Z+Angband 0.2.0 (alpha) released!

[ekolis]

Pretty sure I was using 'x'...

[RogerN]

Very nice work. I'm enjoying the new quest system so far. About time someone picked up Z development, even if unofficially!

[Mangojuice]

Patches coming / known issues.

Around the middle of next week, I'm going to post a patch that will fix many of the irritating simple bugs in the game right now. Things that will be fixed:

* Farm quests will work properly
* Bounty quests will work properly
* "X and its followers" quests will complete properly
* Will no longer be possible to WoR into a completed/failed quest.
* Bug fix that causes certain amulets & rings to almost always become artifacts.
* Symmetric levels will (almost always) be connected now.
* Avoid irrelevant "Nothing answers your summons" message for conjuration magic.
* Implement buying food in farms: didn't work.
* Bug fix: scrolls of summon / staff of summon should ID themselves.
* Cut down on summon durations; implemented pet kills giving you (small) experience.
* Remove buggy "Lite of Brightness." May try to fix in a future version.
* Remove "Built rooms[Y/N]" prompt.
* Fixed LUA script for scroll of detect invisible
* Fix theme dungeon creation to avoid stupid-looking doors in dumb places.
* Developed 8x8 "hack" graphics kit to make dungeon walls more distinct.
* Make Zymurgists not as powerful; make Mage Guild membership better.
* Make Libraries less expensive

If anyone has any other easy-to-fix issues to report, please do so soon!

[Mangojuice]

Warning: Read this! (I need your help)

I've discovered (in Windows at least) a nasty bug that can sometimes cause a "panic save" when walking around the wilderness.

I STRONGLY recommend that players back up their save file frequently when exploring the wilderness, because this panic save actually ruins your savefile. I really want to debug this, btw, but I don't actually have a savefile that produces the bug reliably to work from, because of the way this destroys the savefile. So if someone encounters this bug and has a backup save file that can reproduce it, I'd much appreciate it!

[ekolis]

Browsing the spell "Malediction", I see that "unholy holy fire" (wtf?!) deals double damage to evil creatures (wtf?!) and destroy cursed objects... a few things seem wrong here! :P

edit: The "wrong spells in shop's spellbooks" thing reported earlier seems to only occur when I'm playing a class that has more than one school of magic available during the game, such as a Mage or a Priest...

edit2: ... or not! It seems to occur when I browse Death spellbooks as a Life magic using character or vice versa.

edit3: also, something seems to be wrong with the running algorithm... running through a winding corridor for the first time is OK, but the second time, since not all corners have been fully explored, my character keeps on stopping, which is quite annoying! This seems to occur regardless of the running options I have set...

edit4: The description for "resist poison" also contains the description for "enslave undead"... :P

[Mangojuice]

Browsing the spell "Malediction", I see that "unholy holy fire" (wtf?!) deals double damage to evil creatures (wtf?!) and destroy cursed objects... a few things seem wrong here! :P

edit: The "wrong spells in shop's spellbooks" thing reported earlier seems to only occur when I'm playing a class that has more than one school of magic available during the game, such as a Mage or a Priest...

edit2: ... or not! It seems to occur when I browse Death spellbooks as a Life magic using character or vice versa.

edit3: also, something seems to be wrong with the running algorithm... running through a winding corridor for the first time is OK, but the second time, since not all corners have been fully explored, my character keeps on stopping, which is quite annoying! This seems to occur regardless of the running options I have set...

I will fix the "unholy holy fire" typo. The rest of that information is correct, and it's kind of interesting: you can use the malediction spell as a very weak form of pseudo-id. The malediction spell uses the same elemental type as Hellfire, which does indeed hit evil creatures extra hard.

I've now confirmed the spellbook browsing bug, and I'll look into it. (It happens all the time, in a store or not. Of course, it's not really critical since the other book is never one you can cast from, but it is still confusing. It only happens with priests, paladins, or monks.)

Running: It's on my to-do list, but for a future version. The game basically ignores the cut corners and explore unknown corners options, and doesn't take your light radius into account. It's an inherited bug from recent versions of Zangband: basically, the running code doesn't properly explore corners if you are wielding a torch (but it works fine with a lantern). I will at some point try to upgrade the codebase in this area but it's a more complicated fix than it sounds like, so I won't be able to fix that by next week. In the meantime, consider it extra incentive to get a Brass Lantern

Edit: Resist Poison / Enslave Undead description: will fix.

[ekolis]

Heh, evil magic that hits evil creatures harder? I'd think it would hit *good* creatures harder, or evil creatures less, or something... I guess evil magi truly are evil!

[Svladd Cjelik]

More Z. Awesome.

[ekolis]

Looks like enemy missiles are shown even while the player character is blinded...

[Mangojuice]

Looks like enemy missiles are shown even while the player character is blinded...

Sounds like an inherited bug. I'll put that one on the back burner. What OS are you using? And what graphics package?

[ekolis]

Windows Vista with ASCII (no graphics).