RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2
 

For the past few weeks I've been noisily working on porting the monster races of Pos into the latest version of V so I could enjoy playing as a monster while enjoying the latest features and conveniences of V. The basic gameplay is essentially working now, though the UI is still a little quirky. I'm not sure where I should go from here in development - there's still plenty of features left to add, so I figured I'd ask the good people of oook what they want to see.

If you're not familiar with Pos, the basic idea (putting aside possessors for a moment) is that you start as a wimpy member of some monster race, complete with its (wimpy) powers and unusual equipment slots, and by gaining levels you change into tougher members of that species. For example, you can start as a 2-headed hydra, and at level 8 you grow a third head and get the power to cast fear. Later on you get the power to cast stinking clouds, and then to breath fire and even plasma, just like tougher hydrae can. As you gain heads you also gain more slots to equip helmets and (in RePos) amulets. If you make it to level 45, you'll be sitting pretty with 11 helmet and 11 amulet slots!

That's what I've got working so far. There are other features too, and that's what I want your help with. Is this basic gameplay enough, and I should focus on ironing out the UI bugs and adding monster races? Do you want to see the random quests and artifact reforging of the Adventurer's Guild added? Do you want King monsters added? The ability to summon friendly monsters (a prerequisite for implementing some races)? What say you, banders?

Here's the game, beta version 0.5.2:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/g858d8...nd%200.5.2.zip

edit: Ugh, and of course it wouldn't be a release without at least one completely untested, crash-inducing feature being included. Upload should be fixed now.

edit: LATEST VERSION:
https://github.com/downloads/simongr...nd%200.6.5.rar

OSX compile:
https://github.com/downloads/NickMcC...-3.2.0-osx.dmg

Important notes for people playing the game:
Press the "U" key to use your race's powers, if it has any.
It doesn't matter what class you initially select if you're playing a monster, you'll always be assigned the monster class.
Baby red dragons evolve up the red dragon line every ten levels. At level twenty you can become a chaos drake instead of a mature red dragon if you want. If so, you'll have to reach level 40 before becoming a GWoC.
Hydrae evolve every 7-8 levels. Once you reach 9 heads, the EQ display will start misleading you. To remove EQ that comes after the piece labelled (w), press (x), (y), (z), ({), (|), or (}). The labels are bugged, ignore them.
Generally, if you want to swap one item out for another and you have more than one slot of that type (e.g. ring slots) it's better to manually take off one then wield the other. The prompt for switching items sometimes refuses to respond correctly.
Hydra are pretty strong in melee but have no versatility. They're kind of a unique challenge, like playing a warrior.
Red dragons get gobs of HP and cheap attack spells but also lack versatility and their attacks will be resisted later on.
Chaos dragon have expensive and weak spells but they're hardly resisted, and they get a melee attack that confuses. They have the most versatile powers though they still have to carry around plenty of rods.

More races, definately... and classes. For example, dragon should be a race and red (blue,green,white) should be the classes.

The (V) UI seems fine though I didn't play for more than a few minutes. here's what jumped out at me.

My baby red dragon started with a wielded ring of open wounds, a wielded torch, and 3 scrolls of curse weapon. Shouldn't dragons have dark-vision or something instead of a torch slot. What's with the other stuff? Are those just the mandatory cursed items that drop when I die. He also had 6 limbs in addition to his 5 other slots. He also got 3 attacks (claw,claw,bite). Is that normal for a baby dragon?

Might want to add a strictly limited number of utility spells in addition to his breath ability (don't go crazy with it). Detect treasure seems appropriate for a dragon at some point in his career.

Unlitited home slots for dragons... they are treasure hoarders.

... and rename the title screen.

I have eventual plans to use the class slot for possessors and other variations on being a monster. I could make a colorless drake race that turns into a baby * dragon at level 5, though.
Yeah, starting EQ was a bit messed up, I just fixed that. Now they start with a ring of damage and 2-3 scrolls of *Destruction*, like in Pos.
I don't remember if dragons have infravision or darkvision.. Smaug wasn't able to see Bilbo, but Bilbo could maybe have been invisible to all kinds of vision except Sauron's. I don't want to take the light slot away from them without good cause though; it's an important source of activatable powers
The 6 limb slots are for rings (four feet and two wingtips), maybe I should rename them from "on limb:" to "ring:" to be clearer.
Attack data is pulled straight from the monster file. I want the character sheet to display it eventually.
Red dragons do get word of destruction and blink after a few evolutions. I really like the idea of giving dragons the detect treasure spell.
One design goal is to make slow play less unattractive compared to diving, so that's another reason I ought to add unlimited home slots. It's now on the short list of things to do before 0.5.3.
I know I should change the title screen but I'm not really interested in doing ASCII art. Do you know anyone who's good at that sort of thing I could PM for help?
Above all, thanks for the feedback!

I'm sure there's a freeware program that can make ASCII graphics, I'll give a look for something and get back to you.
The 2nd screen on the character sheet is messed up, and shouldn't red dragons have innate rFire.

Very glad to see you working on this. Pos was one of my favorite variants.
I'd say more races and polish in the UI should be the first priority, and then the Adventurers guild - artifact reforging is such a needed thing for some of the races.
Summoning, and more importantly summoned creature AI would be nice, but I think would be very hard to get right. The companion leveling in Pos was fun, but tended to become very unbalanced.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Regards,
Jonathan

I also want to offer my encouragement on this--Posband is probably my favorite variant as well.

Since you claim that adding more races is an easier task, I would focus on this, followed by ironing out gameplay bugs and polishing the UI so everything is playable.

