[Announce] Poschengband 3.3.0 Released

[debo]

I was hoping for further diversity within those dungeons.

Several of the dungeons have subtleties that I didn't pick up on at first, although these have little to do with terrain. The Arena, for example, prevents monsters from mass-summoning. Anti-melee and anti-magic caves have pretty obvious mechanics. The glass castle and its transparent walls can also make for some interesting close-calls from breathers. ("A wall is crashed. (x99) *** LOW HITPOINT WARNING***")

Not sure where you're "grinding" right now, but the midgame can certainly feel awful esp. for builds with a high XP penalty.

[EpicMan]

Several of the dungeons have subtleties that I didn't pick up on at first, although these have little to do with terrain. The Arena, for example, prevents monsters from mass-summoning. Anti-melee and anti-magic caves have pretty obvious mechanics. The glass castle and its transparent walls can also make for some interesting close-calls from breathers. ("A wall is crashed. (x99) *** LOW HITPOINT WARNING***")

Not sure where you're "grinding" right now, but the midgame can certainly feel awful esp. for builds with a high XP penalty.

What could be substituted for an xp penalty? A score penalty? Maybe reduce the number of stat increases you get from levelling up, where a high-stat race like High Elf starts great but gains fewer stat increases as they level, or maybe gets the same amount but they are given at higher levels?

[mewmew]

worse item drops?

[debo]

What could be substituted for an xp penalty? A score penalty? Maybe reduce the number of stat increases you get from levelling up, where a high-stat race like High Elf starts great but gains fewer stat increases as they level, or maybe gets the same amount but they are given at higher levels?

I dunno. I've played the most extreme of weak-midgame-high-XP-penalty characters, and even that wasn't terrible once you got rBase, since you can farm ancient dragons literally forever and still get good XP and drops from them. I guess it's just part of the game; also, I am not a game designer

[chris]

I was hoping for further diversity within those dungeons.

Such as? Clouded and I recently added close to 300 new room types to the dungeon generator. There are also currently 128 vault types so I don't think we need more of those.

The wilderness, on the other hand, does currently need a bit of work.

[Nick]

What could be substituted for an xp penalty?

No XP penalty

[mewmew]

Why do playable hounds use health for their breath while playable dragons and possessed/mimiced hounds use SP? It's kind of unfair.

[debo]

Why do playable hounds use health for their breath while playable dragons and possessed/mimiced hounds use SP? It's kind of unfair.

If you're looking for fairness, this is the wrong game

I think dragons also used HP until very recently, they're sort of odd ducks among monster races now. (I'm also not sure that all dragon realms use SP for breath, but I haven't played one.)

Possessors / mimics are also weird. (In a good way.)

imo the next release should add more incomprehensible japanese things.

[mewmew]

Well, I may be wrong but IMO hp cost on breathing/casts significantly affect playability. Especially considering that hounds already cannot choose their evolution unlike dragons.

[Zikke]

This may have already been asked here, but is there any plan to have the Vanilla 3.5-style auto Squelch added? Something with a easy UI instead of coding would be fantastic. That's really the only part I don't like as of right now.

[chris]

This may have already been asked here, but is there any plan to have the Vanilla 3.5-style auto Squelch added? Something with a easy UI instead of coding would be fantastic. That's really the only part I don't like as of right now.

Yes this has been asked before and the short answer is no.

[1] Vanilla's squelch system only addresses one aspect of the TMJ problem: What the player doesn't want. There is still the rather large issue of managing what the player *does* want and what the player *might* want. (It might not be known but a rather nice feature of Hengband et. al. is to show you the location of objects that you specify in map mode, so you can see at a glance where on the level you want to go for, say, a potion of *healing*.)

[2] Any menu based UI system is necessarily limited to a handful of hard coded situations. It took me 2 minutes poking around in V to find an intolerable situation for a hypothetical PosCheng character: As a ninja, I want to destroy weapons that my class cannot use. I can use daggers and other small edged weapons, but cannot use swords and the like. But the squelch system has hard coded classes that are too broad and I can only squelch all pointy weapons. This can only be fixed in the source code. But in poscheng I could simply type 'dagger' and the system would work.

[3] A quick perusal of what V's squelch can handle shows it to be rather limited. For example, you can squelch average and good weapons of a certain broad classification but there may be many types of crappy egos you are not interested in as well: Slay Orc, Slay Troll, Burning, etc. And yet, there are many ego types you definitely are interested in: Pattern, Crusade, Trump, etc. Vanilla's system can't handle this. Also, you might want to set power thresholds on what you keep and what you destroy. For example, who cares about a 1d4 pattern weapon. But a 6d5 pattern weapon is definitely something you want to know about.

[4] When you destroy an item in Poscheng, you can type 'A' to autodestroy the item. So even if you don't fully understand the rule based pickup preference system, you can still use it fairly effectively. In fact, this will emulate V's squelch system up to a point.

etc.

