If you’re a follower of the crawl-ref-discuss mailing list or a regular reader of commit logs (I know that I am!) you may have noticed the creation of a new branch of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The branch in question is “stone_soup-0.6″, and its creation means a variety of things for players of the trunk builds hosted here as well as the versions playable via secure shell and telnet.

This week we’re going to take a few minutes to discuss those things rather than focusing on a specific set of changes.

We’ll get the negatives over and done with first: crawl.develz.org will now be hosting 0.6 branch binaries and serving 0.6 via secure shell and telnet until 0.6 is officially released (hopefully, shortly). This means that you won’t be able to playing bleeding edge, up-to-date trunk at all the usual places.

That’s not much of a negative, is it? And there are so many more positives: this means that the next stable release of DCSS, namely 0.6, will be released relatively soon! Hooray! All of the things that you’ve been reading about on the blog will be in it, as will a large amount of the commits mentioned in the posts over the coming weeks. It does mean that we have a large amount of testing and balancing left to do and this is where you, the faithful reader, come in!

You can read about current 0.6 targets that we’ve been polishing and testing here. The easiest way to contribute to this process is simply to play the game and comment on any issues (bugs, balance and so on) that you might encounter.

The easiest way to comment would be to reply to this post. For bugs, however, please file an issue on our Mantis tracker; you can also post comments to the crawl-ref-discuss mailing list, open feature requests (also on the Mantis tracker) or tell us directly via IRC (##crawl-dev on freenode). Good play-testing and good luck!

And now, onto The Great Big List, starting at commit cf82e8e8ec.

