[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.liquorice released

**Sideways** · April 25, 2020, 05:01

Chaos is a fairly offense-oriented realm option, but you can still try to play it as support for melee, which will also help with the loot destruction

You can also try to lure monsters away from other monsters' loot before you throw something item-destroying at them.

Holy Orb will be hard to rely on it to the same extent as Orb of Draining in V because it's more expensive than for V priests, and moreover otherwise identical to its V cousin while monsters are often stronger or have more HP.

Not entirely sure what the most OP priest combo would be, but death/sorcery would have to be up there, both of those are very strong realms and sorcery plays well as realm 2 because it has so much good stuff in the early books. Would go with Hera over Hermes if the choice is between those two, the speed bonus on Hermes demigods only develops at a rate of +1 per 10 levels which is too slow to help much in the early game.

**caruso** · April 26, 2020, 17:36

Just returned from a sabbatical in a better place. A place where death is but temporary, and even the fiercest battles are only about as harmless as a brawl among children. Now I feel reinvigorated enough to enter the fray once more!

Please find below my feedback on my first "serious" attempt at FrogComposband.

Tried Beginner mode because I'm undecided on whether I like wilderness, and because otherwise I tend to give difficult characters a try before I'm ready for them. Still, felt overwhelmed with the many town buildings at first and am still not always sure whether I fully take advantage of the town. Also, as with every Poschenglike I first had to get used to the difficulties of fully id'ing stuff. Hopefully things will be easier soon. Looking forward to playing with a mount from now on

Bugs

shift + NumPad never causes my character to run, neither with or wothout capslock. I'm using a QWERTZ keyboard on Windows 10.
Tried several dozen times to capture a Scrawny horse in town, in vain. I did reduce its HP to one * (and threw a spike at it as needed).

Tweaks

let the game start with the most important sub windows readily set up. This should be a great help for beginners.
I would switch off selling for beginners so they can bring all the consumables they need and worry less about leaving behind the wrong items
if you can't buy 'a'll items from a given stack, 'a' should make you buy "as many as you can afford" instead
in coffee-break mode, certain shops could open only after the PC has reached a certain level. Too many shops are likely to overwhelm new players, and no DL1/CL1 character will want to e.g. have mutations removed. Once a shop opens and the character returns to the surface, there could be a message like "The people are talking about a recently-opened <building>!"
macros should be deactivated in shops and other town buildings. That way, you can also use lower-case characters as triggers for macros.

Manual

MonsterRaces.txt Vampire

Missing an "a" before "true prince of darkness"

monster.txt. Pets and Riding

please explain why a pet sometimes just "escapes" when you release it (happened to half of my captives!). Was my CHR too low?
also, would be good to know how to keep pets around when you e.g leave a level. (Though, as you mentioned elsewhere, it's usually best to get yourself new pets if keeping the old ones becomes too complicated.)

**Sideways** · April 26, 2020, 22:33

Originally posted by caruso

shift + NumPad never causes my character to run, neither with or wothout capslock. I'm using a QWERTZ keyboard on Windows 10.

This could be explained if you have the online_macros option turned on. It's also possible the game is interpreting your numpad keys as End/Down/PgDn etc. or KP_1/KP_2/KP_3 etc. instead of 1/2/3 etc., which would still let you walk but not use Shift to run; that problem would be solved by toggling numlock.

Tried several dozen times to capture a Scrawny horse in town, in vain. I did reduce its HP to one * (and threw a spike at it as needed).

I think I know what's causing this - the code currently checks if the monster's HP is lower than randint0(X) (a random integer lower than X) where X depends on the monster's maximum HP; and scrawny horses can have max HP so low that X is 1, so randint0(X) is always 0 and the horse must have less than 0 HP to be captureable. Of course, if it has less than 0 HP, it's dead.

I am not entirely sure whether to call this an actual bug or just unexpected behavior, but it probably could and should be "fixed" anyway by allowing capture at equal values. This will make capturing slightly easier, but for monsters with more HP the difference would be minimal.

Let the game start with the most important sub windows readily set up. This should be a great help for beginners.

It would be somewhat hard to set that up since each platform supports subwindows in different ways; but more importantly, I'm not sure it would be good at all. Subwindows are by no means necessary, each player who does use them wants them set up differently, and having monster-list and object-list subwindows ready might discourage beginners from using the 'Y'/'[' and 'O'/']' commands at all - and so they'd miss out on all the extra functionality those commands offer that the corresponding subwindows do not.

