list of bugs and wishes
 

As a long time nethack, moria, angband etc. player (> 30 years), I recently picked up Angband again, and really enjoy the changes since last time I played (2 series).
Trying to contribute, I started collecting bugs and wishes, and here they are.
version: vanilla Angband 4.1.2 / 4.1.3
System: desktop PC with Windows 10-64, AMD video card with resolution 1680x1050.
Using Shockbolt tiles with 4x4 multiplier, no 'nice graphics', default terms, but added term 6 with map view.

01 - map view (in term6) often doesn't refresh correctly: you can see your own character in there a lot of times, and sometimes remains are left of beam/cone attacks. CTRL-R corrects the errors. Apparently erasing changes from the previous turn is imperfect.

02 - outdated dungeon.txt:
* "Each level has at least one up staircase and at least two down staircases. There are no exceptions to this rule." Level 99, 100 and 127 are, I believe, exceptions. But several types of special map levels might not have 2 downstairs either. Notably a maze level always seems to have exactly 1 up and one down stairs.
* The whole file also is based in the character interface, ignoring tiles.
* It also contains a strange label: ".. |'D'isarm| replace:: 'D'\isarm"

03 - weapon damage calculation: if the blows per round is not a whole number, but say 3.8, you get 3 blows every round, never 4. But the calculation for the weapon view does count the fraction, resulting in too high dam/rnd values.

04 - with the Shockbolt tiles I still don't see any difference between passable and impassable rubble in 4.1.3.

05 - if there is a bunch of monsters, I am often in a corridor get only one attacking me, resting until the next one steps in. Their drops are piling gradually, and when there is more than one item under me, the screen gets redrawn every time because it displays the list of items under me. I wish there was at least one wait command key (of the '5', ',' and '.') that I can use to rest without picking up.

06 - why are elementals, esp. Pukelman resistant to all attacks except the one they are using themselves (acid)? That seems illogical.

07 - changing the font to a larger size does not increase the space a letter gets, so they get truncated

08 - resolve naming inconsistency wirh wands and rods by renaming staff of light to staff of illumination

09 - why does @m1 inscription work, but not @p1?

10 - Wish: display monster level in monster memory (esp. with uniques). If there is not enough room, I wouldn't mind the monster symbol being removed - I assume most users use tiles by now anyway.

11 - Wish: change options permanently (e.g. I like show_damage) - e.g. save set like exporting autoinscribe. Every time I start a new character (I like playing several in parallel) it is off again.

12 - show_damage should not only show weapon damage, but also spell damage

13 - treasure balance seems off: too many weapons compared to armor pieces (you need 6 armor pieces compared to 1 weapon, so it would seem better if they occur 6x as often too, but they seem to have similar occurences currently). For artifacts my high level mage has found 25 weapons, 4 shooters, 28 armor and 4 miscellaneous (light, ring, amulet).

14 - There seems to be something off with the generation of elemental rings (fire, acid, cold and lightning). According to the generated spoiler (obj-desc.spo) from 4.1.2 they are level 50, but I seem to find them regularly from around level 20. That seems a bit overpowered, considering their protection similar to rings of protection but also offer a big amount of area damage regularly, AND temp. elemental resistance.

15 - Amulets of resistance are way too high level for their worth: since most artifact armors, shields, and even many ego armors, shields and cloaks offer the same elemental resistances, by the time you reach level 60 no one is ever going to need them. 10 levels later than resist acid en lightning, so 20, seems more appropriate. Or perhaps it should have 1 or 2 random extra resistances?

16 - in principle it is a good thing that slow digestion is powered up, but still there is so much food found in the dungeon, not to mention loads of satisfy hunger scrolls, that even a half-troll warrior is unlikely to sacrifice a ring or amulet slot for it. Perhaps the ring and amulet should have some minor extra power, like slow poison?

17 - spell failure chances seem higher than the spellbook mentions. I tested this with a 21st level mage with listed spell failure of 4% on detect monsters, with no negative effects present as far as I could see. I cast it in total 335 times in a row, and had 26 failures, which amounts to more than 7% - almost twice as much as listed.

18 - stores will not accept unidentified armor, not even for free. (I had a robe [2,+2] {??} that wasn't accepted until I happened to find out the rune in another way. It was resist fire.) I think they should, just like unidentified negative potions, scrolls, wands, etc. are bought. This is also contrary to the description in dungeon.txt. Weapons that are partially unknown and contain a curse are also unsellable.

19 - Why don't shops have consecutive letters for their inventory? It is confusing and I don't see a use.

Edit 2018-09-22: in message #14 is an updated version of this list.

Hey, thanks for the feedback and bug reports! I've responded to a few of them below.

It's not exactly clear how documentation could make use of tiles instead of text, in any event, tiles are not the assumed default UI for a lot of things (including e.g. the Banish prompt).

This is something that could absolutely be explained better, but when you have 3.8 blows per round, what you get is 3 blows performed in slightly less than one turn's worth of time (specifically, 3/3.8 turns). So you do get to attack faster, or alternately, your enemy is less likely to get a turn in between your attacks.

Pukelmen are golems, not elementals. All elementals, as far as I'm aware, are strong against their own elements. Golems tend to be weak to acid and strong against everything else. Maybe pukelmen should have different vulnerabilities, but they should have some element they aren't strong against or else mages will be sad.

Probably because the 'p' command is mapped to 'm' internally, so 'p' is not a "real" command. But yeah, this is weird and should be fixed.