Then work on summoning, since this is lots of fun, and required for some races to play effectively. I *wouldn't* worry too much about the balance of the game--the unbalance of the original Posband was part of the fun. Plus, it's easier to tweak game balance after all the races and features are in place.

Keep up the good work!

More fonts than you can shake a stick at..

Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone!
They do, which becomes ImmFire at level 30, it just doesn't show up because of how much I've broken that screen. That's one of those UI issues I need to fix ASAP

This is what I was worried about.. if high level play would be impossible for some races because of lack of reforging. OTOH, I haven't added all the (really tough) NPP monsters so it might not be so bad. I think I'm going to change the Acquirement code so it only grants usable equipment to make things a little nicer for monsters, at any rate.
This is my philosophy as well.

Thanks to Buzzkill, I now have a new title screen, and today I added the Troll, Basilisk, and Balrog lines, as well as creating an entirely new MHD line. I still need to finish fixing the 'C'haracter screen, expanding the home, and maybe fixing those last few slots for 9- and 11-headed hydra or fixing the "replace which X?" prompt and make it appear for any EQ with multiple slots.

If you have any specific race requests before 0.5.3 is released (that don't require summoning or using multiple weapons at once) then be sure to make them! The way I've done races means new starting races break savefile compatibility, so I'd like to do new races in bursts rather than a steady stream of them.

Spiders, please! Araneas did have summoning in the original Pos, but you could include it later when you've done it.

How do I use a breath weapon with the roguelike keyset? U makes me go diagonally.
EDIT: How do I sell, drop and such from my quiver as a Hydra?

Oi, two UI problems I hadn't even thought of. I'll get those solved for 0.5.3.. I don't know of any workaround for in the meantime though, sorry :(

OK, Nick told me how to solve the Rogue keyset problem.. if you don't feel like waiting for 0.5.3 (out in time for New Year's hangovers, hopefully) then you can go into reposband/lib/pref/pref.prf and add the line:
..or whatever you want in place of 'p'. Not sure if location matters but I put it amidst the other commands like that, about 2/3rds through the file.

Nick: do you like spiders because you like being a capital S with lots of boot slots and poison and paralyzing attacks, or because you like cursing and web spinning? I can add spiders with the former easily but the latter will have to wait a little while. Also, I want to give spiders their full 4 boot pairs, which should just translate into stealth and speed coming cheap to spiders - very in-flavor! I also would ideally like for them to have their full 8 ring slots but that seems like it could be incredibly OP and make the end game a very boring cakewalk (much more so than typical). Maybe I'll give them 2 ring slots, on the grounds that each leg is equivalent to a finger and you get one ring/4 fingers.

The flags display looks normal now but it still won't show innate flags for some reason :confused:

The former, but also the webs - in the original Pos they were essential for slowing stuff down.

Pos had 4 rings and two pairs of boots - so like 4 arms and 4 legs - but it's up to you.

I found a workaround. Pressing \ lets me choose from the standard keyset. On the quiver, would it work to allow quivers only for creatures with a shooter slot? As far as I know, the monsters with really wierd inventory can't shoot. Am playing a quylthulg in the original and having a blast. Can't wait for summoning.

I voted for summoning, mostly because I love playing Q's in the old Posband. I still think you should do the fast things first (and it does have most votes). And I also agree with jevansau, artefact reforging is very helpful for some of the monster races, at least it gives you some comfort when you find Ringil but you can't use weapons...

OK, RePosBand 0.5.3 is up at the usual place. The character screen works MUCH better than it did before. It's not perfect but V will probably be changing the char screen in the next few months so I don't want to go nuts with my own changes. There are playable trolls, basilisks, balrogs, multi hued dragons, and great wyrms of balance (the GWoB is a rather pitiful evolution past the GWoC, I haven't done shard and sound yet breath). ATTR_MULTI and ATTR_FLICKER work now, so if you're playing a chaos drake or GWoC or GWoB you get to change colors. Great hell wyrms and greater basilisks do too to a lesser degree. Dragons can smell treasure now.

For v0.5.4 I have to do: infinite home space (sorry Buzzkill, I worked on it but it looks trickier than I expected), make char dumps work right, make the 'repeat command' command work for race powers, implement the SUPER_REGEN (troll and hydra) and IMM_POIS (hydra) flags, give MHD and GWoB more powers, and do race requests. So far I just have spiders for Nick and crystal drakes/GCD/law drakes for me, y'all need to get your requests in. Also I should probably copy over Pos's help files and fix the funkiness that comes with having more than 20 eq slots. After .5.4 I'll probably start poking around with summoning as Qs seem popular. Don't count on seeing summoning before Feb though.

In other news, my ancient red dragon just found a White DSM of speed +6. Woo hoo!

edit: I forgot to mention, the NO INNATE flag isn't implemented yet either, so if you fight want to be cheesy you can probably do sick damage fighting 'bare-handed' as a balrog.

It's funny you should write that as I just picked Ringil up off the floor on lvl 48. Stupid no-hands-having dragons...

Dread (or any kind of ghost), liches, hounds, angels?

Until now adding new stuff to Angband has been easier than anticipated. Adding these new flags, though, has caused unexpected headaches. I'm not going to have another release ready before next weekend.
Hounds should be really easy*, as long as you don't mind that they aren't able to summon pack mates. Same with angels and liches. Ghosts could be tricky, I'm not sure how much the game will like an immaterial PC, but that will also make them interesting. Good requests!

*easy to code, that is. Designing an evolutionary flow chart for all 5 billion hound varieties could take a while. It'll be mostly re-usable for vortices though!

