[Un]angband 0.6.2 beta 2 has been released!

[Bandobras]

I've just prepeared the release of Unangband 0.6.2 beta2. I hope UnAndrew approves of it, signs it and does all the publicity stunts, when he has a couple of hours to spare. Please report any bugs in this thread. Have a lot of fun and save often! The files are at

https://developer.berlios.de/project...p?group_id=331

The release notes follow.

Unangband 0.6.2 Beta Release 2: "Help of the shopkeepers"

This probably the last release with so big changes before 0.6.2 gold.
Among other things, options' names are changed, so some of your
old pref files may not work as expected (old option names are ignored).
This release is somewhat tested, but it may crash on you without
any warning just as well. Please backup your savefiles before
upgrading and save often.

Thanks to all involved: testers, reporters, contributors
and to the new, volunteer shopkeepers.

Changes from 0.6.2-beta to 0.6.2-beta2:

### Game Play ###

* made nexus temporary (via temporary stat bonuses)

* fixed #12919 (Flask and wand of Nexus do not (un)scramble stats)

* removed potions of Slow Poison

* removed instrument-specialized bards' icky hands penalty. It was irregular,
no other class gets icky hands for anything else than magic books use.
Instruments are underused anyway.

* made wands of Spark less common outside Hobbiton

* made resting for the night more expensive --- vampires are not liked

* made Ranger's cache more lucrative

* moved auto-eat to before the travel; tweaked messages and allowed food

* mega patch changing the options subsystem to the V setup and tweaking
the amal gamation of V and Un options is various ways

* Savefile version bumped; options are reset when loading older savefiles

* hack: options I abandoned in the mega-patch are ignored in prf files;
warnings displayed when old savefile imported

* some slight bag tweaks

* no level feeling in town and wilderness

* removed feeling delay; changed the scale of level feeling

* remove feeling boost from items

* random hacks to make level feeling better; it will improve further
when more rooms is generated in some cramped dungeons

* changed feeling messages to negative ones from S

* bumped the level of low-level monsters, except breeders that were already
bump ed; in this way we have less monsters of the same level in monster groups
and higher level feeling with the same danger

* made good and great objects more common to compensate for no level feelings
related to objects

* a hack to move Black willow deeper (paralyze spell); it's now at DL7,
it it's not enough, make paralyzation even shorter for shallow monsters

* made ecologies start at DL3 so that both Maggot's and Isengard start with
all the fun; only Bree has first 2 levels weird

* an experiment with limiting powerleveling for low-level characters;
this count ers higher amount of OoD monsters after my previous changes;
this does not affect XP from in-depth monsters; it almost does not affect
CL30 and older characters

* reverted my year old stupid change, which made the Three Trolls worth
lots of XP

* described Black willow in more detail to help players

* added a shopkeeper, changed the races of others, made the Maias even more
secret

* made also the evil shapechanger shopkeepers hide their race. Make them
and Maiar really outgoing to their kin. Added a (hidden) ******** shopowner

* done #13304 (don't repeat shop owners, if some are still left);
no savefile format change needed

* lots more shopkeepers; the shop-owners overhaul is beta2-ready now

* slight tweak to detect magic and wizard mode display

* a slight tweak to the message after defeating the guardian

* moved some rubbish potions deeper to make stat potions and other
useful potions more common while they are really useful

* the final few shops from the polls


### User Interface ###

* corrected description of Tree of Life spell and similar

* shortened Wonder description to fit the screen

* fuelling now auto-lights

* changed some flag descriptions to be understandable by newbies

* fixed zero rechange times and mangled descriptions of activable objects
(rods and artifacs were fine)

* added description of the resting services

* tweaked line splitting and fixed some quirks

* tweaked description of mana-adding objects

* changed filename of a tip kind to be prettier to display

* store help tips (their file names) permanently in the order of their display

* help tips knowledge screen

* removed spurious messages when refueling

* fixed broken description of charm spells, etc., as reported by Anne

* wording of the birth_beginner option

* moved Un options to the end of menus so that V people feel at home

* added 'R'eset options command to '='

* fixed layout of '=' and '~' menus

* removed some obscure and half-broken commands

* corrected some command help

* various little fixes from the forum

* committed the new options help file by Mysterious Anne

- Added lib/docs folder which will contain .rtf files with various
in-game and out of game documents. (May use .htm instead at a future date).

