[Announce] PosChengband 7.0.0 Released

[PowerWyrm]

Porschengband

Now I know what I want in the next version: cars!

[Nivim]

[...]

This sounds like one of those things that should have been in private messages instead in the thread, but then debo's post might not have been quite as good or comprehensive— tradeoffs.

To corroborate, I'm one of those people that watched clouded's termcast enough to say; the reason clouded was annoyed with device changes was because he was already annoyed with the vanilla (6.*) level of hassle some characters had getting devices online.

So am I, for that matter, but I also think it's appropriate that brawn characters need +Md to use powerful tools they didn't train for; I'd probably just smooth out the device changes instead of getting rid of them... or make it so +Md can be found more reliably, since it usually means sacrificing [M with amulet slots or sacrificing +slaying/brands with glove slots, regardless. (Also now Free Action, I guess.)

Current theory for the display bug is that it has something to do with compiler differences or files leftover from previous versions that didn't update correctly.

[1] "Super batshit crazy" was never my design intent. Quite the exact opposite, actually. I guess I really need to write something up on my goals and views. If people knew more about my intentions, they'd be less puzzled by changes. Also, they would understand that what they want to play might not be what I want to build. That's OK. I really think there is opportunity for forking this variant and doing something more crowd pleasing. I would actually encourage this.

Ah, yeah— you see— stuff like Sexy Android Berserker or "you can play as the One Ring! Not someone wearing it, but the Ring itself!" is kinda how a lot of people got introduced to the game, followed by getting hooked on how there's such a great variety of choices that if one interesting character dies you can immediately start on a new one with radically different mechanics and balance.

There's overpowered things like Psion, mid-power things like Diggermaster, or low-power things like Hexmage or (non-U-discounting) Warlock, and they all have completely different playstyles and perspectives on the game, thus collectively making most other variants look bland and over-balanced by comparison.

Then there's Possessor; one of the reasons Hugo played so many Possessors is because Poschengband has the best Possessors out of the few games that even have them— they offer plenty of variety each game, they aren't broken, buggy, or unfinished, they're strong, and they have plenty of silly little details that another variant would just... simplify away.

I would not be surprised if most players (were all of them to read your post) failed to reconcile your perspective and their brightest memories of playing.

You might not have intended the game to be so, but your work was successful enough that it took on some life of its own.

[spoiler]I could have guessed your original intentions, myself, but failed to; I thought 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x represented a slow but novel shift in your design philosophy rather than you attempting to return to your original goals.[/spoiler]

[debo]

You are explicitly telling me to not play your game, I will comply with your request

I don't think we all need to start piling on chris because he showed one moment of human frailty after spending two straight years cranking out a variant that is arguably more popular than Vanilla (sorry Nick.)

I also think clouded has contributed a ton of stuff not just to poscheng, but many other variants as well. I've also learned a lot by watching him on said termcasts, although he probably still thinks I'm a total scrub. Yes, his online persona is a bit edgelordy sometimes but I'm very happy to have him around. I have also personally maintained changes in my own variant branches before, and I never felt the need to announce them every time. The oook ladder isn't a sacred place. Hell, I wasn't even that picky about that sort of thing when I was running the comps.

I'll note that people rarely had much of a leg to stand on when they argued about what they wanted in Sil, because it was such a huge departure (was not seen to have a heritage) and half clearly expressed what the design philosophy was up-front.

Porschengband is very clearly a hengband descendant with way cooler stuff added, and indeed most of the early versions of poscheng added a lot of zany things (possessors, rings, etc.) I would have described hengband as "super batshit crazy", and since poscheng appeared to be amplifying that in the first few releases, that's the philosophy I ascribed to it. Maybe it's time to make it clear somewhere central what poscheng's core intended flavor really is?

