Unangband - some testing results

[Arralen]

Originally Posted by Arralen View Post
Boots of Poison ?!?!

Nice idea. Quite possibly they do. What does the description say?

Already sold them .. figured my bard wouldn't do damage to somemonster by using boots all to often, no matter if I had to throw them or kick them around
Shop description says:
a Pair of Soft Leather Boots of Poison [2,+6]
This set of Boots weighs 2.0 lbs. It does x3 damage from poison. When thrown, it does 1d2 blunt damage. It increases your armor class by 8. It is a useful ego item.

Now, if the x3 damage from poison applies to ANY damage I do, tell me ... I'll hurry and buy them back immediatly

(didn't notice any change in light radius ..)

If you could verify this, please report the bug.

Hmm.. tried again and now they seem to give light radius of 1. I could swear they didn't when I first tried them, but light radius in town seems to be broken anyway, with light-carrying town inhabitants leaving trails and all ...

Thinking 'bout it .. would be cool if it was possible to "flip" those cursed item to positive values. ...

Sounds fun, though flipping as in TOME quickly becomes just a little boring mini-game inside the main game. OTOH, would you carry cursed stuff with you just in case you find a shrine? Nope.

.. I would, if I really wanted that item. Would be nice though, if certain shrines and ingredience (monsters) where known to be on certain parts of the map, so you had to go there and hunt them down - therefore actually work on uncursing the item, instead of hoping for the RNG being nice.

... but still not quite heroic for my tastes. Perhaps have a chance of filp proportional to XP worth of a monster each time you manage to hit with that weapon? Only if still cursed so that you don't end doing boring swaps?

.. now THAT sounds heroic .. hitting a high-XP monster with a (-11,-11) (-12dex) weapon could be quite .. difficult.
I like the idea - but what about non-weapon items ? Punching/kicking them for gauntlets/rings/shoes? Throwing amulets and armor until the monster is dead ?!

[Anne]

Here I am with my newbishness showing, but what does RNG stand for?

[darkdrone]

Here I am with my newbishness showing, but what does RNG stand for?

RNG = Random Number Generator

[darkdrone]

if one picks up more than one Magicalbag, the only way to reduce the (additional) 10 lbs is to

1. empty out all the items
2. drop the bag
3. repickup the items.

just wondering if this was a By Design thing?

[darkdrone]

newbie question on Runes

okay one more weird behavior thign


1. was wieldnig a SUstain Strength+Size ring
2. applied a Earth Rune to it
3. it got changed to <2Earths>
4. it got cursed (im assuming because of this, didnt run into any other magical creatures that i can recall that can curse JUST the ring)

how does the Rune mechanism work ?/

[Anne]

if one picks up more than one Magicalbag, the only way to reduce the (additional) 10 lbs is to

Actually, I was wondering about that too. If I had two and wanted to sell one of them, would the game automatically sell the empty one, or would I run the chance of losing my supplies unless I emptied them both first?

[darkdrone]

Actually, I was wondering about that too. If I had two and wanted to sell one of them, would the game automatically sell the empty one, or would I run the chance of losing my supplies unless I emptied them both first?

I didnt try selling the bags ... but trying to drop the bags only drops the contents first, and only after you empty all the supplies do you get to drop the bags.
so im guessing you'd have to either put all the supplies in your Home or sell them first before you could sell the bags.

when i put my supplies into one bag and picked up the second one, there was no difference , if i selected "2 Magical Bags of Scrying" there would be the stuff from my old bag in there...

[Bandobras]

Anne, thanks a lot for testing the bag. You nailed it. This won't be fixed for beta2, I'm afraid, which may be late, BTW, perhaps even the next weekend, not this one, we'll see. I was quite busy, too...

Radiant Blow - "You must learn Radiant Blow or Call Light before studying this song." I'm assuming that first prerequisite is a mistake. lol

Hehe, good one, fixed.

Rod of Haste Monsters - Description gives only throwing information, not using. Hmm, did I give you that one before?

You. Don't worry, beta2 is close, 90% of your reports are fixed.

My character learned the CLW spell from a magic book, but the same spell in a prayer book is marked as unlearned. It may be coded that way purposely since they're from different schools of learning, but I wasn't sure.

Yes and only one of them cures blindness, but the same name is misleading, I agree; filed a bug report...

Flask of Slime - description gives throwing info only.

It is supposed to be a junk item. Do you have any witty idea for a marginally useful effect, or even a void effect with a flavourful description? It could cover the floor with slime, but then we'd need slimed versions of all the terrain types...

Potion of Detonations - "When quaffed, it makes you bleed and stuns you and cures you of unnatural parasites and affects you." Not sure whether the 'affects you' part was meant to indicate another affect in addition to the rest or maybe it's just awkward wording.