I thought that SteamBand handled passwall player characters well. In short, depending on skill, there was a % chance of the player taking HP (or maybe SP) damage when moving through solid wall. In effect, it makes passing through solid rock a risk, a trade-off, rather than something that is done casually, at least at low levels.

Of course, being able to walk through walls while your enemies cannot is still a huge advantage which typically causes one to get in over his head. I found that death most often came because all monsters have ESP, which leads to ghostly PCs getting surrounded/trapped in the walls, afraid to poke their nose out. Since resting while embedded in rock is likely to be a losing proposition, one should seek to avoid such situations. This is the sort of balance I'd look for, unless you've got a better idea.

Tunnel a square of granite once inside. Perfect resting place.

You have to come out sooner or later :). An truly evil benovelent DM would spawn umber hulks nearby if it detected a player resting in such a place. Oh my, the player is trapped and will surely starve to death. I will free him.

Add a mac version!!!!

I appreciate you may be able to cast StM but the image of one trying to swing a pick* when already embedded in rock is somewhat comical...




*and that's not to mention how ghosts carry stuff through walls in the first place.

Most important monsters to implement:

Dragons/Hydras
Spiders (webs were amazingly fun in Pos)
Xorns/Umber Hulks that can move through walls

That's how Z handles it as well, except there's no skill - 100% of the time you take a small amount of nonlethal damage. That's probably what I'll do too.
I would if I could.. I'll be sure to include the source in 5.4 (I wish I had for 5.3) so that someone with a Mac can compile a Mac version. I think compiling it should be pretty easy- hopefully it's just a matter of going to the source directory and entering "make -f makefile.osx" -but if not then you could try bugging forum goers with Macs to do it. I think d_m has one, for example.
Ooh, I like the idea of playing an X. No need for a ring of delving when you have the KILL_WALL flag!

edit: Also, in case any Angband gurus are reading this, I could use some help dealing with an extremely annoying crash-on-save bug. The code is on github.com/simongre/RePosBand
edit2: OK, the problem is that increasing home space to 128 slots causes a low level saving routine (savers[i].save) to freak out. That's way above my pay grade, so hoarding is going to have to wait a while.

Someone created unlimited home already I believe for 3.2ish, Fizzix maybe? It was iVanilla IIRC.

As for hounds/vortex evolution, here's an idea:

Start with Water/Fire/Cold/Elec hound...
At level 15 morph into a Multi hued hound (resist basic 4 + poison, and a breath for each)
Each breath gives you resist to it
20 - Light / Dark breath
25 - Shards breath
30 - Sound
35 - Force
40 - Plasma
42 - Gravity
44 - Nether
46 - Time
50 - Aether form (resist all)

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

Right, which then you become a water/fire/cold/elec hound at 6.

So we need to be invisible. Are there any See invisible tags on monsters?

TOME 1/2 had player invisibility, and implemented it by making monsters have a chance to figure out where you are each turn, intelligent monsters being more likely to detect you and stupid monsters less likely. If the monster could not detect you, shooting/casting actions would fail, and if the monster moved it would do so in a random direction.

Which IMO was a pretty annoying way to handle it. Either the monster knew exactly where you were and would hit you perfectly with any ranged attack, or they had no idea whatsoever where you were. The player in contrast practically never tries to use bolt attacks unless they're in a corridor fighting a material invisible enemy, and instead tends to bomb the area with ball spells in the hopes of getting lucky.

In other words, properly-handled player invisibility isn't all that easy to do, AI-wise.

Pos had player invisibility (and the ability to blind monsters!) which puts it on my to-do list, but it's not a top priority.. ATM player clear hounds are just really, really stealthy. I could also give them a fat bonus to AC, but I don't want to spend too much work beyond that on a form that people will only stay in for 10 minutes or so.

Now that I write that I remembered that Dreads and maybe some other Gs are invisible as well, so I should probably move it higher up the list. First I want to do all the breath weapons (for dragons and hounds) then webbing, though. Also now that I found out my flags weren't causing problems, I'm going to try to do them again - immunity to poison for hydras and maybe spiders, super regen for hydras and trolls, pass_wall for Xs and ghosts

I've added the requested races.. got 99 races now, 23 starting races (that's counting the ten original demihuman races). Now I'm working on breath weapons and I need to figure out how much damage different elements should do. I'm going to roughly follow the numbers from monsters' damage caps:
4 basic elements - 6x player level damage
poison - 4x player level
nether, sound, chaos, disen, shards - 3.5x player lvl
light, dark, nexus - 3x player lvl
time, inertia, gravity, plasma, force, mana - 2.5x player levl

I'm thinking about making nether stronger, though, because it's so commonly resisted and the side effects don't work on monsters, and making sound weaker because stunning is so powerful. Do the side effects of inertia and gravity work on monsters? Should mana be made stronger because it blows up all loot? Maybe I should make a 5x player level category and spread the elements out more.

edit: also, because king monsters got the second most votes, and because I looked at how they work and it looks simple to implement, I'm gonna add them next. They'll be done in the version after next, knock on wood.

edit2: breathing bolts will use the same rankings as above and just multiply the damage by 2/3 (and the cost by 1/3..)

From a quick reading of the source, I don't think gravity or inertia will slow down monsters (compare ToME 2, where they did, and there was no cap on how much slower they got; chained inertia attacks could put even the fastest monster at the equivalent of -40 speed). They're also only resisted by the monsters that breathe them. Gravity does teleport monsters though.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that posband is back online! So i went to search for it, but i could only find the .5.2 version and not the 5.4. I could only find a page with the source? on it. At least i think it was the source...

