Skills-Angband (Sangband)

[Seventh Holy Scripture]

I think the SDL works on Macs

Yes, it does. I'm using a Mac.

The docs say that to raise Burglary to over 30% you must join the Burglars' Guild, but apparently my sorcerer is exempt from that.

[Leon Marrick]

Thanks for the bug reports, everyone!


Display glitches:
The first thing you should do when you see a display glitch is to rename your "config.txt" file and let the game remake it from scratch. This goes double if you've edited or changed anything. If that doesn't help (you want your own layout, or the default itself is buggy), then I need you to send me the active config.txt file and to hear *exactly* what changes you made.

Lighting glitches in town:
They are probably caused by a line of code that turns off lighting effects (I will rethink it). Fuma, would you please email the daytime picture to "sang" at "runegold" dot "org"; I wasn't able to see it on imageshack.

High score:
I decided to stop publicly recording a single high score. They are of most value when comparing similar characters to each other (especially similar combat methods).

Petebull:
You mention using an enviroment variable to try and solve the "split over two monitors" problem. Using the environment variable DL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=0 didn't help?

Burglary limits:
I neglected to update the Manual when I changed the rules. Now done.

[Fuma]

It seems that imageshack is having some problems lately, but unfortunately I don't know any other good filehost for images.

Hm. It seems that the default config.txt file that is extracted from the windows binary is to blame for the display error. The previous versions of Sangband 1.0 all had this glitch, and now that I checked it, all the config.txt files were 6,7 KB big.
After renaming the file and letting Sangband create a new one. Everything seems to work. (And the file has only 3,4 KB)

Edit:
Oh, and to make sure that the display error was not due to my previous files I installed a fresh copy of Sangband to a empty directory and loaded the default character that was already there (you forgot to delete the save file I assume.) and first thing I saw was the town with the display glitch.

[Leon Marrick]

It seems that imageshack is having some problems lately, but unfortunately I don't know any other good filehost for images.

Hm. It seems that the default config.txt file that is extracted from the windows binary is to blame for the display error. The previous versions of Sangband 1.0 all had this glitch, and now that I checked it, all the config.txt files were 6,7 KB big.
After renaming the file and letting Sangband create a new one. Everything seems to work. (And the file has only 3,4 KB)

Please PM or email me that 6,7 KB config file. I smell a bug.

[Seventh Holy Scripture]

Here's some ineffective potions of essences I just found on the dungeon floor:

http://bad-end.org/stuff/essences.png

[petebull]

No, that one I didn't try before but that also doesn't help.

I use the Free radeon driver which has a MergedFB driver option. It also has a Xinerama emulation option which works perfect with any desktop environment.

I fooled around with libsdl-ruby a bit:

 SDL.listModes(SDL::FULLSCREEN)
 => [[3200, 1200], [1600, 1200]]
 screen = SDL::setVideoMode(1600,1200,16,SDL::FULLSCREEN)

would switch my display to clone mode. Also a bit confusing but playable.

[Leon Marrick]

The potion of essences drops may have been spontaneously fixed in a hotfix. I was using #3 and have now upgraded to #5. My character died, so I'll have to get deep enough for them to drop again.

Some graphics glitches:
http://bad-end.org/stuff/glitchy.png - I don't know what triggered it, but the map has started overlapping with the text windows at the bottom. When I went into the prefs to investigate if this could be fixed, the map font spontaneously set itself to 32x32, and sangband freezes every second time per game that I try to change one of the fonts. After a few tries, I've reset the map font to the correct one, but the overlapping continues.
http://bad-end.org/stuff/darklight.png - This happened when my Wonder spell cast a ball of darkness. Now there is an invisible dark area containing an invisible Battle scarred veteran.

Also, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary screen refreshing (causing text flickering) when exiting menus and such.

Now that I know you are running the Sangband SDL port on Mac, the errors you report make a little more sense.

I need to work with you to correct the overlapping window problem. For starters, I must have your config.txt file and a list of any display changes you made (if any). Check your PMs.

The refresh problems are due to the relative inefficiency of the SDL port. Despite a *great* deal of work to make things run faster and more smoothly, some flicker is inevitable, unfortunately. If you see particularly annoying flicker in any situation, describe as best you can what the screen is doing (what list, window, etc. is being shown and hidden) and I may be able to optimize things.

The visibility glitch with casting darkness in town will be fixed in 1.0.0. Final.

The 0d0 essences potions may be caused by compiler-specific math issues. This will be easy to check.

[Leon Marrick]

The problems with overlapping windows will be largely sorted out in v 1.0.0 Final (possibly completely - we'll see ) ; I've (finally) figured out what exactly I want the code to do, and re-written it.

[Fuma]

I just downloaded the Sangband 1.0.0 hotfix #7 and extracted it to a new directory.
After running the game I choose to load a previous save that was not listed and pressed enter. (just trying out what would happen) The game told me that the PLAYER save file was not present (true) and so I choose to start a new game. Strangely enough I noticed that a blank line ending with "(+)" showed on top and I had to press a key to advance to character creation. Dunno if that's related to my previous actions, but I described them just in case.
Unfortunately, the display glitch returned and renaming the config.txt file doesn't help.
Here's the screenshot (I didn't change any options):

http://shrew.yi.org/~fuma/day.jpg

And here's my config.txt file:

http://shrew.yi.org/~fuma/config.txt

[Rasit]

Sangband:
This thread:
Feel free to post anything Sangband-related here, including ideas, play reports, questions, and - hopefully! - answers.

