Sil (now at v1.3)

[getter77]

http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/

A new year about this time generally means a new release, savor the ridiculous amount of things that hopefully more Angband variants, Angband itself, and other Roguelikes steal from with reckless abandon.   

V1.2.0 Grand Changelog:

- broke savefile compatibility
   - sorry about this
   - it needs to happen every now and then and I schedule it for the 1.X.0 releases

- many of the small improvements in this version are from the Sil variant: mpa-sil
   - I've noted this below where I remember -- apologies for those I've forgotten to credit

- monster abilities
   - monsters can now have some of the abilities that the player can get
      - such as Charge, Cruel Blow, etc.
   - Morgoth and Gorthaur have songs of power

- abilities
   - Throwing Mastery now prevents thrown items from breaking
   - Two Weapon Fighting no longer allows you to wield 'hand and a half' weapons in your off-hand
   - Knock Back
      - now requires there to be no monster in the square the creature is knocked into
         - so orcs don't get swapped in corridors etc
      - it now takes weapon weight into account in determining your effective strength
         - so you will want a heavy enough weapon to get your full strength bonus
   - Point Blank Shot now completely prevents the attack of opportunity from the
     enemy you just shot at, instead of 50% chance for all adjacent enemies
   - Skill requirements reduced on several early Evasion Abilities
   - Added the Evasion Ability: Leaping
   - Flanking no longer requires Dodging (though the latter still works well with it)
   - Heavy Armour use now has an alternative pre-requisite of Crowd Fighting
   - Lore-master no longer identifies chest traps (via mpa-sil)
   - Majesty now takes the monster's Will into account
      - instead of reducing morale by Will/4...
      - it reduces it by half the difference between your Will and theirs
   - Song of Sharpness now lowers enemy protection by 2% per point of Song
      - this is usually a smaller effect than the old rules
   - Song of Mastery is now slightly cheaper to make the skill point progression simpler
   - Unwavering Voice has been removed
      - having non-song abilities in the Song tree limits the ability for people to learn many songs
      - and this was the weakest one in terms of game mechanics
   - Woven Themes now makes the minor theme use (Song / 2) instead of (Song - 5)
      - this makes it worse in most cases
      - but this means more people will use Song abilities to get actual songs
      - made slightly more expensive to make the skill point progression simpler

- smithing
   - 'slays' no longer cost a strength point to add to a weapon
      - it was too steep a cost for the early game, making no-one add them
   - artefact arrows now have half the difficulty
      - it was crazy costing you as much for 1 arrow as for 24 or a regular equipment piece
   - fixed several of the smithing bugs
      - the game is now clear that you can only use one of Enchant or Artifice per item
         - this removes the worst smithing bugs
      - fixed a bug with artefact rings and amulets forgetting their special bonuses sometimes
      - I think the only remaining bugs are glitches surrounding abilities on artefacts disappearing or duplicating
         - the work around is to only add abilities to artefacts immediately before the end

- items
   - weights   
      - randomised weights for weapons and armour are now less fine grained (via mpa-sil)
         - they come in multiples of 0.5 lb instead of 0.1 lb
      - other weights tweaked a bit to match (e.g. potions from 0.4 lb to 0.5 lb)
   - increased chance of generating out of depth items from 1 in 10 to 1 in 7
   - identification
      - there is no longer a perception check when identifying items by use
         - (you automatically pass if you get the opportunity)
      - identification of passive abilities now occurs twice as quickly
   - reduced the late game frequencies of many potions/herbs
      - people typically had far too many of them by the throne room
   - horns
      - changed trumpets to horns
         - changed colours, descriptions, adjectives
         - dramatically reduced weight
      - added the Horn of Force, which knocks back enemies in its path
   - vampiric weapons no longer drain life from nonliving monsters
   - herbs of rage
      - now make you completely immune to fear
         - previously it was just resistance, but the possibility of frightened rage was silly
      - you can no longer identify monsters via the recall window
   - staffs of treasures now display non-subdued Deathblades
   - bows
      - Shortbows now native to 50 ft instead of 100 ft
         - so archers should be a bit easier to start
      - Longbows
         - now native to 150 ft instead of 350 ft
            - to give players a better choice of archery style through the game
         - no longer get the [-1] penalty
            - it was a bit fiddly and too few archers were using them anyway
      - Dragon-horn Bows are now 1d9 2.0lb
         - a bit like deathblades or the old longbows
         - they should be more tempting to the majority of archers who find them now
   - throwing items (daggers, spears, throwing axes)
      - now found in slightly larger stacks
      - removed some of the special item types they could get that required wielding
      - made an automatic throwing command: control-t
         - throws the first throwing item in your inventory at your target or closest monster
         - akin to "ff"
   - artefacts
      - made the Greatsword of Saithnar a bit less good
      - made the Shortsword of Galadriel rarer
      - tweaked the stats of the Helm of Curufin
         - it had (-1) instead of [-1] only because 5 years ago that was how all helms were...
      - the Cloak of Maglor now grants Song of the Trees
         - as Unwavering Voice was removed