Bugs fixed

1. The Lernaean Hydra’s multiheaded attack has been restored, as has its ability to target multiple foes in one round.
2. Further references to Shoal:X have been replaced by references to Shoals:X, hopefully removing the last of these strange bugs.
3. A bug with the Message Window clearing the screen after –more– prompts has been fixed, removing a crash in the Arena.
4. Trees and plants now block opacity, meaning that monsters will attempt to pathfind around them instead of just standing there watching you.
5. Unique maps are now tagged as “transparent”, meaning that these creatures can be placed in “encompass” maps (such as the pre-generated Vaults, Tomb, Vestibule of Hell and so-on).
6. Active armour training is now 1.5 per successful attempt, instead of the previous 1 per successful attempt as caused by the light/heavy distinction removal.
7. Shallow water transparency rendering on some platforms with improper OpenGL support now functions properly; the previous functionality (manually-drawn transparency, “player sliced in half with a laser”) is currently default, but the new functionality can be enabled with “tile_better_transparency”.
8. Merfolk aquamancers will no longer fire icicles through like-attitude monsters.
9. A rare crash in acquirement code (a misplaced parenthesis) has been fixed.
10. Large clusters of uniques should no longer be as common, as the chances of placing another unique reduce sharply after three have been placed.
11. Tiles: Crashes on secret doors with overridden tiles should no longer occur. Secret doors should also correctly take a variant tile from nearby neighbours; this removes the previous “last_tile” hack.
12. Artefact amulets of Stasis also prevent teleportation properly, while these artefacts will not come with properties involving teleportation or blinking.
13. Messages reported on the turn before death will properly show up in the morgue and character logs.
14. Tracers will no longer continue past features that their beams cannot destroy, meaning that monsters will no longer attempt to target the player through trees.
15. Hopefully, all of the INVALID BEAM messages have been resolved; instances of this happening in messages involving Smite have been removed, while ghosts should have proper spellcasting flags meaning that they no longer “throw energy” but actually cast spells; finally, vapours should no longer generated INVALID messages.
16. _finalise_tile calling feat_is_ for out-of-bounds cells should be fixed, no longer causing a crash at map edges.
17. Apportation and other beam spells no longer mentioned “transparent wall” (a holdover from when there were no trees).
18. Vampires of sufficient EXP now have the bottle blood ability displayed at all times in the Ability screen, not just when there are available corpses.
19. Macros maps will no longer expand exponentially until they contain all sequences and subsequences of keys entered by the player in a session.
20. Fedhas’s Evolution ability now prioritises low count stacks of food over high count stacks of fruit.
21. Blessed blades are no longer even considered for acquirement purposes, as they only way to get these is via the worship of the Shining One; this means that long blade acquirement (specifically, acquirement via Trog and Okawaru) should actually generate long blades.
22. If two Lair branches have already been discovered, the third (and not generated) will not be displayed on the overview; finally, Hell portals begin showing up on D:21, not D:20.
23. Friendly monsters will no longer cast Dig at the player, fixing messages such as “Your Cacodemon gestures at you.”.
24. Friendly monsters will no longer attempt to cast emergency spells that are targeted (such as teleport other, blink other) on the player when at low health.
25. Finally, friendly monsters will no longer cast self-enchantments on the player.
26. Gourmand is marked as useful for non-full saprovores, and is marked as useful for ghouls (as it provides “instant rotting” of chunks).
27. The aptitude table width has been increased, allowing proper highlighting of aptitudes to work.
28. Monster casting targets now default to “something” instead of “nothing”, preventing weird messages.
29. Tracers no longer give away unidentified exploding missiles.
30. Clouds in the Cloud Mage Wizard Laboratory no longer break rest.
31. Friendly monsters will now use the player’s genus for relation checks, instead of their foe.
32. Manually specified grid colours will be visible once returning to a targeting prompt.
33. Confused monsters will properly zap wands in random directions, instead of always at themselves or the player.
34. Kikubaquudgha’s Weapon Blessing is now properly noted on the ^ screen.
35. Monster speech now functions properly in the Dungeon; previously, “Dungeon” was not being considered a branch prefix, meaning that only monsters whose entries contained this prefix (currently none) would speak.
36. Creation of randart books no longer causes a crash due to increasing the maximum size of CrawlVector.
37. Identification of the Singing Sword now functions properly, giving the “Hi, I’m the Singing Sword!” message.
38. Erica no longer gives misleading statements about drinking potions; this line has been removed from her speech.
39. Unique vaults that are transparent will now be placed with regard for terrain; this prevents amphibious uniques from being placed in the middle of nowhere in levels such as the Shoals.
40. Cheibriados worshippers will no longer get permanent stat loss when having their equipment melded.
41. Cursed randart items should colour properly.
42. Unmemorisable spells are now properly grayed out in the memorisation screen.
43. A missing separator in the jewellery database meant that items could have names such as “jewellery appearance”. This is no longer the case.
44. Rod descriptions now indicate that they no longer require attachment to the player in order to recharge.
45. Clearing the map now properly clears tiles that have been overridden in vaults, as well as secret doors.