Probably not a safe assumption. :) But to be clear, you're saying that you want the monster level to show up in the one-line description of the monster, right? Their level already shows up in the full monster memory; it's the depth the monster normally appears at. So e.g. Morgoth is level 100.

I don't know why the spoiler says they're level 50; they're really not that great. Rings of Protection are pretty bad rings, and while the activation is quite nice it's not competitive with the kinds of rings you'd normally be playing with by level 50. Specifically, big stat rings and Rings of Damage easily out-compete them.

Interesting, that's the first time I've seen someone gather statistics that weren't closely in-line with the listed numbers! People often complain about spells failing too often, but in the past every time someone's collected stats they've been within a percentage point of what the game says.

Thanks for the quick reply.
A few remarks:
02 - I think the file should at least mention something the symbols are replaced with tiles if you use those.
03 - OK, thanks for the explanation. I have never noticed that with unmodified speed and 3.8 blows, I sometimes get an extra turn against other monsters with the same speed.
06 - sorry, you're right. I mixed it up since earth elementals have the same issue. Silent watchers are also only vulnerable to acid, but do not do acid attacks. I agree they should have at least one vulnerability; e.g. gelatinous cubes are a horror for mages.
10 - yes, if you show the monster level in the overviews, you can quickly find which to expect on the level you are at. Opening the full recall is rather cumbersome for that.
14 - I read the description in object.txt, and now assume that the spoiler lists the property: depth ('strength' of the item), and not the alloc min (dungeon) level. Perhaps this could be made clearer in the spoiler. (I would prefer to see the min dungeon level in the spoiler rather than a subjective strength.) Perhaps rings of protection could have higher armor increase then if they are underpowered, making them more balanced with the elemental rings.

Talking about wishes - I have something which bothers me in the user interface.
I use the default layout, it's mostly fine for my needs.
It would be nice if we had a maximize/restore button on the terminal windows.
If one of them has too much information, i need to manually enlarge, then resize it again (usually not succeeding in positioning perfectly).
Also sometimes the displayed information could be improved in content and order.
As an example here is a screenshot:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=r1dbeo&s=9#.W3Hk4bhx2M8

What do I see in the object inspection window?
Item name and who dropped it, fine.
But then combat info with 5 lines of text which is not really useful, it would be more important to see what damage it would do with my current setup.
Additionally all lines are duplicated which is a waste of space.
With +x STR and +y DEX you would attack a bit faster.
With +x STR and +y DEX you would get 1.1 blows.
These 2 messages could merged into one. Or just have the second one which is more meaningful. Surely if currently I would have 1.0 blows and with more STR/DEX I would have 1.1 it means I would attack a bit faster.

Btw I just upgraded from 4.0.3 to 4.1.3 and really like the changes so far, thanks for them :)
Rune ID is interesting and nice, but ID when walking over is really super.

Re the strange label in 02: I assume you are seeing this when opening the .txt file with a text editor. The doc files are written in RST (restructured text), a Markdown-like format that is used (for instance) in Python documentation. The game includes a parser that can display the files correctly in the online help, and you can compile it to HTML or PDF with "make manual", but when you open the .txt file directly you see some of these strange artifacts (though the file is mostly readable).

Some history here. AC in angband has never been great. Last quick fix was doubling armour & making it super cheap. It failed to fix the issue & my warrior just pounded Morgoth with too much AC (here AC is king). AC could be fixed with radical rebalance. Not easy and requires hard changes to core gameplay (like teleports). I'd say the history of fudge fixing made this worse. More band aids is probably a bad idea. You either get your hands dirty trying to rip out the guts of the problem or avoid making it worse. At least in my opinion.

Maybe AC in general should be more useful, like giving some protection against some attacks, say force, shards, and/or stunning for example?
The rings of protection could grant a random resistance also, to make them more useful.

Yes, rings of protection are among the weakest items in the game. They're supposed to be. They're among the gear that you can buy from the magic shop for a few hundred gold. That sort of equipment is intended to be nothing more than a way to fill slots until you find something more useful in the dungeon.

A case can be made for reworking the whole armor system, but if we're not doing that, there is no reason to change the protection rings.

Just thinking aloud, but perhaps the AC thing essentially being another inout to the to-hit calculation isn't a good fit.

Perhaps to-hit should be simply 'have you been hit at all' so a function of the stats of the hitter together with the to-hit values of the weapon.

Then if that hits, AC would soak up some or all of the damage. Maybe some armour could be better against different attacks

Just an idea that might make it actually useful to get a good AC

You need to adjust the space used to show characters as well (which would be realy handy if the program would calculate that automatically and update the screen after you have choosen a new font size. There is only 1 font size size per window possible. )

You adjust the screen size (per character) for the main window with the window menu option "Term 0 Font Tile Size" => "Font".

Remark: THAT is ONLY POSSIBLE after character creation in game mode. It is not possible while the start up screen is shown!

For windows 1 to 9 you have to do that manually (*sigh*).
Use the four window menu options "Increase/Decrease Window Tile Width/Height".

For example i am using Win7 system and the standard font size is 8x12 points. If i change that to the more eye friendly size of 10x14
i need to use 2x Increase Tile Width and 2x Increase Tile Height for each subwindow i change the font in.

+1 from me for that wish!

Since spells can hit more than one target (beam or ball attacks or breath attacks) you could solve that by either
(a) show the damage for each monster damaged (could be spammy)
(b) show only the damage for the targeted monster (if no target, the 1st monster damaged).

window size and position
 

By the way there is an bug through all the versions i played so far:

The Window size and the window positions are not exactly stored in the configuration file.