- display
   - molds are now always visible once sighted for the first time (via mpa-sil?)
   - made the darkest shade of grey (d1) a bit darker
      - needed to tell it apart more clearly from the others
   - visual display of hits on monsters changed
      - there is no longer a colour difference when doing more than 10 damage
      - instead, there is a colour difference when killing an opponent
   - significantly improved the self knowledge screen to show the quantitative effects
      - including the details of stacked levels of an attribute
      - now also identifies items if the item granting the power is known
         - (e.g. slay orc on melee weapon) (via mpa-sil)
   - weapon and armour weights are now shown when you walk over them (via mpa-sil?)
   - gave more detail in the in-game descriptions of some abilities (via mpa-sil)
   - if you are in a pit or web, this is now displayed in the status line
   - adjusted the 'notes' display
      - to let it fit slightly longer notes
      - and changed self-made notes so that the last few words don't automatically flow to the next line
         - which makes it easier to manually write long multi-line notes without looking ragged
   - falls now correctly display the character of the thing that made you fall in the combat rolls window
      - e.g. the staircase or the false floor
   - abbreviate "Health" and "Voice" when you have more than 100 points of it (via mpa-sil)

- interface
   - removed "always pickup" and "prompt before picking things up" options
      - the former let you get free turns and wasn't really any easier than manual pickup
         - (since you want to pick up less than half of things and need a keystroke either way)
      - the latter was only needed with the former
   - added an user interface option to 'Forgo bonus attacks on unwary enemies'
      - this used to be always on, but can now be toggled
      - I've made sure it covers *all* bonus attacks (I'd missed Rapid Fire and maybe another)
   - targetting
      - firing an arrow 'ff' when the target is a location that is now out of line of fire, no longer fires
      - added an automatic throwing command that throws the first throwing item in inventory at the first target
      - both firing and throwing no longer automatically choose a target if it is out of range
   - you can now inscribe your melee weapon with "!a" somewhere in the inscription (via mpa-sil?)
      - this will trigger a warning every time you try to attack with it
      - good for pacifists, extreme stealth characters, and smithing equipment
   - you will also be similarly warned if trying to attack with a shovel or bare-handed
   - monster memory now explains that touch attacks ignore armour
   - you are notified when entering greater vaults (via mpa-sil)

