Comp 202
 

Comp 202 is up. It's an Oangband shadow-fairy rogue (Nick's favorite race selection.)

GLH"F"

The linked Windows version is not working for me. No game window comes up, no .raw-files are created in the data directory, only sign of having started it that I can see at all is a process in the task manager doing nothing at all.

What about UnAngband?
 

No UnAngband comp? A new version was just released and there hasn't been a comp for UnAngband since 2013.

@Mitze: Agree. *Forcing* early quests makes for a very different game. Drives me nuts, but certainly different.

Traditionally the name would be Death.

Oops. I forgot. Next comp :)

Oh, and also it's Shadow Fairy Necromancer that's my favourite. You suck so bad debo. Although Rogue is probably actually winnable in competition time, so I'll let it pass this once.

I specifically said "favorite race!" I was going to pick necromancer but I decided I wanted people to actually play this competition.

Wow. What a lot of compiler warnings. Rather than worry about it not running on Win10, I'm just doing a MinGW build. Easier all around. Also: I hate old-style Makefiles. makefile.src is just so much easier to deal with.

I think you'll find you're wrong :D

So, problems:
1. It hangs when freshly compiled on Windows. Requires WinXP compatibility mode.
2. Executable shows no debug symbols when compiled -g in gcc. No clue about this.
Hope this works...
Edit: having trouble downloading the save file in Edge. It wants to save it as txt, no idea why. I'll use a different browser.

So, Mana Burn - does it happen automatically, or do I have to do something to activate it?

It's one of the specialties - looking at your character, you took Athletics instead. You get another choice at CL20, if you make it that far :)

Normally I wouldn't take athletics, focusing on offence and defense instead (darkness, shield bash, mana burn, etc.) But for shadow fairy, CON is just a desperate need. Or does the shadow fairy get darkness specialty innately?

Shadow Fairy's innate thing is no aggravate, you need to take Unlight to get the darkness features. 'O' command shows all the specialty stuff.

Yeah, and I took Mana Burn at 20 :) Have seen it activate by now... seems it happens randomly on occasion?

I think it requires critical hits, which is why I recommended waiting til the midgame (cl 40, say.) They happen better than every other turn when you're getting 5 blows with a heavy weapon.

The help text says something about Rogues being better with light weapons - what does this actually mean in game mechanisms?

And general reminder - which Ego items can have extra abilities and needs to be *identified*? Have forgotten so much stuff...

Any that 'might have hidden powers.' In practice that means anything beyond branded weapons, and anything better than resistance armor.

So, what a pain. Don't accidentally try to wield a spellbook. It'll get "wielded" and disappear. Silly bug.

Man, forgot how ridiculous this game is
 

Read scroll xyzzy
You have no more scrolls of Teleportation -- more --
the baby blue dragon breathes lightning -- more --
the pseudodragon breathes darkness -- more -- you are blind.
...
You die.
Only in OAngband... teleport to a group of awake monsters...and they all start to breathe right away.

What, you expect the enemy to not lead off with their most powerful abilities? :)

PosChengband takes that ridiculousness to a whole new level. ;)

@D-- not so much that, as I expected them to be asleep. Did not expect awake groups of 'wandering monsters.'
And now I can't start the game again. I expect the old bug in font resources.

Can cursed still be good in O? Got cursed arrows from a player ghost that still seem effective. Hmm, iding them puts them at -7,-3. Must just be my bow is good enough

@wobbly -3 deadliness is almost meaningless. That's only a 3% reduction in base damage.

The lack of ?recall in the stores is tedious. So is ID and selling, ugh. I'd forgotten.

Arghh! So Bill Ferny dropped a pile of "good" throwing daggers. They went into quiver as a single stack. Then I threw them. When I pick them up (a) they don't go into quiver, (b) they lose all memory of what they are, so now I have to identify them individually!
Silly, silly bug.

OK, I quit. Finally had a promising character, found ?recall in the dungeon. Seg fault on entering a store. Everything since cl 4 is lost. That does it. I will consider this variant dead.

How many character levels did you lose in the process? :(

Maybe 10 lost? I was down to dl 12 or so, and moving pretty slowly.

I don't like O either. Having said that, spamming ^s is pretty much required practice for older variants.

Yeah, but I am so accustomed to auto-save on every level. And this one time I forgot to set autosave when I started. (Why it's even an option I don't know. Just do it no matter what, on a reasonable schedule.) There were just too many annoying things. Really massive crowds of kobolds. Weird stacking, even with items with THROWING flag; quiver items not returning to quiver; horrible pickup options; etc.

I just get bored of never finding anything worth keeping.

Well, that too. I'd been cheating a little by running of a carefully chosen savefile from the initial town visit, mostly because I was sick of going through the opening motions, but partly because of a good Fern drop of a pile of four daggers. Since there was no sling for sale, this seemed like a reasonable workaround. But yes. Terrible drops, and little gold gets boring fast. Grinding takes over when you can't even kill groups of kobolds.

I had a reasonable time with marksman & a shooter till I rang out of ammo. Maybe you have to stash 1 of each shooter type in the home to guarantee ammo. Don't know, play was still a bit slow.

Man, when was the last time Oangband was updated??

Looks like nobody wants to play Oangband. Elliptic will win (surprise!) at dl 62.

Not that I'm disparaging O . . .
 

. . . but is there any reason to play it over FA? I was kind of under the impression that the latter was pretty much an improvement in every way.

O has a nicely shaped difficulty curve, IMHO - there are no big patches where the levels all feel the same, unlike current V. But it's so punishing it just gets demoralising.

As for FA being better, I always thought it had different aims and so couldn't really be compared; it's nice to hear, though :)

I like O. I played a couple of comp characters, none of whom got below about dlev 25, but didn't really have time to have a proper go at the comp, which is a pity because I like the race/class combo. If it had happened outside term time I would definitely have spent (wasted?) a lot more time on it.

In answer to MITZE's question, I'd say FA is an improvement in most ways, but I still like to play O from time to time. FA is great, but its maintainer just isn't evil enough for my taste.

This prediction ended up being exactly right, but probably not in the way that you expected.

I had a lot of fun with this competition, played 27 Ibuns, the last was the best, dying on level 29 to a Nruling.

Congrats to elliptic for winning without really trying, and to clouded and Gwarl for their 2nd and 3rd place finishes. And kudos to everyone who gave this a shot, O is not a forgiving variant.