ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Well, for longer comments like these, I generally compose the comment in a text file before posting it (building it up as I track down and fix the reported bugs), so there's usually some other instance of the phrase already in the file that I can copy/paste to wherever I want to use it.

_________________
"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Hi Zizzo

RE adverse status things that could adjust appearance; I quite like the stunned / confused ones on TE4 main game, and also a red warning when you're about to get eaten

Couple of new bits:
Interesting: Selling un-id'd scrolls / potions etc is now allowed; the price is agreed (e.g. 15 gold) but the actual remuneration reflects the value of the sale (as if it had been ID'd previous to trying to sell it). The same doesn't seem to be true for ammo.
Also, selling 1 un-ID'd ammo from a stack doesn't identify the rest of the stack in your inventory.

Auto-explore doesn't mind walking onto Lava... bye bye acquirement scroll...

Bugs:
This happened when I walked on ice created by an ice ball (that I'd cast over lava)
error = "Lua Error: /data/damage_types.lua:200: attempt to compare number with nil\
At [C]:-1 __lt\
At /data/damage_types.lua:200 projector\
At /data/timed_effects.lua:1909 on_timeout\
At /engine/interface/ActorTemporaryEffects.lua:85 timedEffects\
At /mod/class/Actor.lua:239 actBase\
At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:119 tickLevel\
At /mod/class/GameEnergyBasedEvilHack.lua:32 tick\
At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:51 tick\
At /mod/class/Game.lua:564 "
seen = true
reported = false


Read a scroll of light
error = "Lua Error: /mod/class/Player.lua:1349: /data/general/objects/scrolls.lua:262: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)\
At [C]:-1 \
At [C]:-1 error\
At /mod/class/Player.lua:1349 playerUseItem\
At /mod/dialogs/UseItemDialog.lua:69 use\
At /mod/dialogs/UseItemDialog.lua:45 fct\
At /engine/ui/List.lua:155 onUse\
At /engine/ui/List.lua:81 fct\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:58 receiveMouse\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:98 delegate\
At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:765 mouseEvent\
At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:485 fct\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:58 "
seen = true
reported = false

Hi Zizzo,

Couple more bits:

Outside of Bree, are there any other mayors etc that are currently activated? (it's not currently possible to test the other house quests as the other 'Mayors' aren't implemented yet)

Are you able to implement an inventory re-stock for shops? They will get very full of dungeon loot and i guess that when they're full the only way of selling your dragon mail in mid-late game would be to buy-out the armory shop's supply of leather boots etc.

Used a staff of disarm (unidentified) - Thorondor fails to disarm an unknown trap

Activating Rilia caused an error
error = "Lua Error: /mod/class/Player.lua:1349: /data/general/objects/artifacts.lua:2567: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)\
At [C]:-1 \
At [C]:-1 error\
At /mod/class/Player.lua:1349 action\
At /mod/dialogs/ShowEquipInvenFloor.lua:73 use\
At /engine/dialogs/ShowEquipInven.lua:57 fct\
At /engine/ui/ListColumns.lua:463 onUse\
At /engine/ui/ListColumns.lua:135 fct\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:58 receiveMouse\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:98 delegate\
At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:765 mouseEvent\
At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:485 fct\
At /engine/Mouse.lua:58 "
seen = true
reported = false

Let's see, is stunned the wobbly-screen one or the spinning-stars one? Confused, I think, is the blurry-screen one. And… "eaten"?


[sound F/X: source diving] Ah, right, it's recomputing the sale price after the object is identified during the selling process. That will be tricky to disentangle… ah, since I'm already overriding Store:doSell(), I can just have it pass the computed price through to Store;onSell(). Fixed in SVN.


Hmm, presumably I can handle that by ID'ing the stack before peeling off the one to sell. I forget, does doing this fully *ID* the remainder of the unsold stack, or just ID it? The latter is what I've put in SVN; if it's supposed to be the former, that's easy enough to fix for the next release.


Now, there I'm out of my depth. I know very little about how the engine's auto-explore works; I'm just putting scaffolding around it that I copied from elsewhere. Maybe we need to have it check for 'block_run' rather than 'block_move', which would stop it running across lava unless you're immune to fire; I have no idea whether that's even possible, though.


