Towards FAangband 1.2

[LostTemplar]

Themed levels may be used as well as dungeons with guardians to lure players to otherwise worthless parts of the map.

[Nick]

Grid like map will be good, if levels will be permanent, so if you want more levels, you have to explore different areas. Currently you only need one level of a given danger and given type. Players will take shortest route from thier start to the place, they want anyway e.g. Amon Rhud. There is nothing bad with expanded map, but also nothing good unless you add more dungeons with unique guardians additional locations will be ignored.

The plan is still fairly new, but the idea is that it won't be a linear grid where you can always go in all directions. Travel will be much as it is now (paths will always increase the danger level 1 or 2), and depending where you are that may take you more or less apparent distance on the map.

I am not even entirely convinced that this will work yet, but I'm hopeful.

[LostTemplar]

Nrulings can kill,but your High Elf has a Gondolin weapon and so you can kill them with a little luck....

Try dwarves / longbeards, they can kill scorpions.

[LostTemplar]

Grid like map will be good, if levels will be permanent, so if you want more levels, you have to explore different areas. Currently you only need one level of a given danger and given type. Players will take shortest route from thier start to the place, they want anyway e.g. Amon Rhud. There is nothing bad with expanded map, but also nothing good unless you add more dungeons with unique guardians additional locations will be ignored.

[Fendell Orcbane]

Nrulings can kill too, not many others btw, when your char no longer fears this two, it is more or less sure win.
Dragons, balrogs, and black reavers never kill, they sleep until they die. Maybe something like storm of unmagic, and various mystics and sorcerers can be considered by late game threat, many uniques too e.g. Wiruin, but when you see that things, you probably already have destruction + ESP + unlimited detection. This remove any danger.

Nrulings can kill,but your High Elf has a Gondolin weapon and so you can kill them with a little luck....and I have to say you have to be careful around dragons. But yeah this game is all about getting your escapes in order. You know what spell I was abusing, create doors! I love that spell. It is almost like a poor man's ASC. Speaking of which I haven't really used those yet. I used to use them when I played V.

[Nick]

At a first look, a map like this would have 50-odd regions, from Helcaraxe in the North-West to Ered Nimrais in the South-East - and that's if I stop short of Mirkwood.

Further to that changing object and monster generation based on region - I think maybe each region should have a monster and object level. So, for example, the frozen wastelands of the north would have nasty monsters, but not too many objects lying around.

In fact, maybe there should be a general nerfing of objects on the ground in wilderness, aside from wilderness vaults.

Also, revamp for towns and shops and maybe race starting locations.

This is getting out of hand.

[Nick]

OK, Seany's idea has got into my brain:

Possibly some tweaking of the wilderness layout to mitigate the trek across half Middle Earth before Hobbits et al find a dungeon.

Yay - personally, I'd love to see the map expanded (maybe away from a paths format, towards a less-directional map where you could explore every square on the continent). Any chance of bringing in new explorable wilderness for areas without dungeons/guardians - Hithlum, Nevrast, Balar, even the First Age versions of Rhun or Harad?
Caveat: it could end up feeling a bit too much like ToME 2.X if you expand much beyond Beleriand, to be fair...

I have a rough plan, which goes something like this:

1. Construct a lerge map. This page has some examples where this could be drawn from; I particularly like this one (with the post-First-Age stuff removed, obviously).
2. Divide it into regions (West Beleriand, Eriador, etc).
3. Allocate a danger level and wilderness type (plain, forest, etc) to each grid.
4. Generate wilderness levels pretty much as now.

This map would then be an 'overworld map' rather like that in ToME 2, Z, etc - but for information only.

This will require some new terrain types - ice/snow, impassible mountains, impassible water. There will also need to be a rewrite of some of the level generation, notably mountains. Not all levels will be created equal - some may have quite small passable area. Teleport level will need another rethink. Random dungeons seem like a possibility. Monster and object generation should probably be region dependent. I can even see potential for a Wanderer (or something) class.

Perhaps the sensible thing to do is continue with the stuff I initially outlined for 1.2, then do all this for 1.3...we shall see.

[LostTemplar]

Nrulings can kill too, not many others btw, when your char no longer fears this two, it is more or less sure win.
Dragons, balrogs, and black reavers never kill, they sleep until they die. Maybe something like storm of unmagic, and various mystics and sorcerers can be considered by late game threat, many uniques too e.g. Wiruin, but when you see that things, you probably already have destruction + ESP + unlimited detection. This remove any danger.

