[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.liquorice released

[budswell]

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

Did you mean numlock? As far as I know capslock has no effect on running. But for me shift+numpad running only works if I turn numlock off

[Sideways]

Still feeling my way around the peculiarities of Frogcomposband, but I think it's a game that I'm going to return to

* When you load the savefile that I've sent you and open the object list (not the sub-window) right away, the game crashes again. However, this time the savefile didn't get corrupted.

I tried to warn you in the e-mail that you'd have to walk over the zero daggers that were causing the problem before you could use the object list, sorry if I was not sufficiently clear about that.

* During the Angwilian stables quest I tried to capture a unicorn. Again I had my target reduced to a single * and again it was all in vain, despite several dozen attempts. It may be a series of coincidences, but so far only rideable monsters seem to be uncatchable (even my other character's Dimetrodon is actually a polymorphed Dark naga).

Town quests disallow a number of effects, including annihilation, destruction, teleport level, genocide, and the capturing of monsters who are not already pets. (They do permit charming a monster and then capturing it.)

The help notes that "quest monsters are immune to being captured" but it is admittedly not immediately obvious that it's including town quest monsters in that and not just speaking about level guardians. I will clarify that wording, and also change the feedback message to make it clearer to the player what's happening.

* I'd find it useful to get informed if my character gained a new ability ('m' or 'U') upon gaining a level.

* You could mark unidentified consumables in shops as "(unseen)". After all, sometimes it's useful to buy an item just to know what you're finding in the dungeons.

Not quite sure I would like those myself, but they could potentially be options, thanks for the suggestions.

Martial Arts: In the Proficiency screen it says that ninjas can potentially become very good martial artists. However, how can ninjas get a high proficiency in martial arts when they don't even have melee attacks while unarmed?

Ninjas cannot (currently) use martial arts, consequently it does not matter what their proficiency cap is.

If a monster has been drained, can it eventually regain its former powers? In particular, what about drained pets or monsters that you make your pets afterwards?

Not entirely sure what you mean by draining, since that term could apply to a number of different concepts; but my first guess is that you're referring to vampiric attacks. Vampiric attacks are already covered in the FAQ, and the only FAQ hits for the word "drain" occur in that section.

Monsters cannot recover the max-HP lost to vampiric draining, but uniques who spawn again later will spawn with their full, normal HP. I think placing a monster in a capture ball will also restore the lost max-HP, so you could "heal" a vampirised pet that way.

I will add more content on Mundanity in the help.

[caruso]

Still feeling my way around the peculiarities of Frogcomposband, but I think it's a game that I'm going to return to
(Supposed) Bugs

• When you load the savefile that I've sent you and open the object list (not the sub-window) right away, the game crashes again. However, this time the savefile didn't get corrupted.
• During the Angwilian stables quest I tried to capture a unicorn. Again I had my target reduced to a single * and again it was all in vain, despite several dozen attempts.

Tweaks

• I'd find it useful to get informed if my character gained a new ability ('m' or 'U') upon gaining a level.
• You could mark unidentified consumables in shops as "(unseen)". After all, sometimes it's useful to buy an item just to know what you're finding in the dungeons.

Manual

• attack.txt
  Martial Arts: In the Proficiency screen it says that ninjas can potentially become very good martial artists. However, how can ninjas get a high proficiency in martial arts when they don't even have melee attacks while unarmed?
  
• monster.txt
  If a monster has been drained, can it eventually regain its former powers? In particular, what about drained pets or monsters that you make your pets afterwards?
  
• faq.txt
  Please add entries on "Draining" and "Mundanity".

Also, about pets that immediately "escape" upon release: This time I waited a little longer before I released my recently-captured pet, and this time everything went well

[Bucephalus]

While we're making quality of life suggestions...

Confusing monsters gives you colored status text when you succeed, which is nice. But the status when they resist doesn't, even though this is arguably more important (you were expecting to confuse the monster, it didn't work, now it's awake, and it's probably higher level than the monsters you confused).

[Sideways]

I have confirmed that caruso experienced a crash bug involving the object list subwindow. I'm not entirely sure of the exact conditions for triggering that bug, but it requires the object list subwindow to be on when an item with some specific properties is equipped from the floor.

I don't know yet what those properties are, except that the vast majority of items will not trigger this crash, and so the risk of it happening to you is very low even if you have the object list subwindow on. Nevertheless, you may want to be wary of equipping items (especially unidentified items) directly from the floor if you use that particular subwindow. I do know how to prevent the crash, so it will be fixed in the next release.

[Bostock]

One (more...) QoL suggestion for pet classes - make the toggle commands provide message-line feedback. This is useful if you're using them enough to keymap them, as currently if for example you keymap the pets-cast-summon-spells toggle to something, and you press it, you get zero feedback.

[caruso]

Thanks, just sent you the savefile

[Sideways]

I'll try to see if I can uncrash your file, hopefully it has some clues as to what caused it to crash in the first place. Certainly just wielding items from the floor with overflowing packs does not routinely do that, my instinct is that something was already corrupted earlier and wielding the dagger just made the game notice it.

[caruso]

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.

Thanks for the hint, but neither worked for me By now I've gotten used to '.<dir>', but it would be nice if I could eventually use 'shift-<dir>' again.

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.

It would be a nice opportunity to get a mount early on, but I think it's not too annoying if it remains like this.

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.

That's a surprise! I thought all experienced angbanders use subwindows, particularly to avoid annoyances up to insta-death from off-screen monsters. Gonna give it a try without these then and see whether it works.

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!

I see

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.

It's just a minor issue. Thanks for the hint

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.

I'm gonna try it out this weekend and tell you about my findings

Unfortunately, a crash bug just corrupted my comp save file Well, the game crashed when my spectre ninja tried to 'w'ield an "excellent" broken dagger from the floor. His pack would have overflowed, and there was a lot of stuff lying in that tunnel already. Now when I try to load the file again and delete the old temporary files in the process, the game immediately crashes again. Would be happy if you know a fix. If not, then that's okay; I was just CL 21/DL15. I can also send you the files, if you like.

[Sideways]

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.

[HugoVirtuoso]

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]

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]

'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]

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.

[caruso]

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.)