[Roch]

Any interest in adding origin for items, e.g. "found on the floor of level 50 of angband" or "dropped by Lagduf the Snaga." Might be a nice complement to the statistics table that were recently added to dumps.

[krazyhades]

Any interest in adding origin for items, e.g. "found on the floor of level 50 of angband" or "dropped by Lagduf the Snaga." Might be a nice complement to the statistics table that were recently added to dumps.

Would save a lot of pain inscribing items with the info for the sake of making a story out of a chardump.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Would save a lot of pain inscribing items with the info for the sake of making a story out of a chardump.

I definitely second this. It would be nice for the game to remember where you found a certain Diamond Edge, for example.

[chris]

Any thoughts on how to display this info in the character dump? I really don't like the multi-line display done elsewhere ... It's very important to me to be able to see the complete equipment listing at a glance.

Compare

============================= Character Equipment =============================

a) The Executioner's Sword 'Crisdurian' (6d5) (+23,+24)
c) The Harp of Daeron (+4) {!!}
d) a Ring of Combat (+8,+11) (+2) {St;Wm, !! Hero}
e) a Ring of Speed (+10)
f) The Amulet of Brand (+9,+10) (+4 to searching) {DxSr;Hl~Tele Brand}
g) The Law Dragon Scale Mail of the Dawn (-2) [40,+30] {CoBl Dawn}
h) The Shadow Cloak of Tuor [6,+12] (+4 to stealth)
i) The Golden Crown of Amber [0,+15] (+3) {Di;Hl, !!}
j) The Set of Cesti of Fingolfin (+10,+10) [5,+20] (+4) {~p}
k) The Pair of Soft Leather Boots of Malachite [2,+16] (+4 to speed) {SpDx;CfCa;Fa Flora}

to

  [Character Equipment]

a) a Great Hammer (Holy Avenger) (8d1) (+7,+13) [+4] <+4>
     Dropped by Orfax, Son of Boldor at 550 feet (level 11).
     
     +4 wisdom.
     Slays evil creatures, undead, demons.
     Provides protection from fear.
     Can be destroyed by acid, fire.
     Sustains dexterity.
     Blessed by the gods.  Grants the ability to see invisible things. 
     
     
     Combat info:
     1.0 blow/round.
     With +8 STR and +0 DEX you would attack a bit faster
     With +14 STR and +0 DEX you would get 1.1 blows
     With +0 STR and +2 DEX you would attack a bit faster
     With +8 STR and +2 DEX you would get 1.1 blows
     With +0 STR and +5 DEX you would get 1.1 blows
     Average damage/round: 33.1 vs. evil creatures, 41.7 vs. undead,
     41.7 vs. demons, and 24.6 vs. others.
     
b) a Long Bow of Accuracy (x3) (+15,+13)
     Bought from a store.
     
     Can be destroyed by acid, fire.
     
c) a Ring of Free Action
     Bought from a store.
     
     Can be destroyed by electricity.
     Prevents paralysis.  
     
d) a Ring of Speed <+4>
     Dropped by Angamait� of Umbar at 1400 feet (level 28).
     
     +4 speed.
     Can be destroyed by electricity.
     
e) an Amulet of Wisdom <+2>
     Found lying on the floor at 1100 feet (level 22).
     
     +2 wisdom.
     Sustains wisdom.
     
f) the Phial of Galadriel <+2>
     Found lying on the floor in a vault at 1400 feet (level 28).
     
     Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
     When activated, it lights up the surrounding area, hurting
     light-sensitive creatures.
     Takes 14 to 26 turns to recharge at your current speed.
     Your chance of success is 95.1%
     
     Radius 2 light.

g) the Chain Mail of Arvedui (-2) [40,+15] <+2>
     Found lying on the floor at 1300 feet (level 26).
     
     +2 strength, charisma.
     Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, cold, shards, nexus.
     Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
     
h) a Cloak [1,+0]
     Dropped by a Mummified human at 1500 feet (level 30).
     
     Can be destroyed by acid, fire.
     
i) a Wicker Shield of Resist Acid [2,+10]
     Dropped by Mughash the Kobold Lord at 1350 feet (level 27).
     
     Provides resistance to acid.
     Cannot be harmed by acid.
     
j) a Hard Leather Cap of Seeing [2,+4] <+2>
     Bought from a store.
     
     +10% to searching.
     Provides protection from blindness.
     Can be destroyed by acid.
     Grants the ability to see invisible things.  
     
k) a Set of Leather Gloves of Slaying (+3,+2) [1,+5]
     Bought from a store.
     
     Can be destroyed by acid, fire.
     
l) a Pair of Ethereal Slippers of Stealth [0,+11] <+1>
     Bought from a store.
     
     +1 stealth.
     Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.