Halls of Mist plans

[Magnate]

In my work, I write and edit all kinds of text, and design books, magazines, and sometimes websites. How useful are these tools for version control in non-coding projects? I prefer to work with plain text for as long as possible.

I often work with other people, but mostly they are very non-technical folks. Just a tool to keep my own plain text files in order might be very useful...

VCSs don't care what you're writing - code, a website, a novel, whatever. They just track changes you make in discrete chunks which are called "commits". You decide what and when to commit, and as Derakon says you can roll back if you need to.

I rarely disagree with Derakon, but git and subversion are miles apart, even if you're working on your own. Git allows you to create branches, mess about with something, then change your mind and abandon it (or merge bits of it back into your main work) with impunity. I remember subversion being very tedious (you have to cp -a the entire source tree to set up a temporary branch, IIRC).

[Derakon]

I remember subversion being very tedious (you have to cp -a the entire source tree to set up a temporary branch, IIRC).

That would be because Subversion, like every other VCS out there except Git, doesn't let you destroy commit histories; thus, there's no such thing as a "temporary branch".

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Gotcha on the above, UI and less commands to muddle the waters are key in general!

The targeting interface seems kinda complicated to me. Might be a stumbling block for a new player. Have you noticed any interesting developments in that area?

I don't really want to go back to the Moria system, even though it was much simpler.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This has github written all over it - it's exactly what we did when we forked v4 - we've applied a ton of Blubaron's UI fixes to both versions with minimal hassle.

Unfortunately github doesn't allow you to fork your own repositories, so you'll need to upload them separately and link them on your local machine. But it will then allow cherry-picking of commits between the two with ease.

Alright, so Git it is. Seems like the obvious choice, since both Angband and Pyrel seem to be using it, too. Thanks for your help, everybody!

Should I start with identical forks? I've made some changes already, but it should be easy enough to find them.

[Magnate]

Alright, so Git it is. Seems like the obvious choice, since both Angband and Pyrel seem to be using it, too. Thanks for your help, everybody!

Should I start with identical forks? I've made some changes already, but it should be easy enough to find them.

I'd do it this way:

1. Upload Classic to github - have this as your "master" branch on your local machine. So any time you want to update Classic you just "git push origin master".

2. Create a branch off master for your dev version. Call it something like dev-master (we use "v4-master" for v4), because although it's only a branch locally, it's the master of the new version. Add at least one new commit (even if it's only a trivial version number change or something).

3. You'll need some sleight of hand to pretend to github that dev-master is a completely separate repo. I think the simplest way is to clone it somewhere else (another machine would be handy) and push it up from there as the new repository.

4. Add the new repo as a remote to your original local setup, so you now have two branches (master and dev-master) which you can push to two repos, but which have common commits.

[Magnate]

That would be because Subversion, like every other VCS out there except Git, doesn't let you destroy commit histories; thus, there's no such thing as a "temporary branch".

I think this is where being an amateur comes in really handy. Temporary branches make perfect sense to me - in my world people write all sorts of things which never see the light of day (i.e. publication or Ministerial consideration) - life would be horrific if we had to keep them all around.

[Nick]

I have done precisely this thing with FAangband and Beleriand, and it works really well. Sadly I can't recall exactly how I did the fork, but I think roughly I cloned FA into a new directory under a new name, and then pushed that to github. Or something.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I have done precisely this thing with FAangband and Beleriand, and it works really well. Sadly I can't recall exactly how I did the fork, but I think roughly I cloned FA into a new directory under a new name, and then pushed that to github. Or something.

Heh, this is a funny trend. All cool *bands nowadays want to have classic and future versions in github.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

One change I've made to the dev version: Mist doesn't keep track of the weight of most items anymore. I got the inspiration for a new weight system from Brogue.

Future Mist (hey, that's a cool working title for the project) will only care about the weight of weapons and pieces of armour, in a different way.

Total the weights of all helmets, body armours and boots you either carry or wear. The weight unit is not kilograms or pounds or anything, it's just an abstract measure. If the total armour weight is higher than your Strength, you get penalties: -10 to Jumping, -5 to Parry and Stealth for each weight point over your STR.

If you attack with a weapon with a weight higher than your Strength, you get -10 to all attack skills for every weight point over your STR. (No other penalties. Too heavy weapons may now be actually useful.)

The inventory and equipment screens use different colours to alert you about weight problems. Red for too heavy weapons, blue for too heavy total armour weight.