Changed features

1. Giant spores now leave trails of squares “mold covered”, while ballistomycetes now only give experience when you kill the last one on the level. The trails of spores will also lead to other ballistomycetes and giant spores, while the activation of a ballistomycte by killing another will temporarily highlight the section of spore trail that leads to the activated one in red.
2. New tiles: dead trees (used in the Zonguldrok WizLab), mirrored wall (used in the Tukima WizLab).
3. Shoals now uses better flood filling when deepening water, this should prevent rectangular shapes of water at low tide.
4. Out-of-depth monster generations that would normally result in a band now instead generate as a single monster, unless a large period of time has elapsed (1.4k – 117 * depth turns spent on a level); this means that instead of generating out of depth yak packs, you will get a single yak, and so on.
5. Tiles: the player doll hair tiles have been adjusted slightly.
6. Fulsome Distillation now aborts without cost if there are no available corpses for distillation, while menu colours are used for colouring corpses listed during Fulsome Distillation prompts.
7. Fedhas’s Reproduction ability now gives a message indicating why spore production failed, instead of “nothing happens”, while worshippers of Fedhas will be given a message indicating why they can’t walk through trees.
8. Some Liches (including Boris) now have the spell Iskenderun’s Orb of Destruction.
9. Xom is less likely to polymorph plants, as the generation of these has been increased in the Lair of the Beasts and Shoals branches.
10. Amulet of Stasis now functions consistently with ARTP_PREVENT_TELEPORTATION (-Tele artefacts).
11. Fedhas now uses the “circles” version of the Oklob retribution more often, allowing circles of oklobs to be created as small as radius four around the player.
12. Fedhas now appreciates your contribution to the ecosystem upon death.
13. Iskenderun’s Orb of Destruction initial move has been randomised, removing guaranteed range for instant damage, while it now causes noise upon hit.
14. Trapdoor spiders are now in line with other submergers, while functionality for kraken submerging has been removed, as these no longer submerge.
15. Khufu is now silenceable, meaning that monsters who are and are not affected by silence can now be determined by glyph.
16. Fedhas now only dislikes Necromantic magic that affects corpses and chunks. These include Sublimation of Blood, Animate Dead, and so-on.
17. Labyrinth outer walls are now permarock, helping to clear up the confusion with metal.
18. Player ghosts can now be marked as worshippers of Fedhas once more, as the necromantic conduct does not care about the incorporeal undead.
19. Depths for undiscovered branches are now indicated on the overview screen.
20. Exclusions are now annotated based on map knowledge, rather than the actual monsters present.
21. (Neutral) Ballistomycetes no longer activate for Fedhas worshippers, while friendly giant spores will create friendly ballistomycets; finally, hostile ballistomycetes will show up in the monster list and stop travel.
22. Ogre hunters start with a club instead of a hand-axe, but also have a knife for butchering purposes.
23. Vampires’ ability to bottle blood from corpses is now activated as an ‘a’bility instead of using the ‘c’ command, while corpses are now a valid choice for the ‘q’ menu (when accessing the entire inventory with *).
24. Xom’s Snakes to Sticks effect is more common.
25. Out of range squares are now marked as such during targeting.
26. Reflected Orbs of Destruction no longer have a free move, while they are no longer attacked by monsters and are immune to damage; it will currently start as being off-direction when launched, and will then attempt to correct itself and home in on the target; they will also steer when necessary, instead of just when badly off course.
27. Cheibriados now supports Ponderous armour by granting stat boosts as well as resistances.
28. Hellfire no longer respects AC, but the overall damage has been reduced as much as having 15 AC previously would have; this removes discrepancy between EV and AC in that regard.
29. Guardian Spirit documentation has been updated: it no longer prevents “internal damage”, such as poisons, casting cost of Pain.
30. Fedhas’ Evolution ability now grows ballistomycetes from mouldy squares, while a message is given if the user attempts to evolve trees; experience is also given if a player’s ally destroys the last ballistomycete on a level.
31. Spore creation chains (created by a giant spore (created by an active ballistomycete), and so on) have been removed.
32. Fedhas’ Decomposition ability will no longer cause a piety loss by causing toadstools to grow in squares that have harmful clouds on them; toadstools will no longer generate on these squares.
33. Amulet of Inaccuracy now affects the casting of Iskenderun’s Orb of Destruction.
34. With the introduction of Iskenderun’s Orb of Destruction into the Lich spellbook (IV), Frederick now has his own spell book, as does Boris.
35. Silver now hurts the player according to player_is_shapechanged, and how mutated they are.
36. The unrand Serpent Scourge is now made of the hides of black mambas, who are poisonous, instead of anacondas, who are not.
37. i_feel_safe now takes into consideration monsters that are exposed in deep water (“~”) and will no longer attempt to auto-explore you next to them.
38. You can no longer worship Sif Muna if you do not know any spells.
39. Lemuel’s fog machine vaults (involving dangerous clouds) now include auto-explore stoppers (statues repurposed for this), while the “rotting” minivault has a warning-inscribed door to prevent auto-opening.
40. Cheibriados’s Ponderousify ability will never failure, and no longer has an MP cost; it still retains the piety cost.
41. Troves now have two mechanisms of tolling the player: the first is the original fee, during which the portal may time out; the second is a two-part quest: you can “lock” the portal for a small fee, but then the portal will require a magical item (or items) to open properly. These items can include consumables (stacks of potions), randarts found in shops, and so-on.
42. Tide levels in the Shoals will be the same across multiple levels; if it is high tide on one level, it is high tide on all levels, and so-on.
43. Due to carrying capacity changes, the weight of large stones has been increased once more; this reverts the previous decrease in weight.
44. “was cursed” messages are no longer generated on items that the player saw being cursed, and are cleared when items are fully identified.
45. Cheibriados’s Ponderousify ability now converts items to randarts, and his ponderous property is now a randart property; the -2 EV penalty for each ponderous item worn has also been removed.
46. Spells are now coloured in the memorisation, ‘I’ and Z/z? screens; these colours are according to usefulness (darkgrey for useless), religious obligations (red for spells forbidden by your god), and so-on.
47. Kikubaquudgha’s necromancy miscast protection is now noted on the ^ screen.
48. Duane, Edmund and Frances have had their descriptions, speech and other flavour overhauled; Duane is now an experienced guard, Edmund is Sigmund’s jealous younger and less talented brother, while Frances is a warrior who defeated a Pandemonium Lord and took over its realm and demons.
49. Ice Cave entries have been improved.
50. Murray is now placed in 1 out of 8 Vestibules of Hell, and is directly placed using the vault syntax for that map, rather than using the unique placement system.
51. Wayne has been buffed and is now a dwarven priest of Okawaru, with the spells Might and Haste; he also comes with all-dwarven gear. His speech and flavour have been improved.
52. Tiles: tile_force_overlay option, allowing the message window to forcefully be overlayed over the play area, meaning that this can be larger.
53. Cheibriados gives extra piety in some instances. See commit 4507799433cbc6e1f2f.
54. Shoals tides occasionally washes blood off features.
55. If the player knows Evaporate, the list of clouds that the various potions can created are included in their descriptions.
56. Tiles: the inventory screen now has visual tabs, allowing you to switch between the inventory, spells, and memorisation screens.
57. New tiles: Fedhas altar, silver and steel darts.

