Changeset 1012

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10/01/08 19:27:42 (3 months ago)
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takkaria
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Update the changelog.

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  • trunk/changes.txt

    r918 r1012  
    55 
    66Thanks for this release go to: Eytan Zweig, pelpel, Kenneth Boyd, 
    7 J.D. White, and more 
    8 XXX fill in before release 
    9  
    10 Leon Marrick's dungeon generator from O was imported briefly, but since 
    11 he wasn't around to answer questions or improve it at all, it's been 
    12 reverted (see revisions 306 and 612).  Also, using the 3.0.x dungeon 
    13 generator makes it much easier to balance the object allocation changes. 
    14 The dungeon generator is scheduled for some attention sometime in the 
    15 3.1.x series, but it's not my main concern right now. 
     7J.D. White, Eddie Grove, Rowan Beentje, Nick McConnell, Gabriel 
     8Cunningham, Shanoah Alkire, Alexander Philips, mikon, Antony Sidwell, 
     9and all the alpha- and beta- testers who downloaded the game, 
     10sometimes in an extremely shaky state, and played it anyway. 
    1611 
    1712Noticeable up-front UI changes 
    …… 
    2116 * Notes, like NPP and FA, except with brand new code by J.D. White. 
    2217   (#10) 
    23  * Add a trap detection indicator (#19) 
     18 * Add a trap detection indicator.  Also, colour the edges of trap- 
     19   detected areas green. (#19) 
    2420 * Make status bar display all timed effects, left-to-right, which 
    2521   involves moving the dungeon level to the bottom of the left-hand 
    …… 
    3531     came from (#149) 
    3632 * Recolour the monster recall: (part of #152) 
    37    - Monster's depth is in red if it's beyond maximum depth, light green 
    38      otherwise. 
     33   - Monster's depth is in red if it's beyond maximum depth, light 
     34     green otherwise. 
    3935 * Add how many items the player already has when buying something at 
    4036   the store.  (closes #151) 
    …… 
    5854 * The monster list display has a little more colour-coding 
    5955 * Death menu now uses a scrolly menu. 
    60  
    61  
    62 Gameplay 
    63 -------- 
    64  
    65  * Remove autoscum.  (#365) 
     56 * Preserve mode has a sensible description again. 
     57 * Try and differentiate the level feelings more. 
     58 * Add the moderately well-tested "lazy movement" patch which allows a  
     59   movement delay to be set, during which it is possible to choose a 
     60   second direction.  This means that up and left in quick succession 
     61   can be translated to an actual diagonal.  This may improve some 
     62   people's laptop playing experience without resorting to the 
     63   roguelike keyset. 
     64 * Add bigscreen support to the self-knowledge screen. 
     65 * Make inscriptions like "!k!k!k" prompt multiple times again.  (#492) 
     66 * Make monster XP and native depth always known, even without 
     67   kills.  (#596) 
     68 * Rejig social status a bit. 
     69 
     70Gameplay changes 
     71---------------- 
     72 
     73There are some pretty big gameplay changes. 
     74 
     75The object list has been reworked quite a bit.  It is a bit more 
     76varied and has less duplication.  Some items have been removed and 
     77others added.  The new items have had relatively little testing and 
     78may be gone again next release. 
     79 - The number of items that monsters drop has been reduced drastically. 
     80 - Potions tend to appear in stacks now. 
     81 - The range of food items has been reduced. 
     82 - Healing heal a proportion of wounds, not just a set value-- this 
     83   makes all the potions useful. 
     84 - Add a selection of "gain one, lose one" stat potions to replace the 
     85   old stat loss potions-- they guarantee a stat to raise and reduce one 
     86   randomly. 
     87 - The Elven Rings have a variety of healings, at the suggestion of 
     88   Timo.  Also, apply some other changes from the TV-patch (r428) 
     89 - Replace the sustain {stat} rings with sustain mind and sustain body, 
     90   providing three sustains each. 
     91 - (#543) Make ammo of slay evil/venom apply to Mithril ammo too. 
