Beta version of PWMAngband 1.2.0 released

[Derakon]

What that says is that power dragons should be about 15 times more rare than white dragons. The frequency of power dragons overall depends on the commonness ratings of all the dragons, though. E.g. if you sum all of the commonness ratings and they sum to 500, then that means that the power dragon gets 1/500th of that sum and should show up 1 time in 500.

[tangar]

Derakon, thanks

So currently chance to roll Power Dragon ~ 1:120

[tangar]

As release are coming closer, I wanna point some past /rfes. I've noted them in Trello https://trello.com/b/CuFa9Xiz/board and assigned color marks.

The most critical ones:

1) /bug(?) 'text' entry in chat (after you push : ) is too short. I mean the size of the field. It's hard to put there even one sentence.

2) /bug sometimes there is a bug occuars when you enter message to the chat game freezes and each time you push any of keys it says:
Illegal edit key!

3) currently 'Home' ('0' in terrain.txt) do not work for custom towns; but actually it could be very interesting and useful place - as it looks like a 'bank'. If every big city would have such '0' building - it would be like 'bank'-system in MMORPG (eg WoW, Ultima Online etc). For '1-char/account' this is perfect solution to reduce item managment inconvenience (one of the biggest problem in online roguelikes).

Ideally would be system where you should pay certain amount of gold to 'open' more storage in the bank. But as current '0' not too big, it's alright as it is for now.

4) add a terrain element for common player houses. So it would be possible to add some player's houses in custom cities

5) /rfe add 'end of turn' signal while in 'time bubble' mode
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...8&postcount=29 :

when time seizes - it's hard to understand when turn pass. eg.
player is '1' life; monsters chasing him. Player drinks a potion and try to run further. Because of 'slow time' effect it's very hard to understand did your previous command worked or not. So you could cancel your previous action and not to drink potion, but run further.

Possible suggestion:
to mark end of each turn in 'low hp mode' as red line, like
**********************************
in game messages window.

I'm not sure - would it help alone.. Maybe add also this solution:
when player push any key while in 'low hp mode' - show this action as (queued) in game messages window. eg:

(**planned**) you are to drink a potions of cure light wounds

and when this action was completed, write it in game message window with yellow ink something like:

(**completed**) you finished your action queue

6) /rfe add admin '&' command to return all players to town immediately

7) players swapping problem (wrongdoers could block newbies in tavern or in corridors).

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=135397&postcount=26

idea: make it possible to use shift+W (walk) command towards other player to swap with him.

Normal priority:

1) add possibility to distunguish truerts vs randarts (add a not in their description). Right now the only way is to bring the item to city and try to put it in house

2) remove pstores types restrictions: house deco customization

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=135804&postcount=89

idea: temp. measure: make all player stores 'yellow' by default (currently they are BM)

Low priority:

1) /rfe add simpliest music system: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=9261

2) do not close the game after death

3) add XBM price customization to constants.txt

4) ... there are loads of other low priority issues https://trello.com/b/CuFa9Xiz/board

===

Questions:

1) is it possible to add auto-shadows to tileset:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=136283#post136283

2) is it possible to add new terrain 'type' - transparent one. So it would work like a monster tile - would be placed on top of 'floor' tile.. So it would be possible to have 'tree' tile with transparent background, which could be placed, for example, at 'feat: :unknown grid' (town_feat.txt) as random "fillers":

# Special feats
feat:fir tree:deciduous tree:50

Why is it cool? Cause then we won't need to have loads of similar tiles: currently I have to add 'tree' tile with loads of different backgrounds - grass, dirt, dungeon floor etc... and the same problem for all other objects! Having possibility to put certain types terrain objects (rubble, tree etc) as transparent ones to the 'floor'-tiles - would solve this problem. Maybe there could be different solutions, lets brainstorm

3) How to use scroll of House Foundation and House Foundation Stones? I tried to read scroll nearby and inside house in different places - it didn't work

[PowerWyrm]

"As release are coming closer, I wanna point some past /rfes"

Unfortunately if anything hasn't been implemented yet, consider it has been reviewed and discarded as "won't be implemented".

"1) /bug(?) 'text' entry in chat (after you push : ) is too short"

Not a bug. Message line is 60 characters long, same as MAngband. If you want to enter longer messages, you need to use the chat window.

