PWMAngband 1.1.11 released

[TheHairyOne]

The new code is based on vanilla 4.0, IM_XXX and RES_XXX flags have been combined into RES_XXX. An immunity is declared as RES_XXX[3], while a simple resistance is set as RES_XXX[1]. Same goes with slays and brands, which have the multiplier defined in the text files.

What is RES_XXX[2] used for? I haven't found it yet anywhere. Lots of [1]s and a couple [3]s on the Arts, but no [2]s....

[PowerWyrm]

I am guessing there is an option somewhere that turns off XP on levels higher than the deepest level you have been to? Just spent 30min hunting 50ft after a death to see that my XP meter hasnt moved. 8(

I don't know what could cause that. Did you have your xp drained?

[PowerWyrm]

I was checking out someone else's server. I want to play it a bit and see what it has to offer. I will try the graphic option, thanks! I wonder if that would work in my mobile version of Angband... 8)

I am sure I will have lots of questions soon.

I found out that Luthanos's server, which is using "static towns" option, doesn't allow to go into the wilderness -- you get a "there is a wall blocking your way" message. This is probably a bug and I'll have to investigate.

[PowerWyrm]

Ok, i am guessing that the game data is baed more off Angband than Mangband.

Hopefully its easy to change things like shop keeper inventories. And I will probably have to rebalance spawns and monsters for multiplayer,

How much testing and balancing has been done already? Not Angband....I am talking PWMangband only. And really I am talking about the multiplayer stuff.

MAngband exists for more than 15 years and had a large player base for a while, so it was nicely balanced. I merely added races and classes, and ported the code base to the latest Angband code, minus some features, so it should still be balanced. There are some classes of course that are more easy to play once you know how to play them, some that are easier in the early game, some that are easy in the endgame, but all should be enjoyable to play.

[PowerWyrm]

Ah. I am playing 3.4 on my phone and it has CHA. Figured it was a V4 thing.

There are a few reasons I want Cha back. First it balances some for certain races...you give up long term profit with the lower Cha. On a multiplayer server with a potential economy, this can have an impact. Its a downside of the half-troll and an upside to the high elf.

But the biggest reason was some of the new classes...which just scream to be Cha based. I was very disappointed to learn it was removed.

I guess it cant be that hard to add it back in. I have the mangband code with Cha, just got to merge its code back in to the main code base. *sigh*

The original Summoner class was based on CHA. With its removal, I rebased it on WIS. It's fine, since the Summoner can be seen as a priest of nature, and priests use WIS as base stat.

[PowerWyrm]

Where did the new races and classes in PWMangband come from? I am not finding it in the Vanilla. I know basicly nothing about them, thou I tried a dragon and it seemed cool. 8)

I have been working my way through the Dev notes for Angband. Trying to get a feel for what Angband 4 is, what PWMangband is, and how each differs from the Mangbands (0.7.2 and 1.1.2) that I am familiar with.

Any threads, guides, or recommended reading that will help me with me task is appreciated. I don't mind doing my homework, but I feel a little lost trying to tackle 15-20 years of changes.

You can say that latest PWMAngband is a mix of the MAngband 1.1.2 code + additions from the future 1.2.0 version (if it's released one day), and the latest Angband 4.0.

Most of the new races/classes are from TomeNET, once PernMAngband (I loved playing that 15 years ago). I simply added a Dragon race, and the Elementalist/Summoner/Necromancer classes which are quite different from the ones you can find in other variants.

The main source of documentation was the MAngband website, which is currently down. However, I've seen all the admins back on IRC and they've brought back the main Mangband server online... so this means good news! In the meantime, you can find everything you need in the help files (which are accessible in-game by pressing '?', or simply in the help subdirectory of the /lib directory)

[PowerWyrm]

What is RES_XXX[2] used for? I haven't found it yet anywhere. Lots of [1]s and a couple [3]s on the Arts, but no [2]s....

Resistances and immunities are defined by a degree of resistance, which is simply:
- (-1): vulnerability to an element
- (0): no resistance
- (1): resistance
- (2): double resistance
- (3): immunity

In the configuration files, you can only find items with resistance or immunity, therefore you won't find anything with RES[2].

[PowerWyrm]

I found out that Luthanos's server, which is using "static towns" option, doesn't allow to go into the wilderness -- you get a "there is a wall blocking your way" message. This is probably a bug and I'll have to investigate.

