We’re getting closer to the next release, DCSS 0.7. It is partially a consolidation release (more below). Also, it will go public sufficiently early, so that there’s enough time to fix bugs before August, the time for the annual tournament. If you are curious, you can play the most current version on CDO, as usual. We appreciate feedback of any form.
The consolidation aspect of 0.7:
* Monster double actions due to energy randomisation always include a move. The double action was a source of a lot of controversy. In 0.7, an adjacent monster won’t hit you twice, although a monster a step away might still approach and hit you in a single turn.
* Make heavy armour guaranteed damage reduction percentage independent of armour skill. This makes heavier armours a bit better again, after the severe but long overdue nerf in 0.6.
In other news, there have been a lot of improvements to Tiles, Tutorials (tutorial and hints mode are now distinct) and the interface in general. Crawl will also officially feature Chapayev’s awesome Sprint variant.
Gameplay-wise, the biggest changes are these:
* Demonspawns will feature less lottery; all mutations grow to the full; also, mutations are meaningful, in particular, many of them are specific to the species.
* Zin has finally seen the light help: Recite is less risky, hence more useful. Also, there’s a new ability, which allows to imprison intelligent monsters.
Feedback on DS, Fi and Zinners are appreciated. We won’t re-design these on short notice, with release being so close. But comments on how far you get (and got in older versions) would help to see gauge we stand with the new AC/DS/Zin.
Some more changes which will be of interest:
* Aptitudes now on a scale +5 to -5.
* Remove Death Knights and Thieves.
* Show effective weapon speed in ‘@’ character info.
* Walls in the Slime Pits are acidic.
* Changed shop distribution between branches.
* Removed instant stat death.
1. Comment by megli
16/Jun/2010 at 19:40
Why do you remove Death Knights? I have to admit I always liked them. Perhaps because they are similiar to necromancers?(I belive the gameplay with both may be different, even from stats difference)
As for the demonspaws, I always appreciated “the lottery”, but I can understand why that may seem bad.
2. Comment by Incomp
17/Jun/2010 at 05:06
I dislike the removal of Death Knights as well, as they are one of my favorite classes. However, I do see the reasoning behind their removal: They are either necromancers with a bit of melee that a necro will likely pick up anyway, or they’re priests of yredelemnul with a different weapon and armor.
3. Comment by Tenaya
18/Jun/2010 at 02:34
I don’t understand the change in aptitude display. It would seem to make the races less distinct all for the sake of making something intuitive and quantifiably-understandable into something rather opaque but qualitatively obvious. IMHO.
Glad to hear about demonspawn; I’m looking forward to it.
4. Comment by Tenaya
18/Jun/2010 at 19:46
Well, after some consideration I guess the -5 to +5 aptitude is a fine change. The meta- is still there in the background should someone care enough to look and it will look better in a table.
5. Comment by Dashen
19/Jun/2010 at 21:39
I also like death knights, perhaps they could be tweaked to be a bit more unique then remove this class that is just so likeable.
6. Comment by dpeg
22/Jun/2010 at 12:22
Tenaya: Thanks for giving the aptitudes another tought. I believe that the new system helps making the species _more_ distinct: we won’t fool ourselves into “GE and DE are diverse because these aptitudes differ by 5″ anymore. The idea of aptitudes is great, but small difference matter little. With the new system, it is also easier to spot holes, i.e. combinations of good/bad aptitudes not yet utilised by some species.
re DK: losing something (like a background in this case) will always offend players. Especially since the removed item will inevitably have been the preferred choice of some players. However, if we believe that diversity is not enough, there’s only two options: remove or improvement. We had no striking ideas for making DK stand out better…
7. Comment by dubradditz
23/Jun/2010 at 09:12
Maybe a buff to whips? A property to disarm opponents so they are unique / useful. Right now they just clutter the dungeon.
