Beta version of PWMAngband 1.2.0 released

[tangar]

Solution to wilderness cheating

In next update I'm thinking to switch server back to wilderness mode (with adjusting Angband dungeon in Hobbiton). I so love dungeon-city (it's reminds me about Moria..), but it would be fun to give players more freedom - someone wish to travel around ME, some would like to dive right after they create a new character.

All this time I thought how to solve the biggest problem os wilderness 'cheating' with moving along the borders. I've also suggested some ideas there
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...0&postcount=28 , and got some more thoughts, but finally it comes to my mind, how to solve it.

Problem:
If wilderness option is on, players using 'cheating' possibility to move along the borders to be able to change location immideatelly as soon as they noticed dangerous monster. This vulnerability in gameplay mechanics gives players non-roguelikish endless 'escape' option from danger and makes wilderness kinda pointless.

Suggestion:
When player change location - he should appears not at the border, but in the center of new location.

Description:
Winderness locations lay from [0, 0] coordinates to [10, 54] (to see them - move your screen with 'shift+L')

Player moves from sector [0, 0] to the north and moves to the new location. Right now he would appear on [10, 0] and could continue his way on border and are ready to run from any monster to another location in any moment.

My suggestion is: when player moves from sector [0, 0] to the north, he appears in the center of next sector, ~ [5, 27]. From there player is free to go anywhere, but he can not immideately change sector to avoild danger.

Results:
- this would remove the weakiest, anti-roguelikish point of wilderness - cheating at borders (one of the main reason why I turned wilderness off).
- makes travelling faster (it's alone not a bad thing), more interesting, dangerous, fair.
- (in future) gives new opportunities for gameplay events, eg points of interests (in future every location could have a chance to spawn random point of interest in it's center, to spawn there something like 'vault' for wilderness: bandit's camp, orc's ambush, broken caravan etc). With currenty system (when you appear on the border) you won't even notice such stuff cause you continue to run along the border from one location to another without a glance to the center. But when you appear in the center of next location and you are surrounded by band of orcs or see a broken trader's cart ravaged by bandits - you would notice it So such mechanics could be foundation for RNG-wilderness-events system in future.

[tangar]

New problem: as players do not swap places with each other (I like this mechanics, more realistic), one player could block other players completely by standing on tavern 'door' or staircase to the dungeon. It brings a problem when someone could occasionally stay afk in dungeon entrance and block other players (happened to me today).. And further on - to more dangerous issue, when malicious players could block others on purpose.

Suggestion:
to allow 'swap' between players under condition if one of them are standing on the starcase/tavern door.

Also maybe to prevent too much swapping and possibility of extra exploits during PvE - make it cost some energy and give certain CD, so after you swapped once, you should wait some time.

[tangar]

Thanks =D

You cannot put "normal" items inside, the code doesn't allow it. Black Market items are randomly chosen.

Would it be possible to assign more flags to BM in next update (when new flags are comming)? %) I suppose TomeNET got 'Normal' flag in BM for speed pots, tele scrolls & etc; would be lovery to have flag for it too (maybe not 'normal', but 'rare')

===
Server got an update: vigor mushrooms and magic mapping - http://angband.online/vigor-mushroom...magic-mapping/

[PowerWyrm]

Ok I checked and here's my result concerning the BM:

1) You cannot put "normal" items inside, the code doesn't allow it. Black Market items are randomly chosen.

2) You can put "always" items inside, the code allows that for all stores. However, by doing this, you need to remove the items you add from all other stores (for example: if you add "Cure Critical Wounds" to the BM as a staple, you need to remove them from the Temple as "normal" items), otherwise the item would not appear in the BM.

3) Max store item is 24. This means that slots:max + number of "always" items in a store should never be greater than 24.

Hope this helps reconfiguring shops on the server.

[tangar]

Updated FAQ: http://angband.online/faq/

[tangar]

It would be fun one day to port TomeNET music system or it's part (I've prepared huuuge fantazy pack: http://tangar.info/en/t/musicpack/ for TomeNET, it would be pleasure to reassign it to PWMA)

Currently I've tried to assign some music to \PWMAngband\lib\customize\sound.prf but it's got several problems, eg:

I've assigned

# Town during the day.
sound:ambient_day:09_Old_Tristram

# Town during the night.
sound:ambient_nite:02_Matt_Uelmen_Town

....

# Dungeon levels 1-20 (50'- 1000')
sound:ambient_dng1:03_Matt_Uelmen_Dungeon

1) when I enter the game - no music playing
2) I enter the dungeon - 03_Matt_Uelmen_Dungeon playing, but I can not hear other sounds (maybe track volume should be reajusted..)
3) when I exit the dungeon and come to the surface I hear two music tracks at the same time: ambient_dng1 (continues even after the dungeon) and ambient_day. Ouch D:

I understand that this isn't music system, but sounds. It's was just an experiment - is it possible to fit music tracks to the current system..

