Sil-Q 1.4.1 release

[wobbly]

Yeah I guess I don't have any great ideas here at the moment and there's certainly more important stuff to get right. The consumables are fine being consumable, maybe just fix the worst? The box full of blessed realms? Is there jewellery that wont work in a chest? Mixed jewels seems to make as much sense as here's where we store our blessed realm amulets. Straight off the mint. All catalogued, filed and stored in rows....

[Wiwaxia]

A minor request since you seem to be working on another release: could you add an "other" gender option to the character creation screen? (or just remove the gender field altogether, since I think it only affects the pronouns on the opening quote) It's a little thing but it matters a surprising amount, and I've been hesitant to recommend Sil or Sil-Q to nonbinary friends who I think might otherwise enjoy it because of that.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Wiwaxia

A minor request since you seem to be working on another release: could you add an "other" gender option to the character creation screen? (or just remove the gender field altogether, since I think it only affects the pronouns on the opening quote) It's a little thing but it matters a surprising amount, and I've been hesitant to recommend Sil or Sil-Q to nonbinary friends who I think might otherwise enjoy it because of that.

I don't have any objection to removing the gender field. If anyone does, please speak up and give your reasons, but I think without the field we can all have the character default to the gender we assume for them in our head and nobody need be upset by it.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Quirk

I don't have any objection to removing the gender field. If anyone does, please speak up and give your reasons, but I think without the field we can all have the character default to the gender we assume for them in our head and nobody need be upset by it.

I agree this seems the simplest solution.

[Quirk]

Gender turned out to be more than a pain than expected - height and weight were based off it. Have fudged a solution. Commit is up.

[wobbly]

Some weirdness in Uldor's AI. In this screenshot:

http://angband.oook.cz/screen-show.php?id=4602

they are just exchanging places. After killing the archer, Uldor proceeds to just keep moving between the 2 squares rather then attacking back.

[thzfunnymzn]

Watched and read Sil for a while, beat one game of Sil 1.3, left another game of Sil-Q half-finished at 700', have another game at 850'. Remember some old discussions about Smithing builds. Had a spitball for Smithing:

Smithing a Masterpiece Greater Jewel, which, when the presented in the throne room, would incite so much greed in the foes there that they would begin fighting each other over the jewel. (See: Ungoliant fighting with Morgorth over the Silmarils). In the chaos, the Iron Crown falls off Morgoth's head, and the character can carve out a Sil and run. (Course, that leaves the question of why the Throne Room doesn't just kill the player to get the Shiny).

Reason: From what I know of my reading (I may be wrong; I have relatively little gameplay experience, little hard numerical analysis of Sil, and am late to the party), because of inability to knock off the Iron Crown, all builds, ultimately, come back to Melee, Archery, or Song, in order to accomplish the game's objective. Since it seems "Smithing builds" are an aesthetic desire of Sil, but Smithing is generally just a support skill for Melee or Archery, I figured the part of the way to accomplish that aesthetic desire would be to give the player a way to use Smithing to "knock off" the Iron Crown (knocking it off in a way that doesn't go through Melee, Archery, or Song). I figured my proposal aesthetically matched up with Tolkien's lore, hence, the suggestion.

That's it. I'll go back to lurking now.

[Jamba]

Originally Posted by Wiwaxia

A minor request since you seem to be working on another release: could you add an "other" gender option to the character creation screen? (or just remove the gender field altogether, since I think it only affects the pronouns on the opening quote) It's a little thing but it matters a surprising amount, and I've been hesitant to recommend Sil or Sil-Q to nonbinary friends who I think might otherwise enjoy it because of that.

There is no "gender" field.

There is a "sex" field though, but I dunno why you would want that gone unless you like to roleplay as an amoeba.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by thzfunnymzn

Smithing a Masterpiece Greater Jewel, which, when the presented in the throne room, would incite so much greed in the foes there that they would begin fighting each other over the jewel. (See: Ungoliant fighting with Morgorth over the Silmarils). In the chaos, the Iron Crown falls off Morgoth's head, and the character can carve out a Sil and run. (Course, that leaves the question of why the Throne Room doesn't just kill the player to get the Shiny).

I think my main question with this is why, if the throne room will descend into bickering and chaos to acquire a jewel, it has not already done so over the Silmarils themselves, the greatest jewels in Tolkien. I suspect the answer is that nobody else in that throne room wishes to enter into a conflict with Morgoth.

This leads me to the conclusion that entering the throne room with some fancy and desirable jewel would only lead to Morgoth ordering "take it!" and a legion of orcs, Balrogs and other fiends descending on the player.

Incidentally there is one more way to remove Morgoth's crown you haven't mentioned, which is to use a staff of slumber with sufficiently high Will. It's relatively rare that a build would have this as an only option; I'll explain.

No Melee and no Archery implies pacifist or a Stealth build. This incidentally also more or less rules out Smithing, because it required a prolonged period of making noise and attracts monsters, which pacifists have no permanent means of dealing with.

Pacifists most popularly use Lorien as their song of choice, which puts Morgoth to sleep and removes the crown. Elbereth pacifists are just about possible but very rare, and there are certain enemies such as serpents they have difficulty dealing with: they can either use Lorien or make use of high Will plus a staff of slumber - since Majesty is useful to the build high Will is plausible. Pure stealth characters with low Song are the most constrained for options.

In general though most of the major constraints on builds are imposed by the need to survive until the throne room. It is not impossible that something like this could work outside the throne room, where a jewel could be thrown as a distraction, and it certainly seems like that might work for dragons in a nearly canonical sounding way, but I suspect that it would either not be worth the smithing cost or a broken tool in the hands of an archer. It wouldn't be broken if the enemy was required to be unaware of your presence, but then the mismatch between Smithing and Stealth appears again.

[fph]

Originally Posted by Jamba

There is no "gender" field.

There is a "sex" field though, but I dunno why you would want that gone unless you like to roleplay as an amoeba.

There is also no "eye/hair/skin color" field: people are happy to leave these details to the imagination of the player roleplaying their character, without the need to write them down. It's not clear why the shape of the character's genitalia is more important, to the point of deserving an explicit mention in the character screen. Also, since it's an issue many people are sensitive to, it makes sense to leave it out.