[Announce] Cthangband 6.7 Release

[Dean Anderson]

Yes, it's release time again.

This one has quite a few changes. It started as a simple bugfix to fix the vault issues and the whirlpool issue (both of which had been recently reported by a player), but rapidly got away from me and ended up as a pretty major release.

Here's the change log:

• Dead monsters no longer futilely try to flee in terror.
• Fixed bug where if a player had multiple natural attacks they’d not stop making them when the monster was dead.
• Fixed a bug where stumbling into a town while confused would mean you didn’t realise you’d visited it.
• Even characters with poor item sensing can now sense artifacts.
• Potentially offensively titled ‘Genocide’ spell (and its variants) renamed.
• Fixed longstanding bug that stopped you running along the edge of a room (eventually!).
• Monsters that steal gold will now drop it when killed.
• Monsters will no longer try to summon help against other monsters if there isn’t room to do so.
• Adjusted a few character history text fragments to make them more diverse and lose some sexism/racism.
• Fixed bug where a monster breathing on another monster would fire a ball instead of a cone.
• Fixed bug where a monster attacking another monster with a theft attack would continue attacking it after having blinked away.
• Fixed wrong message being given when a monster breaks through an Elder Sign.
• Fixed sanity checks not being fired when eldritch horrors come into view.
• Fixed Channelers’ ability not working on scrolls of Rumour.
• The chance of having your race changed through mutation has been reduced.
• Priests have a patron deity (based on the realm of magic they choose), and they get increased favour with that god.
• Sacrificing items to win the gods’ favour (at the temple) will give you benefits.
• Manual and Journal are now both accessible from within stores (racial high scores moved from ‘h’ to ‘v’ to make room).
• Exact dungeon offsets will vary from game to game (randomised on world creation).
• Cleaned up formatting of skill display.
• Small balance tweaks have been made to most classes; in particular Channelers and Druids have been given a bit of a boost.
• ‘Mindcrafting’ powers have been renamed to ‘Mentalism’ powers, since the Mindcrafter class is no longer the only user of them.
• The spell-using martial artist has now been renamed to ‘Monk’ and a mentalism-based martial artist (the ‘Mystic’) has been added.
• Abilities screen now highlights abilities you have to make it easier to see at a glance.
• Removed numerous annoying and useless wizard mode messages.
• Huge amounts of behind-the-scenes code refactoring.
• Fixed bug where monsters casting whirlpool on empty spaces would crash the game.
• Last bits of confusion between ‘allies’ and ‘pets’ cleaned up.
• The high score table now includes living characters from the three save slots.
• Added documentation for how martial arts works.
• When rolling stats, characters with too low a score in their class’s main ability score will be rerolled automatically.
• Fixed two vaults that had invalid definitions.
• Fixed occasional crash when placing a greater vault on a level.

As usual, the latest version can be downloaded from my website; or if you prefer here is a direct link to the file.

[iggy_hunter]

I'm interested in helping with the continued development of Cthangband. Can I join you in your effort?

[HugoVirtuoso]

To Dean:
What are your thoughts if someone else here ports your variant to Linux or Mac? Any objections?

[Dean Anderson]

Originally Posted by iggy_hunter

I'm interested in helping with the continued development of Cthangband. Can I join you in your effort?

Until recently the source code was only on my local machine (well, and my NAS back-up device), but a month ago I moved it up to GitHub.

The repository is still private at the moment, but I'm just in the process of cleaning up the code (e.g. puttting headers on the files with license/copyright info) and I should be making it public in the next day or two. I'll put an announcement up here and on my website when that happens.

Once it's public I'll be able to handle bug reports and you'll be able to make branches with fixes and the like.

Originally Posted by HugoVirtuoso

To Dean:
What are your thoughts if someone else here ports your variant to Linux or Mac? Any objections?

I have no objections at all. Once the GitHub repository goes public anyone will be able to download the source and port it.

Although I've no idea how difficult it is porting a C# program that uses a blend of Windows Presentation Framework and WinForms onto platforms other than Windows, though.

I did look into Microsoft's claims to be able to make multi-platform apps in C#, but they seem to be mostly marketing guff and not very practical for this type of thing.