Ok it's not a bug. The town layout is determined at server's birth and then loaded from the server savefile. What happened on Luthanos's server is that the town was generated with TOWN_WALL=false, then the option was set to TRUE. This will still display the town wall as "clear", but will prevent characters from wandering into the wilderness. Note that this is clearly NOT recommended on a server that is not designed for ironman diving, as it will greatly reduce the number of houses available for storing stuff.

[TheHairyOne]

Thank you for all the helpful information!

I am working on a To Do list for my new server. Any advice, tips, etc that you care to give would be greatly appreciated.

I have a long history with this game going back to Moria in the 80s. Haven't played many variants, but Moria->UMoria->Angband->Mangband and a little ToMEnet. 8)



To Do list for MAngband Server:

Make Uniques on a Spawn Timer and make them drop loot each time they are killed

Expand to deeper depths? (How much is involved in taking Max Depth to 256 levels from 128?)

Reintegrate Cha

Change amount of stuff in stores (multiple pages and more of certain things) [LIKE MANGBAND]

Make sure stores can buy enough and pay for big ticket items [LIKE MANGBAND]

Adjust the buy/sell amounts for Cha (Increase max profit and scale up better with extra Cha. Net change should be similar gold for similar current mangband Cha, but allow those who focus on Cha to increase their return on dungeon dives.)

Adjust Stat code to allow benefit past 18/220

Watch drop rates and drop qualities and rebalance as needed (See Angband source notes for what changed and why it might be broken for multiplayer. [They did more items, but less good items. For multiplayer it should be less items, but more good items. Who wants to sort through MORE crap?)

Add support code for RES_XXX[2] (RES_XXX(1) is standard mangband resist. RES_XXX[3] is Immunity. Would be nice to have a RES[2] for high end content purposes [may already be done]. (Sounds like it is done but not currently used for players)

Pick apart current code for how RES works. Find a good number for RES2. Add code for RAND_RES2 and RAND_HIGHRES2 (Should be double resist...should be fine as is)

Distribute resists with new items and on existing items.

Implement a new building. The Inn. Open Inside format. Multiple Vendors? Quests? Bartender? Barmaids? (The Bartender named mob placed behind a bar. Summons barmaids who drop booze when you kill them? hehe. Maybe 5 different types affecting duration and intensity.)
DROP_BEER S_BARMAID
Mushroom of Hallucination missing! 8(

Custom Town? (How hard is it to do a Town layout?)

Custom AI for Boss Mob

Mod the new classes....and races....
Sorcerer (INT)
Elementalist (INT)
Archer (WIS)
Necromancer (INT)
Shapechanger (CHA)
Psionicist (CHA)
Summoner (CHA)
Traveller (ALL?)
Ent...change to Minotaur...fix stats etc
Thunderlord...change to Dragonlord...fix stats etc
Yeek...change to Fairy
Dragon...leave alone
Gnoll...Add
Lizardman...Add

I will probably end up adding a few more things to the list as I progress through my project. If you want to know my end goal...I have been running a custom RPG game for the last 27 years called Rings or Rings of Karma (so I will problably call my varient RMangband or RoKMangband 8). The final boss for the campaign is going to be implemented on my server and I am hoping to have 25-50 players playing regularly for about 18 months leading up to the final encounter. So I need to incorporate my universe into Mangband and then make sure the server is balanced and can handle the multiplayer load. Best case scenario I keep my code changes portable so I can update to newer versions of PWMangband as they become available.

[Derakon]

Thank you for all the helpful information!

I am working on a To Do list for my new server. Any advice, tips, etc that you care to give would be greatly appreciated.

Not a MAngband player, but I'll chime in anyway.

Reintegrate Cha

...

Adjust the buy/sell amounts for Cha (Increase max profit and scale up better with extra Cha. Net change should be similar gold for similar current mangband Cha, but allow those who focus on Cha to increase their return on dungeon dives.)

I strongly recommend that you do some serious play with the "no selling" option before you "bring back" selling in your variant. The majority of players (on these forums, at least) greatly prefer not having to return to town frequently just to convert the worthless high-level ego items they find into cash.

If after such consideration, you still feel this is important to do, well, it's your server.

Watch drop rates and drop qualities and rebalance as needed (See Angband source notes for what changed and why it might be broken for multiplayer. [They did more items, but less good items. For multiplayer it should be less items, but more good items. Who wants to sort through MORE crap?)