"2) /bug sometimes there is a bug occuars when you enter message to the chat game freezes "

Unfortunately I can't reproduce this. It's probably a charset/keyboard problem. Try to switch your keyboard to "ENG" and see if it happens again.

"3) currently 'Home' ('0' in terrain.txt) do not work for custom towns"

Only works for base town in no-wilderness mode. Intended, and I have no plan to change this.

"4) add a terrain element for common player houses"

See above. Player houses are meant to be in the wilderness suburbs.

"5) /rfe add 'end of turn' signal while in 'time bubble' mode"

End of turn means beginning of next turn. Indicator would be pointless as you would get next turn action before you could react to what you see on screen. The current "time slowdown" is the same as having lag… turn doesn't pass slower, it's just frozen.

"6) /rfe add admin '&' command to return all players to town immediately"

I thought about it then discarded the idea. You would get players with birth_no_recall that would have to be treated differently, and players that wouldn't want to lose the level if they get uniques or vaults. Shutting down server is the best option as players are saved immediately.

"7) players swapping problem "

No, I wouldn't want people swapping afk players in water or lava.

"1) add possibility to distunguish truerts vs randarts"

No need, true arts have a description, randarts don't.

"2) remove pstores types restrictions"

MAngband feature. Will stay this way.

"1) /rfe add simpliest music system"

Just put a CD in your CD player

"2) do not close the game after death"

Simply not possible.

"3) add XBM price customization "

The factor? Hmm maybe…

"4) ... there are loads of other low priority issues "

…

"1) is it possible to add auto-shadows to tileset"
"2) is it possible to add new terrain 'type' - transparent one"

Not that I can think of…

"3) How to use scroll of House Foundation and House Foundation Stones?"

You need a house that's not close to other features. Choose one of the walls and fill a rectangle area of at least 3 rows with House Foundation Stones. Stand next to the area and reas the scroll, it should change the stones into space and extend the wall.

Note: I didn't use the feature in ages, I could be wrong.

[tangar]

"As release are coming closer, I wanna point some past /rfes"

Unfortunately if anything hasn't been implemented yet, consider it has been reviewed and discarded as "won't be implemented".

Dum spiro spero

"1) /bug(?) 'text' entry in chat (after you push : ) is too short"

Not a bug. Message line is 60 characters long, same as MAngband. If you want to enter longer messages, you need to use the chat window.

Majority of players do not use chat window, but are using term-1 for chatting. It would be fun to enlarge it's field at least twice (in TomeNET it's 4x times more I believe) cause currently it's not possible to chat normally at all.

"2) /bug sometimes there is a bug occuars when you enter message to the chat game freezes "

Unfortunately I can't reproduce this. It's probably a charset/keyboard problem. Try to switch your keyboard to "ENG" and see if it happens again.

I always got 'ENG'. I suppose this glitch happens when you are trying to push 'backspace' in certain cases. It's pretty random and hard to reproduce

"3) currently 'Home' ('0' in terrain.txt) do not work for custom towns"

Only works for base town in no-wilderness mode. Intended, and I have no plan to change this.

This is very cool feature to have in 'custom towns'. Sad that you do not like it. But won't it hurt to have it on other servers? If by default it wouldn't work in PWMA, but if people on the server would like to have this feature - they could add it to city map. It could be like having EL chars and more than one char - optional feature; but you even do not need to add flag for it in config

"4) add a terrain element for common player houses"

See above. Player houses are meant to be in the wilderness suburbs.

But currently there are loads of houses in Hobbiton and it's fun!

Why not to add it if it wouldn't interfere with traditinal PWMA gameplay? So by default in PWMA wouldn't be such stuff, but if people who would like to have this feature at their server - they could 'draw' houses in their cities

"5) /rfe add 'end of turn' signal while in 'time bubble' mode"

End of turn means beginning of next turn. Indicator would be pointless as you would get next turn action before you could react to what you see on screen. The current "time slowdown" is the same as having lag… turn doesn't pass slower, it's just frozen.