Anyhow, I think the idea of cutting all the options that are obscuring intent is a good one. At worst, someone will fork from 6.x or elli and go in a different direction, and maybe people will really get a chance to see if the direction poscheng is taking will work out. I do have my doubts about pitching a variant that discourages diving to the angband community, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[clouded]

This is pretty funny. I have some changes I've never really mentioned like removing ambushes and dungeon guardians but I haven't changed anything with staves of healing. By the way, for years I have broadcasted my poschengband games on termcast.org and an irc channel of people have watched me play, there are several people here more reputable than a scumlord like me who can prove my innocence.

Edit: Out of curiosity I went into devices.c and changed EFFECT_HEAL_CURING to a level 1 effect. What this seems to do is cause all DL1 staves to be cure wounds, and seemingly no DL80 staves to be healing. Pretty bad deal, why would I want to do that? Also, in the character sheet these level 1 healing staves aren't even listed as "Cure Wounds" in the item tallies. This display bug is present all the way back to 4.0.0 for me because that is when this item tracker was added to dumps. It also shows up on the one poschengband-r game I won, which I didn't modify at all.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I will be dropping clouded's contributions from the next version.

Does this mean you're going to say goodbye to the awesome Lite Town you implemented?

[Derakon]

Or, which of the following do you think is true:
(a) *Identify* is stupid since it means I have to *Identify* every single object I find! At least with easy_id, Identify becomes *Identify* instantaneously. -or-
(b) With the 5.0 lore system, Identify becomes *Identify* ... gradually and over time. Players earn their lore. But the time over which this occurs is not oppressive. Play the game thru just once and then the next player (same savefile) basically just needs to *id* rand-arts (Forget about devices for a moment)?

Speaking as someone who hasn't played PosChengband in a long time, but has played an awful lot of roguelikes in general, I can say with good confidence that I just flat-out don't like having to identify items, and I have never seen a game that handles unidentified gear in a way that I felt was a net positive to the game -- Vanilla included! There are absolutely niche circumstances where having things in your pack that you don't know what they do can be an interesting issue, but they are always vastly outweighed by the tedium of having to figure out what all these items do before you can use them.

And that last statement is probably the most significant -- I'm not willing to use an item that might be cursed, or a potion that might be poisonous, etc. It's almost always a pointless risk with only marginal benefits.

As a player, my style is to break a game apart into a collection of mechanics, analyze those mechanics, and figure out how to use them best to succeed at the game. This is a very deconstructionist approach to games, and doesn't leave a lot of room for concepts that make neat stories but have ambivalent mechanistic effects. And under this approach, identification amounts to an extra action you have to take / consumable you have to use, with any item before you use it.

You can force players to engage with your mechanics. Vanilla tried to do this by removing magical identification altogether, so that the only way to ID items was by using them. There was a minor player rebellion, so mages got to keep their precious Identify spell. But in general I would say that, if you're going to come to me and say "look, please play the identification game the way I've implemented it", I will need a lot of convincing that your implementation amounts, mechanically, to anything more than "I must identify everything I find before I'm willing to use it." I'm not saying it's impossible, just that so many people in so many roguelikes have tried to do the identification game in so many different ways, and I've never felt that it was a positive addition to the game.

On the flipside, I've played Angband and variants of Angband where everything is just automatically identified as soon as you pick it up. For me, that makes the game far more fun. I can focus on the parts that I enjoy -- the tactics and strategy of dealing with a given set of monsters in a given set of terrain, and the gambling aspect of finding new items -- without dealing with a part that I really don't. From my perspective, having to identify items is a relic of a bygone era, only present out of inertia.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I found a reproducible bug in 7.0.0. This is probably still persistent in 7.0.1:
Summon traps crash the Thieves quest. How so? Hit a summon trap and then if you kill them all after you completed the quest (i.e. after killing the thieves), the game crashes with a software bug (i.e. CTD).

I don't know if this^ impacts any other town quest. Workaround: Just don't kill the last monster or get killed by it. IF the summon trap summons monsters BEFORE you kill the last thief and you kill them (i.e. the summoned monsters) BEFORE you kill the last thief (i.e. complete the Thieves quest), the crash doesn't happen.

