[Announce] PosChengband 1.0.0

[chris]

Sorry if this has been reported already, but...

There seems to be a discrepancy in how much knowledge the character has in regard to weapons display: If, say, the character has an Identified (but not *Identified*) Katana (Craft), he/she can wear it, press "C" and "w" to see that it's branded Elec/Fire/Cold, but upon (I)nspecting is told "You have no special knowledge about that item". This seems a bit off.

Maybe the easy (or even right!) solution is to just replace Identify with *Identify* across the board and make normal Identify a bit scarcer/expensive?

The issue here is that the player is assumed to have knowledge of what ego items do even if the particular item in question has not been *idenitified*. In this case, the player knows that (Craft) weapons are branded with Fire, Cold and Lightning, and that they grant extra light. All of these should be reflected in the character dump in the flags section (I didn't confirm this for your example). Also, the weapon info command ('C' 'w') should likewise show this information.

(BTW, this is handled by the object_flags_known function and is configurable with the compile option: SPOIL_EGO_ITEMS. Personally, I don't think egos should be spoiled this way until the player *identifies* at least one ego item of the corresponding type, but that's something for another day.)

So I'm guessing that the object inspection command needs to also tell the player about these "known flags"? That should not be too hard to implement, I think. I'm not sure when I will get back to coding ... I'll try to remember to address this when I do

[AnonymousHero]

Sorry if this has been reported already, but...

There seems to be a discrepancy in how much knowledge the character has in regard to weapons display: If, say, the character has an Identified (but not *Identified*) Katana (Craft), he/she can wear it, press "C" and "w" to see that it's branded Elec/Fire/Cold, but upon (I)nspecting is told "You have no special knowledge about that item". This seems a bit off.

Maybe the easy (or even right!) solution is to just replace Identify with *Identify* across the board and make normal Identify a bit scarcer/expensive?

[UglySquirrell]

Oops. That's only in Chengband. Apparently I've made so many nerfs to Chengband powers that I can't remember them all, but Kiss will no longer work on unique monsters.

But, you are playing lazy anyway, and would prefer to kill the Unicorn, no?

Ya ill give the Unicorn my best shot , I didn't realize we could ride unique's, my last game, i accidentally charmed one of the unique Great Eagles as a pet In the Mountains with dominate creature. So i know that works. I'll try that again.

I got insanely lucky with a summon pet scroll, at CL 26. Read it in the Dragons Lair and got Kokuo, Raou's Steed. He may not hit really hard, but he hits a lot, is +20 speed, regenerates and hits a lot

Thanks for the detect traps tip, it works perfectly.

[chris]

As a Beastmaster, you may even kiss a unique monster to ride. This is something you would not otherwise be able to do, so it is quite powerful. For instance, you could fight the Serpent while riding the Unicorn of Order!

(BTW, you can kiss friendly monsters to attempt to make them pets).

Oops. That's only in Chengband. Apparently I've made so many nerfs to Chengband powers that I can't remember them all, but Kiss will no longer work on unique monsters.

But, you are playing lazy anyway, and would prefer to kill the Unicorn, no?

[chris]

No big deal with the trap detection, was just curious. Ill just walk a little more softly.

If you turn off view_unsafe_grids try turning on both disturb_trap_detect and alert_trap_detect.

For next release, I'll add the DTrap status indicator (green inside detect trap region and yellow on the edge) from Vanilla. You will have a choice of visual indicators on the map (view_unsafe_grids = ON) or the status indicators (view_unsafe_grids = OFF).

[UglySquirrell]

As a Beastmaster, you may even kiss a unique monster to ride. This is something you would not otherwise be able to do, so it is quite powerful. For instance, you could fight the Serpent while riding the Unicorn of Order!

(BTW, you can kiss friendly monsters to attempt to make them pets).

Very cool, i think i might rethink my Lazy personality then. That sounds like a much more interesting endgame. No big deal with the trap detection, was just curious. Ill just walk a little more softly.

On second thought, getting others to do my work, sounds like it fits the Lazy personality perfectly.

[chris]

i;m playing an Aphrodite Demigod Beastmaster.

The Kiss skill works great alongside dominate, instead of making a creature your pet and following you around it makes them friendly. So you can use it to cover corridors, or rooms, since they tend to stay in the same area and an added benefit is there's no upkeep cost. I think that Kiss has the potential to work against any creature too so endless fun there.

As a Beastmaster, you may even kiss a unique monster to ride. This is something you would not otherwise be able to do, so it is quite powerful. For instance, you could fight the Serpent while riding the Unicorn of Order!

(BTW, you can kiss friendly monsters to attempt to make them pets).

