[Announce] Poschengband 3.3.0 Released

[Tilurian]

I'm not sure if this is the right place for a bug report, but in the autosquelching, when I tell it to squelch average daggers it squelches average and good daggers, and when I tell it to squelch good daggers it squelches good daggers and leaves average daggers

Also, when playing a berserker, I did squelch rod and squelch staff
But this also squelches 3 piece rods and quaterstaffs

[Derakon]

When you log in, set the "remember me" option; otherwise you'll log out pretty quickly.

There's two level feelings -- one for monsters and one for treasure. If I recall correctly, the treasure one only shows up after you've done some exploration.

EDIT: disregard this post; I didn't realize I was in the PosChengband thread. Whoops.

[Tilurian]

Sometimes the level feeling I get changes, from indicating the level is boring to indicating that the level has something
Is this because new monsters have spawned or is this because the original feeling was false

[Tilurian]

Am I doing something wrong
This website keeps logging me out after only a few minutes

[Tilurian]

Oh, I forgot to mention
Thanks for the game Chris

[Tilurian]

I think that this is the PosChengband discuss anything thread and so I hope it is ok to post these question shere
When I am in searching mode I get level feelings quickly
Is that because when I am in searching mode my character is moving slowly and thus spending a large number of turns on that level
Also, I assume that the demigod ability massacre would be too awesome to give to a duelist, and so it is either forbidden or the failure rate is high
Is that correct

[chris]

Rotation of wilderness encounters is still marked as TODO. Funny, I thought I already did that

For numbering, don't exceed the max value in misc.txt (currently 750). I'm not sure why 676 gave you a problem. Post a sample so I can try it.

For the parse error, all of your map lines ( M: ) must have the same width. It used to be the case that you had to tell the parser the size of each room in v_info (which was tedious to compute). But now, it figures it out for you. The width of the room is the width of the first line (and it checks all subsequent lines to make sure they match). The height of the room is simply the number of lines. No more tedium. Just make sure all your lines are the same width and you should be OK. Pad with spaces as needed.

For the MON() field, you can only specify a single d_char at the moment.

[Nivim]

[...]NO_ROTATE (rooms are randomly rotated during generation, but sometimes you don't want this)[...]

Various wilderness vaults do not have this tag yet none of them rotate. :/ Is this a choice based on the map-tile size restriction?

On symbol selection, I'm using a similar standard to clouded apparently, except I use numbers-ascending/level-descending like the FORMATION system instead of the asc/asc like he did. (Around the same time, noticed edge/connection definition is inconsistent; some earlier vaults use a line of %, his use enough to wall in the room.)

Anyway, I had a bit of trouble with the numbering, because apparently picking "N:1212" or "N:676" for testing purposes results in it thinking they're actually a buggy part of "Record 675", but shoving it in the open slot under Grass Encounters allows me to reach this:
"Error 1 at line 3565 of 'v_info.txt'.
Record 159 contains a 'parse error' error.
Parsing 'M:.+############'."
Which is indeed line 3565 in this:

N:159:Villa
T:WILD:GRASS:DEBUG
W:4:*:20
L:0:MON(p, 22)
L:1:MON(p, 15)
L:2:MON(p, 4)
L:`:OBJ(STATUE, 10)
L:*:OBJ(GOLD, 3)
L:&:OBJ(CHEST)
L:%:OBJ(FOOD)
L:~:SHALLOW_WATER
M:...
M:.+############
M:.#...#...#~.%#
M: #.22+..2+..%#
M: #2..#..2#2.%#
M: ##+##########
M: #...#.&&#`..#
M: #...#...#*.0$
M: #.22#...#...#
M: ##+###+###+##
M: #2..#1..#...#
M: #...+...+..~#
M: #...#..1#.%%#
M: #############

Having no idea what makes that line special I tried removing it, and it just complained about the next line. I added some random lines and it still complained about the second M: line, at which point my remaining idea is that the error is about something else but it's accidentally giving me that line, but I don't know how to identify it.

P.S. Oh, first run through I was also trying MON(po, 4) and MON(p|o, 4) to see what it would do, but that probably wouldn't have ruined anything.

[chris]

I'm thinking of making a wilderness encounter with monsters with dlvl of at least 50...e.g. an Elder storm giant hiding near Dragon's lair entrance ...

Well, you can always hard code which monster to use. For an Elder Storm Giant, use its identifier from r_info.txt: MON(1128).

[HugoVirtuoso]

I'm thinking of making a wilderness encounter with monsters with dlvl of at least 50...e.g. an Elder storm giant hiding near Dragon's lair entrance ...

[chris]

Is there a way to specify a minimum level for monsters in those encounters? I have ideas...

Minimum level? No. But you can boost the Out of Depth factor as high as you like. What are your ideas? Perhaps I can add support for min depth in the MON() specifier.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Is there a way to specify a minimum level for monsters in those encounters? I have ideas...

[debo]

Room Templates (continued) - Wilderness Encounters and Ambushes

Wilderness Encounters are specified with the WILD room type. The subtype indicates which terrain they should be used for and, in general, you should try to design something that is thematically appropriate (e.g having a lava field with demons might be OK for MOUNTAIN subtypes, but not for WATER). Wilderness encounters are generated randomly as the player moves about in the normal wilderness mode.

