Z+Angband 0.2.3 released

[bonzo]

Options

The changing of any Birth or Autosave Options do not seem to be remembered from game to game after choosing n) Dump Options to a Pref File. All other option changes seem to stick. Any way to change this? I'm running Z+ via Wine on Linux.

[RogerN]

A quick observation: Z+ is not very diver-friendly. I've noticed that in many (all?) of the dungeons there is only one downward staircase on the entire level. Was that a conscious design decision? Personally I'd like to see a few more staircases.

[Seany C]

A quick observation: Z+ is not very diver-friendly. I've noticed that in many (all?) of the dungeons there is only one downward staircase on the entire level. Was that a conscious design decision? Personally I'd like to see a few more staircases.

Ditto - some of the earlier dungeon levels are horribly tedious until you get detect stairs. Either more stairs or smaller levels would work well...

PS Can anyone remember what the different dungeon numbers (on the overview map) signify, if anything?

[Mangojuice]

Ditto - some of the earlier dungeon levels are horribly tedious until you get detect stairs. Either more stairs or smaller levels would work well...

PS Can anyone remember what the different dungeon numbers (on the overview map) signify, if anything?

It was a deliberate design decision, but different dungeon types have different amounts of staircases. The "sewer" type, which is always the one present in the starting town, typically has one down staircase per level. This was done to encourage you to get out of the town and get into quests. Having played it, I do agree that having only one down staircase per level can be frustrating.. a number of find-x-artifact quests took me to sewer dungeons, and diving quickly to the right depth was a matter of a lot of teleporting and stair detection. What I think I might do, when I get around to revisiting dungeon generation, is try to make sure the stairs are always in the middle area, which will make them much easier to find. In my experience, the stairs are far more likely to be disconnected from the dungeon if they're near the edge, and they're also harder to look for then.

Dungeon numbers indicate the depth of the dungeon and the depth level for the dungeon guards. Number n indicates that the stairs take you directly to a level from 10*(n-1) to 10*n - 1. So a number 4 would be a level 30-39 dungeon. Dungeons have guards at a level equal to their first level. So, watch out for high numbers, they're dangerous.

--MJ

[Mangojuice]

Here's another. I currently have a quest to kill Adunaphel the Quiet on dungeon level 75. However, while trying to complete a different quest (destroy a Dark Elven Shade and his minions) one of the sorcerers managed to summon Adunaphel the Quiet.

Since I managed to kill her (and it didn't mark the quest as finished), what will happen if I go down to level 75? Will it crash? Will I be able to descend to dungeon level 76? I hope I didn't just screw my game file up... this was the competition character

Are you playing 0.2.3? Because that bug is supposed to have been fixed.

If not, you can fix your game by upgrading, because that bug is one that gets corrected when you import your character. In other words, the quest will get marked as finished now that Adunaphel is dead.

[Mangojuice]

The changing of any Birth or Autosave Options do not seem to be remembered from game to game after choosing n) Dump Options to a Pref File. All other option changes seem to stick. Any way to change this? I'm running Z+ via Wine on Linux.

I'll take a look. I do know the birth options would stick if you start your next game by "opening" the savefile of your dead character instead of starting a totally new game. (This is also the only way to maintain your monster memory, AFAIK).

[RogerN]

Are you playing 0.2.3? Because that bug is supposed to have been fixed.

Yes, it's definitely 0.2.3. I just double-checked. Is there a way to force the quest-fixing logic to execute without upgrading to a newer version?

[RogerN]

Another observation: It really sucks to spend 5000+ turns clearing out a level for a quest, only to realize that the last monster(s) are in a lesser vault which isn't connected to the rest of the dungeon. If you didn't happen to bring a shovel or stone-to-mud then you have re-enter the level and start all over again In some dungeon types I'm seeing disconnected vaults on roughly 50% of the levels.

[bonzo]

I'll take a look. I do know the birth options would stick if you start your next game by "opening" the savefile of your dead character instead of starting a totally new game. (This is also the only way to maintain your monster memory, AFAIK).

Excellent. For the record...yes, I always select New instead of Open when rolling a new character.

[bonzo]

It was a deliberate design decision, but different dungeon types have different amounts of staircases. The "sewer" type, which is always the one present in the starting town, typically has one down staircase per level. This was done to encourage you to get out of the town and get into quests. Having played it, I do agree that having only one down staircase per level can be frustrating.. a number of find-x-artifact quests took me to sewer dungeons, and diving quickly to the right depth was a matter of a lot of teleporting and stair detection. What I think I might do, when I get around to revisiting dungeon generation, is try to make sure the stairs are always in the middle area, which will make them much easier to find. In my experience, the stairs are far more likely to be disconnected from the dungeon if they're near the edge, and they're also harder to look for then.