[sound F/X: source diving] Ah, typo in the temporary effect conferred by standing on ice; I'd copy/pasted it from the ones for lava, which do random damage, and forgot to adapt it for ice, which does fixed damage. Got nether mist wrong the same way. Fixed in SVN.


Not yet; that's what I'm working on for the next release.


That's also what I'm working on for the next release.


[sound F/X: source diving] Oh, right, this is why I added the 'force' flag to Trap:disarm(); I should probably use it, shouldn't I? Fixed in SVN.


Yeah, these are the same bug as before. It really is going to crop up in all sorts of annoying places; I guess this calls for an emergency bugfix release:

Release 0.2.9 "We're Gonna Be Meaner Now"

As noted, this is mostly a bugfix release:

• Fixed a lot of object activations that weren't defining damage types properly.
• Fixed the tooltips for some talents related to Summoning and Possession. [Not that they do anything yet, but at least they won't stack dump anymore…]
• Small typo in the level-up dialog was screwing up the check for whether to show a skill; in particular, we need to show Geomancy for non-Geomancer Mage-related classes even they they can't learn it, because Fire/Water/Air/Earth all live under it.
• Tweak the messages for a couple timed effects that assumed the player was the target of the effect.
• Evil monsters are supposed to be in the "Enemies" faction — including that Spectral/Zombie/etc. version of something that used to be in a friendly faction.
• Fix the Copy Spell inventory dialog so that you can actually select an item to copy onto.
• Relatedly, properly describe spell-copyable items as "A spell (can be/has been) copied onto this item."
• Fix grid damage for standing on ice or in nether mist.
• Couple fixes for selling things to stores:
  
  • When selling one item from a stack, ID the rest of the stack in inventory. This is mainly for selling ammo, to get the (+x,+y) bonuses.
    
  • Bit of internal juggling to ensure that the un-ID'd price the store offered you is the same price it actually pays you after identifying what it just bought from you.
    
• The Disarm spell (and Staffs thereof) obviously shouldn't have to check against the player's disarming ability, nor should it give the player the usual trap-disarming experience. We also reproduce T2's "There is a bright flash of light!" message for this case.
• The usual raft of stupid typos that I really wish Lua did "compile-time" checking for, notably one in the Galadriel chat.

I did add one feature, though:

• As long as I was in the area of the Copy Spell talent, might as well hook it into the use-item dialog, as new action 'Copy spell onto item' for suitable items.

Now, as before, since this is mostly an emergency bugfix release, I'm pretty sure any bugs in it were already there and just haven't been found yet. As always, here is a good place to report them.

And as always, the .team file for the release is available from my site, along with the Subversion repo and WebSVN front-end thereto. And for those of you following along on SVN, the 0.2.9 release branch will get bug fixes for all the aforementioned inevitable bugs.

Feature work for the main release is proceeding slowly but surely; I should be close to a feature release, but I've said that before.

_________________
"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Oh my I remember when you first posted that you were mad enough to try to do it!
Well it's not finished but you most certainly have much much progress to boast! And I'm sure much more later! :>

Congrats!

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[tome] joylove: You can't just release an expansion like one would release a Kraken XD
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning

You planned this timing, didn't you?

So, after the massive Rube Goldberg artifice that was Alchemy, I decided to go for something simpler and less stressful for this release. I'm not sure how well I succeeded:

Release 0.3.0 "Buy Local"

[Since I've embarked on the emergency-bugfix-release strategy, I figured I should start using the "major.minor.patch" version number pattern in the intended manner. This may lead to some version number inflation, but c'est la guerre, as they say. ]

This release is mostly about stores and buildings where you can buy services and get quests. In particular, the newly implemented and/or changed stores are:

