Be the first to post a text review of Sangband. Rate and review a project by clicking thumbs up or thumbs down in the right column.

• File released: /sangband/0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable)/sang099-r20d-win.zip

  posted 951 days ago

• File released: /sangband/0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable)/sang099-r20d-src.zip

  posted 951 days ago

• File released: /sangband/0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable)/sang099-r20d-ibm.zip

  posted 951 days ago

• sangband 0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable) file released: sang099-r20d-win.zip

  Beta 20a, b, c, d. ====================================== Bugfixes - Applicable to other variants: - (most variants) Various temporary conditions now properly update the '@' line in the character screen, listing of attributes. So, when you are Heroic, you not only get resistance to fear, but your character screen knows it. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (some variants with the Ey object knowledge interface) The object knowledge screen no longer whispers secrets to you about the flavour of unaware objects. (reported by Ed Kolis) - (older variants) The Windows preference file is now up-to-date, and should no longer cause problems when hitting Shift-direction in various displays. - (variants with the effects code) The advancing wall effect handles walls better, and is less likely to pass through them. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (variants with evasive monsters) You no longer learn about spells that were evaded. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - The home was refusing to let you have your stuff if you didn't have the gold to pay for it. Thought this was very funny, but fixed it anyway. (reported by magnate) - The damage done by boulders is now learned about like potions and scrolls. (reported by magnate) - Some more creatures are now especially hurt by fire and cold. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - The recharging talent can be cancelled without loss of a turn. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Display glitch fixed for aura of fire/frost. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Those who join the Burglars' Guild no longer get a penalty to martial arts; they now do normal damage. (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Error in the listing of roguelike commands (sub-window) (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Include of sys/time.h for systems that need it. (Christer Nyflt) - Safer "center_string()" function; no more crashes in the savefile management screen when the main window is large. (reported by Scott Yost) - Unsanctified status was not timing out. - That hidden curses wil no longer change the basic damage dice of a weapon or missile. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Precognition messages are listed when you hit ^F, even if you are still uncertain about the general level feeling. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Objects in equipment should no longer have wierd names when you hallucinate. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - You no longer get warning messages about the Oath of Iron when you go to raise spellcasting after you've already chosen a realm. (reported by Joshua Middendorf and Andrew Schoonmaker) - The '*' option to chose special skill commands no longer appears when it wouldn't work. - A bug in the special attacks left-screen display prevented more than one such attack from being shown. - Another prevented many kinds of special attacks from automatically displaying when activated. - Two weaknesses fixed in the object compaction code: it was possible for treasure to combine and get negative value, and player-inscribed objects were not considered important enough. (comments by Eddie Grove) - When blind and looking around, you can't notice objects that you can't see or at least feel. - You can no longer use essences to request object attributes that cost more than you have the skill to make. - ... and various other fixes not mentioned individually. Minor Changes: - More colorful acid, electricity, fire, and frost spells. - Some ball-shooting wands and rods moved down one to three levels deeper in the dungeon. - The 'Q'uit command no longer commits suicide, but rather saves and exits instead. It seemed strange that an obscure keypress would be the usual end game command. - The Character screen no longer takes into account temporary changes to disarming skill. This was confusing people. - As in Oangband, typing a number when choosing an object checks both inventory and equipment. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Quest rewards are no longer IDed. Don't want to spoil the surprise. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Mimics can no longer be quest monsters (it's rough on them when the character knows they're around). (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) Betas 19 and 20 (beta 20 released October 31st, 2005) ====================================== Bugfixes - applicable to other variants: - (variants with Oangband-style quivers) The quiver will no longer confuse the pack reorganization code. - (variants with 4GAI) Some new spells were not disturbing the character; now, all monster ranged attacks are disturbing. - (all variants) The Windows port no longer incorrectly enlarges the bottom edge of windows (except for the minimum necessary to avoid partial lines and columns) after resizing and reloading, so it is easier to size things the way you want. - (all variants) The Windows port orders terminal screens in reverse order, not merely on game start up, but during gameplay and when suspended and restored. So when you hide those title bars, they will /stay/ hidden. - (variants with constant final life ratings) The function that calculate life ratings for each power level now works correctly; life ratings will always be the same for a power 100 character, but will vary a bit until that point. - (all variants) The code to handle spell effects on objects is now more robust, allowing it to safely move and change objects, in addition to simply destroying them. This fix applies to all variants with ambitions here. - (all variants) Fixed a weakness in the "project_path" code inherited from Angband: Items fired, thrown, or cast nearly at a diagonal will not immediately move othogonally (left-right-up-down), then move diagonally the rest of the way to their target. They will now prefer to move into grids that make for the smoothest path. Among other things, this means that inaccuracy is no longer especially nasty when aiming diagonally. - (variants, other than NPPAngband, with traps that affect monsters) Various cases where creatures (monsters and the character) could move and teleport without setting off traps now properly set them off. - (all modern variants). Monster packs charge if their ambush is blown; as long as any monster is hurt, they will howl after you. See the usage of "p_ptr->vulnerability". - (all variants) The inventory and equipment sub-windows handle things better when they have fewer then 80 columns to use. - (all variants) The ancient (in existence since fractional movement was introduced perhaps a decade ago) and long-vexed monster movement clumping bug has finally been nailed to the wall! The solution used (after trying out several more hackish alternatives) is to implement Hugo Kornelis's idea of prioritizing monster moves by increasing "movement moment" (the instant within a game turn in which that monster has 100 energy). Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - Minimum experience costs due to overall power increse less rapidly than in beta 18 - decided that the experience penalty didn't need quite so much help. - Impact weapons *should* no longer crash the game in cases where they hit a very low-hp monster. (Joshua Middendorf) - A certain mushroom's effects will now also correctly change your hitpoints (and other things). (Joshua Middendorf) - (IBM port) Spell effects will delay properly in the IBM port on Windows 2000 and XP, thanks to Andrew Cottrell and DJGPP. - Error in the throwing and firing code that allowed backwards projection paths to be used ("project_path()" was calculated, then sometimes calculated backwards, then used). Your arrows will no longer roll underneath your feet when they were fired at something far away. - Sensing and hearing no longer "linger" (they work like vision, not magical detection). - Thrown weapons are learnt about less often, but stack properly once they do. - Cursed ego-items now get properly nasty plusses. - Throwing weapons no longer do crazy damage (broke the code at some point, not sure when). Similar, but much less serious, bug fixed in mushroom throwing. - High-level forged missile launchers weren't powerful enough. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Some corrections to the appearance of fired and thrown objects in flight. - Objects no longer can stick in monsters when thrown or fired. This removes a couple of bugs, one of which unfairly used up your artifact thrown weapons. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Athelas appears every so often nearer the surface, and it is given as an extra reward in quests if you have the Black Breath. (problem with early undead quests reported by Joshua Middendorf) - You will very seldom ever get repeat quests. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - "Term_rows()" moved to "util.c" to avoid circular dependences (reported by Christer Nyflt) - A number of bugfixes, spelling and formatting corrections in the new code (Christer Nyflt) - Cursed Ego-item weapons with negative bonuses in ego_item.txt have properly nasty plusses now. (Christer Nyflt) - Missile launchers now properly grant temporary attributes to the missiles they fire, so Bows of Holy Might work as intended. - The Windows port correctly saves window positions in 50-line mode. Sub-windows no longer do strange things in 50-line mode, such as cause excessive screen refreshing. The INI file is less buggy. - The shooting and throwing inaccuracy code is now more robust, and no longer breaks down when targeting a grid right beside you. - Inaccuracy still makes diagonal corridors tough to shoot or throw things in, but you can greatly reduce the effect by moving up against the opening. Firing from a slit is now much easier then trying to fire into one. Documentation updated. - Incorrect usage of "strlen()" on NULL caught and fixed. (Pia Kraft) - Quest difficulty semi-saved (will fix the problem completely later) (reported by Pia Kraft) - "impossible" indicator appears properly when asking for too much from the autoroller. (Adam Horowitz) - Inn display corrected: quests are named correctly, special command indicator is gone. (Adam Horowitz, Scott Yost) - Various code typos corrected. (Scott Yost) - Dispel Evil spell (and some others) corrected. (buggy behavior noticed by Scott Yost) - Automatic commands are no longer purged when a character is disturbed. This solves the user interface problem when a poisoned character attempts to enter a store. (problem noted by Adam Horowitz) - Logic confusion in the skills minimum cost code fixed (reported by Joshua Middendorf). This has little effect on gameplay, but it does remove a potential source of nasty problems. - Bug in the monster movement code allowed monsters to sometimes get lots of free moves if their energy was reduced between the start of the game turn and their move. (problem noted by Joshua Middendorf) - Incorrect math in wielding items into the quiver. (Bahman Rabii) - The quiver now correctly combines items. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - The Regen left screen display no longer pops up underneath the list of objects in stores. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Fame was not updated after killing a unique monster or player ghost. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Lagduf and Dark Hounds are both susceptable to light. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Some index errors in the new object-effect projection code fixed (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Finally got around to re-adding "uncursed" inscriptions to objects that you uncurse, unless the object was cursed by a monster spell. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Adopted Angband's code to test for created but not yet discovered artifacts. - Found and fixed a "black item" error (patiently and persistantly reported by Joshua Middendorf). Changed all flavour arrays to use runtime lengths instead of defines. - Spells only give experience when cast succesfully for the first time. (reported by Pav Lucistnik) - Found and fixed an error in the new quest rewards code that lost artifacts forever, thanks to some great detective work by Adam Horowitz. - Monsters seem only as '*'s were getting identified by the monster recall sub-window. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Various spiders no longer hurt you when you use martial arts on them. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) Icky things and mushroom patches, however, are likely to be trouble. - Burglars' monster traps no longer give experience when disarmed. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can take the Oath of Iron by raising your throwing skill to 45, as intended. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Glass bottles and parchments stack properly. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Food (as opposed to flavoured mushrooms) no longer give you experience when first eaten. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - FORCE_DEPTH really does now mean "will not appear above given level". (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Many kinds of objects now properly start out aware again. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker and Mikolaj Konarski) - Fixed a quartet of nasty bitflag bugs (the gotcha of "(!r_ptr->flags3 & SOME_FLAG)). (reported by Scott Yost) - The skills screen warns you when you are able to take the Oath of Iron and attempt to learn magic. (reported by Magnate) Changes - color: - Sangband has entered the 256 color era. New colors are: blue-violet, shining (light yellow), deep purple, magenta-pink, muddy green, teal, light teal, light violet (lavender), light pink, mustard, blue slate, and deep light blue. Some magic realms, monsters, objects, flavours, and spells use these new colors. - Colors are more user-modifiable. In addition to red/green/blue values, preference files now control the character used to ask for the color (in the same way that 'r' means red), and the name of the color. Whatever characters you use will take effect in edit files, so you can create new colors and assign them as you please. - However, some ports (the IBM and GCU ports being two) are not capable of showing more than 16 colors. On them, the extra colors are "translated" to one of the basic 16 using either the translation you supply or (if you don't supply one) RGB comparison. - Adopted Diego Gonzalez's (found in NPPAngband) lovely interface for changing colors (the '&' command). - "Violet" is now called "Light Purple" and has index character 'P' instead of 'v'. "B:Light Blue" is now called "B:Bright Blue". Some colors have changed hue slightly: For example, dark green is now more green and less blue. - There is a price to pay for more colors: 1) Some of the graphics-related code has been broken, and will need to be repaired (when we get graphics). 2) The appearance of magic spells is now hard-coded, and needs to be put back into the preference files. Neither of these really matter for Sangband, but it does make this code less immediately useful to other variants. Changes - ports: - The GTK port now works (Christer Nyflt) - The X11 port is now fully playable (Christer Nyflt) - The Windows port is considerably cleaner looking. Changes - gameplay: - You can slam a non-broken door shut when a monster is in the doorway. If you attempt to do this, the monster gets a free turn to react, then - if neither you nor the monster has moved - you try to slam the door. If you succeed, the monster is forced back one space, the door is shut, and the monster loses a turn. This tactic does not work particularly well on breeders (too *^*$%ing many of them). Documentation updated. - If you are not poisoned, a monster blow to poison will have more effect. Snakes do double poison and half raw damage when they bite. Time to watch out for those snakes and spiders again. - Weapons, armour, and light sources (ordinary and ego) may on rare occasion bear a hidden curse. As soon as you wield or wear the object, it transmutes into a cursed ego-item (only ones with light curses are allowed). When sold, these items also transmute, which leads to some interesting shopkeeper comments. No magic can reveal or remove the lurking curse, but various skills - holy alliance, perception, spell resistance, and magical infusion - sometimes allow you to be warned in the nick of time. Cursed ego-items are now, finally, getting a fair crack at the character. - A bunch of interesting new cursed ego-items including the famous boots of Great Mass, which now actually work. - Cursed, wielded weapons with brands and slays will zap you and call out to your enemies every so often until uncursed. - Characters with very high skill in martial arts that are currently using barehanded methods get free action, resist sound (no stunning) and resist confusion. This should help make these combat methods more competitive in the very late game. Documentation updated. - Light sources can be deliberately lit and doused (use the '(' command). A lit light source on the floor illuminates the surrounding area, allowing for all sorts of ambush coolness. Documentation updated. The code allows for light radii up to five, and uses a pre-calculated table of LOS values. It will probably serve admirably for monster lights. - Quests rewards reworked. They are now more likely to be useful to your character, but will not include standard artifacts. The rewards earned by difficult quests at any depth are now substantially better than those earned by easy quests (bug: during beta 19, this is true only if you don't save and reload during the quest). - If you are in ironman mode, you can forge items in the dungeon. - As in NPPAngband, monsters can become wary when you steal where they can see you, or they or a monster they can see hits a trap. Wary monsters get bonuses against both stealing and traps. (some code by Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, you steal items, not merely gold, from monsters. Multiple thefts are counted by time, not by level, and the penalties for stealing too often are slightly more severe. Various other tweaks to stealing, some adopted from NPPAngband. Documentation updated. (some code by Jeff Greene) - Quiverable items with the =g inscription now pickup directly into the quiver, even if they do not match existing items. (Bahman Rabii) - Allowed optional "quivering" of throwing weapons. (Bahman Rabii) Each throwing weapon uses the space of five ammunition. - As in Oangband, wearables that are #-inscribed will be considered "unique" for naming purposes, and be prefixed with "the" instead of "a" or "an". - New feature: #-inscriptions also override most object, ego-item, or artifact names, which gives you the power to name your stuff whatever you want without hacking any edit files. For example, if you had a yen to change the name of your Wands of Lightning Bolts, you can inscribe them "#of Minor Zapping" to make them appear as "Wands of Minor Zapping". - Major change to the internal calculation of the character's overall ability in melee, archery, throwing, perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races still have a starting ability adjustment, but no longer have an additional adjustment that depends on power. Instead, race impacts the effect of skills on these abilities: for example, if a race has great aptitude for a skill, then the effect of a given skill level is increased. Race has about the same effect on the combat skills (with some important changes), but has more effect on perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races are generally more different from each other, with all the combat skills finely distinguished. For example, half-trolls are now only a little better than average with swords, but much better with hafted weapons. There is one missing feature: humans no longer get a little bonus to crossbows. Documentation updated. (idea suggested by Mikolaj Konarski). - Half-spellcasters get 60% of the mana that Oath-bound spellcasters do, but may raise their magical power skill to maximum. The effect of this is to make choosing an Oath more worthwhile in the early-mid game. - By default, on ports capable of it, the game shows a sub-window with a list of the most commonly used commands. This should make it easier for newbies to get up to speed. (idea by Josh Jersild) Changes - code cleanup: Thanks to Christer Nyflt's suggestions and code patches, the low-level and "background" code is getting a much-needed cleaning. Changes are recommended for some or even all variants. - Making types more compatible in some places. - Split out z-file from util. - Suggested deprecating the very non-standard CHECK_LOAD code. - Reorganized the h-system.h header. - Added in POSIX file locking. - New checks for 64-bit machines, updates for various UNIX and Linux defines and preferences. - Error suppresion of various sorts. Explicit casting to void for "Term_*" functions. - Removal of many unused or unnecessary defines. - Removal of support for several very old (VMS) or risky (SVGAlib) systems that unnecessarily complicated the code. - Removal of the potentially quite troublesome "core" function. Changes - miscellaneous: - More correct code to make monsters lose a turn and to adjust their energy. - Pools of water and lava are more interestingly shaped. Water may now also appear in overlapping rooms. - Cross-shaped starburst rooms are cleaner-looking. - Spikes are less common near the surface, but more common after 500' and before 3000'. - Javelins are found a little deeper. Stores do not sell them in the very early game. - Light curses (the standard kind) no longer have to make the item "cling", which means we can have - and in fact now do have - non-obvious curses that change how the item behaves, but make no difference to how it wears or wields. - Uncursing objects no longer gives a chance of reversing various bonuses (reason for removal was that it made it harder to balance cursed items). However, the uncurse spell now works on both "clinging" and non-obvious curses (but not hidden curses). - Boulders are slate grey by default. - Swordsmanship now costs 12, not 13. - Short object names (from the function "strip_name") are now all lowercase. - Thought that the scroll names were boring, and so worked up an alternative method, known as the "grast-speech". - Wands and rods flavours much improved and their colors diversified. The less plausable and uninteresting metals (like iridium and xxx-plated) removed. - Other flavours revised. Colors changed, some new flavours added, new and existing items got the new extended colors, names and colors combined into unified tables. Still haven't gotten around to moving them to preference files. - You can no longer bash monsters in walls or immaterial monsters. - More correct test for whether a monster is "immaterial". - You get slightly more energy at speed -3 to -7 (so -7 speed is no longer the same as -10 speed). - Preference file entries that are either character or color (attribute) information can be entered, not only as numbers, but as characters. So, typing "B" will now get you light blue the same as typing "14" or "0x0E" will. Preference files revised to take advantage of this. - Some preference files are gone, either because Sangband has not been ported to the systems they handle, or because the graphics files will need to be rewritten. - The code that gets the angle to a target grid is now better at handling large distances. - It is easier to bash down doors that are not stuck. - Hard-coded number of stats removed in the birth code. (Christer Nyflt) - The