NPP thoughts

[nppangband]

Still on Beta 2, sorry. I'll get around to updating soon!

Beta-4 is coming out in a day or two & has two more of your suggested features. I added detection so that it is a set range rather than the whole screen (although it is more like Oangband than Angband), and inspecting a weapon gives more information about its combat damage. Not quite as detailed as Angbands, but that is because in NPP there are more factors that can affect the amount of damage a weapon dishes out (for example, using a flame brand weapon is more effective when you are standing in fire.)

* I cleared out a giant pit, and while I was sorting through the treasure, I saw periodic flashes of light, like you get when there's a monster surrounded by a cloud. I killed most of the giants with Sun Burst and Sun Beam, if it makes a difference. Savefile here. This did happen again when I cleared a later giant pit. Are those spells supposed to have a lingering "super-light" effect?

Yes, some spells have lingering effects, and little "aftershocks" randomly pop up later.

* It seems like staircases often get generated all in a group (like, four staircases in the same room). Is this intentional?

Staircases are placed in areas surrounded by three walls, or by another stair. So they can frequently get generated together.

* Boiling mud was able to destroy one of my scrolls. Intended?

Yes.

* Instead of "The foo fails to set off your trap", shouldn't it be "The foo avoids your trap"?

That message happens when a monster with the PASS_WALL flag (such as a ghost) doesn't set off the trap. I changed the message to "passes through your trap.

* Cruelty idea: make quest pits and the area around them be filled with terrain the monsters in the pit are native to or that they're elementally-aligned with. Oil-filled red dragon pits, anyone?

The game does do this, but not specifically for pits/nests. The game would get real messy when all that oil catches fire, and then so much smoke is given off that the player is bombarded with messages about breathing in smoke.

* If you're going to have wallwalking monsters keep me from resting, could you please at least make them not move erratically? Trying to sleep when there's a group of dreads in a nearby vault doing a very bad job of chasing after me is an exercise in frustration.

I can't re-create this. It has been unchanged for a long time. They should only interrupt resting when they are in line-of-sight (meaning you can hit them with a spell).

* Likewise, trying to dig through ice walls to reach awakened monsters, especially with the increase in digging difficulty, is tedious at best.

All of the walls, including ice walls, ivy walls, etc.... have the exact same chance of sucessful tunneling. But the lighter the weapon, the longer it can take. Other than that it is just random chance.

* Monsters don't seem to path around sessile monsters that are blocking their path that they can't push through. For example, put a Death Mold in a moat, stand in the center room, and watch other monsters walk up to the mold and stop.

Someday I will fix this. But death molds can be your best friend sometimes.

* I got Full Plate of Resistance as a quest reward for a rather difficult quest (14 Great Wyrms of Inertia; I ended up at double-digit HP at one point from double inertia breaths) at 3600'. A bit disappointing.

Had you failed or quit any quests before then? That cuts your fame almost in half,and greatly reduces the quality of your rewards from that point on.

* IMO, the fireproofing service is overpriced. For the amount of money I could spend to fireproof priest book 4, I could buy my own personal random artifact from the guild.

Good observation. I will look into this. Thanks.

* There's a difference between "ancient dragon pit" and "great wyrm pit". Just sayin'.

...13 great wyrms of power, cripes...

Another good observation. I am thinking of a little fame boost for harder quests. By far the hardest an undead themed level (you would have to kill around 100 black reavers and archliches. ). But 13 GWs of power should qualify as well.

* There seems to be some kind of refresh issue with burnt terrain. When I move out of LOS of some burnt walls, they get drawn as completely black tiles (even if I cast mapping or drink Enlightenment), sometimes when I cast detection I see monsters on burnt floors that aren't actually there, if I pass my targeting reticule over a burnt black tile, then the reticule keeps getting drawn there even after I've moved it off. I think this involves tunneling, but I'm not certain.

THis is another one I can't re-create. If you notice this again, a savefile would be a great help.

Okay, I want some respect. That quest for an ancient dragon pit? I completed it.

{snip}

And after all that, they still didn't bump my reputation up to legendary! C'mon, I've got damned-near full monster memory on the frickin' Great Wyrm of Power, whose monster memory says "Nobody has survived long enough to know all the different ways it can breathe." All I'm missing is its resistances and how alert it is!

