PWMAngband 1.1.11 released

[TheHairyOne]

Its a birth option. For Angband that makes perfect sense. For multiplayer not so much. It also brings up the question of what happens if you have two characters hunting together who have different options set for sell vs no sell.

As far as the money goes...maybe the extra dungeon time you get while I am selling makes up some of the difference. And I can see the appeal. But I also like the shopping side of things, which is much more important in a multiplayer setting as well.

[PowerWyrm]

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.

The problem with no selling in PWMAngband is that you still have certain items that are so rare and so useful for your build that you may consider placing an order in the Expensive Black Market to get them. For example, Sorcerors will require Gloves of the Magi at high level to get a decent mana pool, and the last book Power of Ancient Sorcerors to be able to do decent spell damage. These items are very uncommon and usually sold for over a million gold in the XBM. From what I've seen in regular MAngband, you will accumulate roughly 300-400k gold before level 50... which is far from sufficient in PWMAngband. Furthermore, if you want to store items for trading with other players, you will have to buy large houses in the town suburb... which may cost up to a couple million gold too. Considering that every high-end ego weapon you find (westie, HA...) can be sold for 20-30k, it's way faster to accumulate money by setting back the no selling option to false.

[PowerWyrm]

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.

Dying drains 50% of your xp, so yes, your level becomes yellow.

Digging and Searching are now repetitive keys, so you actually search/dig 10 times. If you want to interrupt searching/digging, you need to press Escape. This is kinda annoying, I'll see if I can fix that...

When your level is displayed in yellow, you gain xp normally unless it's also drained (then you get only 10%).

[PowerWyrm]

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?

Nothing. As a no sell character, you cannot SELL items to other players (you cannot open player stores, you cannot flag items as "sellable", and so on). But you can always GIVE items to other players. That, of course, is called cheezing and is usually not tolerated in any MAngband variant... I know that MAngband has a logging system that logs every transaction (the system is also implemented in PWMAngband, but you need the server admin to parse the logs periodically), and that admins may delete characters that use cheezing techniques.

[PowerWyrm]

Its a birth option. For Angband that makes perfect sense. For multiplayer not so much. It also brings up the question of what happens if you have two characters hunting together who have different options set for sell vs no sell.

As far as the money goes...maybe the extra dungeon time you get while I am selling makes up some of the difference. And I can see the appeal. But I also like the shopping side of things, which is much more important in a multiplayer setting as well.

This is debatable. Currently, no selling only affects gold drops... so diving in a party with a no selling character will help getting more gold from drops. And you can always use the character that is allowed to sell to get more gold from selling loot. It should probably be a server option, but I wouldn't want to force every player on a server to play with either selling or no selling, that's why I keep it as a birth option like in Angband.

[TheHairyOne]

Nothing. As a no sell character, you cannot SELL items to other players (you cannot open player stores, you cannot flag items as "sellable", and so on). But you can always GIVE items to other players. That, of course, is called cheezing and is usually not tolerated in any MAngband variant... I know that MAngband has a logging system that logs every transaction (the system is also implemented in PWMAngband, but you need the server admin to parse the logs periodically), and that admins may delete characters that use cheezing techniques.

I have no intention of policing this, even thou I am sure a few of my players will take advantage of it...if they even notice the No-Sell option which will be off by default. I am not going to advertise it. But given that most of my players will want stores, I doubt many would play with it anyway.

As far as tolerating cheezing goes, I trust my player base. However, we have all agreed that in cases such as this, such cheezing is allowable. If I don't want that, I just disable the No-Sell option and its gone. If I choose to leave it in, then it is fair game for my players. *shrug*

I am actively playing MAngband right now on the mangband.org server with a L37 Warrior. In a 30 minute run, I walk away with a minimum of 50k profit, average closer to 75k, and had a 1hr run that netted me 500k once. I currently have 2mil banked (the Ring of Speed +13 for 2.6mil is just inches away), a house worth 500k, and I have bought 3mil worth in items from player vendors alone already.

Play style, risk taking, how effectively you parse loot...these all play a big role in how much money you get per hour in EITHER system (ok, not the loot parsing for No-Sell, OC). I tend to play a risky style, die more, but my return per hour is generally higher than the others I play with.

The money works well as is in MAngband and I will tweak things towards those numbers. The money for No Sell isn't keeping up with what I would expect by a factor of 4-5. But my highest level char was 15 (currently a ghost in the dungeon).

[TheHairyOne]

Dying drains 50% of your xp, so yes, your level becomes yellow.

Digging and Searching are now repetitive keys, so you actually search/dig 10 times. If you want to interrupt searching/digging, you need to press Escape. This is kinda annoying, I'll see if I can fix that...

When your level is displayed in yellow, you gain xp normally unless it's also drained (then you get only 10%).

Interesting. Mangband doesnt yellow levels, only things that are fixable by items in the game.

I have been having problems with the action queue in PWMangband vs Mangband 1.1.2...might need to clear it automatically a bit more often or limit the max actions stored in it or something. It makes lag spikes particularly nasty around enemies.

You only get 10% XP when your XP is drained?!?! That seems pretty harsh. I consider XP drain one of the nastiest things to suffer from without such a penalty. I don't think mangband has this, but I haven't really looked that hard at it either. I tend to carry restore XP potions around so I dont lose XP like that.

