3.4.0 Release Candidate is available

[fizzix]

The Angband dev team is proud to announce the RC for 3.4.0. You can download the Windows or Mac autobuilds here. As always, source is available from github (Autobuilt RC is be2f579582).

A full list of the changes can be found in changes.txt in the main folder. I'll highlight some of the gameplay changes here.

• Shockbolt's 64x64 tiles
• Stack and quiver size is now max 40
• Fuzzy detection for everything but !enlight and rogue's detect object spell
• New pit types and allocation rates
• Angels are now Ainu (mostly a cosmetic change)
• Deep descent is a delayed effect that will drop you 5 levels
• Less stat points available at character creation
• Monster summons are dependent on summoner and summonee level.
• Various tweaks to monsters (AC, alertness)

In addition we are trying to get a cocoa port running for 3.4.0, so feedback on that would be helpful.

Please report any bugs here.

-Angband Dev Team

[myshkin]

Originally Posted by fizzix

In addition we are trying to get a cocoa port running for 3.4.0, so feedback on that would be helpful.

To be more specific, the DMG to which fizzix linked above is a build of the Cocoa port. The Carbon code is still in the source distribution, but we hope to deprecate it for 3.4.0. Here are ridiculous_fish's web page and original pull request for the work. I have made a few additional changes, primarily to add support for the UTF-8 changes in the game engine. A few things you should know about the Cocoa port, if you have not tried it yet:

• The Cocoa port does not support PPC machines or OSes before 10.5. The latter restriction is strict, since the code uses API calls not available before 10.5. It is conceivable that one could get it to run on 10.5 PPC, but the devteam has no ability to test on that platform.
• The port now permits changing fonts on a window-by-window basis. Font size currently has no effect, as ridiculous_fish's resizing code scales the contents of the window to fill the window (and thus supports arbitrary scaling factors in the x and y directions). A current consequence of this scaling behavior is that it is impossible to change the number of rows and columns in a window. I am still working on adding this behavior. At that point, we will have two uses for the resize mouse operation (scaling the window contents and changing the grid size); do you have any opinions as to which should occur on a simple drag, and which should require something like Command-drag?
• All graphics modes, including Shockbolt's new tiles and maximizing the windows to full-screen, and sound should be supported, but I have not tested these extensively.
• I'd like to add in the Open Recent... menu from the Carbon port, but have not gotten to implementing it yet.

Please try it out, and let us know if you encounter any issues.

[Derakon]

Resizing the window should add rows/columns. I guess the ideal behavior would be to use the selected font size to determine a minimum grid size, and to scale the font up as the window is dragged up until there's enough room to insert a new row or column (thus perfectly filling the window regardless of its size), but that'd just be a bonus.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by myshkin

The port now permits changing fonts on a window-by-window basis. Font size currently has no effect, as ridiculous_fish's resizing code scales the contents of the window to fill the window (and thus supports arbitrary scaling factors in the x and y directions). A current consequence of this scaling behavior is that it is impossible to change the number of rows and columns in a window. I am still working on adding this behavior. At that point, we will have two uses for the resize mouse operation (scaling the window contents and changing the grid size); do you have any opinions as to which should occur on a simple drag, and which should require something like Command-drag?

IMHO ordinary drag should change the number of rows and/or columns (as Derakon suggests), with command-drag keeping them fixed and changing font size.

Excellent work on this.

[myshkin]

One other thing: savefiles and user preference files now live in ~/Documents/Angband/... to be more compliant with Apple standards of directory usage.

[Shockbolt]

So this is *the* Angband ver 3.4? Sounds cool and I'm looking forward to spending some hours gaming Angband this weekend!

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Shockbolt

So this is *the* Angband ver 3.4? Sounds cool and I'm looking forward to spending some hours gaming Angband this weekend!

It's the first Release Candidate. If it has no bugs at all, then yes it will be 3.4.0. But that's unlikely ;-)

In feature terms, yes it's the 3.4.0 feature set. We're just trying to find any nasty bugs before release.

[Egavactip]

>Stack and quiver size is now max 40

I've been playing with this in recent days through V4 and I must say I don't like it AT ALL. It has necessitated me going up to replenish arrows and CCW far more often than before, unless I want to give up two additional slots. It basically forces me to have an inadequate supply of arrows--which is especially critical in the early to mid stages of a character when they may not be able to use their melee weapon because of fear.

Ostensibly the reason for this change is because it was too easy to fight Sauron and Morgoth with slay evil arrows. Changing the entire quiver and stack system to accomplish this very narrow balancing goal is IMO over the top. With game balance, the simplest and least intrusive solutions are almost always the best (which I say with some 25+ years of experience as a wargame playtester).

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Egavactip

>
Ostensibly the reason for this change is because it was too easy to fight Sauron and Morgoth with slay evil arrows.

That's actually not the reason for it at all. The reason (IMO) is that having a quiver with 99 arrows per slot is hugely overpowered, it makes archery the default for any class, even priests who are supposedly discouraged from arching. Remember this is closer to a reversion to older days where there was no quiver and each arrow stack went into its own slot. Arguably you are still better off in the endgame with archery than you were prior to the quiver. Not being able to buy 99 arrows from the general store is probably annoying since you've been used to it, but people used to complain about how easy this made the game for a long time. I'd consider making ammo drops more common in the dungeon, or even tweaking breakage chance as possible options if there's a consensus that this limitation is too onerous.

In my playthroughs I tended to find enough !Cure potions in the dungeon to get by. If I was limited in potions it was by what I could afford from the shops and how many they were actually stocking, not slots. Can you describe the situation where you are running out of !CCW in the midgame?

[Derakon]

Egavactip, I recognize that you don't like the change, but please realize two things:

1) v4 archery is broken (in the "useless" sense). You can't compare it to 3.4's archery, which uses the old damage calculations. Please play with 3.4 before declaring it broken.

2) The goal of the 40-items-per-slot limit is to keep us from having to eliminate the quiver altogether. It was breaking the game wide open before and absolutely had to be nerfed. It had nothing to do with fighting Sauron/Morgoth and everything to do with ensuring that the player cannot carry enough items to handle every situation, which is an explicit design goal for Angband play in general.

Also, if you're frightened, drink potions of Heroism. They give you temporary resistance to fear. They're standard kit for all of my melee-using characters until the midgame at least.