[Announce] FrogComposband 7.1.salmiak released

[Shaolinpigkill]

Hi guys, sorry if it's a stupid question, but why does frogcomposband (or any other variant that I know of) has no autoexplore? Is it too hard to implement?

[fred]

Force trainers. Given their Dragon Ballish flavor, maybe they should have Dimension Door as a quasi Instant Transmission.

[archolewa]

Hi guys, sorry if it's a stupid question, but why does frogcomposband (or any other variant that I know of) has no autoexplore? Is it too hard to implement?

Because autoexplore will get you killed in a *band. Its not as common in the early game, but there are monsters and groups of monsters you *dont* want to fight, and many of them you dont even want to see you because they could one shot you or be very hard to escape.

Its also very rarely a good idea to fully explore every level. Many levels have enough dangerous monsters and little enough loot to make full exploration not a very good idea.

Every *band Ive ever played, its the exploration where all the richness lay. You fire off magic mapping treasure and monster detection and then you carefully plan out your route through the level, deciding which monsters to avoid, which to fight, and how best to approach them.

Autoexplore in a *band makes as much sense as auto-equip in a Hacklike or auto-consumable use in a crawl.

[Sideways]

Hi guys, sorry if it's a stupid question, but why does frogcomposband (or any other variant that I know of) has no autoexplore? Is it too hard to implement?

archolewa is right. It is hard to implement, but it's also just that exploring things yourself is a big part of *bands and that needing to explore every nook and corner of each level isn't a big part of *bands; the infinity of levels in a Normal-speed game means you can completely skip any dungeon level at any time without really missing anything, and even coffee-break has enough levels you can afford to skip a lot of them.

There are also plenty of spells and devices for mapping areas quickly; and as archolewa said, carelessly exploring the wrong place on foot will get you very dead very fast.

--

The game in general revolves around monsters (and loot, but monsters are the main source of loot). Encounters with monsters are how you get stronger and progress in the game, and also how you die - or hopefully win, but dying's more usual. Knowing (and manipulating) the surrounding terrain is very important in that it helps you plan for the monster encounters better; occasionally you even find free loot lying around. But half the time, the only reason you're mapping a level is because you want to skip it and just need to find the next downstairs! *bands are like that; they give you more levels than you need, and while it is possible to fully explore each of them and even to kill every monster on them, there is very little need to do so and sometimes an area is best left well alone.

--

Furthermore, competitions tend to be based on the lowest turncount, and even outside a competitive environment players generally want to win quickly and without wasting much time. Autoexploring levels would be extremely suboptimal from a turncount point of view; you would spend too much time exploring uninteresting areas.

--

All that said, we already have automated traveling to the nearest interesting object and other similar mechanics that are already partway there, so I won't say autoexplore's guaranteed to never happen. Sometimes you get a safe and fairly dull level you still for some reason want to have a good look at, or are mopping up the last loot after killing all the dangerous monsters, or want to go through a big dark room quickly and lack -illumination, and in situations like that it would be nice to just press a key and have things explored automatically. But if autoexplore ever is implemented, use it very carefully; it might kill you.

[Shaolinpigkill]

Because autoexplore will get you killed in a *band. Its not as common in the early game, but there are monsters and groups of monsters you *dont* want to fight, and many of them you dont even want to see you because they could one shot you or be very hard to escape.

Its also very rarely a good idea to fully explore every level. Many levels have enough dangerous monsters and little enough loot to make full exploration not a very good idea.

Every *band Ive ever played, its the exploration where all the richness lay. You fire off magic mapping treasure and monster detection and then you carefully plan out your route through the level, deciding which monsters to avoid, which to fight, and how best to approach them.

Autoexplore in a *band makes as much sense as auto-equip in a Hacklike or auto-consumable use in a crawl.

archolewa is right. It is hard to implement, but it's also just that exploring things yourself is a big part of *bands and that needing to explore every nook and corner of each level isn't a big part of *bands; the infinity of levels in a Normal-speed game means you can completely skip any dungeon level at any time without really missing anything, and even coffee-break has enough levels you can afford to skip a lot of them.

There are also plenty of spells and devices for mapping areas quickly; and as archolewa said, carelessly exploring the wrong place on foot will get you very dead very fast.

--

The game in general revolves around monsters (and loot, but monsters are the main source of loot). Encounters with monsters are how you get stronger and progress in the game, and also how you die - or hopefully win, but dying's more usual. Knowing (and manipulating) the surrounding terrain is very important in that it helps you plan for the monster encounters better; occasionally you even find free loot lying around. But half the time, the only reason you're mapping a level is because you want to skip it and just need to find the next downstairs! *bands are like that; they give you more levels than you need, and while it is possible to fully explore each of them and even to kill every monster on them, there is very little need to do so and sometimes an area is best left well alone.

