Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.8.4 "Fampas"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: June 28, 2025, 12:15:02 PM »

This release started off as something very, very boring (library updates, which I hadn't done in an embarrassingly long time), but got interesting: the biggest change is probably that hiding has been reworked so that rather than a skill you have to actively set, the game is checking it every turn if you're not hidden to see if you can hide. This very strongly changes how thieves, and hopefully makes stealth a viable, non-wristbreaking playstyle now.

There's also new music, a lot of smaller mechanical changes, and a couple of bug fixes, including a pretty critical one around followers and summoning.

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.8.4 "Fampas"
- Version declared March 8, 2025. Version finalized June 28, 2025.

- Updated the guidebook's section on Skills and created a new section on
  how to apply terrain features (Lustcrecia).

- Improved the "can't sacrifice" message.

- Applying an altar now triggers sacrifice (same as "O"ffer) if you're
  standing on it.

- Shopkeepers' default message now references restocks (Lustrecia).

- Updates to use Google Test 1.16, Boost 1.87, xerces-c 3.3, zlib 1.3.1,
  SDL 2.32.0, SDL_image 2.8.8, SDL_mixer 2.8.1.

- Made different versions of the level up effect, so that it plays using the
  instrument you're currently holding (if you're not holding one, it plays the
  default).

- More names.

- Talking to fairy spirits now plays a little tune when they disappear.

- "Death" flag for tiles, where unprotected movement on to the tile
  insta-kills. The water tiles in the Caldera have been flagged as death.

- Added an item property, nexus, that provides a link between worlds and
  allows the creature to savely move without death.

- For musical instruments, added info on which races they charm most
  effectively to the codex.

- Singing now breaks the Silent conduct.

- Pacification is now impossible (Music) and/or very difficult (Beastmastery)
  when a creature is enraged.

- Failed attempts at musical pacification are now much more likely to trigger
  rage (though still not guaranteed, like beastmastery).

- The status colour for hiding is now bold magenta (was white) to be more
  easily seen.

- Hiding is now all but impossible unless you are unburdened.

- Hiding is now for Thieves only.

- Humans and Wood Elves now start with Stealth.

- Adventurers now start with Swimming (Paul Raymond-Robichaud).

- Stealth is now more effective at allowing you to move and remain hidden.

- Backstabbed creatures make it nearly impossible to hide again in their
  presence, and e'x'amining a creature now reveals if it has been
  backstabbed.

- Reworked how Hiding works. Rather than requiring manual application, it's
  now checked on a turn-by-turn basis, if you have skill in it. Only Thieves
  start with the skill. The status messages on application/wear-off have been
  removed now that it potentially triggers every turn, and instead, the "Hi"
  status identifier is now bold magenta, to be easily visible at a glance.
  This should allow a distinct playstyle for thieves, similar to how combat
  is for warriors and others, and magic for the spellcasting classes. (Josh
  Engdahl, Paul Raymond-Robichaud)

- Hiding is now automatic only when no creatures can see the hiding creature.

- One of the thieves in the guild house in Carcassia now has some useful tips
  for thieves.

- The game will now check to see if the asset directory exists before
  continuing, if the config requires it (SDL does, curses doesn't).

- Moved all the assets out of source control and into an archive on the game's
  website to get around GitHub's very low git-lfs bandwidth limits.

- Dungeon stairs now sometimes have an extra description.

- Tweaked a few sprites.

- Changed "Hair Colour" and "Eye Colour" to "Hair" and "Eyes", respectively,
  and added a new Hair option, Bald (RelicWraith).

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - Fixed a bug with summoner following that wasn't respecting a tile's
    existing creature (Ewig Kaiwelo).

  - The Crafting skill wasn't showing its message when used (RelicWraith).

2

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.8.0 "Sergio Assad"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: June 28, 2025, 12:10:52 PM »

Hello there, my good mate, finally on vacation and I'm diving in this great roguelike of yours! First impressions are stunning, outstanding. Man, this thing is a time killer for sure! Thank you for this game, it's gonna bring me so many hours of joy ^_^

Hey, sorry this is months late! I'm glad you've been enjoying it!