Also this:
'<' command can be used for both entering and leaving the world map. Maybe a feature? Usually, '<' is supposed to be for only entering World Map.

[chris]

debo August 26, 2017 22:03
I do think the recent changes have missed the boat a bit, though. Poscheng was always attractive to me because it was basically the spinal tap of angband variants -- all dials turned to 11. It was nice to have Sil, which was lean and mean, balanced on the other extreme with poscheng, which was huge and mean. Now it seems we're starting to get finnickier about how people play the game, which is sad.

I'm still optimistic, though. At worst, someone will fork from v5 or v6 and take it further in the super batshit crazy direction.

Sorry, but I need to take exception with much that is said here as well as much that has been happening on oook for quite some time.

[1] "Super batshit crazy" was never my design intent. Quite the exact opposite, actually. I guess I really need to write something up on my goals and views. If people knew more about my intentions, they'd be less puzzled by changes. Also, they would understand that what they want to play might not be what I want to build. That's OK. I really think there is opportunity for forking this variant and doing something more crowd pleasing. I would actually encourage this.

[2] I really did not want to go into "finnickier about how people play the game", but feel compelled to do so by recent activity. I too am sad.

[2.1] That's just it, some people are not playing the game (I'm hoping it is just one player doing hidden mods). Anybody who is playing Poscheng, I have no problem with. Anybody can play this game any way they like. I my only wish is that they are having fun! Feedback is always welcome and criticisms too, but this variant is not crowd-sourced.

For example, I like Hugo ... he's rather entertaining! But I wouldn't say he is playing the game using the style for which it is designed. And if you think you can develop a variant without a target playstyle in mind, then you are "super batshit crazy" The most important decisions you make as a variant maintainer, imo, involve resource allocation and different playstyles need vastly different approaches. I assume a controlled descent approach, using ability to defeat uniques near their level as the controlling principle. I do not like "if you are getting you butt whooped on DL40, go deeper" as a playstyle, though it admittedly works much ... *much* better. And this is for *design*, not play. Play anyway you like. If I say a certain style is scummy, that is not a moral judgement and does not reflect in any way on the player or what they accomplish while playing. But don't expect design to change for any playstyle that differs from the intent. To repeat, you can and should play anyway you like. But it is impossible to vary the game design to suit all playstyles. Also, I feel it is OK for a VM to discourage certain actions such as stair skimming or what not. These tend to be things that I have all too much first hand experience with, having been a very "scummy" player myself. But they usually exploit some code weakness that is unnatural or unrealistic. For me, when I stopped doing these sorts of things, the game improved. My win/loss ratio, if I cared about it, certainly went down. My games became longer ... but more fun. I'm trying to do you a favor here

[2.2] I am ambivalent about Elliposchengband, et. al. What the players are doing is done openly, honestly, and I do see their point of view. Their changes are publicly available on github. I don't even mind if posts from their versions are done here, provided I know that they are (Recommendation: Simply change the Options section of the character sheet to say which mod version you are running. That way, players don't have to write disclaimers when posting). This is not being finnicky on my part. Rather, I need some sort of context when evaluating bugs, gameplay, etc.

However, it might be that these mod versions are doing a disservice to the game by steering new players to just not bother playing certain game options. Everybody has preconceived notions about the lore system and if there is an option to just turn it off, they will. I added the option under duress ... I think it should not exist, but felt that if I didn't add it, nobody will play the original source.

While removing object lore might not materially affect win/loss aspects of the game, it does affect the overall experience (e.g., I enjoy blindly using an identified cursed ego in the early game while in the dungeon without remove curse handy. That sort of stuff might be subtle, but enriches the game for me and perhaps others).

