Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 "Michelagnolo Galilei"(formerly Savage Lands)

[ShinQuickMan]

Well, I have a question about the religion skill. I've leveled it to 100 in a human shephard playthough, but never really noticed any changes So what does it do, exactly? Furthermore, is there any way to build it besides spending skill points on it?

[jcd748]

In situations where you lose piety, a high Religion score lets you lose less. In situations where you'd gain it (e.g. having very low piety - piety slowly regenerates to a base level) you gain more.

There's no way to train it outside of using skill points right now.

[jcd748]

Pleased to announce v1.3.0 is now released. This version adds names for settlements, range to some melee weapons, as well as quests, bug fixes, a resizable display when using SDL, and more!  Full list of changes:

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.3.0 "Kapsberger"
- Version declared February 20, 2021.  Version finalized April 23, 2021.

- Settlements are now named during world generation.

- Cloak of Shadows now adds a little evade and soak as well as the Shadow
  resistance, making it more useful as a general-purpose buff.

- Items generated for the player (via NPCs, quest rewards, and so on) are
  now prevented from having cursed status (Mythrrinthael).

- The tick message for stoning is now displayed in red, to be more visible
  against other messages (Poser Destroyer).

- Dropping items in water now generates a "Splash!" message.

- The hireling and adventurer generation functions have been updated so that
  optional race and class IDs can be specified. A random value will be chosen
  for each if not specified or if the ID is bad.

- Additional name combinations.

- Defined a new "meat" material type, and named the wood one "wood/plant".

- A number of locations now have advisor NPCs.  Set a group quest for the
  advisor in Isen Dun.

- Drinking a large quantity of alcohol at once can now inflict immediate
  poison status.

- Certain items (wildflowers) metabolize alcohol, for reasons not fully
  understood. Eating these metabolizes a portion of the unabsorbed alcohol
  in your system and can help sober you up.

- Weapons now have an associated melee range. Typically 1, this can also be 2
  (spears, greatswords, great axes) or 3 (whips).  This will let you attack
  creatures to up to x distance away in a straight line.  Range information is
  shown in the item codex.  Range is only considered for the primary melee
  weapon (KikuMorgana).

- The display can now be resized, and should scale to larger sizes nicely.
  It will stretch the sprites so things may not look perfect; there's also
  a setting in swyrm.ini allowing for integer scaling, which allows for
  cleaner scaling but will letterbox the game until it reaches a new integer
  multiple of 1280x600 (ACID GRIND).

- Created display_sdl_window_size to allow setting the window size at
  startup. When this isn't set, the window size will be created based on
  the size of the sprites.

- New creatures: advisor.

- New items: Isen Dun whisky, bread, flower bread, dwarven amulet "Protector".

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - Cats shouldn't have been aggressive by default (YARD).

  - Scroll-stacking issues (Mythrrinthael).

  - Cyrillic text wasn't working in SDL when bitmapped fonts were placing
    the characters > 127 (Meklon2007).

[jcd748]

Minor release with various fixes, but there are some crafting updates (kilns, which let you bake pots, shot, or even make fire and shadow bombs); mechanical changes (tanning's bonus calcs are less confusing/more linear); and some hidden stuff that's there if you want it (screens for selecting hair and eye colour, which are off by default).

https://www.shadowofthewyrm.org/downloads.html

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.3.2 "del Liuto"
- Version declared April 23, 2021.  Version finalized June 13, 2021.

- Default hair and eye colour can now be set in swyrm.ini, as well as an
  option that brings up a menu for each, in case you want to select these
  values for each character (Echo38).

- Damage messages will now be displayed in red when you are criticalled and
  take damage, when you take >= 20% of your max HP, or when your HP falls
  below 40% of the maximum.  Each of these settings can be configured in
  swyrm.ini.

- Knockback has been expanded from being possible only on kicks, to
  potentially firing on regular melee attacks when the size differential
  between the attacker and attacked is great enough.

- Knockback has a chance to apply the stun and exposed statuses.

- When attacking an adjacent creature with a regular attack, there is now
  a chance, based on the unarmed combat skill, to get an additional, free
  kick attack.

- More name and settlement name combinations.

- Primordial creatures (those dealing shadow damage or knowing primordial
  spells) have a chance to leave primordial essence when they die. This can
  be used as a projectile on its own, or in the manufacturing of shadow
  bombs.