3

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 08, 2025, 03:50:41 PM »

First of all, thank you for this amazing game! :3

I've had a lot of fun exploring and figuring out the lay of the land (and sea :V).
I'm taking it slow, so I did not confront endgame bosses yet.

I've read through this thread and I would like to point out a few things which did not come up before.

1. Using "active" skills, like fishing or disarm trap, is not covered in the manual and was not very obvious. This might be a me thing, as I don't have a history with more old-school roguelikes like Adom, but just adding a blurb about how you can use skills from F3 menu would have helped me a lot.

2. More or less the same as above, "Apply a nearby terrain feature" is a single line in manual which does not elaborate on what a terrain feature even is. I'm pretty sure I figured that it is for using crafting stations by accident, and opening/closing doors was an accident too. On the other hand, bed is not a terrain feature, while I expected that using "a" near a bed would make me rest on it.

3. It would be nice if merchant's dialogue hinted on the restock somehow, maybe something along the lines of "I'm getting new wares delivered in a couple of weeks, come back again!".

4. Ivory stacking was brought up quite a few times already, but still: wouldn't it make sense to always pick up the whole stack without confirmation? It always drops in stacks, and pretty much never want to pick up, for example, slings from goblin peltasts, so using "pick up all" is not always feasible.

5. If there is only 2-3 items in the cell, maybe you can just list them instead of a "There is a number of items here"? Checking what I dug exactly quickly get tedious when most of the time it's just a couple of different rocks, but there can be an ingot there too.

Thanks for this, Lustrecia, and sorry I didn't respond earlier.

1, 2, and 3 are all good points. I'll add them to my list of suggestions for future versions.

For 4 and 5, I'm unlikely to change item display behaviour, and you can pick up everything on a tile via ";". If you just want individual stacks to always pick up the maximum, there is a setting in swyrm.ini that you can update:

; When enabled, picking up a stack will always prompt the player for the
; number to take, assuming no autopickup.
prompt_on_stack_pickup=1

There should be a swyrm.ini in your user directory. You can set that setting to 0 for the behaviour you're looking for.

4

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.8.0 "Sergio Assad"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: March 08, 2025, 03:47:44 PM »

Sorry this one took a bit! The general synopsis:

​- Several new pieces of music
- Tweaked levels in a number of pieces
- Some additional sound effects
- There is now a water breathing cantrip
- NPCs will try to cast water breathing/flying when it makes sense, and may decide to cast buff spells when hostiles are present
- Orders can now be given to creatures individually (when examining them)
- Wheat fields
- Various other changes
- Lots of bug fixes

But there are a lot of changes, and I spent a solid couple of weeks dealing with the consequences of my actions after deciding to up the warning level to MSVC's strictest setting (so many fixes!). That said, there's a lot of good stuff in this release, and some great new music, too.

The full info:

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.8.0 "Sergio Assad"
- Version started August 25, 2024. Versoin finalized March 8, 2025.

- Made a couple of tweaks to "A Black Mark" so that there was less of a high,
  shrill violin sound in Violin 1, and a small update to "My Love's Gone
  Away".

- Wrote a new piece of music for the Barrows/Asher's Islet/Siriath's Lair,
  and another for the shrines.

- There are now sound effects for eating and drinking.

- Jumping into water now yields a "Splash!" in addition to the sound effect.

- Kew's special items will no longer generate cursed (iakul).

- The level of the corpse's original creature now influences the amount of
  piety received (gghana2).

- More names.

- There is now a Water Breathing cantrip/spellbook.

- When water breathing wears off, the time-in-water counter is reset so that
  if you've been swimming for a long time, you don't immediately start to
  drown.

- When the floating effect wears off, it'll no longer potentially kill you:
  the player will have one turn to react. (if automatic movement is engaged,
  it becomes disengaged at this point)

- NPCs will no longer try to cast divine magic once the Nine have been
  destroyed.

- NPCs will now cast water breathing and flying when it makes sense, and when
  they are not following other orders.

- NPCs may choose to cast statistic buff spells when there are hostiles in
  their FOV.

- Added support for ambient sound effects based on map details.

- Added "waves" music to the overworld part of the exile's island.

