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

[jcd748]

v0.7.3 is done!  The big change this version is the basic implementation of the Hiding and Stealth skills, along with sneak attacks.  A bunch of the bugs that ssteam reported are also fixed as well.

Full changes:

Shadow of the Wyrnm v0.7.3 "de Murcia"
- Version declared December 23, 2017.  Version finalized January 20, 2018.

- Implemented the Hiding skill.  This skill requires selection via the
  Skills menu.  Once selected, a Hiding check is made.  If the player is
  not viewed by any creatures, hiding is automatic.  Otherwise, it is a
  function of the type of map (hard to hide in the cosmos, easier
  underground) and time of day, when above ground.

- Hiding works by removing the hidden creature from field of view maps
  constructed off the real maps.  Given that the game AI works off FOV
  maps to determine what action to take, this effectively renders hidden
  characters invisible to every creature around them.

- Most actions that have an in-game effect (e.g., picking up or dropping
  items, but not checking the game version or reading help files) will
  break hiding.  Searching or staying in place ('5' movement) never
  breaks hiding.

- Hiding is trained when you attempt to hide in a non-guaranteed
  situation (ie, there are one or more creatures around).

- Other hiding advantages/disadvantages:

  - It prevents the hidden creature from intimidating and performing
    counter-strikes.

  - The hidden creature, being hidden, gets a large evade bonus to
    incoming attacks.  Though most creatures will not be able to attack
    hidden creatures, if a missile were being fired through the tile, or
    an area effect spell casted, it would still be possible to be
    attacked.

  - When hiding, an extra 2x modifier is applied to any damage dealt
    when attacking a creature that has not been backstabbed before.
    This then sets the "backstabbed" flag on that creature, and subsequent
    backstabs are not possible, even if the attacking creature becomes
    hidden once again.  The 2x modifier applies both to physical damage
    and magical damage from spells and wands.  The sneak attack multiplier
    is applied on top of the usual ones for slays and phase of the moon.

- Stealth has also been implemented.  When moving while hidden, the
  successful use of the skill allows movement without breaking the status.
  The skill is also useful when not hidden: it provides a passive, small
  (~Skill/10)% chance of performing a sneak attack, assuming the attacked
  creature has not already been victim of a sneak attack before.  As when
  the attacker is hidden, this covers all forms of attacking: melee,
  ranged, and magic.

- The NPC magic AI is a little smarter.  Previously, it was just checking
  to see if a threat existed in a certain direction.  Now, it considers
  the level of all creatures in a particular direction, and will only
  cast in that direction if the sum of the level of any threats is
  greater than the sum of the non-threats.

- The mean amount of time for paralysis is now 3 minutes, rather than 5.

- There are two new effect types, that increase maximum HP and AP.  These
  have been attached to golden and silver apples, respectively.  These
  items have seeds, like regular fruit, and the seeds can be used to
  plant trees, as usual.  The "increase max HP/MP effects", when used
  successfully, add to a counter on the creature.  The creature can only
  use the HP effect as many times as its base Health allows; likewise
  with Willpower for the AP effect.  If the creature increases his or her
  Health/Willpower later, the maximum for the counter is increased as
  well.

- Golden and silver apples can be found as regular items, but they also
  grow on magical trees.

- When a "regular" tree is generated, it has a 1 in 100000 chance of being
  a magical tree, which will grow golden or silver apples.  These trees
  can appear anywhere a regular tree would be generated.

- The look command has been rebound as 'x' (e'x'amine) instead of 'L'
  because the shift key is a pain (ssteam).

- Hild now requires only 10 whiteflowers (ssteam).

- Moving outside a shop while carrying unpaid goods now requires
  confirmation.

- Shopkeepers now trigger an alarm when they first see you with unpaid
  goods.

- Amulets have been reworked so that their unidentified description
  doesn't refer to colour.  They have had colour overrides removed, so
  non-artifacts should almost always appear as a bold yellow '#' (ssteam).

- Stanzas for "Tel and Floridel".

- New items: golden apple, silver apple.

- Bug fixes:

  - Creature::is_affected_by_modifier_spell could return true when a
    particular modifier was marked for deletion.

  - Avernal bats were defined as birds and were dropping quills.  Added
    support for creature-level overrides of flying, and defined avernal
    bats as flying animals (ssteam).

  - One of the doors in the tower level of Wintersea Keep was incorrectly
    placed (ssteam).