I recently started a character that is intended to be become a Warrior, unfortunately he is the most unlucky character I have ever played when it comes to finding loot, 30 points in swordsmanship and he is still using a dagger +4 +4 at dlevel 10. Not a single ego weapon despite killing of Murgash, Wormtongue and two other uniqes (Wormtongue only dropped "a Set of Leather Gloves {average}" ) and only two {good} items besides that dagger.

I have a truckload of unspent exp that I am considering to spend on Weapon forging and Armor forging. My only problem is that I don't know where to find chunks of ore.

A small goblin dropped a chunk of copper in the beginning and that is the only chunk I have found so far. I have tried to dig out every [Square] with treasure I can find using a staff of treasure location but all I find is cash. I was digging at dlevel 8 to 10, is that to close to the surface?

I have tried to search the newsgroups but I can't find anything about where components can be found, well except that "there are a lot of them in the early levels of the dungeon".

Can anyone give me clue about where I should search for those elusive chuncks?

[Fuma]

Can anyone give me clue about where I should search for those elusive chuncks?

I haven't played the newest release much, but usually I just started to find them over time. It pretty much depends on luck, and as far as I know, the only thing you get from digging the treasure veins is money. I found chunks of copper and better on the floor, dropped by monsters and even once or twice under some pile of rubble.

I guess that your character is just unlucky with finding things you need.

[Rasit]

lol, I just raised my weapon smiting to 31 and used my only chunk of copper to make a long sword. Guess what I got.

A vorpal longsword +6 +6 , I have no idea what vorpal effect does in this game but I am hoping it does something similar as in D&D (perhaps extra critical hits?)

[edit] A enemy that used to take 4 - 8 hits to kill now goes down in 1 or 2 hits [/edit]

[andrewdoull]

I haven't played the newest release much, but usually I just started to find them over time. It pretty much depends on luck, and as far as I know, the only thing you get from digging the treasure veins is money.

Leon, why is that btw? I would have thought that digging mineral veins would be an obvious way to add mineral chunks. Even if its on average 1-2 per level, it'd make the patience required to dig them out worthwhile.

And spending forever tunneling is a great way to regenerate monsters...

[camlost]

Crafting is crazy good. Unless you only ever got chunks that were 40 levels old, increasing the drops of chunks is a no go. Have you ever seen what lategame chunks can do?

Also, I think it's still bargain priced at 14. I still took it when I raised its cost to 16 (though that may be a matter of playstyle).

I don't think you can seriously increase the quantity of chunks generated unless you seriously degrade their quality (or the quality of the extra chunks).

For that matter, it doesn't really make sense that you need a single chunk of material -- why not just melt a bunch of the appropriate coins to get an appropriate component?

Vorpal increases the frequency of critical hits. Not that it matters now, but buying a long sword from the store is probably better than wielding a +4,+4 dagger.

[Leon Marrick]

I just downloaded the Sangband 1.0.0 hotfix #7 and extracted it to a new directory.
After running the game I choose to load a previous save that was not listed and pressed enter. (just trying out what would happen) The game told me that the PLAYER save file was not present (true) and so I choose to start a new game. Strangely enough I noticed that a blank line ending with "(+)" showed on top and I had to press a key to advance to character creation. Dunno if that's related to my previous actions, but I described them just in case.

Yeah, I've noticed that "blank message" too. I'm not going to worry about it for this release, but I've got it added to the to-do list.

Unfortunately, the display glitch returned and renaming the config.txt file doesn't help.
Here's the screenshot (I didn't change any options):

http://shrew.yi.org/~fuma/day.jpg

And here's my config.txt file:
http://shrew.yi.org/~fuma/config.txt

Thank you for the config.txt file. It didn't let me find the problem in this case, but it did narrow down the possibilities. This is a mighty strange glitch; I've only ever seen something like it once before, way back in some alpha, when I'd managed to corrupt the underlying text-output code. However, if that were the case, 1) your screen would look a whole lot worse, and 2) pretty much everyone else would be reporting the same problem.

I need more information. I have not figured out how to display this glitch on my machine - if I had, the problem would already be fixed - so need you to do the following tests:

- If you are not certain you've updated your lib folder, do so. Even an out-of-date lib folder shouldn't be causing this problem but you never know...

- The first clue is that, in town, only the '3' character is followed by wierdness. Go into visual preference (type '%'), change feature attr/chars. Type 'n' to navigate to terrain # 85, "The Armoury". Change the character to '0'. See if the glitch goes away.

- Type '?' (when showing the game display) and the help screen will appear. You will see five options. Look at the middle one, number 3. Is the text after the '3' corrupted?

- Go into options (type '='). Type '!' and the "Display & Multimedia" preferences will appear. Change the graphics to "16x16 full". See if the glitch goes away.

- Whether it does or not, restore your preferred graphics setting and play. See if you ever notice any similar glitches in the dungeon, or any other display oddities. All might be clues.

- Let me know 1) what port you are using (it's either Windows or SDL) and what system you are running. If you compiled your own, tell me what compiler you used.

Thanks for this most fascinating of bug reports!