Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Announcements => Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) => Topic started by: getter77 on January 14, 2013, 01:04:51 PM
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https://sites.google.com/site/poschengband/
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=5848
PosChengband is a roguelike dungeon adventure game.
The purpose of the game is to defeat the dreaded Serpent of Chaos. You may play a variety of races including elves, hobbits, dwarves, half giants, half trolls and even various monster races. You may play a variety of classes including hack and slash warriors or spell wielding mages. The game is littered with powerful and rare artifacts to assist you on your challenging quest. But the road is long. The enemy's forces have grown numerous and fester in the deep. Perhaps death awaits you? Perhaps glory? Are you up for the challenge?
As the name implies, PosChengband attempts a merger Chengband with ideas from Posband and RePosBand. However, many of the features, races and classes of Chengband have been extensively modified and quite a few of the new Chengband classes have been redesigned from scratch. So it seemed like a completely new variant was in order.
So, what is it? First and foremost it is a Chengband derivative, though with rather extensive changes. Enough to warrant it being a completely new variant in my opinion. Most races and classes have been altered in at least minor ways and quite a few classes were completely redesigned. Dual wielding has been completely redesigned. There is a new resistance system. Player hitpoint evolution has changed and ... I've made too many changes to remember them all at the moment!
But the big change is the addition of Posband style monster races. Have you ever wanted to play as a Gelatinous Cube? As a Dragon? As a Phase Spider? If you are like me, then the answer is a resounding Yes! At the moment I've added 10 new monster races (Angel, Beholder, Demon, Dragon, Giant, Hound, Jelly, Lich, Spider and Xorn) and a few more will be coming shortly. Like Posband, each monster race (excepting Xorn) has a boss monster which will drop a special racial artifact.
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v1.0.4
I keep telling myself to wait until I clean up the help files ... someday.
Some of the changes include:
* Munchkin personality is less of a munchkin
* Touch of Confusion no longer confuses a dead foe for innate attacks.
* Cunning Strike (Clubmaster) now always has a chance to stun.
* Knockback is now 2 sqaures for each hit (Polearm master).
* Fleet of Foot is marginally improved (Still not as good as Chengband, though).
* Monster races get permanent heroism after slaying their boss.
* Armageddon damage amounts dialed down for Inertia and Disintegration breaths.
* Kamikaze Warrior's weaponmastery now works.
* Invulnerability and Berserk Rage now give total immunity to fear.
* Weird Mind no longer lies in the player dump (i.e., you don't get resist confusion).
* Jellies are now invulnerable to hunger based attacks.
* Player is far less likely to be insta-knocked out by monster criticals (i.e., going from no stun status to knocked out from a single blow).
* New Demigod Talent: Black Marketeer.
* When choosing a demigod talent, there is now a browse feature. The descriptions should be accurate. You won't get any powers that aren't at least hinted at in the descriptions.
* Added a prompt for the store buyout option. You are only prompted if "Disturb Minor" is turned on, though.
* Demigod parentage descriptions should now be accurate. You won't get any powers that aren't at least hinted at in the descriptions.
* Ego items of Power Throwing now enhance Club Toss and Dagger Toss.
* Jellies can now get up to 7 blows. They get a more favorable multiplier for calculating number of blows since they cannot use two "hands" to wield weapons.
* Demigods always get their family artifact from slaying their parent.
* Fixed bug with wielding heavy weapons described above.
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v1.0.5
* Added new class: The Mystic. (Available under the Martial Arts birth option).
* Monks and Forcetrainers now get their correct number of blows.
* Monks and Forcetrainers now get the two-handed martial arts bonus.
* Maulers should be working now
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v1.0.8
* Fixed a nasty bug for Shadow-Fairy light vulnerability.
* Added Hydras as a player monster race just so this release would have some heft. Hydras can get up to 5 helmet and amulet equipment slots, and up to 11 attacks per round. Getting enough speed for the endgame might be problematic, though. The boss is The Lernean Hydra and the reward was suggested by Djabanete a long time ago.
* Capture Balls should now be working. Note: Capture Balls go in your shield slot, so if you play a monster race that cannot use shields, then you cannot use Capture Balls either.
* Rebalanced the Hydra monster race.
* Added a new monster race: The Leprechaun. Leprechauns start the game with a pot of gold, possess the luck of the Irish, are fast and stealthy. Many of their powers are influenced by how much gold they have on hand. But they are rather small and weak. If the leprechaun does not wield a normal weapon, then they have low damage innate attacks that pilfer items and gold from their foes.
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v1.0.9
* Crimson now gives Shards resistance rather than Nether
* Olympians are now more common (since they are confined to Mt. Olympus)
* Weaponmaster Old Castle rewards were all reversed, so you got the high reward 80% of the time rather than 20%. Fixed.
* Subtle Casting and Peerless Sniper now never trigger monster retaliation.
* New demigod powers: Speed Reader and Fell Sorcery.
* Snotlings are now only -5 Chr (and 45% xp rather than 35%)
* Fear is less difficult early on.
* Artifact rings are now (slightly) more powerful
* Vanilla Town gets no random quests.
* Vanilla Town now restocks stores normally.
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v1.0.17
* Weapon Info now displays stats required for your next attack (if possible). This works for both normal melee characters and for monster races with innate attacks. It does not yet work for monks and martial arts.
* Hounds can now where helmets. If you are upgrading an existing hound, you may find your boots in the helmet slot. Just take them off and re-equip them.
* Adjusted Hound speed bonuses down a bit.
* Added new Dog Collar artifacts: Wolf, Fang and Grip. Only Hounds may wear dog collars.
* I made a few changes to Hounds giving them extra speed per evolution (starting with Fire/Cold/etc) as well as a smidgen more melee damage.
* This release fleshes out the Demon monster race adding new 3 new forms: Tanar'ri, Cyberdemon, and Servant of Khorne.
* Brought back offensive scrolls (cf the Speed Reader demigod power for a combo).
* Added a new uber-rare, uber-powerful amulet type.
* Added rods of escaping.
* The Trump Card now activates for teleport every turn.
* The Armageddon Stone now activates for destruction (Perhaps jellies now have a chance?)
* Cyberdemon playtest changes.
* All monster races have had their skills redone. Skills are generally class based while monster races are race based, so I recoded the skill system to accommodate the monster races. In the process, I think many monster races had too much fighting prowess, so they have been suitably adjusted.
This release adds trolls to the list of player monster races. Another strong melee race, trolls have amazing powers of regeneration. In addition, players may choose from the following subtypes:
* Ettin: Two headed trolls that get extra amulet and helmet slots.
* Storm Troll: A fast troll with access to elemental attack spells.
* Spirit Troll: A passwall troll.
* Troll King: A fast troll with an extra damage bonus in melee.
The boss monster for trolls is Ulik the Troll, of course!
Also, I toned down Death Scythes a bit, but they are still best avoided.
Jellies have been redone. Please do not upgrade existing jellies from older releases!
* Jellies can now read scrolls (Suspend you disbelief ... Nobody has ever heard a jelly, so its hard to understand how they do it). Of course, their device skills are really bad.
* Jellies lose 2 equipment slots and 1 max attack.
* Jellies lose 10% of their hp.
* Trolls start more quickly. Their starting club is now only 10 lbs, they get a bite attack, and they also start with a ring of damage +7. So, they kick butt early on
* Trolls now get a small AC bonus.
* (Defender) weapons are now bipolar. Sometimes they cover resist base. Sometimes, they offer multiple high resistances.
* Slaying weapons are now (Armageddon). Instead of only offering poison brands, they now may offer any elemental brand.
* Weapons of sharpness are now more useful.
* Added Rings of Extra Might (for shooting).
* Fixed Rage-Mage encumbrance.
* Removed the Virtue system
* Golems regain Stone Skin
* Mindcrafter Precognition no longer so costly
* Fixed Extra Might display bug
* Slaying weapons (Armageddon) are no longer heavier than normal.
* Fixed character dump for pets. Riding mount is now displayed properly.
* Leprechauns lose a bit of stealth
* Ares demigods now prorate their damage boost when dual wielding
* Equipment *identifies* at birth
* Fixed major bug with Troll AC.
* Fixed equipment bug when restarting a Servant of Khorne.
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v1.0.19
I added a new class: The Devicemaster
The Devicemaster is the absolute best class when using magical devices (wands, rods and staves). In addition they choose to specialize in a particular class of devices and gain extra powers for their speciality. These include extra damage, increased speed of activation, the ability to power the device without using charges, the ability to move charges from one device to another and the ability to use multiple charges at once in an act of desperation.
Other changes include some minor game balance tweaks. For example, many monster races now have slightly less hitpoints.
* Race/Class stat bonuses restored to Hengband/Chengband values. Helpfiles regenerated to reflect changes.
* Everybody gets extra starting hitpoints, just like in Hengband. Added a "BHP" column to the helpfiles (Base Hitpoints).
* Massively changed the hitpoint calculation. Hitpoints are no longer so backloaded, but the progression is still heavily non-linear.
* Devicemaster starting equipment nerfed. Offensive wands replaced with a single device depending on their speciality. They also start with a wand of magic missiles.
* Rodmasters buffed. They get double the device power of other devicemasters (up to +50%).
* Added Rods of Mana Bolts.
* Made Rods of Mana Balls more shallow.
* Decreased costs of Gamble Shop for Scrolls, Staves, Wands and Rods
* Sleep Monster is now more powerful.
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v1.0.21
-This release adds 2 new specialities for the Devicemaster: Potions and Scrolls. Both of these subclasses can get 5 blows max instead of the normal 4 for this class since their aren't many offensive scrolls, and aren't any offensive potions (other than chucking death or detonations, but you don't want to risk carrying those in your inventory!). The standard devicemaster adjustments apply: enhanced power with potions/scrolls, the ability to use these objects much more quickly, the ability to preserve the objects so they are not always consumed, the ability to transfer "charges" from one object type to another and the ability to consume multiple items in a stack in an act of desperation for increased effectiveness.
The rules on transfer (which is hard to balance, obviously) are that you can only transfer from source objects of a greater or equal depth from the destination objects. Also, you can't choose worthless source objects (like the relatively deep scrolls of curse weapon/armor).
Anyway, I've playtested the potion speciality a bit and the scroll speciality not at all, so I'm sure these will need some adjustments down the road.
-This release fixes a serious bug with potions of polymorph causing the program to hang!
In addition, I brought back the virtue system.
*It is now optional with a birth option (enable_virtues).
*If you upgrade a savefile from before the version where I removed the virtue system, the game should keep your virtues intact and leave the virtue system enabled, but you might want to try to upgrade with a backup of your save file just in case.
* If you upgrade a savefile from a version that did not have virtues, then the virtue system should be turned off.
* If you start a new savefile, virtues will be on by default, but you can turn them off by pressing '='.
* The player now receives messages whenever they perform actions that affect one of their virtues. Messages are displayed as long as the disturb_minor option is turned on. Otherwise they are suppressed.
* All of the virtues now have minor gameplay effects. I can provide spoilers if desired, but none of the effects are very strong so all may be safely ignored if desired.
Finally, I did some minor work on improving the helpfiles, especially MonsterRaces.txt. This file now gives stat and skill breakdowns for each evolutionary step, but there are still a few problems with the file. For example, hounds evolve randomly so the races listed are random ones in each given tier. But it is still an improvement over the last release
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v1.0.22
[1] Tweaked Berserker dual wielding. Normally, dual wielding effectiveness is extremely sensitive to weapon weight. But forcing a berserker to dual wield daggers is just plain silly. They may even dual wield very heavy weapons quite effectively now.
[2] Compiling on Linux: I removed some duplicate typedefs that were causing compile errors on some versions of gcc.
[3] Object Inspection Changes
[3.1] Inspecting unidentified armors, weapons and ammo now gives the description.
[3.2] Inspecting any identified object always gives the description. For ego items, it also tells you "known powers" but hints that there might be some hidden powers as well.
[3.3] Of course, inspecting *identified* objects works as before.
[4] Stone of Lore no longer activates. Instead, it auto identifies objects underfoot.
[5] Pseudo-Identify changes. These are experimental, so I'm looking for feedback.
[5.1] Pack/Equipment pseudo-id now speeds up exponentially with level. It becomes twice as fast for every 5 experience levels. At CL35, it is automatic (except for the 1 in 5 pack check), but this is somewhat unnecessary since
[5.2] All players get strong pseudo-id underfoot at CL35.
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v1.0.24
* Sorcerers use Charisma for Eat Magic power.
* Options for leave_excellent and leave_good removed.
* Fixed bug with Cult of Personality (Level generation was using summon monster code to build certain packs)
* Travel command (`) now respects delay option.
* Monsters now pursue the player more aggressively (i.e., I increased the flow depth for monsters pursuing the player by 'sound').
* Death Beasts no longer show up in nests (hounds or animals).
* Monster regeneration caps at 400hp (was 600hp).
* Liches gain Ice Bolt.
* Player monster races now start with one flavorful virtue.
* New normal player race: The Centaur. They are half human and half horse, of course. I decided that while they may wear body armor, they get reduced AC bonus since they may only equip the breast plate (upper body part). They do gain full resists and other bonuses. Also, they are unable to wear any boots, so effectively lose an equipment slot. To compensate, they gain extra attacks with their hooves and move with extra speed as they gain experience. They also have a Jump power that acts as a short range, line of sight Dimension Door.
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v1.0.25
* Fixed monk retaliation bug. Players with innate attacks (from mutations or racial bonuses) would get extra blows whenever a retaliation was triggered.
* Fixed bug inspecting town items that the player is not yet aware of (i.e., that the player has not yet found in the dungeon).
* Fixed display bug in weapon info screen. When listing stats needed for the next attack, the display was not counting any extra blows from the weapon itself. So, if you had 5 current blows you would be told that you could increase your attacks to 4 with better stats
* And the big change: Added Fame and Artifact Reforging from Posband. This is liable to affect game balance in a big way. Also, if you upgrade an existing character you will still start out with no fame, meaning that the reforge option might be blocked for some time. The player may increase their fame by killing uniques, completing quests, completing dungeons and returning wanted corpses. Of course, failing quests is very bad for your reputation. Ask about at the Inn if the Inn Keeper has heard of you and you will get some idea as to how you are progressing. Once you have enough fame (and enough gold), you may reforge an existing artifact at the Warrior's Guild in Morivant.