Ah, OK, then they don't need to be made weaker to compensate. I'm not sure whether gravity's phase door or nexus's pd/tele should be counted as positive or negative side effects - they make it take longer but generally safer to kill something. Here's my revised table:
Commonly resisted, damage loot, no side effects - 4 base elements - 6x plvl damage
Commonly resisted, don't damage loot, no side effects - poison, nether, dark(?) - 5x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, annoying side effects - chaos, nexus - 4x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, no side effects, damage loot - mana, shards, plasma(?) - 3.5x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, no side effects, no loot damage - dark(?), light, time, inertia - 3x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, powerful side effects, damage loot - sound, force, gravity, plasma (?) - 2.5x plvl
I'm assuming plasma, force and gravity stun monsters.

I can't quite claim that Pos is back online.. there are still big features in Pos that aren't in RePos, though that'll change over the course of January. ATM it's more of a companion to Pos, for when you can't live without all the niceties of the latest versions of Angband and are playing one of the races Repos supports.

Here's .5.3. 0.5.4 is set to come out tomorrow, and will include plenty of new races as well as some new minor features like ?Acq being changed so it won't drop EQ you can't wear.

Here's 0.5.4:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ctd8s2...nd%200.5.4.zip

New feature: ?Acquirement and ?*Acquirement* won't drop equipment that your species can't use. They can still drop useless spellbooks, of course.

New races:

Crystal drakes: these guys breath shards and at level 25 can choose between becoming law drakes or great crystal drakes. The latter are initially stronger but law drakes eventually become great wyrms of law then great wyrms of balance and so have an easier end game.

Lost souls: all ghosts have the ability to pass through walls and eventually gain the ability to scare monsters, to blink and teleport, and to shoot nether bolts. They have normal slots and evolve every 5 levels, becoming more and more in-tune with the Negative Energy Plane until they turn into Dreads and eventually Dreadlords. They start out better at spell casting but become ferocious melee fighters.

Liches: you all know these guys. Their most annoying abilities -summoning, stat and charge draining - sadly don't work for player liches, but players do get a nice variety of utility spells with them. They basically play like spellcasters who start with decent melee ability and get no detection. When they evolve into their ultimate form (at level 45) they become completely incorporeal and gain the ability to travel through walls like a ghost.

Zephyr hounds: I ended up doing tiered progression with hounds. Every seven levels you select a new form from a list of 2-5, gaining all the resistances from the tier you were previously in. In the last tier you choose between access to all the breath weapons (the Aether hound) or being able to walk through walls (the Ethereal hound.. don't blame me for the names). All hounds can cheaply detect monsters and breath their own element as a bolt or a ball. A few hounds can breath associated elements - fire hounds can breath light, earth hounds can breath acid - at a higher cost. I'm not 100% attached to the way I've implemented these guys, so be free with feedback.

Angels: these work the same way the Ainur did in Pos but without the terrain modifying spells. Super munchkin-y priest warriors, in RePos their innate melee is a little less insane and their king monster will eventually be Gabriel, not Sauron.

Spiders: A WIP. They can't spit webs yet, but they do have 8 legs each of which can wear a shoe and a ring. They also have very, very few HP and some innate speed. At level 25 they choose between becoming phase spiders or araneas.

Umber Hulks: Also a WIP. They can wear normal equipment (except their claws are too big for gloves), pass through walls, and tunnel extremely quickly. Umber hulks lose their innate confusion gaze when they evolve, but they gain 2 extra arms which means two extra shields (eventually it will mean one extra shield and one extra weapon)

TODO:
*still have to fix the last few slots of a high-level hydra's EQ screen
*need to add code to allow "repeat command" to be used with racial powers
*need to change item wielding so it doesn't unnecessarily prompt you to select a slot when there's only one valid slot.. the code for this is already in there, it just doesn't work for some reason
*need to add more racial flags.. immunity to poison and super regeneration especially

BUG: Hitting n to repeat a monster power does NOT drain mana. Playing hound, became a dark hound, and the darkness bolt/beam can be spammed forever hitting n.

Sides that, it's great, awesome job!

EDIT: What's the github again so I can keep current?

Thanks :) That's a weird bug with the repeat command key - I can't get it to repeat monster powers at all. Hopefully fixing my problem will also fix them not costing anything.

Github's at https://github.com/simongre/RePosBand.

Actually, I was wrong. using N for monster powers just makes you move... I'll investigate source for that.

So far awesome fun. Hounds are a blast, Angels too, but a bit hard at first. Can you change cure serious wounds to heal a % of hp like the spells / potions?

EDIT: Lost souls are fun, but a bit overpowered in the sense that you can melee anything while you are in a wall, and they cannot attack back. The other way around is the opposite, the player can melee attack any monster in a wall, if they are adjacent to the player.

The code about it is in melee2.c in the monster directory, still not 100% on how to fix it though.

Here's a fix to this issue of being untouchable in walls adjacent to open floor:

in src/monster/melee2.c, function process_monster

This tells the monster to try to move into the wall if the player is there, which will cause the monster to attack the player. This could cause a problem maybe, if a non-attacking monster that CAN move tries, then it may occupy the same square as the player?

But its a quick hack and it works. So yay :)

Awesome! I added that to a fix that makes CLW et al. work and display the same as they do in other places, and a hack fix for a bug that lets stuff be equipped in any slot, and uploaded it as version .5.4.1.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9j2qaw...%200.5.4.1.zip

Oh, and an acquirement change is fixed now: it creates an item based on the max depth you've reached, and displays the item as being created on your current floor, instead of vice versa.