Let me ask this: Has anybody who plays easy_id actually tried to play with it off since 5.0? Or, which of the following do you think is true:
(a) *Identify* is stupid since it means I have to *Identify* every single object I find! At least with easy_id, Identify becomes *Identify* instantaneously. -or-
(b) With the 5.0 lore system, Identify becomes *Identify* ... gradually and over time. Players earn their lore. But the time over which this occurs is not oppressive. Play the game thru just once and then the next player (same savefile) basically just needs to *id* rand-arts (Forget about devices for a moment)?

The disservice is that people probably don't really know what the lore system is or how it works. And since there is an option to turn it off, they will just use that without taking any effort to learn more. Players not playing certain aspects of the game means those mechanics don't get any feedback and therefore do not get any improvement. Players who really know the new system, know that it really just means (forgetting devices and assuming stand arts) about 60 ?*ID* per game *and* are still unwilling to use it really should not be playing this variant as they most likely want some sort of streamlined powerdiving gameplay (OK, but wrong variant). I guess my point isn't that gee, if you can't put up with such a minor annoyance then this is the wrong variant for you. Rather, it is that if the lore system does not enrich your playing experience then this might be an early warning signal that this is the wrong variant for you. There is a lot of subtle design in this variant, much from heng (virtues, proficiencies, etc). And perhaps one can use their feelings about easy_id as a litmus test about whether this is the type of game they want to play.

Personally, I think there is a deeper issue here going on, one that might be better addressed by somebody stepping up and making a streamlined version, or whatever. If you find a large number of features to be meaningless, I really don't want them removed from PosChengband. And I really don't want a "shadow version" of the game that attracts all new players. Instead, I'd rather players at least try certain game features and then, perhaps, explain why they don't like this or don't like that. This might improve the game, or it might just be a difference of opinion about what the game should be. For example, I think the virtue system *must* be on all the time. It has subtle design effects on the gameplay and a few not so subtle effects that really, really *ought* to be experienced. First-hand ... not source dived and spoiled. Hengband was a game that was still surprising me after 6 years of heavy play. There was still stuff I didn't know. I'm trying for the same sort of experience, the same sort of design.

I also think that players who don't want this stuff, don't agree with the overall goals of this variant. That is OK. There are no wrong answers. I would not mind at all if someone forked this variant and did something fun and popular. I would actually encourage anyone who wants to do this to step up and just do it

In the future, I probably will remove a bunch of options. Consider this fair warning or, better yet, an inventation to step up now while there is still time. For example, vaults may be getting a *huge* adjustment sometime very soon. If you like the current vaults, better act fast! I only ask that any new fork not be posted under the Poschengband ladder, as it would confuse me.

I'll be taking a long break at this point to think things over as recent experiences here have been exhausting. I've been working like crazy on this variant for the last 2 years pretty much straight thru. Its not done yet and neither am I.

R&\r

[chris]

clouded August 10, 2017 11:59
Lazy removed, the lazy arts removed, the plain gold ring removed, blue mage removed, imitator removed, greater hell beast removed, the unicorn of order has 7000 HP and more yet unknown. the spirit of poschengband has been lost, perhaps version 6.1.0 and 7.0.0 should be the start of a new variant.

What exactly are you trying to acheive with this sort of post? Are you angry about something? Do you have a personal problem with me?

I definitely have a personal problem with you.

A short while back I noticed what looked like a bug in your character dumps. In particular, the stat section was displaying staves of healing as "Cure Wounds". Often you would have two such table entries, but mostly it was just one and since it was listed near destruction I thought it must really be "Healing". Trying to fix a bug, I noticed that the only explanation was that you were modding your version to make _Healing a very low level effect (between 1 and 14 when it should have been 60). No mention was ever made of this in you character dumps. No comment was ever made to my knowledge that you were going to start playing this way.

I don't mind if people mod their versions. But don't you think that elliptic or generic are setting an example for you? They *clearly* state what they are doing. However, they avoid major gameplay design changes (I think). It's not that I think people *must* play this game the way it is designed, but rather that I need to know what you are doing when evaluating the statements you offer, the suggestions you make, the criticisms you make, and the dumps you post. Modding _Healing to L1 would, I'm afraid, mean that I ignore you. And when I learned this is what you were doing, this is what I did.

