Feature request: breath/spell damage in monster memory

[Marble Dice]

Breath damage is non-random and based on a monster's current hp. Once you've discovered a monster's life rating, I'd like to see the damage values for each breath weapon when the breather is at full health.

Spell and curse damage is sometimes random, but based on monster depth. A few spells have high damage variance (water ball does 50-300 at 5000'), but even in these cases an average would be better than nothing. You automatically learn the damage on melee attacks eventually, but not spells.

As it is, I'm always calculating these values by hand.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Marble Dice

Breath damage is non-random and based on a monster's current hp. Once you've discovered a monster's life rating, I'd like to see the damage values for each breath weapon when the breather is at full health.

Spell and curse damage is sometimes random, but based on monster depth. A few spells have high damage variance (water ball does 50-300 at 5000'), but even in these cases an average would be better than nothing. You automatically learn the damage on melee attacks eventually, but not spells.

As it is, I'm always calculating these values by hand.

Yes, I like this. It wouldn't be too hard to do either. Let's get bebo to add it to the list of stuff awaiting Takkaria's views ...

[Marble Dice]

I wrote a patch for this. It includes a number of changes to monster memory:

• The average damage follows all relevant breath attacks, spells, and spell-like abilities. The quoted damage values do not consider any resistance, opposition, or immunity your character might have, and breath damage is only shown if you know the monster's average life, and are calculated for a monster at full health.
• Armor and life was moved so that it immediately follows type and speed. The drops immediately follow the experience reward. The special abilities (shrieking, arrows), breath weapons, spells, and melee attacks are all next to each other, at the end of the paragraph.
• Basic numbers (life, armor, depth, aware distance) are light cyan. Experience and drops are bright blue. Resistances are brown, vulnerabilities are violet.
• Contextual coloring on spells was added. In general, they go green, yellow, orange, bright red in ascending order of danger. Orange usually means unresisted damage. The basic four elements are orange for no resist, yellow for resist, and green for immunity. Most other elements are orange for no resist, and green for resist. Summons are orange or red, curses are usually yellow, but turn green when you get a perfect save.

If you roll your own, you should be able to apply this patch to 1681 by running "patch -up0 < monster_memory.patch" while in the angband root directory (one level above the src directory).

[Magnate]

Awesome. This potentially closes tickets #743, 541, 532 and 258. Grateful if you could add your patch to at least one of those tickets and cross-ref to the others. trac.rephial.org/ticket/258 etc.

[Zikke]

Is this going to be added to another nightly? I remember Tak talking about encouraging people to make patches and dot upgrades for the nightlies.

[Marble Dice]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Awesome. This potentially closes tickets #743, 541, 532 and 258. Grateful if you could add your patch to at least one of those tickets and cross-ref to the others. trac.rephial.org/ticket/258 etc.

I posted on #743 and #542. The patch doesn't address #541 and #258; namely, it doesn't change the way the monster memory only mentions bright light and rock remover for enemies that are vulnerable to it, so that you keep trying to test invulnerable enemies with those two attacks.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Zikke

Is this going to be added to another nightly? I remember Tak talking about encouraging people to make patches and dot upgrades for the nightlies.

Probably. I'll have a play with it next time I take a break from conquering the Roman world, and I'll commit it unless there's some reason not to.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Marble Dice

I posted on #743 and #542. The patch doesn't address #541 and #258; namely, it doesn't change the way the monster memory only mentions bright light and rock remover for enemies that are vulnerable to it, so that you keep trying to test invulnerable enemies with those two attacks.

Fair enough, and thanks for your work. I'll test it soon.