FAangband 2.0.0
 

FAangband 2.0.0 is now available for Windows, MacOS and as source. The official site is here.

For those unfamiliar with it, FAangband was originally forked from Oangband, and developed until around 2014 with version 1.4.4. Development was restarted in 2020, with a rewrite aimed at re-implementing the best features of original FAangband but based on the latest Angband code base.

Since this version is heavily based on Angband there are way too many people to thank here, but I would like to mention:

• Arralen
• backwardsEric
• Cuboideb (Diego Gonzalez)
• David Medley
• dhouseholder
• EugeneLesnov
• Gwarl
• HolyRage
• Ingwe Ingweron
• jevansau
• kheldar
• MITZE
• Rodent/Sideways/sulkasormi
• Sacksquatch
• wobbly

for specific FA_related help.

Please play, enjoy and report bugs - there will be plenty :)

@Nick Can you please update FAAngband to 2.0.0 official now?

Of course, congratulations on the big news!!

Congrats on hitting this big release milestone!

Hurray! Very glad that this release is finally out!

Maybe soon we will start receiving news about Beleriand...;)

Congratulations! Well done!

Congratulations, Nick! :)

Ha! There goes the rest of my day.

Huh, same. Already got 28 lvl petty dwarf mage..The game feels very fresh and interesting..Can't wait to quest appear %)

Thanks Nick! Been looking forward to this one for a while! Question: where would you like me to report crashes related to the Android port? Should I report them here or to Diego? I am having a recurring crash in Amon Rudh level 15 when trying to recall back to my home. Just got to Amon Rudhm, my home is in Belegost and I have 1 more portal to Khazad Dum. When using a scroll of word of recall, it asks me what recall point I want to replace and I select "nowhere" and then as soon as I get the message saying I'm getting yanked back home, the game crashes. I'll post this in the Android thread too, apologies if this is Android specific, not sure what the cause is, Android or source.

Here is good, but probably to Diego too. Do you have a savefile?

I do. It's an Android save file, is this still useful to you?

The savefile is the same. Sources are almost equal.

Savefile attached. Edit: watch out for the umber hulk lurking around the corner. My character doesn't have much in the form of reliable escape techniques yet.

I loaded the savefile into gdb in windows 15 times. I got a report of heap corruption once. 1020 bytes were allocated.

Three tries at loading it on macOS didn't turn up a problem. Setting a watchpoint on the address range for load.c's square_size might help diagnose this, if its value is overwritten by something after being assigned in rd_dungeon().

Thank you! I will try this. I can't reproduce the bug yet.

Similar for me in Linux. I got one crash on exiting the game for a double free, but I've also run several times with valgrind and got no memory issues at all.

tg122 - from the savefile you sent, can you say precisely what you do to get a crash?

I open the save file and immediately use a scroll of word of recall. Then it asks me which recall point I want to replace, and I select "Nowhere." Then while I'm waiting to be brought back to town, I kill the griffin, wear the metal cap that it drops. Then I kill the hippogryph, then an umber hulk attacks and I use a scroll of phase door. Then as soon as I get a message saying I'm being yanked homeward it crashes.
Edit: I just waited in place and all these monsters mentioned above came to me.

Hello, Nick! Please, can you tell us a little about quest system in FAangband ? I'm at level 30 of Amon Rudh now.. :)

There are 5 dungeon guardians at the bottom of dungeons (and Nan Dungortheb). The first two you kill will get you a new specialty ability. They're optional, but Morgoth has a "summon guardians" spell.

See attached save file. Using scroll of recall at all crashes the game :(

The very first time I load the savefile I get a corrupted heap (even before using WoR). I think it's a problem related to the initial generation of the randart file.

I can reproduce the problem after deleting the file.

Thanks Diego, me too. Looking for the problem now.

EDIT: OK, I've located the problem, just need to fix it now.

OK, fixed version is up on the release page, thanks Cuboideb, tg122 and swim for all your assistance :)

Update it on the angband.live webserver, please :D

I'll try, but I don't think Gwarl has it pointing at the right repo yet.

EDIT: I was right.