- Tagged Urlac's robes/staff on generation.  Now when doing a specific quest,
  those specific items will be removed from the player.

- You can now dig up clay along riverbeds. Clay also occasionally appears
  when you dig on regular ground, and is more likely to appear near other
  clay deposits.

- Added kilns, which can be used to create clay pots and shot, as well as
  fire and shadow bombs, if you have the right components.

- To be in line with kiln behaviours around item components, forges, jeweler
  workbenches, wheels and looms, etc., will no longer prompt you for the
  component (ingots, whiteflower, etc) when there is only one available in
  the inventory.  Pulpers will still prompt because selecting the item
  destroys it, and the player needs an option to cancel out.

- Tanning bonus have been simplified, and are now based on a min/max
  range that varies with the tanning and crafting skills.

- You can now create whips at tanneries.

- A couple of the houses near the water in Isen Dun now have a shared flower
  garden, with a shovel left out for their use.

- New material type (clay).  Clay pots, fire bombs, and shadow bombs are now
  made of clay.

- New creatures: potter.

- New features: kiln.

- New items: raw clay, clay shot, wisp of primordial essence.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - The danger level of wilderness tiles was always intended to scale the
    further you got from your starting location, but due to a casting bug,
    the danger was always being defaulted to 1 instead (Echo38).

  - The value of the saved ASCII mode setting wasn't being properly set
    after loading a saved game, reverting things back to whatever the
    system default was.

  - Mono colour settings weren't working properly in the SDL display.

  - Issues with stacking due to value increasing for item types that don't
    actually improve with enchanting (potions, scrolls) (인수태).

  - Stream generation occasionally wouldn't work correctly, as it would start
    beyond the edge of the map.

  - Brightblade didn't have reach 2, as it should have (Grond).

  - Various typos in the codex/bestiary.

[jcd748]

From a user perspective, this release is mostly bugfixes. Most of the features this release are around making SotW behave better on multi-user systems, with an eye on tournament play:

- configurable settings for various directories
- more info in character dumps to allow DCSS-like stats (username, death details), if someone wanted to write stats-type scripts
- setting for automatic character dumps at death
- per-user swyrm.ini that gets merged with the game's copy when starting the game
- settings that can be set in the system copy of swyrm.ini and can't be overridden by the user, for cheating-type reasons
- user savefiles and user-initiated char dumps (ie, not the automatic ones at death) are now saved to the user's home directory

Full list of changes:

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.3.3 "de Sarlat"
- Version declared June 13, 2021.  Version finalized July 14, 2021.

- The log file location can now be configured via log_dir and will give the
  player an error if there are problems writing to that location (Larzid).

- The location for savefiles and char dumps has been updated.  Instead of
  being in the main game directory, this now defaults to .sotw under the
  user's home directory.  This can be reconfigured via a new setting,
  userdata_dir (Larzid).

- Added the setting use_default_name to allow you to bypass name selection
  and use the default/generated value, based on the default_name setting.

- Changes to character dumps:

  - The character dump command now displays the directory to which the file
    was written.

  - Dumps now contain the user's username.

  - There is now a setting to always take system character dumps when the
    game ends.  These are stored to a directory specified by syschardump_dir
    and are intended to be used for stats, etc. on multi-user systems.

  - Character dumps taken after death now record what killed you, and where,
    and at what depth.

- Added a new setting to disallow score generation for a character when
  either narrative mode is set, or the Lua console has been used.  This
  setting (_disallow_score_on_exploration) is off by default, and is intended
  for use on multiuser systems and in tournaments to enforce fairness.

- Each game's total playing time is now tracked and available in the
  character dump.

- Your status as Holy Champion/Fallen Champion is now displayed in the
  Memberships section of the character dump.

- New name and settlement name combinations.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - When automelee was off, the player was being prompted when NPCs were
    attacking at range (Echo38).

  - Digging gave a weird message when you used it over another creature
    (Echo38).

  - Hide whips weren't being suppressed during regular item generation (Red).

  - Petrification wouldn't kill you when your current HP was greater than the
    max value.
 
  - Fireball traps were leaving fire bombs, when these had item destruction
    percentages that should've prevented that (Echo38).

[jcd748]

Here's a question for you all: as I work on 1.3.5 (or whatever number the next version ends up being), I'm adding fullscreen mode. What are your expectations for a roguelike? Would you expect windowed SotW to be the default, or fullscreen?

