[Announce] NPPAngband and NPPMoria 8.0.1 (Qt Port) released

[nppangband]

There was a post, but it didn't get any replies so it fell off the main page after a day or so.

In any event, 8.0.3 is out, which runs much more smoothly than 8.0.1.

[jevansau]

I was playing 8.0.1 as I didn't realise that 8.0.2 was available. There was no post announcing its release.

This was a vault artifact quest, not a greater vault. I think this was my second or third one. I guess it was quite a long session.

[nppangband]

Got another corrupt savefile. Completed a vault quest and recalled. Got an error about npp wanting to terminate in an unusual way. When I try to load the save file it is corrupt. It gives the error Invalid player level (0).

Again, sorry about the crash. At this point it should take something pretty unusual for that to happen.

Whatever caused the game to crash interrupted the game in mid-save. The savefile is reads normally up to a point (For example, the last message in the message log is "You feel yourself yanked upwards!), but then a little after that the game starts reading only empty strings and zeroes.

Were you playing NPP 8.0.1 or NPP 8.0.2? The savefile indicates 8.0.1. The update for 8.0.2 has some important updates for preventing memory leaks. Was this crash at the end of a long game playing session?

Is this the same vault quest from the previous savefile crash? If so, did you succeed in completing the vault quest? I will need to try to re-create the crash. How many vault quests have you done, and have you had problems on all of them?

By the way, after the release of 8.0.2 I came across an obscure bug where a monster near a destroyed area (from casting earthquake, for example) that is fleeing from the player causes the game to crash. That has been fixed, and I am about to release 8.0.3 after I see if I can duplicate or fix the crash you had above.

[jevansau]

Got another corrupt savefile. Completed a vault quest and recalled. Got an error about npp wanting to terminate in an unusual way. When I try to load the save file it is corrupt. It gives the error Invalid player level (0).

[jevansau]

If you'll take a feature request - a larger or expandable house would be great. Especially with randarts, the house feels very constricted. NPP's quests encourage having alternate sets of gear, making the issue worse.

[jevansau]

I am having a tough time imagining how that first greater vault level could have been created, unless the vault template had plain, ordinary squares where the player could start on the level. The game hung trying to find a suitable spot to place the player when the level is generated.

This makes sense as it was the bubbles vault - lots of empty squares.

Thanks for the UI hints too - they work well.

[nppangband]

I'm glad you found the cause of that bug so quickly. Odd in that it was my second GV quest. The first was a bubbles vault, so very lucrative. Is there any restriction on which GV's can be used, or is it just a random selection?

Actually, thank you! A savefile makes things easy to find & fix. Recreating a bug from a description that is the challenging part. I played through a bit of your greater vault quest as well. I won't spoil it for you but it looked a little too fun to pass up (assuming you use the savefile you uploaded and head down the stairs on the first turn).

As for a restriction on the vault, not that I know of. The bug was a line of code that did the opposite of what it should have done. I am having a tough time imagining how that first greater vault level could have been created, unless the vault template had plain, ordinary squares where the player could start on the level. The game hung trying to find a suitable spot to place the player when the level is generated.

Is there a direct interface to the squelch settings? It would be nice to be able to go through this systematically, not just item by item.

You can do this in the object knowledge screen. You can also edit the ego-item squelch settings in the ego-item knowledge screen.

What is on the to-do list, is a central quality squelch dialog where the player can directly edit the quality squelch settings by object type. That fell through the cracks when making the QT port.

How to look at floor stacks - so far, all I've found is to go to the square and use i. This is tedious.

You can right-click on the square with a mouse. Having an object list window open also does a pretty good job of letting you know what objects are nearby.

Is there another interface that is missing?

[jevansau]

I'm glad you found the cause of that bug so quickly. Odd in that it was my second GV quest. The first was a bubbles vault, so very lucrative. Is there any restriction on which GV's can be used, or is it just a random selection?

Not bugs, but there are a couple of things I am still struggling with:
How to look at floor stacks - so far, all I've found is to go to the square and use i. This is tedious.
Is there a direct interface to the squelch settings? It would be nice to be able to go through this systematically, not just item by item.

[nppangband]

Found another bug - descending to a greater vault quest level causes a hang - I've attached a savefile at the top of stairs - > to hang.

Came as a bit of a shock - first major issue I've seen for a while.

Thank you for the savefile. That made it easy to find. It was a careless cut-and-paste error while creating the QT port where the game got hung waiting for a value to be TRUE, and it was being marked as FALSE instead. Any greater vault level would cause the game to freeze.

I was planning on releasing an updated version today, but I am glad this fix got in there first.

[jevansau]

Found another bug - descending to a greater vault quest level causes a hang - I've attached a savefile at the top of stairs - > to hang.

Came as a bit of a shock - first major issue I've seen for a while.

[nppangband]

One thing I've noticed is that the supply of unenchanted missiles is quite low. I think I much prefer the vanilla system of unlimited, and I thought NPP used to be the same way.

There were some items permanently in stock in NPP including arrows, but it was probably overkill and the whole feature removed. But arrows should be kept in stock. I will add that back.

[nppangband]

It's good to hear things are getting better. I believe the crash issue related to forest terrain is fixed for good.

I will be putting out an update in a couple more days once I work out a couple more minor issues. But it is an important update as QT can leave some memory leaks if the dialog boxes are assembled in a certain manner. I have gone through the source code and done a massive search-replace for any potential memory leaks.

Technical explanation for anyone who is interested: When a dialog box is created in Qt, it is much easier to create all the widgets using the memory heap (widgets created in the memory stack self-delete once the function is exited, even if the dialog box still exists). QT is good about deleting widgets sand freeing the heap memory when when the dialog box is deleted (not quite garbage collection, but it is close). But if the coder is not careful, Qt does leave dangling pointers. This probably isn't as big of a deal for other programs as it is for *Angband. Since dialog boxes pop up so frequently in *Angband, things are probably a mess during a long playing session. I think that is what is causing the crashes. All pointers to widgets now change and point to NULL when the widget is deleted.

[jevansau]

I had another almost pristine wilderness level without any issues. Stability in general seems much better with 8.0.1. I've been a bit paranoid with save file copies, but haven't needed them so far.

One thing I've noticed is that the supply of unenchanted missiles is quite low. I think I much prefer the vanilla system of unlimited, and I thought NPP used to be the same way.

[jevansau]

I had an auto-inscription of @0 on unenchanted arrows. These arrows were picked up after converting to 8.0.1. They originally looked OK, but I noticed some time later they had become corrupted.
I dumped the affected ammo in the dungeon and removed the auto-inscription and things seem OK for now.

I might test the auto-inscription again, since I think it was applied at 8.0.0 and see if it will work OK now.

[nppangband]

Hi,

looks like inscriptions aren't fixed, or importing from 8.0.0 doesn't correct the underlying problem.

I've attached a screenshot showing corrupted inscriptions and the matching save file. Hope this helps.

Importing the savefile from 8.0.0 won't correct the current inscriptions. If I am reading this correctly, you loaded the character in NPP 8.0.1, cleared the bad inscription, started playing, and it came back?

Just curious, why is the ammo inscribed with #ffffff? One of the possible memory leak scenarios in 8.0.0 was where the ammo inscription in the next slot contained the letter 'f'.