Example:

N:153:Thieve's Hideout
T:WILD:GRASS:FORMATION
W:1:*:16
L:.:DIRT(ROOM)
L:0:DIRT(ROOM):MON(THIEF, 5):OBJ(GOLD)
L:$:DIRT(ROOM):OBJ(GOLD)
M:###########################
M:#$.212...#.......#...212.$#
M:#$21012..+.......+..21012$#
M:#$.212..9#.......#9..212.$#
M:##########.......##########
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8...777...........777...8#
M:#############+#############

Ambushes (specified with the AMBUSH type), on the other hand, occur randomly when the player is using the wilderness travel mode. The player will be placed as indicated by the @ letter. Generally, the player is surrounded and in trouble. I like to use the FORMATION flag for these as it makes more sense to be ambushed by a group of like monsters than a swarm of random ones. I should mention that not every ambush will pick one of the scripted ambush types from v_info.txt. Sometimes, you do just get dropped into a crowded wilderness tile with lots of extra wide awake random monsters.

Example:

N:158:Dread of Night
T:AMBUSH:GRASS:FORMATION|NIGHT
W:1:*:1
L:0:MON(UNDEAD, 5)
M:      6   8   6  
M:                 
M:   0   8  @  8  0
M:                 
M:      6   8   6

This last example shows two things. First, using the NIGHT flag limits this encounter to nighttime. Second, by not specifying any terrain info, the encounter layers on top of the already generated terrain. This is in sharp contrast to dungeon based rooms which *must* specify terrain for every tile. In general, the wilderness encounters will look better if you don't specify terrain, unless it is thematically part of your encounter.

I am totally making a wilderness Huorn ambush!!!!!!

[chris]

Room Templates (continued) - Wilderness Encounters and Ambushes

Wilderness Encounters are specified with the WILD room type. The subtype indicates which terrain they should be used for and, in general, you should try to design something that is thematically appropriate (e.g having a lava field with demons might be OK for MOUNTAIN subtypes, but not for WATER). Wilderness encounters are generated randomly as the player moves about in the normal wilderness mode.

Example:

N:153:Thieve's Hideout
T:WILD:GRASS:FORMATION
W:1:*:16
L:.:DIRT(ROOM)
L:0:DIRT(ROOM):MON(THIEF, 5):OBJ(GOLD)
L:$:DIRT(ROOM):OBJ(GOLD)
M:###########################
M:#$.212...#.......#...212.$#
M:#$21012..+.......+..21012$#
M:#$.212..9#.......#9..212.$#
M:##########.......##########
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8.......................8#
M:#8...777...........777...8#
M:#############+#############

Ambushes (specified with the AMBUSH type), on the other hand, occur randomly when the player is using the wilderness travel mode. The player will be placed as indicated by the @ letter. Generally, the player is surrounded and in trouble. I like to use the FORMATION flag for these as it makes more sense to be ambushed by a group of like monsters than a swarm of random ones. I should mention that not every ambush will pick one of the scripted ambush types from v_info.txt. Sometimes, you do just get dropped into a crowded wilderness tile with lots of extra wide awake random monsters.

Example:

N:158:Dread of Night
T:AMBUSH:GRASS:FORMATION|NIGHT
W:1:*:1
L:0:MON(UNDEAD, 5)
M:      6   8   6  
M:                 
M:   0   8  @  8  0
M:                 
M:      6   8   6

This last example shows two things. First, using the NIGHT flag limits this encounter to nighttime. Second, by not specifying any terrain info, the encounter layers on top of the already generated terrain. This is in sharp contrast to dungeon based rooms which *must* specify terrain for every tile. In general, the wilderness encounters will look better if you don't specify terrain, unless it is thematically part of your encounter.

[chris]

Room Templates (Continued) - Monster Formations

These are designed to replace the hard coded nest and pit rooms of yore. For example, this replicates the old code exactly (but is *much* more rare then before):

N:441:Monster Pit I
T:ROOM:NORMAL:FORMATION
W:20:*:100
L:0:MON(*, 5)
M:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
M:%.......................%
M:%.#####################.%
M:%.#7777777777777777777#.%
M:%.#7665544322234455667#.%
M:%.+7665544310134455667#.%
M:%.#7665544322234455667#.%
M:%.#7777777777777777777#.%
M:%.#####################.%
M:%.......................%
M:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

When using the FORMATION flag, you need only specify "letter" 0 for the type of formation you desire. Using the random wildcard * means the code will choose a formation type the way it used to (Orc Pit, Troll Pit, Graveyard, etc). But you could invoke, say, a formation of knights with a L:0:MON(KNIGHT) directive.

With the formation, you get "letter" 0 through 9 to refer to the placement of monsters in the formation. 0 is the most powerful monster and 9 the least, so arrangement should reflect this. Basically, the code picks 10 monsters that meet the type of formation and sorts them by level (descending). You don't need to use all letters, of course, and there may be duplicates in the sequence 0 .. 9 depending on the number of kinds of available qualifying monsters.

The old nests were ubiquitous in Hengband (there was even code to limit them to 2 per level since they were so common!) and also a bit repetitive. But now, there should be lots of variety, including smaller versions with more varied shapes:

N:447:ASC II
T:ROOM:NORMAL:FORMATION
W:20:*:50
L:0:MON(*, 3)
M: #%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%# 
M:%#5#4#4#3#2#2#1#0#0#1#2#2#3#4#4#5#%
M:%5#5#4#3#3#2#1#1#0#1#1#2#3#3#4#5#5%
M:#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#

N:494:Fortress III
T:ROOM:NORMAL:FORMATION | NO_ROTATE
W:30:*:50
L:0:MON(*, 10)
L:$:OBJ(*, 5)
M:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
M:%...................%
M:%......###+###......%
M:%....#+#66666#+#....%
M:%....#$#44444#$#....%
M:%.########+########.%
M:%.#9876#42224#6789#.%
M:%.+9876+42024+6789+.%
M:%.#9876#42224#6789#.%
M:%.########+########.%
M:%....#$#44444#$#....%
M:%....#+#66666#+#....%
M:%......###+###......%
M:%...................%
M:%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%