FrogComposband 7.0.strawberry

[Sideways]

Now available (source code and precompiled Windows executable) here.

Note that the Windows-specific file only contains the .exe, so Windows players still need to download the source code for the library files; they just won't have to compile anything.

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Changes in FrogComposband 7.0.strawberry (compared to ComPosband 7.0.3):

* Rebalanced artifact reforging. The goal was to prevent silly-powerful items while still allowing very strong items (so a character can reasonably expect to use reforged items in the endgame and final fights). The importance of fame in reforging was reduced slightly to make early/mid-game reforging more appealing, though realistically reforging will likely remain mostly a late-game thing. Slot weights were also adjusted slightly, with effects on both reforging and randart creation. The hard cap of 90000 on the source artifact's power was removed, although stronger artifacts will still be treated as if they had a power of 90000, or even less for less weighty slots. This prevents situations in which a very strong item is effectively worse than a weaker item because it doesn't fit the player's needs directly and cannot ever be reforged. Reforging is now also slightly cheaper

* Rebalanced shop shuffling. The cheap shuffling introduced in ComPosband allowed characters to acquire silly piles of extremely powerful consumables very easily, as long as they found a dungeon shop and had enough money. The cheap shuffling has been retained, but many of the most powerful items (like !Healing, !*Healing*, !Life, stat potions, ?Genocide, ?MassGenocide and !NewLife) can no longer be generated on a shuffle. Also, Black Market shuffling is more expensive now

* Moved Thalos, and added a new town (Anambar) where Thalos used to be. Prettied up the Thalos map (and edited t_pref to include additional terrain types). Mt. Olympus is now slightly more accessible since Thalos is closer to it than any town was before (originally, I moved Thalos even closer to Mt. Olympus, but then I decided I didn't hate you players enough). There's an option to allow teleporting to Thalos as soon as any two other towns (including Outpost) have been visited (because I decided I didn't want you players to hate me either...!)

* Fixed an old PosChengband bug where quest seeds were lost on save/load, meaning players who exited the game after requesting a quest would receive a seed of 0 for that quest and consequently always get the first item from a list of supposedly random rewards

* Fixed another old PosChengband bug whereby uniques seen through fuzzy telepathy would sometimes acquire a stray "the" in front of their name (e.g. "The Gertrude dies.")

* Fixed an old bug with file handling on Windows

* Fixed several minor old bugs related to weapon slays (chaos weapons were getting massive extra damage against good monsters from the KILL_EVIL flag instead of the KILL_GOOD flag; the displayed damage for a KILL_HUMAN missile didn't match the actual damage; in the character sheet, the *Human* slay's statistics were displayed for weapons with KILL_LIVING rather than weapons with KILL_HUMAN)

* Updated the rumor list and silly name list

* Added a new realm (Law) and two new classes (Lawyer and Ninja-Lawyer)

* Added new monsters (and restored the deleted Egyptian gods)

* Added a few artifacts (and brought back the GHB's T-shirt)

* Added new random artifact names

* Added new quests (I actually feel like there may be too many early-game quests now; feedback on the number of quests, and quests [whether new or old] that players like or don't like, would be particularly welcome; of course, there is no need to attempt to do every quest in the game at depth)

* In ComPosband, if a quest level was buggy and didn't generate properly, the game would crash and the player would be forced to fail it on resuming play. In FrogComposband, while the game will still crash, the player can continue normally on resumption and can retake the quest after it has been fixed. This should make life easier for both developers and test-players

* Gave eldraks a significant buff, they are now stronger than ettins (consequently, swapped ettin and eldrak in the troll evolution sequence; however, player trolls still evolve into ettins rather than eldraks)

* A small number of monsters can now initiate melee attacks from 2 squares away. (Fair's fair - player samurai, dragons and archaeologists with whips can do this!) Currently the only monsters with this ability are large dinosaurs, novice archaeologists, balrogs, samurai, Godzilla and Jormungand. (Jormungand, who was a soft guardian for its depth, also received a number of other buffs; most notably, it now has the CAN_SWIM flag instead of the AQUATIC flag.)

