Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup


If it doesn't fit anywhere else, it belongs here. Also, come here if you just need to get hammered.

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 18:04

Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Two friends of mine and I were dissatisfied with monster spawn removal in 0.21, so we started a variant of our own (which is now based on 0.22). I have just completed a planned rework of ghosts, and this seems like a good time to release it so Tavern can hate it.

We don't have a design philosophy besides doing stuff we like, getting rid of stuff that annoys us, not removing things we like even if vanilla Crawl removes them, being a bit more relaxed about what Hypothetically Optimal Man might do, and liking mustellids.

You can play Stoat Soup on crawl.kelbi.org.

You can also play by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers (if you don't normally play online console, you might want to read https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto to find out what this means). I regret that we don't intend to offer Webtiles on this server. (However, where Stoat Soup changes or additions have necessitated new tiles, I have bodged them up, and I do much of my own testing in tiles so I expect it to work.) Beware that in Stoat Soup, "bold_brightens_foreground" defaults to "true" - if you can't see walls out of your field of view, read http://www.montres.org.uk/about.html.

Stoat Soup scores can be found at http://www.montres.org.uk/, including the minor innovation of Sprint scores; in the event that any other server offers it and tells me where the logfile is, I'll add their scores to this page.

https://github.com/damerell/crawl is the github repository for the variant. Now it is released, I will refrain from doing gratuitous rebases of the "master" branch.

https://github.com/damerell/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt should include every change made in Stoat Soup 0.22 and 0.21, but here's a list in approximate order of importance:
  • Monsters still continue to spawn as in Crawl 0.20, but you knew that because that's our whole rationale for the variant.
  • Ghosts don't roam the dungeon murdering you horribly or hide in ghost vaults to be cashed in for XP later. They remember what killed them, and come into being to seek revenge on their slayer. They're neutral monsters, so they're not entirely safe to be around, but if you don't aggravate them they're useful allies. Ghost AC/EV/HP were all reduced to, probably unsuccessfully, encourage players to fight alongside ghosts rather than sitting back as they flatten their targets.
  • High elves and mountain dwarves are back, and joined by faerie dragons. MD aptitudes have been adjusted in line with the across-the-board aptitude adjustments since their removal.
  • The monster list in console is enormously improved, able to provide information on more than one monster of the same kind and to report on a vast range of criteria - know at a glance that 2 of these 3 gnolls have polearms. (This change is not made in Webtiles, both because the monster list in Webtiles is generated in an entirely different bit of code in a different language, and because much of this information is already available.)
  • Zin cures mutations on a gifting timeout, so can't be used to lock in a good mut set. Recite was very slightly improved, both in the HD of monsters it can affect and by being usable more frequently at ****** piety.
  • You can still get that good mut set by eating purple chunks. Purple monsters start to "cool down" when first sighted, and if killed sufficiently much later aren't mutagenic. I don't know if H.O.M. was actually stowing them in branches for later, but now he can't.
  • You are optionally warned before entering, or when forcibly transported to, the last level in a branch.
  • Ozo's Armour doesn't prevent movement, but it can only be cast with monsters in view, so H.O.M. can't cast it before opening every door. It runs out twice as fast if no monsters are in view, but twice as slowly if they are, which since it still gives ponderous might result in some harmless amusement.
  • Ogres get +1 Maces and Flails; we're fine with an easy choice, but it doesn't have to be overpoweringly good. Ogre spell apts are a mix of -1s and -2s based roughly on Ogre and Ogre Mage apts in pre-DCSS days.
  • LRD digs rock, but never stone or metal, since much of the problem with it seemed to be cracking into stone vaults. IOODs and eyes of devastation also dig rock. I suppose this means H.O.M. will dig killholes everywhere, but if that annoys you, don't do it.
  • The Swamp gains the Triceratops, a unique who's a melee beast who knocks down trees because that's original, er. But I like triceratopses.
  • Deep dwarf MP loss on healing gets averaged out - it is much harder now to have a run of bad luck that loses you MP every time, or a run of free heals. Additionally, the first MP loss of the game is ignored. This makes DD easier, of course, but is analogous to the 0.18 situation where you got one load of wand charges for free.
  • Food still consists of meat and bread rations, fruit, and honeycombs, because who needs inventory space? Honeycombs are only found in bee vaults, though, to cut down on food spam slightly.
  • The Mace of Variability still varies but does so on hits so H.O.M. can't just wait for it to be +16. The Singing Sword is vorpal; independent invention of a vanilla change.
  • Dream sheep can still spread sticky flame to each other, which Dithmenos hates, because Dithmenos still hates fire.
  • Labyrinth loot was unchanged; minotaurs got some but not all of the vanilla boosts.
  • Engulf still gives a movespeed penalty.
  • Cosmetic changes; if you worship Qazlal, the noise bar goes to 11! Quokkas are now weasels. Double and triple swords are now broadswords and claymores.
Post-release changes:
  • You can now wear-ID amulets with relative impunity. The amulet of harm does not drain you. However, when you take one off, you continue to take extra damage until fully healed and some time has passed, so it still can't be usefully swapped mid-fight. The amulet of faith only starts to increase piety gain after a random amount of piety has been gained while wearing it - on average, 3 points. However, it drains at most 1/5 of your piety on removal, and cannot drain more piety than was gained by wearing it.
  • Infusion and Shroud of Golubria are now "permabuffs", lasting forever rather than having to be recast. The intention is to add more permabuffs; the implementation is not that found in Hellcrawl or Gooncrawl.
Last edited by damerell on Tuesday, 24th September 2019, 22:02, edited 8 times in total.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 18:09