• The Soothsayer and Prancing Pony in Bree now vary the prices of their services according to player race, as do all the other stores; the Soothsayer also now sells Scrolls of Divination. There's also a Soothsayer in Gondolin, for your convenience.
• The Seat of Ruling in Lothlorien offers the house quest, the Spiders of Mirkwood quest, and the Poisoned Water quest.
• The Castle in Minas Anor offers the house quest and the Last Alliance quest.
• The Tower of the King in Gondolin offers the house quest, the Eöl quest and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad quests, and also participates in the Last Alliance quest and the Invasion of Gondolin quest.
• Khazad-dûm doesn't have a "mayor" to hand out quests, but its house quest is now implemented (and dangerous enough that it gets both a warning on entry and an achievement for completing it).
• The Wizards Spire in Lothlorien can ID your possessions or recharge wands/staffs/rods, and offers the fireproofing quest; the Tower of Magery in Minas Anor and the Star-Dome in Gondolin are the same, but without the quest. The Minstrels Haven in Gondolin can only ID your possessions.
• The Library in Minas Anor can *ID* items, sells Staffs of Identify, and offers the custom-spellbook quest. The Library in Gondolin is the same, but without the quest.
• The Priests Circle in Lothlorien, the Inner Temple in Minas Anor and Khazad-dûm, and the Valarin Temple in Gondolin can heal plus remove several detrimental effects or restore stats. The Earth-Dome in Gondolin can also cure Black Breath.
• The Rangers' Guild in Lothlorien and Minas Anor and the Golden Flower in Gondolin can repair/enchant bows and arrows; the Fighters' Hall in Minas Anor and Khazad-dûm can repair/enchant weapons and armor; the Paladins' Guild in Minas Anor and Khazad-dûm can heal and repair/enchant armor.
• The Thunderlords' Nest in Lothlorien, Minas Anor and Gondolin can recall you back into the dungeon or (for a hefty fee) transport you to any level of almost any dungeon, even if you haven't been there yet.
• The Beastmaster Shanty in Lothlorien and Minas Anor can research a monster for you, populating your monster memory (which is only meaningful if you've enabled the "Learn monster information" option), and offers bounty quests, in which you obtain and return specified monster corpses to learn the Monster-lore and/or Corpse-preservation skills. The two stores share records and bounty quests, so you can take a quest corpse to either one.
• The Inn in Lothlorien and Minas Anor and the White Tree in Gondolin are basically duplicates of the Prancing Pony without the local color. The "meal" option now properly declines to feed Vampires, but I still haven't gotten the "room for a night" option worked out; if anyone is deeply troubled by this, let me know.

Stores that are still unimplemented:

• The Merchants Guild in Minas Anor and Gondolin. AFAICT these were associated with an abandoned Merchant class, and now effectively do nothing anyway.
• The Casino in Minas Anor. Did anyone ever actually go there?
• The Sea-Dome in Gondolin has a "Morph restoration" service, which just clears your mimic form and thus is basically useless. (In one of my T2 patches, I hijacked it to instead reverse the effects of Traps of Masculinity/Femininity/Neutrality, but we don't need that since we've removed those traps.) It's also supposed to offer a quest, but I can't figure out what it's supposed to be…
• Some zones in T2 can have "dungeon towns", with stores appearing on various levels. I'll get to those later.

For stores in general:

• Store restocking is now more or less implemented according to original T2 behavior: every 1000 game turns, a store will cycle out 1-9 items and restock with 1-9 new items, both bounded by the store's preferred min/max stock levels.
• The black market gets some improved filtering to stock better objects: as per T2's evocatively named black_market_crap() filter, anything that isn't positively enchanted and has the same base object type as anything currently being sold anywhere else in town is rejected by the black market's stocking code, along with anything too cheap (<10gp base value).

Also a few bugs that didn't make it into the last bugfix release:

• Fun Fact: in T2, worldmap grids have levels, indicating how tough the monsters in their corresponding wilderness zones are going to be. Grass, for instance, is level 5, while shallow water is level 20 and deep water is level 70. Less fun fact: I was propagating that information to the wrong place, so it wasn't being taken into account when generating Actors for a wilderness zone. We Apologize for the Increased Deadliness.™
• Wasn't updating FOVs properly when opening doors, which I think meant NPCs behind the door weren't being made immediately visible.
• Apparently none of our playtesters has ever been stunned, as that effect was badly broken…
• Fix some name juggling; we want a Dagger of Westernesse (1d4) and a Wooden Rod of the Istari (20), for instance, not a Dagger (1d4) of Westernesse or a Wooden Rod (20) of the Istari.
• Apparently no one has gone onto the worldmap in tiles mode, because worldmap grid tile image references were completely wrong…
• Due to a handful of spectacularly stupid typos, pretty much any spell effect that was supposed to affect terrain grids or object on the floor, well, wasn't. Notably including prety much all disarm effects.

