Z+ 0.3.3 released!

[Mangojuice]

Err, Is it just me, or does the source tar.gz archive have some really strange permissions? If I untar it I can't read any of the directories generated, and can only delete them as root - and that's when I DON'T preserve permissions. When I do, ls -l shows a long series of ? symbols for all the permissions... What is going on?

Ugh. Permissions. Right, see, I was putting that .tar.gz file together on windows where there are no permissions. Let me see if I can chmod everything.

EDIT: Well, I can't in Windows. I have the program, it just says permission is denied. It seems to work in cygwin, but everything has rwx permissions. I suppose that's better, right? I'll upload that as an alternate version on sourceforge. Look for ZPlusAngband_033beta_src_a+rwx.tar.gz. But do me a favor and see if you could at least *set* permissions as root?

[Therem Harth]

Yeah sorry about that, chmod -R a=rwx (as root) makes it work. Kind of a ham-fisted approach though.

[Mangojuice]

Yeah sorry about that, chmod -R a=rwx (as root) makes it work. Kind of a ham-fisted approach though.

Clearly I need a different routine to create the source dist. It should work to do it entirely in cygwin. But normally I don't use cygwin because a build inside cygwin doesn't work outside of it.

[AnonymousHero]

You could also just provide a regular .zip. Any modern *nix flavor which can compile/run modern *bands probably has an 'unzip' implementation.

There is also an option to GNU tar at least called "--no-same-permissions" which just uses the logged in user's normal permissions for extracting. So you could instruct people to use

tar --no-same-permissions -xvf <FILENAME>

when extacting -- though, obviously, it'd be best if the archive Just Worked(TM).

EDIT: When creating the archive, GNU tar also has a "--mode" option which may be of interest. I'm not sure exactly what format the argument takes, but I'd imagine something like --mode=a+rX would work.

[RogerN]

So now I'd like to start talking about ideas for v.0.3.4.

On my to-do list:
1. Dungeons need names. It's silly that they don't have them.
2. The player should get warned when they discover a dungeon entrance in the wilderness.
3. Tavern rumors - could be a waste of time and gold, but can also give you useful information
4. "Travel to" mode, which routes a player to a given space automatically, via running. (snip)

And some things I'm considering:
1. I think Z+ has an object-filtering problem... too much junk. [snip]
2. Throwing weapons (snip)
3. A back of my head thing - I feel like priestly (Priest/Paladin/Monk) magic is too much like normal magic. (snip)

I love all of your ideas (especially #2! Maybe then I can finally avoid getting killed by Strygalldwir in the wilderness!) Except perhaps #3... we already have Scrolls of Rumor which fill that purpose. I suppose you could just get rid of the scrolls and merge the same functionality into Inns or something.

Regarding your proposed *Identify* enhancement: I think that would be a very welcome change. On the other hand, I would restrict this behavior to only the scroll version of *Identify*. If players could achieve the same effects through the Thieve's guild services or even *Identify* spells then I think it would be too powerful.

Regarding throwing weapons, SAngband has a nice throwing system IMO. The mechanics are heavily based on your throwing skill, which doesn't quite work for Z+ gameplay, but there are still some good ideas to steal. Z+ already has at least one obvious throwing weapon - Hammers of Returning. Other stuff: shurikens, javelins, throwing knives, darts (always poisoned?)...

[Mangojuice]

I love all of your ideas (especially #2! Maybe then I can finally avoid getting killed by Strygalldwir in the wilderness!) Except perhaps #3... we already have Scrolls of Rumor which fill that purpose. I suppose you could just get rid of the scrolls and merge the same functionality into Inns or something.

So I actually have an even better solution for #2 in mind. Instead of having guards outside, where you get wasted just for wandering too close, why not have an antechamber? That way you don't face the guards unless you deliberately decide to. The antechamber would be underground, but at dlvl 1, and you can't descend except via the staircase. (Teleport level will always send you upwards). There's no treasure, and there are lots of guards at similar difficulty to what they are currently, and the dungeon is wide open with basically no walls and the staircase down in the middle of the guards. The stairs up are far away so it's not easy or safe to farm for XP. Once you've passed the antechamber "test" it's just like it is now once you've gotten into the dungeon: you don't have to face them again (and the stairs go straight past the antechamber from then on).

I like your idea about restricting the enhanced *ID* power to scrolls. It needs to be something players never have infinite access to, but also something not too hard to find.