- Replaced the music for the Caldera with a new composition.

- Updated premake script for v5.

- Increased MSVC warning level from /W3 to /W4.

- The location of the scorefile (scores.dat) can now be specified (Larzid).

- Orders can now be given to individual followers via examine.

- Divine prayed-for smites are now lightning-based and carry a large effect
  bonus for paralysis. There is now also a message that the creatures are
  hit with divine fury.

- Towns now have a chance to have wheat fields generated nearby.

- The ploughman in Isen Dun is now surrounded by wheat.

- Jellies, plants, insects, constructs, and the undead are all considered
  mindless, and immune to intimidation.

- Branding an item adds a bit more resistance than it did before.

- Enchanting an item now increments the status (cursed to uncursed, uncursed to
  blessed).

- New creatures: living scarecrow.

- New items: scarecrow, wheat berries.

- Bug fixes:

  - Creating items with Bowyer/Fletchery wasn't setting their status
    appropriately.

  - Fixed an internal issue with getting the season colour.

  - Followers with ranged attacks will no longer fire through a square that
    contains a grouped creature (ebalster).

  - There was an inconsistency around Cynwise's background (sc95837).

  - Diving is no longer possible in the infinite dungeon/sewer (ebalster).

  - Fixed new/delete mismatches throughout the codebase. These were causing
    small but persistent memory leaks in terrain generation and in other
    scenarios.

  - Athel was incorrectly generating as hostile (iakul).

  - Newer versions of boost::filesystem weren't including directory_iterator
    (sxnwlfkk)

5

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: November 05, 2024, 12:13:27 AM »

Thinking about #3 - I think it makes sense that they can't join. You can't break the conduct anymore, and that's a precondition of joining.

Recently came back to the game, and just cleared the Godslayer ending with a Godless Human Wizard yesterday. Some things I wanted to mention

1) Athel starts off hostile if you don't have the same god as him. He converts to non-hostile once you Chat with him and activate his quest turning him into a follower. Not sure if that's intended.

2) Saw that you turned off cursed status for NPC generated items a few versions ago. Not sure if you intend them to be non-cursed as well, but the Kew starter pack still has a chance to be generated cursed, due to them not being generated by him.

3) It seems like godless aren't able to join the thieves guild, due to them not being able to pray and break all their conducts. Or did I miss some way for them to join?

6

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: November 04, 2024, 01:58:50 PM »

Thanks, iakul! Re: your first message

1) I'll fix this
2) Likewise (these are specified in the map data, and items generated this way don't have the same safeguards; I'll find another way to generate these)
3) I'll fix this too.

I haven't looked at the 2nd msg in detail yet but I'll add them to my backlog of items. Thanks so much for reporting these, and welcome back.

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: September 12, 2024, 11:28:25 PM »

ebalster, I've fixed those issues for the next version.

8

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: August 25, 2024, 03:26:46 PM »

I feel like I've had four "big" releases of SotW: the initial release in 2015, the 1.0 release that included Carcassia, the release that added full sprite support, and now this one, which includes music.

I've spent my evenings for the last six months hunched over my laptop, working on pieces and effects in MuseScore 4 (with MuseSounds for realistic-sounding instruments). That wasn't actually my intention: early on, I'd always envisioned an 8-bit soundtrack for SotW. But after spending a week learning FamiStudio, and creating what I think is a pretty good piece of 8-bit music, I came to the same conclusion as some of the people in the Discord: I don't know; this doesn't quite work. And so I set about trying to create a "real" soundtrack. I figured this might take eight months to a year. Instead, I went at it with all my energy, largely put aside my regular musical practice and writing work, and finished it quicker.

After six months, I'm done, and very proud of the result, which in places hovers somewhere between video game and traditional "classical" music, the latter very heavily informed by my tastes and preferences over a lifetime of playing and listening. I wasn't sure I could do this, but I did. I'm very proud of it. I hope you enjoy it.

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"
- Version started February 18, 2024. Version finalized August 25, 2024.

- Evergreen trees are now cyan in winter, to mimic the appearance of snow on
  their branches.