[jcd748]

I wasn't planning to take so long to release, but a number of factors combined to make this a large release the size of a small release. There are some niceties for playing on multiuser systems, improved pickup logic, and a number of other features, but the biggest change is probably that deities now have likes (not just dislikes). That's right! You can now please your deities passively, generating piety for yourself without actually having to haul the corpses of your enemies to the nearest aligned altar!

As usual, there are lots of bug fixes as well, including some fun ones that have been around since the very earliest versions (close misses never worked!). Enjoy.

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.3.6 "Valderrabano"
- Version declared July 14, 2021.  Version finalized October 19, 2021.

- A copy of swyrm.ini is now created in the user's .sotw directory, with some
  hints on how to get started with overriding settings.

- New swyrm.ini setting (display_sdl_window_mode) to allow the SDL display to
  be either windowed (default) or fullscreen.

- NPCs that start with spells now start with some skill in those categories,
  plus Magic if the spell isn't Cantrips, to allow the NPC to pick up and
  read appropriate spellbooks.

- The spell Dig and digging wands are now range 5, rather than 4.  Crumble is
  still range 1, but now a ball rather than a directional spell.

- Dropping an item and refusing the shopkeeper's item now keeps the item in
  your inventory (krwak).

- Pickup all/pickup/autopickup now smartly pick up the right number of items.
  If the stack is too large, the maximum quantity of items is selected (Sean
  McKeague).

- You can now occasionally stumble across the corpse of a hapless adventurer.

- Artifact weapons are now more effective at inflicting status effects,
  giving a minimum bonus even if not explicitly specified in the game
  configuration.

- Shops are closed for business at night.  More generally, the game now supports
  night-time chat text and chat scripts.

- Deities now have likes as well as disikes.  Doing something a deity likes
  will grant a small amount of piety if you follow them.  This allows you to
  gain piety passively, rather than having to camp out at an altar and
  sacrifice repeatedly (though this can still be done to supplement your
  piety as needed!).

  - Burying remains (corpses, skeletons, etc) removes the remains and may give
    piety depending on what you're burying and your active deity.

  - The three good deities will give you piety when you heal your companions.

  - The evil deities enjoy cruelty, and attacking friendly creatures will make
    your god happy if you follow Shiver, Urgoth, or Sceadugenga.

  - Additionally, Sceadugenga rewards cannibalism, desecration, and
    graverobbing.

  - Aurelion and Celeste both like smiting.  Celeste likes it when her followers
    learn spells, and Aurelion likes stunning.

  - Urgoth likes stunning, and revels when his followers rage.

  - Vedere enjoys the planting of seeds.

  - Voros likes inflicting blinding.

  - The Lady smiles on pacification via Beastmastery and Music.

  - Shiver enjoys bloodletting, learning spells, and inflicting slowness.

  - The Trickster likes sneak attacks and learning spells.

- Shiver's artifact list has been pared down, and the weapons are now only
  daggers and staves.

- Dungeons can now have orchards and vegetation rooms.

- The guidebook now includes information on how to read the equipment screen,
  as well as detailing what each of the damage flags does (krwak).

- Settlements now have signs at the perimeter with their names.

- Added vegetable gardens to Isen Dun, Gnordvar, Yew.

- Dwarves now start with a very small Smithing value, and smiths much more.

- Settlements can now have pens with sheep or chicken.

- World generation can now specify hermitages on certain types of terrain,
  where a hermit either lives, or used to.

- World generation can also place storehouses, where large quantities of food
  are kept for long-term storage, as well as cottages, where witchlings
  retreat to live in peace, and welcome friendly visitors.

- Witchlings (and sages, who also learn primordial spells) now form their own
  association, which other characters can automatically join by learning
  primordial spells.

- Creatures who worship a particular deity and share that deity with you will
  no longer be hostile.

- When deities summon creatures around you, their deity ID now reflects who
  summoned them.

- Enchanting and glowing now start on the equipment screen, allowing you to
  selected equipped items as well as inventory items (Paul Blay).

- Added the ability to set custom scripts for a particular creature in its
  placement details, and added another scholar to the library at Atua-Elar to
  prove this out.

- Multi-page chat speech is now available (split using "%") - the game will
  split the text before displaying each page.

- More name/settlement name combos.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- New creatures: chicken, hermit, witchling.

- New features: fencing.

- New items: board with a nail in it.