Dungeon numbers indicate the depth of the dungeon and the depth level for the dungeon guards. Number n indicates that the stairs take you directly to a level from 10*(n-1) to 10*n - 1. So a number 4 would be a level 30-39 dungeon. Dungeons have guards at a level equal to their first level. So, watch out for high numbers, they're dangerous.

--MJ

Thanks for this explanation. I was thinking about bringing this up as well. To get around the not so exciting part of the beginning dungeons, I've been playing with small level always on and with a character who can learn detect doors & traps early on. Guess I'll have to get out of the starting town more often now that I know this is a design decision. Although, wandering through the wilderness has not been very kind to me so far.

[Mangojuice]

Thanks for this explanation. I was thinking about bringing this up as well. To get around the not so exciting part of the beginning dungeons, I've been playing with small level always on and with a character who can learn detect doors & traps early on. Guess I'll have to get out of the starting town more often now that I know this is a design decision. Although, wandering through the wilderness has not been very kind to me so far.

There are other things that encourage you to leave town: 1. The stores in your starting town are very basic. 2. You'll soon use up the easy quests in your starting town, and they're very worth doing. 3. The town dungeon only goes down to 1250', and won't have any vaults. 4. The town dungeon contains quite a low proportion of magical stuff like scrolls, potions, et cetera. This may in fact be overkill. Any thoughts?

One thing I do want to work on in future versions is trying to even out the game starting position you face. There's a world of difference between starting in a truly easy wilderness with lots of roads and nearby towns, and starting in a small island of easy wilderness surrounded by dangerous stuff with far away towns.

[Mangojuice]

Another observation: It really sucks to spend 5000+ turns clearing out a level for a quest, only to realize that the last monster(s) are in a lesser vault which isn't connected to the rest of the dungeon. If you didn't happen to bring a shovel or stone-to-mud then you have re-enter the level and start all over again In some dungeon types I'm seeing disconnected vaults on roughly 50% of the levels.

That does suck. And stone-to-mud *wands* can be kind of insufficient, because you can even run out of charges. This is definitely on my design hitlist. In 0.2.2 (I think) I removed a couple of minor vaults that involved digging through a lot of granite. Those were fine as minor benefits in a dungeon level you don't have to clear, but a major pain when you must clear.

Some dungeon connection issues may be solveable, but this will fundamentally always be a problem as long as vaults involve tunneling through rock (as many of them do). I was thinking of adding a rod of stone to mud, any thoughts on that?

[RogerN]

Some dungeon connection issues may be solveable, but this will fundamentally always be a problem as long as vaults involve tunneling through rock (as many of them do). I was thinking of adding a rod of stone to mud, any thoughts on that?

Nah, that's what the deep shovels are for. Dwarven shovels, gnomish shovels, picks of all kinds... already got 'em.

I don't mind disconnected regions in general, but on quest levels it seems a little unfair. IMO the game should delete all items and monsters from areas of a quest dungeon which are disconnected. You'd have to use a flood-fill algorithm or similar to determine connectivity from the initial up staircase.

P.S... my most recent encounter with a disconnected vault on a quest level was solved with wonder. Although I was trying for stone-to-mud effect, I was just as happy when an unexpected earthquake broke through the wall of the vault.

[perost]

If you didn't already know it, of Greed-things seems to be a bit buggy. I bought a Golden Crown of Greed +3, thinking that the extra speed and rConf would be nice, but it kept spamming "Your purse feels lighter"-messages all the time which was extremely annoying. Nothing seemed to happen to my money though, until suddenly when I noticed that all my money was gone

I assume that the intention was that it should slowly drain your money? That's fine, but the description doesn't say anything about it. And the spamming of messages makes it completely unusable to me at least, since there's a message every 10 turns or something like that. It keeps spamming even though you have no money too. But perhaps it's a work in progress?

[pampl]

Oh woah, I had no idea about the starting town dungeon. I knew that quest levels had a bunch more vaults but I just thought that was part of how ridiculously rewarding quests are not that all wilderness dungeons were like that. I must have flipped dungeon_abyss off when I was monkeying around in the settings.

That stuff sounds cool especially with a guaranteed decent wilderness, it should be mentioned in the faq too.