code that allowed text files to be loaded upon explicit request is gone. (Christer Nyflt) - Player ghosts give one extra fame point (Jeff Greene) - Speed display changes color if character is hasted or slowed (DarkGod's idea, I think) - Throwing potions of Lose Memories no longer do damage, but instead cause monsters to forget what they know about your resists. (Jeff Greene) - Monster information now displays in the monster sub-window as the player scrolls through monsters in the knowledge screens (patch provided by Cyrus Dolph, from NPPAngband) - Made tunneling a much louder activity. (Jeff Greene) - Teleported monsters clear their movement target. (Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, the "stun" counter stops increasing when the character is knocked out, messages about oppositions to the elements do not appear if the character is already immune, monsters that shriek wake up and hasten other creatures near to them, not the character, and monsters that teleport towards the character can no longer land on glyphs. - Earthquake blows that move the character away from the monster also force the monster to stop attacking. (Jeff Greene) - Drain-charge attacks are not quite so effective, as in NPPAngband. The draining code now cleaned up and regularized. - Hallucination shows legal object and monster graphics instead of random text characters. (from Angband) - Various system-specific impovements from Angband 3.0.6, including better support for Macintosh file types and the ability to store various user files to an outside directory on multi-user systems. - Added some helper functions to make things like testing the saving throw easier to read (and more likely to be correct). (Bahman Rabii) - You can wield melee, missile, and thrown weapons, and also missiles and light sources, when shapechanged. However, taking on and off rings, amulets, and armour is still forbidden. - Shapechanges now only protect your armour, not your weapons, from disenchantment. - Disenchantment can now also affect the quiver. - Some changes to traps: High-level teleport traps can throw you out of the dungeon, and traps of alter character no longer do this, but drain changes instead. The falling rock trap is now a falling boulder one instead; it does more damage, and creates a boulder. - Gazing into the Palantir now forces you into combat with any smart, unique opponent, not just Sauron and Morgoth. Some other changes to this activation. - New code to get only the base monster name and strip off any title. For example, "Wormtongue, agent of Saruman" becomes "Wormtongue". - Adopted various other Oangband fixes and improvements (Bahman Rabii). - Earthquakes have different messages when on the surface. - Finally surrendered to the lure of auto_more messages. "He must be getting soft." For this option to work, you must also have assigned one of the sub-windows to show messages. Because of this, and because Sangband shows a "(+)" instead of a "-more-" indicator, the option is called "message_to_window". It is off by default. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to verify that a window is actually on screen or even open (the game apparently doesn't ask that question), so this option remains dangerous. Use with caution. - Also caught up with the HTML screenshots craze. Used the Angband code, but implemented things a little differently. Firstly, you can still save text-mode screenshots (because the newsgroup is text-only). Secondly, I'm experimenting with issuing automatic commands to save and load preference files, instead of duplicating "map_info()" (which would increase the work involved in adding new graphical or lighting effects). Not sure this second move is such a bright idea, but I'm going to try it anyway. Decided to remove the code to load screen dumps until convinced that it serves a real need. Documentation updated. - Quest monsters no longer affect the level rating. - Ego-item and forged missiles break (even) less often. - Scrolls and potions will "merge" armour classes, taking the average, when combined. This is a just a tad inaccurate, but it make forging of these items with diverse kinds of parchments and bottles much more convenient. Scroll and potion armour class is slightly more effective at reducing inventory destruction. (reported by Scott Yost) - An explicit message appears when you learn about an unaware magical device or object by using it. - More detailed checks to avoid surprises when you mistakenly raise Blood Dominion, and then want to learn holy lore, or study Holy Alliance, and want to learn necromantic rituals. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - The skills screen gives you an idea of how the race of your character affects advancement cost. Skills in which you have invested something are shown in brighter white. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - New sets of character titles for burglars who have also invested in magic. The existing titles were especially inappropriate for holy thieves. - Angels usually avoid characters with holy lore, and killing or stealing from them is not a good idea, so you should avoid them also. - Magical infusion talent now also requires a device skill of 30. - Blessing and Holiness grant slightly lesser bonuses to non-magical fighting ability. - Items will pick up automatically into the backpack if a similar item in the backpack is marked "=g". - Automatic pickup of quiver items and items marked "=g" now properly take time. - If you are strongly disturbed, and badly wounded, you will not automatically pick up anything that will cost time while walking (only gold and essences will be picked up in such cases). - Blindness now makes all objects and traps in the dungeon vanish from view. - New window option to show nearby objects in line of sight. - The map and snapshot windows are gone. The map window will return when it is again useful. - Alchemists learn about unaware potions more easily, even if the effects are not obvious. (Christer Nyflt) - Character armour makes monsters miss a bit more often. - The check_load code is deprecated, and will disappear eventually (unless people complain). - Aimless merchants hit to talk, which is purely for flavour, and does no damage. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Ringil no longer has a poison brand. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - If merchants get a good deal when buying something from you, the profits add to their total wealth. (Joshua Middendorf) But don't give them things for cheap on purpose; they will see you as an easy mark, and want to haggle for almost everything. - Half-orcs are innately better at throwing and shooting, and at learning the associated skills. Dwarves learn a few skills slightly more slowly. (rebalance suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Windows cursor is now a underline dash when the option "highlight_player" is OFF. - Nexus may on rare occasion reroll your life ratings. Your character's final potential does not change, but his current HPs probably will (unless he has 100 power). - Messages when you throw or fire stuff now describe the action, and include an indication of what you have left in the stack of ammo or throwing items. The hit and monster reaction messages are now often combined (unless you score a powerful critical hit, or kill the monster). So, you get messages like: "You throw the Javelin 'Bloodspike' (+5, +5) (1) (4 left). The Javelin hits the Giant marksman ant; it scuttles about." - Added a beginner's crossbow and inexpensive ammunition. Crossbows is now easier to learn early on, and missile warfare is less pricy. (Joshua Middendorf) - Crossbows are considerably lighter (apparently I forgot them when reworking weapon weights) - Essences are somewhat more common in the dungeon, especially between 200' and 2000'. - Race and realm-specific preference files now work, and will be loaded automatically on game start, or when you choose a magic realm. - Removed two options: "alert_failure" (always off) and "disturb_near" (always on) (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - Monster pits are a bit more common. Because they're cool. - Innate melee, missile, and throwing ability is a little higher, and the first point of skill has a little less effect. So if you forget to apply your starting skill points, you are slightly less doomed. - Yeeks scream like yeeks. - When using a menu to pick up objects on the floor, the game no longer displays an explicit "you have ..." message. This cuts keystrokes down substantially. - Bluesteel blades make slightly less powerful forged items, but executioner swords do not. (Joshua Middendorf) - The skills screen shows a indication of skills that you have enough exp to raise and those that are too costly. (thanks to Christer Nyflt, who harassed me until I did it) - Very low skills (much lower than overall power) no longer encourage chests to give you inappropriate items. - The greyscale code for blindness is more intelligent; water is now distinguishable from normal floors. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Object tags of the form "@x1" now also work when the object is on the floor. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Object tags of the form "@ma" also work, so you can inscribe your spellbooks and use a, b, c, etc. to select books. Documentation updated. Be careful: You can make it impossible to use an object with a given command by inscribing another object with its index character. If you have this problem, just change the inscription on the the offending object. - Parts of the "get_item()" code are more simple - the rest is a project for later. - When selecting objects, the "-" choice no longer chooses a single item on the floor automatically. - Wands now stack regardless of knowledge (I should have done this originally). However, information about charges is lost unless both objects are known, or either one is fully known. So reading a scroll of *ID* on a wand can be rather useful. - Edits to the names of the Elven Rings of Power. - Some more interesting curse messages when items are worn. - The Ring of Power (The One Ring) is now called simply The One Ring. When worn, a special message appears and it grows much heavier. It is now always yellow. - No more quests for thieves. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - The chances of a damaged object being cursed increases with depth. Cursed wargear is rare early on. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Disease, and mushrooms of Disease, are much more survivable. - Quest rewards only include magical devices, scrolls, or potions that you don't already know about. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - You get a message if you detect no traps or monsters. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You get a "disturbed" notice if disturbance causes you to stop making a trap half-way through. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can learn about boulders - and therefore make them stack and show you damage indications - by throwing them. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Rods use the device flavour table in reverse; this diversifies wand and rod appearence. - Monsters evade your spells and blows less often when stunned. (suggested by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Character dumps now list current and previous quests. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Random artifacts now actually indicate that they are artifacts when inspected. (this probably qualifies as a bugfix) - The store interface works better with a limited purse, as in ToME. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Character power is (finally) shown on the skills screen. (suggested by lots of people) - Moria-style pack destruction messages are shown when strong elemental attacks hit your inventory. - Some monster pluralization changed. (uruk to uruk-hai) Olog-hai is now Olog; olog-hai is the plural form (from Fangband). - People accustomed to tidying up the dungeon need a quicker way to destroy stuff. So the destroy command automatically repeats when working on floor items.

