More thoughts on v4

[Magnate]

Then.. you either don't need physical properties or you don't need magical properties (probably physical). That's a big loss of flavor. Personally, I'd rather they stack (and replicate the old *super slay*). Chocolate ice cream in chocolate flavored cone with chocolate syrup on top > a scoop of chocolate ice cream in styrofoam cup with little plastic spoon.

I'm not sure if Nomad realises, but Slay Demon is x3 whereas Iron is only x2, so they're not exactly the same. I also don't see much point in having two affixes give identical properties under different names. But I do see the point in having some items give +1 STR while others give +6. In that case there's a single rune for "affects your strength", so maybe the key to this is to get on with moving slay multipliers to a pval ...

[Nomad]

I'm not sure if Nomad realises, but Slay Demon is x3 whereas Iron is only x2, so they're not exactly the same. I also don't see much point in having two affixes give identical properties under different names. But I do see the point in having some items give +1 STR while others give +6. In that case there's a single rune for "affects your strength", so maybe the key to this is to get on with moving slay multipliers to a pval ...

No, I didn't know that, and yes it does make a difference. (If there are HURT_X flags for x2 damage, does that mean SLAY_EVIL and SLAY_ANIMAL now do x3, or are they still x2 as before? I'm horribly confused.) But I do think pval is the way to move, because inconsistency in naming bugs me as well.

[Magnate]

No, I didn't know that, and yes it does make a difference. (If there are HURT_X flags for x2 damage, does that mean SLAY_EVIL and SLAY_ANIMAL now do x3, or are they still x2 as before? I'm horribly confused.) But I do think pval is the way to move, because inconsistency in naming bugs me as well.

Good, that's settled then - slays and brands will be pvals and there will only be one rune for each type. That still doesn't quite solve the conundrum of how to deal with obvious affixes which have runes, but we're getting there.

Yes, I'm afraid SLAY_ANIMAL and SLAY_EVIL really ought to be HURT_ANIMAL and HURT_EVIL because they are still only x2 ... but this will soon all be irrelevant ...

[takkaria]

Separately, I've now realised why I have a problem with takkaria's issue of hates fire being a physical property of the material not a magical property of the item. Let's take IGNORE_FIRE instead: sometimes it's a natural property of the material (i.e. mithril), and sometimes it's a magical property of the item (e.g. Defenders). It makes no sense to me that a given property would sometimes be a rune and sometimes not be.

Why not? Some things don't catch fire naturally (rocks) and other things need fire-retardant spray (fabric). The rock doesn't have (or need) a rune, the fabric does. You have to distinguish the fact that an object has a property from its origin, e.g. keep magical/natural flags separately, if you want it to make sense.

It would be a massive headache to code up, but there's no conceptual problem in it.

[Magnate]

You have to distinguish the fact that an object has a property from its origin, e.g. keep magical/natural flags separately, if you want it to make sense.

It would be a massive headache to code up, but there's no conceptual problem in it.

I see what you did there ;-)

Ok, added to the to-do list as #1589. I just wish I could close tickets as fast as I create them.

[takkaria]

I see what you did there ;-)

Thought you'd like that

[fizzix]

Had some time to test-play v4 a little this week (still plan to do a lot more) but here's two issues that cropped up.

1) When takkaria proposed making torches radius 1 light I didn't like the change but decided to wait until I got a chance to play with it and see if I was being hasty in my decision. After playing with radius-1 torches, I've decided that I still don't like it at all. It's fine for every race except for dunadan and human, but these two races have the problem that they can run into e's, j's and m's in early levels and get immediately killed. Radius-1 light makes no-infravision characters have a very painful first couple of levels, and I don't find it enjoyable at all.

2) Playing with no-selling it can sometimes be very difficult to find a cheap weapon in town. In 4 starts, the cheapest weapon I found in either the armory or the temple was over 150 gp. I think either a cheap dagger/whip should be available always in the town, or that characters should start with a dagger and 550 gp.

[Magnate]

2) Playing with no-selling it can sometimes be very difficult to find a cheap weapon in town. In 4 starts, the cheapest weapon I found in either the armory or the temple was over 150 gp. I think either a cheap dagger/whip should be available always in the town, or that characters should start with a dagger and 550 gp.

I am not really buying this one. I've played quite a lot of games with no selling, and I find the money invested in the initial weapon (be that a launcher or melee weapon) to be well worth every gp. I often spend 500gp or more on a starting weapon with plusses.

That said, I have no objection to ensuring that the general store carries unenchanted daggers or whips.

[fizzix]

That said, I have no objection to ensuring that the general store carries unenchanted daggers or whips.

It's possible I need to recalibrate my early dive distance to be different from v4. In V I'd go down to about dlevel 15 or so on the first dive, maybe I can't do that in v4.

I think unenchanted daggers in the general store is a good approach.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Any thoughts on fixing the wierd hight/weight attributes of the races? This has always been a pet peeve of mine, specificaly half-trolls and High-elves, and dunadan, High-elves aren't 8 foot tall and weigh 170lbs half-trolls arent 9feet tall and 250lbs, I never heard of the dunedain being 7 foot tall brutes either, seems kind of messed up to me, but that's my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!