If an item doesn't have a listed weight, you can have 12 of them in a stack. If it does have a listed weight or an "x", there can only be 3 of them in a stack. Torches have an "x". If an item has "X", you can't stack them. You can't stack anything with charges in Mist.

Handling the weight of non-wargear is abstracted away. Perhaps you carry stuff in a backpack and drop it on the ground before important battles -- the game doesn't care.

Comparing the wargear weights to your STR is now really fast. This change should speed up play. I decided that micro-managing weight isn't something I want to spend time on in Mist. Especially town visits were a bit too slow for my tastes. Micro-managing dropped piles of stuff in the dungeon started getting boring.

EDIT, some notes:
- You don't need to carry spellbooks anymore.
- Everybody can learn spells, and even Warriors have some mana. Less need for big stacks of scrolls and potions maybe?
- There are no bows or arrows in the game.
- Many throwing weapons don't have listed weights, so you can have 12 of them in a stack. Thrown weapons never break.

[getter77]

The targeting interface seems kinda complicated to me. Might be a stumbling block for a new player. Have you noticed any interesting developments in that area?

I don't really want to go back to the Moria system, even though it was much simpler.

Might do well to take some notions from ToME 4's fresh new Beta43---has some major refinements to automatic uses of abilities where general conditions can be set. Beyond that, just the usual like mouse use, or if that isn't possible, have actions grouped near to each other on a keyboard such that it forms something of a "physical mini-menu", when the right sequence is initiated. What may be logical in a broad sense of Letters Representing Things would stand to work even better in an artificial vacuum of something like "Well, I hit f to fire....now it falls to you d,g and r keys to carry the day while the rest of reality and your other functions fade to black for a bit".....versus having to wander over to an Asterix or get a Shift or Ctrl key involved unless they are for popping up an onscreen quick menu.

[Nick]

Future Mist (hey, that's a cool working title for the project)

When you have the new Halls of Mist ready, you should call the old one The Mists of the Past. Or The Mists of Time.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

When you have the new Halls of Mist ready, you should call the old one The Mists of the Past. Or The Mists of Time.

Yes! The Mists of the Past is a great name. The Mists of Time is a great name also, and a bit easier to pronounce...

[Mikko Lehtinen]

My current todo list for Mist Classic is mostly bugfixes and simple but efficient rebalancing tweaks.

The one change that will require serious work is rebalancing melee weapons and item rarities. Fortunately both Classic and Future Mist gain full benefits from this work.

• Balance weapons anew, using the Future Mist weapon rarities. This will result in melee weapons being just as common on every dungeon level, but getting progressively better.
• Copy the list of swords and clubs from Future Mist; there are less types than before.
• Create a similar list for polearms (no polearms in Future Mist).
• Tweak damage dice and weight. Lots of work here!
• Rebalance the rarity of all other items so that every item type is just as common on every dungeon level. Consider all magic devices one big group, perhaps all jewelry too, and perhaps potions + scrolls.

New rarities for weapons:

Typical depth / Rarity line
0a	A:0/55:12/30:24/0
0b	A:0/40:24/10:36/10:60/0
12	A:0/5:12/40:60/0
24	A:0/0:12/5:24/40:60/10
36	A:12/0:36/40:60/20
48	A:36/0:60/70

EDIT: Eytan stole the EyAngband rarity system from Sangband, IIRC. It's really flexible! An item can have up to four level/rarity pairs.

EDIT 2: If you have an equal number of weapons for each of the six rarities, weapons will be just as common on every dungeon level. The Thin White Duke is on level 48, but item depth continues up to 60 -- vaults and lucky finds have OOD items.

[Nick]

Eytan stole the EyAngband rarity system from Sangband, IIRC. It's really flexible! An item can have up to four level/rarity pairs.

I don't know where it came from originally, but FA inherited it from O, and it is indeed awesome.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

My only big annoyance in Mist Classic is that there are three slightly different weapon weight/number of blows tables: one for warriors and shamans, one for mages, and one for everybody else.

Future Mist manages with only one table because fighting skills are much more relevant there. Boosting Warriors' skills is enough to make them superior melee fighters. But Mist Classic needs to solve this problem in some different way.

How about this for a more transparent system:

Some weapons, like Bastard Swords, have 1.5 blows.

Warriors always get two blows. Shamans get two blows with clubs but not with other weapons. Mages get one blow. All the other classes have a 50% chance of getting two blows.