More thoughts on v4

[Magnate]

* The burden information from the inventory display is gone. It was useful for checking how close I was to overloading; could we please have it back?

I don't think anyone removed this intentionally, though it was changed from % to lbs remaining. If anyone can corroborate this please open a ticket.

* I picked up a scimitar: "You have a Scimitar of Piety (4d2) {splendid}." A turn later: "You feel the Scimitar of Piety (u) in your pack is splendid..." Inspecting it also didn't list the unknown runes on the item, even though i t also said I didn't know the full extent of its powers.

Hmmm. The message sequencing is a known bug. I think the inspection issue is a case of runes interacting badly with the old pseudo tiers. It's splendid because it has Blessed, and you already know that rune. It has other properties you don't know, but which have no associated runes (e.g. modified damage dice). Not sure what if anything to do about this.

* Thoughts on squelching: it seems like a good place to start would be "squelch all items of this base type that have at most these runes." That is, if I find e.g. a Stone Awl-Pike of Sharpness and squelch it with that option, then all Awl-Pikes that have the Stone, Sharpness, or Stone + Sharpness runes would be squelched. And of course the option to extend that to hafted weapons as well. Players should be able to say "This particular combination of runes is not desirable in any circumstance" while leaving the door open for that combination plus other runes to still be desirable.

Change "rune" to "affix" and that's exactly how it works. You can squelch individual affixes on all items, or on individual base item types (tvals), and the item will be squelched if you have chosen to squelch all its affixes. (We use affixes instead of runes for precisely the issue you note above: not all properties can be represented by runes.)

* Digging up treasure is representing a significant portion of my income at this point, aided significantly by the Gloves of Digging [3,+3] (+2) I picked up for a song from the Black Market for a mere 900AU. I am playing no-selling, though, which inflates the value of treasure seams.

That sounds pretty cool to me, though I am still of the view that nobody (even Dwarves) should be able to dig without a digging bonus somewhere on their equipment.

* Eating a ration took me straight from not-full to gorged. I thought that wasn't possible. Oh well.

Neither did I. You're sure it wasn't Waybread?

* Throwing a Tough Jerkin of Protection broke it. Armor, especially soft armor, probably shouldn't break easily.

Personally I think the breakage chance should move from tval to k_idx. It seems silly to me that all bladed weapons (or all lights, or whatever) would have exactly the same breakage chance.

* I spotted some mithril coins sitting in a room, thought "Ah! A mimic!" (it being far too early for mithril to show up on the floor at all often), and fired a bolt at them. The bolt just landed to the side. It was a mimic, of course; are we not allowed to reveal them with ranged attacks? What about spells?

Maybe you just missed with the bolt? I think attacking (successfully) by any means does wake them up.

* In retrospect, colbrans are freaking terrifying. Fast, durable, 520 hitpoints, frequent casters, and they start showing up at 1350'! Even with using a speed potion I barely took that one down. Shortly thereafter a horde of black puddings showed up; with me at 1400' they're out of depth by 9 levels. The dungeon's certainly scarier than I remember it being...

Good. I've always had colbrans on my hate list, since one killed one of my very first characters.

* On that note, teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Teleport away from Angamaite, land next to black puddings. Teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Really, game? Really?

This is depressingly common with certain dungeon layouts. You can end up in a situation where all the legal targets of a teleport are in one room, exactly as you experienced. We should perhaps make the code more intelligent at looking farther afield (or less far) in those situations.

* Bows should probably not be made of diamond. Or at least, such should not make them better.

Think of it as "diamond-reinforced" rather than pure diamond. Or suggest some different affixes for launchers.

Thanks again for the observations - I hope it's more challenging in the good old days sense, rather than just irritating or tedious.

Artifacts disappearing even with birth_no_preserve off

After several games with v4 I got a high-elf ranger deep enough in the dungeon and suddenly I started seeing extra entries in the artifact knowledge menu. Had a suspicion that it may be a bug, and I won't be getting those artifacts again.

So after a YASD, I started in debug mode, and sure enough, if I loiter around long enough, without collecting anything, I start seeing entries in the artifact history.

The way to repeat it, start a new character, power up for enough HP, jump to level 99 a few times (I would say about 20 times), and you must see some artifacts in history. And then if I generate thousands of great objects, I get other artifacts but not them.

