Beta version of PWMAngband 1.2.0 released

[tangar]

"One of our players just rolled power dr
agon"
The lucky bastard. It's like 1/1000 chance.

So there is 1/1000 (pretty high chance for roguelike game, compare to some top items' drop chance) - that player would cheat and faceroll the game

"Please could you explain idea of dragon race. Maybe I miss something"

It's PWMAngband. Of course there are gonna be dragons...

I like dragons. And this idea - transformation from one creaature to another - is a good foundation to add more monster-races, spiders, for example.

1) The breed is random. Base ones are the most common. Chance of getting the best ones is VERY low.

It would make people 'reroll' characters. It's online game, MMORPG.. People scumm in such games in all their strenght

2) When in walls, you're NOT immune to other's attacks.

One player reported it for Ethereal dragon. Then it should be a bug?

3) IM_xxx only translates as resistance. Having IM_COLD | IM_FIRE | IM_DISEN just means you are resistant to those 3. Go face the Tarrasque as Balance Drake without being prepared, I can ensure you that you will not win the fight.

Erm, so if a playier is a red dragon and got :
flags:IM_FIRE | NO_CONF | NO_SLEEP

.. he won't have fire immunity? It makes gap between power dragon and simple one even bigger.

4) spells:BR_CHAO actually polymorphs mobs when it's selected, meaning that Chaos/Balance/Power dragons breath is pretty much useless and you only benefit from the resistances.

Ok, chaos drag breaths suxx (1/2 CHAO), balance got 1/4 (manageable), power got 1/20 chance to breath chaos.

5) The xp penalty is so high you will curse the day you started to play as a dragon. Low level versions are so weak you will struggle until level 45 with low hps, speed, armor, damage. It's basically the counterpart to half-troll warrior.

The problem is: dragon race now consist of dozen of races.
a) weak basic dragons
b) mediate dragons
c) power dragon

All this groups should have different XP rate or should be heavely rebalanced. For example, powerdragon with 800% XP penalty, basic dragons as 350%, Mediate 600%.

But actually I think that you could just copy-paste TomeNET dragonian balance (https://www.tomenet.eu/guide.php?cha...%20traits#r215) - it's quite perfect; and rework it a bit. There are nothing bad about taking good stuff from other games - it's the best way actually.

As I said, Balance dragon is the second worse choice as a dragon just after Chaos. I'd rather get Blue (lightning) or Black (acid) which give full elemental breath which are rarely resisted. There's absolutely no need to nerf them.

The problem: there shouldn't be WORSE CHOICE. The 'good' balance of the game is to make everything useful under certain circumstances. So if chaos dragon is the worst one atm - it should be buffed. Others should be nerfed. And not a one time. It's constant check balance from players - if they took certain breed more ofter then another - it should be nerfed. If they do not take certain breed (or do not like it) - buffed. Rebalancing is constant eternal thing.

Ethereal is problematic though. Wraithform + invisibility is way too powerful, especially since those are PERMANENT. I'll do something about this.

Ethereal dragon:
- remove dragon breath
- make wraithform activated ability (instead dragon breath)
- remove invisibility

I'll add a file with basic stuff for customization. Some things are currently hardcoded and I want to remove that and put it into a file.

Thanks, it would help a lot. Also maybe it's possible to implement a framework for adding more monster-like races within gamedata customization? Spiders, beholders (start as a floating eye yay)... Also undead races could use the same principles (evolving in time).

[tangar]

/bug

town.txt

# Starting town should ALWAYS be the first entry in the list.
# Base town should ALWAYS be the second entry in the list.

# Bree
name:Bree
wpos:-15:20

# Base town containing the main Angband dungeon
name:Carn Dыm
wpos:-9:37

Starting town should ALWAYS be the first entry in the list.

this doesn't work, game always generate Hobbiton as starting town even if you would put other town at 1st (starting) place

Please could you take a look into this bug asap - without it I can not continue work at new custom world map

[tangar]

[03:26] Dawndeath: stuf is saved in the savefile, so for your cahnges to work you need to wipe the server savefile and restart anew :frowning:

Of coruse, I did it, it doesn't help.

To reproduce bug:

1) download new PWMA package
2) purge PWMAngband_120_bin\lib\user\save folder
3) change town.txt (for example, put Bree town on top)
4) run server & connect
5) you would see that coordinates and town name are changed, but there is a Hobbiton layout, not Bree one

[PowerWyrm]

Forgot to reply yesterday, but dragons have been rebalanced.

"It would make people 'reroll' characters. It's online game, MMORPG.. People scumm in such games in all their strenght "

Cannot do much about this. At least you need to level up to charlevel 5 a race that has 450% xp penalty. Not trivial if you want to play a class that will benefit from the dragon's powers (monk). In the early days, the transformation to baby dragon was occuring at level 10 which made scumming way less possible (would take probably one hour to level up a dragon to 10 without weapon or ranged). I felt it was more logical to have transformation at levels 5/15/25/35/45/50 instead of 10/20/30/40/45/50 simply because it made transitions to ancient dragon and wyrm too abrupt.

