New version of v4

[Magnate]

Hmmm. I was kind of hoping for ideas to allow affixes which already exist to appear on deep boots ... but ideas for new affixes always welcome, of course.

Nomad - welcome aboard! I got your pull request - but I am a little concerned about the tiles for the dungeon spellbooks not being used any more. Their tvals and svals haven't changed, I think it's just an issue with the names used in the pref files. Hope to sort this out later.

[Nomad]

Nomad - welcome aboard! I got your pull request - but I am a little concerned about the tiles for the dungeon spellbooks not being used any more. Their tvals and svals haven't changed, I think it's just an issue with the names used in the pref files. Hope to sort this out later.

Ah, I've found the issue. It's just the names that are broken: "K:magic book:[Resistances of Scarabtarices]:" doesn't work any more, but "K:magic book:4:" still does. I'll amend the pref files.

[Nomad]

I'm getting a "you dazzle the <creature>" message whenever I hit anything that's senstive to light. I'm guessing the light radius flag on my light source is being treated as an off-weapon brand. (I presume that's a bug, but I don't know, it actually seems kind of like a feature. Maybe you should get an automatic combat bonus if you choose to melee something that's harmed by being too close to your torch.)

[Magnate]

I'm getting a "you dazzle the <creature>" message whenever I hit anything that's senstive to light. I'm guessing the light radius flag on my light source is being treated as an off-weapon brand. (I presume that's a bug, but I don't know, it actually seems kind of like a feature. Maybe you should get an automatic combat bonus if you choose to melee something that's harmed by being too close to your torch.)

Hmmm. That's an interesting misfeature. I implemented a mon_vuln flag in the slay table, so the mult for fire/cold brands is increased by one if the monster has HURT_FIRE or _COLD. I also added fake x1 slays for IMPACT, TUNNEL and LIGHT, so that they could do x2 damage to creatures with HURT_LIGHT or HURT_ROCK. But I forgot about off-weapon brands - I think LIGHT and TUNNEL shouldn't be used unless they're on-weapon. That shouldn't be too hard to fix.

[Nomad]

Found another small bug: discovering stat boosts via ID by use doesn't seem to teach you the corresponding rune. I've only noticed this on themed items and an early artefact so far, so I'm not sure if it also applies to items with ordinary affixes.

Incidentally, finding OOD artefacts is kind of awesome with rune-based ID. I just picked up a randart cloak at 150' with seventeen runes on it! (Although I guess four of those are just the standard artefact element-proofing.)

EDIT: also, re: Windows char dump bug, after seeing flechette reference it existing in 4eefc30, I downloaded both the build and the source for that, and can now confirm that the bug occurs in the Windows build from buildbot.rephial.org, but not if I compile my own version from source.

[Obsilium]

Also, Emerald and Topaz weapons should get their weak brand runes swapped, at the moment Emerald is considered to have Weak Lightning and Topaz Weak Acid.

[Magnate]

Thanks all for the bug reports - please keep them coming. That's a brilliant discovery that the buildbot may be responsible for the chardump bug!! No wonder I can't reproduce it. We'll look into that.

[Nomad]

I just killed Bullroarer at 250' and he didn't drop anything. (I checked with unignore: still nada.) I seem to recall the same happened with Mughash in my last game. Something amiss with the functioning of the DROP_GOOD flag?

[Magnate]

I just killed Bullroarer at 250' and he didn't drop anything. (I checked with unignore: still nada.) I seem to recall the same happened with Mughash in my last game. Something amiss with the functioning of the DROP_GOOD flag?

I don't understand that at all - I could understand it dropping a piece of kit that had no affixes, buggy though that would be - but nothing? I don't see how there can be no legal drops. Will check with some of the devteam's actual coders and see if we can spot the problem ...

[Nomad]

Haven't been able to reproduce the "no drops" problems so far - later uniques in the next few levels have all given reasonable seeming drops. It's possible I forgot to switch branches and the bug is actually in the code I'm working on for affix names rather than the current master. (Although all I've done so far is add a field to ego_item.txt and parse it, so I can't quite see how that would affect good drops specifically rather than all items with affixes.) I'll let you know if I encounter it again.

In the meantime, I did find another minor issue; I read a scroll of Treasure Detection from the floor and then checked the item list, which yielded this:

You can see 1 item:
               ...and 1 others.  (Press any key to continue.)

I could see one asterisk, which on investigation turned out to be a pile of money, so I assume this is caused by the fact that money is usually excluded from the item list.

[Magnate]

Haven't been able to reproduce the "no drops" problems so far - later uniques in the next few levels have all given reasonable seeming drops. It's possible I forgot to switch branches and the bug is actually in the code I'm working on for affix names rather than the current master. (Although all I've done so far is add a field to ego_item.txt and parse it, so I can't quite see how that would affect good drops specifically rather than all items with affixes.) I'll let you know if I encounter it again.

In the meantime, I did find another minor issue; I read a scroll of Treasure Detection from the floor and then checked the item list, which yielded this:

You can see 1 item:
               ...and 1 others.  (Press any key to continue.)

I could see one asterisk, which on investigation turned out to be a pile of money, so I assume this is caused by the fact that money is usually excluded from the item list.

Yes. Bit of a giveaway, that. I'm not sure what we can do about it though, as the only alternative seems to be listing all unknown gold items in the full list, which seems like a lot of clutter to avoid giving away a fairly small amount of info. Anyone else have a view?

I've been reflecting on the no-drop thing, and ISTR it happens occasionally in V too. We'll keep an eye out though.

[Nomad]

Yes. Bit of a giveaway, that. I'm not sure what we can do about it though, as the only alternative seems to be listing all unknown gold items in the full list, which seems like a lot of clutter to avoid giving away a fairly small amount of info. Anyone else have a view?

I guess we could resurrect the old divide between scrolls of object detection and treasure detection. (If I'm right in remembering they were separate things back in 3.0.9.) Or maybe have money piles appear as an orange asterisk so they're distinct from objects but impossible to tell apart from buried treasure without exploring.

[Magnate]

I guess we could resurrect the old divide between scrolls of object detection and treasure detection. (If I'm right in remembering they were separate things back in 3.0.9.) Or maybe have money piles appear as an orange asterisk so they're distinct from objects but impossible to tell apart from buried treasure without exploring.

Now that last is a good idea. We could then ignore them completely in the object list.

[takkaria]

Haven't been able to reproduce the "no drops" problems so far - later uniques in the next few levels have all given reasonable seeming drops. It's possible I forgot to switch branches and the bug is actually in the code I'm working on for affix names rather than the current master. (Although all I've done so far is add a field to ego_item.txt and parse it, so I can't quite see how that would affect good drops specifically rather than all items with affixes.) I'll let you know if I encounter it again.

In the meantime, I did find another minor issue; I read a scroll of Treasure Detection from the floor and then checked the item list, which yielded this:

You can see 1 item:
               ...and 1 others.  (Press any key to continue.)

I could see one asterisk, which on investigation turned out to be a pile of money, so I assume this is caused by the fact that money is usually excluded from the item list.

Hmm, I did change some code to try and stop this from happening about a week ago - my plan was to make all unknown items, gold included, turn up on the display, but obviously it's not working!

[Obsilium]

This is just pure guesswork, but could the lack of item drops by elites stem from the fact that they aren't allowed to drop (slay unique type) items?
Personally I think that unscrupulous uniques might have weapons to slay their own kind to get rid of rivals and to keep order in the ranks, but that's just me...