--

Furthermore, competitions tend to be based on the lowest turncount, and even outside a competitive environment players generally want to win quickly and without wasting much time. Autoexploring levels would be extremely suboptimal from a turncount point of view; you would spend too much time exploring uninteresting areas.

--

All that said, we already have automated traveling to the nearest interesting object and other similar mechanics that are already partway there, so I won't say autoexplore's guaranteed to never happen. Sometimes you get a safe and fairly dull level you still for some reason want to have a good look at, or are mopping up the last loot after killing all the dangerous monsters, or want to go through a big dark room quickly and lack -illumination, and in situations like that it would be nice to just press a key and have things explored automatically. But if autoexplore ever is implemented, use it very carefully; it might kill you.

I see, I haven't really got past the early/mid game with my characters and so I always felt like auto explore would be a huuuge time saver. I found out about ctrl+g to pickup ammo/items of interest which saves a lot of time so I thought it would be a nice option to have autoexplore as an option as well.

[CyclopsSlayer]

I always play with auto-center map ON, otherwise deeper there are things that can all too easily one-shot you from off map.
Using run down a long corridor has led to a ton of near-death encounters and many deadly ones.

[CyclopsSlayer]

An odd and very specific Bug,

I recently started an Archer under salmiak and and went to manage my quiver, only to find I cannot.
On other characters 'i' 'e' 't' give the options Inventory|Equipment|Quiver (except for t).
On the Archer, only Inventory|Equipment show.
I can swap the quiver with another quiver, add arrows to it, fire arrows from it, but cannot take the quiver off, remove or sell arrows from it.

edit: Also, the arrows in the quiver cannot be enchanted by scroll or shop.

[Sideways]

I can't reproduce your problem with Archer quivers. There is a known bug with 'floor' sometimes not showing as an option in the object prompt when it ought to, but this sounds unrelated to that. This behavior is what I'd expect from a character with no quiver or no ammo in their quiver, but if you're switching quivers and firing ammo from them I presume that's not the case here. The only other thing I can think of is that either your quiver or the ammo in it have somehow had their locations corrupted so the game thinks they aren't actually equipped, though I have no idea how that could happen (or even if it would produce symptoms like this, rather than, say, a plain crash).

Did the problem only appear some time into the game, or immediately the first time you put ammo in your quiver? Can you drop or unequip the quiver if you shoot away all the ammo in it?

[CyclopsSlayer]

Did the problem only appear some time into the game, or immediately the first time you put ammo in your quiver? Can you drop or unequip the quiver if you shoot away all the ammo in it?

I honestly didn't check until I had the ability to Craft arrows and had reached Clvl12. I made 40some Sheaf arrows and wanted to add them to my then full quiver. Arrows (0, 0) Quiver was a 60 space. When I noticed the issue I tried to change quiver, the only one for sale was size 70. The 70 vanished and the old 60 appeared in my inv. The issue persisted.

edit: Just made a new Archer (Female, Demigod-Artemis, Lucky) This one started with a size 80 Quiver that does not appear, bought a new size 60 quiver and can swap them back and forth. While never showing on the listings.

My base game must be corrupted, I'll DL a fresh copy do a fresh install later today.

edit2: I DL'd the frogcomposband-7.1.salmiak-win.zip package and the problem persists. Try installing an instance of that and see it that shows the issue to you as well?

edit3: I DL'd the Exe and Source code separately. Combined them and the issues still persists. Reinstalled 'chocolate' and the quiver showed. So the compiles seem to have an issue?

[HugoVirtuoso]

Windows 10, right? I am wondering if any other Microsoft Windows users are affected? Be it Windows 10? Windows 8.1? etc.

[Sideways]

I cannot reproduce the bug, even in a freshly installed copy of salmiak-win on a lucky female Artemis demigod.

[CyclopsSlayer]

@HugoTheGreat2011 - Yes, Win10.

@Sideways - Okay, thanks for trying. Might be Win10, but so odd that previous versions worked fine. Ah, well, no Archer for me.

[ShadowTechnology]

I cannot reproduce the bug, even in a freshly installed copy of salmiak-win on a lucky female Artemis demigod.

I created a Win 10 Salmiak Lucky Female Demigod Artermis Archer and played up to CL 25 (at Instant Coffee speed) last night. No problems loading/unloading or changing quivers. Having fun so I think I'll keep going.

[CyclopsSlayer]

I created a Win 10 Salmiak Lucky Female Demigod Artermis Archer and played up to CL 25 (at Instant Coffee speed) last night. No problems loading/unloading or changing quivers. Having fun so I think I'll keep going.

Damn, so what could possibly be wrong on my end... mutter, mutter, curse, mutter...

[Saeldanya]

Edit: moved to a new thread, as it was in the wrong place.