Oh, yes, it really affects you: instant death if at less that half HP... Fixed the descriptions.

[Bandobras]

Now, if the x3 damage from poison applies to ANY damage I do, tell me ... I'll hurry and buy them back immediatly

Don't hurry, I probably mixed O with Un. No brand bonuses from rings and gloves. But I think I was right about bonus to weaponless combat and I'm still not sure about throwing.

light radius in town seems to be broken anyway, with light-carrying town inhabitants leaving trails and all ...

It would be great if you could elaborate when beta2 is out. Even in beta2 there is still too many options left in the 'view_*' family and I wonder what combination of options may cause your problems.

[wilderness location with guaranteed shrines]

I like the idea - but what about non-weapon items ? Punching/kicking them for gauntlets/rings/shoes? Throwing amulets and armor until the monster is dead ?!

A good question. Perhaps killing a high XP monster would give any worn cursed equipment a chance to flip? But, then, I think XP is enough reward for killing. Butchers kill, heroes prevail against odds. Perhaps your idea about flipping as a reward for reaching a wilderness locations is a better one. Or perhaps a store service --- another way to spend _big_ money? Dependent on flipped item price?

[Bandobras]

if one picks up more than one Magicalbag, the only way to reduce the (additional) 10 lbs

Well, not quite additional. This is always only 10lbs --- the things in the bad weight nothing.

is to

1. empty out all the items
2. drop the bag
3. repickup the items.

Yes, that's the only way.

If I had two and wanted to sell one of them, would the game automatically sell the empty one

Yes. Feel free to prove me wrong.

trying to drop the bags only drops the contents first, and only after you empty all the supplies do you get to drop the bags.

Nope. When you press ESC at the list of bag's contents you drop the bag. Suggestions for the improvement of this UI welcome. It also works in stores and when 'I'nspecting, etc.

when i put my supplies into one bag and picked up the second one, there was no difference , if i selected "2 Magical Bags of Scrying" there would be the stuff from my old bag in there...

Yup. You're finally dropping your narrow rationalistic thinking and starting to grasp what a _Magical_ bag is. And I tell you, there is more to it.

1. was wieldnig a SUstain Strength+Size ring
2. applied a Earth Rune to it
3. it got changed to <2Earths>
4. it got cursed (im assuming because of this, didnt run into any other magical creatures that i can recall that can curse JUST the ring)

Yes, 2Earths is the ring of Strength+Size (not sustain), I think. It's often cursed at that depth. Sorry.

how does the Rune mechanism work ?

In various misterious ways, of which the details are left for you to discover (the general mechanisms should be documented, but the particular runes recipes would be more like spoilers than documentations; I don't insist on that though). For rings it now seems to create an item from scratch (cursed/uncursed status, pval, etc.). I filed a feature request that the numbers should be left intact when the object kind is changed, but I'm not currently able to implement it.

[Anne]

Anne, thanks a lot for testing the bag. You nailed it.

Woot! I'll just toddle off and look for something else I can try to crash the game with, then. I could use the extra 100 gp. lol

Yes and only one of them cures blindness, but the same name is misleading, I agree; filed a bug report...

Oh! I'm glad you mentioned that. I hadn't even noticed the difference in descriptions.

It is supposed to be a junk item. Do you have any witty idea for a marginally useful effect, or even a void effect with a flavourful description? It could cover the floor with slime, but then we'd need slimed versions of all the terrain types...

I'll get back to you on this. I need to confer with my sons, the slime experts. Bet they could come up with something good. lol

Actually, now that you mention those graphics... I've been thinking about something. I don't consider myself to be any sort of artist, but I do know my way around a graphics program, and I could probably come up with some decent filler tiles for at least some of what the game is currently missing. I wouldn't mind giving it a shot to see what I can come up with. I don't have the inspiration to come up with a complete new tileset, but is it possible to code things in such a way that all tilesets could use my extra ones as sort of defaults when a tileset is missing something? It's up to you - if you think it's doable, I could come up with some things to show you, and it'd be your choice whether to bother with them or not.

[Bandobras]

I'll get back to you on this. I need to confer with my sons, the slime experts. Bet they could come up with something good. lol

Did I say Unangband needs coders? No! Unangband desperately needs slime experts! There are monsters that "slime you" and slime-covered walls, but they look absolutely unprofessional. On a related note there are also Flasks of [random monster, quite often a dragon] Bile and Flasks of [...] Blood and they, too, do nothing when thrown. That is unacceptable.

Actually, now that you mention those graphics... I've been thinking about something. I don't consider myself to be any sort of artist, but I do know my way around a graphics program, and I could probably come up with some decent filler tiles for at least some of what the game is currently missing. I wouldn't mind giving it a shot to see what I can come up with. I don't have the inspiration to come up with a complete new tileset, but is it possible to code things in such a way that all tilesets could use my extra ones as sort of defaults when a tileset is missing something? It's up to you - if you think it's doable, I could come up with some things to show you, and it'd be your choice whether to bother with them or not.