Each time i start the Angband executable the windows are slightly misplaced and missized. Something in the range of a few points only but still annoying to
perfectly match them each time to cover the complete screen.

It has nothing to do with the screen size. Bought a new screen with a much higher dpi than the old one, but the windows are still mismatched as it was before.

Would be nice if you could take a look at that Nick :) Thanks!

font size
 

Oh, thanks a lot Tiberius. I actually got a new screen 2 days ago, with more but smaller pixels, so I really needed some font resizing! Did I miss any tutorial / manual where this is explained? Actually now I know I think I could have experimented more with those 'Window' options, but under MS Windows I've become so used to truetype fonts that I never realized that it were separate settings.
Another thing that could be explained is that the tile size is a multiplier of the font-size, so changing the font also changes the tiles.
Knowing better how it works, I just changed 1 terminal to a different font size, and then changed the rest with copy-paste in the angband.ini file.
If you look at that file, you see the terminal size is expressed in lines and columns, which are probably rounded down, so any pixel-precise sizing will be lost the next time. The position is stored in pixels, so that shouldn't change I would think.

All in all my reported bug is resolved, but the whole system has a number of co-dependencies and side effects that make it hard to understand and handle. Perhaps the price for system-independence?

DEFINITELY not a safe assumption. Many of us are not merely old-school, but just plain old (and thus blind). I play fullscreen on a 32" monitor using the 12x24 font, in ASCII mode like nature intended!

You kids today, with your subwindows and graphics tiles. When I was your age we had to memorize every host between ourselves and each recipient of our emails, and we LIKED IT.

Love,

uunet!decuac!c3pe!gypsy

summary
 

Thanks for all the on-topic contributions. Below I list an edited version of my bugs and wishes, with the extra information incorporated.

Question: what is going to happen with this list? Is someone going to enter it into the bug tracker system, or should I? Or will they be picked up even when not in the system?

Updated list:

01 - map view often doesn't refresh correctly: you can see your own character in there a lot of times, and sometimes remains are left of beam/cone attacks. CTRL-R corrects the errors. Apparently erasing changes from the previous turn is imperfect.

02 - outdated dungeon.txt:
* "Each level has at least one up staircase and at least two down staircases. There are no exceptions to this rule." Level 99, 100 and 127 are, I believe, exceptions. But several types of special map levels might not have 2 downstairs either. Notably a maze level always seems to have exactly 1 up and one down stairs.
* The whole file also is based in the character interface, ignoring tiles. It should e.g. mention that with tiles you can see the visuals under '~', 'display xxx knowledge', select one item and press 'v'.

03 - not a bug.

04 - with the Shockbolt tiles I still don't see any difference between passable and impassable rubble in 4.1.3, although I read that was changed since 4.1.2.

05 - if there is a bunch of monsters, I am often in a corridor get only one attacking me, resting until the next one steps in. Their drops are piling gradually, and when there is more than one item under me, the screen gets redrawn every time because it displays the list of items under me. I wish there was at least one wait command key (of the '5', ',' or '.') that I can use to rest without picking up.

06 - why are monsters like Pukelman and Earth Elemental resistant to all attacks except the one they are atacking with themselves (acid)? That seems illogical. I suggest a different basic element vulnerability.

07 - wish: (semi-)automatically determine character width and height based on the selected font for all terminals, like you can set "Term 0 Font Tile Size" to "Font" for terminal 0.

08 - resolve naming inconsistency wirh wands and rods by renaming staff of light to staff of illumination

09 - why does @m1 inscription work, but not @p1?

10 - Wish: display monster level in monster memory (esp. with uniques). If there is not enough room, I wouldn't mind the monster symbol being removed, but I think both should fit. Especially with uniques it helps to quickly see which you might expect on your current dungeon level.

11 - Wish: change options permanently (e.g. I like show_damage) - e.g. save set like exporting autoinscribe. Every time I start a new character (I like playing several in parallel) it is off again.

12 - show_damage should not only show weapon damage, but also spell damage. In case of beam, ball or breath attacks the damage in the square targeted could be listed, or perhaps the nearest monster affected?

13 - treasure balance seems off: too many weapons compared to armor pieces (you need 6 armor pieces compared to 1 weapon, so it would seem better if they occur 6x as often too, but they seem to have similar occurences currently). For artifacts my high level mage has found 25 weapons, 4 shooters, 28 armor and 4 miscellaneous (light, ring, amulet). I would also prefer not to find at least one of the *thanc daggers at one of the first levels so often; then all the fun disappears of first finding one with bonuses, then the first ego, and finally the artifacts.

14 - In obj-desc.spo listing the items power in the column level is confusing. Either list the min level the item can be found, like in mon-desc.spo, or call the column power, or list both. I consider the min level more useful.

15 - Amulets of resistance are way too high level for their worth: since most artifact armors, shields, and even many ego armors, shields and cloaks offer the same elemental resistances, by the time you reach level 60 no one is ever going to need them. 10 levels later than resist acid en lightning, so 20, seems more appropriate. Or perhaps it should have 1 or 2 random extra resistances?

16 - in principle it is a good thing that slow digestion is powered up, but still there is so much food found in the dungeon, not to mention loads of satisfy hunger scrolls, that even a half-troll warrior is unlikely to sacrifice a ring or amulet slot for it. Perhaps the ring and amulet should have some minor extra power, like slow poison?

17 - spell failure chances seem higher than the spellbook mentions. I tested this with a 21st level mage with listed spell failure of 4% on detect monsters, with no negative effects present as far as I could see. I cast it in total 335 times in a row, and had 26 failures, which amounts to more than 7% - almost twice as much as listed.