     92 
     93Gold drops have also been reworked.  By the end of the game, there is 
     94about 3.6x less gold per drop than in any earlier version or Angband 
     95or Moria, but the amount per drop at the beginning of the dungeon  
     96is quite similar to pre-existing levels.  You may be interested in 
     97looking at http://rephial.org/research/avg_gold_drop.pdf for an 
     98illustration. 
     99 
     100Magic mapping and detection use the same-sized rectangular area around 
     101the player regardless of screen size. 
     102 
     103Birth: 
    66104 * Make point-based points worth less gold. 
    67  
    68 Detection: 
    69 Try a different approach at detection: make all of magic mapping and 
    70 detect trap/door/stair/monster/item/treasure use the same width and 
    71 height rectangular area around the player. 
     105 * Minimum starting gold is 200AU. 
     106 * Add an option to start the character with 500AU but no equipment. 
     107 * Point-based character generation is now equivalent to best available 
     108   from the autoroller.  (Eddie Grove) 
     109 * All characters start with WoR. 
    72110 
    73111Stores: 
    74112 * Phase Door is now a staple item. 
    75113 * Start stocking deeper items as the character descends. 
     114 * Rewrite the rules for shopkeepers 
     115   - Remove individual-shopkeeper and race-based price changes from the 
     116     store code, to make it easier to balance pricing. 
     117   - Adjust adj_chr_gold[] values upwards to represent the average-110% 
     118     inflation usually applied by the individual-shopkeeper greed 
     119     values.  This should really be applied to the object.txt file 
     120     instead, though. 
    76121 
    77122ID: 
    …… 
    89134 * Make weak pseudo-id notice the difference between magical and 
    90135   excellent 
    91  * Stop making rings of Stupidity, Weakness, and Woe. 
    92136 * Allow any/all rings/amulets to be cursed if the game wants to 
    93137   generate a "bad" item.  This is liable to be rethought in the future. 
    94138 
    95  
    96 Combat: 
    97  * On shooters, slays affect rolled damage, not total damage, like 
    98    combat.  Also, transfer slays and brands from the shooter to 
    99    ammunition. e.g. Cubragol is firebranded.  This tones down ranged 
    100    combat quite a bit at the high end. 
    101  
    102 Monsters: 
    103  
    104 Monsters have only had one change, but it's not a very noticeable one 
    105 (hopefully): monster HP is specified as an average value around which to 
    106 randomise, instead of using a "12d5"-type calculation.  Uniques always 
    107 have the number of HPs specified in the monster.txt file, like before. 
    108  
    109 Pack AI for trying to confront the player in rooms was exploitable: it 
    110 was not considering open spaces created by digging creatures or 
    111 stone-to-mud, making it possible for the player to clear "safe" open 
    112 space at the side of a room.  Now the pack AI tries to attack in any 
    113 open space where the player can be surrounded, not just room interiors. 
    114  
    115  
    116 Objects: 
    117 #310 #228 #311 #313 #316 
    118  
    119 There is a new object allocation algorithm, something like the Sangband 
    120 system but not quite the same.  This made it possible to rebalance the 
    121 object rarities with better accuracy and knowledge of how such changes 
    122 would affect the game. 
    123  
    124 As a result, object rarities have undergone fairly extensive changes, 
    125 especially with regard to consumables and rechargeables.  Some items 
    126 have been removed, some new ones have been added, and most rarities have 
    127 been changed.  There are a few quirks with the allocations as they 
    128 stand, like speed potions being abnormally common on the first few 
    129 dungeon levels. 
    130  
    131 A selection of the most notable changes appear below: 
    132  
    133  - Water and Apple Juice are gone. 
    134  - Various potions have a tendency to appear in stacks. 
    135  - Reduce the number of food varities in the game. 
    136  - Add a new timed telepathy effect to some items 
    137  - Make potions of CLW, CSW, CCW heal a proportion of wounds, not just 
    138    a set value.  In the process, make all the potions more useful, to 
    139    the point where even CLW can be used usefully; CSW is about as useful 
    140    as the old CCW, and CCW is now only found in the dungeon -- albeit in 
    141    piles.  (#313) 
    142  - Add a selection of "gain one, lose one" stat potions to replace the 
    143    old stat loss potions-- they guarantee a stat to raise and reduce one 
    144    randomly. 