I loaded my save in version 2.0.0-4 and found it was still crashing when I use the scroll of recall.
Do I need to start a new save for the fix to take effect?

If this was indeed an issue with the initial generation of the randart file, then I would think that you may have to start a new game. Just a guess.

It seems that the last executable was compiled with old sources.

Compiling from scratch with Mingw allows me to load your savefile without problems.

Oh hmm. Well I've already started over now since I wasn't very far anyways. Hopefully I have better luck with this one! =p

I think the problem in my case comes from attempting to recall after using $ to "set home" in a town that doesn't actually have a "home" building in it. Still investigating.

edit: Tried to travel back to a town that actually has a home building in it, but it's crashing now when I even try to go to the next map. :(

Here is the save I made with version 2.0.0-4. Crashes if you attempt to use the scroll of recall or use the "stairs" to go the next map.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Ahhh yes I believe Swim is right. I just started a new game, walked to Khazad Dum, moved my house there with the $ command, then left the city, used a scroll of word of recall, and it crashed. Doesn't seem to crash until after moving your house.

I just tried the same thing with no crash. Did you get any info from the crash?

For me, when the crash happens the game just closes and I don't get any pop up that displays any information.

Are you both using Android, and if not, which OS?

I am using Android 11. There is no message, the program just closes.

I am on Windows 10.

Google reports the same error. I'll take a look tomorrow

I’ll try another playthrough today and see if I can avoid the crash by making sure I don’t set home in a place without a home building.

You can only set a home where there is no home building.

The way it works is at the start there is only a home building in your starting town. You can move it (with all your possessions) by using the move house command at a different town.

Ohhh I see. Damn ok =p

I created the problem twice in a row by using a Green-Elf Ranger and heading straight to Taur-Im-Duinath and setting home there, heading North and attempting to recall. If that specific scenario triggers it for you as well perhaps that may be a clue.

Here is a bit more info that may be helpful. I just noticed that the issue is NOT specific to word of recall. The crash happens any time I enter a town after I move my home there. If I move my home to a town, then walk out of the town, then try to walk back in it crashes too.

Do you use a tile multiplier bigger than 1x1 ? I uploaded a new version that improves the map view in FA (I forgot to copy that from the android version of V, sorry).

No, I'm using asci 1x1. I tried messing around with a bunch of my settings in the game and on my phone but haven't figured anything else out yet.

1x1 is the only feasible choice, though it's hard to read. Wiyh 200' range attacks, anything less is too dangerous

I am still not able to reproduce this crash, including with provided savefiles. It's very annoying.

I feel the same.

I'm looking at every ocurrence of memset (I have the feeling that a large portion of the memory is wiped in some place). This line seems strange in ui-term.c (2626):

/* Assume no key */
memset(ch, 0, sizeof *ch);

It's valid ?

I once had an issue with the Angband Android app because of a storage permission issue. I had to move the directory out of the Android/data folder to fix it. Could this be somehow related to the scoped storage system with Android 11?

Edit: that was with an old phone. Currently the game is installed to Android/data.

I think it's just zeroing the memory that's going to store a keypress, so it looks fine to me. Also it's been there for 10 years without causing a problem :)

I had some problems with Android 10 concerning storage. I don't know if it's related to this.

There is a long standing bug in the android port that arises once in a while. A monster race pointer becomes null and the game crashes.

"...Google reports a lot of errors in mon_take_hit, get_lore, player_kill_monster. All related in some way to an invalid mon->race pointer..."

As I said, perhaps a rogue memset is wiping a chunk of memory.

Sorry, I didn't know that sizeof could be used without parenthesis.

Maybe this will help...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wbl...ew?usp=sharing

That's the full game directory including the save file.

Thank you. I can confirm that this crashes in Win 10, both in the directory you supplied and in a clean copy. Testing continues :mad:

Thank YOU! :)
I loved what I saw of the game so far.

Nick, which compiler do you use for windows ?

If I put a fresh copy of the executable made with mingw (32 bits), the savefile provided by swim doesn't crash.

It's the mingw cross-compiler as picked up from the package, gcc-mingw-w64, in the ubuntu-18.04 runner on Gihub's Actions. configure was run with

Because of Arralen's report of trouble with the Windows executable and Windows 8, have not been using the ubuntu-20.04 runner and its version of mingw.