18 - stores will not accept unidentified armor, not even for free. (I had a robe [2,+2] {??} that wasn't accepted until I happened to find out the rune in another way. It was resist fire.) I think they should, just like unidentified negative potions, scrolls, wands, etc. are bought. This is also contrary to the description in dungeon.txt. Weapons that are partially unknown and contain a curse are also unsellable.

19 - Why don't shops have consecutive letters for their inventory? It is confusing and I don't see a use.

I looked into using real fonts for the windows port at one point. Unfortunately, it seems like all support uses MS C++, and isn't really an option for gcc without a huge amount of work because of mangling issues and the like.

All letters that are commands in either keymap are not used as shop inventory letters.

To be a little more accurate, letters that are commands that can be used whilst in a shop are not used as inventory letters. E.g., "a" is used as an inventory letter, because one cannot "aim" while in a shop; but "b" is not used as an inventory letter, because one can "browse" a book while in a shop.

While in a shop one can [b]rowse a book, [d]onate an item, [e]quipment menu lookup, [g]et or purchase an item, [i]nventory menu lookup, [k]ill an item (ignore an item), [l]ook at or examine an item, [p]urchase an item, [s]ell or donate an item, [t]ake off a piece of equipment, or e[x]amine an item. Thus these letter commands are not used in the enumeration of shop inventory.

More bugs and Wishes
 

I've continued collecting more findings:

20 - wish: for auto ignore menu's: could space also work to toggle the ignore? Apparently for me that is such a logical key that I keep making that mistake. There is also no explanation which key should work (although I found the 't' quick enough. Enter works also, but I'd expect the cursor to move to the next item then, and it doesn't.).

21 - for a priest, the cure serious spell from the Purifications and Healings book is way higher level (15 vs. 5 --> higher spell failure, worsened by higher base fail: 50 vs 32) and costs more mana (5 vs 4) than the one from the basic book, and I don't see any exta benefit. Shouldn't that be the other way around? That cure mortal wounds version is 4 mana cheaper and only 4 levels higher (but 25% higher base fail).

22 - if you browse a spellbook, toggle descriptions on, and scroll through the spells, the longer descriptions lines 3 and 4 do not get erased fully if you select a spell with a single line of text (and line 4 not when two lines). E.g. browse first book, toggle descriptions, select e and then f.

23 - Wish: show with items that are recharging in their description how long it is expected before they are recharged (I know there is a random factor, but you could use the average), or at least how long it is already charging.

24 - Wish: monsters shouldn't be able to summon higher lavels than they are: why would a more powerful monster obey a lesser one?

25 - Why does in the middle of combat (lvl 92 - animal zoo) suddenly a message appear: "FINAL POWER IS 72*"? The only thing object-related was that some spellbooks were burnt at the time.

26 - spells that negatively influence monsters, like confuse monster, list the duration as "dam 40" even though they do not do damage. This is confusing and should read "dur 40", like player booster spells like haste.

27 - in some cases item description can be confusing, like with a staff of remove curse: "... When activated, it attempts removal of a single curse on an object. Your chance of success is 94.9%". The 94.9% is not the chance to remove the curse but to use the staff, so more correct would be "Your chance of successfully using this item is 94.9%". (But longer, so it might make the item description slightly less clear.)

28 - if a spell beams, monsters hit on the way that are killed seem to survive, and only when the beam has run it's full course the monsters on the way fall over. This is confusing because you are already planning your next attack, only to find out a second later that it is not necessary anymore. Can't monster kill be handled before the beam continues?

29 - Wsh: the game allows movement by mouse click. Why doesn't it use the monster pathfinding so that you can click further away - that would really make it easier to e.g. move to the stairs when you've finished the level. The only issue might be that you should not be able to find the quickest route through unexplored territory (which is a bit cheating).

30 - If you run (Shift-direction) you stop one step before an item, and when you run again one step beyond the item (which doesn't seem to make sense to me - stopping on the item itself seems most natural to me) And if there is a trap at that square beyond the item, you trigger it even when your disarm is 100%.

31 - with the action that doubled armor class of all armors, I suspect the weapons that give AC were not increased, because it seems that, apart from the Cutlass 'Gondricam', the AC bonuses from weapons is peanuts, like a defender [+2]!?

32 - an fully identified cloak [1, +6] (cursed - teleportation prevention), incorrectly displays a lot of ? in the character resistance overview.

33 - Wish: unique Ainur Osse should not have nether breath and lower Xp - that is not fitting to an angel (ainur) and it is not even evil. Having nether (550) breath is also unbalanced for level 62 - even with resistance that can do up to 471 damage. The remaining capacities, esp. water ball, and the fact that it is very quick still make it dangerous enough.
Discussion: should damage also be capped to monster level, e.g. 60*level? Or even to dungeon level - you could say that the specific monsters that are able to survive at deeper levels are the stronger ones of the spieces.

This has always bugged me too. On the other hand it's not always a commandment to attend the fight, in the necromancer summons skeletons way, as sometimes it's a call to friends for aid, in the same way a smaller kid calls for help from his much bigger friend in the schoolyard.

The counter argument to this is: why would they bother to summon something weaker?

That said I did make that change to the source once and I thought it played better. But it's not a strong preference

I threw a (+5, +3) spear at a yellow kobold and it knocked half his health off, but the spear broke. Shouldn't thrown weapons have a pretty small chance of breaking? What if instead they maybe lost some damage every half a dozen throws or so? Seems to me a spear should be good for at least a few dozen throws before breaking. Do the to-hit and dam stats affect throwing?