Certainly filling up the gaps is good and doable --- people were doing this many times. I guess it has to be done separately for each tileset, so it's probably a good idea to choose the best one. Unfortunately, I don't know which is the best. In fact I've not even once run any variant with tiles... I hope other people can help you.

P.S. I've managed to code beta2, but I've not managed to test it (especially anything related to pickup, options and importing old savegames can be broken, please help), so I've put a wip Windows executable for brave testers here:

http://prdownload.berlios.de/unangband/unangband-062-windows-beta2unofficial.zip

Oh, and back up your saved games and preference files. Actually, backup all important data on your computer.

[andrewdoull]

Man - get busy at work for a little while and a massive thread grows in your absence....

I'm going to lump all this together and try to deal with it in one message. My apologies for not attributing the individual quotes, but you can always read the rest of the thread to find the original.

* Little problem with some tilesets when 'nice graphics' is enabled. I experimented with all possible combinations of 'nice graphics', 'double-tile', and 'big-tile' for all tilesets.

In Gervais, when 'nice graphics' is enabled, that also automatically enables both 'double-tile' and 'big-tile' mode. If you disable either (or both) of the latter but leave 'nice graphics' enabled, it stays that way right through exiting the game. But upon reloading the game next time, both 'double-tile' and 'big-tile' modes are enabled once again.

'Nice' automatically tries to find the nearest tile set size based on your text size which ensures that the tiles are not scaled. I'm not sure how often it 'rechecks' this which is probably the behaviour you're seeing.

The graphic weirdness where black bars are stretched over portions of the grid only happens now upon loading the game, and only sometimes. Redraw screen clears it right up and it doesn't come back until the next time I load the game. Note that I've only experienced this so far with Gervais tileset, 'nice graphics', 'big-tile' mode. I haven't experienced it in other tilesets or ascii (with or without 'nice graphics') at all yet, but then again, I haven't used them so far other than for the little bit of testing I've done. I'll experiment a bit more and let you know if I find out anything else about this. Again, this could always be caused by wonkiness on my own machine.

This is a known bug caused by some low-level graphics code interacting with some low-level text display code. No one using this has come up with why it's happening yet - probably due to the obscurity of the code involved.

Very minor 'center_player' issue if used with Gervais and 'nice graphics' are enabled. If the game is exited when the character is close to the edge of the town, when it's loaded up again, (first having to disable 'double-tile' as described above), the game attempts to center the character, filling in all the surrounding off-the-edge area with wall tiles. Move the character one grid in any direction and the screen appears normally again. Does -not- happen unless 'nice graphics' is enabled.

This occurs because the 'nice' graphics code needs to tell the game to recentre the player location and there is no 'hook' code to do this correctly.

Thinking 'bout it .. would be cool if it was possible to "flip" those cursed item to positive values. Shouldn't be as simple as applying "remove curse" and "enchant XY" scrolls, though. Maybe something involving shrines and different corpses/body parts and other ingredients .. randomly chosen with each new game, and only with some % chance ?!

Sounds fun, though flipping as in TOME quickly becomes just a little boring mini-game inside the main game. OTOH, would you carry cursed stuff with you just in case you find a shrine? Nope. Random ingredients stuffed at home until you find the right set and then use it at the best of dozens of cursed items you store, seems more like fun, but still not quite heroic for my tastes. Perhaps have a chance of filp proportional to XP worth of a monster each time you manage to hit with that weapon? Only if still cursed so that you don't end doing boring swaps?

The intention with cursed items is to allow you to bond demons/dragons/undead to them using the bind demons/dragons/undead spell. The more cursed the item is, the more powerful monster you can bind. Code not yet written.

Boots of Poison ?!?!
Nice idea. Quite possibly they do. What does the description say?
Already sold them .. figured my bard wouldn't do damage to somemonster by using boots all to often, no matter if I had to throw them or kick them around
Shop description says:
a Pair of Soft Leather Boots of Poison [2,+6]
This set of Boots weighs 2.0 lbs. It does x3 damage from poison. When thrown, it does 1d2 blunt damage. It increases your armor class by 8. It is a useful ego item.

Now, if the x3 damage from poison applies to ANY damage I do, tell me ... I'll hurry and buy them back immediatly

You kick a monster with every second blow while unarmed, or if you are charging. This is the point at which the poison damage is applied (not much - note Unangband guarantees a minimum damage increase due to brands which I can't remember off of the top of my head, but is higher than 1d2 * 3).

if one picks up more than one Magicalbag, the only way to reduce the (additional) 10 lbs is to

1. empty out all the items
2. drop the bag
3. repickup the items.

just wondering if this was a By Design thing?

