[Announce] Poschengband 3.2.0 Released

[HugoVirtuoso]

Everyone should be looking at Chris' newly uploaded screenshots. This is a GENIUS taken to another level.

[debo]

Do hounds literally just ignore stealth and always know where you are?

[HugoVirtuoso]

Debo,
Probably yes. I think the way Hounds function in this game is working as designed.

[debo]

Do we know who in the annals of Angband history actually ''designed" hounds? I want to have a talk with said person...

[Derakon]

Do we know who in the annals of Angband history actually ''designed" hounds? I want to have a talk with said person...

Stealth in all Angbands that aren't Sil (at least, as far as I'm aware) is simply a rough indication of how many actions you can take before monsters wake up. Once a monster is awake, it always knows where you are -- and zephyr hounds are always awake. So yeah, they're kind of a pain in the ass. Vanilla has toned them down considerably from their original state, where something like 1 in 3 monsters on many levels would be a zephyr hound. Poschengband has simply added a lot of other monster types that also aren't hounds (but may not be any better than they are!).

[debo]

Stealth in all Angbands that aren't Sil (at least, as far as I'm aware) is simply a rough indication of how many actions you can take before monsters wake up. Once a monster is awake, it always knows where you are -- and zephyr hounds are always awake. So yeah, they're kind of a pain in the ass. Vanilla has toned them down considerably from their original state, where something like 1 in 3 monsters on many levels would be a zephyr hound. Poschengband has simply added a lot of other monster types that also aren't hounds (but may not be any better than they are!).

Yeah I think the zangband-era implementation of them had all of them awake all the time, and the *hengbands inherited this behavior.

[Derakon]

Yeah I think the zangband-era implementation of them had all of them awake all the time, and the *hengbands inherited this behavior.

All zephyr hounds in all variants are always awake; it's one of their defining characteristics. Vanilla toned them down by making them less common and reducing the pack size, not by letting them sleep.

[debo]

All zephyr hounds in all variants are always awake; it's one of their defining characteristics. Vanilla toned them down by making them less common and reducing the pack size, not by letting them sleep.

Yes, but what I'm saying here is that in my experience so far, _all_ hounds of _all_ types in poscheng are awake _all the time_

[AnonymousHero]

Yes, but what I'm saying here is that in my experience so far, _all_ hounds of _all_ types in poscheng are awake _all the time_

Are you talking about non-Z hounds? EDIT: As in Hell Hounds (red C, IIRC) and such?

[debo]

Are you talking about non-Z hounds? EDIT: As in Hell Hounds (red C, IIRC) and such?

So far, all Z I find are awake all the time

[AnonymousHero]

So far, all Z I find are awake all the time

Oh, then it's by design. Z = Zyphyr Hound and all of them are always awake.

EDIT: Whether it's good design... I'm not so sure.

[Nick]

Stealth in all Angbands that aren't Sil (at least, as far as I'm aware) is simply a rough indication of how many actions you can take before monsters wake up.

It's a bit more subtle in O/FA - there is a general noise level, and certain actions add to that and increase the waking chance. Also monsters follow noise.

Also, hounds are asleep at nighttime in FA wilderness - but that's a fairly technical point

[chris]

Apologies for the delayed response. Also, I'm considering some of your ideas and will comment on the others.

nerf\buff the initial max stats when starting a new character.sometimes i roll a char which gets a +5 boost in a stat on level 10,sometimes +1.this is extremely annoying.Can you change it so that all chars only get +1 every 5 levels?

I agree this sort of variability can be frustrating, but I think it is an important aspect of the Hengband tradition. What is going on is that your innate stats have variable maximums rolled on character birth (from 18/70 all the way up to 18/130 for each stat, but chosen so that the average for all 6 stats is 18/100). When you get a boost at 18, you gain a random bonus that depends on the amount of stat remaining (so stat gain is asymptotic). For an 18/130 intrinsic, the boost will generally be much greater than for 18/70. The result is either euphoria or depression. I think making it always be "+1" (I assume that means +10 when you hit the 18's) would be fair, but it would make stat gain oh so much more tedious!

the original angband and other angbands have a generator that generates weight,height and background story and etc,why did you remove it (!please put it in again,it just adds so much to the game when the char has a written background story.if you do that,also please increase the space for the "background story" part.as i remember,after four lines you cannot write more in it.