- Move explanation of monster.txt file to lib/docs/monster.rtf.

- Decide to consolidate all lib/edit comment files into a single modding.rtf
document.

- Updates to artifact.txt, ego_item.txt, flavor.txt, object.txt, p_race.txt,
p_class.txt, spell.txt to use newly formated artifact.txt file.

* added Pete Mac description of display_knowledge

* modified display_knowledge, according to Pete Mac lore,
so that dungeon_knowledge starts at the current location (not zone, yet)

* added reminders about lighting torches to two more help notes

* yet another dungeons dump tweak

* a bit more informative messages when taking the guardian stairs

* feet -> stories for towers

* made the 'fumble' message longer, as it happens rarely

* made stat potions a little bit more common; some cleanup


### Bug fixes ###

* fixed display of temporarily drained stats on the main screen

* corrected rod of CMW

* Rod of Haste Monsters did nothing

* Potion of Boldness no longer of Holy Water

* fixed a crash at cheat_lore option

* fixed inactive Rod of Slow Monsters

* fixed uninitialized variable that mangled object details display
(e.g. Phase Door distance)

* now saving store generation level, this now really fixes #10307
(restocking of the black market, thanks to kajmace's persistence)

* a fix to message saving; if your messages get garbled upon version change,
don't be alarmed --- it's a one-time annoyance

* fixed a lots of object generation quirks; not sure what I'm doing;
no more negative pval objects in shops; but I'd prefer that there remain
a few with sane maluses

* fixed too high guesses price of unknown gauged weapons

* fixed 13138 (Can't use staff in hand)

* remove spurious flags in spells such as the one invoked by eating mushroom of
Blindness

* cleaned up dungeon knowledge function thanks to pmac

* hacked a fix to #13235 (Shield of Sustain Wisdom didn't work)

- Fix for Bug #13250: Tree trunks can be opened (and bashed with the same descr)

- Only update monster experience and rarity if we are trying to output
a new monster txt file.

- Remove various monster.txt file hacks from init1.c so that the flags
in the monster.txt file are an accurate representation of the monster.

- Update the monster.txt file to improve formatting and so that all
monsters stats are correctly represented.

- Disable ALLOW_TEMPLATES_OUTPUT so we don't write output files every
time we start.

- Fix for bug Bug #11856 Wrong greyed out classes.

* enable the slow debugging of spell.txt, but only if ALLOW_TEMPLATES_OUTPUT
defined

* fixed #13205 (infinite torches from the wall)

* a fix for a bow with EXTRA_MIGHT (-8) in a shop

* fixed #13293 (No screen update after command: wear)

* made mushrooms of Mana blue again

* a quick hack to remove broken egos from quest reward shops

* fixed #13328 (Guaranteed good and great items still get negative pvals)

* unfortunately the quadratic pval costs make cheaper flags much more common,
because more expensive stuff can't get into the 19/20 of the expected power;
reduced this to 18/20, but still... for the same reason non-pval flags
are very rare --- they can't fine tune to 18/20 by pvals or, deep down,
get high enough by pvals (in magic items, randarts cope)

* removed/redone some of my tweaks from last month, when I still didn't
understand the code

* fixed a crash in homes knowledge screen

* fixed the Wall of Fire crash reported by Big Al

* fixed bag refusing mashrooms

* disabled the "bad maze" message unless cheat_xtra

* shop_owners apparently cannot have purse bigger than 30000;
fixed a related bug

* prevented sensing pval when already identified (then items would not stack)


### Build / Platform ###

* silenced mingw warnings

- Allow OS/X to compile again due to changes in use_sound introduced
in the Angband porting work. This will undoubtedly break the OS/X menus.

- Workaround for Bug #13249 ] Crash on exit with show_itemlist on Windows.

[ekolis]

Well, thanks, but the Windows port kinda crashes on Vista when I start it up... the last thing that appears is "initializing arrays (races)"...

[Anne]

Woohoo! Big thanks for all the time and effort you've been putting into this. It's much appreciated!

Originally Posted by Bandobras

* moved auto-eat to before the travel; tweaked messages and allowed food

Perfect solution! Moving the auto-eat to before will eliminate the confusion about the hunger not showing on the status bar.

Originally Posted by Bandobras

* remove feeling boost from items

Personally, I think that's a good idea. Realistically, I can see getting a feeling based on monsters (maybe you'd notice little signs subconsciously) but not from inanimate objects.

