FAangband 1.0

[Nick]

FAangband 1.0 is now available from the usual place. Please download, play, post dumps, complain, etc. I have many people to thank:

- pav, as usual, for hosting;

- Psi and buzzkill for playtesting alpha and beta versions;

- HallucinationMushroom for designing an awesome vault based on the Luthien emblem I use as the FAangband icon;

- takkaria for the Vanilla build system;

- Psi again for producing version 0.3.6, which gave the endgame some much needed balance (which I have, I hope, only partially destroyed);

- numerous people on the forums, rgra and ladder who have given me ideas and shot holes in my own ideas.

There are big changes in this version, and more to come. Full details are below, but the big ticket items are vastly altered objects (especially ego-items), a complete overhaul of mages, and the introduction of player-race based monsters which are not always hostile. Object and monster changes will continue for the next version (1.1).

As for the version numbers, this is actually 1.0.0, but anything of the form 1.0.x (so when the inevitable bugfixes happen) will be savefile compatible with it. The next thing not savefile compatible will be 1.1.0, etc.

Enjoy.

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Object Changes
--------------
Complete overhaul of ego items, with most purely bad types removed
and many "mixed blessing" types introduced. There are now many types of curse,
with the traditional "sticky" curse just one of them. Curse removal is no
longer certain, and multiple removal attempts can destroy the item (even
artifacts). Stat boosts, bonuses, slays, brands and resists are now all values
rather than flags, so multiple "pvals" and variable slays and brands are
possible. The objects bitflags have been completely reworked, and all
information about an object is now kept with the object rather than referring
to the object kind.

Pseudo-id is now instant for all classes, and applies to all wearable items.
Strong pseudo now shows perilous (ego with drawbacks), dubious (some drawback),
average, good, excellent (ego with no drawbacks) and special (all artifacts);
weak pseudo shows perilous (some drawback), average or good. Squelch
categories have been changed accordingly, I hope in a useful way. *ID* has
been reintroduced; now regular ID shows everything except curses, which are
discoverable either by *ID* or (automatically) noticing when they show up.

There are some corresponding changes to regular items and artifacts, and some
new artifacts. Ungoliant now drops a specific item, making Nan Dungortheb
worth visiting. Blades of Chaos have been replaced with Valinorean Swords, and
"of Chaos" is now an ego type. Pricing has been changed to be more dependent
on the object properties and less on the type. Activatible items can now be
activated before they are ID'd.

Player Race Monsters
--------------------
Most former human ('p') monsters are now assigned one of the player races, and
have a chance not to be hostile to the player. Groups of these monsters now
have the same player race, but not necessarily the same monster race. These
groups have leaders, which influence the behaviour of the other monsters. The
AI for these guys is still fairly basic, but will mature over the 1.x series.

Mages and Magic
---------------
Mage spells have been completely reworked to make early mages playable, and
late game mages very powerful. Books have been reorganised and renamed, and
spells changed - most notably the last book now consists of varoius rune laying
spells. Magestaffs now activate to restore a small amount of mana. Mana
attacks have been completely removed from player and monsters (apart from a
couple of devices). Some monsters (and PDSM) now get an "elemental attack"
spell comprised of all 14 resistable elements; this is chiefly useful for
determining player resistances. Chaos has become much more chaotic, with
multiple effects on terrain, monsters and (if unresisted) the player.

Code Modernisation
------------------
Much of the low level code from V3.1.1dev has been incorporated - including
most of: the build system for *nix and windows, the OSX port and file handling.

Other changes
-------------
A new terrain type - sand dunes - has been introduced. It can hold objects,
and is easy to move through, but blocks line of sight.

Some improvement to object descriptions.

Spell descriptions appear before the spell is learned.

Wands of the same type always stack; if one has an unknown number of charges,
the whole stack does.

Some of the Lothlann region is now plains instead of desert.

Some monsters only appear in dungeons (gelatinous cubes, lurkers, etc).

The Complainer has increased his vocabulary.

Themed wilderness now exists - there are five themed wilderness levels, and
four themed dungeon levels.

Sound support has been upgraded so that it works properly, and Dubtrain's sound
patch can be included in the same way as for Vanilla.

Monster traps and runes can be laid on grids containing non-artifact objects
(by destroying the objects).

Uniques are more resistant to stunning.

Bugfixes
--------
Killing dungeon guardians on Angband 100 no longer causes weird stuff.

Squelched gear is dropped more quickly if hide_squelchable is on.

Extended colours show properly in html screenshots.

Autoinscriptions actually work.

Ego squelch settings are reset at the start of each game.

Anfauglith 58 is no longer chock full of artifacts.

Stairs in to Amon Rudh dungeon are no longer ever encased in granite.

Player ghosts work properly.

Crash from buffer overflow with too much gold or experience fixed.

Tree traps no longer appear under the player.

[buzzkill]

Congrats on the release. Do you see comp. 73 in FA's future? Maybe a mage?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Congrats on the release. Do you see comp. 73 in FA's future? Maybe a mage?

Well, V3.1.1 may be a bit hard to ignore for 73. But maybe 74.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Yah, congrats on the ONE. I can't wait to see the new complainer messages.

[thapper]

Congrats on the release! I'll start playing it right away (or when I get of this high-speed train, *banding here makes me nauseous).

[Nick]

I've just realised, I really should have mentioned this:

Don't upgrade with an existing live character.

Object properties get scrambled (mostly just deleted) in the upgrade process. If you want to retain your monster memory, the best way is to upgrade with a dead character.

[ekolis]

Nice! Keep up the good work!

I did notice however that on the options menu, you can't use the arrow keys because they map to numbers, which map to the commands... perhaps the numbers should be letters like on the options submenus?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by ekolis

I did notice however that on the options menu, you can't use the arrow keys because they map to numbers, which map to the commands... perhaps the numbers should be letters like on the options submenus?

Actually, that's a really good idea. This whole arrow/number thing has been a complete pain. I will do that.

[Blackened]

Congratulations on the 1.0 release, I am really looking forward to playing it! Unfortunately, unlike Vanilla, I am not able to compile it on my Linux machine and even running ./configure without any option at all results in following last four lines:

configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating mk/extra.mk
config.status: creating mk/sinclude.mk
config.status: error: cannot find input file: src/autoconf.h.in

[ekolis]

Oh, one more thing... it seems that when examining a wand/staff/etc. it always says I have a 100% chance of activating it, but that's not the case...