It all depends on whether you ever failed a quest, or abondoned one. That is a big step back in player fame.

[Derakon]

Glad to hear about those changes. I'm beginning to suspect that the non-drawn tiles have a similar root cause as the improperly-displayed accented characters. If they've fixed that for Vanilla then you might consider stealing the fix; I remember seeing a bug report for 3.2 for accented characters on OSX but I can't remember if the fix was simply to turn them off...

I'm on vacation right now, so I can't play, but when I get back I'll get you savefiles for improperly-displayed tiles and disturbing wallwalkers.

That great-wyrm quest was a bit after refusing an archlich quest, so yeah, my reputation had dropped, though it had been at Heroic for several quests by that point. Mostly I was just ranting that the guild doesn't know legendary when it sees it. What you could do is set a target difficulty for the quest based on the danger level of the monsters being fought (using the monster threat values used to calculate the value of slays -- Vanilla has code for this). Then you can base the fame improvement on the perceived quest difficulty. This should work for everything except the vault quests, which I generally find to be easier anyway (to the extent that I always take them when they're available).

From "That cuts your fame almost in half, and greatly reduces the quality of your rewards from that point on." -- my assumption was that quest rewards were based solely on your reputation, but are you saying that refusing quests affects rewards beyond just chopping said reputation?

Regarding the lingering effects: it'd be nice if beneficial / coaligned effects didn't disturb you, and if harmful ones that hit you had a message to go with them. It took me awhile to figure out why I was randomly taking a half-dozen damage.

Thanks for being so responsive to my feedback! It's great to be listened to. And thanks for making the variant!

[nppangband]

NPP 0.5.1 beta-4 are up. Fixed many bugs and issues. 2 main new features are detection radius is now a circle rather than dependent on screen size (a mix of how it works in OAngband and Vanilla), and when you examine a weapon you get more information about damage per attack.

This should be pretty close to the final 0.5.1. It has been thoroughly playtested and there shouldn't be only minimal issues in terms of bugs or game balance.

The links are:

source:

http://download.nppangband.org/npp-0.5.1-src-beta4.zip

Windows executable:

http://download.nppangband.org/npp-0.5.1-win-beta4.zip

[Derakon]

Okay, finally got time to check this out, and I can't seem to accept quests. I rolled up a new character, went to the guild, selected the "Monster or Unique quest" option, hit enter, and nothing happened. I thought maybe it had something to do with my level, so I wizarded myself to level 50, but I still can't take the quest. What's going on here?

[nppangband]

Okay, finally got time to check this out, and I can't seem to accept quests. I rolled up a new character, went to the guild, selected the "Monster or Unique quest" option, hit enter, and nothing happened. I thought maybe it had something to do with my level, so I wizarded myself to level 50, but I still can't take the quest. What's going on here?

Please just use "p". There was request of most of my dedicated playtesters on the NPP forums to prevent initiating purchases by "enter". Atter you press p, you can use enter and escape to handle most of the follow-up promots.

Also, please make sure you have the latest, beta-5a. It was uploaded about 5 hours ago. Beta-5 had a serious flaw in that all of the monster damage messages were scrambled up. (It's amazing how one missing comma can destroy the playability of an entire game.).

The links are:

source:

http://download.nppangband.org/npp-0.5.1-src-beta5a.zip

Windows executable:

http://download.nppangband.org/npp-0.5.1-win-beta5a.zip

[Derakon]

Yes, I'm on beta 5a. Thanks for the info about changing how quests work. I can see the logic, but I didn't see that change in the changes file so I figured something was broken. Anyway, once more unto the breach!