[chris]

Oh, i was wondering does Arcane Mastery work to decrease spellrates for the Lazy personality? As far as i can tell Lazy gives you a 10% hidden spell failure rate. Would the -5% from this Skill work to decrease that?

Yes it would, except the effect is only -3% for Arcane Mastery.

And finally Is there a way to change the display for areas that have been checked for traps? Like in Vanilla with the green border, or an option to change the non detected area's color. The light gray is quite distracting. And covers my whole screen even on small levels .Maybe a slightly lighter shade of black.

If you are playing ASCII, then you can change this in the feature file. But I think you are playing graphics and any change will require a change to the tileset (Something I've been trying hard to avoid). When I get time, I'll try to see what Angband is doing these days to see if there isn't an easy improvement to be made.

[AnonymousHero]

The links for PosChengband in the Variants tab are correct. Perhaps he clicked Chengband by mistake? Chengband is still around and I'm hoping Dave takes up development one of these days

Sigh. I'm a dork. Apologies.

[Djabanete]

Chris --- I had some ideas about virtues. Since there seem to be people who really appreciate playing with them, I'll try to refine the ideas a bit more (and I'll post here when I do). Essentially, I was thinking that virtues could tie in to quests... like, say, completing Old Man Willow Quest could improve your Valor (+1) but hurt your Nature (-1). Then, you could reap certain benefits from correctly cultivating your virtues. The idea is to remove the benefits from repetitive/boring actions and reward global character planning instead. Of course, the system would have to be "grokkable" for a new player, since the weirdness of the old system was its main flaw. I haven't really thought through all the details yet... I'll post again when I have

[UglySquirrell]

Oh, i was wondering does Arcane Mastery work to decrease spellrates for the Lazy personality? As far as i can tell Lazy gives you a 10% hidden spell failure rate. Would the -5% from this Skill work to decrease that?

[UglySquirrell]

Thanks for the explanation on upgrading my savefile. I decided to do a clean install in the end. Having lots of fun, i;m playing an Aphrodite Demigod Beastmaster.

The Kiss skill works great alongside dominate, instead of making a creature your pet and following you around it makes them friendly. So you can use it to cover corridors, or rooms, since they tend to stay in the same area and an added benefit is there's no upkeep cost. I think that Kiss has the potential to work against any creature too so endless fun there.

The new Virtues are great, i'm slowly raising my nature skill, and have noticed that i now have friendly monsters being generated in levels. Has a real feeling that my actions are affecting the world

I'm finding the autopicker it really streamlines the game a lot, not having to check every item to see if it's worthwhile speeds the game up, at level 20 it destroys all non magical armor/weapons, and at 30 all under excellent (with exceptions for superior, like poison needle, elven cloaks etc.)

Automatically picking up known great items like rings of speed, damage and slaying is also a nice touch. I noticed that it still does this even if the item is known to be cursed though.

And finally Is there a way to change the display for areas that have been checked for traps? Like in Vanilla with the green border, or an option to change the non detected area's color. The light gray is quite distracting. And covers my whole screen even on small levels .Maybe a slightly lighter shade of black.


Thank you,

[Nick]

I do have all the source code zip files still on my hard drive, as well as a mercurial repository that I am using for development. However, I don't really understand why keeping each and every release would be desirable. Chengband had nigh 140 "releases" but the reality is that these were more akin to nightly builds and completely lacked the quality control one normally would associate with a "release".

I see your point - but as I build the variant repository there are lots of variants where there are big gaps in the record, and I'm trying to forestall that with PosCheng.

EDIT: Source code for versions 1.0.0 thru current is now available here.

Got them - so no need to leave those up if you don't want to. I'll try and grab the future ones as they come out.

[chris]

Since you mention it ... I've got the source for all the stuff that's currently up (ie back to 1.0.13) for the variant repository, but if you still have the previous versions and can put them somewhere that would be great. Or if there's a code repository I can slurp them from, that would work too.

I do have all the source code zip files still on my hard drive, as well as a mercurial repository that I am using for development. However, I don't really understand why keeping each and every release would be desirable. Chengband had nigh 140 "releases" but the reality is that these were more akin to nightly builds and completely lacked the quality control one normally would associate with a "release". With PosChengband, I aimed to do better, but failed ...

At any rate, if you really want the source I can provide it.

EDIT: Source code for versions 1.0.0 thru current is now available here.

[Nick]

Google puts somewhat strict size limitations for their free service so I need to continually pull down old releases.

Right - so putting a link to the original release was silly. I've removed that.

BTW, thanks for the update to the Variants tab If there is anything I can do to help out, please let me know.

Since you mention it ... I've got the source for all the stuff that's currently up (ie back to 1.0.13) for the variant repository, but if you still have the previous versions and can put them somewhere that would be great. Or if there's a code repository I can slurp them from, that would work too.