  - Using unpaid wands in shops wasn't angering the shopkeeper.

  - Paying shopkeepers for unpaid goods wasn't globally removing
    shopkeeper aggression (ssteam).

[Karagy]

Feedback for v0.7.3

1. In shop, hero can't pay for items with cost 0.
2. Automove mode is not breaked by drowning.
3. For Thiev with Stealth near 50 - it seems that the Stealth check w/o enemies in site is noticeably harder than with enemies in site. At least in forest.
4. For Thiev with Stealth 100 - is impossible to unhide. This is completely block the items selling in shops.
5. Monsters attracts to left-upper adjusting cell near hero, not for hero cell.
6. Please, dim unimplemented skills by an dark color (in skills menu).

[jcd748]

Thanks, Karagy!  I'll add these to my feedback file and look into these before the next release.  I expect that'll be a while, so if you find anything else that's problematic, or have any general suggestions, feel free to post them here.

[jcd748]

Karagy, do you want to be credited as "Karagy" or by your real name?  You can let me know via DM if you prefer not to say here.

[jcd748]

Hi Karagy.  I've fixed all of these for the next release, except for #5.

What do you mean for #5 - that creatures are attracted to diagonal squares when pathfinding towards another creature?  This may be due to my pathfinding code, which internally gives diagonal and non-diagonal distances the same distance.

[Karagy]

Hi jcd748.

This is very subjective appraisal.
On wide areas (like forest or plain) - it looks like monsters rush not directly to hero, but to left upper adjusting cell near hero.
Look to keyboard, to numpad matrix (3x3). Let hero paced at '5'. Monsters aim to '7' instead of '5'.

On entering to non-persistent area - can you land hero in random area's edge?

[Troubler]

Hey, I remember playing your game a while ago. I beat it and had a great time.
It's good to see you are still developing it even now. I saw a lot of potential there.
I was worried it would end up abandoned, but it looks like you're still at it.

I had taken some notes while playing I wanted to email you about, but forgot to.
I saw your thread when I registered here though and it reminded me. Sorry if my info is now out of date:

1.The item "Huge rock" seemed supremely OP at the time, especially since anyone could wield it for 8d6 damage, even a ~6 strength fae. Compare that to actual weapons, it's beyond some artifacts.
2.Is there some kind of mechanic where a crone can give you every status ailment in the game at once? Not sure if this one was a bug or a sadistic feature, it definitely taught me to fear crones.
3.It was possible to very easily grind some combat skills by holding down a direction and bump attacking enemies repeatedly when your attacks could not penetrate
4.I remember enchanting being extremely OP compared with smithing or tanning. The scrolls were pretty common and could out-preform anyone who bothered to invest much in these skills
5.Crafting in general was not worth the investment, as you would routinely find superior armor to even lv100 skills in your adventures
6.My favorite race, the snakelings, were listed with hair. I was not sure if this was an oversight or if they just had hair.
7.The best endgame-tier artifacts I seemed to come across were swords, so there wasn't much point in training any other weapon skill (luckily I chose right)
The one I used came directly from a smith. I don't see why he couldn't forge an axe, dagger, spear, etc at your request if it's made on the spot, but I forgot the lore behind it

That's all I had.
I'll play it some more and see how it has progressed since last time.
Good luck, this game is really something special.

[jcd748]

1. May or may not still be OP. Will take a look.

2. Yeah, that's a feature

3. EDIT: I've taken a look and the game has a chance to mark a skill even if an attack fails.  This is meant to model learning from failure.  I'll change it so that 0 damage attacks count as failure, so it will take much longer to grind up weapon skills (the quickest approach is always to just spend skill points).

4. These skills need to be revisited at some point when the game is more mature. Thanks for the reminder!

5. As 4.

6. Never caught that before! I'll fix that.

7. Artifacts are really heavily weighted towards swords atm.  I have a note to rebalance this later.

And thanks. I kinda back away at this slowly and don't have many players. It's nice to hear that people are playing and enjoying the game

[jcd748]

Hi jcd748.

This is very subjective appraisal.
On wide areas (like forest or plain) - it looks like monsters rush not directly to hero, but to left upper adjusting cell near hero.
Look to keyboard, to numpad matrix (3x3). Let hero paced at '5'. Monsters aim to '7' instead of '5'.

On entering to non-persistent area - can you land hero in random area's edge?