- monsters
   - unified how monster mana works
      - they each have a capacity of 15 points of 'mana'
      - it regenerates 1 point per round (if not singing)
      - casting a spell uses 10
      - starting a song uses 1 per round
         - and monsters only decide to start if they have at least 10
   - made the check for monsters to bash down doors the same as for the player
      - I don't know how this had got out of sync
      - it is now easier for monsters to bash doors
   - allowed weaker monsters to rarely (1 in 10) push past stronger ones
      - necessary for the new pathfinding code
   - orc warriors
      - now come in smaller groups
      - also have the Ability 'Charge'
   - easterlings
      - easterling archers
         - their longbows now do 2d7 instead of the old-fashioned 1d11
      - easterling warriors
         - have the Ability 'Flanking'
      - Uldor, the Accursed is now an archer rather than a melee specialist
         - makes him more different, and good to have an archer unique
         - has the Ability 'Crippling Shot'
      - Ulfang, the Black
         - has the Ability 'Opportunist'
      - Maeglin
         - has the Ability 'Riposte'
   - cats
      - cat warriors
         - have the Ability 'Exchange Places'
      - Tevildo
         - has the Ability 'Cruel Blow'
         - and has melee reduced a little to compensate
   - trolls
      - all types have the Ability 'Knock Back'
      - Dagorhir, the Elfbane
         - now has the Ability 'Elf-Bane'
         - his base att/evn was lowered a bit to compensate
   - worm masses
      - now become unwary properly when you are far enough away (like other monsters)
      - since they don't breed when unwary, this should help with worm mass explosions
      - their crawl attacks no longer halve your armour (unneeded complexity)
         - but I've slightly increased damage to partially compensate
   - raukar
      - sulraukar are now easier to kill
         - reduced evasion and protection
      - ringraukar
         - increased damage
      - kemenraukar
         - reduced evasion
         - adjusted their AI slightly to weakly prefer open space to breaking through a wall
   - shadow spiders
      - reduced health (slightly), evasion, and melee
      - they seemed to be a bit too tough, but you will still want to remember to run away!
   - Thuringwethil is now coloured red to make her more distinct
   - Gorthaur
      - has gained a Song
   - Morgoth
      - has gained two Songs
      - and a point of Con to make him slightly more resilient

- vaults
   - added many new vaults, including many designed by Clouded and some by HallucinationMushroom (from the Forum)
   - made vaults a little more common, including earlier in the dungeon
   - removed iron walls (a.k.a. permanent rock)
      - it wasn't really needed and we weren't doing anything interesting with it

- traps
   - removed amnesia gas traps due to player frustration
   - removed flame traps from chests as they just encouraged dropping your flammable goods (via mpa-sil)

- other
   - digging
      - you no longer need to be wielding a digger to dig with it
         - carrying it in your backpack is enough
         - this saves some turns (and tedium) when digging
         - but to balance this digging now provokes attacks of opportunity from adjacent enemies (like archery)
      - the strength requirements have been changed (via mpa-sil)
         - you now need Str 1 to clear rubble, Str 2 to break quartz, and Str 3 to break granite
         - it no longer depends upon the digger weight (as there was no clean way to do so)
   - stealth
      - reduced the difficulty of having monsters lose track of you (become unwary again)
         - previously you had to beat them at their perception roll by 30
         - now it is by 25
         - Vanish still give +10 to this roll
      - passing the turn in stealth mode doesn't suffer the speed penalty
         - so it is no longer advantageous to toggle stealth mode on and off if you want to pass
         - the word 'slow' is still displayed but that relates to the next action, not the last one
   - unified and clarified the stacking behaviour of numerous effects on the player and monsters
      - almost everything that can stack, does stack
         - all temporary effects (except entrancement): add new duration to the existing duration
         - speed: stacks but the final score is limited to be between 1 and 3
         - elemental resistances: x levels of (net) resistance means damage/x
                                  x levels of (net) vulnerability means damage*x
         - sustains: +10x bonus to Will check
         - resist fear, blindness, confusion, stun, hallucination: +10x bonus to Will check
         - free action: +10x bonus to Will check
         - see invisible: +10x bonus to Perception check
         - aggravate: unwary monsters get +10x to perception check
         - regeneration: your regeneration rate is (1 + x) times normal
         - danger: monsters are generated as x levels deeper
         - cowardice: damage threshold to trigger fear is 10/x
         - haunted: x% chance per turn of generating a wraith
         - hunger: each level triples the rate, each level of slow digestion divides it by three.
         - sharpness: Amount from song (song*2 %) is added to amount from weapon (0%, 50%, or 100%)
         - slays/brands: each valid one adds a die of damage
         - light: your equipment levels add up to produce your light radius
            - light from sources on the floor, or monsters, or lit rooms, add their light levels on that square
      - things that don't stack
         - tunnelling: you tunnel with the best digger available, multiple diggers don't stack
         - abilities: multiple copies of an Ability (such as Sprinting) don't stack
         - entrancement: cannot affect you when you are already entranced
      - monster effects
         - morale effects: all add together
         - temporary effects: add new duration to the existing duration
   - the extra deep monsters generated during the escape now come from a wider range of levels
      - to add more variety to the escape
   - you no longer gain double experience for finding artefacts and unique monsters
      - it was a bit unnecessary...
   - removed the 'crown' screen at the end of the game
      - it was left-over from Angband and seemed out of place
      - if enough people want something like that, perhaps a better version could be added