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

damerell wrote: You can play Stoat Soup by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers.


What does this mean, and how do I do it?
Relatively new to Crawl, and willing to help development in any way I can.

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 18:22

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

MisterPersonMan wrote:
damerell wrote: You can play Stoat Soup by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers.

What does this mean, and how do I do it?


Good question. I should have thought this through a bit; online console players already know, but of course not everyone is an online console player. https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto discusses how to ssh to the public servers, and it's the same procedure.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 19:07

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

damerell wrote:Good question. I should have thought this through a bit; online console players already know, but of course not everyone is an online console player. https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto discusses how to ssh to the public servers, and it's the same procedure.


It seems I'd need to download an SSH Client in order to do this, so I'll leave it alone for now... But I'll definitely keep this in mind.
Relatively new to Crawl, and willing to help development in any way I can.

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 19:17

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

New forks are always neat, but you've removed Triple Swords and now I think I have to be opposed to everything this fork is about, just on principle

(I hope you have fun with your vision. :D)

Swamp Slogger

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Post Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 22:06

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Thanks for weasels. Killing quokkas was extremely grimdark for my taste.

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 10th April 2019, 11:04

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

MisterPersonMan wrote:It seems I'd need to download an SSH Client in order to do this, so I'll leave it alone for now... But I'll definitely keep this in mind.

While I don't want to presume anything, it seems like CKO has been reasonably keen to add variants, so if you're used to Webtiles it might be best to hang fire and see if it turns up there.
phloomp wrote:Thanks for weasels. Killing quokkas was extremely grimdark for my taste.

"Stoat Soup: you don't have to kill any quokkas"? (Actually, I think the friendly ghosts are the best bit.)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 10th April 2019, 11:32

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

So ghosts are still based on dead characters? I'm not saying it's like bones stuffing in Nethack but getting help from a dead character seems a bit fishy to me...

(Yes, the current implementation of ghosts as free XP and items to get when you're strong enough is bad too.)
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
Bloat: 17: RaRoPrPh{GuStGnCa}{ArEtZoNb}KiPaAnDrBXDBQOApDaMeAGBiOCNKAsFnFlUs{RoBoNeWi

Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 10th April 2019, 11:54

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Sprucery wrote:So ghosts are still based on dead characters? I'm not saying it's like bones stuffing in Nethack but getting help from a dead character seems a bit fishy to me...


Yes; AC, EV, and HP are lower, and they're allowed to be fast or to have weapons of chaos or distortion again, but their stats are generated much like existing player ghosts.

I don't see bones stuffing as a major problem (unlike in NetHack, where I've heard from people who suicided because they got an item that would be much better for another character class). The ghost wants to help you with one monster, although it's not impossible it will find its target behind a bunch of other monsters and try and cut through them. If you've intentionally left a ghost that might maybe help you, you could just have played the viable character you had anyway.

