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January 3, 2014 23:21 |
Sil 1.2
Sil 1.2 is now available.
Headline features:
* Some monsters now have abilities too, like Charge, Exchange Places and Songs...
* There are now chasms in the dungeon
* Many new vaults and interesting rooms
* Many balance improvements, minor changes, and bug fixes
Full Changelist:
Code:
- Sil 1.2.0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- broke savefile compatibility
- sorry about this
- it needs to happen every now and then and I schedule it for the 1.X.0 releases
- many of the small improvements in this version are from the Sil variant: mpa-sil
- I've noted this below where I remember -- apologies for those I've forgotten to credit
- monster abilities
- monsters can now have some of the abilities that the player can get
- such as Charge, Cruel Blow, etc.
- Morgoth and Gorthaur have songs of power
- abilities
- Throwing Mastery now prevents thrown items from breaking
- Two Weapon Fighting no longer allows you to wield 'hand and a half' weapons in your off-hand
- Knock Back
- now requires there to be no monster in the square the creature is knocked into
- so orcs don't get swapped in corridors etc
- it now takes weapon weight into account in determining your effective strength
- so you will want a heavy enough weapon to get your full strength bonus
- Point Blank Shot now completely prevents the attack of opportunity from the
enemy you just shot at, instead of 50% chance for all adjacent enemies
- Skill requirements reduced on several early Evasion Abilities
- Added the Evasion Ability: Leaping
- Flanking no longer requires Dodging (though the latter still works well with it)
- Heavy Armour use now has an alternative pre-requisite of Crowd Fighting
- Lore-master no longer identifies chest traps (via mpa-sil)
- Majesty now takes the monster's Will into account
- instead of reducing morale by Will/4...
- it reduces it by half the difference between your Will and theirs
- Song of Sharpness now lowers enemy protection by 2% per point of Song
- this is usually a smaller effect than the old rules
- Song of Mastery is now slightly cheaper to make the skill point progression simpler
- Unwavering Voice has been removed
- having non-song abilities in the Song tree limits the ability for people to learn many songs
- and this was the weakest one in terms of game mechanics
- Woven Themes now makes the minor theme use (Song / 2) instead of (Song - 5)
- this makes it worse in most cases
- but this means more people will use Song abilities to get actual songs
- made slightly more expensive to make the skill point progression simpler
- smithing
- 'slays' no longer cost a strength point to add to a weapon
- it was too steep a cost for the early game, making no-one add them
- artefact arrows now have half the difficulty
- it was crazy costing you as much for 1 arrow as for 24 or a regular equipment piece
- fixed several of the smithing bugs
- the game is now clear that you can only use one of Enchant or Artifice per item
- this removes the worst smithing bugs
- fixed a bug with artefact rings and amulets forgetting their special bonuses sometimes
- I think the only remaining bugs are glitches surrounding abilities on artefacts disappearing or duplicating
- the work around is to only add abilities to artefacts immediately before the end
- items
- weights
- randomised weights for weapons and armour are now less fine grained (via mpa-sil)
- they come in multiples of 0.5 lb instead of 0.1 lb
- other weights tweaked a bit to match (e.g. potions from 0.4 lb to 0.5 lb)
- increased chance of generating out of depth items from 1 in 10 to 1 in 7
- identification
- there is no longer a perception check when identifying items by use
- (you automatically pass if you get the opportunity)
- identification of passive abilities now occurs twice as quickly
- reduced the late game frequencies of many potions/herbs
- people typically had far too many of them by the throne room
- horns
- changed trumpets to horns
- changed colours, descriptions, adjectives
- dramatically reduced weight
- added the Horn of Force, which knocks back enemies in its path
- vampiric weapons no longer drain life from nonliving monsters
- herbs of rage
- now make you completely immune to fear
- previously it was just resistance, but the possibility of frightened rage was silly
- you can no longer identify monsters via the recall window
- staffs of treasures now display non-subdued Deathblades
- bows
- Shortbows now native to 50 ft instead of 100 ft
- so archers should be a bit easier to start
- Longbows
- now native to 150 ft instead of 350 ft
- to give players a better choice of archery style through the game
- no longer get the [-1] penalty
- it was a bit fiddly and too few archers were using them anyway
- Dragon-horn Bows are now 1d9 2.0lb
- a bit like deathblades or the old longbows
- they should be more tempting to the majority of archers who find them now
- throwing items (daggers, spears, throwing axes)
- now found in slightly larger stacks
- removed some of the special item types they could get that required wielding
- made an automatic throwing command: control-t
- throws the first throwing item in your inventory at your target or closest monster
- akin to "ff"
- artefacts
- made the Greatsword of Saithnar a bit less good
- made the Shortsword of Galadriel rarer
- tweaked the stats of the Helm of Curufin
- it had (-1) instead of [-1] only because 5 years ago that was how all helms were...
