Development version of PWMAngband 1.2.0 released for testing

[Nick]

I'm way too behind regarding latest Vanilla features

Yeah, that's probably going to be getting worse for a bit, too. Sorry

[tangar]

"one with birth_n_selling to get more gold, second without it. 1st could give 2nd items to sell in shops"

Yes that's a problem, but how to solve it? It's the same when one player gives other player stuff for free…

To solve first problem: move an option 'birth_no_selling' from player options to server .cfg file, so it would be strict predefined choice.

I suppose it would be fun to make all economy in the game player-based. Having 'birth_no_selling' option makes players focus on actually core gameplay (surviving in the dungeon), not grind on taking hoards of loot back to surface every now and then Let's all players would have to get gold from monsters and trade items between each other (not selling it to NPC), it would make economy more healthier.

To solve giving other player free items... It's a problem indeed, as there is no min.lvl req. for items in PWMA it seems. The solution could be to restrict possibility to take other's players items from the floor; make it possible to trade between players only by buying items from player shops. At the same time - player shops should have threshold of minimum possible prices for items (like in TomeNET), then players won't be able to get items for nothing.

"It would be great to add there some houses"
The "0" building is your house

It would be great to have shops to develop game economy

I wonder - is it possible to use Dungeon Master menu ('&') to add new 'houses' in no_wilderness mode - just to add 'doors'? If not - it would be neat feature! Algorythm:
1) admin login with DM character
2) & 2
3) choose 'house door' & place it on the 'border' of no_wilderness town

Unfortunately I won't have time for everything, so the most critical issues will be tackled and I'll leave the rest as is. I'm way too behind regarding latest Vanilla features, and I want to finish adding stuff to release a 1.4 version to match MAngband version.

No worries, /rfes could wait. Thank you very much for being so active and open in communication with your fellow players! It's rare virtue in online games world

Yeah, that's probably going to be getting worse for a bit, too. Sorry

The more - the better1!! D I'm really excited about new Angband features, like traps, curses and new ID system

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Today I'll move server to the new spot because our current hosting (amazon lightsail) got problems with RAM (it's only 512 mb, it seems it's not enough for Windows 2012 VPS; but it was free! ). At the same time I was surprized to see that PWMA is very good in CPU operation -> idle server uses 5% cpu, 5 players online takes ~10% cpu (at 1 core). I wonder which hosting I should take, considering MS Azure, google cloud, digitalocean (to host on wine, cause there is no win in-build options). Would be glad to receive any advices I suppose 10-15$/month would be alright for now (while we do not have too big player base).

[tangar]

We moved to the new server (azure) Lags should be gone.. although it's still testing, as I'm trying minimal config, was 512 RAM, now 1 GB; if it wouldn't be enough, we would take 2 gb )

[PowerWyrm]

Client crash when typing anything in chat reproduced on my laptop with the latest code. Win 10 64 bits. This doesn't happen on my dev VM which has Win XP 32 bits. I'll have to see if the fix applied in MAngband changes anything.

[PowerWyrm]

Alright, it was exactly the same problem as for MAngband. Porting the same commit fixed the issue locally.

[tangar]

Alright, it was exactly the same problem as for MAngband. Porting the same commit fixed the issue locally.

Great -1 bug!

So far new hosting is very good, no lags at all with 6 players online

[PowerWyrm]

Ok Tangar, I managed to launch your character Tangar III in debug mode (with password protection disabled) and I've found out why the game crashes when you recall. It seems you recalled from a dungeon level that was smaller than the usual dungeon size (142x46 instead of 198x66) and the game didn't adjust the size of player info to the town size (198x66). DUH!

Ok I'll try to see what happened there and fix it. In the meantime, replace your savefile (Tangar_III) by the attached file (unzip it in /lib/user/save). It should show your character back in the tavern without a crash.

[tangar]

yay, it works! I've already thought that my char is wasted! Thanks for fixing him =D It's great that you catched up yet another bug %)

Damm I've finally recognized where is a 'house' in the dungeon As I play tileset-only I didn't noticed this building ('0') at first (though it's just an empty one)

I got such idea about this house - how to implement there player shops. Inside player house there is a '?' key which shows available command. Add there new command, eg. 'h'. Upon pushing this command player should see list of all items inside all players houses which got @S inscription on them and are able to buy them.

So when you inscribe your item as @S10k and drop it in your house - it would appear in 'players market' which is accessible in '0' by pushing 'h' key (or maybe move it to the separate building)

Also yet another tiny rfe:
afair right now it's possible to use 'summon monster' scrolls when you stay on stairs. I suppose it would be fair to make scroll doesn't work when you stay in LoS of stairs (would make it also interesting to ID, cause it won't work all the time).

Of course, it's all not critical /rfes, just an ideas for the future

[tangar]

/rfe:

to add 'no_trade' option in .cfg file to prevent cheating (the transfer of money and items from high-level characters to low-level characters without anything in return), while there is no other way to prevent it.. Soon it could be replaced with this (I've posted it above): to restrict possibility to take other's players items from the floor; make it possible to trade between players only by buying items from player shops. At the same time - player shops should have threshold of minimum possible prices for items (it could be a bit cheaper than Black Market), then players won't be able to get items for nothing).

[PowerWyrm]

I've found out why the game crashes when you recall. It seems you recalled from a dungeon level that was smaller than the usual dungeon size (142x46 instead of 198x66) and the game didn't adjust the size of player info to the town size (198x66). DUH!

Ok I'll try to see what happened there and fix it.

Unfortunately that's not the problem. For the savefile, it just saved the old cave info (from 900ft) when the server panic saved and since it was smaller the game couldn't load the character that was recalled in town.

The real problem is nastier. There was a crash between the time recall kicked in (player still on old level with new coordinates) and the time the new level was generated. The only way to get info would be having the server in debug mode (I always play like that locally, which helps me fix a lot of bugs when I play), but since it's not possible I've added a couple debug lines in the log (basically: entering dungeon_change_level() and generate_new_level() methods with parameters) to narrow the problem if it ever appears again. Then I could work from there.

I'll try to add a couple more things and release a new version tonight. Since I modified the client (removed the change password packet that was obsolete), all players will have to upgrade to the new client to play on the new server.

[tangar]

Cool *hyped about update*

Maybe we can put server to debugging mode somehow? What the preqs. for it? I could create new server instance and try it

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Now server got new url @ metaserver: angband.online

Soon I'll create website there too

p.s.
it could take time to update dns, so players may have problems with connecting it atm... sorry for inconvinience.

[PowerWyrm]

Cool *hyped about update*

Maybe we can put server to debugging mode somehow? What the preqs. for it? I could create new server instance and try it

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Now server got new url @ metaserver: angband.online

Soon I'll create website there too

p.s.
it could take time to update dns, so players may have problems with connecting it atm... sorry for inconvinience.

Great news.

Players won't care much… since new update is on the way and they will have to upgrade their client anyway…

[tangar]

Bill updated his server to latest version. Yay! So now we have two servers:

pwmangband.seymourfamily.com
- located in USA
- got wilderness
- possible to ressurect

angband.online
- located in Europe
- no_wilderness
- no_ghost
- disconnected stairs

It's great that there would be more options to play PWMA in different ways! Actually it's pretty possible to play at Bill's server even from Russia, I got there ~200 ping, quite alright