- If you leave followers behind on an overworld map that isn't permanent (a
  random forest, etc), that map will be flipped to permanent if you leave any
  followers behind when exiting the map (dionje5).

- Cursed wands now have a chance to explode, lessened by Wandcraft, which can
  also (for higher values) prevent this altogether.

- For this reason, NPCs won't chance using cursed wands.

- You can now dig through non-blocking diggable tiles (trees, etc) if you have
  a digging implement equipped (sr.mafioso).

- Axes can now be used to cut down trees. Axes more suited to this purpose
  (woodsman's axe, briar axe) will not break, though others might.

- Digging through weeds no longer gives lumber, branches, and boughs.

- Digging through trees, bushes, and weeds gives different messages than when
  digging through earth and rock.

- Working with traps now trains Disarm Traps (hemsio).

- Improved the way in which Foraging and Herbalism train: these now train when
  herbs or foragables are generated during map creation.

- You will no longer be crowned if standing over a tile (eg, open water) that
  would cause your crowning gift to disappear.

- Shopkeepers now get additional ivory when shops repop and they're below a
  certain threshold (hemsio).

- Shepherds start with slings and a few stones (Paul Raymond-Robichaud).

- Crowning gifts are now generated blessed.

- Creature respawns now generate a message (with associated music effect).

- Full support for music and an initial soundtrack.

- New names, etc.

- New creatures: chamber ensemble.

- The danger level now scales properly from Isen Dun or Carcassia to its
  furthest point at the edge of the map (previously, a fixed value was used,
  and Carcassia starts resulted in slightly less powerful creatures at the
  furthest point).

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - Smithing was training far less frequently than it should (hemsio).

  - The message for NPCs kicking objects wasn't working correctly (Paul
    Raymond-Robichaud).

  - The guidebook didn't note that Shepherds get Weaving (Paul Raymond-
    Robichaud).

  - Skinning stacks of corpses of the same type led to duplicatoin (Paul
    Raymond-Robichaud).

  - Planting seeds wasn't displaying a message, and wasn't also checking to

9

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.6.5 "Reusner"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: August 25, 2024, 03:14:12 PM »

Picking SotW up again to help me get through some long COVID.

I encountered a nasty softlock when I submerged myself in a pond in the infinite dungeon.  As far as I can tell, this causes the rest of the dungeon to cease to exist.  I get `something blocks your exit` whenever I hit `<`.  I was mildly distraught about losing my follower but opted to use an Elfland's Exit to leave the dungeon.  I stepped in to see if I could get my follower back and found myself returned to the same inescapable lakebed!  This time, without a means of warping, I'm stuck.

EDIT:  I did some script diving.  It's possible to get back to the world map with the following command, which is equivalent to an escape spell.  I haven't been able to determine a command for resurfacing, teleporting between floors or re-generating the infinite dungeon to unbreak it.

> load_map(PLAYER_ID, WORLD_MAP_ID)


I also noticed another quirk with followers %u2014 in tight quarters they can accidentally target through the player with a ranged attack such as a rock throw.  This makes the PC hostile to the follower, enabling promptless attacks, until they leave the area %u2014 in my case I speared the poor fool and had to reconcile.

Ack, that sucks, I'm sorry! I'll make a note to investigate and fix both of these things when I start working on the next version. Thanks so much for reporting them!

10

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.6.5 "Reusner"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: February 18, 2024, 02:26:12 PM »

Just to say that SotW now has initial, limited sound support - just sound effects right now. It does however let you extend this how you want via regex matching text to the message area, so there's all kinds of stuff you can do if that's something you're interested in.

A couple small fixes, too. But, sound!

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.6.5 "Reusner"
- Version started December 10, 2023. Version finalized February 18, 2024.

- Added sound support. The game has support for a number of events (hit, miss,
  etc) and the sounds for each can be configured in the game's main XML config.
  Sound effects can also be played on arbitrary regex matches on in-game
  messages.

- Various new name, ship name, etc possibilities.

- Bug fixes:

  - Digging and dropping a stone block/etc would allow you to build over
    stairs (RelicWraith).

  - Made certain API functions safer to call without checks.