Throwing is pretty terrible in Vanilla. The to-hit and to-dam do affect the throw, but there's no multiplier, so you basically get a single melee blow (except affected by your base throwing skill instead of your base melee skill), and then as you noted there's the chance of the weapon breaking.

Throwing could certainly be tweaked, but if it's going to be viable then it really just has to be overhauled. Realistically if you want to kill things from range, use a launcher or spells/devices.

There's a tag for throwing weapons (you see it on the Thancs) though I'm not sure what it actually does. Still that's a starting pt if you are just after a minor tweak.

... didnt know weapons could break.

Not that i would even use throw ...


I suspect that throw is the way it is to stop people from throwing MoDs and GoPs at mobs. I mean, you still can, but the damage is nowhere near what you get with melee.

With THROWING weapons you get 2x damage. In some variants (and in older angband versions) there is also WELL_BALANCED flag, which gets another factor of two. In any case, i never throw anything except flasks of oil for damage, and arrows and bolts for ID.

Throwing slaying ammo is wierdly effective though obviously weaker then the launcher.

I will go through then at some point (hopefully soon), file the ones that are clear bugs or needed changes, test those that are unclear, and explain why the remainder are not problems.

At least, that's the plan :)

In the early game, I find throwing pebbles or iron shots is reasonably effective until one finds a launcher. This is especially true with the more fragile race/class combos, as they necessitate fighting from a distance at the very start.

Recently I've taken to buying bolts (1d5) at the start of my Rogue characters for throwing since bolts do the most damage of any average ammos. Heavier than arrows but lighter than iron shots.

But flasks of oil do more (as do wands of magic missile.) If you need to do damage early, generally you want to do it fast. I've taken Bullroarer with oil more than once, at CL 1 or 2. Using thrown bolts would probably use up all my ?PD.

Buying a Wand of Magic Missile with your starting money is a pretty fun way to go sometimes. It's pretty expensive, which limits your other gear options substantially (and almost certainly means your first dive is one-way until you find a ?WoR), but it trivializes a surprisingly large number of fights. It's especially worthwhile for mages and priests, whose offensive options early on are very limited.

10 !oil, some ?Phase, and a !Heroism have nearly the same effect and is a lot cheaper than -MM. Dive fast, looking for high value target. Then instant CL7.

Oil misses more than Magic Missile fails to activate in my experience. It also has considerably less range. I will agree that your proposal is more versatile, mostly on the basis of giving you other consumables that are generally useful, but I'd give the -MM approach a shot once or twice before you shoot it down entirely. :)

Oil can be a bit of a disaster for a human mage, you don't have infravision so you can't actually see the doggies without light. Even with !heroism I'm not convinced a lvl 1 human mage can hit the dogs reliably enough, I think the little guys have +throwing? The hobbit certainly does.

Yeah Ive tried it. It is a high variance method: either die fast, or level up fast. Using oil doesnt work quite so fast, but it has much less downside risk.

I never bother with oil. The chance of missing is way too high compared to shooting/throwing/magic.

The chance of hitting with oil is the same as with any other thrown object, and at a low level, the extra +10 to hit from !hero makes a huge difference in odds. It and -MM are the only way to take out Bullroarer at CL 1 or 2. It is useful at most once in a game. But it is a use with massive potential upside.
That said, if you are grinding at low levels, it won't ever pay off.

I have tried the MM approach but do find it so expensive. I will give oil and heroism a try next time!

Total cost is ~60GP: 12 !oil and 1 !Hero (which you should be getting in any case in case of fear attacks.) Strategy is particularly good if you are skipping levels a la Quickband.

OK, here's a response to the first list:

Filed as bugs.


Should be fixed, but doesn't seem to be - bug reopened.

Making a keymap for resting one turn should work.

I don't necessarily see this as a problem, but will consider it with the monster list revamp.

I don't think I quite understand this one.

Sounds sensible.

Because 'm' is the real command, and 'p' is just mapped to it. With new classes coming in it may be best to remove the 'p' command altogether.

Monster level is displayed, once learned (from killing one, IIRC).

I think it has been mentioned that you can achieve this by using an old save file. The defaults are actually currently compiled into the game; it's possible that they will be in a player-editable file at some time in the future.

This has been requested before, and is problematic for player damage to monsters because spells sometimes don't have defined targets. It probably could be implemented for monster damage to the player.

This is a perennial issue, affected by many things. It's a constant balancing act, and will remain so. I do listen to specific complaints :)

Filed as a change to be made.

The usual argument for this is that they are not intended as a first source of the four basic resistances, but rather as a way of using the amulet slot to get the basics and free up other slots from having to cover them. I suspect that is still a decent argument.

They really only of any use early - maybe that's OK though.

This is a common complaint, usually refuted by an appeal to advanced mathematical statistics :)

This has been noted before, I've filed it as a bug.

Answered upthread; it's to avoid conflict with shop commands.

I'll get onto the rest of the list soon.

As an expert in advanced mathematics :p, the binomial test for 26 failures out of 335 at 4% failure rate gives a one-sided p-value of 0.00114. This means that you can expect to observe 26 or more failures about 0.11% of the times.

Usually, in a single, non-repeated experiment, a result is considered statistically significant if the p-value is 0.05 or below. So yes, that seems a statistically unusually high failure rate, and worth investigating. There is usually a reporting bias, in that only 'unusual' results get reported to the devs, so the best thing would be collecting completely new data to test it.

BTW: for the rest one turn keymap, I suggest 's', and make it rest 5 or 10 turns (or until disturbed.) I used to use the old search command for this all the time: wait until a nearby monster moves, or appears around a corner .