And assorted extra features of varying degrees of relatedness:

• Shaders! We crib relevant bits of the T4 module's framebuffer/shader infrastructure and bludgeon them into submission until they actually work, notably including a handful of fragment shader files copied verbatim (I'm pretty sure that's kosher license-wise) to implement some requested full-screen feedback for visual effects, controlled by new game option "Full-screen effects feedback" (off by default, so be sure to turn it on if you want it). Currently support effects and conditions are confused, stunned and low HP (as controlled by your "Hit point warning threshold" setting).
• The infrastructure needed for the Thunderlords's Nest also allows us to implement Scrolls of Reset Recall.
• Refusing (or failing) the Invasion of Gondolin quest causes Gondolin to be destroyed; implementing that gave me the infrastructure to destroy all the towns when you wear the One Ring.
• Maeglin in the Invasion of Gondolin quest has a special AI (to prioritize trying to get to the Gondolin exit you came in from); implementing that gave me some insights into the engine's AI handling. In particular, we now implement the AI_ANNOY flag on monsters like Fruit bats. We Apologize for the Annoyance.™ And this could get a lot more involved if we want to implement T2 options like "Monsters behave stupidly" (well, for that option, more like implemening the "off" state thereof… ).
• Not a feature yet, but the infrastructure needed for the Lothlorien Poisoned Water quest will eventually be essential in implementing the Bree Mushroom quest.
• Also, as a courtesy to the player, the Poisoned Water quest is highlighted on the worldmap so that the player knows where to find it. Now, doing this involved re-jiggering the persistence handling of the worldmap zone, including the placement of relic quests on the map, so if those stop appearing, let me know and I'll fix it…
• And as long as I was fiddling with quests in wilderness areas, I went ahead and implemented worldmap ambushes. For those not familiar with them from T2, there is a chance for each movement on the worldmap grid, relative to the grid's level versus player level, that you will be ambushed and dropped in to the wilderness, where the only way to escape is to make it to the edge of the map and cross to another wilderness area. Again, We Apologize for the Increased Deadliness.™
• Using a wand or staff will now learn its "flavor" if it does something noticeable (not its number of charges, though; that still requires an ID).
• You can now close and bash doors. With proper FOV updates.
• Since the quest reward for the Eöl quest is a Dwarven Lantern of the Magi, I figured I ought to implement said ego's Magic Map object power. And as long as I was in the area of object powers, we also pick off Swap Position, Panic Hit, Teleport, Illuminate and Stone to Mud. Also Half-Ogres' Explosive Rune power (actual explosive runes not yet implemented; We Apologize for the Inconvenience™).
• It turns out that Snaga sappers, which figure prominently in the Invasion of Gondolin quest, are actually ZAngband monsters, and so had long since been filtered out in generating my NPC actor list. They're back now, but they shouldn't appear randomly outside the quest (let me know if they do). This also required slight updates to the Gender Parity and ZAngband Monsters addons, both now at v1.0.1.
• Based on a tip from elsewhere, I've incorporated some map tweaks from T4's mod.class.AsciiMap to make ASCII-mode maps look tidier. Specifically, instead of layering actor on top of object on top of trap on top of terrain semi-transparently, we use only the "highest" one in the stack.
• Some preliminary internal infrastructure for cone-effect spells, which could eventually be used to make an addon implementing Thorondor's suggestion for cone-shaped NPC breaths.
• On a lark, I renamed one of the achievements.

And for more fun: while running around various towns testing various stores, I quickly found myself wishing I had my Go to Landmark addon from T4 — so I did a quickie port of it to T2.

Now, I was expecting this to be a simple release (famous last words…), but it turned out to be involved enough that I've probably added some nice juicy bugs for our intrepid bugfinders to find. As always, here is a good place to report them.

And as always, the .team file for the release is available from my site, along with the Subversion repo and WebSVN front-end thereto. And for those of you following along on SVN, the 0.3.0 release branch will get bug fixes for all the aforementioned inevitable bugs.

Now, for the immediate future, I'm probably going to be poking around with the T4 1.6 alpha to see how much work is going to be involved in upgrading all my addons (and as many as I have, that could take a while... ). So now is the time to put in requests for what you'd like to see in the next feature release.

_________________
"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."