I had a lot of other players feedback on this. Players do not understand when turn is ended at 'bubble' -> push keys, they queue -> char dies. Serious issue

"6) /rfe add admin '&' command to return all players to town immediately"

I thought about it then discarded the idea. You would get players with birth_no_recall that would have to be treated differently, and players that wouldn't want to lose the level if they get uniques or vaults. Shutting down server is the best option as players are saved immediately.

Sometimes server could be down for some time and after players would login again - there wouldn't be lvl which he had. At high lvls it could be pretty deadly for player to relogin after server restart. So this option is pretty useful in some cases.

"7) players swapping problem "

No, I wouldn't want people swapping afk players in water or lava.

Afk players shouldn't be afk for long. But currently there is MUCH bigger problem - anyone could create new random acc, put his char at the tavenr entrance and block the game. GAME DEAD. Till admin would come and fix it. Then it could be repeated endless amount of times. I've met such issue in some MMORPGs. It's very dangerous. It worse then DDOS attack as it's super easy to make this stuff, even a children could do it and break the game.

Lava or water won't be harmful as it's much more easier to prevent this stuff and much harder for bad person to harm people.

"1) add possibility to distunguish truerts vs randarts"

No need, true arts have a description, randarts don't.

Good to know, thanks. I'll add it to FAQ.

"2) remove pstores types restrictions"

MAngband feature. Will stay this way.

This is bad feature cause it makes trading less fun. It's not only my opinion, but opinion of our server's players.

"1) /rfe add simpliest music system"

Just put a CD in your CD player

The idea is to have different music in town and in the dungeon. Switching CDs every time you recall to town is pretty annoying (I'll say impossible)


For me the most critical - having possibility to add houses to 'custom towns' as it is in Hobbiton atm. I hope there is a possibility to add house to terrain.txt as it won't interfere with default PWMA gameplay

[tangar]

in past Russian stream ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNBBc6RHBP4 ) I've made some notes:

1) /bug
feat:grass:torch:0xA1:0x83
'torch' doesn't work. eg I've assigned tile with yellow light on it but it didn't work.

2) /bug with tree light

name:tree
graphics:*:g
priority:4
flags:TREE | PREFIXED | NO_SCENT | NO_FLOW
info:0:1
desc:A tree.

feat:tree:dark:0xA1:0x88 - do not work in town, but work in the dungeon. Tested in night-time. Other tiles (for example, grass) - works. This bug makes trees to have 'lights' in the night which looks bad

3) /rfe please allow more symbols to town_feat.txt ; right now it's only possible to assign there Aa-Zz , !@#..

It would be great to allow there more symbols - unicode or at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437

4) tested House Foundation Stones/Scroll following your instructions - it doesn't work (tested on a house with a lot of empty grass around)

[PowerWyrm]

in past Russian stream ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNBBc6RHBP4 ) I've made some notes:

1) /bug
feat:grass:torch:0xA1:0x83
'torch' doesn't work. eg I've assigned tile with yellow light on it but it didn't work.

2) /bug with tree light

name:tree
graphics:*:g
priority:4
flags:TREE | PREFIXED | NO_SCENT | NO_FLOW
info:0:1
desc:A tree.

feat:tree:dark:0xA1:0x88 - do not work in town, but work in the dungeon. Tested in night-time. Other tiles (for example, grass) - works. This bug makes trees to have 'lights' in the night which looks bad

3) /rfe please allow more symbols to town_feat.txt ; right now it's only possible to assign there Aa-Zz , !@#..

It would be great to allow there more symbols - unicode or at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437

4) tested House Foundation Stones/Scroll following your instructions - it doesn't work (tested on a house with a lot of empty grass around)

From the code:

 *  - g->lighting is set to indicate the lighting level for the grid:
 *    LIGHTING_DARK for unlit grids, LIGHTING_LIT for inherently light
 *    grids (lit rooms, etc), LIGHTING_TORCH for grids lit by the player's
 *    light source, and LIGHTING_LOS for grids in the player's line of sight.
 *    Note that lighting is always LIGHTING_LIT for known "interesting" grids
 *    like walls.

LIGHTING_TORCH:

For this to work you have to:
- be in "view" of the square
- grid must NOT be permalit (day time in town or any level permalit by enlightenment or clairvoyance)
- have activated the "view_yellow_light" option
- terrain itself must have the TORCH flag

I just tested this on grass terrain and it works perfectly.