Neat, the wall change sadly makes lost souls *much* harder in the early game, thank goodness for !oil :)

Screwing around with wizard mode before I upgrade to fix the bug for equipment...

BTW Sauron and Morgy went down crazy fast, as did others. Fighting within walls is so awesome :D

Trying out the hounds. Died twice... And twice to Broda. :)

When building from github master on Linux, make keeps complaining about missing reposband.h header at the dependency generation stage. There is no such file in the repository, and I can't find anything that can generate it. Has anyone succeeded in compiling RePosBand on *nix?
Descriptions sound awesome, I'm eager to try it :-)

Ugh, isn't this too much for an immaterial undead creature? Or race bonuses increase with level-up?

Race bonuses increase on level up, the lost soul starts with -5 to str dex and con I think, or something along those lines. Every time you evolve, your race changes, and so do your racial bonuses. It culminates to +6 str/dex/con at 45 or 50 when you hit dreadlord or dreadmaster.

I was able to compile it on Linux, but there were two problems for me:

1. reposband.h, for some reason I couldn't find it? It *was* in the zip but it didn't extract for some reason. I re-extracted it and all was well. I can say for sure it is in the .5.4.1 zip that he posted.

2. It kept looking for reposband.glade when it did the make install, if this happens to you, just create a blank file named reposband.glade in lib/xtra/ and it installs fine after that.

oh yeah, make sure you make clean, to delete the old windows .o files that trip up *nix toolchain.

You have two weapon slots as a dreadbeing?
And i'm going to add : normal to wield slay foo as a foo?

0.6 is out.
I nerded out this weekend and spent the whole time programming. Now there are standard bearers for monster races (used to be called King monsters, but I don't like that title) whom you can supplant by killing. If you become the standard bearer you get permanent heroism and blessing. ATM hounds, basilisks and crystal/law drakes don't have a standard bearer they can beat. For red dragons it's Glaurung, for hydras it's the Lernaean Hydra, for trolls it's Rogrog the black troll, for Xs it's the King of Earth, for ghosts it's Tsekalus the dreadlord, for liches it's Vecna, for spiders it's Shelob, for angels it's Gabriel, and for Balrogs it's either Gothmog or the Balrog of Moria, I forget. For chaos drakes and GWoC it's a new unique who's native to dlvl 97 and looks pretty mean. Also, these race champions (as well as about 5-10 other uniques, a number I hope to increase*) have a 1/15 chance to drop an artifact that's fairly nice, or a 100% chance if they're your race's champion. Technically it's possible to kill your race champion twice, if you kill Glaurung before level 20 as a red dragon then turn into a chaos drake and kill your new standard bearer. You'll be guaranteed both artifacts, but the permanent heroism/blessing won't be doubled. They also don't stack with normal heroism and blessing. It'll probably be possible to 'double dip' with other combinations in the future, it's not something I really plan on preventing - it actually strikes me as kind of a neat challenge goal.

Minor changes: branding from non-weapon equipment effects innate melee, confusion attacks give more feedback, acid/disenchant can hit any of your slots instead of just the first of a given type, Umber Hulks now properly kill walls (though they do insist on stopping and opening doors before they eat them), some monsters from Pos and NPP ported over. (edit: also, super regeneration and poison immunity work now. Branding from EQ provides a better multiplier than innate branding so there's still a reason to wear that ring of flames even if you're a GHW)

This version isn't save compatible with previous versions. It's going to be the last update I release for a few weeks (besides any critical bug fixes) as I begin work in earnest on summoning.

Heehee, nice. How well did wielding two weapons work? I haven't done any work on that yet.

They do, but you've got a good point when you imply that PASS_WALL creatures should maybe not have the best stats. If I start getting complaints about the dread/xorn end-game being too boring and easy I'll bump them down some.

Nah, that was from when equipping was broken and any slot could be used for any item. ATM no one has multiple weapon slots, though Xorns and Xaren will have two once I implement multi-weapon combat. I'm not sure if they should also get multiple ranged weapon slots or how that would work.

I have no idea how the player manages to hold their light source, so I dunno what monster characters would ever be able to equip more or fewer light sources.

*I've got the Silmarillion on hold at the library, but I could always use the help of any Tolkien nerds for ideas and description writing.

Pampl,
I tried compiling the latest 0.6 version on Mac, and I can't find reposband.h either. I tried checking both the .tar.gz file and the .zip file. Then I tried browsing the source files on github, and reposband.h doesn't appear to be there. Can you add it to source control and post a 0.6.1 version? Thanks!

It's up on github now. I can't post a zip that works any better, though, because my compression program already seems to think it successfully included reposband.h. I'll try a .rar version and see if that fixes the problem.

https://github.com/downloads/simongr...band%200.6.rar

Thanks! I can compile PosBand now. :)

I think some of the links you had before *did* have reposband.h in them (e.g., the 0.6.0 package); just the links to download the source code had the missing file.

I was able to compile and run RePosBand on Linux by copying src/powers* and lib/xtra/*.glade files from the 0.6 archive to the git repo copy. Archive alone didn't work for me.
Seems to work fine otherwise, keep up the great work!

Pampl, is there anywhere else you can upload this too? I've really enjoyed the earlier versions, but mediafire keeps giving me a 403 error when I try to download this one.

Chall T. Dow

Just FWIW I had to grab the autogen.sh file from git to get it to compile on Debian Squeeze... Else I got this:

Sure, here's a github link:
https://github.com/downloads/simongr...band%200.6.rar
I think I should stop using mediafire anyway, their pop up ads bug me.
Noted. I'll be sure to include those files now.