.26
For this version, I added a new monster race: Elementals. They have humanoid bodies and powers and abilities that I tried to make as flavorful as possible. For example, Earth Elementals are slow, have high AC, are strong, are good fighters, have poor dex, can attack with shard based powers (think hurling clods of earth), gain powers like stoneskin, earthquake, stone to mud and sense surroundings. Air Elementals are lightning based, incredibly fast, etc. Its all new, so feedback and ideas for flavorful racial powers are always welcome.
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v1.0.32
* Elementals now start with better equipment (In particular, they no longer start with stuff that gets insta-ruined!).
* Added more Elemental flavor: Water, Fire and Earth get a "healing" type spell, provided they are in their element.
* Added more Elemental flavor: Water, Fire and Earth now move quickly in their element.
* Winning/Losing in the Arena now affects player fame. Really, there is no longer any excuse for players being unable to reforge artifacts rather early on, unless they habitually fail quests!
* Reforging is now much cheaper. Minimum cost is 250,000gp rather than 1,000,000gp. But target scoring is tighter, so you are unlikely to get something significantly better than what you start with, and are likely to be considerably poorer to boot!
* Fixed bug when attacking monsters inside a wall.
* Monsters with innate attacks can now benefit from extra attacks.
* Added new monster race: The Death Sword. (Thanks to Arjen). This particular monster race is unable to wear any equipment. Instead, they simply are an animated weapon of a particular form, and they evolve to better weapons over time. To gain abilities, they need to absorb magical essences from the weapons they find, destroying these in the process (Use the Extra Information Screen to display your essences: Press '~' then 'x').
Any more crazy ideas for monster races? How about a fishy (kraken) that needs to stay in water?
Death-Sword only release
[1] FA/SI only require 1 essence.
[2] Tengu and Death-Sword reward is Dagger of Westernesse
[3] High Resistances require 2 or even 3 essences rather than 1.
[4] Stormbringer is not cursed for Death-Swords.
[5] Death-Sword innate Hold Life wasn't working. Fixed.
[6] Death-Scythe blows reduced from 4 to 3. (I figure they will get +1 blow from Extra Blows essences).
[7] Player no longer displayed as "Cursed"
[8] Death-Swords may now increase their light radius.
[9] Wild and Order weapons no longer grant Slaying essences.
This is a big gameplay change for the Death-Swords, and a bit of display cleanup. If you have a substantial character running in 1.0.30, you might be disappointed if you upgrade. Here is why:
The essences required to enhance your current body (weapon) are dependent on that form. Generally, as you evolve, the number of essences required increase (perhaps doubling). As an example, Slay Evil requires the following:
Broken Death Sword: 2
Death Sword: 4
Poleaxe of Animated Attack: 8
Hellblade: 16
Death Scythe: 32
As another example, Slay Orc requires:
Broken Death Sword: 1
Death Sword: 1
Poleaxe of Animated Attack: 1
Hellblade: 2
Death Scythe: 4
You should be able to get at least some good slays in every form (except perhaps the first which is over too quickly), but then you *should* lose most of them when you evolve. If I got the numbers right, that is. I really wanted to play a character thru while designing, but something just came up and I need to be away for a bit.
Sorry Hugo, I didn't get time to address you last list of bugs. But I did fix the shop bug when selling or dropping equipped items.
* Quylthulgs! These are obviously everyone's absolute favorite monster, and now you too can enjoy their quivering, pulsating power! Consider this a beta release, though, as I haven't done too much balancing. I suspect they will be powerful, yet fragile throughout the game, especially in the early going. Their powers are lifted with very little change from Posband, though I did tweak the flavors of summoning slightly and adjusted resistances a bit. Hat tip to Posband!
As for the Hengband pet system, I had to make some changes. Quylthulgs get full experience whenever their pets kill something (Hengband is 0% and Chengband is only 20%) as well as getting full drops (Hengband is no drops). Finally, your pets can kill uniques and I really, really hope I found all the places in the code to make this happen. If you notice an invincible unique, please let me know.
* Thanks to everybody for helping me playtest the Deathsword. I made a few small tweaks. They keep their impressive melee power, of course, as it is hard to imagine a Death Scythe being anything other than ... well, deadly! But they lose their uber-high AC. In fact, the Death Scythe object grants -50 AC so the final form gets that "bonus" too! In addition, I changed the way both speed and AC essences calculate so that the cost per increment increases just like everything else. Expect speed to top out around 27 to 30 and AC at about 150 to 160.
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v1.0.33
* Added new player monster race: The Golem. Yet another melee build, golems possess the awesome power of "Slow Walk". In fact they are so slow, that they never can get more than just a single attack per round. They prefer to fight with their massive golem fists, and strike powerfully enough despite their limited attacks. Another unique golem attribute is the presence of magic resistance, which reduces the effectiveness (damage) of their opponent's spells. The golem race has 3 subraces: Colossus (biggest and hardest hitter, but the slowest), Sky Golem (Resist Time, Breathe Time, weakest in melee) and the Spellwarp Automaton (Middle of the road, but very high magic resistance).
* Added new options to highlight pets when playing in ASCII mode
* Added new giant monsters, new giant evolutions, new giant powers and a whole new giant subrace: The Hru.
* Added new troll powers.
.34 Giants can throw foes around at each other, walls, etc
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v1.0.35
.35 The big change this time is to move blows calculations to a system of fractional blows. It is a big change, affecting every class in the system as well as all the monster innate attacks and monk attacks. Obviously, I didn't test everything, but I did run thru my vast array of "characters on hold", about 20 or so.
First, how does it work? Well, instead of starting with say 1 attack, and having to wait until you receive the correct combination of stat boosts to click into 2 attacks, you might get 1.75 attacks. Improve your dex a bit, and maybe now you get 1.83 attacks. Of course, each time you attack a monster you either get 1 blow, or 2 blows. But you have a 75% or 83% chance of getting those 2 blows, and this is rolled each time you attack. It is best to think of this as a bonus since the old system would just round down those fractional blows to 1.
Second, why the change? Well, the early game can be rather frustrating to get melee going, especially for characters with poor starting dex. Also, characters that should be favoring heavy weapons often switch to light weapons simply to chase extra blows.
Also, I went ahead and bumped the max blows numbers for many classes and monsters. I've always been bothered by the 5 attacks for melee characters, except warriors who get 7 blows. Now, some of the strong melee hybrid classes (Paladins, Samurai, Chaos Warriors, Cavalry) get 5.5 max blows. Weaker melee classes (Priests, Rangers) stay with just 5.0 blows.
Anyway, this is a big change, and I hope you will like it. You might give monks a whirl to really notice the difference, since now they get blows in .25 attack increments
Other changes this release include some rebalancing to giants, including adding penalties for wielding tiny weapons and bonuses for wielding favored weapons. Also, there is a slight monster surprise in store awaiting the unwary!
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v1.0.37
* 1.0.36 fixed a bug with Quylthulgs entering the town Arena. Normally, the town Arena blocks character and monster summoning rendering our poor Q hero defenseless. But now, I enabled both player and monster summoning whenever the player is a Quylthulg.
* 1.0.36 fixed a bug with new virtue effects causing any monster to become friendly. The monster selection is supposed to be themed to the virtue in question (e.g. Unlife influences undead, Faith influences angels, etc).
* 1.0.37 fixes a stupid coder error for the reforging service. Reforging is supposed to limit the maximum object creation depth to 100, and did so by applying the MAX function. Of course, when you want to set a max, you need to use MIN.
* 1.0.37 also adjusts the reforge power down a bit. Fame is more important and you should probably try for at least 100 fame before doing anything big. The town service now tells you your numeric fame value.
* 1.0.37 improves the in game helpfiles, adding more information on some new monster races (Quylthulg, Elemental, Golem, new Giant evolutions).
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beta v2.0 Possessors
This release finally puts the Pos in PosChengband. That's right, we finally have a Possessor! How does it work?
First, the possessor is a monster race and is available under the Monsters menu during racial selection. When you choose this option, you don't get to select a class (just like with all the other monsters).
Next, you begin life as a "soul" which is really nothing but a pathetic ghost in search of a body. You can't wield anything other than a light source, and you have no physical attacks. But don't fear, you have a nice wand of magic missile to play with, fully charged.
So your first order of business will be to procure a corpse. Most human type monsters drop them and are good starting choices. You might mosey on out to the wilderness surround Outpost for example and snag a Novice something or other. Corpses are not guaranteed to drop, but they are quite a bit more likely to show up when you are in your native ghostly form. So don't get greedy using up all your missiles on something too big as you might not get a corpse!
Once you have one, use the racial power of Possession to inhabit the body. At that point, you won't be so weak and can probably wear some gear as well.
At any rate, that's how to start. I haven't done a whole lot of playtesting yet. Also, I moved the body type information to an external file (b_info.txt) which required me to change all of the existing monster races. Hopefully, I didn't break anything obvious.
Oh, one final note: Uniques no longer drop 100% of the time. And I guess I should also mention that corpses now have realistic weights, at least when you are playing a possessor.
Some more on Possessor mechanics:
When you possess something, you gain stats and skills based on that form. Obviously, you get resistances and abilities too, but you don't always get the monster's armor class (e.g. a novice warrior is wearing armor and does not have intrinsic tough skin!).
If you gain spells, then your spell stat will vary depending on the form (e.g. priests use wisdom, mages use intelligence, etc).
If you gain intrinsic powers, then these are usually breath weapons and generally run off constitution. There are some exceptions, like throwing boulders which runs off Strength. Remember, intrinsic racial powers ('U' command) can be used when berserk or in the presence of anti-magic. Their costs can be paid for with hp if your sp run out, etc.
Possessor's still need to gain levels just like everybody else. Racial powers and spells generally have minimum casting levels and fail rates too.
Your current form limits how much experience you may gain. Everybody can get to CL15, but generally the rule is you may advance to the monsters level + 5. So, you really can't stay as a baby white dragon forever as you just will stop gaining levels pretty soon. And you won't ever "evolve" the way monster races do. No, you need to find another corpse!
You can *identify* a corpse and it will tell you some info. You can probe a monster and learn more!
Edit: Innate attacks can be blocked by equipment. So, if your form has a "Hit" attack or a "Touch" attack, then you need at least one empty hand to use it. Innate attacks are generally what is specified in r_info ... They don't progress the way they do for other player monster races.
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Sounds cool!
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v2.0.1
* Players always get at least 1hp
* Possessors start with 15 extra hp. Should be easy to get that first corpse now.
* Added autopicker option to only keep corspes above a certain level (See above in this thread). Note: The leave_special option is on by default so that new savefiles don't auto destroy corpses for the possessor. You will want to turn off leave_special at some point if you are using the autopicker.
* Innate monster attacks are now slightly more powerful for The Possessor.
* Tweaked a couple of monster body types (Manticore and Benedict).
* Possessors no longer display as -99 speed during birth.
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v2.0.2
Change #1: The Possessor can become ejected from their current form!
I resisted this for a bit, but decided to give it a go after all. To make things playable, it is a low probability event that triggers if your health goes very low (less than 25%). Early on, this might happen more often than later, but it is something to be concerned about. For a must win fight (Serpent, Oberon, Quest monster) you might consider bringing a spare corpse, just in case.
To compensate for this change, the Possessor Soul (native form) now has more hp and can advance all the way to CL50. It also as a few slots (2 rings, helmet, light and cloak) so that ejection won't auto dump your speed to 0. Also, when ejected from your current form, you get fully healed first!
Change #2: The Possessor is unable to possess a body above a certain level.
This is designed to prevent wilderness scumming a massively out of depth corpse in the early game, a tactic I pioneered, but one that will also diminish the early game. Also, your power always depends on your current level in a strong fashion, so having a 20-something in an Ancient Dragon form, for example, is a bit unbelievable as you are still rather squishy!
To compensate for this change, you no longer need to leave your current body to possess a new one. Indeed, the game will block you if the target corpse is too high for your current level and it would be cruel indeed if you were forced to jettison your current body (thus destroying it) first.
Change #3: Many monster forms were rebalanced. Early breath amounts were extremely OP and have been adjusted down.
Change #4: Monster shatter attacks now cause earthquakes rather than giving a ridiculous damage increase.
Change #5: Nerf the humanoid prejudice.
To achieve this, humanoids only get 1/3 of the speed boost and their AC bonus decreases for each piece of armor worn. Non-humanoid forms can get full speed from their form, but still suffer the AC reduction. But many monster forms cannot wear body armor so they end up with a higher AC bonus.
Change #6: More forms! I added Spiders and Hounds for early stealthy options. Both forms can detect monsters as well. I also added some nice high level forms to the mix which I don't want to spoil
Other minor changes include fixing the heavy corpse bug (no more negative weights) and implementing the fear aura. Also, the possessor is now born with a tiny ring of damage to encourage adoption of non-humanoid forms.
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v2.0.3
Version 2.0.3 has been released, mostly focusing on possessor changes, of course. Nothing too major has been added, except quite a few new forms and some rebalancing. Oh yeah, one slight adjustment has been to replace monster base immunities with normal resistance, and of course this will be reflected in possessor play. A few monsters still have normal immunity, but the days of 600+ monster races being immune to basic elemental attacks are over!
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beta v3.0.0
Please be kind as I made some rather aggressive and risky changes ... hopefully I've found all of the crashes.
What has changed?
* The wilderness is now continuously explorable. As you move about, the wilderness will "scroll". I also added a few scripted encounters. In general, the wilderness is more difficult than before, so be careful!
* Ego items have been massively overhauled, particularly for rings and amulets. Lots of new stuff here! (I've liberally borrowed ideas from other variants including the latest Hengband, Angband and TinyAngband.)
* Dungeon generation has been massively overhauled with the addition of 165 new types of rooms! (Rooms can be added to v_info.txt rather than created in source code. New submissions would be welcome! But don't look in v_info.txt unless you want the game to be "spoiled" ...)
* I added a new command to list nearby monsters ('['). This is useful if you play on a small screen like I do.
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beta v3.0.1
* Vanilla Town and Light Town options now work.
* Monster List ('[') no longer exposes shadowers.
* Monster List ('[') and Object List (']') are not available while hallucinating.
* Cold resistant monsters resist ice bolts (again).
In addition, clouded was kind enough to design more than a hundred new room types, so there is currently quite a lot of new rooms to explore (over 260 at the moment). I did make a few minor changes to some of the new rooms as they tended to have lots of out of depth monsters!
Finally, I made a minor effort at cleaning up some of the many thousands of compiler warnings that I inherited from Hengband. Unfortunately, a couple very minor changes caused the game to become unstable, but I think I fixed all of the obvious new crashes (This, btw, is one reason why I have made minimal efforts at a legacy code cleanup.)
Source code can be found here and I think we should be working on Linux again. I fixed the curses port to use an 80x27 window size to accommodate the enhanced pack size.