8. Comment by Katherine
23/Jun/2010 at 17:21
I’m having trouble changing my Mac OSX version of the console game to the clear messages setting through init.txt . At the top of the init document it says I have to drag it on a mac computer to ~/.crawlrc in order for my new command to take effect. Where can I find that folder(?) on my mac?
Thanks!
9. Comment by Anym
25/Jun/2010 at 14:42
Sound all good to me. Except maybe the acidic walls depending on what that actually means. The most important thing about 0.7 for me however is that auto-explore is largely working the way I expect it to again. The subtly different behaviour in 0.6 made me skip that version entirely.
10. Comment by Incomp
28/Jun/2010 at 00:25
Dpeg: well, personally, I’d rather priests go than DK. Invocations is easy to pick up, which IIRC is what a priest has over a DK, while sucking at fighting with a melee class like a priest? Sometimes this ends badly. But I respect your judgment.
11. Comment by reuben
29/Jun/2010 at 06:42
dubradditz: seriously! whips are probably the most useless thing in the dungeon right now, I’d rather use a short blade than a whip… :\
12. Comment by Alex
7/Jul/2010 at 20:37
Katherine: your .crawlrc file is another name for your init.txt file, and should exist if you’ve run crawl. It’s should be a hidden file in your user folder (found through hard drive>users>your username). If you want to see hidden files on your mac, go into terminal and put in:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
then
killall Finder
(to reverse this just substitute false for true).
If you have hidden files visible you can just open the .crawlrc with Textedit or some other editing program.
Another way to edit it that doesn’t involve messing with hidden files is to navigate to this folder with Terminal open. It’s likely your home folder when you open Terminal, which you’ll know because at the beginning of the line it’ll say “HD name”:~” Username”$. From there just type vi .crawlrc into Terminal and it’ll start editing the document using VI text editor. Quick tutorial for VI: type a to enter text input mode, escape to exit input mode, and :wq to save and quit once you’re out of input mode.
When you start up crawl it should say “(read options from /Users/”username”/.crawlrc)”. If it says a different location in there then you might have to hunt for your .crawlrc file. Good luck!
13. Comment by KiloByte
8/Jul/2010 at 00:12
Whips happen to be one of the better one-handed maces, at least until you start finding enemies with decent AC.
Against AC of 0, with skill of 6 you get avg 7.5 damage per turn with a whip, 7.2 with a mace, 6.6 with a flail.
With skill 12, that’s 12 damage with whip, 10 mace, 8.8 flail.
(Factors which affect all of these equally are not counted).
Of course, later on you will want more damage to overcome enemy AC. Also, for certain races, whips are always one-handed while maces, flails and bigger stuff suffers from increased shield penalties.
14. Comment by casmith789
9/Jul/2010 at 21:38
DK and Th were nice, I agree, but they are similar to other classes. 0.7 feels more balanced than 0.6, and the only major bad change was the slime pits change – slime isn’t any fun anymore.
15. Comment by Danei
12/Jul/2010 at 00:42
In my rather experienced opinion, Fi is still too hard to start compared to other, similar backgrounds (though certainly not impossible). More than anything else, it seems dependent upon luck of the draw in terms of getting good early items. It doesn’t really have any advantage to outweigh this disadvantage. I think a +1 body armour, a +1,+1 weapon, or even a couple potions of might could go a ways toward making Fi a more appealing background.
16. Comment by dpeg
13/Jul/2010 at 23:22
Danei: Yes, quite possibly. But we’ll see how the new AC plays out. The Fighter background is slightly troubled at the moment — you don’t have anything to get you through D:1 and D:2 apart from the mail and the shield. Some enchantment is not out of the question.
17. Comment by supulton
17/Jul/2010 at 14:37
Disarming whips would be awesome. But yeah I normally skip any and all whips unless they have a ridiculously good enchantment.
18. Comment by jlg
2/Sep/2010 at 08:09
Can someone tell me how to make the status messages in the lower left hand corner of the tiles version take up less space? I’d like to have a shorter list of recent activities and more of the dungeon visible at once.