- Bug fixes:

  - Fixed a couple of cases where items would be added to a tile without
    checking for stacking.

  - Tree and weed species had an extra period at the end of their synopsis.

  - There was a long-standing issue with gates not closing properly, or being
    kickable.

  - Special settlement features weren't being tracked properly and could be
    partially overwritten on the map by other buildings and structures.

  - Settlement generators are now better at placing new buildings and features
    without colliding with previously placed structures.

  - Bazaars were rarer than they should have been, due to a quirk in the world
    generation algorithm.  This has been refactored a bit, and things like
    bazaars, hermitages, etc., should now be slightly more common.

  - Fixed an issue with the current danger level and bazaar item generation.

  - The creature generation algorithm could lead to empty areas in some
    circumstances.  Updated the algorithm so that when the creature list
    is empty, the minimum danger level is halved, repeating until creatures
    are generated or we hit danger level 1.

  - Beastmastery anger was turning pets (RelicWraith).

  - Hiding could be very difficult even if the only nearby creatures were
    friendly/allied (RelicWraith).

  - Pulsars were mapped to the wrong sprite.

  - The logic around close misses was broken (and always had be), so now
    periodically combat should generate "you barely miss <x>"-type messages.

[jcd748]

This version has the usual assortment of small changes, but also some larger ones. These include:

• Weapon masteries - extra bonuses at 100 skill in a particular melee or ranged weapon
• Coastline generation on most world maps
• Skill details available from the selection/improvement menus, similar to item/creature descriptions
• Same for spells

Merry Christmas!

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.4.0 "Pisador"
- Version declared October 19, 2021.  Version finalized December 24, 2021.

- The display is now centered on the monitor when started in SDL windowed mode.

- Via swyrm.ini, you can now select the display the game should start on
  in SDL (Larzid).

- Maps will now usually generate coastlines based on their placement on the
  world map, and your placement will vary based on where the most land is at
  the edge.

- Islets (tiny islands surrounded by sea in the cardinal directions) are now
  generally uninhabited, and random creature generation on these is restricted
  to the naturally-occurring races: birds, animals, insects, plants, jellies,
  dragons.

- The Rage status now provides immunity to Intimidation.

- Total number of random items has been toned down.

- For spellcasters, spellbook generation is now biased so that unusable
  spellbooks are much less likely to be generated (but will still be allowed
  by the item generation algorithm).  Spellbooks are generated as before for
  non-spellcasters.

- Ancient beasts now have some variation in their evade and soak, based on
  the current danger level.

- Updates to weapons when a creature has 100 skill in a particular weapon
  skill:

  - Axes give a chance at vorpal - half the chance as if the weapon had a
    dedicated vorpal flag.

  - Spears add piercing to all attacks

  - Daggers give an extra 30% chance to sneak attack

  - Bludgeons and exotic weapons give an increased chance to apply their
    damage statuses

  - Short and long blades help to deflect attacks, increasing evade

  - Rods and staves get +1 range

  - Unarmed attacks get a slight boost to their damage, and allow knockback
    without explicitly kicking

  - Whips get the same slight damage boost and have a chance to inflict
    Exposed and Bloodied statuses

  - Ranged weapons add an additional level/2 damage

- The chance to sneak attack based on Stealth has been improved from
  <skill %>/10 to <skill %>/5.

- When deciding on a random movement direction, intelligent creatures will
  look to move away from any threats they can't directly reach.

- Both skills and spells now have descriptions similar to those of creatures
  and items.  They can be accessed by using the associated capital letter
  of a skill/spell on the respective screen.

- New name and settlement name combinations.

- Bug fixes:

  - Pregenerated items weren't properly considering whether they'd persist
    when placed on a particular tile (Gokajern).

  - swyrm.ini gave incorrect instructions on how to set default_sex to prompt
    the user to select their character's sex (RelicWraith).

  - Weather conditions no longer cause water to shimmer underwater.

  - Selecting 0 for a stack pickup size would duplicate the item into your
    inventory (RelicWraith).

  - When creatures were randomly placed in dungeons, if the creature couldn't
    be placed due to eg a wall tile being selected, this would still count
    against any maximums, with the effect that uniques could be generated,
    not placed, and then you'd never see them.

  - Damage messages could get displayed in an unintuitive ordering - this has
    been fixed so the damage-related message comes first ("You slash..."),
    followed by any knockback or status effect related messages.

