[Announce] Poschengband 3.3.0 Released

[Nivim]

@chris: I look forward to new syntax! -- Although, I hope this isn't interrupting you from something else.

[debo]

Does anyone know why there are so few duelists on the Angband ladder
Is it because no-one plays them

They're kinda tedious.

[Tilurian]

Does anyone know why there are so few duelists on the Angband ladder
Is it because no-one plays them

[Thraalbee]

ranged attacks are strongly recommended in wilderness

[Arjen]

I have a question for the good players of this game
Looking on the ladder, you get your characters to level 20 after 4 or 5 hours
How do you do this
I can do it with a berserker, but for other classes, unless I play slowly I get taken down by being blinded, confused or paralyzed

Enter the wilderness, if you manage to survive, you can get your character to lvl 20 <1 hour. If you really rush, it can even be after 10 minutes.

[Tilurian]

I have a question for the good players of this game
Looking on the ladder, you get your characters to level 20 after 4 or 5 hours
How do you do this
I can do it with a berserker, but for other classes, unless I play slowly I get taken down by being blinded, confused or paralyzed

[HugoVirtuoso]

Give me a week or so and I should have stuff ready for 3.4.

If you noticed, I stopped playing PosChengband Possessors since the beginning of the week. That's because...Last week you said, "a day or so" Heh heh

If it's likely a week, I might bring out more Hugo$oul Possessors then.

[chris]

Oh, also, should we stick the guide-like material you wrote in the info file? Seemed kinda like that was part of the reason you'd responded to me, but then you made it sound like documentation was a lost cause.

It's official: I'm back working on this. In the process, I'm going to restructure the file a bit so if anyone else is working on vaults, give me a heads up.

I plan to :
[1] Remove sequence numbers altogether.
[2] Give meaningful error messages (rather than hard-coded numeric error codes.)
[3] Rejigger the MON() syntax a bit. It should probably be MON(<Which> [, <Options>]). Currently, the which monster info his hacked onto flags which gives the mistaken impression you can or together multiple monster types.
[4] Fix the file documentation

and finally,
[5] Add new wilderness encounters.

Give me a week or so and I should have stuff ready for 3.4.

[Nivim]

Oh, also, should we stick the guide-like material you wrote in the info file? Seemed kinda like that was part of the reason you'd responded to me, but then you made it sound like documentation was a lost cause.

[chris]

Thanks. I'll certainly snag the first encounter and promise that at some point, I really, really will get back to working on these. As with everything in the pref files, you really need to have the source code up to add/modify functionality every time you want to do something useful. It's still a work in progress ...

[Nivim]

I'm discovering that I, too, would like some form of min-level; it's really annoying how often the "15 levels OoD" creatures just end up being 4 levels total and racking up the OoDness just widens the range.
Other discoveries include: NO_UNIQUE, KIN, and HURT_FIRE (for f_info.txt) at least don't do what they sound like they do (1st with uniques still spawning, 2nd resulting in 0 creatures [with tonberry and human], and 3rd not being destroyed by fire).
So, for two of those, I'm not entirely satisfied with this vault, but I think it can go in.

N:159:Villa
T:WILD:GRASS
W:4:30:24
L:_:FLOOR
L:.:FLOOR(ROOM)
L:0:FLOOR(ROOM):MON(p | NO_GROUP, 25)
L:1:FLOOR(ROOM):MON(p | NO_UNIQUE, 17)
L:2:FLOOR(ROOM):MON(p | NO_UNIQUE)
L:`:FLOOR(ROOM):OBJ(STATUE, 10)
L:*:FLOOR(ROOM):OBJ(GOLD, 15)
L:&:FLOOR(ROOM):OBJ(CHEST)
L:%:FLOOR(ROOM):OBJ(FOOD)
L:x:CLOSED_DOOR(ROOM)
M:___           
M:_+############
M:_#...#...#..%#
M: #.22+..2x..%#
M: #2..#..2#2.%#
M: ##+##########
M: #...#.&&#`..#
M: #...#...#*.0$
M: #.22#...#...#
M: ##x###+###x##
M: #2..#1..#...#
M: #...x...x...#
M: #...#..1#.%%#
M: #############

This one, however...

