RandART Creation Success Rate

[Old Coach]

I have been trying to play a Ranger with Randomized artifacts and ironman stairs. This is the first time I have tried playing any Anband game or variant with randomized artifacts. My game locks up most of the time when trying to start a new game with rand arts. I would guess that I have to create a character about 10 times before I get a game that "sticks". Is this normal, or is it an artifact (sorry) of my machine?

Also, if I have Firefox open in the background with flash player running I cannot open Shockbolts sweet tiles. No big deal, just thought I would point it out.

[Derakon]

How long are you waiting? Randarts can take awhile to generate, but I've never seen generation actually hang before; that'd definitely be a bug.

[Magnate]

How long are you waiting? Randarts can take awhile to generate, but I've never seen generation actually hang before; that'd definitely be a bug.

It won't hang, but it will time out with MAX_TRIES for every item, because the generation algorithm can't yet cope with finesse and prowess being 10x the old to-hit and to-dam numbers. Unfortunately I switched off the error messages (due to popular demand!), so you won't see the messages when it hits MAX_TRIES.

The bottom line is, please don't try to play the current version of v4 with randarts. If you really want randarts, go back to a version before the combat changes were introduced (I'd suggest e32f0d2 would be about right).

I am more than halfway to fixing this. We now have a calc_damage() function which will return the damage dealt by a particular object, which will take an aspect argument (RANDOMISE for actual combat, AVERAGE for things like info displays or power calculations). There are a couple of things to iron out (like calculating the AVERAGE value of critical hits, and switching missile combat over to use the prowess multiplier), but once they're done it's just a matter of making object_power() call this function correctly, and adjusting the +fin/prow caps in randart generation. After that it will Just Work, I think.