* I took a down staircase (350' -> 400'), and the game actually hung for a couple of seconds, thinking about <i>something</i>. I can only assume that it had to retry dungeon generation a bunch of times. Weird. No quest on the level, by the way.
* Have stat potion rewards been made more common? Previous versions, I expected to get money for my first several quests; this time, I've gotten stat potions. Not that I'm complaining. Half-troll rogues start out with some significant stat deficits...
* Every once in awhile, I miss the ability to turn on "doors stop running". Particularly when I encounter a loop in the dungeon that has a single doorway in it, where I want to search for more. This eventually becomes irrelevant once my characters get reliable door detection, but in the interim it's quite annoying.
* Magic mapping still maps the entire viewable window.
* Are you sure that digging isn't harder than it is in Vanilla? It took my half-troll rogue, with a strength of 18/50, 196 turns to dig through rubble. Granted he was using a dagger, but I did some digging earlier with a glaive (weight: 19) and it still took ridiculously long to clear rubble.
* A jammed iron door that I tried to break down a dozen times without success...was taken down trivially by a tiger.

More to come; this character's just getting started.

[nppangband]

Yes, I'm on beta 5a. Thanks for the info about changing how quests work. I can see the logic, but I didn't see that change in the changes file so I figured something was broken. Anyway, once more unto the breach!

I hate to say it, but I only put something on the changes file if it is from the previous full released version (NPP 050). All of the little changes in between beta releases don't get mentioned.

* I took a down staircase (350' -> 400'), and the game actually hung for a couple of seconds, thinking about <i>something</i>. I can only assume that it had to retry dungeon generation a bunch of times. Weird. No quest on the level, by the way.

The NPP dungeons are a little more complicated to generate, due to the complex terrain, small levels, wilderness levels, and other little things. It is usually instant, but sometimes with a little bad luck it can take a second or so to generate an acceptable dungeon.

* Have stat potion rewards been made more common? Previous versions, I expected to get money for my first several quests; this time, I've gotten stat potions. Not that I'm complaining. Half-troll rogues start out with some significant stat deficits...

I made good rewards more common, essentially the lowest reward, along with rewards of gold. A stat potion if the first possible good reward, so they will be a little more common now. It sort of happened by accident, but it has been a good change.

* Magic mapping still maps the entire viewable window.

I missed that one. Thanks. This is fixed.

* Are you sure that digging isn't harder than it is in Vanilla? It took my half-troll rogue, with a strength of 18/50, 196 turns to dig through rubble. Granted he was using a dagger, but I did some digging earlier with a glaive (weight: 19) and it still took ridiculously long to clear rubble.
* A jammed iron door that I tried to break down a dozen times without success...was taken down trivially by a tiger.

Right you are, there was an error. Unintentionally, digging is five times harder in NPP. I will spare you the story, since it is about 10 times longer than it is interesting. If you don't want to wait for my next release, here is the fix:

cmd2.c, (in do_cmd_tunnel_aux), line 1316 reads:

if (p_ptr->state.skills[SKILL_DIGGING] > rand_int(200* j))

By changing that 200 to 40, digging has exactly the same chance of success as in Angband.

More to come; this character's just getting started.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[Derakon]

I hate to say it, but I only put something on the changes file if it is from the previous full released version (NPP 050). All of the little changes in between beta releases don't get mentioned.

Well, fair enough.

* I prefer to not pick up items by default. When I hit 'g' and there's a choice of what to get, I'm prompted with a list. However, it is impossible for me to get all but one item; once there is only one thing left it is automatically picked up. Very annoying.
* Since when can Lotho Pimple, who appears in the books to be at most a simple brigand, cast phase door?
* I don't automatically pick up spellbooks that match books in my pack any more. "Merge inscriptions when stacking" is on, so there shouldn't be any problem. Certainly, ammo auto-pickup is working, as is scroll auto-pickup...of inscribed scrolls, even!
* You appear to have removed the guaranteed nice items from nest quests. Oh, well, they were overpowered anyway.
* There appears to be a bug where walking out of LOS of monsters does not cause them to stop being drawn. Savefile here; to reproduce, walk one step to the southeast. Note that force-redrawing the screen with ^R causes the monsters to be properly cleared.
* Something screwy's going on with squelch. Every once in awhile I see a brown ring that disappears when I walk over it. Shouldn't it display as a purple dot?
* Another weird sight bug: if I walk away from the northern wall in this room, it gets replaced by blackness unless I force a redraw. Savefile.