  posted 1487 days ago

• sangband 0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable) file released: sang099-r20d-src.zip

  Beta 20a, b, c, d. ====================================== Bugfixes - Applicable to other variants: - (most variants) Various temporary conditions now properly update the '@' line in the character screen, listing of attributes. So, when you are Heroic, you not only get resistance to fear, but your character screen knows it. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (some variants with the Ey object knowledge interface) The object knowledge screen no longer whispers secrets to you about the flavour of unaware objects. (reported by Ed Kolis) - (older variants) The Windows preference file is now up-to-date, and should no longer cause problems when hitting Shift-direction in various displays. - (variants with the effects code) The advancing wall effect handles walls better, and is less likely to pass through them. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (variants with evasive monsters) You no longer learn about spells that were evaded. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - The home was refusing to let you have your stuff if you didn't have the gold to pay for it. Thought this was very funny, but fixed it anyway. (reported by magnate) - The damage done by boulders is now learned about like potions and scrolls. (reported by magnate) - Some more creatures are now especially hurt by fire and cold. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - The recharging talent can be cancelled without loss of a turn. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Display glitch fixed for aura of fire/frost. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Those who join the Burglars' Guild no longer get a penalty to martial arts; they now do normal damage. (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Error in the listing of roguelike commands (sub-window) (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Include of sys/time.h for systems that need it. (Christer Nyflt) - Safer "center_string()" function; no more crashes in the savefile management screen when the main window is large. (reported by Scott Yost) - Unsanctified status was not timing out. - That hidden curses wil no longer change the basic damage dice of a weapon or missile. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Precognition messages are listed when you hit ^F, even if you are still uncertain about the general level feeling. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Objects in equipment should no longer have wierd names when you hallucinate. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - You no longer get warning messages about the Oath of Iron when you go to raise spellcasting after you've already chosen a realm. (reported by Joshua Middendorf and Andrew Schoonmaker) - The '*' option to chose special skill commands no longer appears when it wouldn't work. - A bug in the special attacks left-screen display prevented more than one such attack from being shown. - Another prevented many kinds of special attacks from automatically displaying when activated. - Two weaknesses fixed in the object compaction code: it was possible for treasure to combine and get negative value, and player-inscribed objects were not considered important enough. (comments by Eddie Grove) - When blind and looking around, you can't notice objects that you can't see or at least feel. - You can no longer use essences to request object attributes that cost more than you have the skill to make. - ... and various other fixes not mentioned individually. Minor Changes: - More colorful acid, electricity, fire, and frost spells. - Some ball-shooting wands and rods moved down one to three levels deeper in the dungeon. - The 'Q'uit command no longer commits suicide, but rather saves and exits instead. It seemed strange that an obscure keypress would be the usual end game command. - The Character screen no longer takes into account temporary changes to disarming skill. This was confusing people. - As in Oangband, typing a number when choosing an object checks both inventory and equipment. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Quest rewards are no longer IDed. Don't want to spoil the surprise. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Mimics can no longer be quest monsters (it's rough on them when the character knows they're around). (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) Betas 19 and 20 (beta 20 released October 31st, 2005) ====================================== Bugfixes - applicable to other variants: - (variants with Oangband-style quivers) The quiver will no longer confuse the pack reorganization code. - (variants with 4GAI) Some new spells were not disturbing the character; now, all monster ranged attacks are disturbing. - (all variants) The Windows port no longer incorrectly enlarges the bottom edge of windows (except for the minimum necessary to avoid partial lines and columns) after resizing and reloading, so it is easier to size things the way you want. - (all variants) The Windows port orders terminal screens in reverse order, not merely on game start up, but during gameplay and when suspended and restored. So when you hide those title bars, they will /stay/ hidden. - (variants with constant final life ratings) The function that calculate life ratings for each power level now works correctly; life ratings will always be the same for a power 100 character, but will vary a bit until that point. - (all variants) The code to handle spell effects on objects is now more robust, allowing it to safely move and change objects, in addition to simply destroying them. This fix applies to all variants with ambitions here. - (all variants) Fixed a weakness in the "project_path" code inherited from Angband: Items fired, thrown, or cast nearly at a diagonal will not immediately move othogonally (left-right-up-down), then move diagonally the rest of the way to their target. They will now prefer to move into grids that make for the smoothest path. Among other things, this means that inaccuracy is no longer especially nasty when aiming diagonally. - (variants, other than NPPAngband, with traps that affect monsters) Various cases where creatures (monsters and the character) could move and teleport without setting off traps now properly set them off. - (all modern variants). Monster packs charge if their ambush is blown; as long as any monster is hurt, they will howl after you. See the usage of "p_ptr->vulnerability". - (all variants) The inventory and equipment sub-windows handle things better when they have fewer then 80 columns to use. - (all variants) The ancient (in existence since fractional movement was introduced perhaps a decade ago) and long-vexed monster movement clumping bug has finally been nailed to the wall! The solution used (after trying out several more hackish alternatives) is to implement Hugo Kornelis's idea of prioritizing monster moves by increasing "movement moment" (the instant within a game turn in which that monster has 100 energy). Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - Minimum experience costs due to overall power increse less rapidly than in beta 18 - decided that the experience penalty didn't need quite so much help. - Impact weapons *should* no longer crash the game in cases where they hit a very low-hp monster. (Joshua Middendorf) - A certain mushroom's effects will now also correctly change your hitpoints (and other things). (Joshua Middendorf) - (IBM port) Spell effects will delay properly in the IBM port on Windows 2000 and XP, thanks to Andrew Cottrell and DJGPP. - Error in the throwing and firing code that allowed backwards projection paths to be used ("project_path()" was calculated, then sometimes calculated backwards, then used). Your arrows will no longer roll underneath your feet when they were fired at something far away. - Sensing and hearing no longer "linger" (they work like vision, not magical detection). - Thrown weapons are learnt about less often, but stack properly once they do. - Cursed ego-items now get properly nasty plusses. - Throwing weapons no longer do crazy damage (broke the code at some point, not sure when). Similar, but much less serious, bug fixed in mushroom throwing. - High-level forged missile launchers weren't powerful enough. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Some corrections to the appearance of fired and thrown objects in flight. - Objects no longer can stick in monsters when thrown or fired. This removes a couple of bugs, one of which unfairly used up your artifact thrown weapons. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Athelas appears every so often nearer the surface, and it is given as an extra reward in quests if you have the Black Breath. (problem with early undead quests reported by Joshua Middendorf) - You will very seldom ever get repeat quests. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - "Term_rows()" moved to "util.c" to avoid circular dependences (reported by Christer Nyflt) - A number of bugfixes, spelling and formatting corrections in the new code (Christer Nyflt) - Cursed Ego-item weapons with negative bonuses in ego_item.txt have properly nasty plusses now. (Christer Nyflt) - Missile launchers now properly grant temporary attributes to the missiles they fire, so Bows of Holy Might work as intended. - The Windows port correctly saves window positions in 50-line mode. Sub-windows no longer do strange things in 50-line mode, such as cause excessive screen refreshing. The INI file is less buggy. - The shooting and throwing inaccuracy code is now more robust, and no longer breaks down when targeting a grid right beside you. - Inaccuracy still makes diagonal corridors tough to shoot or throw things in, but you can greatly reduce the effect by moving up against the opening. Firing from a slit is now much easier then trying to fire into one. Documentation updated. - Incorrect usage of "strlen()" on NULL caught and fixed. (Pia Kraft) - Quest difficulty semi-saved (will fix the problem completely later) (reported by Pia Kraft) - "impossible" indicator appears properly when asking for too much from the autoroller. (Adam Horowitz) - Inn display corrected: quests are named correctly, special command indicator is gone. (Adam Horowitz, Scott Yost) - Various code typos corrected. (Scott Yost) - Dispel Evil spell (and some others) corrected. (buggy behavior noticed by Scott Yost) - Automatic commands are no longer purged when a character is disturbed. This solves the user interface problem when a poisoned character attempts to enter a store. (problem noted by Adam Horowitz) - Logic confusion in the skills minimum cost code fixed (reported by Joshua Middendorf). This has little effect on gameplay, but it does remove a potential source of nasty problems. - Bug in the monster movement code allowed monsters to sometimes get lots of free moves if their energy was reduced between the start of the game turn and their move. (problem noted by Joshua Middendorf) - Incorrect math in wielding items into the quiver. (Bahman Rabii) - The quiver now correctly combines items. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - The Regen left screen display no longer pops up underneath the list of objects in stores. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Fame was not updated after killing a unique monster or player ghost. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Lagduf and Dark Hounds are both susceptable to light. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Some index errors in the new object-effect projection code fixed (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Finally got around to re-adding "uncursed" inscriptions to objects that you uncurse, unless the object was cursed by a monster spell. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Adopted Angband's code to test for created but not yet discovered artifacts. - Found and fixed a "black item" error (patiently and persistantly reported by Joshua Middendorf). Changed all flavour arrays to use runtime lengths instead of defines. - Spells only give experience when cast succesfully for the first time. (reported by Pav Lucistnik) - Found and fixed an error in the new quest rewards code that lost artifacts forever, thanks to some great detective work by Adam Horowitz. - Monsters seem only as '*'s were getting identified by the monster recall sub-window. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Various spiders no longer hurt you when you use martial arts on them. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) Icky things and mushroom patches, however, are likely to be trouble. - Burglars' monster traps no longer give experience when disarmed. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can take the Oath of Iron by raising your throwing skill to 45, as intended. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Glass bottles and parchments stack properly. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Food (as opposed to flavoured mushrooms) no longer give you experience when first eaten. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - FORCE_DEPTH really does now mean "will not appear above given level". (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Many kinds of objects now properly start out aware again. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker and Mikolaj Konarski) - Fixed a quartet of nasty bitflag bugs (the gotcha of "(!r_ptr->flags3 & SOME_FLAG)). (reported by Scott Yost) - The skills screen warns you when you are able to take the Oath of Iron and attempt to learn magic. (reported by Magnate) Changes - color: - Sangband has entered the 256 color era. New colors are: blue-violet, shining (light yellow), deep purple, magenta-pink, muddy green, teal, light teal, light violet (lavender), light pink, mustard, blue slate, and deep light blue. Some magic realms, monsters, objects, flavours, and spells use these new colors. - Colors are more user-modifiable. In addition to red/green/blue values, preference files now control the character used to ask for the color (in the same way that 'r' means red), and the name of the color. Whatever characters you use will take effect in edit files, so you can create new colors and assign them as you please. - However, some ports (the IBM and GCU ports being two) are not capable of showing more than 16 colors. On them, the extra colors are "translated" to one of the basic 16 using either the translation you supply or (if you don't supply one) RGB comparison. - Adopted Diego Gonzalez's (found in NPPAngband) lovely interface for changing colors (the '&' command). - "Violet" is now called "Light Purple" and has index character 'P' instead of 'v'. "B:Light Blue" is now called "B:Bright Blue". Some colors have changed hue slightly: For example, dark green is now more green and less blue. - There is a price to pay for more colors: 1) Some of the graphics-related code has been broken, and will need to be repaired (when we get graphics). 2) The appearance of magic spells is now hard-coded, and needs to be put back into the preference files. Neither of these really matter for Sangband, but it does make this code less immediately useful to other variants. Changes - ports: - The GTK port now works (Christer Nyflt) - The X11 port is now fully playable (Christer Nyflt) - The Windows port is considerably cleaner looking. Changes - gameplay: - You can slam a non-broken door shut when a monster is in the doorway. If you attempt to do this, the monster gets a free turn to react, then - if neither you nor the monster has moved - you try to slam the door. If you succeed, the monster is forced back one space, the door is shut, and the monster loses a turn. This tactic does not work particularly well on breeders (too *^*$%ing many of them). Documentation updated. - If you are not poisoned, a monster blow to poison will have more effect. Snakes do double poison and half raw damage when they bite. Time to watch out for those snakes and spiders again. - Weapons, armour, and light sources (ordinary and ego) may on rare occasion bear a hidden curse. As soon as you wield or wear the object, it transmutes into a cursed ego-item (only ones with light curses are allowed). When sold, these items also transmute, which leads to some interesting shopkeeper comments. No magic can reveal or remove the lurking curse, but various skills - holy alliance, perception, spell resistance, and magical infusion - sometimes allow you to be warned in the nick of time. Cursed ego-items are now, finally, getting a fair crack at the character. - A bunch of interesting new cursed ego-items including the famous boots of Great Mass, which now actually work. - Cursed, wielded weapons with brands and slays will zap you and call out to your enemies every so often until uncursed. - Characters with very high skill in martial arts that are currently using barehanded methods get free action, resist sound (no stunning) and resist confusion. This should help make these combat methods more competitive in the very late game. Documentation updated. - Light sources can be deliberately lit and doused (use the '(' command). A lit light source on the floor illuminates the surrounding area, allowing for all sorts of ambush coolness. Documentation updated. The code allows for light radii up to five, and uses a pre-calculated table of LOS values. It will probably serve admirably for monster lights. - Quests rewards reworked. They are now more likely to be useful to your character, but will not include standard artifacts. The rewards earned by difficult quests at any depth are now substantially better than those earned by easy quests (bug: during beta 19, this is true only if you don't save and reload during the quest). - If you are in ironman mode, you can forge items in the dungeon. - As in NPPAngband, monsters can become wary when you steal where they can see you, or