Something's changed in crawl today...

[tasonir]

So, having spent a fair amount of time on the tavern as well as playing crawl, it seems one of the things that comes up over and over again is outdated information. Things that were once true but have since changed are somewhat harder to unlearn, and can be just as bad for your success in crawl as information that was never true. I figure it would be useful to have a thread which attempts to correct outdated advice/collect recent changes to crawl and the updated advice for how to handle the current version of crawl.

Some examples of recently discussed outdated advice: Cerebov's loot rooms needing Ctele to get into them (they have doors as of about 2 years ago), trolls not being able to use the regen ego on troll leather armor (this exception was recently removed), or things like not being aware that you can check the success rate of monster's hexes against you by looking up their spells in their descriptions (I didn't know this myself until it was mentioned). The goal is not to blame anyone for being out of date because it's quite difficult to stay current with a rapidly changing game, but to help keep us all slightly more accurate over time

There are of course the blog updates that PleasingFungus does with a summary of recent trunk changes, which is WONDERFUL, but I think there's room for a thread about it too. For those who don't know about these, the current latest one is this one: https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trun ... -june-2015 You can find the older ones there as well.

So, what's changed recently, or not terribly recently, that players should be aware of in order to play better crawl?

[Sandman25]

Some outdate info in OP detected
There is no need to check spells for hex success chance, it's listed in monster description now.

[savageorange]

It's not exactly correcting a misinformation, but IMO many players might benefit from being aware of the recent addition of the explore_auto_rest option.
Setting it to true causes autoexplore to first rest up, if you are injured and are not a DD, before moving. Good for almost all builds, IMO.

[Sprucery]

Does it take into account being a bloodless vampire?

[savageorange]

Not yet. I've just commented here about that, but if you want to make sure it gets fixed, file an issue on Mantis.

[tedric]

It might behoove regular players of trunk builds to bookmark Crawl's GitHub page (https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commits/master) and follow the commits there. Only takes a moment or two to scan through recent changes and check in on anything relevant to gameplay. There are lots of commits that are just code cleanup, but the devs are pretty good about leaving notes on anything that's relevant to players, which are revealed with mouse-hover.

Of course this doesn't help more casual or occasional players, but if you're jumping between versions you're going to have an overwhelming amount of information to sift through no matter what, and the changelogs already cover the big stuff.

[njvack]

Or, if you're old like me and use an RSS reader, that github commit log has an RSS feed.

[jejorda2]

I wish the "Do you want to [T]ransfer your game to the new version?" prompt had a "[R]ead the changelog" option. The prompt tells you the new version, and your current version must be available, so what else is needed to show you a list of all changes between the two versions?

If, say, you skilled to cast control teleport and wanted to finish the game before it's removed, that would be good to know.

It has probably only bitten me twice in 8 years or so of playing, so it might not be worth the effort.

[savageorange]

I wish the "Do you want to [T]ransfer your game to the new version?" prompt had a "[R]ead the changelog" option. The prompt tells you the new version, and your current version must be available, so what else is needed to show you a list of all changes between the two versions?

The current version ... is available.... but probably not in the sense that you think.

https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/save ... -in-dcss-2 explains how it works.
Basically, you don't get semantic versioning (eg. 0.17.a0 is a semantic version number), you get .. numbers that change only when something incompatible/requiring upgrades occurs.
It's certainly possible to associate these with release numbers, so I guess if someone put such a table together (it would require 34 entries, currently, AFAICS), it could be used fairly easily.

[jejorda2]

I don't think I'm talking about save file versions. It appears to me that every time there is a commit between when I save a game and when I resume it playing online, I am prompted whether I want to keep playing the version of the game that I was playing or transfer the game to the new version. This often happens more than once per character- more than once per day. It's not something that has only happened 34 times since the 1990s.

[thevogonpoet]

Yeah, I would love an option to peruse the change log before updating... Sure I *could* say no, save the game, track down the commit, then reopen and update, but that's like, hassle which I am never going to be prepared to go through.

Its pretty rare that I have a dude who will feel the effects of such a change, but it does happen: I had a dude in maxwells patent armour the last time it was tweaked (back at Christmas time apparently), and got very confused at one point, first preparing for Slime, to find it did not have rCorr, then preparing for Zot, to find it had lost its rF and regained rCorr. I was like, 'D'oh'.

/trunk reasons

[savageorange]

I don't think I'm talking about save file versions. It appears to me that every time there is a commit between when I save a game and when I resume it playing online, I am prompted whether I want to keep playing the version of the game that I was playing or transfer the game to the new version. This often happens more than once per character- more than once per day. It's not something that has only happened 34 times since the 1990s.

Oh, you're playing webtiles. Never mind then.. the version you're playing has to be noted in order for anything to work at all.