LIGHTING_DARK:

For this to work, the tile has to be completely unknown. Trees are "interesting" features, so as soon as you are aware of them, they appear as LIGHTING_LIT as per the above rule.

House creation:

Ok, I've checked the code again.

- house creation only works in areas that are at least distance >= 2 from any town
- you must stand directly next to the area you want to extend (not on the stones, but one stone needs to be next to the player)
- area depicted by the stones on the ground must be rectangular and must be EXACTLY the size of the wall you're extending
- extension must be at least 3 rows or columns
- there has to be space (at least 1 row or column) between the extension and any other house around
- you need money to extend the house!

If it doesn't work, check the message displayed, it should be explicit enough to tell you why you can't extend a house.

Example of a valid extension:

#####~~~
#...#~~~
#...#~~~
+...#~~~
#####~~~

[tangar]

- have activated the "view_yellow_light" option

thanks, now I understand why it didn't work for me - 'view_yellow_light' is turned off by default.

It would be fun to make this option 'yes' by default, but as it doens't work in permalit places - it looks wierd (eg in the dungeon when you come from corridor to permalit room). It could be not logical to have yellow light from torch in permalit room in the dungeon - but it would look much better (good example of 'magic' in game which sometimes should be more important then logic to deliver good gamedesign). So /rfe is:
- make yellow light (torch flag) work in permalit and to make view_yellow_light = on

LIGHTING_DARK:

For this to work, the tile has to be completely unknown. Trees are "interesting" features, so as soon as you are aware of them, they appear as LIGHTING_LIT as per the above rule.

Hm.. So it work like this: "in the dungeon tree tiles with 'dark' flag - WORKS, in the town - 'dark' for trees doesn't work" - because in town there is a clairvoyance by default.. So to solve this problem I should add new trees feat in terrain.txt without 'interesting' flag. I see, thanks.

#####~~~
#...#~~~
#...#~~~
+...#~~~
#####~~~

I've tested house stones again - didn't work. Tested twice:

[tangar]

Is it possible to allow more symbols to town_feat.txt ? Right now it's only possible to assign there Aa-Zz , !@#.. , which isn't enough to complete different landscapes. It would be great to allow there more symbols - unicode or at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437

[PowerWyrm]

"I've tested house stones again - didn't work. Tested twice: "

Reread my post...

"house creation only works in areas that are at least distance >= 2 from any town"

"Is it possible to allow more symbols to town_feat.txt ?"

You can use 255 characters from character table, more than enough. It's PWMAngband, not Sim City.

[tangar]

"house creation only works in areas that are at least distance >= 2 from any town"

I see now, thanks. I though it's 2 tiles from town's location border, not 2 locations itself (in world map coordinates). I'll explain this in the guide.

But then there comes a problem: this feature won't be used much as majority of players prefer houses nearby to the town, as closer as it possible. So this idea:

"The idea of coloring houses is to make one house distinctive from another one."

Well, you forget something important here... Any player can customize his house at will.

- Go to General Store
- Buy a scroll of House Foundation
- Buy some House Foundation Stones
- Go back and shape your house like you wish!!!

Painting door is just to make a distinct shop, not to differentiate houses.

...isn't really customization as it could be.

/rfe

remove this restrictions:
- house creation only works in areas that are at least distance >= 2 from any town
- area depicted by the stones on the ground must be rectangular and must be EXACTLY the size of the wall you're extending
- extension must be at least 3 rows or columns

leave this restriction:
- there has to be space (at least 1 row or column) between the extension and any other house around

add this restriction:
- house creation only works in areas that are at least distance >= 2 TILES from any town

Then players would be able to change form (shape) of their houses and it would become real customization - it would be possible to create unique houses.

"Is it possible to allow more symbols to town_feat.txt ?"

You can use 255 characters from character table, more than enough. It's PWMAngband, not Sim City.

The problem is: current graphics engine doesn't support proper transparency for terrain elements and I have to create set of tiles for each terrain type (for grass, for snow, for sand etc). So even 255 won't be enough after a while. Also I plan to create interactive tutorial (there would be several room with 'text' in it), so it would take ~70 additional tiles there. If it possible - please allow more symbols to town_feat

[tangar]

Female problem: god bless… wipes! http://angband.online/female-problem/