  - Shops could be generated over top of shops, leading to situations where
    shopkeepers might not accept items of the types displayed in the shop,
    or where two shopkeepers could be created (RelicWraith).

  - The Arcane skill increment message wasn't working properly.

[iakul]

Hi, I enjoyed your game enough to create an account just to give feedback.

So far, have won once each with a Human Pugilist worshipping Urgoth for all 3 endings. Questions and comments so far:

1) Except for incorporeal enemies, I never seem to attract enemies before I can see them. Is this a case of "If I can't see you, you can't see me?"

2) Worshipping evil deities seem to come with too few drawbacks.
a)Their sole dislike is something that you practically have to commit on purpose
b)There's a certain named orge on a certain island on the west side of the world that's always generated friendly, which I think is due to us sharing the same diety. This gives me impunity to slaughter his comrades before I need to focus on him.
c) I can attack and slaughter hirelings for their enchanted gear, and not only not get penalised, I even gain piety for it.

3) Wouldn't it be more intuitive to have base speed be 100?

4) The gods seem to be all melee. They do hit hard, but when you are a pugilist who's been boosted by the Smith, you hit back harder, and you end up being more afraid of their spellcasting goons, since the gods do you the favour of walking up to you so you can punch them in the face.

5) Possibly related to 1), but I found that half the time, entering the shrines from the bottom entrance allowed me to grab the gems without a fight.

6) Would it be possible to set your own keybindings? I lost a couple of characters due to accidentally double-pressing Y on to a mountain before I learnt to give them a wide berth.

7) Weaving seems like it doesn't scale well. I raised it to 100 for 1 game, and promptly decided to stick with having it in the teens for my future games. (I did read your previous comment about revisiting crafting skills when the game is more mature though)

Food seems really plentiful and easy to get. This was already the case before I figured out where the Hunting trainer was. This turned the starvation counter into more of a "how long do I have to wait before I can consume this corpse for resists?"

[jcd748]

1. Right now as a performance tweak, only nearby enemies get actions - this is so there isn't huge amounts of long pathfinding going on. So yeah, your suspicion is correct.

2. Yup. Evil deities let you do just about anything you want. That's the tragedy of evil - it thrives on a lack of constraint.

3. Perhaps, and especially if you come from eg ADOM. But this is so embedded in the calculations that it's not likely to ever change.

4. Mmm, good point. I'll look at maybe boosting them.

5. Hmm.

6. You can set keybindings in swyrm.ini

7. Yeah, at some point in the future I need to revisit and balance these some more.

8. True. This isn't rogue where starvation is a real possibility. Food's necessary but plentiful. If it's too annoying, you can always go fae and not have to eat.

[jcd748]

First release of 2022! Lots of changes in this one. The most useless (for now, anyway) would be building: if you dig and drop sod or a stone block, you can build a wall. Drop lumber and you can build a door, or over water and you can build a pier. You can pry apart wooden features with crowbars. This is something I wanted to add to make the world feel a bit more alive and open.

On a similar note, certain "useless" low-level townsfolk-type NPCs might now give quests. The rewards might be middling, or good, but it's a reason to talk to people and it (again) opens up the world a little more.

Other than that, most of the rest of the major changes are around followers. Divine companions' power is now influenced by the Religion score. You can bless monster summoning scrolls and you'll get followers rather than a dangerous situation.

It's been a few months since the last release, but I think this one will add a lot more variety. I hope you enjoy.

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.4.3 "da Milano"
- Version declared December 24, 2021.  Version finalized March 27, 2022.

- Stone blocks can be obtained by digging in solid rock, while sod can be
  harvested by digging in fields.

- Digging through trees provides a source of lumber (as well as branches and
  boughs).

- You can now build, and only need building materials (stone blocks, sod
  bricks, lumber):

  - Dig and drop the building material on a tile containing buried remains
    and you'll be asked if you want to make a grave.

  - Dig and drop the building material and you'll be asked if you want to
    build a section of floor.

  - Drop building material and if you can't/don't want to build a floor,
    you'll be prompted to build a section of wall.  Stone and sod let you build
    rock/earth walls, respectively, while dropping lumber near water allows
    you to build a pier.

- If maps have a very low danger level, traps will not be generated when
  requested.

- Lituus is now rods/staves rather than bludgeons.

- Pick axes are now much less likely to break, and dwarven mattocks will not
  break at all.

- Blessed weapons now make it a little easier to hit, and cursed weapons a
  little harder.