I think part of that behaviour is due to the fact that each direction has a cost of 1 in pathfinding, so this is actually legal (if odd).

Not sure I want to change the map placement behaviour. That's one area of the codebase where I'm sure if introduce weird edge case bugs...

[jcd748]

Troubler, do you want to be credited by your alias on this forum, or another name?  You can send me a message if you'd prefer to talk privately.

[Troubler]

Troubler, do you want to be credited by your alias on this forum, or another name?  You can send me a message if you'd prefer to talk privately.

Alright, thanks
Troubler is fine with me

[Troubler]

Hang on. I'm not sure I explained myself properly earlier, judging from the lack of surprise.
When I said "wield" huge rocks, I meant as melee weapons, where I recently noticed a similar pattern for a lot of ammunition.
An arrow is as good as a spear, a javelin is superior to a spear, a barbed spear is far superior to even a long spear, etc.

While playing recently I also noticed that non-moving NPCs produce a strange spot of darkness which can not be explored until you swap with them.
Though I am using Wine to play right now. You might check that one out for yourself, It's happening right at the beginning of the game.
EDIT: This seems to be the case with enemies as well. Everyone starts with a dark square under them, and it just persists when they don't move around

Also forgot to jot down a bug from a long time ago that's still around: Repeatedly moving into a trap but saying 'n' to entering the square eventually removes it.

[jcd748]

Hi.  Sorry for the late reply, and thanks also for the additional feedback.  I'll look into the details around wielding missile weapons, and your reported issue around traps.  The "dark tile" thing is a known bug.  I fixed it a month or two ago, and it'll be in the next release.

[jcd748]

Just a note to say that these will both be fixed in the next version.  The missile weapons are all tracked as "exotic" for melee purposes already.  I'll be adding a speed multiplier for exotic weapons (which is reduced down to 1 as you get better at them), and making huge rocks two-handed.

This will make exotic weapons more difficult, which is intentional, but still allow them to be quite viable by putting skill points there.

[Troubler]

Nice. I won't have to feel bad about using those cool winged javelins as weapons once it's become a legit choice.
One other thing I noticed is they tend to be much cheaper compared with their melee equivalent.
But that's kind of tricky since you typically would need them in stacks to be useful.
I've also beaten the new version in the meantime and got some more stuff here.
No luck finding the ultra ending yet, been looking, but I'm going to try to get it on my own.

Notable issues:
1.The greataxe functions as a one-handed weapon. It took a lot of restraint to keep from duel-wielding them.
2.Once you have ~3 pages of spells, selecting the first on a page becomes strange, since the list starts with 'v' but ends on 'u'
    Hard to really explain. If you are casting a spell low on the list, it goes back to page 1 and pressing 'v' again casts the wrong spell. Other implications too.
3.Check out how timewalk works around stairs. I remember going up some stairs to escape a lich, and the graphics and input got a bit odd for a while.
    I thought that I would be glitched to death, but it looks like it goes back to normal after some struggling. Might have been an unrelated coincidence though.
4.Every morning, when in a dungeon, monsters respawn after your stats/skills are recalculated. This often means you get surrounded out of nowhere.
    Wasn't a huge problem for me, but could be deadly in certain situations, and being killed this way wouldn't be very fair.

Grammar/spelling:
1.Fire potion has an extra space at the end of its name
2.Skeleton bestiary entry says "sudden movements cause the the bounces to bounce and click"
3.The hydra bestiary lore says they are "venemous" instead of "venomous"

Minor cosmetic remarks:
1.In the upstairs area of the sea-weathered small keep near Isen Dun, there is an iron door in the middle of the open air to the south of the tower you are in. (Was looking for secrets)
2.We talked earlier about snakeling hair. Well now I just finished the quest with Calind and got the reward...
3.Thengil in dwarf-town offers to forge you a great sword, but lacks a forge.
4.Entering an arid desert on the overworld says you enter a vast desert, but the deserts are usually very small
5.Nama mentions a sparrow, even in the middle of the night, when asking to rename you.
6.Your character hooks random things every time he fishes. If unskilled, it seems like he often may use up enough bait to feed himself!
7.The statues of knights in the stone church are off-center, still aligned with the altar, but it looks weird in front of the door
8.The hunger system in the game tends to catch me off guard a lot. Typically it goes: hungry, weak, starving. Here it jumps from hungry to starving!
 Though I can't remember if that's how it worked in ADOM or another game...