PRIME 2.2 (27th March 2013)

[El Barto]

congrats for the new release!

[getter77]

Each marvelous, spanning changelog moves it all that much further forward---plus the recent ongoing success of SotS The Pit and DoomRL as ever further bolsters that there is room aplenty for sci-fi Roguelike goodness.

[guest509]

  Nice!

[guest509]

  Grah! I got jumped by a room full of face huggers, was impregnated by an alien and died giving birth. Thought maybe the anal probe could help get the alien out, but I guess my grasp of biology is a bit off. :-)

[kipar]

I suggest to add a crashlog. When playing as Xel-Naga game always crashes after several turns. Then i started a really successful Dissident, but the game crashes around level 6 when i tried to attack someone (can't remember letter).
Otherwise, great game!

[Ancient]

@Jo: Kheh, no, anal probes are not helpful in getting rid of parasitic infestation. Funny idea you got. :-) The facehugger hugs your face (duh!) so you may want to drink something unhealthy to kill that maturing chestburster. Another way is to get cesarean section.

@Kipar: Your crash log is in user/dbg.kipar.txt file. Found what the problem is with Xel'Naga - finding a door in graphical mode calls a method on a null pointer. Yuck! Problem fixed, expect a patch for download this evening. If you have core file in you directory I would be obliged if you mailed it to me. I'll check out what happened to that dissident.

Edited 31.03: I received more bug reports. Bugfix release date moved to early April.

[kipar]

I haven't saved log as started a new game already, but encountered the same problem several times at holidays.
The problem is: The game crashes (rarely), when i'm hitting someone with either melee or ranged weapon.
Log says nothing about disaster - last string is "In what direction?" in case of ranged attack or just says about previous attack (in case of melee).
I'm trying it on two laptops with Win7 x64, and the problem appears on both. I'm using ascii mode.
I can't find your email in profile, but there is a link to one of such logs in case it can help (this time i attacked goblin with optical blast): http://sourceforge.net/projects/weightlessness/files/dbg.Asus.zip/download

[Ancient]

PRIME is supposed to print my email every game so that I don't have to include it in my profile where it is vulnerable to spambots. :-)

Log doesn't feature crash data but has all the stuff you did previously in a game. Thank you for putting it out there. Information you gave me restricts the problem area to fight code.  It did not change that much in recent versions so there is good chance the bug shall be caught soon.

For next release there should be emergency save mechanism.

[ronw23]

OS X users who want to build 2.2, I have a version that is currently running on NotEye, not just curses: https://github.com/ronw23/prime-osx

[Ancient]

Ronw23, thank you! I added link your repository on front page. For next version I will do my best to include these changes so compiling for Mac with NotEye is straightforward.

So far all my attempts to reproduce the bug Kipar mentioned have failed. Perhaps it is exclusive to Win7 x64. If so I am likely to have an opportunity to test this later this month. At the moment my programming time is going to catching crashes instead. If the bug is random it may be possible to continue game after getting emergency save. If it is made reproducible through savefile it could be sent to me for examination. Either way it sounds like a good idea.

[kipar]

If the bug is random it may be possible to continue game after getting emergency save. If it is made reproducible through savefile it could be sent to me for examination. Either way it sounds like a good idea.

That would be great, because I liked this game and now played about hundred or so characters with latest version.
Crashes without saving are annoying, but they are pretty rare, so i consider them as yet another instadeath accidents.

Another instadeath events, that imho aren't ok:
 - pit with an acid is fatal and you can't do anything if you fall there.
 - when going downstairs, there is a chance to appear in aliens nest. In that case character sometimes don't appear on the stair tile, resulting in almost certain death. I'm not sure is it a bug or funny joke.

[Ancient]

Another instadeath events, that imho aren't ok:
 - pit with an acid is fatal and you can't do anything if you fall there.
 - when going downstairs, there is a chance to appear in aliens nest. In that case character sometimes don't appear on the stair tile, resulting in almost certain death. I'm not sure is it a bug or funny joke.

Acid pit can be climbed out of like any other pit so should be more of a danger to your equipment than to yourself. On the other hand it is overpowered against reticulans who have very little HP. I think they will be relegated to appear at lower depths. If you found jump boots wear them to get out of pits in single turn.

Landing inside an alien nest is not a bug, it is a challenge. However, getting displaced because something other spawned on stairs certainly is wrong. This shall be addressed in 2.2a.

If aliens themselves or getting facehuggers present problems how about consulting aliens spoiler?

[Ancient]

Release 2.2a is available on website. However, there have been additional bug reports and 2.2b may appear soon.

Xel'Naga problem is no more! Acid pits actually stay at their original depth. Turns out climbing out of them was a ten-turn action and this dealt horrible piles of damage often killing characters. There are other issues fixed and, that probably is greatest accomplishments, more than half crashes is caught. Unfortunately that does not guarantee you will be able to load the resulting savefile though!