RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[Arjen]

Thanks for pointing out the fact that posband is back online! So i went to search for it, but i could only find the .5.2 version and not the 5.4. I could only find a page with the source? on it. At least i think it was the source...

[Derakon]

From a quick reading of the source, I don't think gravity or inertia will slow down monsters (compare ToME 2, where they did, and there was no cap on how much slower they got; chained inertia attacks could put even the fastest monster at the equivalent of -40 speed). They're also only resisted by the monsters that breathe them. Gravity does teleport monsters though.

[pampl]

I've added the requested races.. got 99 races now, 23 starting races (that's counting the ten original demihuman races). Now I'm working on breath weapons and I need to figure out how much damage different elements should do. I'm going to roughly follow the numbers from monsters' damage caps:
4 basic elements - 6x player level damage
poison - 4x player level
nether, sound, chaos, disen, shards - 3.5x player lvl
light, dark, nexus - 3x player lvl
time, inertia, gravity, plasma, force, mana - 2.5x player levl

I'm thinking about making nether stronger, though, because it's so commonly resisted and the side effects don't work on monsters, and making sound weaker because stunning is so powerful. Do the side effects of inertia and gravity work on monsters? Should mana be made stronger because it blows up all loot? Maybe I should make a 5x player level category and spread the elements out more.

edit: also, because king monsters got the second most votes, and because I looked at how they work and it looks simple to implement, I'm gonna add them next. They'll be done in the version after next, knock on wood.

edit2: breathing bolts will use the same rankings as above and just multiply the damage by 2/3 (and the cost by 1/3..)

[pampl]

Pos had player invisibility (and the ability to blind monsters!) which puts it on my to-do list, but it's not a top priority.. ATM player clear hounds are just really, really stealthy. I could also give them a fat bonus to AC, but I don't want to spend too much work beyond that on a form that people will only stay in for 10 minutes or so.

Now that I write that I remembered that Dreads and maybe some other Gs are invisible as well, so I should probably move it higher up the list. First I want to do all the breath weapons (for dragons and hounds) then webbing, though. Also now that I found out my flags weren't causing problems, I'm going to try to do them again - immunity to poison for hydras and maybe spiders, super regen for hydras and trolls, pass_wall for Xs and ghosts

[Derakon]

Which IMO was a pretty annoying way to handle it. Either the monster knew exactly where you were and would hit you perfectly with any ranged attack, or they had no idea whatsoever where you were. The player in contrast practically never tries to use bolt attacks unless they're in a corridor fighting a material invisible enemy, and instead tends to bomb the area with ball spells in the hopes of getting lucky.

In other words, properly-handled player invisibility isn't all that easy to do, AI-wise.

[EpicMan]

TOME 1/2 had player invisibility, and implemented it by making monsters have a chance to figure out where you are each turn, intelligent monsters being more likely to detect you and stupid monsters less likely. If the monster could not detect you, shooting/casting actions would fail, and if the monster moved it would do so in a random direction.

[Adley]

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

So we need to be invisible. Are there any See invisible tags on monsters?

[Sirridan]

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

[emulord]

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

[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)

[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.

[Djabanete]

Most important monsters to implement:

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

[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.

[Adley]

Add a mac version!!!!

[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.