N:676:Keep of Four Pillars
T:WILD:GRASS
W:8:*:32
L:.:FLOOR(ROOM)
L:_:FLOOR
L:x:CLOSED_DOOR(ROOM)
L:v:SHALLOW_LAVA
#To-do; a cold analogue to lava, probably G:#:B
L:b:GLASS_FLOOR
L:n:DEEP_WATER
L:m:MOUNTAIN
#The following is actually supposed to be more like a
#line selecting mages with a high summon chance or
#1/5 chance of silent watchers, and a line selecting
#warriors (p or not).
L:*:FLOOR(GLOW):MON(NO_GROUP | DEMON_SUMMONER, 25):OBJ(LITE, 10):EGO(*)
L:`:FLOOR(GLOW):MON(NO_GROUP | 397):OBJ(LITE, 10):EGO(*)
L:p:FLOOR(ROOM):MON(p | NO_UNIQUE, 15)
M: vvvv      mmmm 
M:vvv__________mmm
M:vv#v_##__##_m#mm
M:v_v__#####+__m_m
M:v___##..p.##___m
M: _#+#p....p###_ 
M: _##..#x##..##_ 
M: __#p.#*`x..#__ 
M: __#..x**#.p#__ 
M: _##..##x#..##_ 
M: _###p....p#+#_ 
M:b___##.p..##___n
M:b_b__+#####__n_n
M:bb#b_##__##_n#nn
M:bbb__________nnn
M: bbbb      nnnn

...made me wonder why MON() has tags like CLUBBER_DEMON which only selects one monster anyway, but lacks a whole lot of other categories. You can use the vault if you feel like it, but I don't really consider it done-- I think the lack of a freezing cloud/tundra feature bothers me more than blocky creature selection, though.

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.

Apparently I had a mistype somewhere; retyping the vault for that number resulted in it working.

Edit: And reforging still doesn't actually take time, so maybe...
sed -i 's/After several hours, you are presented/After strange, timeless hours, you are presented/' bldg.c

[HugoVirtuoso]

Another minor bug:
Equipment with <worn> inscription sold to stores still shows with <worn> inscription.

Also:
Any headgear of Sunlight sells or buys for 1 gold at the store...Light resistance isn't that useless!

Chaos Patron *start equippy rewards* disappear at start!!

Double attack still works even when player gets scared in the middle of series of hits.

[Tilurian]

I think I have discovered a bug for the duelist
Suppose that you have challenged a monster and your next action is to charge it
And suppose that you mistakenly press m then a instead of m then b, so you have challenged instead of charged
If you press escape to cancel then it cancels your existing correct challenege

[chris]

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

Demigod Duelists can indeed pick Fantastic Frenzy if they like, but it is a poor choice IMO. One aspect of this power is only using fractional energy if they kill a monster with less that their full number of melee attacks. But duelists only get a single attack, so this is meaningless for them. The other aspect of this power is the Massacre activation, but duelists only fight effectively against their current "Challenge Monster". So you will indeed attack everything surrounding you, but with only a single very weak attack excepting your single challenge monster if applicable.

[chris]

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

You need to spend a fixed (random) number of game turns on a level before a feeling is revealed. Since feelings use game turns rather than player moves, faster players take more actions before actually getting the feeling than slow players (sometimes, a really fast player can clear the level before the feeling shows up). If you are "Searching" then each action you take uses twice the number of game turns as normal, so it will appear that the feeling comes quicker (i.e. in fewer player actions).

Once you get the initial level feeling, you will get updates periodically should the level rating change. For example, a monster might drop an artifact and the level feeling will get updated to "Special". Or an out of depth monster might spawn causing a more dangerous level feeling. These updates are delayed as well, but not so long as the initial update.