[Announce] FrogComposband 7.0.cloudberry released

[Sideways]

7.0.cloudberry is now available here, with the source code, precompiled Windows full game (without the source code) and precompiled Windows .exe. (Windows users who download the .exe should also download the source code, but not the full game, which would be superfluous. Windows users who download the full game won't need to download any other files.)

Savefiles are unidirectionally compatible with previous versions of FrogComposband; you can safely use old savefiles in 7.0.cloudberry, but you can't use cloudberry savefiles in older versions.

Many thanks to everybody who provided feedback and helped make this (hopefully) the best version of FrogComposband yet! I hope you will enjoy 7.0.cloudberry and continue to help me improve the game. I already have plenty of ideas - many of them yours - for the next version, but the more the merrier

Changes in FrogComposband 7.0.cloudberry:

* Improved support for play on the angband.live online server (unwanted auto-running on keyboards with no Num Lock, which has been a perennial problem for angband.live newcomers, can now be very easily disabled; and the game attempts to detect this problem automatically and help the player solve it)

* Plugged a loophole that allowed Amberite blood curses to still be deadlier than intended after the earlier nerf in 7.0.nougat (thanks to Gwarl for being unlucky enough to discover this)

* Ranged weapons now have their own list of random artifact names, separate from that of melee weapons

* Completely redesigned player Water Elementals based on Nivim's ideas (thanks also to wobbly for the feedback on old water elementals)

* Added some new monsters and artifacts

* Added mimic/possessor data for most of the monsters that lacked it

* Djinnis now resist fire

* Several additional monsters now either resist confusion or can shake it off rapidly. (Notably, Fenris, Maeglin, Eol and Jurt now resist confusion, and the bird uniques can shake it off rapidly; but the bird uniques' HP was slightly reduced to compensate)

* The two main types of confusion attack (GF_CONFUSION and GF_OLD_CONF) now both give monsters a save against the effects; previously, only GF_OLD_CONF gave monsters a save

* The Vault is now described as a level 35 quest, instead of level 30. (This change has no effect on how dangerous the quest actually is; it is intended simply to give the player a more accurate idea of its danger level. The change does have minor effects on object generation within the quest.)

* Swapped the wilderness-mode rewards of Crow's Nest and Orc Camp

* Fixed minor issues with the descriptions for potions of Clarity and Great Clarity

* Swapping equipment at home (or in a shop) with a full inventory no longer throws the player out of the building with an erroneous pack overflow warning

* The dates of quest failures were not recorded properly; this has been fixed

* Attempting to summon monsters on a Possessor caused the game to crash; this has been fixed (thanks to bostock for reporting)

* Fixed a display bug in the character sheet when a monster with a long name was being possessed or mimicked

* Humanoid corpses are no longer auto-destroyed while a player demon is temporarily polymorphed into a non-demon (thanks to Mocht for reporting)

* Player traps can no longer roll the Trap Door effect on the bottom level of a dungeon (thanks to bostock for suggesting this)

* Nerfed harp randarts, and slightly reduced the power of all harp artifacts for non-bards

* Added partial inscription support for devices absorbed by Magic-Eaters

* Added an option to disallow permanent changes to the player's race (intended mostly for use in future competitions)

* Added an option to start with empty item lore even when the game is based on a dead character's savefile

* Improved samurai (added browsing support in the spell UI and imported some attack flavor messages from Composband, and reduced the life rating a bit)

* Player jellies eating a stack of objects works properly now

* The Old Man Willow quest now counts as completed when Old Man Willow is killed (copied from Composband)

* Helmets of Knowledge and Dragon Armor of Lore now give auto-identify instead of auto-pseudo-identify

* The Phial of Galadriel now gives rDark and +5 to searching

* Improved warning message when Crafting has a chance to fail

* Reduced XP gain from player summons (to discourage spamming staves of summoning for XP)

* Clipped the extremes of the random energy function

* It is now possible to use the 'J' key (the '(' key in the roguelike keyset) to resume travelling to the same target after being disturbed mid-travel

* Modified the message when a monster hurts itself (thanks to murphy for reporting this problem)

* In some unusual circumstances, the Zombified Serpent of Chaos could be generated without the normal Serpent of Chaos having been killed first; this has been fixed

* The "Bless Weapon" power, which previously had a 1 in 3 chance of successfully blessing a strong weapon and a 2 in 3 chance of disenchanting it, will now always succeed except in the case of some fundamentally unholy items (thanks to wobbly and bostock for their feedback)

* Werewolves could change from wolf to human while stalking and still stalk; this has been fixed (thanks to wobbly for reporting)

* Weaponsmiths can no longer remove shop discounts from items (thanks to CyclopsSlayer for bringing this up)

* Fixed several issues with shieldmasters (thanks to Fnord for reporting)

* Fixed a minor issue with the description of use-IDed *Sharp* weapons

* Toned down death-swords' speed gain a bit (thanks to Nivim for suggesting)

* Rebalanced player-monster golems (thanks to Bucephalus for the feedback)

* Using autoget with no melee attacks sometimes caused the game to get stuck and crash; this has been fixed (thanks to bostock for the report)

* Bumping into an invisible monster with no melee attacks now costs a bit of time, though less than a full turn (thanks to vertigo for suggesting this)

* Lists of stolen objects carried by monsters were not loaded properly, causing such objects to fall into a limbo; this has been fixed

* Fixed two bugs with monster packs (their most notable effect was that dungeon entrance guardians were sometimes not properly marked as killed)

* Artifacts absorbed by Death-Swords and Rings are now marked as found even if not identified

