Sangband 1.0.1's new thread

[camlost]

Several Bugs (or possibly just quirks) I've found in SAngband (1.0.1.169, windows version, the pre-compiled download):

- When using either graphical tile set and "hilight player with cursor", the player graphic remains on-screen in stores, sometimes obscuring important information such as price, weight, quantity available, or specific plusses depending on where on the screen the store entrance is

I can't reproduce this.

[Magnate]

My understanding of the help files was that it was the spellcasting Oath which dropped your HP, while the Oath of Iron raised them. I did note that some of the things I had noticed might be quirks rather than bugs.

To be fair to you, the help files are deliberately opaque, as the original author did not want them to spell out the game mechanics clearly. In fact any character raising spellcasting sacrifices some hp as s/he does so, but those who have taken a magic oath lose approx twice as many.

[camlost]

Quite right ... I had not spotted what was causing it, and since I tend to raise my skills in "chunks", I was frequently buying 2-4 points in Spellcasting with no other purchases at the same time.

And then half a level later, I would look at the Max HP, and think "What the heck?"

My understanding of the help files was that it was the spellcasting Oath which dropped your HP, while the Oath of Iron raised them. I did note that some of the things I had noticed might be quirks rather than bugs.

Both the oath and the skill reduce your HP, I'm pretty sure. The oath reduces (eliminates?) the bonus you get for your power. The skill directly reduces your HP (assuming you don't level up).

[other]

I think the OP ("other") had not spotted that the only skill which does this is Spellcasting. There is no other skill which reduces your max hp, and as you say, it is perfectly understandable for a skill-based variant which needs to bring casters' hp down as their skill goes up.

Quite right ... I had not spotted what was causing it, and since I tend to raise my skills in "chunks", I was frequently buying 2-4 points in Spellcasting with no other purchases at the same time.

And then half a level later, I would look at the Max HP, and think "What the heck?"

My understanding of the help files was that it was the spellcasting Oath which dropped your HP, while the Oath of Iron raised them. I did note that some of the things I had noticed might be quirks rather than bugs.

[Magnate]

I actually don't consider this a bug. Additional study without corresponding power increase could very well lead to reduced hit points. It's also a natural fallout of how spellcasting works in S; the more specialized you are in it, the fewer HP you get.

I think the OP ("other") had not spotted that the only skill which does this is Spellcasting. There is no other skill which reduces your max hp, and as you say, it is perfectly understandable for a skill-based variant which needs to bring casters' hp down as their skill goes up.

[pav]

Perhaps HP is a better place to check from?

Yes. I have added a trigger that will set status as dead when encountering negative HP and non-winning status.

[LostTemplar]

Somehow your dumps lack Last Messages section, on which the detection of deadness relies.

Oh, my bad then, SAngband adds any number of last messages to the dump. I have requested 0 messages to be added.

[camlost]

Somehow your dumps lack Last Messages section, on which the detection of deadness relies. I see this section in other people's dumps... What gives?

I'm guessing that (s)he chose 0 messages (default is 15). Perhaps HP is a better place to check from?

I've tracked down one of the break-points for losing Max_HP

I actually don't consider this a bug. Additional study without corresponding power increase could very well lead to reduced hit points. It's also a natural fallout of how spellcasting works in S; the more specialized you are in it, the fewer HP you get.

[other]

I've tracked down one of the break-points for losing Max_HP, which will hopefully make it easier to figure out what is going on. For a High Elf with 15 con, you get 70 HP with these skills:

Swordsmanship 10%
Archery-Bow 15%
Spellcasting 10%
Magical Power 13%
Wizardry 15%
Magical Devices 11%
Perception 15%
Stealth 15%
Disarm Traps 15%
Dodge 15%
Spell Resistance 15%
Armor Forging 10%
Alchemy 15%
Magical Infusion 12%

Adding one point of Spellcasting drops your Max HP to 69. (adding a second point raises your power level from 17 to 18, pushing your HP to 71)

I hope that helps!

(Yes, I know my skills are way more spread out than the docs recommend ... since I haven't had a winner yet in any variant except multiBand, which seemed fairly broken, I want to survive! My basic plan is to get some skills to an intermediate level and then stop advancing them. I expect that once Archery + Magic lets me reliably kill, I'll stop pushing Swordsmanship, for instance.)

[pav]

One more issue, concerning SAngband ladder : dead characters are not displayed as dead until "flag this character as dead" option is used.