This stuff got removed out of sheer laziness on my part and I don't think I'll be adding it back. The birth history generator was over a thousand lines of code, for example, and wasn't being maintained. So there were races that weren't getting appropriate starting stories and what not. The concept is fine if you have 6 races but not so fun if you have 50. I understand many people liked being able to type in a custom starting background story and apologize for removing it.

why did you delete all the amulet and ring descriptions?could you please add it in again?

I didn't remove the descriptions. I removed all the amulets and rings! Instead, all of the current jewelry items are actually ego items (whereas before they were ordinary object 'flavors') and get generated during object creation as sort of mini random artifacts, choosing a random number of powers and bonuses from a thematic set. Ego items don't currently offer descriptions. Perhaps they should? But then, the descriptions couldn't really describe the powers the way they used to but would instead describe the overall theme of the particular class of ego item (e.g. Barbarian Talisman: "It is an object of superstition designed to ward against evil magics.").

In the old day, you could "recall scum" for rings of speed. Since they were ordinary object flavors, they showed up as aware in your map provided you had a form of clairvoyance. Recall down. Light up the level. Check map mode. Gather rings of speed. Recall back to town. Repeat. And once you knew all the default flavors, you could scum rings of power this way too. No longer! This was my main motivation in beginning the jewelry change, but making jewelry more "interesting" was a secondary goal.

okay,youre probably gonna refuse this request straight away.can you make monster races able to choose player classes?this would be sooooo cool.

Yes. Sorry. I'll explain my thoughts, though.

Originally when I began poscheng I wanted to add dragons just like Drangband had them. There, the player could choose a dragon race and then a class as well. But I also researched other variants to see what good ideas I could borrow. Posband was really popular, had myriad diverse starting monster races, offered evolution from one form to another, but did *not* allow choice of a starting class. So I realized I had a choice. Either allow class choices or not.

In the end, I decided not. And this is not a choice I can easily back out of since it determines how aggressively I can design the various monster races. For the normal race/class paradigm, most of the character power comes from the class choice, not the race choice. Oftentimes my end game characters forget what race they are playing as it is no longer noticeable. But they never forget what class they are playing! So if I leave in the class choice, then the new monster races need to be designed weakly. And instead of a variant with 40 to 50 easily forgettable starting races to choose from, you now have a 100 or so! Not what I wanted!

Forgoing the class choice allowed me to design the new races with all of the power of a normal player (and perhaps a bit extra, too, since I was generous while designing many of them!). As a result (I hope that) the player can feel in touch with their racial choice throughout the entire game.

I like your other ideas and will try to work them in as well as fix that horrendous moldy exploit you mentioned. I appreciate the feedback. Even if we don't agree on all points, I do enjoy hearing the thoughts of other players.

[chris]

Apologies for the delayed response.

* I'm using a single window to play. This means that the "more"ing really becomes annoying. I know of the auto-more option, but that means I might miss vital information. How about optional squelching? As a warrior, I don't mind standing surrounded by a ton of orcs, but clicking away 20 misses each round gets old really fast. How about allowing to compress those into "(+20 misses and spell failures") or such?[/url]

Try pressing ESC in these situations. It dismisses all messages until your next action. Your space bar key will thank you

As for reworking messages, this is a difficult request. For one thing, the code (and there is a lot of it) is written in the style of barfing out messages as they occur. Take monster attacks for example. The attack code barfs out that the attack hits you. Then the effect code barfs out that you feel your life draining away. Or perhaps it is the stat drain code that barfs out that you feel weak. And this better display before the next monster attack! Or perhaps you hit the monster and the player attack code barfs this fact out, but the monster has the revenge aura, so the touch zap player code barfs out that the monster retaliates whence the monster attack code barfs out the monster hits you and then the stat drain code barfs out that you feel very stupid. And all this lay in the house that Jack built!

I don't know how to intelligently untangle this sort of mess. Personally, I play with the ironman_no_messages option enabled

[krazyhades]

Do you really play with ironman_no_messages? Man, and I thought debo was crazy. Though I guess you DO have dev-knowledg advantage.

I think message code clean-up is part of Nick's vision for the Vanilla code restructure, but that's neither here nor there.