But since you insist on some sort of naysaying campaign of sabotage, and since your influence here (unjustified imo) appears to matter, I feel compelled to address this. Since these claims ought not to be made lightly, I spent a couple of tedious hours offline looking at character dumps still present in my internet cache and found this one which I would guess to be the one were you first made the mod:
http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=18913 (donmai, Yeek Tourist by clouded 3/25/2016 4.0.1)

Ah, so you've been doing this all along, ever since 4.0.1. And things make more sense now.

At around this time, clouded was complaining about devices, healing in particular. I don't remember the particulars, but my take at the time was that here's another player with a scumming tactic lobbying for healing. Perhaps I was short with you? I don't remember. But I also don't remember any sort of argument either, and you usually don't argue anything, but assert, whine and that take snarky snipes when you don't get what you want. Anyway, you probably nagged me for a while, but then stopped. I assumed this meant you were playing the game, perhaps even adjusting your playstyle, perhaps improving it ... just like everybody else. But now I see that you decided to get what you want, be sneaky about the fact, and continue to pass yourself off as someone who is actually playing the game. And plenty of other players here manage to play just fine as far as I can see.

If this was all you did, I wouldn't overly care, and I wouldn't say anything. I don't see what you gain out of doing this sort of thing. Why not just play at home? Or, if you disagree with the game designer, why not create your own variant? I'd prefer the latter, and perhaps many other people would as well. But you know what really gets me? It's the fact that you have duped me for over a year and a half. More than any other player, I have bent over backwards trying to understand your comments and criticisms. I was taken in by the quantity and diversity and speed of your character dumps that happened at about this time and thought that hey, even if this guy rubs me the wrong way, he deserves consideration. Had I known what you were doing, I would have been spared much subsequent grief.

This sort of behavior is, I'm sorry, highly offensive to me. It's the sort of thing that really should have you booted from oook with all of your posts and dumps deleted. But this is pav's place, not mine, and I may be over-reacting. So I'll just ask you to leave. Continuing to post snipes and snarcs will only undermine the spirit of the community of those people who are actually willing to play the game. I will no longer read them.

I will be dropping clouded's contributions from the next version. This is a shame, but I really just want nothing to do with a person of such bad character.

[GenericPseudonym]

(7.0.0) So got breathed on by elder storm giant. Storm winds vs 4 levels of electrical resistance. From what I can tell from the log I got hit 3x for 700ish damage.

Not sure if it's meant to work like that? Does it hit that many times? Am I being teleported & landing in the radius & being hit again? The last lot of damage appears to hit me when I'm out of LOS behind a door.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21048

For the record, storm winds don't check elec resistance. At least in 6.0.0 and earlier, it was a nasty unresistable breath that capped out at 300 damage and had the same side effects as gravity.

Hitting you three times in one cast definitely sounds like unintended behavior, though.

[Fnord]

Completely minor convenience feature request: Show max reforge even when not having an artifact in inventory. Bonus feature: Directly use from home.

[Fnord]

Bite (Gravity)? That's annoying as hell. Not sure if that's a 7.x change, but... does melee really need it that much harder?

[wobbly]

(7.0.0) So got breathed on by elder storm giant. Storm winds vs 4 levels of electrical resistance. From what I can tell from the log I got hit 3x for 700ish damage.

Not sure if it's meant to work like that? Does it hit that many times? Am I being teleported & landing in the radius & being hit again? The last lot of damage appears to hit me when I'm out of LOS behind a door.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21048

[krazyhades]

Maybe that was just his way of telling you to be patient.

The end of patioence!?

[debo]

(7.0.0) yeah it's a bit ridiculous. Utgard-Loke just summoned Yibb-Tstll on me. As if Utgard wasn't bad enough already.

Maybe that was just his way of telling you to be patient.