..which brings us to /rfe - to add primitive music system. Lets it would have only two main flags for now: town and dungeon All other complex flags are not really important right now - it would be wonderful just to have changing of intensive dungeons music to calm 'townish' to add more atmoshpere

[tangar]

Thanks! =D

Alright guys. Bad news...

I've changed some stuff in the savefiles for next version... and therefore saves in beta 3 won't be compatible with beta 2. Sorry...

This means I'll take a bit of time to add more stuff before releasing the next version... but it also means you'll have to finish up your chars by the time the new version is released. This also means new instance, so new town, so no more townies trapped inside that remote area

It's alright! In fact, wipe was planned at our server anyway because of the new MAX_ACCOUNT_CHARS option, so it fits perfectly

--

There is kinda possible exploit: if you drink potion of salt water, you become starved and game kick you out from the game (without 30 second timer). Players could use this mechanics to avoid death - drink this potion as 'escape' option if they got dangerous situation, so next time when they relog to the game - they would have easier lvl or could ask other players for help.

[PowerWyrm]

"Why fps was rearranged to 75 and how does it incluence gameplay? It I'll rearrange this value to 60, how it would influence the game? "

FPS = number of frames per second = number of times the game checks for input per second.

The default value in the code is... ONE. Yeah, this means if you forget to put a mangband.cfg file in your directory, ALL players will move ONCE per second.

FPS = 75 is the MAngband default (check every 13ms). If you lower to FPS = 60, you'll make the game slower (check every 16ms).

[PowerWyrm]

Alright guys. Bad news...

I've changed some stuff in the savefiles for next version... and therefore saves in beta 3 won't be compatible with beta 2. Sorry...

This means I'll take a bit of time to add more stuff before releasing the next version... but it also means you'll have to finish up your chars by the time the new version is released. This also means new instance, so new town, so no more townies trapped inside that remote area

[PowerWyrm]

1) In fact I was considering moving some options to server, not only birth_no_selling, because it's hard to have different modes for players. I'll start with no_selling in next version and I'll check others afterwards.

2) Radius of all effects is a parameter in the txt files. Can't change anything without breaking the whole system. If you want to change radius, you can still edit the txt files, but I wouldn't do that.

3) Already started to work on this.

4) I agree. XBM is a bit too expensive and I'll lower the factor a bit. Note: factor is halved when playing with ironman server. Other note: I've tried to lower the factor to 5 in the past, and found that the items sold were too good and too cheap and so were greatly imbalancing the game, as you could order almost anything for gold.

5) I'll check. I'm pretty sure the BM isn't designed for "normal" items...

[tangar]

Thank you very much for answers!

"I would be fun to have an option to be able to go outside to the wilderness"

Impossible. No_wilderness means there's nothing outside town + dungeon. And there's no way to generate it in this mode.

I suppose then the easiest solution is just to use 'wilderness mode', but add there 'a dungeon' which would be the same as 'no_wilderness' town.. If server admin wish to use such setup - he could place entrance to this dungeon at Hobbiton (just generate object with & menu - staircase to this dungeon). It would be awesome solution.

"troubles with game performance"
Always or that's because the time bubble (low hps)? Never tested with Linux so I don't know...

It seems EdginLarsen fixed it atm. He also wrote a guide how to play on linux, but its in Russian (translation in progress).

"PowerWyrm, as a developer/maintainer please could you declare policy considering adding stuff to PWMAngband initial package"
Easy. I'll deliver a package that is conform to what I play and enjoy, because I like playing my own games in turn based mode too, then customisation is totally free on servers.

Dev Q&A continues.. Do you plan to put PWMAngband sources to github so more developers would be able to contribute the code?

=======

Server updates could be found @ http://angband.online/ (currently we rebalancing stores)
And don't forget to join our Discord, guys: https://discord.gg/zBNG369

=======

Suggestions:

1) Most important: please could you assign 'birth_no_selling' option to server .cfg; currently it's optional rule which player could define at chacater creation screen. Having players with both 'selling' options on server makes it almost impossible to rearrange economy balance.

2) is it possible in future to add an option to restrict magic mapping radius the same way as EPS now restricted? (limited_esp .cfg option)

3) is it possible in future to add more different flags for stores? Now there is 'always' flag (spawn 40 stack of 40 items) and 'normal' (ocassionaly spawn 1-10 times). It would be fun to have something like this:
- always (spawn 10-20 items) // currently having always 40 items sounds quite anti-RPG style, moar rng!
- normal (5-10 items)
- rare (1-5 items)
- unique (1 item)

4) add an option to customize XBM (expensive black market) price. Currently it's x15 and it doesn't fit our server balance.