they or a monster they can see hits a trap. Wary monsters get bonuses against both stealing and traps. (some code by Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, you steal items, not merely gold, from monsters. Multiple thefts are counted by time, not by level, and the penalties for stealing too often are slightly more severe. Various other tweaks to stealing, some adopted from NPPAngband. Documentation updated. (some code by Jeff Greene) - Quiverable items with the =g inscription now pickup directly into the quiver, even if they do not match existing items. (Bahman Rabii) - Allowed optional "quivering" of throwing weapons. (Bahman Rabii) Each throwing weapon uses the space of five ammunition. - As in Oangband, wearables that are #-inscribed will be considered "unique" for naming purposes, and be prefixed with "the" instead of "a" or "an". - New feature: #-inscriptions also override most object, ego-item, or artifact names, which gives you the power to name your stuff whatever you want without hacking any edit files. For example, if you had a yen to change the name of your Wands of Lightning Bolts, you can inscribe them "#of Minor Zapping" to make them appear as "Wands of Minor Zapping". - Major change to the internal calculation of the character's overall ability in melee, archery, throwing, perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races still have a starting ability adjustment, but no longer have an additional adjustment that depends on power. Instead, race impacts the effect of skills on these abilities: for example, if a race has great aptitude for a skill, then the effect of a given skill level is increased. Race has about the same effect on the combat skills (with some important changes), but has more effect on perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races are generally more different from each other, with all the combat skills finely distinguished. For example, half-trolls are now only a little better than average with swords, but much better with hafted weapons. There is one missing feature: humans no longer get a little bonus to crossbows. Documentation updated. (idea suggested by Mikolaj Konarski). - Half-spellcasters get 60% of the mana that Oath-bound spellcasters do, but may raise their magical power skill to maximum. The effect of this is to make choosing an Oath more worthwhile in the early-mid game. - By default, on ports capable of it, the game shows a sub-window with a list of the most commonly used commands. This should make it easier for newbies to get up to speed. (idea by Josh Jersild) Changes - code cleanup: Thanks to Christer Nyflt's suggestions and code patches, the low-level and "background" code is getting a much-needed cleaning. Changes are recommended for some or even all variants. - Making types more compatible in some places. - Split out z-file from util. - Suggested deprecating the very non-standard CHECK_LOAD code. - Reorganized the h-system.h header. - Added in POSIX file locking. - New checks for 64-bit machines, updates for various UNIX and Linux defines and preferences. - Error suppresion of various sorts. Explicit casting to void for "Term_*" functions. - Removal of many unused or unnecessary defines. - Removal of support for several very old (VMS) or risky (SVGAlib) systems that unnecessarily complicated the code. - Removal of the potentially quite troublesome "core" function. Changes - miscellaneous: - More correct code to make monsters lose a turn and to adjust their energy. - Pools of water and lava are more interestingly shaped. Water may now also appear in overlapping rooms. - Cross-shaped starburst rooms are cleaner-looking. - Spikes are less common near the surface, but more common after 500' and before 3000'. - Javelins are found a little deeper. Stores do not sell them in the very early game. - Light curses (the standard kind) no longer have to make the item "cling", which means we can have - and in fact now do have - non-obvious curses that change how the item behaves, but make no difference to how it wears or wields. - Uncursing objects no longer gives a chance of reversing various bonuses (reason for removal was that it made it harder to balance cursed items). However, the uncurse spell now works on both "clinging" and non-obvious curses (but not hidden curses). - Boulders are slate grey by default. - Swordsmanship now costs 12, not 13. - Short object names (from the function "strip_name") are now all lowercase. - Thought that the scroll names were boring, and so worked up an alternative method, known as the "grast-speech". - Wands and rods flavours much improved and their colors diversified. The less plausable and uninteresting metals (like iridium and xxx-plated) removed. - Other flavours revised. Colors changed, some new flavours added, new and existing items got the new extended colors, names and colors combined into unified tables. Still haven't gotten around to moving them to preference files. - You can no longer bash monsters in walls or immaterial monsters. - More correct test for whether a monster is "immaterial". - You get slightly more energy at speed -3 to -7 (so -7 speed is no longer the same as -10 speed). - Preference file entries that are either character or color (attribute) information can be entered, not only as numbers, but as characters. So, typing "B" will now get you light blue the same as typing "14" or "0x0E" will. Preference files revised to take advantage of this. - Some preference files are gone, either because Sangband has not been ported to the systems they handle, or because the graphics files will need to be rewritten. - The code that gets the angle to a target grid is now better at handling large distances. - It is easier to bash down doors that are not stuck. - Hard-coded number of stats removed in the birth code. (Christer Nyflt) - The code that allowed text files to be loaded upon explicit request is gone. (Christer Nyflt) - Player ghosts give one extra fame point (Jeff Greene) - Speed display changes color if character is hasted or slowed (DarkGod's idea, I think) - Throwing potions of Lose Memories no longer do damage, but instead cause monsters to forget what they know about your resists. (Jeff Greene) - Monster information now displays in the monster sub-window as the player scrolls through monsters in the knowledge screens (patch provided by Cyrus Dolph, from NPPAngband) - Made tunneling a much louder activity. (Jeff Greene) - Teleported monsters clear their movement target. (Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, the "stun" counter stops increasing when the character is knocked out, messages about oppositions to the elements do not appear if the character is already immune, monsters that shriek wake up and hasten other creatures near to them, not the character, and monsters that teleport towards the character can no longer land on glyphs. - Earthquake blows that move the character away from the monster also force the monster to stop attacking. (Jeff Greene) - Drain-charge attacks are not quite so effective, as in NPPAngband. The draining code now cleaned up and regularized. - Hallucination shows legal object and monster graphics instead of random text characters. (from Angband) - Various system-specific impovements from Angband 3.0.6, including better support for Macintosh file types and the ability to store various user files to an outside directory on multi-user systems. - Added some helper functions to make things like testing the saving throw easier to read (and more likely to be correct). (Bahman Rabii) - You can wield melee, missile, and thrown weapons, and also missiles and light sources, when shapechanged. However, taking on and off rings, amulets, and armour is still forbidden. - Shapechanges now only protect your armour, not your weapons, from disenchantment. - Disenchantment can now also affect the quiver. - Some changes to traps: High-level teleport traps can throw you out of the dungeon, and traps of alter character no longer do this, but drain changes instead. The falling rock trap is now a falling boulder one instead; it does more damage, and creates a boulder. - Gazing into the Palantir now forces you into combat with any smart, unique opponent, not just Sauron and Morgoth. Some other changes to this activation. - New code to get only the base monster name and strip off any title. For example, "Wormtongue, agent of Saruman" becomes "Wormtongue". - Adopted various other Oangband fixes and improvements (Bahman Rabii). - Earthquakes have different messages when on the surface. - Finally surrendered to the lure of auto_more messages. "He must be getting soft." For this option to work, you must also have assigned one of the sub-windows to show messages. Because of this, and because Sangband shows a "(+)" instead of a "-more-" indicator, the option is called "message_to_window". It is off by default. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to verify that a window is actually on screen or even open (the game apparently doesn't ask that question), so this option remains dangerous. Use with caution. - Also caught up with the HTML screenshots craze. Used the Angband code, but implemented things a little differently. Firstly, you can still save text-mode screenshots (because the newsgroup is text-only). Secondly, I'm experimenting with issuing automatic commands to save and load preference files, instead of duplicating "map_info()" (which would increase the work involved in adding new graphical or lighting effects). Not sure this second move is such a bright idea, but I'm going to try it anyway. Decided to remove the code to load screen dumps until convinced that it serves a real need. Documentation updated. - Quest monsters no longer affect the level rating. - Ego-item and forged missiles break (even) less often. - Scrolls and potions will "merge" armour classes, taking the average, when combined. This is a just a tad inaccurate, but it make forging of these items with diverse kinds of parchments and bottles much more convenient. Scroll and potion armour class is slightly more effective at reducing inventory destruction. (reported by Scott Yost) - An explicit message appears when you learn about an unaware magical device or object by using it. - More detailed checks to avoid surprises when you mistakenly raise Blood Dominion, and then want to learn holy lore, or study Holy Alliance, and want to learn necromantic rituals. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - The skills screen gives you an idea of how the race of your character affects advancement cost. Skills in which you have invested something are shown in brighter white. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - New sets of character titles for burglars who have also invested in magic. The existing titles were especially inappropriate for holy thieves. - Angels usually avoid characters with holy lore, and killing or stealing from them is not a good idea, so you should avoid them also. - Magical infusion talent now also requires a device skill of 30. - Blessing and Holiness grant slightly lesser bonuses to non-magical fighting ability. - Items will pick up automatically into the backpack if a similar item in the backpack is marked "=g". - Automatic pickup of quiver items and items marked "=g" now properly take time. - If you are strongly disturbed, and badly wounded, you will not automatically pick up anything that will cost time while walking (only gold and essences will be picked up in such cases). - Blindness now makes all objects and traps in the dungeon vanish from view. - New window option to show nearby objects in line of sight. - The map and snapshot windows are gone. The map window will return when it is again useful. - Alchemists learn about unaware potions more easily, even if the effects are not obvious. (Christer Nyflt) - Character armour makes monsters miss a bit more often. - The check_load code is deprecated, and will disappear eventually (unless people complain). - Aimless merchants hit to talk, which is purely for flavour, and does no damage. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Ringil no longer has a poison brand. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - If merchants get a good deal when buying something from you, the profits add to their total wealth. (Joshua Middendorf) But don't give them things for cheap on purpose; they will see you as an easy mark, and want to haggle for almost everything. - Half-orcs are innately better at throwing and shooting, and at learning the associated skills. Dwarves learn a few skills slightly more slowly. (rebalance suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Windows cursor is now a underline dash when the option "highlight_player" is OFF. - Nexus may on rare occasion reroll your life ratings. Your character's final potential does not change, but his current HPs probably will (unless he has 100 power). - Messages when you throw or fire stuff now describe the action, and include an indication of what you have left in the stack of ammo or throwing items. The hit and monster reaction messages are now often combined (unless you score a powerful critical hit, or kill the monster). So, you get messages like: "You throw the Javelin 'Bloodspike' (+5, +5) (1) (4 left). The Javelin hits the Giant marksman ant; it scuttles about." - Added a beginner's crossbow and inexpensive ammunition. Crossbows is now easier to learn early on, and missile warfare is less pricy. (Joshua Middendorf) - Crossbows are considerably lighter (apparently I forgot them when reworking weapon weights) - Essences are somewhat more common in the dungeon, especially between 200' and 2000'. - Race and realm-specific preference files now work, and will be loaded automatically on game start, or when you choose a magic realm. - Removed two options: "alert_failure" (always off) and "disturb_near" (always on) (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - Monster pits are a bit more common. Because they're cool. - Innate melee, missile, and throwing ability is a little higher, and the first point of skill has a little less effect. So if you forget to apply your starting skill points, you are slightly less doomed. - Yeeks scream like yeeks. - When using a menu to pick up objects on the floor, the game no longer displays an explicit "you have ..." message. This cuts keystrokes down substantially. - Bluesteel blades make slightly less powerful forged items, but executioner swords do not. (Joshua Middendorf) - The skills screen shows a indication of skills that you have enough exp to raise and those that are too costly. (thanks to Christer Nyflt, who harassed me until I did it) - Very low skills (much lower than overall power) no longer encourage chests to give you inappropriate items. - The greyscale code for blindness is more intelligent; water is now distinguishable from normal floors. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Object tags of the form "@x1" now also work when the object is on the floor. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Object tags of the form "@ma" also work, so you can inscribe your spellbooks and use a, b, c, etc. to select books. Documentation updated. Be careful: You can make it impossible to use an object with a given command by inscribing another object with its index character. If you have this problem, just change the inscription on the the offending object. - Parts of the "get_item()" code are more simple - the rest is a project for later. - When selecting objects, the "-" choice no longer chooses a single item on the floor automatically. - Wands now stack regardless of knowledge (I should have done this originally). However, information about charges is lost unless both objects are known, or either one is fully known. So reading a scroll of *ID* on a wand can be rather useful. - Edits to the names of the Elven Rings of Power. - Some more interesting curse messages when items are worn. - The Ring of Power (The One Ring) is now called simply The One Ring. When worn, a special message appears and it grows much heavier. It is now always yellow. - No more quests for thieves. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - The chances of a damaged object being cursed increases with depth. Cursed wargear is rare early on. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Disease, and mushrooms of Disease, are much more survivable. - Quest rewards only include magical devices, scrolls, or potions that you don't already know about. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - You get a message if you detect no traps or monsters. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You get a "disturbed" notice if disturbance causes you to stop making a trap half-way through. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can learn about boulders - and therefore make them stack and show you damage indications - by throwing them. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Rods use the device flavour table in reverse; this diversifies wand and rod appearence. - Monsters evade your spells and blows less often when stunned. (suggested by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Character dumps now list current and previous quests. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Random artifacts now actually indicate that they are artifacts when inspected. (this probably qualifies as a bugfix) - The store interface works better with a limited purse, as in ToME. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Character power is (finally) shown on the skills screen. (suggested by lots of people) - Moria-style pack destruction messages are shown when strong elemental attacks hit your inventory. - Some monster pluralization changed. (uruk to uruk-hai) Olog-hai is now Olog; olog-hai is the plural form (from Fangband). - People accustomed to tidying up the dungeon need a quicker way to destroy stuff. So the destroy command automatically repeats when working on floor items.