I checked with 3.3 and this did not happen there.

So, I wonder, if this is indeed a bug, what will happen to the artifact spell books? It would be terrible if they are lost.

[sethos]

I fired up my dwarf again, so here's some more thoughts:

* The burden information from the inventory display is gone. It was useful for checking how close I was to overloading; could we please have it back?

* I picked up a scimitar: "You have a Scimitar of Piety (4d2) {splendid}." A turn later: "You feel the Scimitar of Piety (u) in your pack is splendid..." Inspecting it also didn't list the unknown runes on the item, even though i t also said I didn't know the full extent of its powers.

* Thoughts on squelching: it seems like a good place to start would be "squelch all items of this base type that have at most these runes." That is, if I find e.g. a Stone Awl-Pike of Sharpness and squelch it with that option, then all Awl-Pikes that have the Stone, Sharpness, or Stone + Sharpness runes would be squelched. And of course the option to extend that to hafted weapons as well. Players should be able to say "This particular combination of runes is not desirable in any circumstance" while leaving the door open for that combination plus other runes to still be desirable.

* Digging up treasure is representing a significant portion of my income at this point, aided significantly by the Gloves of Digging [3,+3] (+2) I picked up for a song from the Black Market for a mere 900AU. I am playing no-selling, though, which inflates the value of treasure seams.

* Eating a ration took me straight from not-full to gorged. I thought that wasn't possible. Oh well.

* Throwing a Tough Jerkin of Protection broke it. Armor, especially soft armor, probably shouldn't break easily.

* Early uniques are a lot more dangerous without strong weapons. I've burned !Speed on practically every one I've encountered...assuming I didn't just run away. As of clvl 25 I'm still dealing only 48 damage/round; 300HP isn't really enough to survive melee with these guys at that damage rate.

* I spotted some mithril coins sitting in a room, thought "Ah! A mimic!" (it being far too early for mithril to show up on the floor at all often), and fired a bolt at them. The bolt just landed to the side. It was a mimic, of course; are we not allowed to reveal them with ranged attacks? What about spells?

* In retrospect, colbrans are freaking terrifying. Fast, durable, 520 hitpoints, frequent casters, and they start showing up at 1350'! Even with using a speed potion I barely took that one down. Shortly thereafter a horde of black puddings showed up; with me at 1400' they're out of depth by 9 levels. The dungeon's certainly scarier than I remember it being...

* On that note, teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Teleport away from Angamaite, land next to black puddings. Teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Really, game? Really?

* Bows should probably not be made of diamond. Or at least, such should not make them better.

Sorry, But I actually laughed when I read the part about teleport. *GRIN* that really sucks.

But I like Diamond bows... they make great clubs, and they're all sparkly.

Otherwise, This seems like some good stuff... Maybe I should stop playing NPP for a little while... Maybe... urghh... Not easy.

[Derakon]

I fired up my dwarf again, so here's some more thoughts:

* The burden information from the inventory display is gone. It was useful for checking how close I was to overloading; could we please have it back?

* I picked up a scimitar: "You have a Scimitar of Piety (4d2) {splendid}." A turn later: "You feel the Scimitar of Piety (u) in your pack is splendid..." Inspecting it also didn't list the unknown runes on the item, even though i t also said I didn't know the full extent of its powers.

* Thoughts on squelching: it seems like a good place to start would be "squelch all items of this base type that have at most these runes." That is, if I find e.g. a Stone Awl-Pike of Sharpness and squelch it with that option, then all Awl-Pikes that have the Stone, Sharpness, or Stone + Sharpness runes would be squelched. And of course the option to extend that to hafted weapons as well. Players should be able to say "This particular combination of runes is not desirable in any circumstance" while leaving the door open for that combination plus other runes to still be desirable.

* Digging up treasure is representing a significant portion of my income at this point, aided significantly by the Gloves of Digging [3,+3] (+2) I picked up for a song from the Black Market for a mere 900AU. I am playing no-selling, though, which inflates the value of treasure seams.

* Eating a ration took me straight from not-full to gorged. I thought that wasn't possible. Oh well.

* Throwing a Tough Jerkin of Protection broke it. Armor, especially soft armor, probably shouldn't break easily.