Ran some tests: created a human mage, advanced him with debug commands to lvl21 and enough int to get 4% failure rate, and cast detect monsters 335 times. Got 14 failures. p-value of 0.47. Verdict: the RNG seems to work OK. Complaint "refuted by an appeal to advanced mathematical statistics". :)

For low probability events, a poisson distribution is generally appropriate. It always has a fat tail (because you can't have fewer than zero events.) Yes, it will eventually converge to normal (as any distribution will.) But even at expectation value E=14, while the curve looks close to normal, the tail is significantly fatter at 1.5*E. The estimate of 0.11% is too low by a significant amount.

I don't follow you. These are independent trials, so their exact distribution is binomial/Bernoulli. I'm not approximating anything with a normal. 0.11% is what is returned by

Right. My bad.

Note: I've already failed a spell with 1% failure rate five times in a row :)

All you've proven is that under controlled test circumstances the rng doesnt fail.
I hope it's evident why that isnt enough.

Everyone has reported unusual rng results. At some point you gotta accept that it's not an epidemic of bias and something in the code is doing something it shouldnt. And god knows what it is. What is the rng based on anyway, system clock? That has to go through the OS which could unwittingly manipulate the results.

Empyrical observation does have its merits, y'know.

Oh btw congrats PowerWyrm on a 1:10,000,000,000 chance.

As far as I understand (I didn't write the code) the RNG does one call to time() in Rand_init() when the game is started, then it's all state-based. If I read the branches correctly it uses this RNG.

Actually, no. Humans are built to recognise patterns; if there is no actual pattern, we will still find one. The correct thing to do is to have a mathematically sound source of randomness, check the implementation from time to time, and otherwise accept that people will continue to tell you that the RNG is broken :)

Nick nailed it. A 1 in 10,000,000 chance for an event that is not specified in advance is not actually 1 in 10,000,000 at all. And it is happening in a game with roughly 100k moves, which reduces the per-game chance by a lot. And it is happening to one player on a forum, rather than one in isolation. We have to *expect* to see these events fairly regularly, be it a 1% fail repeated 5 times, or a ring of speed +24...or Dwarven PDSM.

Civ 2 lied to everyone for years and it turned out that the computer *was* in fact cheating. The same did BloodBowl.

Anyway, the "people find patterns" applies to randomly tested unaware people, and i must point out that .. we are none of those. I put it to you that the average angband player is far more likely to have confidence with maths and abstract concepts than your typical God Of War player.

Im sorry pal but when yet again i fail 7 times a 5% spell, those things dont go unnoticed.


If you guys Really want to do some testing... play a game. A whole game, from town to morgoth. And write down everything.
You've done your lab test, now it's time for field testing.

We do play the game. And we recognize both confirmation bias and reporting bias. If want to test the RNG, put it through an autocorrelator with N = 100. The bottom line is the Mersenne twister has been tested by people who know a lot more statistics than you and I.

As Pete Mack notes, there are actually two cognitive biases occurring here. The first is the one that convinces people that failing a 5% spell 7 times in a row during gameplay is a statistically reasonable trial from which to derive that the RNG is failing. The second is, of course, "everyone has reported unusual rng results". I have not. I imagine many other people on this forum have not. However, those that do are more remarkable, and so they seem more common than they actually are. In order to perhaps correct that perception, I will now report RNG results.

I just started a new mage run today, inspired by this thread. That character is now clvl 26 and with 18/70 INT, and has 4% fail on detect monsters. I made a keymap that casts detect monsters 5 times. I then pressed it many many times, counting each time that it failed. It failed 13 times within the first 335 casts (I cast it a bunch of times after as well because I was running through my whole mana and it didn't fail after, but those don't count because I decided to run 335 casts). I'm not actually any good at stats, but I'm pretty sure 13 failures is what you'd expect from a fair dice roll. There were no apparent anomalies during the test, though since I wasn't testing for those, it doesn't really matter.

Philip--
I suspect you have posted AARs that support reporting bias (assuming you post AARs at all.) Every crazy speed ring, and every YASD that occurs because of repeated failure. By and large people post AARs when something unlikely happens, not something ho-hum. I do not mean to imply that everyone thinks the RNG is broken and is actively busy generating reporting bias.

Oh, for sure in that sense. I was more talking about the bias that causes Sky to suggest that reports of (perceived) problems with the RNG are very common, even though they're really not, though they are rather memorable, especially if you're already inclined to believe the RNG is bad.

Looks like a reasonable test to me. Do you volunteer to run it, since we are fairly sure ourselves that the RNG is right? It would be a valuable contribution. I guess this could even be automated with a couple of fprintf() in the right place.

I suggest a couple of rules to ensure fairness:

* write a forum post before starting, detailing which events you are going to track (for instance, spell failure rates). Only "pre-registered" characters count.
* report the results after your game no matter what they are and no matter what happens to the character (e.g., inglorious death at 500' by the hands of Wormtongue).

The last time i noticed i failed 3 times in a row at a 5% fail, i then realized i was stunned.

anecdotical evidence:
When i fight Morgoth as a mage, i always use Mana Storm exclusively. Depending on my level and the fail rate, i needed 66 - 78 Mana Storms.
I usually note the real and expected fail rate in my final dump. Fail rates:
32% (expected 35%)
34% (expected 26%)
37% (expected 32%)
23% (expected 23%)
17% (expected 20%)
So it looks like the RNG works correct.