Does those 'king' monsters already work? Because i just killed Gothmog and have killed the Balrog of Moria without the perma bless or unique item.

Uh oh, that sounds bad. This is 0.6 and you're a Balrog, right? Gothmog doesn't have a unique artifact yet but he should definitely have given you the perma bless and heroism. What were the circumstances you killed him under - were you already blessed/heroic, did you kill him in melee or with ranged or magic items, etc?

No bless/heroism when i killed him, i meleed him in a gcv (i think). One of those 1 space a monster vaults. I just meleed him as Greater Balrog. I got no notice what so ever of killing my 'king'.

Atm im lvl 49 at dlvl 98 going for the kill.

OK, crap, I made it so first it checks if they have an artifact THEN it checks if they're the race's standard bearer, and because he doesn't have an artifact... standard bearers for red dragons, chaos dragons, liches, spiders, trolls, and hydras should still work, but ghosts, angels, and Xs will have the same problem.

0.6.1 will be up on github momentarily. It's savefile compatible. It'll only help people who have yet to slay their standard bearer, though. I could try to make a version that searches back through your kill history to see if you've already done the deed, but it would take a while and it sounds like you're about to win...

How did you like playing a balrog? Too easy, too hard, just right? Did you run into any of the new monsters or uniques or artifacts?
Edit:
Forgot the link to 0.6.1

Balrog is easy, but that could also because of Feanor at clvl 32... But they are insanely strong, loads of hp and the aggr isnt that bad. I'm now going to get the P. Just killed Sauron without the need of potions/scrolls/rods.

O and why do they have mana? They don't have spells. Not even fire breathe. :)

I'll post my char after morgoth or after my death.

*edit*
Well he is dead, fight was over in 5 minutes. Could have been tricky because i saw i was out of teleports (he drains charges... how would i know?) ;)

Ow and about the new monster/arts/uniques... I didn't find special arts and i did kill some classbosses. But i think i went too fast through the game to find everything.

Fire breath (and later plasma breath) is a cool idea. I'll have to make it pretty expensive to keep them from being better breath spammers than dragons or hounds though.

They have mana for two reasons: one is that it's the default behavior for monsters and I didn't bother changing it, and the other is that they'll eventually have powers anyway. In Pos they had the ability to summon demons and, later, high demons. That might be too strong - and I don't know how much it would contribute to the flavor of playing a renegade Balrog - but my attitude is generally implement first and ask questions later.

Two things I can do to make them harder: one is the brute force solution, reducing their stats and max HP. I'll probably give them 1 point less to stats across the board and a 5 point smaller hp die size (so 125 less max hp at 50) and see what that's like.. I want to have a pretty light touch when it comes to nerfing. The other is more interesting: implementing the FIRE_TOUCH flag from Pos, that makes it so any flammable objects carried by the balrog burst into flames after a few turns. That would make playing a balrog more distinct and flavorful, and hopefully more challenging, but would also reduce their tactical options somewhat... I'm not sure people are interested in tactical variety when they choose to play a raging demon of fire and darkness, though.

Different topic: has anyone had trouble killing monsters inside walls in 0.6 or 0.6.1? I think I'm experiencing a bug and I'm not sure if it's just in my newest code or was introduced earlier.

I haven't updated to .6* yet, so I can't say anything on that.

However, here's my thoughts on Balrogs and what could be done to tone them down:

1. Balrogs have a lot of hp. I beat out a level 50 warrior by the mid 30s.
2. Balrogs do a lot of damage. Insane physical stats are great, I love the starting gear, it's a lot of fun and fits thematically just carving your way through the dungeon. Honestly I wasn't in any danger until around the 70's, with one or two close calls due to my over confidence.
3. In their current form, Balrogs are too strong. Even with aggravate, you're still just a wood chipper, and aggravate just acts like the hands piling the wood in.
4. Balrogs heal too much. Massive amounts of hp mean !C*W heal *A LOT*. !CCW can outheal !Heal I think towards the end.

My suggestions to make this more of a challenge instead of just easy-mode warrior.

1. Implement FIRE_TOUCH: Either burn all scrolls and staves immediately, or give them a few rounds. This would probably entail starting a balrog off with a rod of recall.

2. Make balrogs vulnerable to cold: One big weakness in an otherwise near-invincible shell.

I wouldn't nerf the physical stats, playing an overpowered monster is what playing a Balrog should be.

1. I think you were lucky with finding con pots. I had like 600 hp at lvl 30 (Still a lot, i know)

2. Yeah, balrog need to be strong, they are demons. And i even found a MoD early on, I switched it for my executioners sword. But i wouldn't change this.

3. Yeah, Aggr helps you more than making the game harder. With the aggr I just wielded Calris, Hammerhand, Gorlim for a while.

4. True, i used CCWs a lot, healing me like 150-200 hp. To avoid this, cap CCW at 100? No idea, i'm not good at balancing games, only playing.

Ow and i hated the burning part, you can't carry WoRs with you so you need to find a rod to travel or buy a lot of scrolls if you have the money. First rod i found was around dlvl 50. And every source of teleporting is also vulnerable to fire, so you also loose your way out. I needed teleporting several times because of chainsummoning.

I would go for the second idea of making them vulnerable for cold. And maybe light (as being a 'good' attack.)

To make them harder you can also increase the xp they need to level. Balrogs are old right? And they have seen the world. Just make them 300%- 400%. This way you won't level as fast when you are way out of your detph killing monsters.

