Various bugs and gameplay quirks
Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 4:05 am
Thanks for a great game. I can't wait to see Tome4 finished. Hopefully I can speed the process; here are various bugs and gameplay quirks I noticed running Windows 7. Spoilers ahead for those of you worried about that.
I managed to get to the orc ambush with a dunadan sword/shield fighter. He died almost immediately from the archers. My next play through was a mage, and it took a lot of tries to get one to survive long enough to feel even sort of safe. Once the mage got going, though, it was much, much easier than the fighter. Mages are *powerful*. I wiped out the orc ambush after preparing heavily for it. Anyway, list of issues on my two play-throughs:
The popup window you get when you mouse over your character appears at weird times. I don't use the mouse at all, but I had the window popping up over my fighter whenever I stepped on a square that I had killed a monster on.
When telepathy is active, default targetting often chooses monsters that are out of line of sight.
I have made hotkeys of ctrl-keypad7 and ctrl-keypad8. The game does not differentiate between them.
For large inventories, non-letter symbols toward the end don't register when you try to use/drop/whatever the item by typing the symbol. You have to scroll to them or use the mouse.
Keypad5 for staying in place does not display items you are standing on. Running into a wall does, however.
After selling something, the sold item (now in the store's inventory) stays selected. If you're trying to sell a bunch of things, this adds a great many keystrokes and also results in accidentally buying a lot of things before you get used to it.
Some dialogs, like entering quantities of objects, won't accept a keypad enter. The keypad enter works for most things, though.
Sustained spells have to be recast in order to take advantage of increases to spell power. This can also be exploited.
Sense doesn't detect traps in a useful way. It shows you the traps for a single turn, just like the monsters, but then they go away until you blunder over them.
Feathered Wind doesn't seem to help against any traps I've found, despite the description. It also doesn't reduce incoming archer damage, though maybe it reduces the frequency of the hits. I couldn't tell.
I'm having a hard time making chain lightning useful. There seems to be some strangeness about how it decides to chain to secondary targets that involves line of sight. It's useless in corridors, for example. Never hits more than one.
I've lost two characters to accidentally targeting them with an offensive ability. One actually shield-pummeled himself to death. This seems unlikely, and definitely wasn't fun.
Teleport has no minimum range, resulting in some botched escape attempts.
Stone Wall makes insubstantial walls. Enemies (and the player character) walk right through them. I haven't tested to see if they break line of sight for ranged attacks.
Displacement shield seems to have no effect. I never once saw it redirect any damage.
Turning Feather Wind on or off doesn't change encumbrance status, even if you fall below or rise above the encumbrance limit. For example, if you have FW turned on and you're lugging around way more stuff than you could normally, you can turn FW off and keep moving around freely. Until you pick something else up, anyway.
Running into a wall uses a turn.
During a long game save, I hit the shift key. It turned the screen white and after the save was done, the shift was stuck on.
After killing the whole orc ambush, I tried to use the < and got this message: "There is no way out of this level here." I had to teleport to the mage town to get out. After finishing the quest it became clear that I was supposed to have gotten mugged and lost the staff. I suppose that not killing all the orcs results in some sort of plotty exit from the ambush where they take the staff and you crawl off to Minas Tirith. I'm not sure. My first try against the orcs went badly with my fighter: almost instant death. My mage obliterated them. I guess we're supposed to do something in between.
Selecting the Staff of Absorption in a store closes the shopping dialog.
Probability travel works on the world map if you have it on when you access the world map, though you can't cast it.
During character creation, it says that the important stats for berserkers are strength and constitution, and the important stats for fighters are strength and dexterity. Is that intended? I couldn't see much of a use for dex on my fighter.
Early in the game, I frequently saw artifact rings and potions in the stores. Of course I couldn't afford them. Later, when I could afford them, they never reappeared. This doesn't feel like chance. I saw them a *lot* early on. In fact, the very first store I went into with my very first character had a Blood of Life for sale. With my mage winner, I can't get any of them to appear now.
My fighter found quite a few random artifacts before dying at the ambush. My mage never found any except the fixed artifacts. Probably just chance.
The boss of Amon Sul appears in a special room that doesn't always connect with the rest of the level. It took me a long time and multiple characters to figure out the problem. Finally I just made sure that I had Dig by the time I reached the bottom. Compounding the problem, it seems the game will only generate the boss once. If you leave the level without killing him and come back, he won't be there. This needs a fix badly.
The quest "An Apprentice Task" remains in the list of uncompleted quests after you complete it.
Default targeting is too sticky. For example, it's annoying to try to cast Dig on the wall in front of me and have the default target be a spot halfway across the dungeon in the wrong direction.
