[Announce] PosChengband 6.0.0 Released

[MITZE]

Shop Bug

Shops now will keep worthless items in their inventory if you sell such things to them.

[MITZE]

Museum Bug

Items donated to the Museum are not automatically *identified*, nor are they *identified* upon e'x'amination.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Bug in 5.0.5 (probably in 6.0.0 too):
When you enter dlvl 99 for the first time, there's no message to announce that the level is guarded by Oberon. The same bug when entering dlvl 100 for the first time - no message announcing you have to defeat The Serpent J.

Those are common knowledge, but for announcement purposes, the official reminders should be displayed. Having played intensely for hours, one could easily forget that there would be Oberon / Serpent on the level

--------------------------
Different question:
Does anyone know for sure if it is possible to attempt the Node quests in Zul while being a Skillmaster? Of course, there's one way to find out

[TheQuest]

Chris, may I suggest some additions:

• in pets menu rename "no breeding" to "pets do breeds?"
• add "move to location" to pets menu so to command pets/summons to move to certain location to scout area, for example

[HugoVirtuoso]

Bug:
Eric the Usurper and Old Man Willow can spawn outside of their respective town quests. If killed prior to their quests, they can still re-spawn in the quests as if nothing happened.

[wobbly]

I've had bull gates as an angband quest before too, similar thing

[Ironshod Al]

Feature request?
Is there a way to toggle 'g' to work as in 5.0.5? Preferably during the game. It is a wonderful feature, but in some situations it is not great to have @ automatically running around picking up stuff.

Here's an example: When I fight Smeagol he is sometimes invisible. I know he's there and I want to pick up some of my ammo or an item, but in a controlled fashion. Pressing 'g' when Smeagol is invisible will send my character all over the place until Smeagol becomes visible again. In some cases he will get a chance to steal from me and teleport away.

I tested ',' and 'w' in town, but ',' didn't pick up anything (just told me I was standing on a pebble) and 'w' requires you to be next to an item to pick it up. In some cases I want to grab what is directly beneath me.
Ammo has auto-pickup unless you're out of ammo, but picking up the first pebble using 'g' makes @ run around to pick up all the other pebbles.

A related problem, but not a big one:
Before setting up the auto-picker, gold is still considered worth picking up. As such, pressing 'g' to pick up ammo (will normally only pick up the pebble beneath @ when auto-picker isn't configured) @ will ignore all ammo in room and run straight for the gold. After that I can go back and grab the ammo one pebble at a time.

A funny observation:
'g' ignores creeping coins. Even if I haven't encountered the monster before.

[HugoVirtuoso]

To get the 'g' command to work like in 5.0.5, just disable the following options (via '=' then Input Optoins '1'):

auto_get_ammo
auto_get_objects

Disable both actually so you clearly know

'g' is supposed to not pick up the 'creeping coin' anyways, but it's a monster anyway

[Ironshod Al]

Thanks. I'll try that at some point. Easter holidays are coming up, so it may be possible to get a full day for gaming at some point. This would make 6.0.0 playable as I don't have to save.

I'm aware that creeping coins are monsters, but just found it funny that it was so obvious that 'g' didn't bother picking it up considering how eager it is to always pick up $.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Apparently, the standard artifact, 'High Preist of Morlok' has a typo ... it should say, 'High Priest of Morlok.'

[wobbly]

Noticed something odd fight Fangorn. Ents can't dig! Seems like something they should have.

[HugoVirtuoso]

[From 5.0.5, but I'm sure applies to 6.0.0 too]

1)
Found an undocumented trick while navigating through options via '=':

't' is a yes/no toggle

2)
And notably this (not necessarily a bug/glitch, but this happened to me by chance):
If you get killed by an exploding magical device, the death chardump and tombstone will say, killed by "uncontrollable power storm."

[HugoVirtuoso]

Noticed something odd fight Fangorn. Ents can't dig! Seems like something they should have.

I'm sure Fangorn and the fellow Ents should be able to bore through trees (if not already, they should in future versions). But, to bore through granite walls, hmm...good question...

On a different topic:
There should be a re-implementation of side-by-side simultaneous two weapons comparison in some form. We used to have this feature at a Weaponmaster store in one of the towns in the PCB 1.x era...but well...not anymore.

[Pete Mack]

Video evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw0jwrWqOKI

I'm sure Fangorn and the fellow Ents should be able to bore through trees (if not already, they should in future versions). But, to bore through granite walls, hmm...good question...

[chris]

Version 6.0.2 is now available in the usual spot (https://sites.google.com/site/poschengband/home).

I just noticed that the last 6.0.0 Windows release was unable to reload savefiles. I did test, but not enough to notice the bug and I always run Linux these days. Sorry for the mistake. Also, I see that Windows Security Center is deleting msvcr100.dll for some reason, causing the Poschengband.exe not to run. While preventing programs from running does make your system more secure, it probably makes it less useful. I'll try to resolve this issue but it might take me a bit to figure out as my Windows partition no longer touches the internet. Probably, I just need to find an updated version of the C runtime redistribution. For 6.0.2, I switched to msvcr110.dll ... maybe that will make a difference. But probably not as I haven't patched my Windows in quite some time.

For the future, I'd like to build using mingw like Vanilla does, but I don't know what I am doing. You'll just need to bear with me while I grope about for a solution. Perhaps someone can step up and provide a more stable Windows build in the meantime if this 6.0.2 release is still having issues? You really should just be able to dump in an updated msvcr*.dll to fix the issue, but the number (formerly 100 but now 110) must match the version that Poschengband.exe was linked against.

Other changes:
[1] Wow, I just tried out clouded's new monster list (elliposchengband). I think I managed all the new monsters except that Dor and Michael the Overlord. I enjoyed them, so I've added them as is. Thanks for the contribution! You'll find the game is now a bit longer and more difficult, and you'll need quite a bit more healing to survive. Some re-balancing may be required ...

[2] I grabbed a few commits from elliposchengband, which I get in a round-a-bout way from a poschengband R repository I happen to have locally cloned. Not sure if it is up to date ... These include "The X resists" patch, the RF3_NONLIVING patch for monster lore, the replacement artifact level patch, a tweak to artifact ring generation, and a patch to allow WILD_ONLY uniques to show up in the no_wilderness option. There might have been a few other patches that I grabbed as well. Check the git log for details and thanks for the bug-fixes and improvements!

[3] Also from elliptic was the idea to mix random and standard arts. He did an option for 50% replacement, but I decided to let you choose the amount (from 0% to 100% in 10% increments). I really like this option.

[4] Riding skillmasters no longer receive the -30 to hit archery penalty once they have enough skill points.

[5] Staves of Genocide are now deeper, making them much less likely to be found. You only need one, of course, but don't expect them every game.

[6] By request, randomized birth has been returned. Press '*' at any of the birth menus (I didn't test this too much, though).

[7] I started to look at Rune Knights (it is one of elliptic's major changes) and added documentation and a few minor changes. But I do think they need to keep their mana as it is the only check on unlimited rune creation. I haven't found them to be outrageously OP, but I also haven't played them too often (and certainly not to endgame). Comments?