    145  - Stop Broken Daggers being generated, make Filthy Rags [0,+0], and 
    146    make Broken Swords (+0,+0) by default. 
    147  - Stop fixing the flavour for slime mold juice. 
    148  - The Elven Rings have a variety of healings, at the suggestion of 
    149    Timo.  Also, apply some other changes from the TV-patch (r428) 
    150  - Bad potions (confusion and the like) have a more damaging effect than 
    151    good potions when thrown.  This is like a lazy version of potions 
    152    actually having the proper effect on monsters they hit. 
    153  - Make torches always be found at 5000 turns, and lanterns at 7500 
    154    turns 
     139A small selection of other changes: 
     140 * Remove autoscum.  (#365) -- really? 
     141 * Add minimum depths for each kind of trap.  As such, only teleport and 
     142   confusion traps occur at dlev1.  This should help some people. 
     143 * Make the rogue slightly better at combat than the ranger, based on Timo's sugges 
     144   tion.  (Message-ID: <651vknF2cvjl2U1@mid.individual.net>) 
     145 * Lower the distance missile weapons can fire into the 10-14 grids range. 
     146 * Make monster arrow attacks sometimes miss.  (#537) 
     147 * Some improvements to monster AI. 
    155148 
    156149 
    …… 
    163156   special dedicated display windows, like "messages" and "monster 
    164157   list". (shanoah) 
     158 * OS X: the OS X version is now a universal binary, and runs faster, 
     159   better, quicker, and with more sound than before.  (Rowan Beentje) 
    165160 
    166161 
    …… 
    168163---------- 
    169164 
     165Monster HP is now specified as an average value around which to 
     166randomise, instead of using a "12d5"-type calculation.  Uniques always 
     167have the number of HPs specified in the monster.txt file, like before. 
     168This is copied from Ey. 
     169 
    170170A lot of code-level cleanup has been applied to this release, much of it 
    171171still in flux.  Many new files have been split out of existing files, 
    172 which should now have much more self-explanitory names. 
     172which should now have much more self-explanitory names.  The player/,  
     173monster/ and object/ subdirectories have been created, to aid seperation 
     174of code. 
    173175 
    174176There is also a new generic effects handler so that all item activations 
    …… 
    196198previous mishmash of fd_*() and my_f*() calls into a simpler, better 
    197199documented interface.  (#137) 
     200 
     201Store stocking is specified in lib/edit/store.txt now, in a reasonably 
     202flexible format. 
     203 
     204A fair bit of work has gone into allowing item names to be used in the 
     205edit files rather than the tval/sval numbers.  For example, see the 
     206new store.txt file; but also the lib/pref/ graphics files, and the 
     207starting items in the p_class.txt file, amongst others.  This is a 
     208fairly easy thing to do and is a massive massive usability enhancement. 
     209It means that invalid item references are caught much sooner, since if 
     210an item is removed, all references to its name become invalid. 
    198211 
    199212Set up an event system for UI display updates, where the game 
    …… 
    213226using doxygen.  Makefile.std provides an easy mechanism to generate docs 
    214227(try "make docs"). 
    215  
    216 There is some new and preliminary load/save code, which has involved 
    217 creating a host of new files: 
    218  - z-blockfile deals with "tar"-like blocks of data, where each block 
    219    contains a number of records 
    220  - z-smap is a serialisable map type, used to store values in the 
    221    blockfile 
    222  - compress is a quick and space-efficient compression algorithm stolen 
    223    from "liblzf". 
    224  
    225 The new code is much easier to use and read, but it's not ready for use 
    226 by anyone who cares about their characters yet. 
    227228 
    228229Other assorted changes: 
    …… 
    243244   this up a bit. 
    244245 * Introduce the one_in_() notation to the game, for percentile dice. 
    245  
     246 * Move to using randint0() and randint1() for random numbers. 
     247 * Add proper transparency to the PNG files.  (fixes #270; thanks to Rowan Beentje 
     248 * Move to using flags[6] for monster flags rather than individual flagsets. 
     249