[Fendell Orcbane]

Maybe black scorpions won't be such a death sentence for lower level characters. I swear black scorpions have killed more of my characters than winger dragons,balrogs and black reavers combined. The combination of speed,poison, and blindness is a killer. And unless you have a staff of teleportation you can't escape.

[nppangband]

Item and monster lists should also be updated to V3.2.0 standard at least.

Well, the plan is to import the AngbandBase code, make everything work, and then import the higher level V stuff I want (plus things like your message patch).

Yep, that was my plan last June when I started. I think it took over 2 months before it would even compile. And another month before the game didn't crash every 5 minutes. There are just a bunch of little things, like the new flag system or options system that will keep you cutting and pasting for hours. The changes affect every little part of the code. I am glad I did it, but equally glad I am finished.

And then, after it compiles, there are all kinds of fun things to de-bug, like load/save functions that used to return -1 for failure and 0 for success, now return 0 for failure and 1 for success.

I have had whole releases where the changelist has been dominated by "Stole feature X from NPP"

No wonder it's so good then. Actually, I will look at what you took from NPP too. I think the best ideas get polished by being passed from variant to variant. One starts an idea, then another variant takes it and finds some little way to improve it.

[HallucinationMushroom]

If you decide to change the store system would it be possible to have old-school shopping as a kind of preference you could click on or off or maybe as a birth option or something like that? For entirely selfish reasons I would prefer the old-school method because I'm simply just so used to the old way.

[CunningGabe]

In V, the Cure * Wounds potions always restore a minimum amount of HP. For example, Cure Light Wounds heals 15 HP or 15% of the difference between your max HP and current HP, whichever is greater. So it doesn't make it worse for fragile characters -- it just makes these potions relevant for longer.

[thapper]

I hope the store interface changes won't include switching from the excellent get->object command style that FA uses to the object->get style that V has. I can't count how many times I've bought stuff I didn't want in V. If you are thinking about that I'll try to talk you out of it

About the green detection limit for traps. I'm not entirely sure how it works currently in V but if you implement this, could you see if it is possible to have the green limit visible in tile mode as well? If you are leaving the warning messages in (when entering/leaving the detected area) this is not an issue but if the warnings are replaced by the green limit then I'd like to see it when playing with tiles as well.

The other stuff sounds good (except perhaps the % on healing potions, but you were talked out of that already I see).

[Nick]

Thanks for all your thoughts. I'll just answer some of those:

Some modifications to dungeon generation, including possibly a "hard mode" with more vaults, pits etc.;

Hmm...sounds a bit like turning autoscum up to 11 - applied to wilderness or just to dungeons?

I was thinking just dungeons, but probably it should be wilderness as well.

Possibly some tweaking of the wilderness layout to mitigate the trek across half Middle Earth before Hobbits et al find a dungeon.

Yay - personally, I'd love to see the map expanded (maybe away from a paths format, towards a less-directional map where you could explore every square on the continent). Any chance of bringing in new explorable wilderness for areas without dungeons/guardians - Hithlum, Nevrast, Balar, even the First Age versions of Rhun or Harad?
Caveat: it could end up feeling a bit too much like ToME 2.X if you expand much beyond Beleriand, to be fair...

I like the way you're thinking, but I'm not sure that I'll get such a serious change in for 1.2. In particular, the directionality has always been a bit of an annoyance to me ... I'll think about possibilities here.

Stacks of potions and scrolls in the dungeon.

Fine - although it might make things a little too easy. Arguably reduces the need for merchants and makes ironman a little easier?

Yes, maybe. I just kind of liked it in RePos without really being sure why...

Percentage healing for potions of Cure x Wounds.

I'd be wary of this one, without a bit of playtesting. To take a hypothetical example, a CL6 Petty-Dwarf Necro might well have 20-25 max HP. At the moment, chugging CSW potions will restore at least half those HP, if not all of them. With %healing potions, a !CSW might well heal a low-HP char by less HPs than a monster or two can take off in a single round.
(Or, in brief, I'd be worried that %heal will unbalance healing in favour of high-max-HP chars and away from fragile ones).

That's a good point. You may have just talked me out of that one.

Store interface (!).

Hmm, not sure what this will look like...

Well, the current V one. Again, I'm not completely convinced, but it seems to make sense to be as like V as possible wherever there's no good reason not to.

[Seany C]

Meh - just as well that I never became a coder...