Additional info regarding the RNG:
If you fail 7 times in a row at 5% fail rate, this doesn't even mean that the RNG did a low roll 7 tims in a row. Unless that happened in an empty town, there were probably 10 - 100 rolls for monster actions between your castings.

Even in the town, the RNG deciding whether and where to spawn more townsfolk.

Crashing during standard roller chargen
 

If I repeatedly alternate between pressing 'p' for "previous roll" and 'r' for "new roll" (to keep an old roll and compare my new rolls to it) during standard roller character generation, the game eventually crashes, sometime after only a couple rolls. No error message is shown by default, but when I traced the process with gdb, gdb tells me that the program exited with SIGABRT because of corrupted memory or a double free.

Can anybody else reproduce this? This is in 4.1.3.

Just tried. 50 keypresses(25 'p's 25 'r's). No crash

Wobbly--
Try a debug build. They have nuch better chance of detection duplicate frees.

gdb says that the offending line is z-virt.c:67 in mem_free():
Going up from the stack frame where the fault occurred reveals the following function call:
If I restart the program and reproduce the bug again, the program hangs up in the same place, but with a different string (since the string is one of the things being randomized by the chargen) and different garbage at the beginning of it.

Continuing to test this bug, I've hit other error messages as well, like "realloc(): invalid old size". In this case, the program seems to crash hard; my terminal hangs up. The "double free" message I only see if I'm tracing the program with gdb, but the "invalid old size" displays (right at the end of the curses display, without even a newline before it) even if I'm not tracing the program.

I've also noticed some inconsistent behavior: the history at the bottom of the character sheet sometimes changes when I press 'p'.

Note that there is no description of the character's appearance here! This particular bit of data of the data seems to get lost pretty often. The family information there is the same as it was before.

However, sometimes weirder things happen. A crash ususually follows:
I don't always have to strictly alternate between 'p' and 'r' to get the program to crash. Sometimes just pressing them without much pattern will cause it to happen. However, if I press only 'p' or only 'r' a bunch of times, it usually does NOT happen.

Sometimes, especially if I press 'r' a bunch of times in a row without pressing 'p', I will reach a state where pressing 'p' will restore the stats of the previously-rolled sheet, but see the history stay the same. In this state, if I press 'r', the history does change, but if I press 'p', the history stays the same. After rolling a number of new characters, the program may resume retrieving previous characters' histories as normal. Sometimes when histories are not being retrieved properly, the appearance description disappears when the previous sheet is loaded, but the genealogical information remains. When this happens, pressing 'p' again will restore the appearance description with the rest of the history.

It also looks like I can get the program to crash by manually editing the character history to be too long. Can you replicate that, wobbly?

I'd have to know what you mean by manually editing. If you mean in-game where it says accept character history y/n. If I hit n, then hold down a key for a while then when I press enter the game does in fact crash for me.

Yes, that is what I mean by manually editing.

Good catch vivit! Well characterized reports of memory errors are a gift to developers.

Thanks! I know from experience that memory-related bugs are some of the weirdest, nastiest, most elusive, and most resilient kinds of bugs out there, so fixing this quickly is going to require as much information as possible.

Nick posted on his Oct28 post, that he does not understand what this is about.

It is about using text chars and altering the font you use.

The program uses a fixed char width and height for each window. If you change a font, this two variables are not automatically adjusted. If you increase the font size, it will result in that chars are not shown completely anymore. If you decrease font size it will result in additional space above/between chars.

The solution for this problem is: after altering the font size, the user can adjust the width and height variables manually using the corresponding menu entries.

For the main window only there is also an automatically adjustment available in the windows menu, it is called "window=>term 0 font tile size => font". If you use that option after choosing a charset with a different width / heigth than before the window size is adjusted to show with the new font as many lines and columns as with the previously charset.

The change / feature request was:
(A) Make this automatically adjustment available for all sub windows as well.
(B) Call this function always after choosing a new charset for a window, so that the user does not need to call this function manually over the menu anymore. (B) ensures, that after choosing a new font, it is readable because width and heigth are adjusted to the required values of the new font.

And some more answers:

I think this one is just a matter of getting used to it - space is kind of reserved as something you can always use to clear messages without it having any gameplay effect, and I think we want to keep that strictly true.

Will be "fixed" in 4.2 with new classes :)

Filed as a bug.

I'm concerned that the player is already bombarded with info, and this might make that info a bit busier - what do others think?

High level doesn't necessarily mean smarter. Also, "I'll just get my manager" :)

That's something that can be written when object power is being assessed; it typically only gets written into the logfile for randart generation. My best guess is that it was some kid of memory issue, and I've filed it as a bug (without much prospect of really solving exactly why it happened).

I didn't think any did (except maybe Bedlam). Which spells?

I feel that on the whole the extra verbosity isn't worth it. The player should be used to seeing this on magic devices, and there is a separate curse menu which tells the odds of removing the curse.

Short answer - no. This is the standard way all projections work; it possibly could be rewritten, but I don't think it's worth the time and potential of introducing new bugs. This is another case of just needing to get used to it.

You are never "finished the level" - a new monster might have spawned between yo and the stairs. I think the mouse movement as is is OK.

Added this to another bug about running.

The range of armour classes was doubled, not all armour classes, mostly by increasing the AC of heavy armour so it was more wearable. Possibly some weapons could be looked at to have their AC increased, but I think it's a marginal issue.

Added to another bug about ID issues.

Agreed about Osse and nether - all monsters will be up for re-examination for 4.2. Capping damage by level is an interesting idea, but on the whole I think it's too restrictive.

