[Announce] PosChengband 1.0.0

[ThunderToads]

The Stone of Lore is balanced by negative effects

[AnonymousHero]

Thanks, Chris!

I managed to buy an "oTelepathy pretty soon after I posted, but it went unused for the entire game because of various other equipment issues (mainly lack of FA). The character was pretty promising at Clvl31 (or was it 32?) with a RoD(+17), but died to an unresisted Ethereal Drake double-breath at Castle/Dlvl 39. (Miserable CON probably played a role here too.)

EDIT: Oh, I should say... the amulet went unused at first because of lack of FA, but later I found Thranduil, so...

I've tried a few of the quests you mentioned, and some of them aren't nearly as scary as I remember them from Entro -- I had been apprehensive about trying them out because of the (perhaps incorrect) memories of Entro of years ago.

Also, I was playing the Lucky personality, so that contributed a bit to the slow start. (Low APR.)

[chris]

I mostly agree about *identify*, but I do think there could be some changes that would have almost no affect on balance and would add hugely to convenience. Making pseudo-ID happen as you stand on top of an item aswell as when it's in your inventory, scaling pseudo-ID to be instant when the player can be reasonably expected to have infinite ID (stone of lore, rod of perception), and finally making the stone of lore simply ID things when you walk over them. FA has the stone of lore ID and instant pseudo when you pick things up, but I hate the inventory juggling you need to do when you have a full pack.

There are some situations where you need to decide if you want to spend a turn picking something up/IDing it or escaping, I grant you, but are those turns worth all the extra burden?

I like the proposed change to the Stone of Lore. Currently, it is nothing but an early quick charging rod of perception, with huge negative consequences (unresistable confusion) and a propensity to kill the unwary (by running your sp negative, inducing paralysis). I almost never use it, except when playing characters that don't have sp (so they get to pay the cost with hp).

Also, I too dislike the pseudo-id game altogether. It is OK and flavorful in the early game, but completely breaks down later on. As such, there is currently a way to circumvent it, and I must say that I never play the pseudo-id game anymore these days.

First, turn on the options "leave_good" and "leave_excellent". These should be turned on by default for a clean install/savefile.

Next, turn on the autopicker for your character (press '_'). Note the following line in the default pickpref.prf file (which gets copied over to pickpref_PLAYER.prf when you press turn on the auotpicker):
~unidentified ego

This instructs the the autopicker to leave any unidentified ego items. Below this line, you will see the following:
#!unidentified weapons
#!unidentified armors

The # key is a comment, so they are not active. If you remove the comment characters to give:
!unidentified weapons
!unidentified armors

Then you have effectively bypassed the pseudo-id game! Your character will automatically destroy any average weapons or armors, but will leave any good items until you turn off the "leave_good" option, and will leave any excellent items until you turn off "leave_excellent". You effectively get your desired instantaneous pseudo-id ... at least for weapons and armor. There are other commented out lines in the pickup preferences that should be self-explanatory. For example, an endgame warrior with a good weapon cares not for ego daggers, so rather than the sequence:

~unidentified ego
!unidentified weapons
!unidentified armors

They might prefer:

~ego more than 19
~unidentified ego armors
!unidentified weapons
!unidentified armors

The "ego more than 19" applies to ego weapons whose damage dice XdY have X*Y > 19. So a 5d4 weapon survives (as does a 1d20) but that 3d4 dagger does not. Also, the unidentified attribute was removed in case you find a 10d10 longsword of slay orc and have previously registered slay orc weapons for automatic destruction. (Lines in the pickup preferences are processed in order, of course, until the first line that applies to the object being considered is located.)

As for building this into the game as a scaled pseudo-id, that is possible but I imagine some players might consider this change to be cheating (*). Also things are rather nice as is since the autodestroyer also whacks non-qualifying items and is customizable to your character's wants and needs (e.g. some characters can't use shields at all, so they can just auto destroy all of those fairly easily). So after clearing that pit of AMHD and generating a couple thousand objects, you can simply walk over them leaving just a handful of qualifying egos to identify! I still find my characters overwhelmed with consumables that won't fit in my pack, but that is just part of the game ...

EDIT: (*) By "this change", I mean the current auto-destroyer changes and "leave_good", "leave_excellent" options that I added to Chengband, rather than a proposed change to pseudo-id mechanics. Obviously, if that change were incorporated into the game mechanics, it would not be cheating. It would be the way the world works!

[AnonymousHero]

QQ: Is 0% spell fail achievable for the Monster/Demon races (with or without Shrewd?). I'm playing without virtues, just in case it matters.

EDIT: Oh, and a small bug: The "With X STR and Y DEX you will get N blows" display doesn't seem to take extra blows on the weapon itself into account.

[chris]

1.0.22 is available in the usual spot:

[1] Tweaked Berserker dual wielding. Normally, dual wielding effectiveness is extremely sensitive to weapon weight. But forcing a berserker to dual wield daggers is just plain silly. They may even dual wield very heavy weapons quite effectively now.

[2] Compiling on Linux: I removed some duplicate typedefs that were causing compile errors on some versions of gcc.

[3] Object Inspection Changes
[3.1] Inspecting unidentified armors, weapons and ammo now gives the description.
[3.2] Inspecting any identified object always gives the description. For ego items, it also tells you "known powers" but hints that there might be some hidden powers as well.
[3.3] Of course, inspecting *identified* objects works as before.

[4] Stone of Lore no longer activates. Instead, it auto identifies objects underfoot.

[5] Pseudo-Identify changes. These are experimental, so I'm looking for feedback.
[5.1] Pack/Equipment pseudo-id now speeds up exponentially with level. It becomes twice as fast for every 5 experience levels. At CL35, it is automatic (except for the 1 in 5 pack check), but this is somewhat unnecessary since
[5.2] All players get strong pseudo-id underfoot at CL35.

