RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[pampl]

New version that fixes rather serious bug - attacks to batter/wound weren't defined so they didn't do any damage. If you ever wondered why half ogres were so easy, it's because they literally couldn't hurt you. It's still at https://github.com/downloads/simongr...nd%200.6.3.rar

[Sirridan]

IF you compile it yourself, do a make clean first. That fixed all my issues.

Huzzah! But it was fun being immortal at dlvl 380! 17000some feet? It was a blast

[pampl]

I just updated the code on git. There aren't a lot of changes so I'm not going to make a new rar, I'm just hoping that it'll fix the weird bugs besetting people who compile it themselves.

[Sirridan]

I had a fun bug, did a git pull to get the newest version, but for some reason the compiling kinda screwed... so I created a hound and went downstairs. The square I started on in dlvl 1 was downstairs... so I went down again. The start square in dlvl 2 was also downstairs... so I went to 3. and 4. and 5... So I held down shift + . (for >) and kept going downstairs!

5 minutes later I was at dlvl 380. I killed something invisible (after it killed me and I didn't die?) and leveld up. I eventually quit when invisible undead had me in a confusion/fear lock I couldn't escape because I couldn't die.

Hopefully a make clean will fix it

[emulord]

I think I was playing the latest. It was .6.3

[Arjen]

Found a typo with hounds. They can breathe lighning. Furthermore, i don't think hounds have too much HP. I'm now lvl 28 with 235 HP. That not even 10 hp per level. Balrogs would have like 700 hp at lvl 28.

[AnonymousHero]

That's really weird. Prefs.c line 1055 is just freeing up memory, and isn't something I've touched (or would ever want to). Do you ever get crashing in other variants or is this unique to Repos?

I've only observed it in RePos, but I now notice that RePos is tracking the Angband 'master' branch, so it may just be some instability inherited from there.

[pampl]

They need to have some disadvantage compared to dark hounds because of how well they can kill orcs.

This is a good point.

As for bashing, just give races with the need to bash, a bonus, much like dwarves get with tunneling?

Just a thought

Tunnelling bonus is easier to implement but it should be pretty easy anyway, I'll give it a shot and see how it plays once I've done summoning and questing.

Where do the 4 ring slots come from? Arn't hydras just a snake with a bunch of heads? They should only have 1 ring (tail). That probably would make it too hard though.

Balance was good until I evolved to a 5 headed hydra.
5 Headed hydras can only do poison damage. Against poison resistant enemies, it can be impossible to kill them. As a result you just ignore large kobalds and stuff like that and hope something else kills them with a lightning or fire breath.

I don't think there's an authoritative answer to whether the Lernaean hydra was supposed to have 0, 2, or 4 legs. D&D tradition is 4 legs so that's what I went with.

Are you playing the latest version? I've changed it so that all elemental attacks do half their damage as physical damage. You still have to deal with resistances but you do 55% of normal damage instead of 11%

[emulord]

So I was playing hydras.

Where do the 4 ring slots come from? Arn't hydras just a snake with a bunch of heads? They should only have 1 ring (tail). That probably would make it too hard though.

Balance was good until I evolved to a 5 headed hydra.
5 Headed hydras can only do poison damage. Against poison resistant enemies, it can be impossible to kill them. As a result you just ignore large kobalds and stuff like that and hope something else kills them with a lightning or fire breath.

[emulord]

So I was playing hydras.

Where do the 4 ring slots come from? Arn't hydras just a snake with a bunch of heads? They should only have 1 ring (tail). That probably would make it too hard though.

Balance was good until I evolved to a 5 headed hydra.
5 Headed hydras can only do poison damage. Against poison resistant enemies, it can be impossible to kill them. As a result you just ignore large kobalds and stuff like that and hope something else kills them with a lightning or fire breath.

[Sirridan]

Bashing doors instead of opening them makes sense with game logic, but it is really annoying. Mainly because Bashing is terribly ineffective until Str of 18/50+.
On the other hand, light hounds waking up monsters faster makes sense with game logic, and balance reasons. They need to have some disadvantage compared to dark hounds because of how well they can kill orcs.

As for bashing, just give races with the need to bash, a bonus, much like dwarves get with tunneling?