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beta v3.0.2 is out, changelog coming when it manifests.
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Well, v3.0.3 has a log! 8)
* Strong sensing of cursed items has been restored where appropriate. Some of the feeling names have been changed. If you turn on the Easy Destroyer ('=' '6') and enable the leave known worthy items option, then anything that pseudo-ids as 'bad' will get destroyed automatically. These options are on be default.
* Weakly sensed non-cursed items are now labelled as 'enchanted' rather than 'uncursed'.
* The autopicker ('_') now has a verb for cursed items (called 'cursed').
* Fire Elementals can teleport onto deep lava. Their fiery touch will no longer destroy scrolls of destruction.
* Clouded provided an awesome new Light Town redesign. If you are put off by the wilderness in Poschengband, then give this option a try!
* The Vampire Lord in The Arena now drops a scroll of mundanity.
* Aggravate, Permanent Curse and Ancient Foul Curse are now much more rare, and should no longer generate on weak cursed ego items.
* Back to the autopicker, corpses and skeletons now have separate names to support the possessor (who only cares about corpses, after all).
* The demigod Loremaster talent now functions the same as the Stone of Lore
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v3.0.4
This update adds a new player monster race: The Vampire!
Vampires are powerful, undead creatures of darkness and shun the light. They are vulnerable to light based attacks and this vulnerability can never be fully overcome. They feed on the blood of the living and managing their food state is an important aspect of gameplay, so the vampire will want to enable the display_food_bar option under 'Text Display Options.'
The vampire also has limited shapeshifting abilities, and you may notice that re-equipping gear upon transformation can be a bit tedious. To help with this, you may inscribe the name of the appropriate form (vampire, bat or wolf) in lower case on your gear and the game will automatically equip that object from your pack whenever you enter the inscribed form. For example, a wolf cannot wield a weapon, but the vampire can, so inscribe 'vampire' on your weapon to have it automatically re-equipped when shifting out of the wolf form back into the vampire form.
Vampires use Charisma as their spellcasting stat. They have a powerful gaze ability can dominate their enemies and they can also create vampire servants by killing humans with their bite attack. Their bites are vampiric, of course, but the vampire only regains hitpoints with this attack if they are not full. Thus, you need to manage your food status a bit more aggressively than with other characters who might be in the habit of filling up every time their stomach rumbles in the slightest manner.
Vampires are strong and quick, but don't have a lot of hitpoints. So you will need to play somewhat cautiously. They are, of course, very stealthy as they are quite comfortable moving about in complete darkness.
Other changes for this release include the following:
* Farmer Maggot and Lionheart are back in town (Thanks for pointing that out, Hugo)
* Hydras now get fractional blows.
* Angels start life with a mace.
* The Servant of Khornes starting weapon of sharpness now actually has the sharpness attribute.
* Golems get a "two handed" punching bonus when forgoing a shield.
* Golems are stupid.
* Fixed infinite loop bug when killing a pet that drops loot.
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v3.0.5
I pushed a woefully undertested interim release (3.0.5) in the usual place:
* Stairs no longer collapse in the wilderness when using the ironman_rooms option. Previously collapsed stairs should now be available again (untested).
* Wilderness now correctly prints town status when scrolling about.
* Mirror Master spell stat fixed to Int. Mirror Concentration power now correctly detects current mirror status.
* Some new lance ego types added for riding classes and a couple miscellaneous new artifacts added.
In addition, I added some new Mauler goodies as requested (untested):
* Dice boosted ego weapons and rand-arts now gain extra weight, but only for the Mauler.
* 3 New mauler artifacts added. Also, the Mauler now has a good shot at some of the heavy monster king rewards. Finally, a couple of already heavy artifacts got a bit extra weight to make them useful for the mauler.
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v3.1.0 beta
There are substantial changes to Archery and Extra Attacks in melee, so I think this update warrants a new minor release (3.0 -> 3.1). You may update savefiles if you like, but, as always, I recommend making a backup first. I definitely updated my characters from 3.0 to 3.1 without issue, but that doesn't mean I didn't mess up something obvious.
So, what changed?
[1] Archery:
* The bow multipliers are now specified in the edit files rather than being inferred.
* The game supports fractional bow multipliers.
* Ego bows of Velocity get +.25x to the multiplier.
* Extra Might now "dice boosts" the bow on item generation (Warning: Upgrading will only give +.75x for ego bows)
* Extra Shots now always use the object's pval, and grant +.25 shots per plus (Warning: Upgrading will give a pval of 3 if one is not present).
* Equipment combat bonuses now mostly apply to archery as well as melee. Exceptions include all gloves (except sniper), rings of combat (of course) and a few combat helms like Terror Mask and Hammerhand.
* Pickup preferences now treat dice boosted shooters like dice boosted melee weapons, so you can see these at a glance in map mode or with the object list command (']').
* Various shooting classes have had their extra shot values toned down.
* Rings of Archery are less likely to grant both Extra Might and Extra Shots.
[2] Melee changes
* Extra attacks are now fractional, and you get +.5 attacks per round per plus.
* Many items have had their pvals shuffled to compensate.
[3] Device changes
* Magic Mastery no longer gives device power. Instead, there is a new Device Power flag and it is currently extremely rare.
* Magic Mastery can now spawn on some of the wizard amulets.
* Wands of Rockets are more rare (and deeper)
* Wands of Disintegrate are also more rare (and deeper).
[4] Miscellaneous
* Death Swords now gain fractional blows for extra attacks. The number of blows possible is open ended, but in general, the final form will have a limited number of extra attacks.
* Death Sword retaliation for the Death Scythe form now only triggers 1 in 3.
* Scouts got some minor adjustments and an improved character dump. Scout terrain effects to AC and Saving Throw now scale with level.
* Mariliths get a usable starting weapon and their Enchantment power is now super cheap and easy (since they must eat corpses for food).
* Monsters with Pass/Kill Wall will no longer spam spells when a player is hiding out of line of sight.
* The out of bounds wilderness bug has been fixed.
* Rand-art helms/crowns are more likely to gain ESP.
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v3.1.1 beta
This release features the new ring player monster race which is hopefully stable, but not yet fully balanced.
Changes:
* Added new player monster race: The Ring. A start guide pops up automatically upon player birth which is hopefully detailed enough to get the player going. This race is the magical version of the death-sword, absorbing rings and jewelry for power and spells. Also, this race must 'ride' a suitable ring bearer in order to get about.
* Various *Slay Foo* weapons now no longer automatically get the KILL_FOO brand. Warning: If you update a Death-sword, all of your KILL_FOO essences will get changed into SLAY_FOO essences!
* Various ego changes, especially with regard to more flavorful activations.
* Death-swords may no longer use town enchantment/reforging services.
* Resists are a little harder to come by for Death-swords.
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v3.1.4
That's it, I'm going into hiding now until the comp starts. A final, final update before the comp is available:
* Ring bearers no longer revolt in the town arena or battle areas.
* The code for losing your current ring bearer had the saving throw logic backwards (So it was easier to keep a more difficult pet, and harder to keep a weaker pet).
* Economical Mana, should you ever have achieved it, was not working!
* Scrolls of Summon Pet now always bring forth a ring bearer. So if you are worried about an untimely revolt during the final battle with the Serpent, you can stock up on these. (Personally, I think it would be much more cool to win without a ring bearer!)
* Finally, my limited playtesting led me to boost some of the damages slightly.
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v3.1.5
* Graphics now update when the doppleganger shapeshifts (tiles only)
* Fixed wilderness bug that allowed '<' to escape awake monsters
* Fearless personality now gives resistance to fear (again)
* Various changes to the Time-Lord class including a more appropriate Old Castle reward. Time-Lords now use Wisdom as their casting stat.
* Extra attacks on rings/gloves have been tentatively added back into the realm of possibilities (albeit, unlikely possibilities)
* Teleportation is now possible in The Royal Crypt quest.
* Fixed weaponmaster bug
* Fixed bug generating encounters on the wilderness edge (Thanks, Hugo!)
* Fixed necromancer bug that allowed dual wielding shields to retain the ability to touch opponents
Finally, numerous changes were made to the Ring race:
* Rings start with electricity vulnerability and elec resistance is a bit harder to attain
* Rings no longer gain automatic resists (cold, poison) or abilities (hold life)
* Faramir activation supported
* Ring levitation now applies to current ring bearer
* Ring casting costs adjusted. The number of essences effects costs as well as damage. Economical Mana is no longer all or nothing, but gradually reduces costs as essences are found.
* Rings can dig a bit better.
* Added a few new ring bearers (sorry, no giants or Olympians yet ... I'm still considering these)
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v3.2.0
This release adds a new dimension to the Dragon monster race: Dragon Realms! There are 8 realms to choose from and each has a specific focus. For example, Lore dragons seek knowledge and have great powers of detection and identification. Attack dragons are the best at melee while Breath dragons give up melee power in order to augment their breath attacks. Each realm alters player stats, skills and experience requirements while tweaking the power of dragon melee and breaths. In addition, many realms give innate bonuses (e.g. Lore dragons gain telepathy) so the realm choice is much richer than a normal spell realm. Some information is available in a new helpfile (DragonRealms.txt) which is accessible during the birth process (press '?') or from the normal MonsterRaces.txt file (Press '?' then 'c', then 'h' and finally 'b' ... I'll clean up the help system a bit at some point).
I also made a few minor possessor changes (Monk forms gain stunning, Tiamat now has an appropriate 5 headed body) but for the most part, this release is all about dragons!
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v3.3.0
It's super duper beta this time. This release adds the new Mimic player monster race, which serves as a complement to the Possessor. But while the Possessor relies on controlling corpses, the Mimic is able to imitate living foes in front of them. As usual, documentation is lacking and I also apologize for not keeping up with recent posts concerning last release.
To learn a form in 3 easy steps:
[1] Mimic a nearby visible monster.
[2] Kill that monster.
[3] Get a lucky die roll.
There is no counter for mimicry. If the form is learned, it lasts forever (or until somebody dispels magic). But if the form is unlearned then the source monster needs to be visible or you will quickly forget how to copy it.
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v3.3.1
Since nobody has found any show stopping bugs, here is another release (3.3.1). The main changes this release are UI related changes including:
* Mimic shapeshifting now intelligently reequips previously worn items. For the most part, you may remove all your @mimic manual inscriptions and let the system manage things for you. The only time you might have an issue is if you need certain pieces of gear to go into a specific slot. For example, dual wielding and you need one weapon in your right hand and another in your left. This *can* be handled, but let's see if it actually comes up
* I added an option to Identify All when using a scroll of identify or a staff of perception. Simply press '*' to identify all unknown items in your pack, in your currently worn equipment and under-foot in a single action (up to the allowed number of charges, of course). This convenience does not take extra energy.
* I added a new pickup preference action to automatically identify an object. For example, a line like "?unaware items" is a very nice thing to have. The source of the identification is either a scroll of identify, a charge from a staff of perception or a charge from a rod of perception if available. Sorry, no support for spells.
* I redid the default pickup preference file. I really like the changes but I'm not sure others will. The defaults are in lib/pref/pickpref.txt so any who grok the autopicker should feel free to critique or to offer suggestions.
* I fixed a longstanding auto-destroy bug. You all know what it is: Register a mace for autodestruction and suddenly maces of disruption are also destroyed! (Text now supports $ as an end of string marker).
I did also do some gameplay changes, mostly with regard to mimics:
* Spell stats can now be specified in r_info. To celebrate, zephyr hounds now use Dex as their spell stat even though they emulate rogues (Hounds aren't particularly bright, after all).
* I tweaked the speed calculation algorithm. Basically, forms that must use innate attacks get the full bonus and everybody else gets 35% of the monster's speed value (But see the next bullet item).
* Speed values can now be specified in r_info. If so specified, this overrides the normal algorithm for deducing player speed from the monster's speed. Why have this? Well, rogues and monks should be faster than you might expect. Also, some critters might have been too fast otherwise.
* I adjusted down many XP requirements for player monster races. The in game helpfile is now up to date again.
* Liches and Beholders gain Eat Magic. Any possessor/mimic form that emulates a mage also gets Eat Magic.
* The Summon Mold exploit has been removed.
* Sparing early uniques will no longer help you when facing The Serpent of Chaos (I almost didn't spoil this change ;)
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v3.3.2
* Removed infinite experience exploit with player resting.
* Hounds now spawn in the wilderness.
* Spiders get a better paralysis attack: Paralysis is no longer sleep.
* Fixed (nothing) object bug in wilderness.
* Rebalanced the Blood-Mage. They can no longer choose the Life realm and other healing spells are either illegible (Herbal Healing) or don't work to restore hp. There may be one or two weak exceptions, though. Also, they now have to deal with armor and glove encumbrance issues just like all other mages, but the effects manifest thru higher fail rates rather than decreased spell points.
* The Town weapon shop is kinder about stocking archery supplies.
* Town stocking of certain essentials (Food, Light, Diggers, Recall) is also kinder, but not 100% guaranteed.
* Finding food and recall in the dungeon is also easier. In fact, the ironman_shops option should now be playable as it enables the player home.
* More Possessor/Mimic forms can benefit from Economical Mana (e.g. wizardstaves).
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v3.3.3
This release adds new object statistics tracking. You can view stats in game with the ~2 and ~i options (for objects and egos, respectively) and information is also added to your character dumps. This information should help me get a better handle on how many resources are being found, used, destroyed, etc and should assist in future game design.
Other minor changes include:
* The player Knock Out code has been totally reworked. In general, getting KO'd will mean the player loses 1 or perhaps 2 turns, but will wake up heavily stunned still.
* Dual wielding weapon weight sensitivity has been decreased for certain classes (Warrior, Samurai, Blood-Knight, etc). This means they can dual wield heavier weapons more easily, but also means the benefits from dual wielding light weapons are also lessened.
* Wilderness monsters are now generated awake when the player is ambushed. It seemed weird to get ambushed by sleeping monsters
* The player is no longer automatically "aware" of ego items. This means the first time you find a Pattern weapon, you won't know anything about what it does. Once you *identify* it, however, the ego type in question gets marked as "aware" so the next time you find one, you will know about the common ego attributes (but not the extra powers, of course).
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Hi, quick question. Couldn't find an answer anywhere else I looked:
Is there some sort of dungeon-level persistence in PosCheng? I haven't gotten very far into it or anything, but I noticed that going up and down the same set of stairs doesn't regenerate either dungeon level.
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I think it depends and there are special cases---I know exiting to the world map and re-entering dungeons can cause a re-rolling.