5) bug: there is a problem with 'normal' flag in BM. It seems it doesn't work. 'always' works alright.

===

Question:

in .cfg:
# Option: set the speed of the game, in frames per second.
# In 0.7.0, the framerate has been increased by a factor of five relative
# to the earlier game versions.
FPS = 75

Why fps was rearranged to 75 and how does it incluence gameplay? It I'll rearrange this value to 60, how it would influence the game?

[PowerWyrm]

"edited .cfg and added there new account credentials"

Need to look at this. I don't remember how the admin char works. Maybe it's a problem with case (must start with uppercase?).

"I would be fun to have an option to be able to go outside to the wilderness"

Impossible. No_wilderness means there's nothing outside town + dungeon. And there's no way to generate it in this mode.

"currently minimum rows are 5, not 4"

Then it'll be 5 (you can get 4 without add-on). Can't go lower, at one point this crashes the client (Angband has no limit, and if you try to reduce the window to zero, it crashes the game).

"autopickup incription doesn't work properly"

Known bug. This happens when you step on ammo while running. And I have no idea why this happens... Workaround: before picking up ammo, stop and just walk to pick up.

"player 'Lich' reported lags when monsters breath on them"

Yes, that's the client latency for displaying effects. It is a configurable option. Go to Options menu -> d) set base delay factor -> lower the value (40ms by default). Usually I put 10 or 20ms to keep the breathing effect, but lower the latency on the client. You can put 1ms if you don't want effect.

"troubles with game performance"

Always or that's because the time bubble (low hps)? Never tested with Linux so I don't know...

"very bad thing, no point to use it."

That's because you don't play high stealth characters. Sometimes you want to wake up something close without having to go melee range. Horns are there for "aggravation on demand".

"rearrange shops items a bit"

You can rearrange via the txt file. The original version will always stick with regular Angband. I'll try to implement a "semi permanent" mode for items, but that will be only for customisation. All customisation in Angband leaves enough possibilities for everyone to adapt their game (or server) as they wish.

"PowerWyrm, as a developer/maintainer please could you declare policy considering adding stuff to PWMAngband initial package"

Easy. I'll deliver a package that is conform to what I play and enjoy, because I like playing my own games in turn based mode too, then customisation is totally free on servers.

[tangar]

Horn of Rohan on 'A': wake up all sleeping mobs and speed them up for 25 seconds; very bad thing, no point to use it.

According to JRR it such horns should 'freeze' enemies for a short amount if time. I suppose such horns in PWMA should do something good too. Lets it awake mobs, but also give boldness for some time and confuse close standing mobs for 2 turns.

--

Maybe also it would be fun to rearrange shops items a bit, eg to add speed potions to black market as 'normal' & etc. Should I post suggestion about stores there at forum so we could discuss them and eventually add them into installation package or it's already designed as intended (as in vanilla Angband)? (then I'll assign this experemental changes only for the server @ PWMAngband\lib\gamedata\store.txt)

PowerWyrm, as a developer/maintainer please could you declare policy considering adding stuff to PWMAngband initial package

[tangar]

1) min rows 'bug'

New PWMAngband 1.2.0 beta 1 released!
- Reduce the allowed minimum size of subterms to a fifth of the maximal size (16x4)

Tested: currently minimum rows are 5, not 4.

But actually it would be fun to have minimum rows as 3

2) it seems that autopickup incription doesn't work properly.. Sometimes you have to pick up projectiles even if you got an inscription =g on them

3) player 'Lich' reported lags when monsters breath on them (I didn't had it myself, donno). They say that game is kinda 'freezes' for some time after several hounds breaths at once

4) player 'vp' who plays @ linux via wine reported that he got troubles with game performance - like he push a key and sometimes it doesn't work

[tangar]

/rfe

add and option to .cfg to have a staircase up to the wilderness from dungeon-town.

So currently I have no_wilderness flag at the server. I would be fun to have an option to be able to go outside to the wilderness, to the open-world and go to the dungeons there.

Some details:
- every new character start in undeground town (like no_wilderness)
- in this town there is a staircase (or it could be a 'magic portal')
- if player uses staircase (portal) - he appears in Bree
- at any moment player could use them to go back

It would give alternatives for player - some would be glad to dive right into the dungeon, some would like to breath air

This option could be implemented later on, when server would have more players - then this solution could help to reduce problems with limited shops (so players would not have to wait one another when buying stuff or using the same 'dungeon storage-house')