Frankly it's players' choice if they want to scum hours for a power dragon form, and then die at level 40 to Ungoliant and restart from scratch.

"One player reported it for Ethereal dragon. Then it should be a bug?"

Don't think so.

"he won't have fire immunity? It makes gap between power dragon and simple one even bigger."

Balance #1: the 4 base dragons (red, blue, white, black) now have immunity, others only resistance.

"All this groups should have different XP rate or should be heavely rebalanced."

Balance #2: each breed now has a different xp factor, which MULTIPLIES the base factor of 450%. Currently, base dragons have a factor of 100 (so 450% penalty) while power dragon has a factor of 200 (so 900% xp penalty), while others in between have a factor of 120-180.

"TomeNET dragonian balance"

This is Draconian, not Dragon. Here we have Thunderlords instead. Completely different story...

"The problem: there shouldn't be WORSE CHOICE. The 'good' balance of the game is to make everything useful under certain circumstances."

Balance #3: hardcoded stuff has been pulled out of code and put into dragon_breed.txt. If you feel the dragons are not balanced, feel free to fine tune from the txt file. This now also includes comonness of the breed, so if you feel some breed should be made more common or rarer, do so in the txt file.

"Spiders, beholders (start as a floating eye yay)... Also undead races could use the same principles (evolving in time). "

Sorry, but this will NEVER happen. PWMAngband is not Pos****Band. If you want to play as a beholder, start a Shapechanger and scum for the form.

"Ethereal dragon"

- will keep breath (you need a ranged attack, even if it's bad like nether)
- will keep wraith, but with a nerfed version (need to think about what I can do)
- will lose invis (too powerful as a permanent ability -- dunno maybe increase stealth instead? dragons have so poor stealth giving back some would be ok I guess)

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by tangar

Of coruse, I did it, it doesn't help.

To reproduce bug:

1) download new PWMA package
2) purge PWMAngband_120_bin\lib\user\save folder
3) change town.txt (for example, put Bree town on top)
4) run server & connect
5) you would see that coordinates and town name are changed, but there is a Hobbiton layout, not Bree one

Unfortunately I checked the code again... profile "mang_town" is hardcoded for the starting town, that's why you get the "Mangband" layout even if you put Bree as your starting town. For the same reason, profile "town" is hardcoded for the base town (Carn Dûm). These cannot be changed.

[tangar]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Unfortunately I checked the code again... profile "mang_town" is hardcoded for the starting town, that's why you get the "Mangband" layout even if you put Bree as your starting town. For the same reason, profile "town" is hardcoded for the base town (Carn Dûm). These cannot be changed.

I see, thanks. But maybe it's possible to add new profile 'custom' which would take structure from town.txt or just would have hardcoded town_start.txt as 1st town? Another approach - new profile could 'wipe' hardcoded map and put on it's place new town_start.txt

This is very critical issue, because without it I can not implement really awesome idea - to draw new world map which I've already started http://angband.online/new-map-coming/

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by tangar

I see, thanks. But maybe it's possible to add new profile 'custom' which would take structure from town.txt or just would have hardcoded town_start.txt as 1st town? Another approach - new profile could 'wipe' hardcoded map and put on it's place new town_start.txt

This is very critical issue, because without it I can not implement really awesome idea - to draw new world map which I've already started http://angband.online/new-map-coming/

Nah no need for custom profile. What I will try to do (I think it's possible) is to remove the hardcoded profile for towns and simply put "mang_town" as default in case the town doesn't exist. So it goes like this:

- wild_info.txt has a 'T' symbol at position x,y
- town.txt has town "foo" at position x,y
- game checks if file town_foo.txt exists
- if the file exists, the game uses the profile (map) inside that file to generate the town
- if the file doesn't exist, the game uses the mang_town profile to generate the town

The only hardcoded profile that will remain is for base town (Carn Dûm) which should always be the second entry in town.txt.

[PowerWyrm]

"When in walls, you're NOT immune to other's attacks."

I'm having some doubt now... ok i'll do some more testing, since I've seen a shardstorm breathe shards on a wraithed char without getting the "you resist the effect" message.

EDIT: there's definitely a bug. It concerns breath attacks. Since breath code has been ported from V, wraithed players are immune to breath because the code checks for walls and rejects the location if it's a wall. Wasn't the case before. Doesn't occur for any other attack (a Shadow using "slow" and "nether bolt" was working fine).

I'll fix the problem with breaths.

EDIT: the problem also occured with ball spells (same as breaths -- new V code didn't take into account the fix from MAng) and bolt spells (smart mobs were discarding their bolt spells because they were not projectable).

This is now fixed. I hope there are no more issues with this.

[tangar]

Great! Can't wait for the new release..

[PowerWyrm]

Today I rebalanced wraithform and invisibility.

Wraithform:
- prevents regen and drains 1 hp per turn while standing on non-passable terrain (same penalty as necromancers in undead form)
- consumes a lot of food

Invisibility:
- is now a flag: a monster can see a player or not (until attacked, on which case the invisibility drops and the monster reacts normally), no more randomness
- is less likely to fool mobs (depending on monster level)
- consumes a lot of food

This should make both useful but not OP.