FAangband 2.0beta

[Sideways]

Some minor issues:
- an alarm trap I discovered by walking into it was not displayed properly until I returned to the area later
- Vampire Form description claims it costs 50% of your HP, but the actual cost is 25%
- Soul Siphon description should mention that it only works on living monsters (the name does hint at this, but it should be spelled out)
- shapechanger death messages don't reliably indicate the monster's true race (not sure if this bug occurs every time or only occasionally)
- I have not tested this myself, but Eriloth says interacting with the letter "ú" in a character history causes the game to crash

There's a lot of minor typos and grammar errors, I should probably get around to fixing those myself at some point and sending a pull request; although some of them will break savefiles like the lords of misrule did.

[jevansau]

Thanks Nick. I've got compilations working now, but looking at some of the files in my download makes me think I didn't get an up to date download.
With this new version, I'm getting chunk_copy() level bounds failed going north from level:WEST_BELERIAND:19:PLAIN to EPHEL_BRANDIR:0

[Nick]

Here is a Windows build of the latest development version. Things done recently include:

• Combat now pretty much identical to FA1.4
• Deep descent bug fixed
• Unarmed combat shows on the character sheet
• Ridiculously OP jewellery should no longer be available

[Nick]

And another example of an excessively useful item:
It did come with the poisoning and skin to stone curses (at strength 1 and 15) but still.
The treasure feeling for the level was 9 although there was a minor artifact on the level as well.

OK, I really hope that was from before I fixed jewellery. Are you doing your own Windows compiles now, btw?

[jevansau]

And another example of an excessively useful item:
It did come with the poisoning and skin to stone curses (at strength 1 and 15) but still.
The treasure feeling for the level was 9 although there was a minor artifact on the level as well.

[Nick]

Pull from 23/8 9am AEST.
Deep descent from L28 of Amon Rudh causes a crash. Standard wilderness.
Attempting to get to Talath Dirnen 29 is consistently crashing with:
Assertion failed!
Program C:\...faangband.exe
File: cave-square.c
Line: 1400
Expression: square_in_bounds(c,grid)
Looks like some issue with RIVER.

I'm currently finishing off unarmed damage display (for the character sheet), and I'll get onto this next.

[Nick]

Not sure if you still want stuff like this to still be possible; if not, well, it can still happen, though it's not quite as ridiculous as the +4 blows amulet.

This would be maybe OK if it were a once per game level of rarity, I guess - it does at least have the vulnerabilities to make it interesting.

[MITZE]

Jewellery




Not sure if you still want stuff like this to still be possible; if not, well, it can still happen, though it's not quite as ridiculous as the +4 blows amulet.

[Sideways]

Combo review: Adan Necromancer.

This is by far the most difficult combo I have tried in FAA yet, especially in the early game. Early necromancer combines mage's squishiness with a lack of good offense or utility, which makes survival very challenging; and while Adan is an extremely strong race, it probably also contributed to the challenge through the DL20 start. The early-game balance on necromancer is very different compared to every other class (even mage), it feels extremely underpowered by comparison; though it might well be the case in actuality that necromancer is balanced while every other class is overpowered.

In the midgame (from CL 20-25 to stat gain) necromancer remains weak in terms of offense, but is not in much immediate danger as long as the player stays alert and doesn't allow gazing eyes to hide under the mouse cursor. This seems to encourage tedious, grindy play - certainly that was my reaction, though a less wimpy player might react differently. The big problem is that the spell fail rates are really really high, even in darkness; it's only with stat gain and higher CL/INT that the offensive spells really start pulling their weight.

Stat gain, and the strong book 4, seem to be the things that eventually pull necromancers out of suckitude and make them fairly strong in the late game. Late game necromancer is basically a weaker druid (which is still enough to be strong!). In theory necromancer resembles a weaker druid throughout; but the similarity becomes more noticeable later on (especially in terms of the spell set), since many of the druid-like spells aren't really viable prior to stat gain.