Thanks again. This is the most Angband-fun I've had in a long time. It's good to see ToME moving in new and interesting directions.
I managed to get to the orc ambush with a dunadan sword/shield fighter. He died almost immediately from the archers. My next play through was a mage, and it took a lot of tries to get one to survive long enough to feel even sort of safe. Once the mage got going, though, it was much, much easier than the fighter. Mages are *powerful*. I wiped out the orc ambush after preparing heavily for it. Anyway, list of issues on my two play-throughs:
The popup window you get when you mouse over your character appears at weird times. I don't use the mouse at all, but I had the window popping up over my fighter whenever I stepped on a square that I had killed a monster on.
When telepathy is active, default targetting often chooses monsters that are out of line of sight.
I have made hotkeys of ctrl-keypad7 and ctrl-keypad8. The game does not differentiate between them.
For large inventories, non-letter symbols toward the end don't register when you try to use/drop/whatever the item by typing the symbol. You have to scroll to them or use the mouse.
Keypad5 for staying in place does not display items you are standing on. Running into a wall does, however.
After selling something, the sold item (now in the store's inventory) stays selected. If you're trying to sell a bunch of things, this adds a great many keystrokes and also results in accidentally buying a lot of things before you get used to it.
Some dialogs, like entering quantities of objects, won't accept a keypad enter. The keypad enter works for most things, though.
Sustained spells have to be recast in order to take advantage of increases to spell power. This can also be exploited.
Sense doesn't detect traps in a useful way. It shows you the traps for a single turn, just like the monsters, but then they go away until you blunder over them.
Feathered Wind doesn't seem to help against any traps I've found, despite the description. It also doesn't reduce incoming archer damage, though maybe it reduces the frequency of the hits. I couldn't tell.
I'm having a hard time making chain lightning useful. There seems to be some strangeness about how it decides to chain to secondary targets that involves line of sight. It's useless in corridors, for example. Never hits more than one.
I've lost two characters to accidentally targeting them with an offensive ability. One actually shield-pummeled himself to death. This seems unlikely, and definitely wasn't fun.
Teleport has no minimum range, resulting in some botched escape attempts.
Stone Wall makes insubstantial walls. Enemies (and the player character) walk right through them. I haven't tested to see if they break line of sight for ranged attacks.
Displacement shield seems to have no effect. I never once saw it redirect any damage.
Turning Feather Wind on or off doesn't change encumbrance status, even if you fall below or rise above the encumbrance limit. For example, if you have FW turned on and you're lugging around way more stuff than you could normally, you can turn FW off and keep moving around freely. Until you pick something else up, anyway.
Running into a wall uses a turn.
During a long game save, I hit the shift key. It turned the screen white and after the save was done, the shift was stuck on.
After killing the whole orc ambush, I tried to use the < and got this message: "There is no way out of this level here." I had to teleport to the mage town to get out. After finishing the quest it became clear that I was supposed to have gotten mugged and lost the staff. I suppose that not killing all the orcs results in some sort of plotty exit from the ambush where they take the staff and you crawl off to Minas Tirith. I'm not sure. My first try against the orcs went badly with my fighter: almost instant death. My mage obliterated them. I guess we're supposed to do something in between.
Selecting the Staff of Absorption in a store closes the shopping dialog.
Probability travel works on the world map if you have it on when you access the world map, though you can't cast it.
During character creation, it says that the important stats for berserkers are strength and constitution, and the important stats for fighters are strength and dexterity. Is that intended? I couldn't see much of a use for dex on my fighter.
Early in the game, I frequently saw artifact rings and potions in the stores. Of course I couldn't afford them. Later, when I could afford them, they never reappeared. This doesn't feel like chance. I saw them a *lot* early on. In fact, the very first store I went into with my very first character had a Blood of Life for sale. With my mage winner, I can't get any of them to appear now.
My fighter found quite a few random artifacts before dying at the ambush. My mage never found any except the fixed artifacts. Probably just chance.
The boss of Amon Sul appears in a special room that doesn't always connect with the rest of the level. It took me a long time and multiple characters to figure out the problem. Finally I just made sure that I had Dig by the time I reached the bottom. Compounding the problem, it seems the game will only generate the boss once. If you leave the level without killing him and come back, he won't be there. This needs a fix badly.
The quest "An Apprentice Task" remains in the list of uncompleted quests after you complete it.
Default targeting is too sticky. For example, it's annoying to try to cast Dig on the wall in front of me and have the default target be a spot halfway across the dungeon in the wrong direction.
Thanks again. This is the most Angband-fun I've had in a long time. It's good to see ToME moving in new and interesting directions.