Stopping one square away is better, since you can see what it is before reaching it. Unless you do auto-pickup, you won't know necessarily know why you stopped. My one complaint: If you keep running when you stop next to stairs, you run right over top of them without stopping. This is particularly annoying on android, where tap-running is the default way to navigate the dungeon.

If I was the dictator maintainer (and a super duper programmer), I would make these changes in the next version:

- remove magic mushroom patches, they're nothing but an annoyance
- remove nexus quylthulgs, they're nothing but an annoyance (especially when exploring a vault and you have a level feeling of X-9 or X-8)
- remove hand, foot and skull drujs, they're hardly anything but an annoyance
- a warrior should not get a good level feeling when a high level prayer / spellbook is created on a level, same thing about green prayer books for mages/rogues/rangers and red spellbooks for priests and paladins

They are there to teach novice players about the mechanics of confusion and so serve a purpose. For me they aren't even an issue

They are annoying; I'd rather give nexus resistance a chance of avoiding the teleport, or reduce their chance of casting teleport on you. They provide an interesting challenge of how to approach the area they are in

Oh no they are the turrets of Angband and again give a different challenge to just walking up and wailing on every creature you come across

I'll agree with that one. I know Nick has already reduces the drop rates for books which can't be used by the player; this might be the next logical change along that line

Of course this just my 2p/2c and mileage my vary

High level drops can still be useful to those using sell:on

Indeed they can. Should that affect the level feeling though? Maybe so as 'there are some good treasures here'. You could always leave it for those with selling on

Nexus quylthulg is mostly just a super annoying monster. Hard-to-detect teleport away machine. But non-resistible teleport also makes it potentially one of the most dangerous critter, depending on a situation developed on the level ofc.

Okay, now I want a foot druj, which unlike the other ones is mobile. :D (the variety you missed was the eye druj, by the way)

As for your other suggestions, my advice is to try to internalize the fact that there's an infinite supply of dungeon levels, so the contents of any one level (or indeed any portion of any one level) are not special. It makes no particular difference if you ditch one level halfway through; you can make an unlimited supply of statistically identical levels. It helps (when trying to learn this lesson) to turn level feelings off, since they do nothing but encourage you to think about what makes this one level special. It's not special. No level is special.

Once you've learned this lesson, you'll be far more willing to abandon a level if it has something you don't want, and far less bothered about getting kicked off a level by a monster with a teleport-level spell.

That is true Derakon, with a few exceptions. I think most of us had the experience when enlightenment showed something you really needed (missing dungeon book, an unknown ring type when you know it must be a ring of power etc) and you can't get near the precious loot inside a perma-wall vault because it is guarded by a nexus q. That's annoying for sure. If it's a forced descent game, it can really hurt.
I still would not remove them, they are part of the challenge. But I can understand if someone gets upset after such an encounter ;)

The last in your list is the only one requiring code changes, so you don't actually need to be a super duper coder.

I also 2nd the addition of foot drujs. They could have stinking cloud as their main attack spell.

Sounds like foot drujs are up for inclusion in the monster list overhaul!

.
.
.

You might say they could be a shoe-in

(And no I'm not proud of that)

Oh dear... what have I unleashed? :eek:

:D

Nick needs to put his foot down on this.

:-)

OK, that's enough.

Anyone who doesn't toe the line will get the boot.

While we're at joke characters:

name:Head of Vecna
base: skeleton
color: y
level: 5
speed: 120
hit-points: 55
flags: UNIQUE
spell-freq: 1
spell: TRAPS | SLOW | CONFUSE | DARKNESS | SHRIEK |TERRIFY | BLINK
spell-power: 8
experience: 50
desc: A floating skull flickering with eldritch shadows.

You mean create Nick's foot the druj (Unique)? I guess that's one way for our maintainer to achieve immortality... ;)

Needs the NO_MOVE tag, and also clearly should only be generated once Vecna himself has been destroyed. :)

Actually, given the lore of how liches work, having to destroy the individual parts of a lich once you've "killed" it the first time isn't that far-fetched.

Something with spell freq 1 & lacking No_move could be amusing though. It moves but only when you're not watching it

Head of Vecna does not in fact come from Vecna (and is fairly low level):
http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm

So I could never reliably reproduce this, but I did find some very poor behaviour in the character history editor which has now been fixed in development. If anyone notices this bug reoccurring, please let me know.

Reading the description (SIGABRT because of corrupted memory or a double free), it seems the same bug fixed in the following change.
https://github.com/angband/angband/c...bdc0201a710a2a

Aha, yes! Thanks for pointing that out - and also for the fix :)

Just started playing anband recently.There is one thing that's a huge turn-off for me:

A clvl 20 half-troll warrior does more damage with his starting dagger than with a war hammer of orc slaying against orcs!

Super immersion-breaking and imo a bug in the combat system.

;)

Regarding your recent change to ui-birth.c, it fixed another bug also reported by Vivit in this thread.

This has been the case for literally decades. I'm not saying it won't be fixed ever, but fixing it is a hard problem with far-reaching implications for game balance.

On looking at this, I think the current label is correct. Level for an item is used in a few places, most importantly for how easy devices are to use. Frequently, but not always, this does correspond to minimum depth it can be found. So I think level is probably the thing to print, and I think calling the column level is also correct.

Can we have a "smaller levels" birth option in future version ?

That seems like something to look into.

Didn't wobbly have a go at fixing this? Might be worth looking at what he's done with coffeeband here?

I looked into this a bit and

1. decided that it would require significant change to the combat system rather than just tweaking, which led to
2. introducing the percentage damage birth option, which is too broken to be more than just a placeholder at the moment, but should evolve into a real alternative.