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v3.3.5
It is a very minor update on the 3.3 branch with mostly minor tweaks and a few bug fixes:
* Standard Artifact shooters were not getting the multiplier set on creation. Upgrading an old savefile should repair any unfairly nerfed objects.
* Archer classes get a ring of archery from the Wargs quest.
* Some possessor forms were using hp for casting purposes, resulting in infinite free healing scenarios.
* Added a new race: Wood Elves. These are about as strong as the original Hengband elves (removed in Chengband) and have a couple of nifty abilities.
* Fixed random artifact naming bug.
* Pets that breathe storm should no longer hit the player when they breathe.
* A few rods were made more powerful: Mana bolts/balls and havoc.
* Some new activations were added for a few ego types.
* Samurais now automatically concentrate when resting.
* Samurais now track and display spell stats.
* Digger weaponmaster's Industrious Mortician nerfed.
* Olympian drops are now more rare.
* Fairy egos now mask aggravation.
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v3.3.6
Upon reflection, I decided to release a quick update as 3.3.6 here. This is a minor release with a few bug fixes:
* Fixed bug with Ring of Archery quest reward. This was a show stopper game crash bug, so is the reason for this release!
* Nazgul egos are now only available from Nazguls. They are more powerful as well.
* Nazgul monsters are scary.
* Berserkers no longer auto-identify objects since they cannot read or use magical devices.
* 0d0 possessor attacks now do no damage at all. Display code updated to reflect this.
* Possessors get a new "Corpses" category in the monster knowledge menu (~4). This enumerates all corpses currently in pack, home or underfoot for easy comparison. Knowledge of a body's attributes can now be gained by *identifying* the corpse (in addition to probing or monster lore in the town).
* Monster knowledge now sorts descending on level.
* Possessors and Mimic's now track history of forms used and display these in the character dump.
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v3.4.0
I've begun to burn out a bit on the edit file stuff, so here is 3.4.0. What's changed?
* I've begun adding new wilderness encounters and incorporated a couple new ones generously contributed by Nivim. I've added copious (for me) documentation to the top of v_info.txt, and this should serve as the goto place to look for how to do stuff. I have quite a few more encounter ideas that are commented out and many of the new ones I added could use improvement. Feel free to offer changes and new encounters if you are feeling creative!
* Possessors have been rebalanced a bit. A few body types are more flavorful (e.g. archer forms get extra shots; mage forms get extra mana, faster mana regen and the eat magic power; sorcerer forms get the huge sorcerer mana boost with concomitant extreme encumbrance penalties).
* Monster AI has been tweaked. All unique monsters now employ variable AI strategies. Also, anti-summoning corridors are less effective.
As usual, source and a full diff are available, though github declines to actually diff v_info.txt, which is where the bulk of this release's changes occurred.
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v3.4.1
* Faster Stat Gain
* A more challenging Water Elemental (Corrosion now eats anything unless it has resist acid ... even artifacts!)
* A new player monster race: The Centipede.
* Revamps to many egos (Sunlight, Death and Daemon weapons) and some new ones too (Dwarvish rings of power, slightly corrupted by Sauron, of course).
Many minor changes as well:
* Hydras get amulets for quest rewards instead of rings. Hydras can now dig a bit.
* Maulers no longer can get Nyoi-bou
* Arena and Corpse rewards are now "mass produced".
* Monster players receive a "special" feeling when their racial boss is around.
* Gloves of the Giant help when wielding heavy weapons.
* Cursed items are now considerably more rare.
* Attack dragons can browse ('b') certain powers to see their damage effect.
* Monsters that drop items and treasure now drop more items and less treasure (was 50/50).
Some bugs were fixed as well:
* Rings with extra attacks now work for innate attacks
* Standard artifact shooters now get the correct multiplier from a_info.txt (e.g. Ballista, Robin Hood).
* Fixed infinite loop bug with Rings of the Nazgul deep in the dungeon.
* Fixed memory out of bounds for warriors, samurai and paladin.
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v3.4.2
* Possessors are a bit easier to start (Mercy!). For example, they have better stealth, better device skills and even telepathy! Alas, their stats and hp still suck!
* Possessors can experiment a bit with new forms in the beginning. Normally, leaving your current body destroys the corpse 2 times in 3. But until you reach CL10, your old body will always be preserved. This is a mercy to new players
* Maulers have been redesigned. I've playtested a little with this but not as much as I would like. If you have a mauler running now and are happy with it, I suggest you finish up before upgrading. The purpose of the redesign was to make the various mauler utility attacks attractive. But I've gone farther: They are almost mandatory! (But should be fun, I hope.)
* Minor tweaks were made for centipedes and beholders. For example, centipedes get a little extra melee accuracy with their (pathetic) attacks.
* Some beholder effects were completely rewritten (Confuse, Stun, Sleep). Since the effect code is shared globally, this impacts things like wands of sleep monster. Don't write these off as only being useful in the early game!
* Failing a quest or dying in The Arena no longer super trashes your fame. You won't lose more that 30 fame for any failure.
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v3.4.3
* Numerous changes and bugfixes to psions. A few powers were buffed (Protection, Seeing, Clarity) and some new powers were added (Mind Wave, Disruption, Drain). Powers are now listed (with stat tracking) on the character dump.
* Monster breath amounts significantly adjusted. You should notice a difference!
* Monster summoning amounts nerfed.
* New Arena Rewards
* Androids reverted to a single innate weapon that upgrades with construction
Also, some bugs have been fixed:
* Fixed pickup pref bug (OR should be IOR). Everybody was hoarding rods of fire balls, etc. rather than only mage characters.
* Fixed warlock power bug. They really should be paying for racial and class powers! Only the eldritch blasts should be free.
* Fixed activation targeting bug with (e.g.) Laputa.
* Fixed major bug with tailored drops. Sometimes you wouldn't get a quest reward!
And the finalee:
* New monster talk! (Thanks debo )
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v3.4.4
This is mainly a bug fix version that I wanted to push before beginning some bigger changes.
Bug Fixes
* Fixed Psion Energy Blast descriptions
* Fixed bug with extended attacks (Archaeologist, Samurai, etc). These techniques should not allow the player to attack with innate attacks as well (e.g. horn mutation).
* Fixed some incorrect spell descriptions
* Fixed bug with ninja bumping into hidden permanent walls
* Fixed infinite loop in TELE_TO with regard to levels generated with just a single room which also happens to be a vault (of course, this too is a bug, but I can't figure it out!)
* Mounts can no longer move when sleeping or paralyzed
* Magic-Eaters can no longer circumvent anti-magic with the various device keys
* Inspecting un-identified objects no longer displays artifact descriptions or activations
* Fixed attack dragon bug regarding number of blows being reduced too low.
* Fixed display for a bronze dragon's Deadly Bite
Enhancements
* Clear Mind now happens automatically while resting (If you have the power, of course!)
* Fixed escape delay in curses port.
* Object activations are now autoinscribed
* The Easy Destroyer is now turned off by default
Game Changes
* Monster saving throws now use a competing dice approach
* Duelist combat changed to make weapon choice more meaningful
* Duelists no longer gain a two-handed bonus on weapons
* Halfheart + Weaponmastery is no longer crazy-broken
* Artifact ammo no longer gains activations
* Improved monster AI versus distance attacks
* Chaos Warriors no longer receive level up reward on CL1
* Dungeon Guardians no longer receive special AI tactics
* Rogues no longer benefit from wizardstaves
* Monsters hurt by light should no longer show up in the wilderness during the day time
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v3.5.0 8)
In case it isn't obvious, I no longer have Internet access at home. So, if something is really, really broken, your best option is to post an issue on the github site (I will miss remarks in character dumps and forum posts, though I'll do my best to keep up).
This doesn't mean I've stopped working on PosCheng. In fact, I just uploaded a new release. Alot has changed, and a full source diff is available, as usual. But some of the main highlights are:
* Draconians have been redesigned with subraces just like Demigods. They even get a special power at CL35. I added an in game helpfile to show the choices (available during the birth process).
* Tonberries have also been redesigned, and are absolutely crazy at the moment. But they have some big time drawbacks as well.
* I added spell damage. You'll see this on the various mage egos (rings, amulets, crowns).
* There is a new shop in Zul. You might want to check it out!
* The Craft Realm got some slight alterations. This is the absolute last time I'm changing it, I promise. Check out the Crafting spell. Also, it might not be obvious, but Elemental and Mana Branding both affect archery as well as melee.
* There is a new personality: Hasty
* Demigods have their skills adjusted depending on subrace. For example, Zeus is good at everything, Athena rocks with devices, etc.
* Character Dumps are improved with Monster Kill statistics and a count of random artifacts found.
There's more, and many minor game balance changes.
Enjoy, and please remember that releases will be much less frequent from now on.
* Vampire Light Vulnerability is much more important these days. (The same applies to Ents and Androids).
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v4.0.0 8)
There is also a patched 3.5.1 version that just fixes the Draconian Polymorph bug (sorry about that).
4.0.0 should be considered beta, as any X.0.0 release. It also breaks savefiles, so you'll need to finish up your current characters on 3.5.0 or 3.5.1. before upgrading.
There have been many, many changes for this release, almost 400 commits in fact. But most changes have focused on the Help files and various UI improvements (For example, there are window options for the Monster and Object Lists).
I apologize in advance for any bugs ... I changed a lot of code for this release. I'll try to do better at keeping up with bug reports, but without internet access, this is difficult.
Enjoy!
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v4.0.1
I just uploaded a band-aid 4.0.1 release in the usual places. You should be able to post html dumps to oook now (Huge thanks to Pav!!!), and plain-text dumps from Windows should display properly on oook. Other changes are mostly playtesting adjustments ... You can view the commit logs on github for details.
I haven't managed to read very many character dumps yet, but I did read some forum issues and perhaps the following comments will help:
[1] The game now has an ego lore system. While the player is born with innate knowledge of some ego types, like Gloves of Free Action, other types must be learned. To learn an ego type, you may (1) *ID* the first one you find, (2) sell the first one you find, or (3) Examine an ego in a shop (e.g., The Black Market). You definitely do *not* need to *id* every ego you find. For this release, I spruced up the Inspect to command to hopefully make the mechanics clearer.
[2] Selling has long had a bug: The offered price was based on unknown attributes of the item. This leaked information about object quality to the player, and is no longer possible. Pricing is now based on the *known* quality of the item (even if only pseudo-identified). Sometimes, this can work out to your advantage (e.g. Worpal Blade). Other times, not. Its up to you if you want to *id* before selling, but I seldom bother. Sell or *id* the first instance of an ego type to learn it, but generally, don't bother *id*'ing subsequent instances to sell. The only exceptions to this are Elemental Resistance and Celestial Protection.
[3] Shopping and Town Services are based upon the player's race, charisma and *fame*. The last is particularly important and makes fame useful for more than simply reforging.
[4] Devices: Rods cannot be destroyed, and recharge 10x faster than wands or staves. There is less overlap between the device types now as well. Finally, some things like Stone to Mud and Teleport Away are deliberately more difficult, but there are late game alternatives.
[5] Sorry if people find *id* cumbersome, but I personally enjoy the tiered object lore system. Sure, *id* is now more important, but it is also more common, and late game there are even staves of *id*. You definitely do *not* need to *id* everything in the game, just stuff you plan to use. My experience is that I id 10% of the objects I find, and *id* another 10% of those (so only about 1% of drops overall), and I definitely *id* more than I need to and only because/if it is commonly available. A typical game might use 200 *id*s, which is less than the amount of food I eat Its really not a big deal and not having cheesy automatic full object knowledge does lead to interesting game scenarios that I'd rather not remove.
Finally, Hugo, the Windows HTML screen dump menu should be working again Also, its not documented, but Ctl+] automatically generates screen dumps (screen.txt and screen.html in /lib/user, I think).
Edit: Also, make install should be working on Linux with regard to helpfiles and other non-compilables. As for the usleep putenv issues, gcc warns for me if I don't add declarations, and I can figure out how to shut gcc up on the issue. If anybody knows the correct way to do this, I'd appreciate feedback.
Edit:
[6] Use Ctl+v to recenter the viewport (map) in the event that messages are overlapping the player. This happens if you wander near the top of the dungeon, or if you are getting a lot of messages. Personally, I usually macro this command to Shift+5 on the numpad, which is very ergonomic if you are shift running a lot anyway.
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v4.0.2
I really wanted to hold off releasing until this version is stable and balanced (that would be when I would call it 4.1) but after another flurry of development, I need to take a bit of a break. Perhaps by the end of the year?
So, what changed?
First of all, I see many people are playing with "mpa changes", so I decided to look and see what those might be. Aside from bug fixes, the 3 main issues I see are:
[1] Complete removal of monster lore
[2] Almost complete removal of item lore (Id = *Id* and everybody gets automatic *Id* of every object at CL25)
[3] No Selling
Well, I can't say I agree with these, but I went ahead and added an easy_id birth option. It is not so munckinesque as mpa, but it makes Id the same as *Id* and also grants instantaneous pseudo-id at CL1. The automatic Loremaster change is too much for me to stomach, though, so you'll need to suffer a bit!
I did nothing at the moment to address monster lore. I suppose the cheat_know option could be replaced by a birth option called easy_lore?
For no selling, I previously removed this option since, in my experience, it promotes/requires digging for gold. In fact, the one time I tried it, I spent almost 80% of my game time digging (in the end game), but I was using Angband's gold boosting code at the time (not mpa's) and I was also playing an old time "One and Done" devicer, where you needed to recall to town to recharge after killing each notable end game monster (cost 20k to 30k to recharge rockets, etc). So my experience was probably unfair.
But honestly, I don't understand why we need an option for no selling. Instead, I think the problem might be the gold distribution. As monsters grow more powerful, they stop dropping gold. This is considered a "bonus". Also, deeper chests don't drop gold at all. This means your only sources of gold in the late game are digging and the occasional floor drop, along with a handful of monsters like hydras.
For this release, I boosted the amount of gold drops from monsters and chests, but *not* from digging. (I even made digging less effective.) Also, DROP_GOOD and DROP_GREAT monsters now usually drop (extra) gold as well. You should be finding much more gold than before, and digging should only be considered as an early game option or just as a casual diversion to pass the time as you wander down long corridors ...
So that we can make intelligent judgments, I added statistics for this release displaying how much gold you find versus how much you get from selling, etc. My current character is finding about 50% as much gold as that gained from selling, which seems to negate the need for a no_selling option at all (but I made this change only yesterday, so my experience is very limited).
