolis)
- overhead map in mini-window wasn't working properly (someone - sorry!)
- Underworld had light (Arralen)
- Mountaintops didn't (Si Griffin)
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