11

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.6.2 "Daca" (formerly Savage Lands)

« on: December 10, 2023, 05:03:51 PM »

Thankfully, I had a number of people report crash bugs, which I was able to investigate and fix. Apart from that, there are a lot of smaller changes in this one. The biggest ones include plantable plants, fungi (regular and magical), and an expansion of the way that an item's status affects things in-game. Please let me know if you run into any issues!

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.6.2 "Daca"
- Version started July 8, 2023.  Version finalized December 10, 2023.

- The game now shows "a vanished god" if you worship one of the Nine and they
  are gone from the game.

- Added a new religion option, godlessness (Josh Engdahl). Godless characters
  receive no divine help via prayer, and cannot be crowned. They are still
  subject to divine wrath if they do particular disliked things, such as
  kicking altars. Godless characters have a much harder time learning divine
  magic, and receive far fewer castings. When they drop items on altars, those
  items will be cursed, as when doing this on a cross-aligned altar.

- A while ago, the breakage chance of regular pickaxes was reduced to 1%, and
  that of dwarven mattocks to 0%. Tthis made Delver less useful, so it's been
  buffed up: it now offers resistances to all the physical damage types, does
  a bit more damage, and has the piercing flag.

- Made some improvements to the menu options in curses mode when
  "full_stop_after_options" is set, so that they sound better when read by a
  screen reader.

- Added a "display_simplified_splash_screen" setting which in curses-mode will
  present a much simpler splash screen suitable for screen readers (no ASCII
  art) (Stephen Shaffer).

- Added a "show_distance_on_examine" setting (off by default) to display the
  distance of the selected tile from your current position when examining.

- Added mushrooms to fields, and fungus to tree generation.

- Added a special mushrooms room type to dungeons.

- The base chance for an enchantment to brand a wearable has been halved.

- Amaurosis has been buffed up a bit: he can now cast spells, has a greater
  chance to blind on a successful hit, and is faster.

- A weapon/armour's status now affects the chance of that piece being branded
  when enchanted.

- A weapon's status now affects whether it gives a bonus or penalty to the
  application of the damage type's status.

- When digging, an item's status now affects its breakage chance.

- Blessed scrolls of recharging now increase the minimum number of charges
  when recharging a wand. The wand's status now affects the potential number
  of extra charges.

- A consumable's status now affects its nutrition, though this does not affect
  what the item is worth to the divine.

- The status of the item selected for the Bowyer/Fletchery skill now affects
  both the quality of the item produced, as well as (for fletchery) the
  quantity.

- Your fishing rod or spear's status now influences your fishing outcome.

- Most plants and vegetables are now plantable, and when dropped in a hole
  will yield more of the same the next summer.

- Non-weapons that you can wield (such as shovels and fishing rods) and now
  properly treated as exotic weapons when using them in combat. Previously,
  the game treated you as unarmed.

- Added a temple master to the top of the temple in Carcassia - she takes
  donations to the temple, which are rewarded with piety; particularly large
  donations will bless the player's equipment, or inventory.

- When specifying symbol information in the configuration file, if no Row and
  Col are provided, a default of 0 for each is assumed.

- Externalized a bunch of world-generation settings into swyrm.ini for modding
  and/or just messing around.

- Created trap traps, which are traps that generate other traps nearby.

- Allowed for a per-class symbol which overrides the defaults applied to the
  player (Paddy).

- Added an option (off by default) that allows the game to save and then
  prompt for quitting.

- Tweaked a few sprites.

- More name combinations.

- New creatures: temple master.

- New items: mushroom, shelf fungus, Shiver's kiss, deathbloom, chanterelle,
  morel, elfcap, pufftop, elfland's exit, scroll of trap summoning.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - The game would crash if an invalid race was specified for a creature being
    generated.

  - Fixed an auto-death issue involving mountains where you could be generated
    on an air tile, instantly killing you if you didn't have flying.

  - Pov wasn't handling invalid input nicely (Sofistico).

  - When notifying a deity about a pleasing action, the piety was incorrectly
    always getting applied to the creature's active deity.

  - The '%' character was being duplicated on screen in curses mode.

  - Cursed scrolls of enchanting completely prevented branding.