Pack usage is a gameplay choice, and if you want to use more and sell less, you should be able to do so, but there should be consequences to this. But this playstyle should be possible as well, and I don't think it was before I boosted the gold drop amounts. So play with the changes and let me know what you think ... I'd like the distribution of gold gained to be balanced, perhaps 33% gold found and 66% from selling? If selling is too overweighted, we can boost the drop amounts a bit more or decrease the resale values of objects to even things out.
I also grabbed a bunch of bug fixes from mpa. I'd prefer not to get pull requests, since they invariably rot to the point of mega merge conflicts by the time I get to them, and I end up spending more time figuring out a merge than it would take to implement myself. Also, when I access the internet, it is for a restricted amount of time (2 hours) which means I simply don't have enough time to play with github. Issues would be nice ... But it might take me months to a year or so to get to them. Please be patient
Next of all, I did some work with the wilderness, including:
[1] I fixed the 555 and 666 bugs. Talk about unanticipated consequences from a minor code change! Wow. Sorry about that ... And if you were enjoying these as a feature, I'm sure they'll show up shortly on the mpa branch
[2] The wilderness is now more difficult. Be careful, especially early on. Monsters are much more alert and will act over longer distances on the surface, so you are likely to get into trouble. This change has not been thoroughly playtested yet ... I no longer scum the surface like I used to.
Penultimately, I did alot of work on objects, especially on object distribution. This is a major gameplay rebalance effort. You might want to finish playing out on 4.0.1 before upgrading, as the early game feel will be much different. Speed and Spellbooks have been addressed, so the need for 555 and 666 exploits should be mitigated. Rockets *should* be rare, and end game devices are OP, so are intentionally hard to get. _Healing is still a bit deep, but have you tried _Holiness lately?
Finally, I recoded the Weaponsmith. This is a very enjoyable Hengband classic, and I thought it could do with a bit (actually a lot) of love, especially in the UI department. I'm still playtesting this one, so there may be future changes, but you might want to check this class out. (You won't be able to upgrade Weaponsmiths from old versions, though). The Judgment power has been removed and Smithing is now a class power rather than a hijack of the 'm' command. When you smith an object, you automatically judge its quality (pseudo-id until CL10, then id until CL30, then *id*). You can view your essences on the Character Sheet (Cee) or using the Class Extra Knowledge command (~x). Also, on the smithing top level menu, you can look at your current essences (L). Absorption is available from the Smithing command, of course, but it also is applied automatically whenever you destroy an object. So, the autodestroyer is your friend
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v5.0.0 8)
And, one more quick update. I've been thinking a lot about Object and Monster Lore. For the latter, I went ahead and added the easy_lore option, as promised. But, I must confess, I never really paid attention to monster lore, mainly because the monster recall display is so darn horrible! For example, what I, as a player, usually want to know is whether my weapon slays will work, or whether my enemy resists my chosen attack. As a test, I timed myself in attempting to determine whether or not the Serpent of Chaos has reflection or not. It took me way too long to answer this question, mostly because I didn't feel like reading a long story format and kept trying to guess where in the description this tiny, but relevant piece of info would be located. I kept guessing wrong, and in the end, had to skim the entire entry which was horribly annoying. (Not to mention that output wraps using the terminal's entire width, which might be over 200 characters long ... Yuk!)
So, monster recall has been *redone*. It is now presented similarly to the character sheet in that information is labelled and generally appears in the same place on the screen. I used the object display pattern for line breaking long lists of resistances and the like. The description is at the bottom since its length is highly variable (and, I confess, it is the last thing I would care to see . With this change, the Monster Recall window option is now, officially, the first darn extra terminal window that is actually worth using! Perhaps Monster List is as well, but being able to SHIFT+5 to re-center the map really makes that one unnecessary.
With regard to Object Lore, I have some ideas for improvement. I do not think this should just be removed from the game, and won't do so! For those of you who will naturally hate anything I do in this area, don't fear, easy_id will be here to stay But what I want to change will be a big project, and will break savefiles. Thus, I'm pushing everything now, at this point, in a very under-tested change. Next release will be 5.0 (around Xmas?).
Other changes include:
[1] Monks and Ninjas can now choose Metamorphosis as a Draconian talent. I haven't tested this one, but I think it'll be fun. Originally, it was restricted since monks will lose martial arts, and ninjas would have lost their sneak attacks and criticals. But I gave monks a bit of stunning and added support for ninja sneakiness (and rogues too) so this should now be a good option to try. I can't remember who suggested this ... Fnord, maybe? (Sorry, I'm currently offline).
[2] The Weaponsmith got some playtesting tweaks. Not much though, and I did playtest towards the endgame before getting squished. They are more powerful now then in Hengband, but overall, I was happy with the new version.
[3] I added the MPA Rune-sword changes, with a slight addition to adjust the AC penalty as the weapon grows more powerful. I also tested the this a bit in wizard mode, and the changes look to be good ones.
[4] I tried to make SHIFT+5 bind to CTL+V by default now (Windows and X11). If you don't know, CTL+V recenters the map, and since I am running alot, my hands are naturally ready to press SHIFT+5 more than CTL+V. Sorry to curses fans, but "curses doesn't do that!"
[5] I added new Dragon Armor egos and tweaked distributions a bit. More big changes coming next release.
And, one final last final release before taking a break ... You see, I am slightly obsessive compulsive
I had some more thoughts on Object Lore and decided to try them out. Unfortunately, the changes were large and savefile breaking, so rather than 4.0.4 we'll need to move to 5.0.0. We're still beta (I still have classes that need playtesting) but so far, I think the game is playing nicely.
So, what is Object Lore? Consider Monster Lore. Here, the player learns monster abilities one "flag" at a time, as they occur. If a monster breathes fire on you, you learn that. If a monster resists poison and you aim your almighty wand of stinking cloud, you learn that too. The idea is to add "flag" level object lore to the current system.
Here is a quick summary:
[1] Pseudo-id is as before, though it is much faster for low level players. Also, there are objects that grant automatic instantaneous pseudo-id as you step over objects. Use this to locate excellent and special items.
[2] You can learn about objects by equipping and using them. Many bonuses, such as stat and speed boosts will be immediately obvious. Other things, like weapon slays, must be experienced in the obvious manner. (I got the idea from Vanilla, since I heard it had this, but I am not familiar with V's implementation here. Probably, it is similar).
[3] Object Lore is not just at the indiviual object level. In addition, you learn fixed attributes for the Standard Artifacts and all non-cursed attributes for ego items. This lore is part of your savefile, and is transmitted to the next character using this file, just like Monster Lore. So, having discovered and learned the Phial of Galadrial in one game, you'll never need to *Identify* it again for future players. Identifying an object automatically reveals learned flags.
[4] You don't need to Identify an object to begin learning its powers. However, anything you learn at the object level will not be remembered if you die before identifying the object.
[5] You learn flags by use, as mentioned. Also, by *Identify* (spell, scroll or town service). Finally, you can sell objects for lore.
[6] Identify also accurately reveals the object's score. This is meant as a guide to encourage you, the player, to explore the object by using it. It will also assist you in determining if it is worthwhile to return to town with the object.
[7] Object inscriptions add a ? to indicate that the object still has unlearned powers.
[8] Jewelry no longer has easy_id automatically applied. However, as you learn the optional attributes for each ego type, you'll see that pretty quickly, Identify is enough.
[9] Activations must be learned. Generally, these are safe enough to simply try out.
[10] Learning device fail rates requires *Id*.
[11] View your lore by using ~e or ~a and pressing r.
EDIT: I almost forgot a rather big change: Many of the wilderness dungeon entrances are now guarded!
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v5.0.1 8) Some real good momentum seems to be brewing with this new approach~
Another release of PosChengband (5.0.1) is available in the usual spot. This is just a playtesting release with a few major gameplay changes, but no new classes have been added (I've committed myself to playtesting all the Chengband classes until I am satisfied before adding new stuff. At the moment, I'm working on Warlocks and have tested the Spider (fun!) and Hound pacts, and like them both.) I should also mention that I haven't accessed the internet since the last release, which was a bombshell change to object lore. So I haven't had a chance to see or address all the problems. I'll respond to those for 5.0.2
Now, what changed this release?
Gameplay Changes:
[1] Confusing Lights has been toned down. Seriously, that was crazy before
[2] OK, it was a bit too easy to win with devices, so I made Rockets come slightly later and have higher casting costs. Tiamat got a new reward to celebrate this change.
[3] Grow Mold no longer spams Death molds.
[4] Big change to Archery multipliers and ranges. I never liked the Chengband changes, and some inspection showed that Short Bows and Light Crossbows were too powerful, since they retained the faster shooting rate. In fact, Short Bows are the most damage effective, being even more effective than Heavy Crossbows, which is a bit silly. Ranges have been restored and multipliers reduced, but not all the way to Hengband levels (e.g. Short Bows are now 2.50x). If you are upgrading, your Short Bow and Light Crossbow multipliers will be reduced.
[5] The Birth Autoroller is now a bit more generous. You *can* do two 17s if you are greedy. Or 3 16s. Or 16, 16, 15, 15 even ...
[6] Added option to display range to target. This is mostly for Warlocks, who have extremely gimped targetting ranges, and often need to know when monsters are in range. The option is called display_distance and the range will show up in the monster list for visible monsters, as well as when using the target and look commands.
[7] Jewelry drops from dungeon guardians, quest rewards and DROP_GREAT are no longer insulting in the early game. For example, one of my players got a Barbarian Talisman with -2 Int and nothing else! No more!!
[8] no_wilderness: Playing with this option means you forgo stat gains from dungeon guardians. To compensate, you will gain a chosen stat for each random quest completed (i.e. DL6, DL12, DL24 etc quests in Angband)
Class Playtesting Changes:
[1] Samurai and Mystics no longer automatically concentrate to charge their power. It's annoying to do this by hand, but you don't always want or need the supercharge.
[2] Rune-Knights get reduced benefits from Clarity and Great Clarity.
[3] Tweaked Book of Shadows for Burglary rogues.
[4] Mystics can browse powers to display effective damage
[5] Leprechauns no longer have mana, but instead use gold for their powers. Also, they no longer need quite so much gold to receive various bonuses. They also have a new power called Hoarding.
[6] Giants were a bit silly in the start, being quite weak. I changed their stat allocation so they start stronger, but gain strength less quickly. They are also more stupid, less wise, and quite clumsy.
[7] I playtested a Balrog and found the casting costs a bit too high.
[8] Warrior's Sword Dancing is *much* easier. But still fairly useless ... sigh.
[9] Fixed Magic Eater's regeneration rate for ego regen devices. It was quite a bit too fast before. I finally playtested to completion and found this build strong, but acceptable ... and fun
[10] Magic Eaters: Object display now shows the regen rate.
[11] Magic Eaters: Auto detect traps and Auto ID now work.
[12] Scouts were tweaked, with a few new abilities. It took surprisingly little to make this class fun for me to play, though I haven't played all the way thru yet. Try sniping with the Arrow of Bard some time!
[13] Warlocks: I'm in the middle of playtesting. Angels lose Invulnerability and get Crusade instead (untested). Various warlock pacts offer thematic ways to gain Economical Mana (e.g. Undead Warlock can use the Stone of Death). New abilities added ... But I'm still working on Warlocks, so more to follow.
[14] Evil Priests: Since good priests have an affinity for Life magic, evil priests get a bonus to Death magic. Also, why all the qualms about edged weapons if your evil god delights in bloodshed? Icky weapons, and Bless Weapon are only for good priests (Basically, one never played evil priests before, since Healing is so powerful. Now, perhaps, there will be some more reason to choose the dark side?)
[15] Draconian Metamorphosis: As a Monk, your postures will now effect your innate dragon attack deadliness. I would have playtested this change more, but got squished by Hastur shortly after CL35!
Bug Fixes:
[1] Fixed Barbarian Talisman in the Tengu and Death Swords quest.
[2] Brand Fire/Poison spells weren't giving appropriate resistances.
[3] Fixed Object Lore problem with Ego activations.
[4] Fixed SegFault when viewing Cheat Options.
[5] Doppelganger Samurai/Mystics now decay supercharged mana correctly.
[6] Fixed themed jewelry drops (e.g. Archers should drop rings of archery).
[7] Fixed AI Bug with Shoot posture. Monsters with this AI can now melee if the player is adjacent.
[8] Crossbowmaster's Overdraw was adding +0.01x to the multiplier, rather than +1.00x. (Trifling, I know ...)
[9] Vulnerability to fear no longer removes the player's chances of saving. It was fun to die thanks to my Cloak of Cowardice, and probably deserved as well, but players deserve some chance!
Reported Issues:
[1] Fixed gold exploits with the Rune-Knight
[2] Doppelgangers need to repaint the effect list after stopping mimicry
Minor Tweaks:
[1] Glove encumbrance is displayed in the status list.
[2] Fix message spam for characters that auto Clear Mind. Turn off disturb_minor to remove these messages. (I use disturb_minor quite a bit for message suppression).
[3] Monster Recall now includes the max depth when necessary.
[4] Staves of Identify now come in larger sizes. I've seen them up to 70 charges! You should no longer need to carry 2 in the end game.
Aside: If you are viewing changes to the git repository, you might want to use the --ignore-all-space option. My editor (QtCreator) has an option to clean up whitespace for the entire file as you make changes. Mostly this is the removal of trailing spaces, but it also makes sure the file ends on a blank line to avoid compiler warnings on certain platforms.
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v5.0.2
A quick update, mostly addressing recent posts on the forums, is available in the usual spot (5.0.2).
Bug Fixes:
[1] Last release had a tweak to fix early jewelry drops for Quest Rewards and Dungeon Guardians. Unfortunately, there was a bug in this code making late jewelry drops average from DROP_GREAT monsters. Hopefully, this release comes quick enough so that no one but myself was affected by this!
Forum Comments:
[1] I relented even further regarding jewelry, making rings of combat a little better in the early game. Azog, the guardian of the Orc Caves, now drops a ring of combat.
[2] I fixed the auto-roller display code during player birth. There seemed to be some confusion regarding the UI here ... This is not a point based buy in system for starting stats. Rather, it is the same old auto-roller the game has always had, but rather than forcing the player to guess what starting stats have a chance of working, the UI now tells the user when they are asking for too much. If the display is green, you should get your request. If orange, then you are being greedy, but it is still possible (Hey, you might get lucky). If red, then there is no chance for success. If black, then you are being too conservative! (Internally, I added scoring for other purposes, but this need not concern the player.)
[3] Mimics now get a saving throw during Dispel Magic in order to maintain their current form.
[4] Morgul weapons are now more rare (Rarity changed from 6 to 16).