Just a thought

[emulord]

Bashing doors instead of opening them makes sense with game logic, but it is really annoying. Mainly because Bashing is terribly ineffective until Str of 18/50+.
On the other hand, light hounds waking up monsters faster makes sense with game logic, and balance reasons. They need to have some disadvantage compared to dark hounds because of how well they can kill orcs.

[pampl]

Current master crashes almost instantly for me. Here's the backtrace:
...
EDIT: I should also say: I've installed into a directory alongside the source directory, so I have two directories, "reposband" and "reposband-bin". During "configure" I only specified a --prefix option and a CFLAGS.

That's really weird. Prefs.c line 1055 is just freeing up memory, and isn't something I've touched (or would ever want to). Do you ever get crashing in other variants or is this unique to Repos?

Ok, some balance notes on hounds:

Hounds are way too powerful. Hounds are only supposed to be average power level, but right now they're munchiny.


Clear hounds:
should basically be in between a warrior and a rogue. Right now they're a little too powerful. (too much HP) but they're alright.

Light Hounds:
Should have *much* less stealth (they're super bright). Probably less HP too.

Vibration hounds:
Should have "bad" stealth. They're basically emitting sound waves all the time. Also, their breaths should aggro. This would balance them.

Overall:
Amount of resists is insane (but this is probably okay)!
4 rings is probably too much for a hound. It doesnt really make sense to have boots+rings anyway. 2 rings, 1 boots would be fine. Hounds need less slots since they have innate resistances.


That's all the races I've played so far. It seems fun, but there needs to be some difficulty in non-munchkin races.

Cool, thanks for the feedback. Clear hounds actually have less HP than most rogues do, but I wouldn't have a problem with reducing it a little further - the player only plays as them for 7 levels, after all.

I don't have a problem with reducing light hounds stealth if you think it'll make them better balanced, but I don't want to do it if it's just for "game logic" reasons, though, because game logic also says that waving bright lights in front of sleeping monsters' faces doesn't wake them up- only flashes of light do.

I really like the idea of sound causing aggro- stunning is absurdly strong in the early game, and sound is the most reliable early source of it. Impact hounds will still probably be very strong, but I don't mind if there's some difference in power among hounds as long as it isn't ridiculous. I do agree with your game logic justification of vibration hounds having less stealth so I'll probably reduce it a few points.

What did you think of my earlier idea to make hounds (and hydras, and maybe some others like basilisks) have to batter down doors instead of opening them? I'd make easy_alter work with the batter command so you wouldn't have to press shift+B all the time, but even so it might get annoying..

Development has slowed a little bit as I work on summoning and spend a little time tinkering with my old plan to build a Flash roguelike, so .6.3.2 is likely to be the last version of January. I still want bug reports though! Right now the list of known bugs is (from changes.txt):
-Repos having mixed results running on Linux, OSX.
-screen redrawing on evolution means messages before evolution are dropped
-level gain messages can be displayed 2x or more if they occur after evolving
-can't use 'repeat command' with race powers
-powers can't use HP in lieu of mana (feature or bug?)
-equippy chars don't display on main screen (design problem.. how to deal with a line too long?)
-innate melee info not displayed
-eq slots past #23 aren't labelled correctly
-sometimes worn objects psuedo as being in the wrong slot ("you feel the body armor in your pack is excellent...")
-randarts turned on = no names for racial artifacts
-high scores table lists wrong species

If you don't see your favorite bug here be sure to submit it.

[emulord]

Ok, some balance notes on hounds:

Hounds are way too powerful. Hounds are only supposed to be average power level, but right now they're munchiny.


Clear hounds:
should basically be in between a warrior and a rogue. Right now they're a little too powerful. (too much HP) but they're alright.

Light Hounds:
Should have *much* less stealth (they're super bright). Probably less HP too.

Vibration hounds:
Should have "bad" stealth. They're basically emitting sound waves all the time. Also, their breaths should aggro. This would balance them.

Overall:
Amount of resists is insane (but this is probably okay)!
4 rings is probably too much for a hound. It doesnt really make sense to have boots+rings anyway. 2 rings, 1 boots would be fine. Hounds need less slots since they have innate resistances.


That's all the races I've played so far. It seems fun, but there needs to be some difficulty in non-munchkin races.

[Nick]

Sadly, same error code.

Weird - it runs for me with no dramas. If you have XCode installed, could you try compiling? It's just

make -f Makefile.osx dist

from the reposband/src directory.