  - You could farm piety with Sceadugenga by continually digging on the same
    grave tile (Quartzartine).

  - The HP indicator (when using e'x'amine) sometimes wouldn't return a valid
    description.

  - Targetting via ranged combat could target a creature outside the field of
    view if they move (Hems).

12

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.5.8 "Testagrossa"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: July 08, 2023, 03:53:28 PM »

It's been a while since I've done a release, and this is almost more just to cut a version and move on to the next. There are a bunch of smaller features, but also a lot of bug fixes, so take a look!

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.5.8 "Testagrossa"
- Version started January 7, 2023. Version finalized July 8, 2023.

- Additional names for things.

- Added an option "full_stop_after_options" (off by default) which, when the
  game is running in curses-mode, will add a period to allow screenreaders to
  read the text with pauses (George White).

- Some creatures are generated cowardly, and will try to flee when their HP
  becomes too low (Josh Engdahl). Fleeing creatures may turn to fight when
  cornered.

- The table of contents in the guidebook now contains links to each section
  (Dimm_ddr).

- Allowed "template creatures", which are creatures for which the ID, short
  description, description, speech text, night speech text, and text details
  are CSV strings. This makes it easier to specify a number of variations of
  the same sort of creature without having to copy-paste the rest of the
  specification in the configuration. To see an example of this, search for
  "seagull" in ShadowOfTheWyrm_Creatures.xml.

- Wooden items can now be transformed into paper pulp (JovanM).

- Added a setting to always stop on items when using automove (Xvordan).

- Thieves and seafarers now start with bandanas. This is purely flavour:
  bandanas are basically the same as caps.

- Creatures may decide to kick if doing so could insta-kill their opponent.

- Set a weight limit allowing the player to exclude heavier items from
  autopickup (Xvordan).

- New material type, plant. "Wooden" items (clubs, crossbows, coracles, etc)
  are now specified properly as wood, with plant-type items (vegetables,
  wildflowers, etc) specified as plants.

- New items: Selrin's bandana.

- New creatures: guillemot, puffin, barn centipede, metallic centipede, great
  centipede, smallsailor, peddlar, Varra, Athel, Thena.

- Small memorial in Gnordvar for an old friend.

- The naming screen now references your selected class instead of just
  "adventurer" (Xvordan).

- Unimplemented skills are now disabled and can't be improved after levelling
  (Josh Engdahl).

- Deities may now grant knowledge of divine magic after prayer (JovanM).

- Added a small write-up to the docs around map permanence (Josh Engdahl).

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - A missing Lua script was causing an error to be emitted to the logs.

  - Hoard/shipwreck tiles weren't displaying correctly (Grond).

  - Fix an issue with being unable to drop items in shops when overburdened,
    which would lead to a slow and ignominous death (Benjamin Derge).

  - Wands weren't restacking properly when dropped from a larger stack -
    the wand was being given a new charge as if it were a newly-created item.

  - Shop generation wasn't checking the safety of the shopkeeper tile.

  - Carcassia C1A and C2A didn't have an east-west linkage (though they
    currently can't be co-reached in these directions).

  - Having autopickup include rings would cause an issue with displaying that
    option in the automatic actions menu.

  - The boating skill wasn't showing a proper description when selected on
    the skill screen (Xvordan).

  - Option descriptions would repeat when an invalid key was pressed.

  - A player-specific confirmation message was showing when enemies decided
    whether to kick you or not.

13

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Shadow of the Wyrm v1.5.2 "Satoh" (formerly Savage Lands)

« on: January 07, 2023, 02:18:34 PM »

I apologize - I ended up working on this release a lot longer than expected. Life took some turns. I didn't have the steady week-to-week cadence I usually do.

So here's the biggest stuff in 1.5.2. Full info in version_info.txt, as always. There was a lot this time: randarts, randomized descriptions for hirelings and adventurers, shipwrecks, treasure hoards, being able to fly to open sky, being able to swim underwater, dolmens, smarter forest generation based on where you are on the map...anyway! Here's the full list:

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.5.2 "Satoh"
- Version started May 15, 2022.

- Deserts have a small chance to generate a spring.