[5] I tried to address the "out of range splash" exploit on dungeon guardians. Of course, this offers new opportunities for dealing with these guys ... I'm sure you'll figure them out. (BTW, Hengband tried to address this exploit, but their redress only works if the monster has summoning, teleportation, or healing. Unfortunately, none of the guardians have this.)
[6] Minor: Left handed monks can now assume postures while using a shield.
[7] Hallucination no longer displays the monster list at all.
[8] Object Lore: Fixed learning the OF_WARNING and OF_REFLECT flags.
Other Changes:
[1] Monster Lore: The game now reports actual observed spell frequencies rather than the funny guess code. Basically, we keep track of the number of turns a monster cast a spell as well as the number of turns it moved or attacked (while in LoS where it could have cast). If you probe or use easy_lore, than you will see the true frequency as set in r_info, but I prefer to have a record of my actual experiences for the current game.
[2] Egos: IGNORE_ACID has been adjusted on a few types. High level egos, to be competitive, need this flag (e.g. Helmets of Valkyrie) while a few low level types don't deserve it (e.g. Cloaks of Electricity). Some mage like egos now grant mage resistances (confusion and blindness).
[3] Wilderness: Some monsters can now climb in the mountains, and don't need levitation to chase the player. (Basically, I think the Wilderness Mountains are scummable, so I'm trying to address this.)
[4] Beholders have been redesigned a bit. Their melee attacks are non-physical, being just a gaze, so Str and Dex no longer offer bonuses to hit and damage and they never gain critical blows (You aren't bashing things with your eyeballs, after all!). Blows are gained by level (slight boost from Int) like a monk. Finally, the Beholder can "melee at a distance", gazing at nearby foes that are not necessarily adjacent. The range is short, but this change is quite powerful. They lose many of their early level spells (Paralyze, Confuse, Cause Wounds, etc) to compensate. They no longer start with objects on birth and now have some early detection spells.
[5] Monsters with a max level now gradually become less and less common, rather than suddenly cutting off at a specific level (Every 10 levels, their rarity doubles).
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v5.0.3
Now for the big changes:
[1] Player birth has been completely rewritten. I removed the auto-roller, since this apparently confuses new players, and replaced it with a generous point based system. In addition, the game picks a reasonable default stat allocation for you. If you are a new player, you can quickly begin play with a decent build.
[2] I added a new monster race: The Vortex. It is sort of a cross between a hound and a jelly, if that makes any sense. The ultimate form is rather fun and probably a bit too powerful.
[3] I added some new classes: The Gray and Yellow Mages. These are tweaks of the mage class and I figured we've done so many melee twists that it was time for some spellcasting love. The first is a slot based mage that 'learns' spells from books, but then casts them from memory (even if blinded). The second gets multiple spells per round, but cannot learn the really powerful stuff.
[4] I rewrote the Wizard Object command, since someone was complaining (Wizard and Cheat commands aren't really supported ... I used to compile these out altogether before I switched over to Linux for development). I list this as a big change because it was a huge amount of work!
Now, some smaller changes. Many were inspired from forum posts but since I work offline, I cannot remember which was which at the moment. Anyway, thanks for your feedback and keep it coming. I do read the forums (offline and irregularly) and will try to address issues major and minor (eventually):
[1] Fixed (?) curses display bug with beams of gravity (pref/spell-xx.prf was the culprit, using TERM_DARK for a display attribute. I'm not sure why, but on xterm, this erases to the end of the current line until you ^R to redraw)
[2] The Blood-Mage now uses his own blood (hit points) for the recharging spell.
[3] I tried to fix the issue with Burglary traps in the Arena ... but I thought I had already fixed this once before, long ago, so who knows? It might still be broken!
[4] The object list now collects interesting features on the surface, including shops and dungeon/quest entrances. Since you can 'travel' using this list, this should address the request for auto-travelling to various shops on the surface as well as the issues somebody had with being unable to locate a quest entrance. As an example, ]h` will auto travel to your home (You can quickly select an entry in this list by pressing the first letter of the choice ... h for 'Home').
[5] Travelling now checks for abort. This is very useful with [4]!
[6] The curses command line interface has been cleaned up. We now support -top and -left panels and a -spacer option. For example, I play with:
./poschengband -mgcu -u$1 -r -- -spacer 2x1 -left 56x22,* -spacer 0x0 -bottom 78x5
[7] Berserker updates display when tearing off a cursed item.
[8] Monster recall now always displays the observed spell frequency, even if you probe or play with easy_lore.
[9] cheat_peek now works for egos.
[10] ?CurseWeapon et. al. no longer downgrade heavy and permanent curses.
[11] html is now the default for character dumps. You'll need to change the extension to txt manually to get a plain text dump.
Now, for some experimental changes:
[1] I added an auto_target option. Use this with use_old_target for best effect. Every offensive spell or device will automatically target the nearest monster if there is not a valid target already specified (and you need to set use_old_target to be able to target before casting and zapping). With this option, simply cast 'n blast!!!
[2] With this, I tried to improve the monster recall child terminal to auto track monsters *before* you kill them. You should not need to target a monster to remove a stale tracking race.
[3] I played around with the repeat last command stuff. It seemed like a good idea at the time to use this facility as a quick temp macro facility, but I learned some surprising things in the process (like repeat does not record keystrokes and certainly doesn't work everywhere). Anyway, it was a bit of work to implement, so I left it in. Use "<register><command> to record <command> to <register> where registers are named with a single ascii character. The game always records new commands to the '.' register. Use '<register> to repeat the contents of <register> (so '. works just like 'n' or 'X', depending on your keyset, but you can now repeat many many commands). Use '' to list the current recordings prior to entering a register to repeat. So, ''f works the same as 'f, playing back the contents of the f register, except that the current recordings are listed to you once you press the second '. Recordings are not saved in your savefile.
There might also be a few minor bugfixes. You can check the changelog on github for all the details.
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Wow, these PosChengs are coming (relatively) thick and fast! :o
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Yep, nothing finer than some dev and release momentum spinning up nicely~ 8)
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v5.0.5
The big change this time is the addition of a new class: The Skillmaster.
The Skillmaster allows you to build and design your own class. I did a lot of work on the user interface and helpfiles, so, rather than repeat myself, I'll let you read about it inside the game. The only thing perhaps worth mentioning is that you use the 'G' command to gain skills. In the UI, the uppercase version of a command usually brings up context sensitive help.
Other changes this release include:
[1] Better handling of repeated messages, especially Clear Mind and Virtue spam.
[2] Burglary Rogues are CL1 casters and use DEX. Non-burglary rogues remain CL5 casters using INT.
[3] Sorcery Identify spell becomes 'Mass Identify' rather early on.
[4] Burglary books were not being stocked in the BM (remove the TOWN flag in k_info.txt to fix this since black_market_crap() now simply disallows objects where this flag is set).
[5] Ammo allocation has been redesigned. Perhaps seeker stuff is too common now? Somebody play an Archer/Ranger and let me know
Bug fixes mentioned on the forum (up to around Dec 1) include:
[1] Gold amounts overflowing and becoming negative (I guess this was a tax to raise some revenue for The Variant Maintainer??)
[2] Draconian Metamorphosis in the middle of berserker melee was raising a divide by 0 error, since changing your body form chucked all your melee weapons in the middle of the attack loop.
In a BANDing context, such a new class is perhaps the new standard for the edge of madness~ 8)
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v6.0.0
A new version, 6.0.0, is ready in the usual spot. This version breaks savefile compatibility so please finish your current characters before updating. This release is extremely beta ... I've playtested a bit, but not nearly enough to be sure that there are no showstopper bugs.
The main point of this release is an attempt to address some of the archery complaints. Based on comments and my own playtesting, I see the following problems, and have attempted to address each of them:
[1] Ammo breakage is too high. Players need to town scum in order to have enough ammo.
To address this, I made ammo breakage dependent upon archery skill. As your skill improves, ammo breakage will decrease. Archers are slightly worse off from this change, but every other class benefits greatly, assuming they have reasonable archery skill. Remember, arrows break twice as often as shots or bolts.
[2] Picking up ammo after a battle is tedious.
To address this, I turned the 'g'et command into super-get. This command combines the travel code ('`') with the auto-picker ('_') to automatically get all interesting objects in line of sight. The player travels to the next nearest object until there are no more interesting objects. The options auto_get_ammo and auto_get_objects control this behavior. This might surprise you the first time you use this command, but once you get used to it, you'll love it. I promise
If there are a large number of objects to pick up, then you will see multiple -more- prompts. I recommend g<Esc> to deal with this. As you know, <Esc> automatically dismisses all -more- prompts until the next prompt for a top-level command.
[3] Ammo makes inventory management tedious. Ego ammo is seldom used since there are not enough inventory slots (exception: Holy Might). Artifact ammo is completely non-usable since wasting a slot for a 65% chance to hit is not worth it.
Enter the quiver. I implemented this as a new equipment slot for every body type with a bow slot. There is a new object type (TV_QUIVER) and you must buy/find a quiver and then equip it. Doing so gives the player access to a separate set of object slots for their ammo, reducing the strain on your normal pack slots. Ammo is added to the quiver by 'w'ielding it, and removed from the quiver by 'd'ropping it or 't'aking it off. You cannot take off a quiver with ammo inside it, but you can wield a new quiver provided that its capacity exceeds the current quiver contents. You can shoot ammo from either the quiver, your pack, or the floor. There is no penalty for shooting ammo that is not inside your quiver.
The quiver has a large number of slots (currently 26, but could be infinite if desired). However, the quiver has a fixed capacity, such as 60 arrows. This means you can carry many different types of arrows for specialty situations (e.g. various slaying ammo in case you run across a matching monster) without penalty. 60 arrows is a low capacity that you can buy in town. You can find or buy higher capacity quivers during the game. There are even a few ego quivers.
Implementing the quiver was a large amount of work and required me, for purposes of sanity, to break savefiles. During this process, I completely re-wrote the inventory management code and the shop code (e.g. your home is now infinite). You'll notice a new UI for selecting objects for the various commands. Press '?' for help the first time you see it so that you can learn the various command keys.
Note: I made a bold change for this release that will probably require some getting used to. When prompting for an object, the lettering always begins with 'a' and has nothing to do with where the object happens to currently reside in your pack. For example, eating food is always 'Ea' no matter how many spellbooks you are currently carrying (Of course, picking up mushrooms might move the choice, but you'll see this on the screen when you press 'E'). This change will burn you if you have the bad habit of memorizing slots on the 'i'nventory display (I speak from experience). Stop doing this! Please read the prompt when ever you are quaffing potions, reading scrolls, etc.
Note: On any object prompt, the uppercase for a choice no longer prompts for confirmation, but instead inspects the object.
[4] Archery is boring. Ammo is much less interesting then the shooter. Once you have an awesome shooter, then vanilla seeker ammo, enchanted in the town, and carried in stacks of 99 is all there is to the game.
I rewrote ammo egos and the archery damage calculations. The goal is to make ammo much more important. Ammo dice, previously completely irrelevant, now features prominently. Damage is calculated similar to melee, where the slays and criticals multiply the damage dice roll. Criticals are now much much more common, and archery skill, previously irrelevant, is now the single biggest determinant of critical frequency. If you must know all the details, damage is now M*(XdY*C*S + D1) + D2 where:
M is the bow multiplier
XdY is the ammo damage dice
C is the critical multiplier
S is the slay/brand multiplier
D1 is the ammo bonus to damage
D2 is other bonuses to damage (shooter, rings, equipment)
Archery damage has also been reduced a bit. The numbers I work with for design purposes are now 1000 max melee and 700 max archery. These are soft maximums which you can break with awesome finds, but I get slightly alarmed every time I see this. Good end-game numbers are more like 700 melee and 500 archery. And, for archery, you are going to need slaying ammo to achieve this. We'll have to see if I went too far with this, but archery needs to be weaker than melee since you are fighting from a distance.
Another major change for this release: I completely rewrote the quest system. A long time back, I beefed up v_info.txt for new non-vault rooms, and created a nicer syntax for defining 'map letters'. But all the town and quest files continued to use the old syntax. I finally converted everything over, and tried to make the quest system something I'd be willing to add content for. If you are interested in designing quests then take a look at q_info.txt and follow the links to the various quest files. Setting up the town quest sequences is still annoying since you need the quest ids defined in q_info.txt, but the rewards are now part of the quest file (so they can be shared with t_lite and the normal wilderness towns). There are a few new quest surprises, but this release was mostly a herculean effort to convert to the new system. New content will follow in a future release. Failing a quest in a series no longer terminates the series. But intentionally failing quests makes me sad ...
This release also has many bugfixes, many grabbed from PosChengband R (Thanks!). I can't list all the changes. If you are curious, just checkout the commit history on github.
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v6.0.2
I just noticed that the last 6.0.0 Windows release was unable to reload savefiles. I did test, but not enough to notice the bug and I always run Linux these days. Sorry for the mistake. Also, I see that Windows Security Center is deleting msvcr100.dll for some reason, causing the Poschengband.exe not to run. While preventing programs from running does make your system more secure, it probably makes it less useful. I'll try to resolve this issue but it might take me a bit to figure out as my Windows partition no longer touches the internet. Probably, I just need to find an updated version of the C runtime redistribution. For 6.0.2, I switched to msvcr110.dll ... maybe that will make a difference. But probably not as I haven't patched my Windows in quite some time.
For the future, I'd like to build using mingw like Vanilla does, but I don't know what I am doing. You'll just need to bear with me while I grope about for a solution. Perhaps someone can step up and provide a more stable Windows build in the meantime if this 6.0.2 release is still having issues? You really should just be able to dump in an updated msvcr*.dll to fix the issue, but the number (formerly 100 but now 110) must match the version that Poschengband.exe was linked against.
Other changes:
[1] Wow, I just tried out clouded's new monster list (elliposchengband). I think I managed all the new monsters except that Dor and Michael the Overlord. I enjoyed them, so I've added them as is. Thanks for the contribution! You'll find the game is now a bit longer and more difficult, and you'll need quite a bit more healing to survive. Some re-balancing may be required ...
[2] I grabbed a few commits from elliposchengband, which I get in a round-a-bout way from a poschengband R repository I happen to have locally cloned. Not sure if it is up to date ... These include "The X resists" patch, the RF3_NONLIVING patch for monster lore, the replacement artifact level patch, a tweak to artifact ring generation, and a patch to allow WILD_ONLY uniques to show up in the no_wilderness option. There might have been a few other patches that I grabbed as well. Check the git log for details and thanks for the bug-fixes and improvements!