Somehow your dumps lack Last Messages section, on which the detection of deadness relies. I see this section in other people's dumps... What gives?

[other]

You can't cross water at 50%, 60% is first speed drop. I'm not sure if there is a change in weight limits, but at least a lot of weapons are lighter in S than V (or were at some point).

Checking into this a bit more carefully, it seems that the limits were doubled:

in ZAngband 2.7.4c, a character with 14.5 strength (effectively 14), carrying 83.7 lb reports 104% capacity (and can't swim, but is not yet slowed by a point)

in SAngband 1.0.1.169, a character with 15 strength, carrying 82.2 lb reports 51% capacity (and can't swim, but is not yet slowed)

So unless there is some other penalty that kicks in at the new 100%, this seems to be a display change and not a gameplay change ... but I still found it confusing

As a side note on the earlier discussion on tengu and involuntary swimming, I believe Z did 2d10 damage per game turn if you were overweight and in water. For crossing one or two squares this was not an issue, but repeated swimming (or swimming at -11 speed or worse, when there could be three damage ticks between player turns) could indeed kill you, either directly, or by leaving you vulnerable to a monster you could normally take easily. Perhaps allow something of this sort if you try to move out of a water square into another one? That would allow pickup in water or escaping from a bad teleport possible, but still a considerable risk, and by limiting it to situations when the player is already in the water, it remains a hard stop unless you have carefully managed your burden.

[UniqueName]

One more thing...with no sell on you can and I guess should still sell stuff for investment. Also this might be fixed by the buy all change in 169 but in 129 if you did buy all your investment counter would go crazy. Like into the millions for all shops.

[UniqueName]

I guess I don't tunnel for cash hardly ever; is this a common request?

Yes, I was digging in comp due to lack of money. Well wanding really...

[camlost]

I agree about the books though. Unfortunately, camlost's policy is not to deliberately make things easier for challenge games, and even though I reaaally would like a little easing up on the Ironman book situation, I also think camlost has a hard enough time as maintainer without the player community challenging his policies, so I don't want to push it on this one.

Ironman is a special kind of challenge game, that should be reasonably well supported. I'll look at the book distributions at some point.

I've been playing roguelikes since about UMoria 4.8, and this is the first one I've played that had slowing start at 50% ... from other discussion here I gather that this is an intentional change, but I am wondering why? And did 100% at a given strength double at the same time?

You can't cross water at 50%, 60% is first speed drop. I'm not sure if there is a change in weight limits, but at least a lot of weapons are lighter in S than V (or were at some point).

- treasure veins do not disturb a run. deeper in the dungeon this may be a good thing, but on the first few levels, I like to dig out the obvious veins to get a bit more cash for consumables and upgrades; perhaps this should be an option?

I guess I don't tunnel for cash hardly ever; is this a common request?


I'll look into the rest.

[other]

Several Bugs (or possibly just quirks) I've found in SAngband (1.0.1.169, windows version, the pre-compiled download):

- When using either graphical tile set and "hilight player with cursor", the player graphic remains on-screen in stores, sometimes obscuring important information such as price, weight, quantity available, or specific plusses depending on where on the screen the store entrance is

- treasure veins do not disturb a run. deeper in the dungeon this may be a good thing, but on the first few levels, I like to dig out the obvious veins to get a bit more cash for consumables and upgrades; perhaps this should be an option?

- in some circumstances, spending XP will actually LOWER your max-HP. I have no issue with it going up more slowly for "mage"-type characters, but I don't think it is quite right that learning something can make you easier to kill!

- any weapon that is "to heavy to use" also makes tunnelling impossible. This makes picks useless for many starting non-melee characters, and could concievably make even a shovel useless for a very weak character or one who has been strength-drained. Perhaps double the allowed weight for the purposes of the tunnelling penalty?

- the character sheet has no information on your defenses (except dodging under skills) -- I think that the second page (which duplicates a lot of information from the first page) could use a section on Base AC, Magical AC, and maybe Total Armor Weight & dodge percentage

- I think I have found a couple of disconnected dungeon levels, but since I was too low in level to have detect doors yet, this may just have been secret doors that took more perception than I had. I do know that it was in two pieces, since one side had a teleport trap that dumped me over on the other side ... I eventualy tunneled out a Magma streamer to link the two sides

- I've been playing roguelikes since about UMoria 4.8, and this is the first one I've played that had slowing start at 50% ... from other discussion here I gather that this is an intentional change, but I am wondering why? And did 100% at a given strength double at the same time?