- the Cloak of Maglor now grants Song of the Trees
- as Unwavering Voice was removed
- display
- molds are now always visible once sighted for the first time (via mpa-sil?)
- made the darkest shade of grey (d1) a bit darker
- needed to tell it apart more clearly from the others
- visual display of hits on monsters changed
- there is no longer a colour difference when doing more than 10 damage
- instead, there is a colour difference when killing an opponent
- significantly improved the self knowledge screen to show the quantitative effects
- including the details of stacked levels of an attribute
- now also identifies items if the item granting the power is known
- (e.g. slay orc on melee weapon) (via mpa-sil)
- weapon and armour weights are now shown when you walk over them (via mpa-sil?)
- gave more detail in the in-game descriptions of some abilities (via mpa-sil)
- if you are in a pit or web, this is now displayed in the status line
- adjusted the 'notes' display
- to let it fit slightly longer notes
- and changed self-made notes so that the last few words don't automatically flow to the next line
- which makes it easier to manually write long multi-line notes without looking ragged
- falls now correctly display the character of the thing that made you fall in the combat rolls window
- e.g. the staircase or the false floor
- abbreviate "Health" and "Voice" when you have more than 100 points of it (via mpa-sil)
- interface
- removed "always pickup" and "prompt before picking things up" options
- the former let you get free turns and wasn't really any easier than manual pickup
- (since you want to pick up less than half of things and need a keystroke either way)
- the latter was only needed with the former
- added an user interface option to 'Forgo bonus attacks on unwary enemies'
- this used to be always on, but can now be toggled
- I've made sure it covers *all* bonus attacks (I'd missed Rapid Fire and maybe another)
- targetting
- firing an arrow 'ff' when the target is a location that is now out of line of fire, no longer fires
- added an automatic throwing command that throws the first throwing item in inventory at the first target
- both firing and throwing no longer automatically choose a target if it is out of range
- you can now inscribe your melee weapon with "!a" somewhere in the inscription (via mpa-sil?)
- this will trigger a warning every time you try to attack with it
- good for pacifists, extreme stealth characters, and smithing equipment
- you will also be similarly warned if trying to attack with a shovel or bare-handed
- monster memory now explains that touch attacks ignore armour
- you are notified when entering greater vaults (via mpa-sil)
- monsters
- unified how monster mana works
- they each have a capacity of 15 points of 'mana'
- it regenerates 1 point per round (if not singing)
- casting a spell uses 10
- starting a song uses 1 per round
- and monsters only decide to start if they have at least 10
- made the check for monsters to bash down doors the same as for the player
- I don't know how this had got out of sync
- it is now easier for monsters to bash doors
- allowed weaker monsters to rarely (1 in 10) push past stronger ones
- necessary for the new pathfinding code
- orc warriors
- now come in smaller groups
- also have the Ability 'Charge'
- easterlings
- easterling archers
- their longbows now do 2d7 instead of the old-fashioned 1d11
- easterling warriors
- have the Ability 'Flanking'
- Uldor, the Accursed is now an archer rather than a melee specialist
- makes him more different, and good to have an archer unique
- has the Ability 'Crippling Shot'
- Ulfang, the Black
- has the Ability 'Opportunist'
- Maeglin
- has the Ability 'Riposte'
- cats
- cat warriors
- have the Ability 'Exchange Places'
- Tevildo
- has the Ability 'Cruel Blow'
- and has melee reduced a little to compensate
- trolls
- all types have the Ability 'Knock Back'
- Dagorhir, the Elfbane
- now has the Ability 'Elf-Bane'
- his base att/evn was lowered a bit to compensate
- worm masses
- now become unwary properly when you are far enough away (like other monsters)
- since they don't breed when unwary, this should help with worm mass explosions
- their crawl attacks no longer halve your armour (unneeded complexity)
- but I've slightly increased damage to partially compensate
- raukar
- sulraukar are now easier to kill
- reduced evasion and protection
- ringraukar
- increased damage
- kemenraukar
- reduced evasion
- adjusted their AI slightly to weakly prefer open space to breaking through a wall
- shadow spiders
- reduced health (slightly), evasion, and melee
- they seemed to be a bit too tough, but you will still want to remember to run away!