[jejorda2]

Here is the prompt, which I see here in console play upon resuming a character:

  Code:

Hi, you have a 0.17-a0-1399-gd5b76e1 save game:

[T]ransfer your save to the latest version (0.17-a0-1403-g9df874c)?


So there's probably a git command I could use to see all the commits between those two versions, but that would mean reading the man page, making an alias and copying and pasting both version numbers. It makes so more sense for someone else to spend time to solve my "problem!"

But that prompt could certainly use some option, like "[N]o, don't transfer!" for people who don't want to. Esc works now, and lets you play the character on the current version, but it's not obvious from those words.

[savageorange]

That prompt is weird and inconsistent IMO. Is there a good reason not to just say 'Transfer your save to the latest version (x.y.z-abc) Y/n', in line with many other prompts in crawl.

If your only problem with git logs is 'reading the man page, making an alias and copying and pasting both version numbers', then it shouldn't be too hard to generate a link that would compare the versions. For example https://github.com/crawl/crawl/compare/ ... 86991c22b1

As you can see, any commits that you can name are comparable using the web interface of GitHub.
Unfortunately, there does seem to be an additional issue where, for some reason, the versions named in package versions (eg. what you name above, which is also what I'm currently running) do not show up on github as valid commit ids -- because they aren't (i've done a clone and checked). The commits used for builds seem to be different from the ones used in the web interface.
(Devs, if you're looking at this, can you comment on why this is?)

An alternative option would be for the game to look at the date of the savefile instead. That way, we could generate a url like
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/compare/ ... D...master , which would circumvent the commit id problem.

[jejorda2]

It's probably a dgamelaunch prompt and not a crawl prompt.

[Pollen_Golem]

But that prompt could certainly use some option, like "[N]o, don't transfer!" for people who don't want to. Esc works now, and lets you play the character on the current version, but it's not obvious from those words.

I don't get it. What? There is a "No" button right there. It's next to the "Yes" button, they appear together. What is the problem with that?

[all before]

I don't get it. What? There is a "No" button right there

Here is the prompt, which I see here in console

[tasonir]

Did you know that acid damage is reduced by 20/40/60% for each level of the fur mutation? I didn't.

Did you know that was removed?

[njvack]

Here is the prompt, which I see here in console play upon resuming a character:

  Code:

Hi, you have a 0.17-a0-1399-gd5b76e1 save game:

[T]ransfer your save to the latest version (0.17-a0-1403-g9df874c)?


So there's probably a git command I could use to see all the commits between those two versions, but that would mean reading the man page, making an alias and copying and pasting both version numbers. It makes so more sense for someone else to spend time to solve my "problem!"

No worries, I think this is what you want:

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/compare/d5b76e1...9df874c

I guess you still have to copy and paste? Anyhow, you want to leave off the leading "g" in -gXXXXXX where XXXXXX is the end of the commit hash; I assume it stands for "git" rather than being part of the hash itself, as it isn't y'know, a hex digit.

But change that range to whichever two commits show up in that message, and you'll see the set of changes.

Also, I think there's no guarantee the hashes in question will be in github; some secret things (April 1 content?) may not get pushed.

[tasonir]

So I'm a bit late since I only saw the june 21st update last night, but hey, here's a list of recent changes: https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trun ... -june-2015

Abominations having random speed is something I did know, although I'm not sure anyone confirmed the other still random monster. In other words:

Random move speed until 2010: ugly things
Random move speed until this week: hell beasts
Still random move speed: Abominations and ???

??? I'm guessing is pan lords? Not entirely sure.

[Sar]

I'm sure randlords still get random speed, yeah. And random spells! Fun!

[Hurkyl]

Ow, clouds of flame are no longer a barrier against killer bees.

(on the bright side, clouds of flame now kill killer bees)

[tedric]

Ow, clouds of flame are no longer a barrier against killer bees.

(on the bright side, clouds of flame now kill killer bees)

This is true of a lot more things than killer bees, actually!

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/d63ab3c59aa384f4d63c7ca8d95804740299a244

  Code:

Squash I_REPTILE into I_ANIMAL, I_INSECT and I_PLANT into
I_BRAINLESS, and I_HIGH and I_NORMAL into I_HUMAN.

Effects:
- Some difference in tracking ranges/pathfinding/forgetfulness.
- Formerly high-intelligence monsters no longer have an
  extra-high chance to guess invisible players' locations or
  better MR estimation abilities, and no longer have shaft &
  drowning-while-confused immunity.
- Monsters that miscast noisily will no longer sometimes think
  someone else made the noise.
- If Kirke porkalates something, and then you kill Kirke, whether
  or not that monster becomes friendly no longer depends on it
  having >= human intelligence.

[zxc23]

Polyphemus now throws death yaks at you.

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... fc87e3ec90

This can be important.

[tasonir]

Ending transformations no longer requires extra time:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... e6cf325178