  posted 1487 days ago

• sangband 0.9.9, Beta 20d (stable) file released: sang099-r20d-ibm.zip

  Beta 20a, b, c, d. ====================================== Bugfixes - Applicable to other variants: - (most variants) Various temporary conditions now properly update the '@' line in the character screen, listing of attributes. So, when you are Heroic, you not only get resistance to fear, but your character screen knows it. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (some variants with the Ey object knowledge interface) The object knowledge screen no longer whispers secrets to you about the flavour of unaware objects. (reported by Ed Kolis) - (older variants) The Windows preference file is now up-to-date, and should no longer cause problems when hitting Shift-direction in various displays. - (variants with the effects code) The advancing wall effect handles walls better, and is less likely to pass through them. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - (variants with evasive monsters) You no longer learn about spells that were evaded. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - The home was refusing to let you have your stuff if you didn't have the gold to pay for it. Thought this was very funny, but fixed it anyway. (reported by magnate) - The damage done by boulders is now learned about like potions and scrolls. (reported by magnate) - Some more creatures are now especially hurt by fire and cold. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - The recharging talent can be cancelled without loss of a turn. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Display glitch fixed for aura of fire/frost. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Those who join the Burglars' Guild no longer get a penalty to martial arts; they now do normal damage. (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Error in the listing of roguelike commands (sub-window) (fixed by Christer Nyflt) - Include of sys/time.h for systems that need it. (Christer Nyflt) - Safer "center_string()" function; no more crashes in the savefile management screen when the main window is large. (reported by Scott Yost) - Unsanctified status was not timing out. - That hidden curses wil no longer change the basic damage dice of a weapon or missile. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Precognition messages are listed when you hit ^F, even if you are still uncertain about the general level feeling. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Objects in equipment should no longer have wierd names when you hallucinate. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - You no longer get warning messages about the Oath of Iron when you go to raise spellcasting after you've already chosen a realm. (reported by Joshua Middendorf and Andrew Schoonmaker) - The '*' option to chose special skill commands no longer appears when it wouldn't work. - A bug in the special attacks left-screen display prevented more than one such attack from being shown. - Another prevented many kinds of special attacks from automatically displaying when activated. - Two weaknesses fixed in the object compaction code: it was possible for treasure to combine and get negative value, and player-inscribed objects were not considered important enough. (comments by Eddie Grove) - When blind and looking around, you can't notice objects that you can't see or at least feel. - You can no longer use essences to request object attributes that cost more than you have the skill to make. - ... and various other fixes not mentioned individually. Minor Changes: - More colorful acid, electricity, fire, and frost spells. - Some ball-shooting wands and rods moved down one to three levels deeper in the dungeon. - The 'Q'uit command no longer commits suicide, but rather saves and exits instead. It seemed strange that an obscure keypress would be the usual end game command. - The Character screen no longer takes into account temporary changes to disarming skill. This was confusing people. - As in Oangband, typing a number when choosing an object checks both inventory and equipment. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Quest rewards are no longer IDed. Don't want to spoil the surprise. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Mimics can no longer be quest monsters (it's rough on them when the character knows they're around). (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) Betas 19 and 20 (beta 20 released October 31st, 2005) ====================================== Bugfixes - applicable to other variants: - (variants with Oangband-style quivers) The quiver will no longer confuse the pack reorganization code. - (variants with 4GAI) Some new spells were not disturbing the character; now, all monster ranged attacks are disturbing. - (all variants) The Windows port no longer incorrectly enlarges the bottom edge of windows (except for the minimum necessary to avoid partial lines and columns) after resizing and reloading, so it is easier to size things the way you want. - (all variants) The Windows port orders terminal screens in reverse order, not merely on game start up, but during gameplay and when suspended and restored. So when you hide those title bars, they will /stay/ hidden. - (variants with constant final life ratings) The function that calculate life ratings for each power level now works correctly; life ratings will always be the same for a power 100 character, but will vary a bit until that point. - (all variants) The code to handle spell effects on objects is now more robust, allowing it to safely move and change objects, in addition to simply destroying them. This fix applies to all variants with ambitions here. - (all variants) Fixed a weakness in the "project_path" code inherited from Angband: Items fired, thrown, or cast nearly at a diagonal will not immediately move othogonally (left-right-up-down), then move diagonally the rest of the way to their target. They will now prefer to move into grids that make for the smoothest path. Among other things, this means that inaccuracy is no longer especially nasty when aiming diagonally. - (variants, other than NPPAngband, with traps that affect monsters) Various cases where creatures (monsters and the character) could move and teleport without setting off traps now properly set them off. - (all modern variants). Monster packs charge if their ambush is blown; as long as any monster is hurt, they will howl after you. See the usage of "p_ptr->vulnerability". - (all variants) The inventory and equipment sub-windows handle things better when they have fewer then 80 columns to use. - (all variants) The ancient (in existence since fractional movement was introduced perhaps a decade ago) and long-vexed monster movement clumping bug has finally been nailed to the wall! The solution used (after trying out several more hackish alternatives) is to implement Hugo Kornelis's idea of prioritizing monster moves by increasing "movement moment" (the instant within a game turn in which that monster has 100 energy). Bugfixes - Sangband-specific: - Minimum experience costs due to overall power increse less rapidly than in beta 18 - decided that the experience penalty didn't need quite so much help. - Impact weapons *should* no longer crash the game in cases where they hit a very low-hp monster. (Joshua Middendorf) - A certain mushroom's effects will now also correctly change your hitpoints (and other things). (Joshua Middendorf) - (IBM port) Spell effects will delay properly in the IBM port on Windows 2000 and XP, thanks to Andrew Cottrell and DJGPP. - Error in the throwing and firing code that allowed backwards projection paths to be used ("project_path()" was calculated, then sometimes calculated backwards, then used). Your arrows will no longer roll underneath your feet when they were fired at something far away. - Sensing and hearing no longer "linger" (they work like vision, not magical detection). - Thrown weapons are learnt about less often, but stack properly once they do. - Cursed ego-items now get properly nasty plusses. - Throwing weapons no longer do crazy damage (broke the code at some point, not sure when). Similar, but much less serious, bug fixed in mushroom throwing. - High-level forged missile launchers weren't powerful enough. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Some corrections to the appearance of fired and thrown objects in flight. - Objects no longer can stick in monsters when thrown or fired. This removes a couple of bugs, one of which unfairly used up your artifact thrown weapons. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Athelas appears every so often nearer the surface, and it is given as an extra reward in quests if you have the Black Breath. (problem with early undead quests reported by Joshua Middendorf) - You will very seldom ever get repeat quests. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - "Term_rows()" moved to "util.c" to avoid circular dependences (reported by Christer Nyflt) - A number of bugfixes, spelling and formatting corrections in the new code (Christer Nyflt) - Cursed Ego-item weapons with negative bonuses in ego_item.txt have properly nasty plusses now. (Christer Nyflt) - Missile launchers now properly grant temporary attributes to the missiles they fire, so Bows of Holy Might work as intended. - The Windows port correctly saves window positions in 50-line mode. Sub-windows no longer do strange things in 50-line mode, such as cause excessive screen refreshing. The INI file is less buggy. - The shooting and throwing inaccuracy code is now more robust, and no longer breaks down when targeting a grid right beside you. - Inaccuracy still makes diagonal corridors tough to shoot or throw things in, but you can greatly reduce the effect by moving up against the opening. Firing from a slit is now much easier then trying to fire into one. Documentation updated. - Incorrect usage of "strlen()" on NULL caught and fixed. (Pia Kraft) - Quest difficulty semi-saved (will fix the problem completely later) (reported by Pia Kraft) - "impossible" indicator appears properly when asking for too much from the autoroller. (Adam Horowitz) - Inn display corrected: quests are named correctly, special command indicator is gone. (Adam Horowitz, Scott Yost) - Various code typos corrected. (Scott Yost) - Dispel Evil spell (and some others) corrected. (buggy behavior noticed by Scott Yost) - Automatic commands are no longer purged when a character is disturbed. This solves the user interface problem when a poisoned character attempts to enter a store. (problem noted by Adam Horowitz) - Logic confusion in the skills minimum cost code fixed (reported by Joshua Middendorf). This has little effect on gameplay, but it does remove a potential source of nasty problems. - Bug in the monster movement code allowed monsters to sometimes get lots of free moves if their energy was reduced between the start of the game turn and their move. (problem noted by Joshua Middendorf) - Incorrect math in wielding items into the quiver. (Bahman Rabii) - The quiver now correctly combines items. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - The Regen left screen display no longer pops up underneath the list of objects in stores. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Fame was not updated after killing a unique monster or player ghost. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Lagduf and Dark Hounds are both susceptable to light. (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Some index errors in the new object-effect projection code fixed (reported by Adam Horowitz) - Finally got around to re-adding "uncursed" inscriptions to objects that you uncurse, unless the object was cursed by a monster spell. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Adopted Angband's code to test for created but not yet discovered artifacts. - Found and fixed a "black item" error (patiently and persistantly reported by Joshua Middendorf). Changed all flavour arrays to use runtime lengths instead of defines. - Spells only give experience when cast succesfully for the first time. (reported by Pav Lucistnik) - Found and fixed an error in the new quest rewards code that lost artifacts forever, thanks to some great detective work by Adam Horowitz. - Monsters seem only as '*'s were getting identified by the monster recall sub-window. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Various spiders no longer hurt you when you use martial arts on them. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker) Icky things and mushroom patches, however, are likely to be trouble. - Burglars' monster traps no longer give experience when disarmed. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can take the Oath of Iron by raising your throwing skill to 45, as intended. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Glass bottles and parchments stack properly. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Food (as opposed to flavoured mushrooms) no longer give you experience when first eaten. (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - FORCE_DEPTH really does now mean "will not appear above given level". (reported by Mikolaj Konarski) - Many kinds of objects now properly start out aware again. (reported by Andrew Schoonmaker and Mikolaj Konarski) - Fixed a quartet of nasty bitflag bugs (the gotcha of "(!r_ptr->flags3 & SOME_FLAG)). (reported by Scott Yost) - The skills screen warns you when you are able to take the Oath of Iron and attempt to learn magic. (reported by Magnate) Changes - color: - Sangband has entered the 256 color era. New colors are: blue-violet, shining (light yellow), deep purple, magenta-pink, muddy green, teal, light teal, light violet (lavender), light pink, mustard, blue slate, and deep light blue. Some magic realms, monsters, objects, flavours, and spells use these new colors. - Colors are more user-modifiable. In addition to red/green/blue values, preference files now control the character used to ask for the color (in the same way that 'r' means red), and the name of the color. Whatever characters you use will take effect in edit files, so you can create new colors and assign them as you please. - However, some ports (the IBM and GCU ports being two) are not capable of showing more than 16 colors. On them, the extra colors are "translated" to one of the basic 16 using either the translation you supply or (if you don't supply one) RGB comparison. - Adopted Diego Gonzalez's (found in NPPAngband) lovely interface for changing colors (the '&' command). - "Violet" is now called "Light Purple" and has index character 'P' instead of 'v'. "B:Light Blue" is now called "B:Bright Blue". Some colors have changed hue slightly: For example, dark green is now more green and less blue. - There is a price to pay for more colors: 1) Some of the graphics-related code has been broken, and will need to be repaired (when we get graphics). 2) The appearance of magic spells is now hard-coded, and needs to be put back into the preference files. Neither of these really matter for Sangband, but it does make this code less immediately useful to other variants. Changes - ports: - The GTK port now works (Christer Nyflt) - The X11 port is now fully playable (Christer Nyflt) - The Windows port is considerably cleaner looking. Changes - gameplay: - You can slam a non-broken door shut when a monster is in the doorway. If you attempt to do this, the monster gets a free turn to react, then - if neither you nor the monster has moved - you try to slam the door. If you succeed, the monster is forced back one space, the door is shut, and the monster loses a turn. This tactic does not work particularly well on breeders (too *^*$%ing many of them). Documentation updated. - If you are not poisoned, a monster blow to poison will have more effect. Snakes do double poison and half raw damage when they bite. Time to watch out for those snakes and spiders again. - Weapons, armour, and light sources (ordinary and ego) may on rare occasion bear a hidden curse. As soon as you wield or wear the object, it transmutes into a cursed ego-item (only ones with light curses are allowed). When sold, these items also transmute, which leads to some interesting shopkeeper comments. No magic can reveal or remove the lurking curse, but various skills - holy alliance, perception, spell resistance, and magical infusion - sometimes allow you to be warned in the nick of time. Cursed ego-items are now, finally, getting a fair crack at the character. - A bunch of interesting new cursed ego-items including the famous boots of Great Mass, which now actually work. - Cursed, wielded weapons with brands and slays will zap you and call out to your enemies every so often until uncursed. - Characters with very high skill in martial arts that are currently using barehanded methods get free action, resist sound (no stunning) and resist confusion. This should help make these combat methods more competitive in the very late game. Documentation updated. - Light sources can be deliberately lit and doused (use the '(' command). A lit light source on the floor illuminates the surrounding area, allowing for all sorts of ambush coolness. Documentation updated. The code allows for light radii up to five, and uses a pre-calculated table of LOS values. It will probably serve admirably for monster lights. - Quests rewards reworked. They are now more likely to be useful to your character, but will not include standard artifacts. The rewards earned by difficult quests at any depth are now substantially better than those earned by easy quests (bug: during beta 19, this is true only if you don't save and reload during the quest). - If you are in ironman mode, you can forge items in the dungeon. - As in NPPAngband, monsters can become wary when you steal where they can see you, or they or a monster they can see hits a trap. Wary monsters get bonuses against both stealing and traps. (some code by Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, you steal items, not merely gold, from monsters. Multiple thefts are counted by time, not by level, and the penalties for stealing too often are slightly more severe. Various other tweaks to stealing, some adopted from NPPAngband. Documentation updated. (some code by Jeff Greene) - Quiverable items with the =g inscription now pickup directly into the quiver, even if they do not match existing items. (Bahman Rabii) - Allowed optional "quivering" of throwing weapons. (Bahman Rabii) Each throwing weapon uses the space of five ammunition. - As in Oangband, wearables that are #-inscribed will be considered "unique" for naming purposes, and be prefixed with "the" instead of "a" or "an". - New feature: #-inscriptions also override most object, ego-item, or artifact names, which gives you the power to name your stuff whatever you want without hacking any edit files. For example, if you had a yen to change the name of your Wands of Lightning Bolts, you can inscribe them "#of Minor Zapping" to make them appear as "Wands of Minor Zapping". - Major change to the internal calculation of the character's overall ability in melee, archery, throwing, perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races still have a starting ability adjustment, but no longer have an additional adjustment that depends on power. Instead, race impacts the effect of skills on these abilities: for example, if a race has great aptitude for a skill, then the effect of a given skill level is increased. Race has about the same effect on the combat skills (with some important changes), but has more effect on perception, devices, disarming, and stealth. Races are generally more different from each other, with all the combat skills finely distinguished. For example, half-trolls are now only a little better than average with swords, but much better with hafted weapons. There is one missing feature: humans no longer get a little bonus to crossbows. Documentation updated. (idea suggested by Mikolaj Konarski). - Half-spellcasters get 60% of the mana that Oath-bound spellcasters do, but may raise their magical power skill to maximum. The effect of this is to make choosing an Oath more worthwhile in the early-mid game. - By default, on ports capable of it, the game shows a sub-window with a list of the most commonly used commands. This should make it easier for newbies to get up to speed. (idea by Josh Jersild) Changes - code cleanup: Thanks to Christer Nyflt's suggestions and code patches, the low-level and "background" code is getting a much-needed cleaning. Changes are recommended for some or even all variants. - Making types more compatible in some places. - Split out z-file from util. - Suggested deprecating the very non-standard CHECK_LOAD code. - Reorganized the h-system.h header. - Added in POSIX file locking. - New checks for 64-bit machines, updates for various UNIX and Linux defines and preferences. - Error suppresion of various sorts. Explicit casting to void for "Term_*" functions. - Removal of many unused or unnecessary defines. - Removal of support for several very old (VMS) or risky (SVGAlib) systems that unnecessarily complicated the code. - Removal of the potentially quite troublesome "core" function. Changes - miscellaneous: - More correct code to make monsters lose a turn and to adjust their energy. - Pools of water and lava are more interestingly shaped. Water may now also appear in overlapping rooms. - Cross-shaped starburst rooms are cleaner-looking. - Spikes are less common near the surface, but more common after 500' and before 3000'. - Javelins are found a little deeper. Stores do not sell them in the very early game. - Light curses (the standard kind) no longer have to make the item "cling", which means we can have - and in fact now do have - non-obvious curses that change how the item behaves, but make no difference to how it wears or wields. - Uncursing objects no longer gives a chance of reversing various bonuses (reason for removal was that it made it harder to balance cursed items). However, the uncurse spell now works on both "clinging" and non-obvious curses (but not hidden curses). - Boulders are slate grey by default. - Swordsmanship now costs 12, not 13. - Short object names (from the function "strip_name") are now all lowercase. - Thought that the scroll names were boring, and so worked up an alternative method, known as the "grast-speech". - Wands and rods flavours much improved and their colors diversified. The less plausable and uninteresting metals (like iridium and xxx-plated) removed. - Other flavours revised. Colors changed, some new flavours added, new and existing items got the new extended colors, names and colors combined into unified tables. Still haven't gotten around to moving them to preference files. - You can no longer bash monsters in walls or immaterial monsters. - More correct test for whether a monster is "immaterial". - You get slightly more energy at speed -3 to -7 (so -7 speed is no longer the same as -10 speed). - Preference file entries that are either character or color (attribute) information can be entered, not only as numbers, but as characters. So, typing "B" will now get you light blue the same as typing "14" or "0x0E" will. Preference files revised to take advantage of this. - Some preference files are gone, either because Sangband has not been ported to the systems they handle, or because the graphics files will need to be rewritten. - The code that gets the angle to a target grid is now better at handling large distances. - It is easier to bash down doors that are not stuck. - Hard-coded number of stats removed in the birth code. (Christer Nyflt) - The code that allowed text files to be loaded upon explicit request is gone. (Christer Nyflt) - Player ghosts give one extra fame point (Jeff Greene) - Speed