* Made ninjas slightly less outrageous by nerfing Bunshin (which now gives a 1-in-3 chance of evading attacks, not 1-in-2) and Swap Position (which now requires perfectly clear line of sight) and changing their weight limit equation. The Swap Position nerf also affects the relevant mutation and wild talent (the weight limit change should not affect other classes with a weight limit, apart from ninja-lawyers)

* Restored the option of playing without virtues

* Fixed some typos here and there. (I know this will offend some people! But they can take solace in that there are still plenty left.)

* Buffed Lucifer and made him dungeon boss of Hell

* The name of Sultan the Midget was reverted back to Snafu the Midget (because of the one-Sultan rule - there's a sultan in Thalos)

* Players are now less likely to be ambushed by dangerous high-level sea monsters in coastal towns

* Added some alternatives for non-English keyboards to support play on angband.live: Y and Z for [ and {, Ctrl+Y for Ctrl+W, Ctrl+E for @ and Ctrl+O for ]

* Made free action stronger because Chris's system was somewhat confusing and unpopular, though the change here is not as big as what Gwarl did in ComPosband 7.0.4. 1 source of free action works the same in FrogComposband as in ComPosband 7.0.3 (and the last versions of PosChengband). 2 sources are slightly stronger in FrogComposband (and give total paralysis immunity against low-level monsters), and 3 sources give total immunity against all monsters, except in special cases like ty_curse

* Changed how cur SP is calculated after a change to max SP

* Restored the old non-fuzzy telepathy as an option. Chris's fuzzy telepathy is still the default

* Added an option (off by default) to force a -more- prompt on device/spell fails

* Attempts to charm a monster with the hidden NOPET flag now give the message "X is immune", rather than "X resists"; the NOPET flag is unpopular enough without it making players guess whether the monster has it or not. (It's also now slightly harder for monsters to acquire the NOPET flag.)

* Commented out the Windows pref file (font-win.prf). Windows users will notice this as a change to the default appearance of walls and mountains

* Various minor tweaks and code improvements

Changes copied or adapted from ComPosband 7.0.4:

* Added Gwarl's new quests and adopted some of his changes to existing quests

* The entrance to Hideout is now in Outpost, and the entrance to Icky Cave is now in Thalos

* Adapted the new acid floor

* Magic shop now sells offensive wands

* Moved Tidal Cave

* Battlefield's entrance guardian is now a black wraith instead of a grave wight

* Visual change to the appearance of Crystal Castle's glass floor

* Added Gwarl's buff to non-specialist riding

* Tweaked the depth and rarity of a number of items, especially dragon scale mails (but not quite to the same extent as in ComPosband 7.0.4)

* Tweaked a number of monsters

I haven't had the time to testplay this initial release quite as extensively as I would have liked. It ought to be okay bug-wise, but the new deep monsters may not have the ideal balance yet; I have tested them all repeatedly in wizard mode, but there's no real substitute for tackling them with an actual flesh-and-blood character at depth and seeing how it goes. So if it turns out that Muru-Siloch is even nastier than I intended it to be and will completely ruin your week, blame Gwarl

All suggestions and feedback, both positive and critical, will be highly welcome. I am particularly interested in whether people feel there are now too many quests in the early game and early mid-game (Gwarl and Hugo felt the number of quests is okay, but I still have misgivings). Dragon Slayer and The Volcano will probably be converted into late-game or late midgame quests in 7.0.peppermint.

Good luck, have fun, and don't die!

[HugoVirtuoso]

So far, my only gripe is the "change to the default appearance of walls and mountains". How do I change to the way it was in PCB-Vanilla without having to re-compile?

Here's a link to what I mean: https://ibb.co/c10ZXn
Left - VanillaPCB 7.0.2
Right - FrogComposband 7.0.strawberry

[Sideways]

So far, my only gripe is the "change to the default appearance of walls and mountains". How do I change to the way it was in PCB-Vanilla without having to re-compile?

You can undo this change (which only affects Windows players) by either 1) editing lib/pref/font-win.prf and removing the # signs from in front of all lines that start with #F:, except for the first two (which were already commented out before me); or 2) by replacing your font-win.prf with a copy of font-win.prf from ComPosband or PosChengband (there shouldn't be any compatibility issues); or 3) in-game through the Interact with Visuals menu (the '%' key, followed by either 6 or 9; don't forget to dump your changes). In your case I'd recommend approach 1 or 2, since approach 3 only creates a .prf file that affects that one character, and you'd have to re-load (and re-dump) that file every time you started a new character with a different name.