* For the purposes of Weaponsmith and Death-Sword item absorption, all objects with a Kill flag are now considered to also have the corresponding Slay flag (thanks to Prandar for bringing this up)

* Sense Living, once acquired, was never turned off (thanks to wobbly for reporting)

* Monsters from Egyptian mythology now have their own monster-knowledge group (thanks to Mocht for suggesting this)

* A device having no charges left now takes priority over other possible problems (like failing to use the device or being too scared to use it) (thanks to Mocht for suggesting this)

* Potions of Blood are now automatically identified (thanks to Mocht for suggesting this)

* The character sheet's equipment flags table now has lines for Stunning and Life Rating (thanks to Mocht for suggesting the latter)

* Improved interaction of manual pickup with auto-pickup

* The presence of other chests or doors/traps in adjacent squares no longer makes it impossible to open/disarm a chest the player's standing on

* Redundant object flag inscriptions (like "Li;-Li") should no longer appear. Also, made sure such flags have no effect on the object's value

* Item valuation ignored magic resistance; this has been fixed

* Alchemists no longer receive special Hero/Berserk bonuses from any source other than potions

* Fixed bugs with some Rage-Mage spells (thanks to Aver for reporting)

* Fixed the Throw Object wild talent (thanks to budswell for reporting)

* Added Ighalli's effective_speed option from V (show speeds as energy multipliers, except in the character sheet)

* Added new class-specific rewards and tweaked some existing ones to make them more appropriate (thanks to Mocht and CyclopsSlayer for reporting issues)

* The Mogaminator now supports the "more charges than" item descriptor (e.g. "staves more charges than 15:cure wounds#@uu!sdk" picks up staves of cure wounds with at least 16 charges, and inscribes them with @uu!sdk)

* The Mogaminator now supports loading other characters' preference files (including pickpref.prf, the default preference file)

* Pets take a bit longer to feel neglected now

* Nerfed a number of races and classes slightly (priest, time-lord, jelly, steel dragon, bronze draconian, shieldmaster, mindcrafter, monk, possibly others that I forget)

* Verification is now requested for any attempt to genocide nagas (or xorns for users of the roguelike keyset)

* Various minor tweaks and code improvements

Good luck everybody, and have fun!

[CyclopsSlayer]

Ooo... Cloudberry Jam is incredibly hard to find here.
Now I get to play in it!

[Sideways]

There is a brief to-do list at the end of the change log. Even hyper-rudimentary is a polite way to describe it - it's a tiny fraction of the size of my private to-do list - but it does mention emulord's armor monsters as a thing being planned. (It also mentions that my current plan is to implement them as filthy rags.)

The private to-do list is mostly full of my own ideas right now, but "allow longer player names" is on it, as is checking a report of Nivim's about life-draining on mimics, looking into Aver's request to allow dragon-pact warlocks to ride in the arena, and Hugo's idea to give tourists extra money for photographs of a tsuchinoko. (There's also an ancient bug of vertigo's that's never been reproduced and I hope never will, and notes of some more exotic or jocular suggestions like wobbly's player beer elementals.)

[CyclopsSlayer]

In Win10, I tabbed out of the game and then clicked on the game window to pull it back to the front. Something I have done many times before in earlier versions. The Game closed without an error message, Save file seemed to roll back to last save.
Will note if it happens again.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Suggestions for future frogcompos versions:

1)
Incorporate the new altered Chaos patron behavior from Compos 7.1. Do this for anyone that has a Chaos Patron (e.g. Chaotic personality, etc.)

To those who don't know what altered means: for example, Chaos patrons can do 'extra' stuff good or bad to the player during quests, which make the game more interesting, imo.

(I'll have to review a recent recording of the angband.live chat window to state what Gwarl really said)

2)
Re-implement randart jewelry - not just because Gwarl did it...but randart jewelry was a thing in old PCB versions until version 3 or 4 (I forgot which one - happened in 2014) with the introduction of the generic Barbarian Talisman and so on.

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by HugoTheGreat2011

Suggestion for future frogcompos versions: Incorporate the new altered Chaos patron behavior from Compos 7.1. Do this for anyone that has a Chaos Patron (e.g. Chaotic personality, etc.)

I'm happy with the current chaos patron behavior and Chaotic personality. But the Composband version might get added in in some other way

Experimenting with randart jewelry is also on my to-do list for the next version. But don't look for it to be as strong as it is in Composband.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Sideways - Do you want to elaborate on the four to-do items on your changes log? Yes, I mean those four. The only reason for asking is because I think they're interesting.

[Sideways]

OK, that looks like a bug. I'll try to fix it speedily and re-release. In the meantime, try loading a pickpref file (any pickpref file at all), and then make the changes you want, they should save properly.

Fixed now, hopefully. Apologies for the bug.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Originally Posted by Mocht

Downloaded the new version, first time I went into pick up preferences it said initialization, which it always said before, but didn't say for the first version of cloudberry

Pressed "k" to kill then "a" to autodestroy (a bunch of torches) got the message "Failed to create temporary file /tmp/anXXXXXX

I second this. Getting the same error when I use ~ w/u/k/p for 'wanted', 'remaining uniques', 'kill counts', and 'pets'

[Sideways]

That is a really bizarre error. There's nothing in the code that could cause that error, so the only way it could happen is if MinGW reused an outdated version of util.o when I compiled. On the plus side, because there's nothing in the code that could cause that error, I don't need to modify the code, just make doubly sure it compiles properly.

I have updated the precompiled files, sorry for the inconvenience.