The latest builds should not have the crash on moving house, thanks to backwardsEric for finding and fixing the bug.

It seems that someone had put some essential code inside an assert(), and then optimised out asserts in release builds...

Excellent! :)
I'm going to give it a try right now!

Confirmed the crash is gone in my previous save. I'm going to start one from scratch now to test that too.

Well done! I'm updating the android port.

Cuboideb deserves most of the credit for the question above about the compiler; that's what triggered looking for side effects from using --enable-release. Without that, I probably would have read the assert(cave_find(...)) line a dozen more times and still not have realized there was a problem.

Let's just say we're all very clever except me :D

Thanks everybody!

So far so good. Thanks everybody. I am really really enjoying this game.

Hey Nick, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not but I've noticed that rings and amulets seem to be auto ignored as soon as I walk directly over them, even before I have identified them. I just started a brand new character, and I saw a ring lying on the ground in the wilderness. As soon as I walked to it, it said Ring of Utility <ignored> then disappeared before I even had a chance to look at it, but I still hadn't identified any runes identified yet since the character was new. I also don't have the option to know all runes turned on. I remember a similar thing happened with an amulet the other day.

Thanks for the report. This has been an issue for a bit; I thought it was fixed, but apparently not.

Maybe ask Pav to update the Variants page so that 2.0.0 shows as the current version and that it links to the right place to download.

average damage/round on weapons information does not update when @ wears jewelry (combat rings, physical prowess rings, etc.). How does one choose what to wield without accurate damage/round information?

Done - I can edit those details.

That's odd. Noted.

The latest builds have a change by backwardsEric that may fix this problem - let me know what you see.

The last few days I have been trying to implement a weather system for wilderness like in TomeNet. Meh, this requires a deeper knowledge of C than I have =D

Before you commit to C, you need to decide how it works. Just a random state on each map area? Fronts moving from west to east? Once you know your algorithm, the language shouldn't matter.

In perfect world - agree. But my everyday work is Java/Spring Boot. And it is quite difficult to delve into such a large project as FAangband (for me, meh). It's a completely different world for someone with a different specialization. Therefore, to implement some features, it takes more time than a person needs, who, for example, writes C code every day.

To carry on from Pete's point, you also need to think carefully about why you're making a change like this (and this applies to your other idea as well). Is it just for flavour? If not, what gameplay change are you aiming for? Is it going to add to player enjoyment?

I don't know if weather is a good idea for FA or not; I kind of lean against it because it adds a layer of complication to an already complicated game. That's not a definite no (you could make the same arguments about the hunger mechanic, for example), it's more a case of I don't think the idea is developed enough to say for sure. And I do think it's more likely to be a good idea for Beleriand than FA.

Many of Eugene's could be considered if he or anyone else forks FAAngband, be it 2.0 or older version, or Vanilla or even FCPB. I have a plenty of simulation 2021 / 21st century ideas or requests that are bound to be very unpopular depending on who I talk to. This is mostly because I'm more inclined to make an already complicated game even more difficult. Eugene, you should hop over to angband.live and share your theorycraft :)

I left some thoughts on github..

Quoting myself:

I do not insist that this feature be implemented necessarily. But an idea came up and I am glad that the discussion was initiated.

Haha I'll think about it :D

Bug in ignoring jewelry. Somehow, I pressed something and my @'s ring accidentally got ignored. Since I received the "do you really want to drop" warning, I was made aware. I tried "unignoring" the ring from the inventory menu on the item (unignore all), but that didn't work. So, I went to the user menu "Item ignoring setup". Imagine my surprise when I discovered amulets and rings are not included in the "Item ignoring setup", in the "Quality ignoring options", or in the "Ego ignoring options". How does one deal with this for jewelry? Is there a secret menu somewhere? :D

Which version are you playing? I believe (or at least hope) this bug was fixed by backwardsEric a week or so back, in this release.

Ah, that might be it. I was on version 2.0.0-8-g000356eb6. I will download the new version and see if the bug persists.