- Dungeon
   - more stairs on the really big levels
   - more chance that a shaft is placed instead of a stair
   - these things should make the escape a bit faster

- bugfixes
   - chests weren't generating their contents properly
   - minor changes to some vaults to stop generating chests in locations where their items would disappear
   - off-hand weapons were using the wrong damage sides when making a charge attack
   - the boots of Irime now give the right self-knowledge text
   - when extra deep monsters are generated on a level in the pursuit, this no longer includes territorial ones
   - you can no longer see what items a creature is standing on if you detect it with staff of foes or listen
   - you can no longer see what items a creature is carrying unless you can see its square directly
   - monsters that can't use stairs will no longer try to flee to them
   - fixed the problem in debug mode where looking at newly generated monsters could print garbage strings
   - fixed the game taking a turn when declining to attack during the 'truce'
   - fixed the game taking a turn when you aborted an attempt to blow a horn (via mpa-sil)
   - fixed the game giving a turn of poison/regeneration/etc when you save via Control-X (!)
   - fixed a bug with two-weapon fighting where the off-hand penalty was only (-2) (via mpa-sil)
   - fixed a bug with removing autoinscriptions from one item type accidentally removing all of them (via mpa-sil)
   - off-hand weapon weight was counting for heavy armour use (via mpa-sil)
   - Feanorian lamps and lesser jewels granting brightness now auto-identify properly

[guest509]

I hear really good things about this game but I've yet to crack into it.

[getter77]

http://www.youtube.com/user/silstreamer/videos

This channel imparts much of the magic, though no vid series just yet on this new version...the most recent one up to this point was using the variant referenced in the changelog that Sil proper has absorbed a fair bit of changes/enhancements from.

[jim]

UPDATE! YES. LOVE THIS GAME.

Jo, you've seemed to be a theme fiend from what I know of you. Offer two or three hours of your life unto Sil and see if it doesn't take root.

[guest509]

It's on the list Jim!

[Vanguard]

Nice.  Sil is, without question, the best Angband variant I've ever played.

[getter77]

v1.2.1

- monster songs
   - made Morgoth's Song of Piercing a bit easier to resist (+5 bonus)
   - fixed Morgoth's Song score to 20
      - it no longer increases by 5 when his crown comes off like his Will does
   - the Song of Silence now reduces monsters' Song Score by a quarter of the Player's Song Score

- abilities
   - reworked some of the pre-requisites for the Will Abilities
      - notably Hardiness is less essential and Constitution is a bit harder to get
   - added Parry as an alternate pre-req for Two Weapon Fighting
   - increased the Song skill requirement for the point of Grace from 13 to 15

- smithing
   - you can now try out creating any item without the required smithing abilities
      - things that you can't do without an additional ability are shown in red
   - there are no known bugs with smithing remaining
   - modified the stat costs for horns (used to all cost grace)

- dungeon generation
   - significantly more flexibility in vault generation
      - vaults can now appear rotated as well as reflected
      - vaults now can have flags for extra traps, webs, rotation, debugging
   - improved trap placement
      - now much more likely to appear in interesting places
      - so it can now be worth actually searching for them in some cases
   - chasms can no longer be generated before 150 ft
      - (to make sure you can get to the guaranteed forge!)
   - halved the chance of locked doors
      - now 8% of all doors are locked, 4% are jammed

- dungeon features
   - chasms
      - staffs of freedom and song of freedom can now close chasms
         - but the difficulty is extremely high:
            - 20 + number of adjacent chasm squares for the staff
            - 25 + number of adjacent chasm squares for the song
         - it therefore tends to close in from the edges
   - secret doors
      - tunnelling into them now gives you a (random) closed door instead of a broken door
      - to avoid it sometimes being better to not find a secret door than to find it
   - broken doors
      - changed their symbol to '.', so they are more distinct from open doors and less confusing

- objects
   - made herbs of restoration a bit more common early

- artefacts
   - made the new mithril artefacts (Starlight and Silverhand) more rare (as originally intended)