* Early uniques are a lot more dangerous without strong weapons. I've burned !Speed on practically every one I've encountered...assuming I didn't just run away. As of clvl 25 I'm still dealing only 48 damage/round; 300HP isn't really enough to survive melee with these guys at that damage rate.

* I spotted some mithril coins sitting in a room, thought "Ah! A mimic!" (it being far too early for mithril to show up on the floor at all often), and fired a bolt at them. The bolt just landed to the side. It was a mimic, of course; are we not allowed to reveal them with ranged attacks? What about spells?

* In retrospect, colbrans are freaking terrifying. Fast, durable, 520 hitpoints, frequent casters, and they start showing up at 1350'! Even with using a speed potion I barely took that one down. Shortly thereafter a horde of black puddings showed up; with me at 1400' they're out of depth by 9 levels. The dungeon's certainly scarier than I remember it being...

* On that note, teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Teleport away from Angamaite, land next to black puddings. Teleport away from black puddings, land next to Angamaite. Really, game? Really?

* Bows should probably not be made of diamond. Or at least, such should not make them better.

[Napsterbater]

It's an edge case, I think - I can't remember the last time I met a mimic in a corridor which gave itself away that way. I tend to find most of them in rooms, and those I find in corridors have usually woken up before that happens.

Many thanks for the report.

You could make mimics behave exactly as items up until a player invades its space or just gets in attack range. Monsters can walk over them. Maybe have area of effect spells silently decrease its health.

[buzzkill]

Or experiment with ekolis's suggestion. *shrug*

As long as we already have 'fuzzy' detection, why not implement this (v4). You (think you) see 'something' just outside the radius of your torchlight. It works thematically and for gameplay. Maybe press s to squint .

If not, walking into a floating eyes isn't necessarily death. You do get a save, right? And if the reaper does prevail, a infant character so unconcerned with his longevity that he couldn't be bothered to find a lantern bites the dust, big deal!

Orcs carry torches... cause theer shtupid, are oyu?

This post courtesy of Great Lakes Brewing Co.

[Timo Pietilä]

If people think radius-1 light makes for good gameplay, then I guess it should stay.

I see two approach to that:

1) keep radius one in order to have real benefit from finding/buying lantern
2) remove torches

Radius 2 torches are just weaker form of lantern. There is no real difference between two, except that torches are a bit more annoying to use.

Radius 1 torch is different from lantern, making transition to lantern a reward.

I think this is a diver-dilemma. Divers have used to been able to dive early levels like if they were never there. This has been made possible by some of the latest changes in game, it wasn't that easy earlier. One reason to that is radius 2 torches. Early levels are less dangerous when you can see danger before you step right next to it. Difference between seeing danger one turn earlier is a big benefit.

[fizzix]

While you may well have a point, I don't think that it's enough to take torches back to radius 2. The vast majority of characters won't have a problem; those that do can simply suffer until they get a lantern. Or experiment with ekolis's suggestion. *shrug*

It's possible that my strongest objections would go away if we gave certain monsters the LIGHT attribute. Specifically, floating eyes, radiation eyes, bloodshot eyes, disenchanter eyes, red molds (already have it), and disenchanter molds. Most of these monsters seem like they should have LIGHT based on their descriptions.

If people think radius-1 light makes for good gameplay, then I guess it should stay.

My main issue with the auto-allocator is that it sunk 12 allocation points into a single stat. That should practically never happen IMO, since the diminishing returns on that last point are so bad (4 allocation points for 1 stat point).

Ok, I'll look at the code again. Maybe I could set the limit to 8 with minimal problems.

[bio_hazard]

* I found a Whip of Piety with known properties "of Piety, of Piety". I automatically recognized the rune, perhaps because I'd seen a weapon of Piety in a store?

I'd be in favor of removing the ability to learn runes from browsing store inventory. Fine if you want to buy something and sell it back- the price difference is then the cost for learning that rune. Otherwise, it seems to encourage a rather tedious activity of inspecting undiscovered items in stores. This would also seem to be an unnecessary penalty for playing ironman or other options with non-standard store access.

We can imagine the items are all in the back of the store, and the storekeeper has a catalog.