I would switch off selling for beginners so they can bring all the consumables they need and worry less about leaving behind the wrong items

I have so far not made that change because having selling off by default would confuse new players a lot more than having selling on by default does (I've seen it confuse enough people in V!), and also because selling on is both traditional and more "complete" than selling off.

Many experienced players do prefer selling off, so making it the default would be by no means unreasonable; but if it ever does become the default, it wouldn't be for beginners only. It's specifically to accommodate the beginners that it isn't the default already!

if you can't buy 'a'll items from a given stack, 'a' should make you buy "as many as you can afford" instead

This gave me a double-take because I've never used 'a' this way at all. (Indeed, there is no specific "type 'a' for 'all'" feature, it's just that all non-numeric input defaults to the maximum allowed by the prompt.)

In practice, this would be implemented by outright limiting the prompt to the amount you can afford; which is already done in V and is probably a good idea.

Macros should be deactivated in shops and other town buildings. That way, you can also use lower-case characters as triggers for macros.

This would be somewhat hard to implement; and lower-case characters can be safely used as triggers for keymaps, which are good enough for mapping spells and most other common commands.

Missing an "a" before "true prince of darkness"

Thanks.

Please explain why a pet sometimes just "escapes" when you release it (happened to half of my captives!). Was my CHR too low?

Would guess it's because their HP was too low; the help does note that pets retain some self-preservation instincts and may escape from the level at very low health. Give them more time to regain HP in the capture ball before releasing them.

**HugoVirtuoso** · April 27, 2020, 07:02

'Die, mortal' chaos patron gift did not summon monsters during a Thalos Arena fight. Bug or intended... because it was a Town Arena fight?

Since walking into walls (confused or not) does not consume any gameturns, any plan to make it consume gameturns in the future?

**Sideways** · April 27, 2020, 07:26

Walking into a wall while confused (or hallucinating) does consume a turn (I did say this to you before...).

Walking into a wall while not confused does not consume a turn and absolutely should not, that would be disastrous anti-quality-of-life.

Summons don't work in the arena, the only exceptions are for quylthulgs and for rings attempting to lure a ring-bearer. (Even piranha traps don't work in the arena because the piranhas would have to be summoned.)

**HugoVirtuoso** · April 27, 2020, 12:27

Does walking into walls while stunned or even dazed consume a turn?

>Summons don't work in the arena, the only exceptions are for quylthulgs and for rings attempting to lure a ring-bearer. (Even piranha traps don't work in the arena because the piranhas would have to be summoned.)

Does that mean its Greater titan monster etc can't summon either?

How many game turns are consumed when hitting a paralysis trap? Any difference when hallucinating/confused/dazed?

>Walking into a wall while confused (or hallucinating) does consume a turn (I did say this to you before...).

Does this^ mean I will not get 'free turns' against a bronze dragon, for instance, if I'm completely surrounded by mountains terrains? For some reason, I thought I did... or I might be mis-remembering what happened?

Lastly, Levitation consumes no turns over mountains/deep water/chasms/woods/trap doors, right?

(I'm posing the same questions for public knowledge to all)

**Sideways** · April 27, 2020, 14:20

Originally posted by HugoTheGreat2011

Does walking into walls while stunned or even dazed consume a turn?

Not anymore, though it did do so in the past.

Does that mean its Greater titan monster etc can't summon either?

Greater titans are neither player quylthulgs nor player rings, therefore they cannot summon in the arena and will not waste their time trying.

How many game turns are consumed when hitting a paralysis trap? Any difference when hallucinating/confused/dazed?

Hitting a paralysis trap consumes exactly as much energy (game turns are the wrong concept to apply here) as hitting any other trap, or walking into the same square sans the trap.

Does this^ mean I will not get 'free turns' against a bronze dragon, for instance, if I'm completely surrounded by mountains terrains? For some reason, I thought I did... or I might be mis-remembering what happened?

Mountain chains seem to be treated differently from walls in this respect, which feels like an oversight and should likely be fixed.

Unsuccessful attempts to close or open doors while confused used to be free in PosChengband, and still consume less than a full turn.

Lastly, Levitation consumes no turns over mountains/deep water/chasms/woods/trap doors, right?

It continues not to consume any extra turns over normal walking.

**caruso** · April 27, 2020, 19:42