You should be able to select the whole bag by choosing ESC when selecting an item inside it. It may be a recently reintroduced bug that this is not working...

Actually, now that you mention those graphics... I've been thinking about something. I don't consider myself to be any sort of artist, but I do know my way around a graphics program, and I could probably come up with some decent filler tiles for at least some of what the game is currently missing. I wouldn't mind giving it a shot to see what I can come up with. I don't have the inspiration to come up with a complete new tileset, but is it possible to code things in such a way that all tilesets could use my extra ones as sort of defaults when a tileset is missing something? It's up to you - if you think it's doable, I could come up with some things to show you, and it'd be your choice whether to bother with them or not.

Certainly filling up the gaps is good and doable --- people were doing this many times. I guess it has to be done separately for each tileset, so it's probably a good idea to choose the best one. Unfortunately, I don't know which is the best. In fact I've not even once run any variant with tiles... I hope other people can help you.

Even just going through and using the visual mode to assign existing tiles better would be an improvement (press v while looking at a terrain/monster/object in the knowledge menu).

The tiles are either public domain or created by David Gervais and licensed under the creative commons license requiring attribution. I have no problems with you creating more. Have a search under the tiles label at http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com for David Gervais' website - he has some templates you may find helpful somewhere.

In general, I add creatures and so on much faster than the creation of relevant tiles.

Andrew

[Anne]

Man - get busy at work for a little while and a massive thread grows in your absence....

I admit it, it's a conspiracy to keep you and Bandobras busy so you don't get bored with working on the game.

And thanks for that link - I wasn't able to find a Gervais website, but I did find Tome's through there where I found a download of masks that might be the templates you referred to. I've been scouring the internet trying to find info on making tilesets for roguelikes and came up dry. It's too bad there isn't more information out there. It's a simple thing to make single tiles, but I wouldn't know where to put them on the master bmp. That's the sort of knowledge that might come in handy. That's okay, I'll just get in there and start after I've done some more bugtesting on the new unofficial beta.

And speaking of that, I did a tiny bit of preliminary checking last night.

I tried making a separate folder for the new beta, with a new shortcut for it, but trying to load old savefiles only gave me "Broken savefile". Otherwise, it worked fine for the little bit that I played it that way.

I uninstalled the previous version entirely and then the beta was able to load my old savefiles just fine. Maybe there's a shared registry file or something that interferes when two versions of the game exists.

Ooh, interesting. Graphics look a bit different right at the start. Using the Gervais tilset, there are shadows now - it was all one color before. Nice.

I noticed that the roguelike keyset didn't transfer when I opened an old savefile. But since the opening screen warns us to check our options, I don't see that being a problem.

"You have found 14 gold pieces worth of ." Looks like there's a word missing there.

I'm seeing no problems at all with picking up objects or treasure.

"Verify_safe" type behavior - this is no longer a listed option, but I'm getting confirmation requests from time to time. I noticed it first through a character I'd brought over in a savefile. The first instance occured while I was rounding corners chasing a monster (new town, unexplored area). The second was when I was about to step into a spot that was past the edge of where I'd used the "find hidden traps/doors" spell.

Checked the above with a new character - happened at the edge of where I'd used the "find hidden traps/door" spell. I used the spell again so that I was no longer at the edge of an unexplored area, and it let me pass without requiring confirmation. So maybe this is now built into the system and not glitchiness? That would make sense.

Oh, and back up your saved games and preference files. Actually, backup all important data on your computer.

Well if you don't hear a peep out of me for awhile you'll know the beta killed my computer. lol

[Bandobras]

I tried making a separate folder for the new beta, with a new shortcut for it, but trying to load old savefiles only gave me "Broken savefile".

How ugly! It wasn't me! Perhaps the new executable tried to load savefiles using old lib/edit/ directory or the other way around...

I uninstalled the previous version entirely and then the beta was able to load my old savefiles just fine. Maybe there's a shared registry file or something that interferes when two versions of the game exists.

This is just awful. Good that complete Windows reinstallation is not required...

Ooh, interesting. Graphics look a bit different right at the start. Using the Gervais tilset, there are shadows now - it was all one color before. Nice.

Different default options. Generally I defaulted to V defaults plus turned on most Un-specific options. In this case it was probably one of the (too numerous) view_* options.

"You have found 14 gold pieces worth of ." Looks like there's a word missing there.

Yes, must be one of thejust introduced bugs. Fixed., thanks.

"Verify_safe" type behavior - this is no longer a listed option, but I'm getting confirmation requests from time to time.

It's now 'disturb_detect' after the V option (somewhat different, though). Probably a new default, too.

Well if you don't hear a peep out of me for awhile you'll know the beta killed my computer. lol

I'll interpret it to mean there are no more bugs and release beta2 officially.