[nppangband]

* I prefer to not pick up items by default. When I hit 'g' and there's a choice of what to get, I'm prompted with a list. However, it is impossible for me to get all but one item; once there is only one thing left it is automatically picked up. Very annoying.

This is the sole function of the floor_query_flag option. When set to false, you will automatically pick up an object when it is the only object on the floor to pick up (although it is slighly broken in BETA-05a). If you set it to true, this won't happen any more.

* Since when can Lotho Pimple, who appears in the books to be at most a simple brigand, cast phase door?

:::trying to think of a response:::

* I don't automatically pick up spellbooks that match books in my pack any more. "Merge inscriptions when stacking" is on, so there shouldn't be any problem. Certainly, ammo auto-pickup is working, as is scroll auto-pickup...of inscribed scrolls, even!

In the squelch menus, every object in the game can be set to one of 4 different settings:

1) Squelch - always destroy when you walk over them
2) Never pickup - just leave them on the floor when you walk over them, overriding any pickup options you may have in the menus. Intended for things like stat-gain potions after your stats are maxed. You don't want to pick them up, but you might want one if your strength gets drained.
3) Always pickup, overriding any pickup options in the options menus. This is intended for things I would imagine any player would want to automatically pickup throughout the game, such as potions of life.
4) Never squelch - this is the default setting at player birth, and the pickup options in the options menu determine what you pickup and what you leave on the floor.

But the 4 base spellbooks for each realm are the one exception: They are set to never_pickup, mostly because for a starting mage or druid it is annoying to be constantly slowed by the extra 3 pounds from each spell book that is automatically picked up. But if you don't like this, you can go to the squelch menu and set the 4 base spellbooks in your realm to the setting you choose. You can also adjust this setting from the object knowledge menu as well.

Just as a heads-up - I did find a bunch of bugs in the squelch menu last night. Until the next release you are probably better off using the object menu to make changes.

* You appear to have removed the guaranteed nice items from nest quests. Oh, well, they were overpowered anyway.

They are there, just not mearly as many of them. For a pit/nest quest, 5 random creatures will drop an extra item. That item will have the object generation level increased by 5, will not be cursed, and will not be a junk item. There is also a small chance of it being guaranteed good (1 in 5), guaranteed great (one in 10), which means something different in NPP than vanilla, guaranteed good and great (1 in 50, and this has the same meaning as guaranteed great in Vanilla), or a chest (one in 50). You will probably get 1-2 extra nice items per pit/next quest. For a themed level quest, one in 15 monsters have this extra drop, or around 18 creatures on the level. I think you can expect an extra 5-6 good items per level quest, on top of the normal monster drops.

* Something screwy's going on with squelch. Every once in awhile I see a brown ring that disappears when I walk over it. Shouldn't it display as a purple dot?

I noticed that yesterday. I will check into it. Do you have your quality squelch for rings set to squelch cursed?

* There appears to be a bug where walking out of LOS of monsters does not cause them to stop being drawn. Savefile here; to reproduce, walk one step to the southeast. Note that force-redrawing the screen with ^R causes the monsters to be properly cleared.


* Another weird sight bug: if I walk away from the northern wall in this room, it gets replaced by blackness unless I force a redraw. Savefile.

Thanks for the savefiles. I will check into this.

[Derakon]

This is the sole function of the floor_query_flag option. When set to false, you will automatically pick up an object when it is the only object on the floor to pick up (although it is slighly broken in BETA-05a). If you set it to true, this won't happen any more.

Ahh. I read "Prompt before using floor items" as meaning "prompt before quaffing/aiming/zapping/firing/etc. floor items", not "prompt before picking up floor items".

EDIT: this does have the slightly annoying property that if there is only one item on the floor when I hit 'g', then I'm prompted to pick it up. It seems I'm cursed to either automatically get items I don't want, or be force to confirm getting items I obviously do want. :\

In the squelch menus, every object in the game can be set to one of 4 different settings:
<snip>

Ah ha! Okay, then this is working as intended; I just didn't realize there was that extra set of options. Interesting.

I noticed that yesterday. I will check into it. Do you have your quality squelch for rings set to squelch cursed?

Yes, I do. I assume that what's going on here is that there's a ring that I'm automatically use-IDing as cursed as soon as I step on it or something.