Err, I think you may have this backwards. Vanilla went through a few phases of trying to clamp down on the "Too Much Junk" problem. The goal was to have fewer total items to sort through, while still having about the same amount of useful items.

Add support code for RES_XXX[2] (RES_XXX(1) is standard mangband resist. RES_XXX[3] is Immunity. Would be nice to have a RES[2] for high end content purposes [may already be done]. (Sounds like it is done but not currently used for players)

Double resistance is possible for players, by stacking a source of permanent resistance (like gear or an intrinsic) with a source of temporary resistance (like a spell or potion).

Mushroom of Hallucination missing! 8(

Mushrooms of Emergency make the player hallucinate, in addition to their other effects.

[TheHairyOne]

Just curious. Anyone know what Cha is used when you are selling in the new system? Is it 18/100 equiv....18/220 equiv...does it level up with you? Whether you use Cha or not, there is a sell variable that equates to something in the old system. I'D Like to know where they set that for the new versions, please?

[TheHairyOne]

Possible Bug Reports

My level displays as yellow after death until I regain my lost levels.

When digging using ctrl-direction, once the digging is complete it says "You spin around." hitting a movement without the Ctrl still causes you to spin around. You have to hit escape before you can move again.

Same as above, but using the s key to search. If you hit a movement key you will search instead, until you hit escape.

I haven't tested it quantitatively yet, but it seems like I was getting less XP per kill when my level displayed as yellow.

[TheHairyOne]

Not a MAngband player, but I'll chime in anyway.



I strongly recommend that you do some serious play with the "no selling" option before you "bring back" selling in your variant. The majority of players (on these forums, at least) greatly prefer not having to return to town frequently just to convert the worthless high-level ego items they find into cash.

If after such consideration, you still feel this is important to do, well, it's your server.

I can always keep the no selling option for players who like that sort of thing.

Maybe it was the scaling for things with no Cha in play, but I was getting like 20-25% of the gold per run that I was getting when I was selling things in mangband. And in an active multiplayer server, you can get more gold for selling "junk" gear to other players than by selling it to the store. If you play with no sell on and sell gear to other players, you might actually unbalance things the other way.

But I am definately bringing back Cha. And converting some of the classes to Cha classes. Just have to figure out how to code it.

Err, I think you may have this backwards. Vanilla went through a few phases of trying to clamp down on the "Too Much Junk" problem. The goal was to have fewer total items to sort through, while still having about the same amount of useful items.

Well if this is the case then its no problem. I will likely be comparing item generation code between MAngband and PWMAngband. I can always tweak it towards less garbage if MAngband is better than PWMAngband in that respect.

Double resistance is possible for players, by stacking a source of permanent resistance (like gear or an intrinsic) with a source of temporary resistance (like a spell or potion).

Ah, I had forgotten about the temp resists! Thank you! I might need to add an extra tier of resists...unless I want resist boosts to allow people with Res_XXX[2] to become Immune. Is it 33/66/100, 50/75/100, or some other number for the resist amounts of the three levels of resist.

Mushrooms of Emergency make the player hallucinate, in addition to their other effects.

AH! So the code for hallucination is still there! That was all I was really looking for...thou I will likely add the mushrooms of hallucination back for my friends who enjoy that thing. 8)

[TheHairyOne]

And one more possible bug....

Is there anything stopping a no sell character from giving their sell items to a character that isnt flagged no sell?

[Derakon]

And one more possible bug....

Is there anything stopping a no sell character from giving their sell items to a character that isnt flagged no sell?

I would think that no-sell would be a server-wide setting, not a per-character setting. It dictates the behavior of the shopkeepers and the generation of dungeons / monster drops, neither of which is specific to the PC.

If you find you're getting more money with selling than without, then that probably just means that you're used to returning to town very frequently to sell things. One of the goals of no-selling was to keep the player in the dungeon for longer, since that's where the meat of the game is. No-selling had to be calibrated against some frequency of town visits; if you go to town more often (with selling), then you'll have more money. That doesn't mean that you're supposed to have that much money or that no-selling is miscalibrated.

Vanilla's permanent resists for the basic 4 + poison cut damage to 1/3rd (multiply by .33), and if you have both permanent and temporary then the cut is to 1/9th (multiply by .11).