[3] Also from elliptic was the idea to mix random and standard arts. He did an option for 50% replacement, but I decided to let you choose the amount (from 0% to 100% in 10% increments). I really like this option.
[4] Riding skillmasters no longer receive the -30 to hit archery penalty once they have enough skill points.
[5] Staves of Genocide are now deeper, making them much less likely to be found. You only need one, of course, but don't expect them every game.
[6] By request, randomized birth has been returned. Press '*' at any of the birth menus (I didn't test this too much, though).
[7] I started to look at Rune Knights (it is one of elliptic's major changes) and added documentation and a few minor changes. But I do think they need to keep their mana as it is the only check on unlimited rune creation. I haven't found them to be outrageously OP, but I also haven't played them too often (and certainly not to endgame). Comments?
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v6.0.3
[1] This release is a mingw build and no longer requires any msvcr*.dll to run. This should address all the issues with Windows Security Center deleting the c runtime dll causing poschengband not to run. (Huge thanks to Vanilla Angband for making this possible ... Nick set up the original buildsystem for me, and even though I've never worked with this type of system before, I was able to get this working fairly quickly by looking at the Vanilla stuff.)
[2] If you are compiling on Windows, you can try the instructions in Vanilla's compiling.txt with regard to autotools (I include a configure in the repository in case you don't have autoconf on your system). They might just work. Of course, you can continue using Poschengband.sln in Visual Studio ... I'll probably continue keeping it up to date just in case I need to debug something specific to the Windows port.
[3] This version adds an option to "reduce_uniques" to a specified percentage of the total. For those of you (including me) who think the game is too long, you might want to check this option out. The way it works is that dungeon guardians (if !no_wilderness), questors (q_info.txt), bounty uniques (20 randomly chosen) and any FIXED_UNIQUE monsters (r_info.txt) are excluded. Then, the remaining uniques are reduced to the indicated percentage (smoothly distributed by monster level ... see _reduce_uniques in py_birth.c). If you really want a shorter game, try setting no_wilderness, reduce_uniques (10%) and quickband (see below).
[4] Quickband: I've wanted an option for a faster game for a long time. With reduce_uniques, I think it is finally reasonable. This is new and untested, so probably needs some tuning. How does it work? With this option you get:
[4.1] Double experience from kills
[4.2] Stat boosts every 3 levels rather than every 5
[4.3] Better object drops
[4.4] More object drops
[4.5] !Healing, _Healing, and !Curing are all buffed. No need to wait for a huge pile of *Healing*. This option is really designed to work with reduce_uniques and, probably, no_wilderness as well. After all, exploring all the various dungeons is hardly a quick way to play! This option is designed to replace the Munchkin personality which I found to be quite a bit too much.
[5] Fixes from elliposchengband, pseudoelliposchengband.
I really need to improve my git skills here as I'm not sure how to get commits from other repositories. I simply re-key in the changes (most were simple fixes) or cut and paste. Thus, the git log of poschengband doesn't list the correct original author. My apologies. If I've missed something you feel is important, please drop a post in this thread of the forum (I might miss new threads, but I always download a copy of this thread for offline reading whenever I drop a new release). If you explain why something *must* be done, it is more likely to get included. Some changes (like restricting the eldritch horror to los; giving recall access to all dungeons from the start allowing you to bypass the guardians; branding spells working on egos and artifacts; removing erratic movement; replacement arts keep standard activations; allowing all races to eat at the inn) I don't agree with. Other changes (like removing birth object randomization; birth begins with lantern) seem really minor and don't fix bugs. I could be persuaded to add them ... they just didn't seem to be worth the effort.
[5.1] New vaults from clouded
[5.2] New quests from clouded (I converted to the new system). Might need some work on the placement in t_lite.txt, though, as they are placed after the Haunted House. I didn't have time to look at all of clouded's quest mods, though. I think he made the Haunted House easier.
[5.3] And more. "pseudo" is GenericPseudonym, "elliposchengband" is probably elliptic, though I've also grabbed fixes from MarvinPA and Chris Campbell. And, of course, clouded (who also wrote t_lite.txt and designed about half the new non-vault rooms in v_info.txt). I'll come up with a thanks.txt file at some point, so if I missed your name, give me a shout.
pseudo: Fix naturally tele-resistant dugeon entrance guardians being teleportable
pseudo: 'Charm' -> 'Charm Ring Bearer'
pseudo: all nazgul uniques qualify as ring-bearers
pseudo: fix pronouns with named pets
pseudo: message when a blue mage COULD learn a spell, but failed the random chance
pseudo: give the duelist's special attacks some more color
pseudo: don't cut off the last entry in the 'p'et menu
pseudo: count seeker and mithril ammo as rare for Mogaminator
elliposchengband: cap idle time at 30s
elliposchengband: don't print message when autosaving (MarvinPA)
elliposchengband: remove gender restrictions from sexy/lucky personalities
elliposchengband: allow quickstart after wizmode game
elliposchengband: don't fail to eat at inn if full
elliposchengband: improve monster spoiler listing
elliposchengband: Fix autodestroying gamble shop items not giving essences
[6] Fixes from oook forum requests (See, I do actually read these :
oook request: give the home shop-like command aliases
autoget: turn off options by default
oook report: wilderness scroll invalidates a local cave_type pointer in move_player_effect
oook report: typo (High Priest of Morlok)
oook report: museum donations are fully identified
oook report: selling unidentified junk should not keep the item in stock
oook report: shop inventories are sorting incorrectly
oook report: Quiver is full msg when no quiver worn.
oook report: home/museum display centers the title using the screen size, not the document size, resulting in clipping
Study: Regression. item_tester_learn_spell broken for Hex High Mages
[7] Finally, some minor fixes and tweaks:
Rune Knights: Rune Swords already have runes
Artifacts: Flags should extend the base object rather than override them.
Skillmasters: Martial Artists get too much DEX
Skillmasters: Remove (+h,+d) melee bonuses
Wilderness Travel: More issues
shops: initial inventory load turns over too quickly
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v6.0.4
This is a quick update mostly because I integrated many contributions from pseudo and elliptic. Since cherry-picking commits generally involves manually fixing merge conflicts, I'm hoping to save others some tedium! I also converted some more quest changes (q_vapor2.txt and q_haunted_house.txt) and I resurrected the sdl port.
Here is a shortlog of changes:
GenericPseudonym (18):
Re-color some easily confused monsters.
Add a flag in autoinscription for weapons that inflict stun.
Fix the "odds" text in the casino's monster arena
*Recharging* fails if the player doesn't have enough sp.
Add display_race option to control the player's symbol
Metamorphosed draconians become D instead of @
add some MSVC 2015 stuff to .gitignore
Cancel fasting on anything that increases nutrition.
Fix spell fail messages for Sorcerors and Red Mages
ditch ""These resistances can be added to which from equipment for more powerful resistances. ""
Buff hephaestus demigod slightly, and give better messages.
Clarify some race descriptions.
Give snipers a different message at maximum concentration.
Rename sniper's "plasma bolt"
Let Psionic Speed override smaller speed buffs.
Dont lose turns when trying to zap a 0-charge device.
More informative failure messages for riding/rodeo.
Let wands of heal/haste monster target pets.
elliptic (5):
Add a few flags to monster recall.
Change Warning to apply only to traps.
Use the previous game's race/class/etc as default (if the same game mode).
Don't reduce weaponsmith essence gain due to removable curses.
Reimplement no_selling option.
poschengband (25):
Recharging: cherry-picked 61cb737 was broken. After clipping amt to max resource, it reset amt back to power.
Bump Version to 6.0.4
no_selling: minor wording changes
quickband: quicker stat gain (potions)
Quests: Replace Vapor Quest (st_)
Quests: New Haunted House by clouded
quests: display quest name when appropriate
py_display: add color to some notable options
-fsanitize=undefined on 1 << 31
mingw: improve my cross-compile script. prune Makefiles
quests: display monster level for random quests in quests_wizard (^Aq)
quests: remember last filter
sdl: make it compile ... still lots of warnings
sdl: compiler warnings
sdl: macros for arrow/numpad direction keys
sdl: tabs to spaces; reduce repeat rate
sdl: use Angband fonts
sdl: shift+numpad5 should recenter the viewport
sdl: other macros (home, end, etc). reasonable menu font
sdl: make inkey_special work
sdl: configure issues
sdl: experimenting with fonts. cleanup colors
sdl: reformat for the sake of sanity
Wilderness Centering
tiles: adam bolt's 16x16 tileset
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v6.0.5
This time, there was a SIGSEGV bug report ... ouch!
Main Changes:
[1] New option for old pack behavior: use_pack_slots. Should be on by default.
[2] Sniper rewrite for better UI. Browse spells to display damage/accuracy. Bookless casters can browse using the uppercase menu choice just like Skillmasters. That only leaves book based casters with the lame UI.
[3] Miscellaneous sniper game play changes:
[3.1] Monster vulnerabilities (Fire and Cold) are now a factor. The first player to one-shot one of the big giants (Loki, Ymir, Surtur) will get a special prize!
[3.2] Sniper powers enhance rather than supplant corresponding ego flags. For example, Burning Shot on flame branded ammo is even more deadly.
[3.3] Alas, snipers are a bit too OP for the Serpent, so I had to make stunning more meaningful. They still should be the easiest class to win with (once you get to the Serpent, of course).
[4] Lots of work on inventory messaging. With use_pack_slots, you should see the correct slot in your messages (unlike the old pre 6.0 code, which usually told you the slot just before re-sorting your pack).
[5] 'g' is now normal get. '^G' is auto-get. Now you can decide which to use. If you always want auto-get and find '^G' annoyingly hard to type, add a keymap from g->^G. Then, when you want the conservative get, type '\g'.
[6] Quivers no longer automatically accept everything: only ammo that can combine with an existing pile or that is inscribed with '=g' is automatically added. Of course, you still need to wear a quiver, and the ammo must also match your shooter.
Here is a git shortlog of all the commits. I'm trying to write more meaningful commit messages, so you may want to read the full commit info on github.
poschengband (51):
Bump version to 6.0.5
x11: restore blending of monster/object with terrain features
oook: quest reward lost when pack is full
oook: fix wilderness travel lag
oook request: give alternatives to page_up/down in home/shops/inventory
oook report: no running in wild_mode (introduced in b11b419a)
oook report: SIGSEGV in wilderness shop encounter
oook report: possession history incorrectly displays quests
oook report: selling un-identified excellent ammo gives full price (sometimes)
use_pack_slots: new option for old pack behavior
oook request: bring back disturb on autoget obj
Downgrade Dragons' Lair Guardian
Sniper: Recode for more informative UI
Inventory: Displaying Slots
Inventory: Display Slots (cont)
Inventory: Display Slots (cont)
Sniper: Playtesting (UI)
Snipers: Adjust Damage Distribution
UI Messages: Playtesting
Auto-Get: Separate Commands for Normal and Auto-Get
Quiver no longer 'likes' unidentified ammo
Fix double screenshot for killing The Serpent of Chaos
UI Messages: Playtesting
Playtesting
Improve UI for Getting Object Piles
Home: Fix double get message
Messages: Combining objects (piles) loses OM_DELAYED_MSG
Devices: Display Fail Rates inside Inscriptions
Travel: Improve Route Selection
Devices: Tighten up random distributions
Sniper: Apply Ammo Boost Before Vulnerability Check
oook report: funky activation messages
Wilderness: Force Viewport Center on Generate
Devices: Blandify Fail Rate Inscriptions
Devices: Give Message after Usage
Snipers: Endurance Ammo Endures Evilness and Holyness
Snipers: OP vs Serpent
display_percentages in status bars rather than [****---]
oook bug: shapeshifting and the quiver
oook report: un-necessary pack overflow when wielding
oook request: display object list from do_cmd_look
Object List in do_cmd_look: Handle case when monster is on a pile of objects
Egos: Increase pvals ... especially on early CON boosters
Golems: Change Test Hit Mechanics
Stats: Show Ammo Usage
gcc -O2 found something clang missed
Stats: Show Equipment Usage
Archers: More Crits. Smooth Critical Multipliers
Archery: A new bolt, the deadliest of them all!
Quivers: Don't prompt for quanity if just 1
Quiver is more discriminating in its affections
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v6.1.0
A new release (6.1.0) is up in the usual spot. Enough gameplay changes, some fairly major, have accrued to warrant a new minor version.
Changes this release include:
[1] Quest sequence in Angband is now random. You won't know what levels contain quest monsters. But, you can safely leave a quest level if you like and the quest monster will patiently await your return. You decide how to play this, but the game is more fun if you try to complete quests on the first attempt, only backing out if the foe is ridiculously OP (e.g. Malekith on DL35 before you have nether resistance).
[2] Rune Knight redesigned and even playtested. They are strong, but no more than many other classes (unless I am missing something?).
[3] Major changes to devices. End game devices are much harder than before to use, and the high device classes (mage, sorcerer, device master) will finally see some need for their high class device skills. Charmed Pendant restored to its original +2 status.
[4] Changes to melee and spell proficiency systems to smooth out level restrictions. Some players won't like any sort of spell proficiency system, so there is a new birth option to turn it off.
[5] Reforging: The game now uses slot-based power ratings. For example, melee weapons vs light sources. No longer can you reforge powerful slots into weak slots with impunity. This also applies when reforging strong items into weak weapons like daggers and falcon swords (e.g. ninjas). However, you might try reforging Vilya into a Blade of Chaos or even Diamond Edge and like the results, so it is not all bad.
[6] Rand/Replacement Arts: These also will use slot-based power ratings. Fixed a major bug with rand-art scoring after noticing how ridiculous end game rand-arts were becoming.
[7] Archery: Shots per round is completely determined by your base shooting skill (class *and* race/personality).
[8] Devices now have much better allocation. You can get lower level stuff in the end game rather than having effects just cut off abruptly. You should find 1 or 2 -Rockets in a normal game, but will never find more than 3 or 4. No longer will you get annoyingly frequent Beams of Disintegration (and others).
[9] Lots of oook requests addressed. You can do a git shortlog v6.1.0...v6.0.5 to see the details, but the following is worth mentioning: Press '@' at an object prompt to temporarily stop using inscriptions to override label choices.
[10] Stat sustains now help protect against nexus scrambles.
[11] Archery: Slings shoot slightly faster (1.40 vs 1.25).
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v7.0.0
I've begun a substantially redesigned 7.0 version, mostly in response to monster related issues and player effects. While I am not finished playtesting, I have tested enough that what I have seems stable and playable. 7.0.0 is available in the usual spot, but only those brave and eager for design changes should attempt this. I'll keep playtesting ... I had planned to sit on this 'til November or December, but having so many local changes not pushed to github makes me nervous (and once I push, people will play, I think).