- When removing items from the player (typically for fetch-type quests), the
  game now checks inventory first, then worn equipment.

- There are no longer climbing danger prompts at skill 100 (Josh Engdahl).
  At 100 climbing there are no longer exhaustion/etc checks: you will be
  safe to climb mountains indefinitely.

- More names.

- Exiting the codex or bestiary during tile selection no longer exits tile
  selection.  This behaviour is configurable in swyrm.ini (Josh Engdahl).

- You can no longer use the Music skill underwater.

- Updated mawgrawls to use "itself" (Josh Engdahl).  Set this flag as well on
  birds and animals.

- Hirelings and adventurers now have a good chance to have personalized
  bestiary entries.  When they don't, they'll continue to use the existing
  respective entry.

- When you drop an item a shopkeeper doesn't want, it's now added back to your
  pack (Josh Engdahl).  This also happens if the shopkeeper wants to buy it
  but can't afford it.

- Boating now has an initial implementation, and allows faster movement over
  water when not flying.

- When digging via non-magical means in a shop, the player is now prompted
  to continue (Grond).

- Wandcraft now affects to-hit when evoking a wand (Josh Engdahl).

- The in-game start date and current date are now shown in the character dump,
  and the date message formats in-game have been tweaked to also show the
  numerical month.

- Random artifact (randart) generation.

- The terrain lore skills (Desert Lore, Forest Lore, Marsh Lore, Mountain Lore)
  will now help you find treasure hidden across the world. These treasure
  caches contain a variety of useful items, the centrepiece being either a
  huge sum of ivory or a randart.  Dungeoneering can also help improve the
  quality of the cache.

- Ocean Lore lets you find sunken shipwrecks.  These are located on the ocean
  floor near coastlines - you'll need to dive down to find them.

- Mountains can now be generated with southern and eastern clifflines that
  drop off into nothing.  Mountains may now also have streams and springs.

- There are now different messages for using > and < on springs, open sea,
  and the cosmos.

- Bargaining reduces the cost of hirelings (RelicWraith).

- Pelicans have a better sprite.

- The Forest of Yew is a reasonably well-known place and its tile message has
  been updated to be slightly more specific about what's there.

- If you now have a way of flying, you can move up to open sky.  Losing the
  ability to fly in such cases is not recommended, and deadly. If you have
  some swimming, you can go underwater, assuming you're in shallow water,
  though you can only hold your breath so long.

- Carcassia now has "sky maps" above the ground-level maps, that can be
  accessed either via stairs from the appropriate place, or ascending while
  flying.

- Set the flying flag on creatures where it made sense, so long as they didn't
  get it already from their race.

- There is now a skill trainer located by the fighting pits in Carcassia.  He
  will let you train any of your skills - for a price.

- The inner teleporter in Carcassia A1 now has unlimited uses, so you won't
  get stuck in an exitless room (JovanM).

- Character dumps now show the date and time when you started your character,
  as well as the current time.

- The Fletchery skill now influences how many items get created when using
  Fletchery.  A similar calculation is applied to the creation of clay shot,
  with the key skill being Crafting.

- More weeds.

- Dolmens can be generated in the hills.

- Oceanography has been renamed to Ocean Lore, and given to goblins.
  Snakelings will now also start with Desert Lore, in addition to Marsh Lore.

- Forests at the northern and southern extremes are now rockier, their
  appearance closer to something like the Canadian shield. Fields and
  scrublands, too.

- Mountaineering as a separate skill has been eliminated, and has been folded
  into Mountain Lore (RelicWraith).

- Added some additional Lua functions for modding: set_creature_size,
  get_creature_size, get_nutrition.

- Updated the spell ending descriptions to "Ending after" instead of "Ending
  at", to better indicate that the spell doesn't end at exactly that time.

- Autopickup now excludes unpaid items by default. This is configurable in
  swyrm.ini and in-game via '!'.

- Wrote a Python script for checking the blank resource strings against the
  English ones, to ensure everything from the latter is in the former.
  Updated the blank strings to add a few dozen missing resource strings.

- Killing The Sorceror transports you back from Telari, and prevents you from
  re-entering.

- New items: amulet of the sky, conch.