If we want to keep learning from store inventories, how about giving the player a message that we just learned a rune (could apply to ID-ing by use or magic in the dungeon as well).

Also- this might have been addressed before, but the way runes are categorized gives some information in an n-1 degrees of freedom sort of way. For example, I learned the runes for resisting acid, cold and fire. this left one unknown elemental rune (lightning), that by process of elimination I as a player knew although my character did not yet know it. I think I would support also allowing the character to know right away what rLighting is, if we are assuming they know there are four basic elements.

[Derakon]

Play a human priest next and see if you still think it's good. Radius-1 doesn't matter if you have infravision. The problem is with no-infravision characters.

While you may well have a point, I don't think that it's enough to take torches back to radius 2. The vast majority of characters won't have a problem; those that do can simply suffer until they get a lantern. Or experiment with ekolis's suggestion. *shrug*

My main issue with the auto-allocator is that it sunk 12 allocation points into a single stat. That should practically never happen IMO, since the diminishing returns on that last point are so bad (4 allocation points for 1 stat point).

Timo: good call on the dwarven digging bonus. I'd forgotten about that. If any race should be able to bash down walls with their bare hands, it should be the dwarves. I still think that bashing down doors at 50' should be a fairly trivial matter for any warrior though; currently such doors appear to be basically impassible. Shouldn't bashing down a door be strictly easier than, say, tunneling through a magma vein? In fact, why not allow 'T'unneling through doors?

[ekolis]

For the radius-1 torches with non-infravision characters, why not borrow a tack from Sangband? In Sangband, monsters that are 1 square away from being visible appear as gray *'s - you can tell SOMETHING is there, you just don't know WHAT!

[fizzix]

* The game's default was to put no points into CON in favor of getting DEX to 18. This required 4 extra build points, and the point of DEX didn't help my blows any. Probably the auto-allocation shouldn't try to focus on any one stat so heavily.

The automatic allocation works ok except for a few race/class combos where it has trouble. Dwarf warrior happens to be a trouble case. It's really hard to deal with every race/class case without doing them individually in a table form, which may be the best option at this point.

* Radius-1 torches really make you appreciate your first lantern. Good!

Play a human priest next and see if you still think it's good. Radius-1 doesn't matter if you have infravision. The problem is with no-infravision characters.

[Timo Pietilä]

I must admit I haven't played Angband in awhile, but I fired v4 up tonight and gave it a whirl. Dwarf warrior, starting with 18/40 STR, 17 DEX, 18 CON.

* I can also punch down walls fairly reliably. While I couldn't bash down a door at 50' after 17 attempts, I could dig through the granite wall next to it in 84 turns, and a quartz wall with treasure took 17. There's something wrong with the game when a character can more readily tunnel through rock than bash down doors. Even if I devoted fewer turns to bashing the door down (uncertain due to the paralysis from being knocked off-balance), I certainly devoted more player effort to it.

This is partially because of your race selection. Dwarf gets innate digging bonus in 3.x, and I don't think that is changed in v4. With H-Troll warrior barehanded digging would be much harder. With high-level dwarf you can cut thru rock like it is not there with good enough digger. I get single-digit numbers for granite, usually 1.something turns if the digger is good enough.

You could require a digger of some sort, heavy emphasis on weight for weapons and digging PVAL on diggers and add dwarf bonus to that, but not allow barehanded digging at all.

[Magnate]

I must admit I haven't played Angband in awhile, but I fired v4 up tonight and gave it a whirl. Dwarf warrior, starting with 18/40 STR, 17 DEX, 18 CON.

* This is enough to give me 3.7 blows/turn at +3 damage. Who needs weapons? I can punch my enemies to death.

This isn't specific to v4, but is indeed a problem, even after the reduction in birth points. My personal view is that it's only going to be solved by a fundamental re-working of combat, but that's a way off. (I also think it would be good to introduce some proper unarmed combat stuff into v4.)

* The game's default was to put no points into CON in favor of getting DEX to 18. This required 4 extra build points, and the point of DEX didn't help my blows any. Probably the auto-allocation shouldn't try to focus on any one stat so heavily.

This is left over from the days when DEX breakpoints were much more significant for blows. You're right that the birth code needs to tone down the emphasis on DEX now we have fractional blows.