[Snarka]

Dear Mangojuice,

Here is what Kipar, a guy from the Russian forum about roguelike games, wrote about sound in Z+A (in my translation):

"I found this line in the main-win.c:

line #2029

/* HACK: disabling sounds
return (PlaySound(buf, 0, SND_FILENAME | SND_ASYNC)); */

And this line in makefile:

#LIBS := -lib$(LCC_PATH)\lib\winmm.lib -I$(LCC_PATH)\include
LIBS := -I$(LCC_PATH)\include

I see that this version was compiled without sound support. My attempts to compile it with sound were unsuccessiful so far: I got messages about the PlaySound@12 function not found, and some strange error in rooms.c:2533. Probably you need somebody who knows C better than me."

Maybe it is possible to somehow "unhack" that HACKED function? : ))

The game would be absolutely perfect with sound! : ) I do llove it very much already, especially monster heroes : )

[Mangojuice]

Dear Mangojuice,

Here is what Kipar, a guy from the Russian forum about roguelike games, wrote about sound in Z+A (in my translation):

Yeah, what I have to do is look at the current implementation of Vanilla angband to see how they deal with sound in Windows. I don't remember disabling sounds... but it's possible I did that to get the code to work when I was just starting this project.

[Seany C]

So I actually have an even better solution for #2 in mind. Instead of having guards outside, where you get wasted just for wandering too close, why not have an antechamber? That way you don't face the guards unless you deliberately decide to. The antechamber would be underground, but at dlvl 1, and you can't descend except via the staircase. (Teleport level will always send you upwards). There's no treasure, and there are lots of guards at similar difficulty to what they are currently, and the dungeon is wide open with basically no walls and the staircase down in the middle of the guards. The stairs up are far away so it's not easy or safe to farm for XP. Once you've passed the antechamber "test" it's just like it is now once you've gotten into the dungeon: you don't have to face them again (and the stairs go straight past the antechamber from then on).
.

I like the sound of that - to be candid, the difficulty of getting into a "proper" dungeon without getting mashed in the wilderness was one of the reasons that I stopped playing Z/Z+ (and nearly went back to 2.2.x)...

[TJA]

There is a "Z+Angband Maintainer" missing in your profile

[Snarka]

Yeah, what I have to do is look at the current implementation of Vanilla angband to see how they deal with sound in Windows. I don't remember disabling sounds... but it's possible I did that to get the code to work when I was just starting this project.

Thanks! It would be great if you could turn this function back on.

Actually, no need to look as far back as Vanilla Angband: sound works fine in Zangband, even in the latest version 2.7.5 for Windows. Z+A is based on it, correct?

Sound gives the game a feel of much more realism, and battles feel much hotter : ). I added many more wav files for various events, and even change sometimes sound.cfg for male or female characters - they shout appropriate lines in a YASD event : )). For me, it adds some flavor to the game, and its a pity I cant use it with Z+A. Sound would make Z+A an ideal variant for me: in general, Z+A preserves the feel of Zangband, but a Zangband as it was meant to be, if it were not stopped years ago.

I'm very happy someone picked it up and develops again! Thank you!

[Jude]

Random question: Sometimes, when I hit monsters, I get numbers on how much damage I did and how much health they have left. Other times, I don't. I have yet to discern a pattern here. What gives?

[Mangojuice]

Random question: Sometimes, when I hit monsters, I get numbers on how much damage I did and how much health they have left. Other times, I don't. I have yet to discern a pattern here. What gives?

You get that info if you're human. The idea was to make human a good race choice for beginners: though they don't get other abilities, humans have no XP penalty and get the exact damage info in combat, plus better pseudo-id than others.

[Snarka]

* Rebirth: Load up your dead (v.0.3.3) character's save file and you'll have the option of skipping character generation: you just get the same character you started with last time!
* Competition mode: Competing with others? Instead of copy/pasting the savefile, just load your dead character. In competition mode, you'll start over in exactly the same world... only the object flavors will be re-rolled, so you can't simply remember what that Elm Staff was...

What does it mean, "you'll start over in exactly the same world"? Same wilderness, same quests? Hmm...

I'd like the new game to remember monster memory, but to get new birth options, and everything else new. As it was in Z when I loaded a death file. Is it possible to do so?

I tried to answer Yes to the rebirth question, and got the same char with the same birth options. Actually, my char commited suicide with the purpose to change birth options: I forgot about this when generated it. And I'd like to play with silly monsters and more frequent artefacts. So, the new char was also suicided, and now I answered No to the rebirth question.

What things will keep the same now? Monster memory is the same, and I get a message like "one of your ancestors killed 10 such monsters..." But what about cities and quests?

[buzzkill]

Monster memory being retained from one character to the next is normal behavior (for all bands AFAIK). Since you answered 'no' to the rebirth question, I'd assume it was a normal birth and thus new everything, except monster memory.