Monster Issues:
Playtesting the recent monster additions revealed numerous problems, and investigation led to frustration with the existing system and, therefor, another major re-write. I've redone monster melee, monster auras, and, most aggressively, monster spells. I can go into issues if you like, but perhaps it will be better to just browse the commit history if you are curious. I tried to explain my reasoning whenever possible. Dont' browse r_info.txt unless you wish to spoil stuff ... Try playing "blind" instead!
Monster spells are now lored, and you can legitimately learn damage numbers with enough experience. Try playing without easy_lore and easy_id ... The lore system is quite good, IMO. And player omniscience does make the game much easier (not to mention spoiling anything new I might add).
Many monster types have been redesigned. Some new types have been added. Many of the recent 6.1 additions have been dropped (e.g. the Steam stuff) as there was just too much. For example, there is no need for new unique angels, but some work on the existing ones should do the trick. Go slay Azriel and Raphael (preferably in melee), and let me know if we really need new, harder stuff
Player Effects:
While working on monsters, its hard to avoid considering player effects. If the only way to improve monster difficulty is to bump up raw melee damage, then the game goes in a direction I dislike. So, player effects were changed:
[1] Free Action: No longer all or nothing. FA entitles you to a saving throw: one per source. (TODO: More late game monsters need PARALYSIS, I think).
[2] See Invisible: No longer all or nothing. SI entitles you to a "skill roll" to notice an invisible monster: one roll per source of SI. Which skill? Why, searching, of course!
[3] Hold Life: Very interesting changes here. I won't spoil, but powerful undead monsters (especially uniques) might have something nasty in store for you!
[4] Stun: Redesigned effects (for players and monsters alike). Effects are smoothed out, and more significant, I think. Monsters, on the other hand, had an off-the-wall ridiculous stun system where the least stun affect made them miss half their moves, miss half their blows and fail half their spells (non-innate). They now use the same system as the player.
[5] Poison: No immediate damage. Instead, all damage is delayed. You'll see a poison counter in the current version. Poison is much harder to cure and many things only cure it partially.
[6] Nether: A significant portion of nether damage has been siphoned off into ... something nasty. So there will be a bit less direct damage.
I'm sure I'm forgetting major changes ... Many bugfixes and game balance issues.
Oh, and a new score system. The old scores.raw was segfaulting by (1) keeping raw ids in the score table; (2) attempting to display without calling init_angband. Many monster races need a valid r_info to work. The new system is available with ~H or from the Birth Welcome Screen. It is a single user system, not designed for large concurrent access (as in the old, original VAX days). Don't delete files in the scores (apex) directory unless you know what you are doing. The system keeps dumps for you, and you can view them directly from the high score listing. Also, live characters are added to the score list so that if, like me, you have large numbers of currently active characters, there is no need to wait until they die/win to see them.
Finally, I haven't been on-line for the last 4 months or so. Any issues or complaints raised on oook in that time will be addressed in a future release.
Enjoy!
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v7.0.1
This release is a minor update, mostly because I am about to go online to access all the expected complaints about the 7.0 stuff As with the last release, I'm not finished playtesting and still making considerable design changes. If this bothers you, wait for the 7.1 release which should happen sometime around Xmas ... I hope.
This release addressed a few 6.1 oook reports including:
[1] Problems with quests if monsters are summoned *after* the quest is completed. Fixed. Reports about the Vapor quest not working could not be reproduced. Is this still an issue? If you are on Linux (I think the OP was), try running in gdb and at least getting a backtrace (bt). Also, make sure you are running the correct executable. The build system builds into the src directory. Any executable at the root level was placed there by you, and therefore must be manually kept up to date by you. Also, on Linux at least, you can just run out of src (directories are set by configure).
[2] Minor complaints about message coloring ... weapons of sharpness.
[3] Request to look at mimic design ... I did, but haven't had a chance for playtesting. FYI, mimics are designed to be much weaker in mimicry than possessors. They can learn 5 forms, after all, and they are quite capable of success in their native form whereas the Possessor is hopeless without a current body. They should not be able to count on learning any specific form.
[4] Confusion about device design: In the old days, almost any player could get enough device skills to use (almost) any device. Skills were meaningless for mage types: You could probably do a Mighty Zombie Mage and not notice any decrease wrt devices. These days, *nobody* is above the device system... Well, perhaps a Devicemaster is, but then only in their speciality. And even in this case, race and personality choices matter, as does INT. Every player *might* find Magic Mastery useful.
Wrt devices themselves, the old system had each effect identical (and damage indexed to player level??!). The new system has variability in effectiveness, and I've gone ahead and taken a good hard look at this for 7.0.1. For example, Fire Balls start at around 65 damage, but can go all the way up to 370 damage! If you are in the habit of ignoring certain device types, you might want to rethink that approach. So while a Warrior can't use a wand of rockets, they might be able to snag some other device type that doesn't scale difficulty with power so aggressively. (Of course, warriors are *much* better off shooting.)
Check out the wizard commands ^A"3 and ^A"2 if you don't understand the current system and its design goals. And remember, devices should be considerably weaker than mage spells ... at least until the end game (where device skills really, really matter).
I've also continued to make minor gameplay adjustments, such as:
[1] FA helping with slowing effects from inertia as well as with recovery from being slowed.
[2] Random quest rewards are now 10 levels deeper than the current quest level, but there are fewer reward objects (You can get good stuff early).
[3] There is now more !Healing. _Healing is not required and never really was ... at least before the 6.0 monster additions. If you have it, of course, then it is very nice.
[4] Black Market now stocks object levels commensurate with player level. This is not realistic, of course, but is a nice balance change. For example, stocking OL50 for CL30 is a bit broken. On the other hand, the BM is no longer useless in the late game ... You can get OL70 and CL50.
[5] reduce_uniques no longer removes boss monsters or demigod parents.
[6] _Holiness removed. If you upgrade, it still works of course. You just can't find these any more.
[7] Nexus stat scramble replaced with something else. No spoilers, just play and see!
And remember, I still haven't seen any comments about 7.0. I'll adress those in the next release ...
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v7.0.2
Version 7.0.2 is up in the usual spot. I haven't had time to read any recent forum posts. Remember, I don't have Internet access, so I really cannot read and respond to everything that is written here.
If you are posting on oook, please play the actual Poschengband source code. If you mod, that is fine, but please don't post on this forum. This is just common courtesy and is the only price I ask for all of my hard work on this variant.
As with the last 2 releases, I am still playtesting. 7.0.0 and 7.0.1 would not normally be releases, even as beta, since major gameplay changes are still being implemented. 7.0.2 is probably beta worthy, though I have a couple of more things to look at. Again, this is not a finished, polished release. Wait for a non-zero second digit in the version number ... 7.1 should be ready around XMas.
Version 7.* is not meant to be a difficult release. It is not meant to squish noobs. I'm finding this release a bit on the easy side and am content to leave it so. If you are having trouble with this version, it is probably just that game mechanics have changed and require some getting used to. For example:
[1] Free Action: Paralysis always used to be a death sentence but got changed in Chengband so that players, even without FA, could survive. This was accomplished by not incrementing the paralysis counter while the player is paralyzed as well as decrementing the counter on player moves, not every 10 game turns. In effect, paralysis usually means losing 1d3 actions. The only difficulty is what happens on the turn that you recover. You see, you miss that turn and your paralysis counter is now back to zero. Should the enemy attack again, hit again, and paralyze you again, the process repeats. So the key to adressing this is some combination of (1) speed, (2) high AC, (3) distance attacks, (4) avoidance, and/or (5) multiple sources of FA. FA gives you a save vs paralysis, but it is a normal magic resistance saving throw. This means that (6) Anti-magic helps (and is available early for warrior builds that otherwise have low saving throws). In about 30 plays thru the 7.0 versions, I've only lost a single character to paralysis (flying polyp on DL30 of forest, using 8x8 graphics to camouflage itself). Mostly, paralysis is just the loss of a single turn ... something to think about, but generally a very non-threatening game mechanic. If you are dying from it, post your dump ... You are probably doing something wrong.
[2] See Invisible: Address this by improving your searching skill. Try wearing (1) elven cloak, (2) cap of seeing, (3) amulet of magi or trickery. If you have a low searching build, it is more important to improve your base searching skill than it is to get multiple sources of SI. Pay attention to the affect of race and personality choices in this area. Power builds such as Mighty Half-Titans are disadvantaged relative to, say, Nimble Hobbits. In addition, deal with SI by (1) using _DetectInvis to locate them if you lack SI; (2) using -DetectMonsters to locate them if you have SI; (3) quaffing !DetectInvis to help your detection odds; or (4) using _Telepathy (or permanent telepathy, should you be so fortunate). If you are getting spanked, then simply teleport away until you can handle this mechanic using any of the above.
[3] Hold Life: This is a big time mechanic, but it only manifests a few times in the game. Be prepared to pay attention anytime you notice your enemy "growing more powerful". Carry !RestoreLife. Some foes are best dealt with from a distance. If you can't manage this, then wait until you have multiple sources of HL, a high AC, and use ?ProtEvil.
[4] Poison: This has been redone a bit in 7.0.2 and the counter now ticks down every player move, and quite a bit faster. In the end game, use mushrooms to address this. If you have time, !Curing works better than _Curing which is better than !NeutralizePoison, but often, you can just heal more often during battles and let the counter play out (provided you have _Healing).
[5] Telepathy: This mechanic was always a bit on the absurd side. Which would you rather play without: Telepathy or Clairvoyance? Compare how easy/common telepathy is with how rare clairvoyance is! Changing the telepathic awareness is a very strategic change and it is the intent that you not know the exact power/danger of nearby foes. That pack of U's nearby might be harmless ... then again, it might be extremely deadly. Deal with this change by carrying a high capacity -DetectMonsters but it might not always be safe to spend a turn using it!
[6] Devices: I've now played a Magic-Eater all the way thru and devices are playing quite well. There is no nerf here ... good stuff abounds and _Healing is always showing up for me in the mid-60's (once in the early 30's!). Winning with devices is probably just something for Magic-Eaters, Devicemasters and Mage classes (though they will prefer spells, I think). Otherwise, devices play a support role. Playing a pure devicer all the way thru is not advisable ... It never was in heng either. You'll need to start out with melee or shooting and won't be able to switch over to pure devices until the mid-60's.
This version has done the following:
[1] Many rooms, quests, monsters and options have been removed or reverted. You can upgrade early 7.0 versions, but quest monsters or bounty monsters may no longer be available. I'm fully expecting someone to have forked poscheng by now ... so look there rather than here for these things. As usual, if you want explanations/justifications of changes, look to the commit logs.
[2] Devices can now be lored thru use. Previously, using an un-identified device allowed you to learn its spell and its charges bypassing the need for ?id. Now, you can also learn its power (how much damage it does, or how much it heals) by simply using the device. You'll need to observe the full power of the effect for this to work. Monsters that resist the effect, for example, will block the lore. For healing, you must be wounded enough to need the full amount of the healing. Also, you can learn device difficulty (i.e., its fail rate) by simply failing enough times. Devices are no longer cursed. In sum, the need to ?*id* devices should be greatly diminished.
[3] More work on the early game: Traps now using an allocation table with minimum levels and rarities. You won't get clobbered with stat drain in the early game before trap detection is even a reasonable possibility. AFC traps are restricted to much deeper depths.
[4] Monster densities and pack sizes have been reduced. I've read complaints about new effects being too difficult, but remember that in 7.0 monsters have had both their melee damage and spell frequencies reduced across the board. While some monsters did become more difficult (e.g. Grand master mystics), most have been quite seriously reduced in power (e.g. Greater titans and even the big J). Balance has been maintained by making the effect game more important. Consistent with these changes, I've added r_info support for specifying pack sizes on a per monster basis. You should notice this change fairly early ...
[5] Vaults have been redone. They are now very much worth attempting, and are rare enough to no longer dominate playtime. Every vault has at least one tasty inside, but they are very well guarded so be careful.
[6] Monster summoning has been rebalanced a bit. For one thing, max monster depth no longer applies during either player or monster summons. What does this mean? Well, my last character had Omarax summon an Undead beholder and ... a floating eye Also, remember that heng had every S_* spell summon 4 times while we now do greatly reduced amounts. S_CYBER or S_UNIQUE are only 1d2 I think, and the most you get are 1d3+1. In general, you get less quantity then heng. Finally, destruction now works 100% against any summoned monster.
[7] Fixed bug with project() calling project_p() multiple times. For example, I've had Kavlax hit me with a 500 dam BR_NEXUS once. I got this behaviour from heng ... It was not intentional.
[8] alloc_horde() has been re-designed. If you don't know, this is basically a summon kin mechanic added in Zangband, generating a large group of wide awake monsters of of the same display character. It is also a very fragile mechanic ... You could get 15 Flying polyps on DL30, for example. Or a mob of Dracoliches, AMHD, Great Crystal and Ethereal Dragons in the early 30s. Plenty of unfair insta-death here. Also, you got up to 15 monsters in the horde, but monsters with FRIENDS also got their full packs, so you could get a horde of 200+ hounds in one of the wide open FRACAVE rooms: basically a teleportation death trap. The mechanic, which is otherwise and most of the time a good one, should now behave much more reasonably.
[9] Fixed major bug with AURA_REVENGE. Hopefully, nobody but me hit this one, but you'll notice it if you try to melee Master Tonberry.
[10] Bow proficiency is now just like weapons.
You can post comments and criticisms in this thread, but please take time to explain what you don't like. If something seems unfair, linking to a character dump will help. It may take me a while to read and address comments, but I will eventually get around to them.
Finally, some context. This is a Hengband variant. You should know that heng was a long game, perhaps 40 hours if you kill all the uniques. If you don't believe this, look on the heng world score server for dumps by Henkma and Mogami. I'm going by memory here, but seem to recall them being in the 35 to 50 hour range. It is also a variant that takes a long time to master. It took me 2 years to get reasonably skilled with, and even now, 14 years later, I'm still improving my play ... This is not meant to be a casual variant that you play for a month and then grow bored with. If you are a new player, then taking a year to get a win is reasonable. 'bands always used to be this way. In the mean time, use the ~H high score ladder ... It is the only ladder that really matters Also, set goals for yourself other than winning. For example, your first goal should be to complete the Stronghold dungeon, and once you can do that, move on to The Orc Caves. Conquering any dungeon for the first time should make you proud!