[clouded]

Cool, thanks for the changes. I'll try it out after my comp character is finished.

[Djabanete]

I really like the work on *ID*. I'm in the camp of removing *ID* entirely, but I can appreciate your balance concerns, and I think the compromise you're going with is the best one --- allow people to see the features that their characters know already (anything visible in the "grid"), but keep the "hidden powers" concealed.

I hope this means that players who inspect magic items (potions, rods) will now see the powers of the item without having to *ID*!

Question: what does Resist Magic do? (Holy Grail activation.)

[chris]

I hope this means that players who inspect magic items (potions, rods) will now see the powers of the item without having to *ID*!

The descriptions for potions/wands/rods/staves all spoil somewhat, so the object needs to at least be identified to see them. For example, potions of healing have the following description: "It heals you and cures blindness, confusion, poison, stunned, cuts and berserk when you quaff it." Obviously, you would not want that showing up for that unidentified light green potion in your sack On the other hand, additional information is available once *idenitified*. In this case, the fact that the potion heals 300hp (or 375hp if you are a CL50 Potionmaster).

Wands/Rods/Staves are similar. The description tells what the rod does so requires identification. Knowledge of the amount of damage (for example) and the fail rate requires *identification*, though now that I think about it, I suspect fail rates might be given erroneously for even unidentified objects when you try to use them. Hmmm ...

On the other hand, objects like long swords have descriptions like: "A long, straight, two-edged blade, with two hand guards projecting out from the hilt to form a perfect cross." These can be displayed even if the object is not identified.

Question: what does Resist Magic do? (Holy Grail activation.)

Resist Magic increases the player's saving throw.

[chris]

QQ: Is 0% spell fail achievable for the Monster/Demon races (with or without Shrewd?). I'm playing without virtues, just in case it matters.

All monster powers have their minimum fail rates set to 0%. But this won't always be achievable for high level powers even with max casting stat. Mana Storms (Lich), Darkness Storms (Beholder), Hellfire (Balrogs), etc all have initial fail rates set high enough that one can never achieve 0%. Usually 8% or so is about the best you can get for these, but I don't know the exact details off the top of my head.

Virtues (alignment, actually) can effect fail rates, but only for book spellcasters and only for certain realms. Monsters can ignore alignment at the moment, though it might be worthwhile to penalize demons for being good, or angels for being evil in some future release.

[UglySquirrell]

On the topic of identifying items. I'm not sure if its a benefit of the virtue system, but i notice that i sometimes identify items just by picking them up. Or if i remember correctly just walking over them occasionally.

I think having a system like this in general would be really cool. I agree that at the early parts of the game identify is fun and makes sense. But being able to automatically sense what an item is after seeing a hundred others of the same type makes sense.

In game it would fit, after picking up 1000's of objects you should eventually have a pretty good idea what has a magic aura, or whatever.

You could have pseudo id set up with level, and your lore level (increases the more items you identify). This way the more you use identify, the more your understanding of items increases.

Of course artifacts and ego's should still need to be identified.

I'm 99% sure this works to a point already with the Knowledge Virtue, but it would save a lot of time in game i'm thinking.

[AnonymousHero]

I've been playing a bit, and I have to say I'm really liking the changes to ID, especially the Stone of Lore. An item I would never have considered using suddenly became useful -- though a bit "dangerous" if you're playing with Preserve: On(*)... which is just perfect as a balancing factor IMO.

(*) In the heat of battle (or with a full inventory) you might step on something and not notice it being unique... a you'll lose it forever. (Pseudo-ID as "{special}" doesn't count as having "found" an artifact, I believe, so with normal insta-pseudo you should be safe.)

[jevansau]

Trying out a sorcerer and it seems that despite the description (under birth) and stat bonuses, Intelligence rather than Charisma is the spell stat.
I could be wrong in this, but raising charisma didn't raise mana and I note that in the source, me.which_stat = A_INT; which I'm assuming is setting the spell stat.

Anyway, thanks for this amazingly diverse variant.

Regards,
Jonathan

[chris]

Trying out a sorcerer and it seems that despite the description (under birth) and stat bonuses, Intelligence rather than Charisma is the spell stat.
I could be wrong in this, but raising charisma didn't raise mana and I note that in the source, me.which_stat = A_INT; which I'm assuming is setting the spell stat.

Anyway, thanks for this amazingly diverse variant.

Regards,
Jonathan

Ah, that's a bug. If you can compile then just change A_INT to be A_CHR. You'll notice below that they get +6 Chr and only +0 Int, so you will be playing an ironman sorcerer if you keep Int as your spell stat

I fixed it for the next release (1.0.23).

Regarding Sorcerers, I'm not sure how balanced they might be. They are one of the classes I have yet to play test since Hengband (where they were fine). Notable changes including monster retaliation and a new hp system might have made them too fragile.

[chris]

I've been playing a bit, and I have to say I'm really liking the changes to ID, especially the Stone of Lore. An item I would never have considered using suddenly became useful -- though a bit "dangerous" if you're playing with Preserve: On(*)... which is just perfect as a balancing factor IMO.

(*) In the heat of battle (or with a full inventory) you might step on something and not notice it being unique... a you'll lose it forever. (Pseudo-ID as "{special}" doesn't count as having "found" an artifact, I believe, so with normal insta-pseudo you should be safe.)

You can add the line

artifact

to your pickup preferences. Then, the only worry is a full pack. But if you are cautious, and use map mode ('M' 'M') then you shouldn't have a problem.

I don't think the Lore is too powerful, just convenient. IMO, it is balanced by opportunity costs: There are much better lights available later on.

[jevansau]

I'm happy to have a try at compiling. is there a makefile for Windows - I couldn't see one in the source.