Edit: Nope, I'm sorry to report - not fixed. I even started a new @ in case the problem was savefile compatibility, but to no avail. Rings and Amulets are provided for nowhere in the ignoring menus.

Bug: Might also check trap disarming on chests for a bug. I've got a 44th level hobbit rogue with 100% disarm for both physical and magical traps, but every chest with summoning runes that @ tries to disarm is set off and the summons occurs.

Rings and amulets aren't meant to be in the ignoring menus, but they're also not meant to ever get ignored. Were you still getting them ignored with the new savefile?

OK, filed that one.

You should be able to change ignore status through object knowledge as well as the basic squelch menu. (There is no quality squelch for rings.)

Did you notice whether the bug occurred on a new character in both instances? I had the same issue a couple weeks ago, but it always seemed to be for a brand new character, and happened with the first ring or amulet they found. I haven't started any new characters since then because I've got a good run going right now, but I keep meaning to start a new character and try to reprdouce the bug that way.

Should, but not for rings and amulets. I don't understand why not, but whatever.

The reason they're not able to be ignored is that the "types" are a very loose classification of what they do. So something like an amulet of Doom can be the best one you find in the game.

Okay, Nick, here is a savefile for you with this bug. Try disarming the chest immediately to @'s left. It activates and summons Greater Demons. Yet @ has 100% disarming.

Character file: Attachment 2044
Randart file: Attachment 2045

Thanks for the excellent example, there are definitely issues. I'll report back.

There's actually no need to give me your randart file any more, the code now regenerates the randart file if it can't find it.

Thanks, Nick. Also noticed another bug that you can see in that same savefile. @ has the Palantir of Avallone, which I understand should activate for Detection, but the one in @'s equipment is not activatable.

Palantir now fixed in dev versions.

Traps should be more reasonable now too. The maximum trap power (which gets subtracted from raw disarm skill to get a chance of success) is now 115; before this fix it was upwards of 16000. Luckily there is a lower bound on success chance, so one in fifty times the disarm would have worked :)

Hello! How about to make trees "diggable" in Nan Dungortheb? It is pretty difficult to play as a mage without being able to use a ranged attack haha. I don't think it's right but I would like the discussion to begin

Why not burn them down?

At the moment, there is no way to burn them with a fireball (I play last version).
But if we had such feature..

There is a question of balance. If the feature arises, what about other classes? Mages have the ability to cast fireballs, but what about warriors, archers? Of course, there are wands, rods...Non mages should dig then with their own hands! :D

There is something to think about, hmm

Bug: Note that the descriptions for lines in the txt files should be cleaned up. For example: Class.txt in the description lines at the beginning:
replace “# skill-disarm:base:increment” with
# skill-disarm-phys:base:increment
# skill-disarm-magic:base:increment

and their associated full-blown descriptions that follow. same for #hitdie:increment, etc.

Bug: Description in Recall spells, and I assume items as well though I didn't check. Takes @ to the chosen recall point, not necessarily to the deepest level of the dungeon reached thus far.

Hey Nick, I haven't played FAangband, but I would suggest adding a description (brief or detailed) of how it differs from vanilla in the README, on http://nickmcconnell.github.io/FAangband/ , or on http://angband.oook.cz/faangband/ . You put a nice writeup on Roguebasin ( http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/First_Age_Angband ), but it's from way back when you created the page in 2006, so I wonder how well it reflects the game today.

Thanks for all the reports and suggestions. I have filed a couple of bugs.

I think I want to leave Nan Dungortheb as is - it's meant to be horrible. Note, though, that elves and druids/rangers (and especially elven druids/rangers) get easier tree movement, so some characters will not mind it.

Just played through this to completion as a warrior, here's the dump.

Great variant, moving around the greater map through the different outdoor areas is really cool. Too bad 90% of the game is still in the regular dungeon. Would be better the other way around IMO.

I only noticed a couple of bugs, one is that items sometimes say they were found in the Arena. The other is that town building locations reroll every time you visit the town.
Also no quest on level 99 but I assume that's deliberate.

Going to play through again as a spellcaster I think.

Is the idea to move fully to Tolkein lore? As I noticed there's still lots of D&D monsters and stuff.