ToME WikiBucketMan: Hey, Nerdanel! Happy Thanksgiving. I downloaded the latest version and gave it a try today. Here's the list of things I noticed. Some I'm sure you're aware of, and some are engine bugs. But, here you go:
- Combat seems to default to archery at the start of the game.
NerdanelVampire: It does? I guess it could be inconvenient for the barehanded fighters... That's another thing I'll need to fix about the combat mode along with making melee and archery the same mode again.
- Attempting to fight via barehand locks the game, and then destroys my savefile.
NerdanelVampire: That horrid engine bug is still there? I thought it had been fixed. I made all weapons immune to elements so that they wouldn't get burned/melted up and trigger that by accident.
The 2d2 damage rapier that warriors start with is really...inadequete. This is a Rapier. It really shouldn't do barely more damage than a penknife. It's also a bit strange that a dedicated warrior starts with a weapon that does less damage than the loremaster does.
NerdanelVampire: Perhaps the loremasters have it too good (I haven't really looked into them), or perhaps I'm just too good a player... I already nerfed everyone's point-buy stats to make the game less trivial. I'm far from a weapons expert
NerdanelVampire: I had mercy on the poor warrior types and gave them better weapons to start with. Don't expect perfect balance, though. My development isn't at the point where more than very approximate balance is a huge concern.
- After accepting the goat quest, the village elder still says that he's in need of an adventurer.
NerdanelVampire: He says that every time you meet him. It's his way of saying hello. The dialogue system is going to change for alpha18 anyway, so perhaps the Elder could be made more unpredictable.
- Is it deliberate that you have to eat wine instead of drink it?
NerdanelVampire: It's a relic from ToME, Angband, and probably beyond. I guess I could make a new TVAL for drinkable foods, but the gamist design perspective suggest that I should keep the same command key for similar items. After all, wine is just a food ration with slightly different numeric values.
- Being gorged appears to cause you to consume food at a greater rate. I can wander around at the start of the game without eating anything for a while, but if I eat something to gorged, within fifteen seconds I'm weak with hunger.
NerdanelVampire: This one is an old engine bug I filed many, many alphas ago. It appears that it got fixed in the engine but not in my forked hunger subsystem. I would fix this right now if I was at the right computer.
NerdanelVampire: As I said over at the forums, the gorged bug is fixed now in the development version.
- Movement modes Berserk, Searching and Running all generate a LUA errors. Looks like the 'skill_srh' problem from before.
NerdanelVampire: Fixed in DV, I think. (I don't have the DV with me right now.)
NerdanelVampire: It turns out I hadn't actually fixed that, but it's fixed NOW.
- I made it to level 10 of the Myrkrasian Foothills, and received a LUA error "Couldn't place stairs" and was deposited in the middle of a bunch of mountains. I tried again, but couldn't reproduce it.
NerdanelVampire: An engine bug. Usually when that happens the stairs are below me and I can still get up... usually.
- Are camels on level 10 deliberate?
NerdanelVampire: I'm going to have to go through every single dungeon in the game and make it impossible to generate decorative monsters in them. Since camels are level 0 you must have been (un)lucky to meet one that deep.
NerdanelVampire: I fixed this too.
- To hit bonuses from combat/weapon/mastery skills aren't displayed on the character sheet
NerdanelVampire: I actually hadn't noticed that. All my attention was taken by those innate resists and other innate things failing to show up.
NerdanelVampire: I tracked down this bug, and it's due to the engine not updating the displayed value of several things that it really should. I could write a workaround, but since it's not critical I'd rather wait for DarkGod to fix it the correct way. I just filed a bug report about it.
- Alpha17 changed the edge convention on maps. You've probably noticed this. For special levels I've found that it helps to add an extra "border" layer around the outer edge. This keeps the map edge from appearing to be invisible.
NerdanelVampire: Good to know. I've been wondering about that.
NerdanelVampire: Yes! The fix works!
- I'm not sure if it's intentional, but the layout of the second level of the goat quest allows the player to sit on the stairs, and run away to heal every time he's injured. Also, the "level teleport" effect of the demons was saving me more than anything else. Not that this quest really needs to be made more difficult. That last room is really tough even at twice the stated quest level.
NerdanelVampire: I know about the SAVE_LEVEL stupidity and have been sort of hoping the players wouldn't, because it breaks the entire quest... Quests are a never-ending pit of problems, and that's even before you get to balancing. I should probably add a hook to the stairs to forbid intentional escape before the quest is done without failing the quest, make it ask the player a question or something... As for difficulty, perhaps it's just loremasters (if you were playing them) being underpowered. It's a good idea to wear some non-starter equipment too.
- After completing the goat quest, I left the dungeon and was deposited at the extreme left edge of the map.
NerdanelVampire: This one is probably the alpha17 map edge bug acting up in a new and weird manner. I haven't seen this one myself. It probably has something to do with how you have or haven't left the town yet.
- The goat quest does not get marked as completed after being turned in, unless the next quest is also accepted.
NerdanelVampire: :is stricken with with the realization of that every single non-final quest in Zothiqband, implemented or just dialogue framework, will have to fixed for this particular problem:
- Immediately after trying to turn in the goat quest above, but not accepting the next quest, I left the building and the game locked. Once again destroying my savefile.
NerdanelVampire: This shouldn't happen and I have no idea why it did so.
- Trying to enter the ghoul caves instantly crashed the game with an unhelpful stacktrace message.
NerdanelVampire: The ghoul caves appear more crash-prone than some other places. They work over 50% of the time, though. According to the T-Engine CVS, most of the crashes should be gone in alpha18, although I have filed another CAVE=true crash bug that appears to be distinct from the first one as far as I know.
NerdanelVampire: Sorry about the delay. I'm currently away from my development computer and so I can't go straight to fixing bugs.