* I can also punch down walls fairly reliably. While I couldn't bash down a door at 50' after 17 attempts, I could dig through the granite wall next to it in 84 turns, and a quartz wall with treasure took 17. There's something wrong with the game when a character can more readily tunnel through rock than bash down doors. Even if I devoted fewer turns to bashing the door down (uncertain due to the paralysis from being knocked off-balance), I certainly devoted more player effort to it.

I love this, it's a great observation (again not specific to v4). At the moment the digging ability is linear, with digging tools giving a linear addition (+20 per pval IIRC). IMO this needs to be non-linear, with digger-less digging being much more difficult, even for super-strong chars. Bashing down doors could stand to be a smidgin easier too, perhaps.

* I found a Whip of Piety with known properties "of Piety, of Piety". I automatically recognized the rune, perhaps because I'd seen a weapon of Piety in a store?

Yup.

* Grammar error: "the Manes hits you." "The" should be capitalized at the start of a sentence.

Yes, well spotted - this is a curious side effect of some refactoring of capitalisation. I don't understand why it's happening, but quite a lot of sentences now start uncapitalised. This needs a ticket.

* Found a Ring of Resist Poison at 600', dropped by a hill orc. At first I thought someone had taken my suggestion to make them common items, but no, I just got extremely lucky. To make up for it, Wormtongue dropped a shovel of Impact (a.k.a. earthquakes).

Not quite - Impact is purely the earthquake effect, but Of Earthquakes is a theme which matches the V ego of the same name - it also has +STR and +digging IIRC.

* The description of bolts starts with "A short A short projectile...". I guess our narrator is Foghorn Leghorn?

Er, I assume that's an editing error in object.txt - thanks for spotting.

* Mimics are pretty obvious when they block corridors, preventing other monsters from getting to you. Not sure there's much to be done about this since letting two monsters occupy the same space seems like asking for trouble.

Yes. It's an edge case, I think - I can't remember the last time I met a mimic in a corridor which gave itself away that way. I tend to find most of them in rooms, and those I find in corridors have usually woken up before that happens.

Many thanks for the report.

[Derakon]

I must admit I haven't played Angband in awhile, but I fired v4 up tonight and gave it a whirl. Dwarf warrior, starting with 18/40 STR, 17 DEX, 18 CON.

* This is enough to give me 3.7 blows/turn at +3 damage. Who needs weapons? I can punch my enemies to death.

* The game's default was to put no points into CON in favor of getting DEX to 18. This required 4 extra build points, and the point of DEX didn't help my blows any. Probably the auto-allocation shouldn't try to focus on any one stat so heavily.

* I can also punch down walls fairly reliably. While I couldn't bash down a door at 50' after 17 attempts, I could dig through the granite wall next to it in 84 turns, and a quartz wall with treasure took 17. There's something wrong with the game when a character can more readily tunnel through rock than bash down doors. Even if I devoted fewer turns to bashing the door down (uncertain due to the paralysis from being knocked off-balance), I certainly devoted more player effort to it.

* I found a Whip of Piety with known properties "of Piety, of Piety". I automatically recognized the rune, perhaps because I'd seen a weapon of Piety in a store?

* Grammar error: "the Manes hits you." "The" should be capitalized at the start of a sentence.

* I'm digging the runed items which don't have magical pluses. They should really smooth out the power curve early on. For example, a Sapphire Trident of Slay Animal (+0,+0) vs. a Cheap Dagger of Slaying (-1,+1) -- already I have a swap weapon...which came in useful vs. Golfimbul, who resists cold.

* Radius-1 torches really make you appreciate your first lantern. Good!

* Found a Ring of Resist Poison at 600', dropped by a hill orc. At first I thought someone had taken my suggestion to make them common items, but no, I just got extremely lucky. To make up for it, Wormtongue dropped a shovel of Impact (a.k.a. earthquakes).

* The description of bolts starts with "A short A short projectile...". I guess our narrator is Foghorn Leghorn?

* Mimics are pretty obvious when they block corridors, preventing other monsters from getting to you. Not sure there's much to be done about this since letting two monsters occupy the same space seems like asking for trouble.

At this point I'm at clvl 18, dlvl 14. I could probably dive a bit more, but the lack of magical pluses on weapons is starting to slow me down. Hooray!