- Thuringwethil is now coloured red to make her more distinct
- Gorthaur
- has gained a Song
- Morgoth
- has gained two Songs
- and a point of Con to make him slightly more resilient
- vaults
- added many new vaults, including many designed by Clouded and some by HallucinationMushroom (from the Forum)
- made vaults a little more common, including earlier in the dungeon
- removed iron walls (a.k.a. permanent rock)
- it wasn't really needed and we weren't doing anything interesting with it
- traps
- removed amnesia gas traps due to player frustration
- removed flame traps from chests as they just encouraged dropping your flammable goods (via mpa-sil)
- other
- digging
- you no longer need to be wielding a digger to dig with it
- carrying it in your backpack is enough
- this saves some turns (and tedium) when digging
- but to balance this digging now provokes attacks of opportunity from adjacent enemies (like archery)
- the strength requirements have been changed (via mpa-sil)
- you now need Str 1 to clear rubble, Str 2 to break quartz, and Str 3 to break granite
- it no longer depends upon the digger weight (as there was no clean way to do so)
- stealth
- reduced the difficulty of having monsters lose track of you (become unwary again)
- previously you had to beat them at their perception roll by 30
- now it is by 25
- Vanish still give +10 to this roll
- passing the turn in stealth mode doesn't suffer the speed penalty
- so it is no longer advantageous to toggle stealth mode on and off if you want to pass
- the word 'slow' is still displayed but that relates to the next action, not the last one
- unified and clarified the stacking behaviour of numerous effects on the player and monsters
- almost everything that can stack, does stack
- all temporary effects (except entrancement): add new duration to the existing duration
- speed: stacks but the final score is limited to be between 1 and 3
- elemental resistances: x levels of (net) resistance means damage/x
x levels of (net) vulnerability means damage*x
- sustains: +10x bonus to Will check
- resist fear, blindness, confusion, stun, hallucination: +10x bonus to Will check
- free action: +10x bonus to Will check
- see invisible: +10x bonus to Perception check
- aggravate: unwary monsters get +10x to perception check
- regeneration: your regeneration rate is (1 + x) times normal
- danger: monsters are generated as x levels deeper
- cowardice: damage threshold to trigger fear is 10/x
- haunted: x% chance per turn of generating a wraith
- hunger: each level triples the rate, each level of slow digestion divides it by three.
- sharpness: Amount from song (song*2 %) is added to amount from weapon (0%, 50%, or 100%)
- slays/brands: each valid one adds a die of damage
- light: your equipment levels add up to produce your light radius
- light from sources on the floor, or monsters, or lit rooms, add their light levels on that square
- things that don't stack
- tunnelling: you tunnel with the best digger available, multiple diggers don't stack
- abilities: multiple copies of an Ability (such as Sprinting) don't stack
- entrancement: cannot affect you when you are already entranced
- monster effects
- morale effects: all add together
- temporary effects: add new duration to the existing duration
- the extra deep monsters generated during the escape now come from a wider range of levels
- to add more variety to the escape
- you no longer gain double experience for finding artefacts and unique monsters
- it was a bit unnecessary...
- removed the 'crown' screen at the end of the game
- it was left-over from Angband and seemed out of place
- if enough people want something like that, perhaps a better version could be added
- Dungeon
- more stairs on the really big levels
- more chance that a shaft is placed instead of a stair
- these things should make the escape a bit faster
- bugfixes
- chests weren't generating their contents properly
- minor changes to some vaults to stop generating chests in locations where their items would disappear
- off-hand weapons were using the wrong damage sides when making a charge attack
- the boots of Irime now give the right self-knowledge text
- when extra deep monsters are generated on a level in the pursuit, this no longer includes territorial ones
- you can no longer see what items a creature is standing on if you detect it with staff of foes or listen
- you can no longer see what items a creature is carrying unless you can see its square directly
- monsters that can't use stairs will no longer try to flee to them
- fixed the problem in debug mode where looking at newly generated monsters could print garbage strings
- fixed the game taking a turn when declining to attack during the 'truce'
- fixed the game taking a turn when you aborted an attempt to blow a horn (via mpa-sil)
- fixed the game giving a turn of poison/regeneration/etc when you save via Control-X (!)
- fixed a bug with two-weapon fighting where the off-hand penalty was only (-2) (via mpa-sil)
- fixed a bug with removing autoinscriptions from one item type accidentally removing all of them (via mpa-sil)
- off-hand weapon weight was counting for heavy armour use (via mpa-sil)
- Feanorian lamps and lesser jewels granting brightness now auto-identify properly
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