display changes color if character is hasted or slowed (DarkGod's idea, I think) - Throwing potions of Lose Memories no longer do damage, but instead cause monsters to forget what they know about your resists. (Jeff Greene) - Monster information now displays in the monster sub-window as the player scrolls through monsters in the knowledge screens (patch provided by Cyrus Dolph, from NPPAngband) - Made tunneling a much louder activity. (Jeff Greene) - Teleported monsters clear their movement target. (Jeff Greene) - As in NPPAngband, the "stun" counter stops increasing when the character is knocked out, messages about oppositions to the elements do not appear if the character is already immune, monsters that shriek wake up and hasten other creatures near to them, not the character, and monsters that teleport towards the character can no longer land on glyphs. - Earthquake blows that move the character away from the monster also force the monster to stop attacking. (Jeff Greene) - Drain-charge attacks are not quite so effective, as in NPPAngband. The draining code now cleaned up and regularized. - Hallucination shows legal object and monster graphics instead of random text characters. (from Angband) - Various system-specific impovements from Angband 3.0.6, including better support for Macintosh file types and the ability to store various user files to an outside directory on multi-user systems. - Added some helper functions to make things like testing the saving throw easier to read (and more likely to be correct). (Bahman Rabii) - You can wield melee, missile, and thrown weapons, and also missiles and light sources, when shapechanged. However, taking on and off rings, amulets, and armour is still forbidden. - Shapechanges now only protect your armour, not your weapons, from disenchantment. - Disenchantment can now also affect the quiver. - Some changes to traps: High-level teleport traps can throw you out of the dungeon, and traps of alter character no longer do this, but drain changes instead. The falling rock trap is now a falling boulder one instead; it does more damage, and creates a boulder. - Gazing into the Palantir now forces you into combat with any smart, unique opponent, not just Sauron and Morgoth. Some other changes to this activation. - New code to get only the base monster name and strip off any title. For example, "Wormtongue, agent of Saruman" becomes "Wormtongue". - Adopted various other Oangband fixes and improvements (Bahman Rabii). - Earthquakes have different messages when on the surface. - Finally surrendered to the lure of auto_more messages. "He must be getting soft." For this option to work, you must also have assigned one of the sub-windows to show messages. Because of this, and because Sangband shows a "(+)" instead of a "-more-" indicator, the option is called "message_to_window". It is off by default. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to verify that a window is actually on screen or even open (the game apparently doesn't ask that question), so this option remains dangerous. Use with caution. - Also caught up with the HTML screenshots craze. Used the Angband code, but implemented things a little differently. Firstly, you can still save text-mode screenshots (because the newsgroup is text-only). Secondly, I'm experimenting with issuing automatic commands to save and load preference files, instead of duplicating "map_info()" (which would increase the work involved in adding new graphical or lighting effects). Not sure this second move is such a bright idea, but I'm going to try it anyway. Decided to remove the code to load screen dumps until convinced that it serves a real need. Documentation updated. - Quest monsters no longer affect the level rating. - Ego-item and forged missiles break (even) less often. - Scrolls and potions will "merge" armour classes, taking the average, when combined. This is a just a tad inaccurate, but it make forging of these items with diverse kinds of parchments and bottles much more convenient. Scroll and potion armour class is slightly more effective at reducing inventory destruction. (reported by Scott Yost) - An explicit message appears when you learn about an unaware magical device or object by using it. - More detailed checks to avoid surprises when you mistakenly raise Blood Dominion, and then want to learn holy lore, or study Holy Alliance, and want to learn necromantic rituals. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - The skills screen gives you an idea of how the race of your character affects advancement cost. Skills in which you have invested something are shown in brighter white. (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - New sets of character titles for burglars who have also invested in magic. The existing titles were especially inappropriate for holy thieves. - Angels usually avoid characters with holy lore, and killing or stealing from them is not a good idea, so you should avoid them also. - Magical infusion talent now also requires a device skill of 30. - Blessing and Holiness grant slightly lesser bonuses to non-magical fighting ability. - Items will pick up automatically into the backpack if a similar item in the backpack is marked "=g". - Automatic pickup of quiver items and items marked "=g" now properly take time. - If you are strongly disturbed, and badly wounded, you will not automatically pick up anything that will cost time while walking (only gold and essences will be picked up in such cases). - Blindness now makes all objects and traps in the dungeon vanish from view. - New window option to show nearby objects in line of sight. - The map and snapshot windows are gone. The map window will return when it is again useful. - Alchemists learn about unaware potions more easily, even if the effects are not obvious. (Christer Nyflt) - Character armour makes monsters miss a bit more often. - The check_load code is deprecated, and will disappear eventually (unless people complain). - Aimless merchants hit to talk, which is purely for flavour, and does no damage. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Ringil no longer has a poison brand. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - If merchants get a good deal when buying something from you, the profits add to their total wealth. (Joshua Middendorf) But don't give them things for cheap on purpose; they will see you as an easy mark, and want to haggle for almost everything. - Half-orcs are innately better at throwing and shooting, and at learning the associated skills. Dwarves learn a few skills slightly more slowly. (rebalance suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Windows cursor is now a underline dash when the option "highlight_player" is OFF. - Nexus may on rare occasion reroll your life ratings. Your character's final potential does not change, but his current HPs probably will (unless he has 100 power). - Messages when you throw or fire stuff now describe the action, and include an indication of what you have left in the stack of ammo or throwing items. The hit and monster reaction messages are now often combined (unless you score a powerful critical hit, or kill the monster). So, you get messages like: "You throw the Javelin 'Bloodspike' (+5, +5) (1) (4 left). The Javelin hits the Giant marksman ant; it scuttles about." - Added a beginner's crossbow and inexpensive ammunition. Crossbows is now easier to learn early on, and missile warfare is less pricy. (Joshua Middendorf) - Crossbows are considerably lighter (apparently I forgot them when reworking weapon weights) - Essences are somewhat more common in the dungeon, especially between 200' and 2000'. - Race and realm-specific preference files now work, and will be loaded automatically on game start, or when you choose a magic realm. - Removed two options: "alert_failure" (always off) and "disturb_near" (always on) (suggested by Christer Nyflt) - Monster pits are a bit more common. Because they're cool. - Innate melee, missile, and throwing ability is a little higher, and the first point of skill has a little less effect. So if you forget to apply your starting skill points, you are slightly less doomed. - Yeeks scream like yeeks. - When using a menu to pick up objects on the floor, the game no longer displays an explicit "you have ..." message. This cuts keystrokes down substantially. - Bluesteel blades make slightly less powerful forged items, but executioner swords do not. (Joshua Middendorf) - The skills screen shows a indication of skills that you have enough exp to raise and those that are too costly. (thanks to Christer Nyflt, who harassed me until I did it) - Very low skills (much lower than overall power) no longer encourage chests to give you inappropriate items. - The greyscale code for blindness is more intelligent; water is now distinguishable from normal floors. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - Object tags of the form "@x1" now also work when the object is on the floor. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) Object tags of the form "@ma" also work, so you can inscribe your spellbooks and use a, b, c, etc. to select books. Documentation updated. Be careful: You can make it impossible to use an object with a given command by inscribing another object with its index character. If you have this problem, just change the inscription on the the offending object. - Parts of the "get_item()" code are more simple - the rest is a project for later. - When selecting objects, the "-" choice no longer chooses a single item on the floor automatically. - Wands now stack regardless of knowledge (I should have done this originally). However, information about charges is lost unless both objects are known, or either one is fully known. So reading a scroll of *ID* on a wand can be rather useful. - Edits to the names of the Elven Rings of Power. - Some more interesting curse messages when items are worn. - The Ring of Power (The One Ring) is now called simply The One Ring. When worn, a special message appears and it grows much heavier. It is now always yellow. - No more quests for thieves. (reported by Joshua Middendorf) - The chances of a damaged object being cursed increases with depth. Cursed wargear is rare early on. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Disease, and mushrooms of Disease, are much more survivable. - Quest rewards only include magical devices, scrolls, or potions that you don't already know about. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - You get a message if you detect no traps or monsters. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You get a "disturbed" notice if disturbance causes you to stop making a trap half-way through. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - You can learn about boulders - and therefore make them stack and show you damage indications - by throwing them. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Rods use the device flavour table in reverse; this diversifies wand and rod appearence. - Monsters evade your spells and blows less often when stunned. (suggested by Andrew Schoonmaker) - Character dumps now list current and previous quests. (suggested by Joshua Middendorf) - Random artifacts now actually indicate that they are artifacts when inspected. (this probably qualifies as a bugfix) - The store interface works better with a limited purse, as in ToME. (suggested by Mikolaj Konarski) - Character power is (finally) shown on the skills screen. (suggested by lots of people) - Moria-style pack destruction messages are shown when strong elemental attacks hit your inventory. - Some monster pluralization changed. (uruk to uruk-hai) Olog-hai is now Olog; olog-hai is the plural form (from Fangband). - People accustomed to tidying up the dungeon need a quicker way to destroy stuff. So the destroy command automatically repeats when working on floor items.

  posted 1487 days ago