Dark Spear is the most drastic example of the necromancer/druid comparison. It is extremely similar to druids' Earth Rising - a fairly strong beam of an element almost no one resists - but Earth Rising is CL 14/SP 5/difficulty 40, while Dark Spear is CL 25/SP 10/difficulty 60. Dark Spear does somewhat more damage than Earth Rising per successful cast, but somewhat less damage per SP. Due to the high fail rate and relatively high cost, I only really started using Dark Spear well after CL 30 - at which point a druid has already been enjoying Earth Rising as a staple offensive spell for almost 20 CLs. And Dark Spear is still good enough (and ultimately cheap enough) to eventually become a staple offensive spell for necromancers too!

I think if the fail rates for necromancer spells were lowered across the board, it would reduce the grindiness and tedium and make the class more fun to play without affecting the difficulty much.

--

One caveat: necromancers do have one early offensive spell with a decently low fail rate and a good SP-to-damage ratio, namely Miasma. I only got very limited usage out of it on this particular @, since lack of rChaos meant I could only use it in emergencies; by the time I did get rChaos it was polymorphing things into death molds. But if a necromancer lucked into rChaos very early, it could really help them kill things.

--

It occasionally felt a bit strange that Dark Spear and Storm of Darkness work so well against creatures of darkness; even Morgoth, Lord of Darkness, doesn't resist dark.

[jevansau]

Pull from 23/8 9am AEST.
Deep descent from L28 of Amon Rudh causes a crash. Standard wilderness.
Attempting to get to Talath Dirnen 29 is consistently crashing with:
Assertion failed!
Program C:\...faangband.exe
File: cave-square.c
Line: 1400
Expression: square_in_bounds(c,grid)
Looks like some issue with RIVER.

[Cuboideb]

A couple of compiler warnings

cave-view.c
@@ -658,7 +658,7 @@ static void update_one(struct chunk *c, struct loc grid, int blind)
 			c->feeling_squares++;
 			sqinfo_off(square(c, grid)->info, SQUARE_FEEL);
 			/* Don't display feeling if it will display for the new level */
-			if (((c->feeling_squares && 0xff) == z_info->feeling_need) &&
+			if (((c->feeling_squares & 0xff) == z_info->feeling_need) &&
 				!player->upkeep->only_partial) {
 				display_feeling(true);
 				player->upkeep->redraw |= PR_FEELING;

cmd-cave.c
@@ -1046,7 +1046,7 @@ void do_cmd_disarm(struct command *cmd)
  */
 void do_cmd_set_trap(struct loc grid)
 {
-	int max_traps =	1 + (player->lev >= 25) ? 1 : 0;
+	int max_traps =	1 + ((player->lev >= 25) ? 1 : 0);
 
 	/* Specialty ability Extra Trap */
 	if (player_has(player, PF_EXTRA_TRAP)) max_traps++;

[Sideways]

My character is re-finding artifacts he already found before, I think it might be caused by the Ungoliant thing but I'll mention it here just in case it's not.

[Saru]

Probably not. I'm certainly planning to keep the smaller numbers of books, it's possible the spell lists will be reworked a bit. Did you have anything particular in mind?

The clear mind spell was a favourite of mine, as well as 'resist magic' IIRC. Having an early spell to protect from the many blindness spamming nrulings in the early game of old FA was huge.

Runes of speed / mana were cool as well, but I don't expect those would fit as well into a shorter spell list since they're more specialized. I play almost exclusively mages though, so I don't have the widest or most balanced viewpoint for the other classes lists.

[Nick]

Sorry if this isn't the proper place to ask; is there any plan to rework the spell lists in the future for FA to be more akin to the original? And are you planning on retaining the 5 book system or going back to the classic 9 books?

Having a lot of fun playing FA 1.4.4 while I wait for this to get to a slightly more playable state. Thanks in advance!

Probably not. I'm certainly planning to keep the smaller numbers of books, it's possible the spell lists will be reworked a bit. Did you have anything particular in mind?

[Nick]

I've got an armor of Elvenkind that makes the game hang if I try and purchase it. Is this a known issue?
If not, do you want the save file and randart file?

I just go to purchase the armor from the armor shop.

I think this is actually a known and now fixed issue where resistances to unresistable elements were generated.