Or maybe just flag them as munchkin monsterrace? :)

Morgoth Curses renegades.
Curse has different effects, the probability of one happening, it's frequency and the type of curses that can happen depending on your level :
Some random curses idea :
Summon Q's
Summon breeders (they appear, awake, on random tiles in the level)
Summon minor demons
Summon greater Demons
Summon minor undeads
Summon greater Undeads
Summon minor dragons
Summon greater Dragons
Random teleport
Reduce a random stat
Remove (for a small time) an innate positive flag
Ect

Hmm, that would be fun too (except for the breeders and stat loss). Can be a nice add. Just don't make it happen too often that you are killing the previous curse monsters when the next spawn.

Ow and i noticed something annoying with Hydra's. When they become 5-headed, your attacks are venomous which is nice except that you can't kill anything with resist poison. This will also happen later with the fire based attack. Can't you make it that when a monster resists the attack, you will do normal damage without the poison/fire brand?

I just found Lugdusk and i ran through 300 hp without even removing 1 star from him... He is unkillable now.

*edit*

You can 'fix' this problem with wielding branded rings. This way you can have multiple brands and will be able to hit more monsters. Just avoid res base monsters?

Alright, I went with making balrogs vulnerable to cold and increasing the XP multiplier significantly - I figured that would make it clear they're a more powerful (i.e. munchkin) race. I'll add FIRE_TOUCH when they have the ability to summon, so they can have at least one way to deal with summon spam. On the flip side, now they can breathe fire balls at 20 and plasma balls at 45.. 5 levels later than red dragons, and at about ~3x the mana cost.

I like the idea of a Morgothian curse but it would take some time to implement and so will have to wait until after top priority features, i.e. summoning and questing.

I just made it so non-physical attacks do half their damage as physical attacks. So resist poison guys will still take less damage, but only 45% less damage rather than 90% less damage. Will upload later today when I get back from work and solve this problem with innate attacks against creatures inside walls.

Nice, because i was really wondering how i was going to kill res base type of monsters. :)

Ow and i noticed it too that i could attack monsters in the walls but it wouldn't do any damage.

Picked up Reposband for the first time just now, and for some reason when playing as a baby red dragon, the inventory and equipment lists don't work - I did close the extra term windows, but surely they should show up on the main window as in normal Angband and other variants!

Also, it seems as if instead of my "d" being red (and highlighted with the cursor - I THOUGHT I turned on highlight player!), it's white! Could that have something to do with the color player by HP option, perhaps?

Finally, are permawalls SUPPOSED to be red? I thought they were supposed to be brown or gray or something...

These are intended. Color player by HP overrides normal coloration, in case someone depends on that option or just prefers it. Permawalls became red in Angband 3.2
This isn't intended, however. What do you mean by them not working? Does the main window go blank when you try to bring them up, or does it just do nothing, or what? And did they display on the term windows before you closed them?

No, the window doesn't go blank, and I even get a message saying something like "Inventory: 3/26 slots, 5/180 lb" or whatever... but the actual list never appears! I closed the term windows before I even started the game (well, after I ran the exe and before I created a character)... is there perhaps an malfunctioning option that prevents the list from showing up on both the main and sub windows? Or maybe I have to turn off the sub windows in the menu, instead of just closing them? I'll play around with it a bit more...

By the way, is it just me or are nested quote tags not working on this forum anymore? I used to get nested quotes when I quoted a message containing quotes... now I don't!

Well, that's bizarre... Now it works perfectly! Maybe the game didn't detect my resizing/maximizing the window right the first time...

Version 0.6.2 is up. Now monsters in walls can be damaged by innate melee. A side effect of how this works is that they can be damaged by spells if they're directly hit. They're still immune to AoE. I kind of like how this works so I'm considering it a feature.

Monsters' innate melee will now do half physical damage when it would normally do entirely elemental damage. I don't want hydras and eventually green and white dragons to have to spend ALL their time running away from undead etc.

Balrogs have VULN_COLD and 25 max HP/level (used to be 30) and in exchange they get fire breath and later plasma breath.

Gothmog, Quaker, and Tselakus now all carry special artifacts they'll drop for members of their race or lucky people. Thanks go to djabanete for providing the descriptions. Gabriel still doesn't have one, and MHD and law drakes don't even have a champion yet let alone a special artifact. Hounds now have both though, in the form of the Zephyr King and his ethereal cloak. The artifacts are probably a little OP (they were made to be similarly balanced as existing race artifacts, which are also a little ridiculous) and the Zephyr King might be too easy considering he's the leader of the most annoying enemies in the game. We shall see! Oh, also, once you kill Glaurung he's liable to come back as a POed ghost. Be sure to tell me if you somehow see his ghost before you've killed him.

Unless there are more big bugs, I expect this to be the last release for a while, until summoning is usable. Next release will also include gold, white, and blue dragons, and maybe something oddball like quadrapeds (comedy mumak option)

Strange.. hopefully it stays working, that code is somewhere I fear to tread.

By the way, is the +8 ring of damage as starting equipment intentional? That made my dragon a melee powerhouse!

Hmm, also, just a quibble, but the game reports "version 0.6.0" on the title screen, even after installing 0.6.2 ;)

I copied Pos's starting equipment where applicable. If you think that's OP, you don't wanna see at what angels start with ;)
Whoops, I'm really bad about remembering to change that thing.

Meleeing as Hydra works a lot better now. You can see the monster resists your brand but it not indestructible anymore.

Found a bug with the Lernaean Hydra. I killed him and he dropped his artifact. Gloves... Hydras can't wield gloves =)

Any chance you could include the generated "configure" script in the repo? It's incredibly annoying getting the exact right versions of the auto* crud installed & working.