They also only leave the game when either their targets are killed or they are (or after being repeatedly loaded into games but failing to appear), so can't be shaftrobined away (not that you would want to); and can turn up from D:2, in portal branches, anywhere except labyrinths and the Temple.

Of course you may fundamentally dislike the idea of getting help from a dead character, in which case there's not much we can do, really. :-)
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Slime Squisher

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Post Saturday, 20th April 2019, 10:31

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

MisterPersonMan wrote:
damerell wrote: You can play Stoat Soup by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers.

What does this mean, and how do I do it?


Thanks to floraline, Stoat Soup Webtiles is now available on crawl.kelbi.org , although I'm afraid the monster list improvements don't yet work in Webtiles and getting them to work will be difficult.
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MisterPersonMan

Slime Squisher

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Post Saturday, 1st June 2019, 16:28

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

The already lethargic pace of development wasn't helped by City of Heroes unexpectedly rising from the grave, but besides some bugfixes (partly helped by Luxidream scoring our first fifteen-rune ascension and finding two bugs en route) and the amulet change, we now have a permabuff implementation (distinct from that found in Hellcrawl and Gooncrawl).

Our aims with Stoat Soup permabuffs were to keep spell failure and spellpower relevant, and to represent the MP cost of recasting a spell without going in for Hellcrawl-style MP reservation. http://crawl.montres.org.uk/permabuffs.txt details the approach taken in more detail. Presently only Infusion and Shroud of Golubria are permabuffs, but now the infrastructure is added, it should be easy to add more, initially working through the Skald starting book.

Done Song of Slaying, doing Regeneration. Regeneration presented a bit of a problem for our MP regeneration penalty scheme in that at low spellpower it can easily be impossible to cast it on cooldown. (Incidentally, I think this means Regeneration is really good in MP reservation permabuff implementations - you can easily get more value out of it than you could in vanilla.) I developed an alternative implementation where Regeneration has a 2MP (no typo) reserve used to power itself, and your MP regeneration refills the reserve - a proportion of your MP regeneration is taken equal to your MP divided by your max MP.
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Airwolf

Temple Termagant

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Post Thursday, 16th April 2020, 12:30

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Hi damerell, hi folks,

I noticed your fork containing a pre 0.24 Vampire race implementation. If you are interested in something more interesting, feel free to take a look at my fork at https://github.com/danielrogowski/evilcrawl .

If you are interested, I'd implement one or more pull requests for your fork including one, some or all of my forks features.

Best regards and as always happy crawling,
Rogo

Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 16th April 2020, 16:25

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Rogo wrote:I noticed your fork containing a pre 0.24 Vampire race implementation. If you are interested in something more interesting, feel free to take a look at my fork at https://github.com/danielrogowski/evilcrawl .


Thanks. At the moment we're moving from 0.22 to 0.23... at a glacial pace. However, I'll try a vampire in that at some point and if I like it, discuss it with the other two Stoat Soup people. However, from a brief look at the description, it seems like with judicious choice of branches a vampire could stay Engorged or near it for most of the game, at which point it's a straight boost in power over (pre-0.24) vampire. I wonder if there's something I'm missing there?
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Temple Termagant

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Post Thursday, 16th April 2020, 16:53

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

damerell wrote:However, from a brief look at the description, it seems like with judicious choice of branches a vampire could stay Engorged or near it for most of the game, at which point it's a straight boost in power over (pre-0.24) vampire. I wonder if there's something I'm missing there?

You're right. I set the xp stat to "-2" as a compensation. - If you've got a nice balancing idea, let's hear it. - I didn't focus on balancing though. Instead I focused on making the race feel Vampire like.

By the way, remaining engorged is not always the best way to go, because the hp boosts from bite-drinking don't occur when engorged.
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Post Friday, 17th April 2020, 06:00

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

Does this mean optimal vampire play is to always be as close to engorged, but not quite engorged, as possible?

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Post Friday, 17th April 2020, 06:30

Re: Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup

chequers wrote:Does this mean optimal vampire play is to always be as close to engorged, but not quite engorged, as possible?

If you don't care about being able to transform to a bat, than yes. ;) You see, blood level management has got a few things to consider, nameley str + regen + general transform possibility + possible berserking vs. bat transform ability + resistances (rpois!) + stealth + degeneration (negative regen when bloodless).

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