[TheHairyOne]

This is debatable. Currently, no selling only affects gold drops... so diving in a party with a no selling character will help getting more gold from drops. And you can always use the character that is allowed to sell to get more gold from selling loot. It should probably be a server option, but I wouldn't want to force every player on a server to play with either selling or no selling, that's why I keep it as a birth option like in Angband.

I am guessing that the character that kills the monster determines if the monster drops as No_Sell or Sell.

I agree with your philosophy. I like giving the players options and I can see people being very passionate about their chosen option. The advantage of cheezing is maybe a 25% increase in your wealth per hour at best. I can live with that. Of course, I have yet to experience high levels in PWMangband so I don't know what the gold per run will look like Sell vs No-Sell.

[TheHairyOne]

I have alot going on with (PW)Mangband. I am posting here with lots of questions. If I am derailing the thread or bugging you too much, let me know. But I am also desperately trying to figure this all out and its been 15 years since I last modded an Angband variant. I will take all the help I am getting here gladly!

[Carnivean]

Play style, risk taking, how effectively you parse loot...these all play a big role in how much money you get per hour in EITHER system

How much money you receive is the result of a function in the code, which can be changed. This is not the question I think you should be answering.

That question is: If you had a choice between getting money by recalling into town, juggling inventory slots and working out which items provide value or between just playing through the dungeon and earning the same amount of money, which would you prefer?

I suspect that most people prefer to be exploring and killing and looting. If you don't get enough money doing this with no-sell on, then adjust the function so that you do.

[Derakon]

You only get 10% XP when your XP is drained?!?! That seems pretty harsh. I consider XP drain one of the nastiest things to suffer from without such a penalty. I don't think mangband has this, but I haven't really looked that hard at it either. I tend to carry restore XP potions around so I dont lose XP like that.

You get 10% to your max XP and 100% to your current XP, so that you can eventually have your current catch up to your max.

Experience is the most plentiful resource in the dungeon, so I never worried all that much about it being drained. I've been quietly agitating for a while for vampires, nether, etc. to instead temporarily (like, for 25+d50 turns) drain character levels.

[TheHairyOne]

How much money you receive is the result of a function in the code, which can be changed. This is not the question I think you should be answering.

That question is: If you had a choice between getting money by recalling into town, juggling inventory slots and working out which items provide value or between just playing through the dungeon and earning the same amount of money, which would you prefer?

I suspect that most people prefer to be exploring and killing and looting. If you don't get enough money doing this with no-sell on, then adjust the function so that you do.

Some people are fighters, some people are shoppers. *shrug* To each their own! I will probably look at the numbers, but I will probably only tweak them if I have to make changes to the Sell side of things. I will assume y'all knew what you were doing when you implemented those numbers until someone complains about it. hehe

Actually, with the current numbers I think the cheeze factor is managable, so maybe things are just fine as is for a multiplayer server with both options available.

[TheHairyOne]

Modding related questions:

1) I hear I can just add classes/races in the appropriate file, increase the max in constants and it will all just work. Is this true? It sure as heck isn't for Mangband!

2) Same for Objects, Egos, Artifacts, and Monsters? Will they be accounted for automatically in spawns and drops?

3) Where are stat bonuses defined? There used to be a file in the /src/server called tables.c. I can't find it.

4) I noticed some of the races now come with a racial flag (Orc, Troll, Giant, Animal, Thunderlord, Dragon). Where are these defined and what do they do? And how hard would it be to add new ones?

5) How do I do a Custom Town layout? Is it possible to do a custom dungeon level? (ie L120 always looks like XXX)

6) Quoted from the constants file:

# Maximum dungeon level; must be at least 100.
# Setting it below 128 may prevent the creation of some objects.
world:max-depth:128

What exactly does this mean? I was hoping to add some custom design levels for some of the deeper content, but I am not sure there are enough levels post 100 to satisfy my urges! 8)

[Nick]

My answers are for V, but are likely to apply for PWMangband.

1) I hear I can just add classes/races in the appropriate file, increase the max in constants and it will all just work. Is this true? It sure as heck isn't for Mangband!

True, except you don't even have to do anything to constants

2) Same for Objects, Egos, Artifacts, and Monsters? Will they be accounted for automatically in spawns and drops?

Should be.

3) Where are stat bonuses defined? There used to be a file in the /src/server called tables.c. I can't find it.

Most of them are in player-calcs.c, with a couple in player-spell.c. Also you should be able to add charisma back just by adding an additional line in list-stats.h - in theory, anyway. I'd actually be interested to hear how that goes.

6) Quoted from the constants file:

# Maximum dungeon level; must be at least 100.
# Setting it below 128 may prevent the creation of some objects.
world:max-depth:128

What exactly does this mean? I was hoping to add some custom design levels for some of the deeper content, but I am not sure there are enough levels post 100 to satisfy my urges! 8)

Not 100% sure, but I think you can probably increase it as much as you like without any ill effects. Again, interested to find out

[TheHairyOne]

Is there anything preventing you from making more than one item with the same name?

For example, can you have two different types of base Longsword, but with different properties?