- New creatures: Pern, stylite, ancient sage, Carcassian magistrate, hermit
  crab.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - Some of the Nine's special creatures were unable to spawn in the rift in
    the cosmos.

  - Removed some wand enchantment code that was causing stack issues.
 
  - Setting age via swyrm.ini was also overriding the maximum, leading to
    death after one year (Josh Engdahl).

  - When sentries were considering allies, they weren't considering their own
    ID, leading to e.g. Carcassian guards attacking each other.

  - After paying off shopkeepers, hostility was removed from the shopkeeper
    but not the player.

  - The NPC Callara was too close to "Calara", used in Lish's quest.  Callara
    is now called Callisa (YARD).

  - The buy-in message for Blackjack wasn't clearing properly before starting
    the game.

  - Turned off an SDL hint that was causing sprite blurriness on high
    resolutions/large monitors.

  - Wand speed was using the magical speed calculator, so wand speed would
    unintentionally vary based on the last spell cast.  If you had never cast
    a spell, the wand speed would be very fast.  Wand speed has been updated
    to use its own calculations, with Wandcraft positively affecting the speed
    at which you can evoke wands.

  - Creatures with ranged weapons would sometimes attack you even when that
    didn't make sense (Josh Engdahl).

  - Fixed an issue with elements not being cleared from the Lua stack after
    a call into the Lua code from the engine.

  - Wintersea Tower is now properly connected/situated to the main Wintersea
    map, allowing you to either take the stairs or fly up to the top level.

  - Wild orchards and mountains weren't generating coastlines like fields,
    forests, etc.

  - A bug with death-causing statuses was causing crashes in narrative mode,
    where the player is immediately revived.

14

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.4.5.1 "Fuenllana"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: May 15, 2022, 03:31:45 PM »

Just released 1.4.5.1 - this fixes a bug with eating things other than corpses near adventurers and hirelings, where this would cause them to become hostile to you. You might also run into hermits in sewers, now!

15

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Shadow of the Wyrm v1.4.5 "Fuenllana"(formerly Savage Lands)

« on: May 14, 2022, 03:49:51 PM »

Monthly(-ish) release!

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.4.5 "Fuenllana"
- Version declared March 27, 2022.  Version finalized May 12, 2022.

- Created a splash screen for curses mode.

- Killing a questmaster will now remove their quests from your active list
  (oooby).

- Improving items either by enchanting or smithing now has a very small
  chance to add extra speed.

- Creatures will now consider moving through traps if they think the damage
  won't be too much (Josh Engdahl).

- Added another poem for the title screen.

- Removed the use_default_name setting - this was unnecessary and the game
  will now just check to see if the default_name setting is populated.

- When calculating ranged damage, the effect bonus of the launcher now
  gets added to the total.

- Meat now floats, so you can now get eg corpses generated on water tiles.

- There is now an optional setting to prompt prior to quest completion
  (Josh Engdahl).

- Created a new map flag, "divine forbidden".  This flag blocks NPCs not
  considering other NPCs threats if they have the same deity, and is used
  in the shrines.

- Re-added traps to caverns and mines (sewers will remain trap-free).

- Hostile creatures no longer follow and take orders.

- Additional person/place names.

- Additional townsfolk quests.

- Updated creature description via 'x' so that Friendly and Follower show
  outside the statuses section (since they're not technically statuses).

- Various typo fixes/text improvement.

- Sewers can now have drainage basins.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - When default_name was set, and you already had a character of that name,
    the game would hang (Josh Engdahl).

  - Fixed the same issue with the username_is_character_name setting.

  - Traps weren't generating in dungeons (Josh Engdahl).

  - NPCs in corridors might try to cast a refective beam in such a way that
    they thought it would hit the target, but it ends up just bouncing and
    targetting themselves (Josh Engdahl).

  - Air-breathers could be generated on water (Josh Engdahl).

  - Cosmos generation sometimes caused the game to hang in SDL mode.

  - The "It feels peaceful here." message wasn't checking if there were any
    pre-existing hostile creatures.

  - Random villages' names weren't being set correctly, causing issues on the
    quest list screen when receiving quests from NPCs in those villages.