[Announce] FrogComposband 7.0.cloudberry released

[Thraalbee]

How about always making rags lucky regardless of personality? That and a bit more gold initially or through drops if possible. Or perhaps, e.g. every 5 or 10 levels, would help a lot.

[Nivim]

@Thraalbee: I don't think so; that's just buffing them rather than making them more interesting, and there's a difference. You could give them all sorts of stat boosts or loot boosts, but that's just pasting over the hole in their general design rather than fixing it.

Now, Sideways doesn't want to completely redesign them (and neither do I want to do it), so we should instead be thinking of mechanics that can stapled on to draw the player's focus away from the slow/boring stuff or even make them ignore it completely. I'm a little low on ideas for completely new, never-seen-before mechanics (likely due to still technically being sick with a viral infection), but the frogcomelliposchengbands have no shortage of things that can be copied and then tweaked until they're almost unrecognizable:

• Beastmen and Wild-Talents are one design space; making Rag more of a gish to Ring's rider-mage and Deathsword's glass-warrior, with a selection of random and often-useless abilities, maintaining most of the weakness of Rags while giving the player more toys.
• Rags are already extremely bad Devicemasters, so why not make that more literal? Give them abilities useful for working with devices but at larger costs and from HP, or even give them the ability to eat devices like cheap-knock-off Magic-eater.
• To further emphasize 'Filthy Rag', make them into a trashy summoning class, where they can generate molds and mushrooms (perhaps even depth-boosted) to function as mediocre traps and walls.
  • They could also have a "Disgusting" ability as opposed to Ring's Glitter, which repels creatures instead of attracting them.
  • There's also the idea of making their summoning armour-mimic themed, or even animating armour instead of absorbing it, but their description fluff currently contradicts that.
• Reminiscent of Scout and Diggermaster, they could get bonuses for things in adjacent spaces, such as huge piles of junk they can hide in or get evasion from (although, that would have the hefty downside of making mogaminator usage more annoying). Which would allow them to prepare a place to fight (at least until something destroys the loot), and potentially make them strong in cases such as when they've already cleared half of a Pit.

Writing that, one idea from another game occurred to me; give them a bad copy of Cheibriados' capstone ability, where they can get Ninja-super-stealth or better at the cost of passing a bunch of turns while it's in use, potentially killing them but also potentially saving them.

[Antoine]

Shouldn't rags be super stealthy?

A.

[introsp3ctive]

I just finished compiling on Linux Ubuntu as per the instructions in the readme. I'm familiar with the process as it was the same as for setting up Composband which I have had no issues with. When I go to launch the game, I'm getting an error that says "Cannot initialize random names" and I'm not sure what to do to fix this. Any help would be appreciated.

[Gwarl]

Originally Posted by introsp3ctive

I just finished compiling on Linux Ubuntu as per the instructions in the readme. I'm familiar with the process as it was the same as for setting up Composband which I have had no issues with. When I go to launch the game, I'm getting an error that says "Cannot initialize random names" and I'm not sure what to do to fix this. Any help would be appreciated.

For the benefit of anyone else having these problems, the solution was as follows:

run ./configure using the --with-no-install argument

after running make, simply copy the executable from the /src directory to the root directory (don't use make install)

[HugoVirtuoso]

Found a 'bug' resulting from the 'g'et command: Picking up an object of one type mixed in a pile of different item types does not consume energy / ?gameturn. (To me, it doesn't seem to.)

e.g.
Take for example - there's a Broad Sword, some Scrolls, and other item types stacked in the same pile. If you pick up this Broad Sword and not the other items in the same pile near an alert Ancient Dragon for instance, you will always get a 'free gameturn' / 'free energy' against the monster(s). This happens even if the monster is faster than you. Whereas, if you pick up the entire stack simultaneously (Broad Sword, those Scrolls, and all other item types [everything] stacked in the same pile), you won't get the 'free gameturn' / 'free energy' against the monster(s). If you pick up a lone Broad Sword from the ground (and there are no other items in the same pile), the nearby faster Ancient Dragon can still get you anyway, of course. (I might need someone to spectate me to understand what I really mean.)

(Also, I can't remember if I experienced a similar issue in ToME or Sil/Sil-Q)

Or maybe all this is working as designed since the vanilla-PCB days?

[Sideways]

Yeah, that's a bug, though it's not a bug that can be exploited.

Which way do people think it ought to work - 'g'etting an item never consuming time, or 'g'etting an item always consuming time? It makes sense that picking up items would consume time, but then auto-pickup and always-pickup already consume no time anyway, so from a gameplay point of view there's a very good argument for the "no time" option.

[Nivim]

After some thought, I think it would be based on how many kills you want to get as a variant maintainer: making it takes turns will have people used to it not taking turns getting themselves killed as a result (as well as rarer cases like saving pieces of loot right before they get wrecked), whereas making it not take turns is convenient and slightly disincentivizes messing the Mogaminator.

Edit: If there's a way to make it more clear interface-wise you might go half-and-half; make it take half or less energy per item, so you still lose time by picking up a load of stuff, but individual objects aren't bad.

[Gwarl]

Originally Posted by Sideways

Yeah, that's a bug, though it's not a bug that can be exploited.

Which way do people think it ought to work - 'g'etting an item never consuming time, or 'g'etting an item always consuming time? It makes sense that picking up items would consume time, but then auto-pickup and always-pickup already consume no time anyway, so from a gameplay point of view there's a very good argument for the "no time" option.

This is a design flaw we inherited from moria. Although the mogaminator makes it worse/show up in other places. I am inclined toward no time.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Thanks rodent / Nivim / Gwarl for the commentary to my questions on oook from earlier today. I didn't check on how much / little 'energy' is spent on destroying individual items in a multi-item-type stacks in FCPB. Any additional commentary on destruction of / getting individual item(s) in such cases are appreciated - or could be moved into a separate oook topic for developer more feedback / expansion so these thoughts are not lost over time.