RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[thapper]

I voted for summoning, mostly because I love playing Q's in the old Posband. I still think you should do the fast things first (and it does have most votes). And I also agree with jevansau, artefact reforging is very helpful for some of the monster races, at least it gives you some comfort when you find Ringil but you can't use weapons...

[pampl]

OK, RePosBand 0.5.3 is up at the usual place. The character screen works MUCH better than it did before. It's not perfect but V will probably be changing the char screen in the next few months so I don't want to go nuts with my own changes. There are playable trolls, basilisks, balrogs, multi hued dragons, and great wyrms of balance (the GWoB is a rather pitiful evolution past the GWoC, I haven't done shard and sound yet breath). ATTR_MULTI and ATTR_FLICKER work now, so if you're playing a chaos drake or GWoC or GWoB you get to change colors. Great hell wyrms and greater basilisks do too to a lesser degree. Dragons can smell treasure now.

For v0.5.4 I have to do: infinite home space (sorry Buzzkill, I worked on it but it looks trickier than I expected), make char dumps work right, make the 'repeat command' command work for race powers, implement the SUPER_REGEN (troll and hydra) and IMM_POIS (hydra) flags, give MHD and GWoB more powers, and do race requests. So far I just have spiders for Nick and crystal drakes/GCD/law drakes for me, y'all need to get your requests in. Also I should probably copy over Pos's help files and fix the funkiness that comes with having more than 20 eq slots. After .5.4 I'll probably start poking around with summoning as Qs seem popular. Don't count on seeing summoning before Feb though.

In other news, my ancient red dragon just found a White DSM of speed +6. Woo hoo!

edit: I forgot to mention, the NO INNATE flag isn't implemented yet either, so if you fight want to be cheesy you can probably do sick damage fighting 'bare-handed' as a balrog.

[pampl]

And I also agree with jevansau, artefact reforging is very helpful for some of the monster races, at least it gives you some comfort when you find Ringil but you can't use weapons...

It's funny you should write that as I just picked Ringil up off the floor on lvl 48. Stupid no-hands-having dragons...

[Adley]

So far I just have spiders for Nick and crystal drakes/GCD/law drakes for me, y'all need to get your requests in.

Dread (or any kind of ghost), liches, hounds, angels?

[pampl]

Until now adding new stuff to Angband has been easier than anticipated. Adding these new flags, though, has caused unexpected headaches. I'm not going to have another release ready before next weekend.

Dread (or any kind of ghost), liches, hounds, angels?

Hounds should be really easy*, as long as you don't mind that they aren't able to summon pack mates. Same with angels and liches. Ghosts could be tricky, I'm not sure how much the game will like an immaterial PC, but that will also make them interesting. Good requests!

*easy to code, that is. Designing an evolutionary flow chart for all 5 billion hound varieties could take a while. It'll be mostly re-usable for vortices though!

[buzzkill]

Ghosts could be tricky, I'm not sure how much the game will like an immaterial PC, but that will also make them interesting. Good requests!

I thought that SteamBand handled passwall player characters well. In short, depending on skill, there was a % chance of the player taking HP (or maybe SP) damage when moving through solid wall. In effect, it makes passing through solid rock a risk, a trade-off, rather than something that is done casually, at least at low levels.

Of course, being able to walk through walls while your enemies cannot is still a huge advantage which typically causes one to get in over his head. I found that death most often came because all monsters have ESP, which leads to ghostly PCs getting surrounded/trapped in the walls, afraid to poke their nose out. Since resting while embedded in rock is likely to be a losing proposition, one should seek to avoid such situations. This is the sort of balance I'd look for, unless you've got a better idea.

[Adley]

Since resting while embedded in rock is likely to be a losing proposition, one should seek to avoid such situations.

Tunnel a square of granite once inside. Perfect resting place.

[buzzkill]

Tunnel a square of granite once inside. Perfect resting place.

You have to come out sooner or later . An truly evil benovelent DM would spawn umber hulks nearby if it detected a player resting in such a place. Oh my, the player is trapped and will surely starve to death. I will free him.

[Adley]

Add a mac version!!!!

[Psi]

Tunnel a square of granite once inside. Perfect resting place.

I appreciate you may be able to cast StM but the image of one trying to swing a pick* when already embedded in rock is somewhat comical...




*and that's not to mention how ghosts carry stuff through walls in the first place.

[Djabanete]

Most important monsters to implement:

Dragons/Hydras
Spiders (webs were amazingly fun in Pos)
Xorns/Umber Hulks that can move through walls

[pampl]

I thought that SteamBand handled passwall player characters well. In short, depending on skill, there was a % chance of the player taking HP (or maybe SP) damage when moving through solid wall. In effect, it makes passing through solid rock a risk, a trade-off, rather than something that is done casually, at least at low levels.

That's how Z handles it as well, except there's no skill - 100% of the time you take a small amount of nonlethal damage. That's probably what I'll do too.

Add a mac version!!!!

I would if I could.. I'll be sure to include the source in 5.4 (I wish I had for 5.3) so that someone with a Mac can compile a Mac version. I think compiling it should be pretty easy- hopefully it's just a matter of going to the source directory and entering "make -f makefile.osx" -but if not then you could try bugging forum goers with Macs to do it. I think d_m has one, for example.

Most important monsters to implement:

Dragons/Hydras
Spiders (webs were amazingly fun in Pos)
Xorns/Umber Hulks that can move through walls

Ooh, I like the idea of playing an X. No need for a ring of delving when you have the KILL_WALL flag!

edit: Also, in case any Angband gurus are reading this, I could use some help dealing with an extremely annoying crash-on-save bug. The code is on github.com/simongre/RePosBand
edit2: OK, the problem is that increasing home space to 128 slots causes a low level saving routine (savers[i].save) to freak out. That's way above my pay grade, so hoarding is going to have to wait a while.

[Sirridan]

Someone created unlimited home already I believe for 3.2ish, Fizzix maybe? It was iVanilla IIRC.

As for hounds/vortex evolution, here's an idea:

Start with Water/Fire/Cold/Elec hound...
At level 15 morph into a Multi hued hound (resist basic 4 + poison, and a breath for each)
Each breath gives you resist to it
20 - Light / Dark breath
25 - Shards breath
30 - Sound
35 - Force
40 - Plasma
42 - Gravity
44 - Nether
46 - Time
50 - Aether form (resist all)

[emulord]

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

[Sirridan]

Right, which then you become a water/fire/cold/elec hound at 6.