RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[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]

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.

[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!

[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]

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...

[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.

[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...

[Philip]

OK, Nick told me how to solve the Rogue keyset problem.. if you don't feel like waiting for 0.5.3 (out in time for New Year's hangovers, hopefully) then you can go into reposband/lib/pref/pref.prf and add the line:

A:U
C:1:p

..or whatever you want in place of 'p'. Not sure if location matters but I put it amidst the other commands like that, about 2/3rds through the file.

The flags display looks normal now but it still won't show innate flags for some reason

I found a workaround. Pressing \ lets me choose from the standard keyset. On the quiver, would it work to allow quivers only for creatures with a shooter slot? As far as I know, the monsters with really wierd inventory can't shoot. Am playing a quylthulg in the original and having a blast. Can't wait for summoning.

[Nick]

Nick: do you like spiders because you like being a capital S with lots of boot slots and poison and paralyzing attacks, or because you like cursing and web spinning? I can add spiders with the former easily but the latter will have to wait a little while.

The former, but also the webs - in the original Pos they were essential for slowing stuff down.

Also, I want to give spiders their full 4 boot pairs, which should just translate into stealth and speed coming cheap to spiders - very in-flavor! I also would ideally like for them to have their full 8 ring slots but that seems like it could be incredibly OP and make the end game a very boring cakewalk (much more so than typical). Maybe I'll give them 2 ring slots, on the grounds that each leg is equivalent to a finger and you get one ring/4 fingers.

Pos had 4 rings and two pairs of boots - so like 4 arms and 4 legs - but it's up to you.

[pampl]

OK, Nick told me how to solve the Rogue keyset problem.. if you don't feel like waiting for 0.5.3 (out in time for New Year's hangovers, hopefully) then you can go into reposband/lib/pref/pref.prf and add the line:

A:U
C:1:p

..or whatever you want in place of 'p'. Not sure if location matters but I put it amidst the other commands like that, about 2/3rds through the file.

Nick: do you like spiders because you like being a capital S with lots of boot slots and poison and paralyzing attacks, or because you like cursing and web spinning? I can add spiders with the former easily but the latter will have to wait a little while. Also, I want to give spiders their full 4 boot pairs, which should just translate into stealth and speed coming cheap to spiders - very in-flavor! I also would ideally like for them to have their full 8 ring slots but that seems like it could be incredibly OP and make the end game a very boring cakewalk (much more so than typical). Maybe I'll give them 2 ring slots, on the grounds that each leg is equivalent to a finger and you get one ring/4 fingers.

The flags display looks normal now but it still won't show innate flags for some reason

[pampl]

How do I use a breath weapon with the roguelike keyset? U makes me go diagonally.
EDIT: How do I sell, drop and such from my quiver as a Hydra?

Oi, two UI problems I hadn't even thought of. I'll get those solved for 0.5.3.. I don't know of any workaround for in the meantime though, sorry

[Philip]

How do I use a breath weapon with the roguelike keyset? U makes me go diagonally.
EDIT: How do I sell, drop and such from my quiver as a Hydra?

[Nick]

If you have any specific race requests before 0.5.3 is released (that don't require summoning or using multiple weapons at once) then be sure to make them!

Spiders, please! Araneas did have summoning in the original Pos, but you could include it later when you've done it.

[pampl]

Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone!

The 2nd screen on the character sheet is messed up, and shouldn't red dragons have innate rFire.

They do, which becomes ImmFire at level 30, it just doesn't show up because of how much I've broken that screen. That's one of those UI issues I need to fix ASAP

then the Adventurers guild - artifact reforging is such a needed thing for some of the races.

This is what I was worried about.. if high level play would be impossible for some races because of lack of reforging. OTOH, I haven't added all the (really tough) NPP monsters so it might not be so bad. I think I'm going to change the Acquirement code so it only grants usable equipment to make things a little nicer for monsters, at any rate.

I *wouldn't* worry too much about the balance of the game--the unbalance of the original Posband was part of the fun. Plus, it's easier to tweak game balance after all the races and features are in place.

This is my philosophy as well.

Thanks to Buzzkill, I now have a new title screen, and today I added the Troll, Basilisk, and Balrog lines, as well as creating an entirely new MHD line. I still need to finish fixing the 'C'haracter screen, expanding the home, and maybe fixing those last few slots for 9- and 11-headed hydra or fixing the "replace which X?" prompt and make it appear for any EQ with multiple slots.

If you have any specific race requests before 0.5.3 is released (that don't require summoning or using multiple weapons at once) then be sure to make them! The way I've done races means new starting races break savefile compatibility, so I'd like to do new races in bursts rather than a steady stream of them.

[buzzkill]

I'm sure there's a freeware program that can make ASCII graphics

More fonts than you can shake a stick at..

______         ______                 _ 
| ___ \        | ___ \               | |
| |_/ /___  ___| |_/ / __ _ _ __   __| |
|  __// _ \/ __| ___ \/ _` | '_ \ / _` |
| |  | (_) \__ \ |_/ / (_| | | | | (_| |
\_|   \___/|___|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|

   _ (`-.                .-')  .-. .-')     ('-.         .-') _  _ .-') _   
  ( (oo  )              ( oo ).\  ( oo )   ( oo ).-.    ( oo ) )( (  oo) )  
 _.`     \ .-'),-----. (_)---\_);-----.\   / . --. /,--./ ,--,'  \     .'_  
(__...--''( oo'  .-.  '/    _ | | .-.  |   | \-.  \ |   \ |  |\  ,`'--..._) 
 |  /  | |/   |  | |  |\  :` `. | '-' /_).-'-'  |  ||    \|  | ) |  |  \  ' 
 |  |_.' |\_) |  |\|  | '..`''.)| .-. `.  \| |_.'  ||  .     |/  |  |   ' | 
 |  .___.'  \ |  | |  |.-._)   \| |  \  |  |  .-.  ||  |\    |   |  |   / : 
 |  |        `'  '-'  '\       /| '--'  /  |  | |  ||  | \   |   |  '--'  / 
 `--'          `-----'  `-----' `------'   `--' `--'`--'  `--'   `-------'