- Rewrote the Hunting skill to be clearer that it's about corpse drops
  (Wolpertinger).

- Skinning now provides a chance to preserve the corpse afterward.

- Hunting is now passively trained each time you get a corpse.

- Some creatures now have a small chance of providing a quest.  Right now,
  this is limited to townfolk-type NPCs: tradesmen, farmers, potters,
  travellers, tanners, commoners, jewelers, smiths, weavers, scribes,
  thatchers, fishermen.

- The scrimshander in Whaling's End now has a small quest as well.

- Certain NPCs (generally, the ones listed above) now have a chance to run
  some common quests as well.  These quests can be be repeated: you can do the
  quest for a fisherman in Isen Dun, a tradesman in a random village, etc.

- Added a loading splash image and an .exe icon, courtesy of Kenny Dalman.

- Character age can now be specified in swyrm.ini.  This lets you either
  directly set an age, or set a value that triggers an age selection screen
  (RelicWraith).

- Creating items via tannery now properly adjusts their value based on the
  quality of the crafted item (RelicWraith).

- Long spears are now range 3.

- Shard of Starlight deals more damage.

- If you're wielding a pick axe or mattock, you can knock stones loose from
  the ceiling when underground.

- When a particular tile has been dug, small or tiny creatures get a bonus to
  their hiding checks (RelicWraith).

- Blessed scrolls of monster summoning now provide you with companions.

- New name and settlement name combinations.

- Dragonbane's range is now 3, keeping in line with other two-handed spears.

- Divine companions get additional bonuses to HP, AP, and damage based on
  your Religion skill (RelicWraith).

- Characters with Leadership can now use a command in the order menu to summon
  followers on the current map to nearby tiles.  This works even if the
  followers can't currently be seen (RelicWraith).

- Tamed/summoned creatures now start out in the at-ease state, which will have
  them decide what they want to do.  Generally, they'll follow you, attack
  threats in range, and so on.

- NPC AI has been updated so that creatures that were once a threat to a
  creature's leader, but aren't any longer (via taming, etc) are removed
  as threats.

- The Carcassian recruiter has a new quest to put down a peasant uprising.

- The speed difference between the attacker and defender now plays a part in
  determining whether an attack becomes a sneak attack.

- Added support for running a script when a creature is created to allow for
  more complex behaviours, if needed.  Added a creation script for cats to
  randomize their colour between brown/grey/black/white.

- The manual, keybindings, and confirmation text now make it more clear that
  quitting will abandon your character (Echo38).

- New creatures: thatcher.

- New items: stone block, sod brick, lumber, crowbar, speed ring, speed
  amulet.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

  - Acey's imperial stash quest wasn't displaying the reminder string.
 
  - Opponents in the arena were generating friendly if they shared your
    deity.

  - The changes to the ambient danger level were messed up the danger levels
    of mines, sewers, and dungeons - these were intended to give you 1 danger
    level per 50' of depth, but the danger level was starting at the ambient
    danger level, causing the first 50' to give you wildly different creatures
    based on where the dungeon was.

  - Display-related errors weren't being shown properly before exiting
    (RelicWraith).

  - The Stoneheim wizard quest could require you to slaughter the new wizard
    if they were generated as a goblin.  The quest is now smarter and sets
    a flag on all the generated hostile creatures, with the quest completion
    condition now checking the value of this rather than relying on race
    (RelicWraith)

[jcd748]

Monthly(-ish) release!

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

- Created a splash screen for curses mode.

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

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

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

- Added another poem for the title screen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Hostile creatures no longer follow and take orders.

- Additional person/place names.

- Additional townsfolk quests.

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

- Various typo fixes/text improvement.

- Sewers can now have drainage basins.

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

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

  - Fixed the same issue with the username_is_character_name setting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[jcd748]

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

[jcd748]

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

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

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

- Deserts have a small chance to generate a spring.

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

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

- More names.

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

- You can no longer use the Music skill underwater.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Random artifact (randart) generation.

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

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

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

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

- Bargaining reduces the cost of hirelings (RelicWraith).

- Pelicans have a better sprite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More weeds.

- Dolmens can be generated in the hills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- New items: amulet of the sky, conch.

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

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[jcd748]

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

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

- Additional names for things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- New items: Selrin's bandana.

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

- Small memorial in Gnordvar for an old friend.

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

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

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

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

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- Bug fixes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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