Originally Posted by Bandobras

* made good and great objects more common to compensate for no level feelings related to objects

Woot!

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by ekolis

Well, thanks, but the Windows port kinda crashes on Vista when I start it up... the last thing that appears is "initializing arrays (races)"...

Anybody else with this problem? It runs fine on my Wine, so either your download got corrupted or Wine is different from Vista (duh!). In the latter case, perhaps somebody can compile on Vista and we will see if it runs on XP, etc.?

Edit: Please try totally wiping out your previous Un installation (preserving savefiles somewhere else) and restarting your computer. It's known to help...

[ekolis]

Hmm, I deleted my old installation and installed this one to a different folder under My Documents, but I never restarted...

I think I'll try compiling it from source in VC++ 2008 Express to see if I can run that version... someone else was having trouble compiling Vanilla so I was thinking of doing that too

edit: OK, I compiled Unangband... now the first time I run it, it crashes, but the second time it runs OK (though the font is invisible; changing the font seems to fix it!) I'll start a game and see what happens...

edit 2: so far so good... though you misspelled "thaumaturgy"

edit 3: OK, what's with all the "alt" spells in the book of Incendiaries?

[Anne]

Originally Posted by Bandobras

Anybody else with this problem? It runs fine on my Wine, so either your download got corrupted or Wine is different from Vista (duh!). In the latter case, perhaps somebody can compile on Vista and we will see if it runs on XP, etc.?

I just tried both the precompiled version for Windows, and compiling it myself. Both worked fine on XP - the game installed and opened without a hitch.

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by Anne

I just tried both the precompiled version for Windows, and compiling it myself. Both worked fine on XP - the game installed and opened without a hitch.

Thank you for the confirmation. So, it's Wine hand in hand with XP against Vista...

Originally Posted by ekolis

edit: OK, I compiled Unangband... now the first time I run it, it crashes

Any message? Was it with an old savefile or no savefile? Is is reproducible? Debug backtrace?

Originally Posted by ekolis

though the font is invisible; changing the font seems to fix it!

Yeah, people report the font disappears even in V and other variants after Un eats it. But restart helps. Thank you for the tip with changing the font (from menu, I presume?).

Originally Posted by ekolis

edit 2: so far so good... though you misspelled "thaumaturgy"

Oh, my, it's all over the place! Thank you, fixed.

Originally Posted by ekolis

edit 3: OK, what's with all the "alt" spells in the book of Incendiaries?

They are totally the same as the base spells. I guess you just glimpsed a developer comment protruding from the binary.

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by Anne

On the self-knowledge screen, it said that my character was afflicted with paranoia caused by minor ailments. I tried a Mushroom of Cure Paranoia and it didn't cure the disease. Maybe those aren't supposed to cure the disease type of paranoia. If so, then it's a bit confusing - maybe the disease type could be renamed to differentiate it?

Yes, the cure is different and somewhat surprising but ingenious. Changed to "faint heart".

Originally Posted by Anne

Scrying spells such as Sense Magic seem a little untidy in that they will list as choices some items that have already been identified, or mushroom patch spores (which don't get identified).

Can't reproduce. Are you sure a scroll of Identify didn't want to work on an item, but Sense Magic did? If not, it's probably that your item is gauged, has some properties guessed, etc. but is not identified as such and so Sense Magic has a theoretical chance to tell something more. This will be probably overhauled, anyway. so that e.g. if you know enough about the item it will automatically acquire the "Identified" flag.

Originally Posted by Anne

Description for Path through Misty Mountains - missing a letter and a couple spaces

Thank you. Fixed. However, "Wild" is the "Wild" over Misty Mountains as known and feared by the people on the better side of Misty Mountains.

[Pete Mack]

I've got a gripe. Running should be interrupted further from mushroom patches. It is really stupid to get disturbed by a spore attack instead. Damn disease attacks ... grrrr.

[Bandobras]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

I've got a gripe. Running should be interrupted further from mushroom patches. It is really stupid to get disturbed by a spore attack instead. Damn disease attacks ... grrrr.

How come? Isn't it disturbed at the first sighting of a patch? You propose another disturbance just before entering their firing radius? Hmm, would make sense for any immobile monster with limited attack radius. But what if there are many such monsters in a room? You wouldn't be able to run at all! But then, perhaps you shouldn't run in a room full of monsters, even if immobile...