Time for the monthly release! This one's named for Simone Molinaro, a Venetian lutenist of the 16th century. I just spent a while learning to play his "Ballo Detto Il Conte Orlando", one of my favourite pieces of music growing up, though I originally knew it as the opening theme to Respighi's orchestral "Ancient Airs and Dances".
Anyway, this is a slightly-more-significant-than-usual monthly release, because of two features: NPCs can now do ranged combat (firing bows, throwing spears, etc, with the same mechanics the player uses), and breeding has also been implemented - watch out for fork bugs! They have a nasty piercing attack, similar to ADOM's claw bugs.
The other major mechanical change this version is dual-wielding. Thieves and Rovers start with Dual Wield, and this skill now hopefully makes them worth choosing, though it should be noted that they're generally more frail than warriors, and so it might take a bit of creativity keeping them alive.
Breeding and NPC ranged combat were two of the things on my long-term to-do list, so it's nice to get them out of the way. The crash bug remains, however, but a reminder that the game should now provide dumps, so if you get a crash, you can send me the dump and whether you're using the Win7 or XP build, and I can hopefully make the game a little more stable.
A full list of changes:
Shadow of the Wyrm v0.5.0 "Molinaro"
- Version declared March 7, 2016. Version finalized April 3, 2016.
- Added a utility to set the username to empty on savefiles, and updated
the code so that any savefile with an empty username can be opened by
anyone.
- Save files now persist after loading, and are only removed when quitting
or dying. This allows a basic recovery mechanism from crashes.
- Fixed up a number of locations in the Lua API functions where creature
pointers were being used unchecked.
- Dying stars will change their evade, damage, and speed based on their
intensity.
- Defined initial equipment for goblin pelters, archers, ogre hurlers,
and dwarven warriors (these receive slings and rocks/bows and
arrows/cabers/crossbows and bolts, respectively).
- Updated NPC AI to consider ranged combat when threats are in range and
when an appropriate ranged weapon is wielded.
- Resting no longer cuts off at full HP or AP when the player has at
least one status. This allows players to quickly rest off being
Spellbound, etc. Resting still can't be done when afflicted by
particularly dangerous statuses (Stone, Poison) - in this case, the
player would need to use an item, pray, manually rest using 's', etc.
(Antonio Sabochini)
- Creatures can now have skills as well. Added archery-related skills to
archers, goblin pelters, ogre hurlers, snakeling sharpshoters, and
dwarven warriors.
- Amulets now have randomized unidentified descriptions.
- Changed amulet symbol to '#'.
- Added configuration settings to allow the selection of a default race,
class, deity, and sex. If these aren't set appropriately, the user
is prompted to select a value.
- Creatures can now attack with two weapons. There is a to-hit penalty
on the secondary weapon, as well as a speed penalty. These are both
reduced by the Dual Wield skill (kraphead).
- Rovers now start with skill in Dual Wield as well.
- Thieves now start dual-wielding daggers, with some extra daggers in
their inventories. Rovers start with an extra dagger in their
inventory.
- There is now a simple in-game help, accessible via '?'. All keybindings
shown are the default values (AgingMinotaur/Mateusz Lagowski). The
help menu also includes an introduction to roguelike games, a history
of Shadow of the Wyrm, and a basic strategy guide.
- Creatures can now be defined as breeders. Breeders have a small chance
to create another creature of the same type onto a surrounding tile.
Breeding respects when the creature generation rate is 0 (via the
Cleansing spell), so even if a creature decides to breed, breeding will
be suppressed on the level by this spell.
- Added the breeder flag to fork bugs, as well as a piercing attack.
- Added another entrance to the boathouse in Isen Dun.
- Increased the amount of currency per drop, as well as ammunition.
- New conduct type: silent (broken on chatting and spellcasting).
- New creatures: dying star, puca, tentacled spider, fork bug, ogre
hurler.
- New items: holy amulet, shadow amulet, lightning amulet, flame bolt,
arcane bolt, barbed spear, winged javelin, caber.
- Bug fixes:
- Combat/Archery was not affecting the combat to-hit calculations.
- Off-hand equipment specified in the configuration XML wasn't being
equipped properly.