None of these approaches will require you to recompile.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Good to know that this doesn't require re-compiling. Thanks! I was wondering...were those wall graphics only for Windows players in Vanilla-PCB? If so, they should have been made available to work for other ports. Heck, even the webserver port too! (My real question was: Why did you change the default graphics for the walls and mountains for the Windows port? To make the Windows port similar to all other ports? )

[fph]

Nice version naming scheme. Can I write it as 7.0.🍓?

I wonder what will come next... Fruits ordered by increasing size?

[HugoVirtuoso]

Nice version naming scheme. Can I write it as 7.0.🍓?

I wonder what will come next... Fruits ordered by increasing size?

Sideways noted that the next version will be FrogComposband 7.0.peppermint.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Nice version naming scheme. Can I write it as 7.0.🍓?

I wonder what will come next... Fruits ordered by increasing size?

I believe it's a reference to ice-cream flavors, c.f., Vanilla Angband.

[Sideways]

I found a really dumb bug that had somehow slipped through the cracks. It's not game-breaking, but it will make the library in Thalos inaccessible past a certain point. Downloading a fixed copy of t_thalos.txt will solve the problem without any need to recompile, my apologies to everybody.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I found a really dumb bug that had somehow slipped through the cracks. It's not game-breaking, but it will make the library in Thalos inaccessible past a certain point. Downloading a fixed copy of t_thalos.txt will solve the problem without any need to recompile, my apologies to everybody.

CC: Gwarl on this please

[HugoVirtuoso]

Future suggestion:
Re-instate Staves of Holiness...because these grant Protection from Evil while healing the player at the same time

Also, I am wondering if Sideways and Gwarl can look into this thing (still present in CPB and FrogCompos):

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=124926&postcount=28

[Sideways]

Have the Angband quest rewards been changed
In Poschengband, weaponmasters had a good chance of obtaining class specific weapons this way

Feature request: no selling option

Has the bug with maul, the Mauler skill, been fixed

This one?

I've found a bug
When my mauler was ambushed outside the volcano and he attacked a monster, the monster would move back, say, 3 squares and my character would move forward 3 squares
When I deactivated maul the problem disappeared
Maul did not cause problems earlier but the problem also happens sometimes in volcano
I think it is to do either with the tile the monster or character is on, or with nearby tiles
If there is no lava or whatever, just normal tiles, then the problem doesn't occur

At least it hasn't been fixed by me, so it's probably still there. I'll have a look at it.

Bringing back the no-selling option is on my to-do list.

Rod rarities have not been changed in any way since PosChengband. I'd guess you're seeing random variation (or playing subtly differently in some way that causes you to see fewer low-level rods). Of course, if you need a rod of detect traps, there's always the infamous 1-charge one in the Thalos arena

Angband quest rewards have not been changed, and the code that gives you tailored rewards is still there. But since both PosChengband and FrogComposband accept lots of non-weapons as "tailored", there's a lot of randomness in whether your tailored drop happens to be a weapon, and you can easily be lucky or unlucky.

[Sideways]

Quick poll: how many players would be upset if I made Utgard-Loke resist confusion? (Gwarl has emphatically voted against this, but I want to know if anybody else would object.)

[Gwarl]

This is like the riding thing; nobody else is going to have an opinion because nobody else takes advantage of status effects just like nobody else tries to ride things without playing beastmaster/cavalry/skillmaster (except perhaps bostock now that I've trained him).

Imagine not having opinion! That's a player who doesn't understand the usefulness of confuse.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Found a bug with Mangy looking lepers:
If you use '5' repeatedly for long periods of time against the Mangy looking leper, it crashes the game. In my case, it happened with my Tonberry Skillmaster in Outpost. I can reproduce this if I could get someone to spectate me. (or better yet, Gwarl, if you're reading this - You can go ahead and give Sideways my current FrogComposband savefile [the one that is now named 'Van232' in-game] so he can look for the bug)

I was able to slow down my ongoing OBS recording to see what really happened - this message shows at the top of the screen and then crash:
/home/angbandlive/games/frogcomposband: software bug

[Sideways]

@Mocht: Where do you feel you usually found your first rod of detect traps in PosChengband? Knowing that, I could generate lots of random levels at that depth in both Pos and FrogCompos and see if there's any difference in how many rods of detect traps show up.