[camlost]

* Since when can Lotho Pimple, who appears in the books to be at most a simple brigand, cast phase door?

Since he murdered your last character who had a stack of them.

[nppangband]

Ahh. I read "Prompt before using floor items" as meaning "prompt before quaffing/aiming/zapping/firing/etc. floor items", not "prompt before picking up floor items".

EDIT: this does have the slightly annoying property that if there is only one item on the floor when I hit 'g', then I'm prompted to pick it up. It seems I'm cursed to either automatically get items I don't want, or be force to confirm getting items I obviously do want. :\

There are two options with similar names, floor_query_xxx. And I don't have the source in front of me to remember which is which. One of them will automatically, if set to FALSE, use a floor item if there is only one valid choice. The other one will, if set to false, there is only one item on the floor that can be picked up, pick up that item automatically without a prompt if 'g' is pressed.

Yes, I do. I assume that what's going on here is that there's a ring that I'm automatically use-IDing as cursed as soon as I step on it or something.

Probably. In my current game I id'ed a ring of teleportation, and it was automatically destroyed since it was cursed. Now all rings of teleportation are squelched as soon as I step on them, but they don't appear as a purple dot since the object type "ring of teleportation" isn't set to squelch. That isn't quite what I am going for, so I may change it.

But the good news is that if I am down to little problems like that, I can hopefully finalize 0.5.1 soon.

[Derakon]

There are two options with similar names, floor_query_xxx. And I don't have the source in front of me to remember which is which. One of them will automatically, if set to FALSE, use a floor item if there is only one valid choice. The other one will, if set to false, there is only one item on the floor that can be picked up, pick up that item automatically without a prompt if 'g' is pressed.

I think that the "automatically use if there is only one choice" one is buggy, then; it shouldn't trigger in the situation where the user is getting items off the floor and has just gotten the second-to-last item.

For that matter, "prompt before picking things up" doesn't work right either -- if it's on, then I get a get-item prompt when I walk over items even though I don't have "pick up things by default" turned on.

[nppangband]

I think that the "automatically use if there is only one choice" one is buggy, then; it shouldn't trigger in the situation where the user is getting items off the floor and has just gotten the second-to-last item.

THis is fixed for the next release. Beta-5a had this problem. The game now understands the difference between "one item left" and "only one item on the floor to begin with".

For that matter, "prompt before picking things up" doesn't work right either -- if it's on, then I get a get-item prompt when I walk over items even though I don't have "pick up things by default" turned on.

It works, but the pickup options overlap.

The pickup code attempts to do thingsin this order:

1) Squelch any objects that should be squelched
2) Pick up gold
3) Pick up items that go directly to the quiver.
4) Pick up items that merge with items currently in the backpack, unless they are marked for never_pickup in the squelch menu.
5) Pick up items marked for always_pickup in the squelch menu.
6) If always pickup is on, it tries to pick up everything else, then it stops. (So this supercedes the carry_query_flag).
7) If carry_query_flag is on and always_pickup off, you then get the menu to pickup items. If carry_query_flag and always_pickup are both off, the only way to pickup items is with the g command, or mark them for always_pickup in the squelch menu.
8) Finally, if there are multiple items to be picked up or if the floor_query_flag is on, you get a menu. If there is only one item that can be picked up, and floor_query_flag is off, it automatically picks it up. (Contrary to what I said above, the floor_query_flag also will have you auto-use an item on the floor, for example, if you press 'r' and then '-' to check the floor items, and there is only one scroll on the floor, it is automatically used)

Believe it or not, that's actually much easier to understand than what was there before.

[nppangband]

Well, fair enough.

* There appears to be a bug where walking out of LOS of monsters does not cause them to stop being drawn. Savefile here; to reproduce, walk one step to the southeast. Note that force-redrawing the screen with ^R causes the monsters to be properly cleared.
* Another weird sight bug: if I walk away from the northern wall in this room, it gets replaced by blackness unless I force a redraw. Savefile.

Strange. This must be compiler or operating system specific. For the first savefile, the trolls dissappear when I move southeast. For the second, the walls remain displayed when I walk to the south or anywhere else in the room.