That's not good. Did you get the "Congratulations" message at least? Did it end by saying "You notice the Lernaean Hydra drop a strange pair of gloves"? Also, do you remember if when you entered the level it gave you a subtle hint about the Lernaean Hydra being generated?
Sure, sorry about that. I'm a bit of an amateur at this stuff so I'm never sure what to include. What's the file name?

Good news for Mac users, Nick has compiled an OSX version.

Yes i did got the warning and the Congratulations and the notice. I only can't wield gloves because Hydra's dont't have a glove slot.

Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be gloves, it was supposed to be the Iron Crown of the Hydras. Which pair of gloves is it?

I think I'll do centipedes soon. Multiple body segments = multiple suits of armor, and maybe multiple capes. Only their 2 antennae can wear rings though, and I'll probably have to think up some reason why they can't wear 50 pairs of boots. Lousy hp and str/con but high dex, like spiders. They'll be the first race which can't wear a helmet.

Ill post my char now.

I responded on your char dump but I'll post it here too, so everyone can see it: ATM the randomize artifacts option will also randomize racial artifacts, possibly making your racial artifact something you can't even wear. I'll post the fix for it soon. I'll also fix innate melee giving two feedback messages ("The Ogre grunts in pain") per hit. Get in your bug reports ASAP if you want them to be fixed for 0.6.3!

I have tried 3 spiders so far, in a very short time - so they're living up to original Pos standard :)

I used to use quests in Pos as a means of getting a few early levels and gaining more useful powers, so would quite like to see quests implemented at some point. Also, obviously, summoning.

One buglet - quickstarting a new spider (something that is comes up quite frequently) doesn't work - I got a Human Warrior. Maybe you haven't allowed for the increase in the number of races?

I'm glad you mentioned spiders, that reminded me I still have to implement web spells. The quickstart problem is sort of intended - it just uses option 0 for everything (so a female human warrior) instead of basing it on your last character, because otherwise it tries to use the race you were when you died, which means starting as an ancient dragon or whatever. Not as fun as it sounds - it extrapolates the speed and AC bonus back to level 1, making you start with pretty big negatives in both. I should probably fix that, though it does have the side effect of giving XP drain a little more teeth.

It should be just "configure". (Only exists after running the autogen.sh file.)

On second thought it might be better to avoid including it in the repository direct and instead providing a source download for each version (with "configure" included).

I've discovered something weird. When i was clearing out an undead pit, i noticed my auto-destroy was reset. I wasn't destroying anything anymore. And in the past destroyed objects were spawned back in the level, psuedo-ided or even fully ided. So i went and put everything back in the auto-destroy and continued. Now i just cleared a demon pit. Same thing occurs. I put some spellbooks in the autodestroy and suddenly they are back on the ground with a lot of other stuff. And now i can't even put them back in auto-destroy or even just destroy them at all! So now i have to literally throw away stuff i don't want.

I have no idea what triggered this, i only know it started both times when i was killed a lot of monsters who drop a lot of items.

I couldn't sleep so I worked on 0.6.3 instead, and it'll be out in time for the weekend. Quick start is fixed but it means savefiles aren't compatible so delay upgrading until you've died. Now spiders can spin webs, innate melee doesn't spam 2x as much feedback as it should, and other stuff I'll add as I remember (edit: randarts no longer break racial artifacts)

I don't have any "configure" file.. the only files I have without extensions are the makefiles, install-sh, run-tests, and HEADER. I've never run the autogen.sh file unless make runs it automatically :confused:
The squelcher doesn't destroy stuff, it just drops it then ignores it. There's a bug from V that your quality squelch settings get reset every time you close the game, but that shouldn't effect spellbooks.. can you attach a savefile to your post?

Posting this here so other people can get their 2c in as well...
Even with all those you're still effectively a warrior who can't use a bow and is only doing 1/2 as much damage as a non-monster warrior (4 attacks * (20 base + 100 bonus) vs ~1000 damage per round). Now, I can definitely see how AC could get too high, and I'm willing to implement a diminishing returns formula on ACs over 150 or 200 (it'll just be a quick hack fix if AC is going to be changed in 3.3) but the marginal value of the non-AC bonuses from additional helmet/amulet slots once you already have ~4 is pretty low. By the time you've filled all those slots, it's the late late late end game and you'd have beaten Morgoth already if you were a demihuman.

If hydras are more powerful than their XP modifier indicates, I'm willing to increase it or even slightly reduce their stats, but I'm really reluctant to change their slots, especially their head/neck slots.

If it works this post must have the savefile?

I can't figure out what happened with the spellbooks but have you tried pressing shift+K? I didn't know about it before looking at your savefile but it apparently turns the quality squelcher on and off.

shft+k i never used that command. What does it do? I use k for destroying stuff.

I am confused. :confused:
Why is it called reposband-3.2.0? Is it compiled on the 0.6 source? Or 0.6.1?

It's a fairly sloppy job on my part - I haven't gone and checked stuff like version numbers. It's actually based on 0.6.2.

Shift+k lets you see all the objects you've squelched with k. Pressing shift+k again should hide them all again, hopefully.

I decided that the oddball race I'd be adding is beholders. Spectators, gauths, beholders, then maybe a choice between undead beholders and beholder mothers. They can wear rings on their eyestalks and wrap cloaks around their heads but no other equipment (besides maybe a hat). In exchange they get powerful offensive magic. They'll probably be a challenge race, but that's OK.

Already like em!

Well that's just shattered the fearsome image I had of those 'e's. Now I see a comedy eyeball with a stetson.

Good lookin' crowd tonight, great to see you all :)