- bugfixes
   - fixed two smithing bugs
      - one had to do with re-choosing an enchantment after modifying the numbers
      - one had to do with abilities disappearing or duplicating on artefacts
   - fixed a terrible bug with the monster ability 'Exchange Places'
      - which could cause you to be sent out of the dungeon if you killed the cat warrior who was exchanging
   - removed one of the messages when automatically picking up a thrown/fired item
   - fixed a bug where cancelling some but not all free attacks with a '!a' weapon didn't use up any time
   - fixed a bug where Woven Themes was having the effect of the removed ability Unwavering Voice
   - players were (again) getting the Opportunist free attack when an enemy was pushed with Knock Back
   - no longer takes any time to tunnel if you aren't going to be successful
      - i.e. it is more like realising you can't, than like trying and failing
   - fleeing monsters can no longer get free attacks of any kind
   - monsters that are frozen by song of mastery no longer get free attacks of any kind
   - can now automatically identify the Ring of Barahir (and perhaps others) by the Ability it grants

[getter77]

v1.3 

Headline features:

* Early monsters have been redone to be more flavourful
* New Mac version (cocoa) which should run on more systems
* Leaping made much easier to get

- broke savefile compatibility
   - sorry about this
   - it needs to happen every now and then and I schedule it for the 1.X.0 releases

- monsters
   - large changes to the early game monsters
      - many new monsters
      - replaced many of the more generic early monsters as many players had requested
      - a few changes to some later game monsters
   - stopped the Orc warrior "chain charging"
      - it used to be that swapping with another orc counted as movement, setting up a charge
      - it no longer does (in line with how the player abilities work)
      - also anything that makes them skip a turn interrupts their charging
         - (such as when they become aware of you)
   - Gave Boldog resistance to fear (from his spear)

- new mac version
   - replaced the old Carbon version with a Cocoa version
   - the old version was really out of date and wouldn't compile or run on recent systems
   - this should also remove some stubborn old bugs (see bugfixes)
   - this version isn’t perfect (e.g. some minor problems with displaying text)
      - but it does allow Sil to run on all new systems

- objects
   - horns
      - no longer require a will check to use
      - this is because they all require a will check to have an effect anyway

- abilities
   - made Leaping easier to acquire
      - it no longer has a pre-requisite
      - it now acts as a pre-requisite to Sprinting
   - Channelling now halves the voice cost for blowing horns

- smithing
   - now allows artefact rings to have bonuses to attack, evasion, and protection
      - (since there are regular rings with these)
   - removed the ability to add Grace to artefact cloaks
      - (just a minor nerf to the extreme +Grace smiths)

- tunnelling
   - attempting to tunnel but failing now takes a turn if you are confused
      - otherwise control-dir in a corridor would effectively overcome confusion

- bugfixes
   - stopped Great Cold-Drakes and Scatha the Worm having radius 40 light (!)
   - fixed the 'could not find a vault at 100ft depth' bug
   - control-t no longer aims successfully for throwing while confused
   - smithing gloves of treachery now correctly forces a <-1> penalty to strength
   - now correctly displays 'cut' status on the first turn on a new dungeon level
   - fixed a bug where channeling's +5 bonus didn't apply to horns of force
   - hopefully fixed various bugs with the Mac version
      - crash on startup
      - requiring admin password sometimes when opening saved games

[akeley]

What`s next? Mr Mensch finishing Incursion?

Hope this amazing  "real RLs don`t die" streak will continue well throughout AD 2016.

[getter77]

Sil team only missed one year in a generally annual release pace as it was---still great news, but quite on the level of Mensch doing some extreme time travel.   

[akeley]

I seem to recall reading somewhere recently that the author considered Sil more or less complete and that there won`t be no more updates, hence the surprise...glad I was wrong.

Sure, Incursion completed might be a pipedream...but when one sees the likes of Cthangband or Nethack escaping from the RLimbo, well, who`s to say what might occur one fine day

[jim]

Still in my list of top 5 RLs. Love this game. So parsimonious about everything, but yet there's a crafting system.

[Avagart]

And I still don't know how to win. For me it's one of hardest roguelikes I ever played.