Other tweaks

1. A confusing comment for the Lua absdepth wrapper has been changed.
2. Monsters are now removed from the mgrd before firing the death Lua event.
3. Place-population script now properly reports shapeshifters and hydrae; uniques can be grouped using the -groupuniques option.
4. FAQ2html.pl scripts converts the plaintext FAQ into a HTML version.
5. Further issues with stdarg(h) causing crashes on long messages with make_printf have been hopefully resolved for the last time.
6. Instances of “targetted” and “targetting” have been renamed to “targeted” and “targeting”, respectively.
7. The targeting help screen (x?) has been overhauled.
8. The message window system now supports “temporary” messages that will be removed from both the screen and the message history when scrolling away.
9. Indications of mimic and dancing weapon status for the dLua monster wrapper.
10. rltiles now has a tile_ _basetile function that returns the root tile of a variant (or non-variant) tile; for example, a tile passed that is TILE_WALL_NORMAL+3 will return TILE_WALL_NORMAL.
11. Place-population now groups mimics, dancing weapons and very ugly things.
12. mons_cast_noise has been split up, removing UNSEEN_BEAM.
13. Beams whose names were “0″ have been removed; the beam code has been cleaned up, meaning that demonics who cast smite no longer have it considered a “visible” beam. Visibility is instead tracked via the “visible” method of the bolt structure.
14. you.your_level has been renamed to you.absdepth0.
15. Auto-generated artefact files have been removed from the repository.
16. “base_type”, “ego_type”, “sub_type”, and “artefact_name” wrappers for dLua. For a “+0 short sword of Trog {flaming}” for example, they will respectively return “weapon”, “flaming”, “short sword”, “short sword of Trog”.
17. melee_attack has been split from fight.h, meaning that this no longer includes artefact.h and reduces dependencies.

And that’s us, up-to-date at commit b11820d43d9! Tune in next week for more!