If you’ve been following the Stonesoup development, you might have noticed the recent shift of activity from longterm development to shortterm bugfixing, as well as a switch of trunk to version 0.9; the reason being the release of 0.8 that is currently slated for April 24.

The recent changes include the incorporation of the unicode branch, which fixes a number of issues with non-ASCII path names etc., bringing Ashenzari up to speed, and the aforementioned gazillions of bug fixes. In a concerted effort of several developers, we’ve managed to close 100+ bug reports on our bug tracker over the last couple of weeks, which is quite a feat, let me tell you. Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to do that if they hadn’t been reported in the first place. So, here’s a large thank you to our diligent reporters! :)

What follows is the list of changes in the 0.8 pre-release branch currently available on CDO (a206725), meaning they’ll be included in the stable release.

Player

Bug fixes

  • Fix #3676: crashes when butcher delay tries to switch back to empty hands.
  • Fix #3748: crash when viewing aptitude with CK or Wa selected.
  • Fix a crash when an aptitude was improved between saves.
  • Fix #3156, #3709: cloud safety checks getting randomized AC reductions.
  • Fix #3598: if necessary, update perma-mutation if you gain a mutation.
  • Fix #2395: Disallow ending forms/levitation if it would cause drowning.
  • Fix antitraining when opposite skill is nil.
  • Stop quick actions from letting you search faster.
  • Don’t avoid glow by cancelling semicontrolled blinks with enter instead of escape.
  • Fix trying to climb when overloaded taking a turn.
  • Fix #3801: Don’t consume a turn when trying to go downstairs while levitating.
  • Fix #3660: canceling DD recharging ability still costing max MP.
  • Fix #3781: wall clinging not triggering traps.
  • No stealth bonus from boots if you’re flying or in water.
  • Fix clinging status not updated properly when switching out of spider form.
  • Fix #3444: off-by-one error in autopickup_no_burden checks.
  • Fix #3334: boot of levitation message when melding and not levitating.
  • Message fix for levitation while clinging.

Other changes for player characters

  • Disable Arcane Marksmen.
  • All sources of berserk are blocked at “Very Hungry”. Berserk automatically stops when you hit “Starving”.
  • Remove experience pool limit; abbreviate the XP pool above 100K.
  • Replace scroll reading penalty while brainless with 80% failure chance.
  • A wielded ranged weapon will only “clumsily bash” monsters, no matter its enchantment.
  • Prompt the player before moving to a deadly cell with an expiring status.
  • Remove the satiation requirements from evokable invis.
  • Disable ghost creation/loading in wizard non-debug mode.
  • Better warning messages for form and levitation expiration.
  • Special Airstrike message if struck while flying.
  • Don’t auto-attack toadstools when wielding the Wrath of Trog.
  • Reduce the spam when butchering with artefacts.
  • Consistently abort teleportation attempts when wearing stasis or -TELE.
  • Nerf Felid aptitudes: Fighting/UC: 0 -> -2, Ice/Earth: -1 -> -2, improve Cj: -2 -> -1.
  • Decrease Felid’s factor for getting hp from Fighting from 1/5 -> 1/8.
  • Reduce Felid exp modifier from 15 to 16.
  • Don’t let Felids (auto)quiver anything, hide the Qv line.
  • Obey no_tele_into when bringing you a new fresh kitty.
  • Give Ogres an extra +1 hp per level, and +3 apts in Fighting and M&F.
  • Let Kenku use beak+talons for butchering, like birds they are.
  • Mention dietary and drinkary habits of mummies on the ‘A’ screen.
  • Meld all weapons unless you’re in a form that allows wielding.
  • Don’t consider melding a distortion weapon to be unwielding.
  • Don’t check inscriptions on melding stuff — you’re not removing them.
  • Don’t show “it sticks to your hand” on cursed unmeld.
  • Prevent ice form from picking items at the bottom of deep water.
  • Disallow wearing hats in spider or ice form.
  • Allow wearing shields in statue form.
  • Don’t give Green Dracs poison spit in spider form.
  • Don’t cling to the wall when levitating.
  • Clear clinging status when taking stairs.
  • Don’t drown when transforming into a flying form while clinging.
  • Allow spider form to scramble out of deep water by clinging to a wall. (#2967)
  • Allow extending spider form while clinging over dangerous terrain
  • Set clinging status colour according to the current feature.
  • Allow wall clinging on closed doors (#3778).
  • Don’t give Halfling hunters a buckler for free.
  • Save weapon selection for quarterstaves with new games.
  • Let player elves have elven gear.

Gods

Ashenzari

  • Fix #3344: Don’t crash if you.transfer_to_skill somehow is SK_NONE.
  • Fix #3735: some dropped and useless items being autopickuped.
  • Don’t crash on old saves in Ashenzari penance.
  • New Ashenzari passive ability: identify monster equipment with chance boundedness/3.
  • Ashenzari also warns about monsters’ wands.
  • Nerf Ashenzari transfer knowledge: double XP penalty (20%), greatly increase piety cost 10 -> 25.
  • Lower piety gain.
  • Forbid reskilling from or into Fighting.
  • Make scrying fail proof and instantaneous.
  • Ashenzari: scale passive mapping density with piety.
  • Ashenzari on-sight item identification.
  • Reskilling: keep the same letters between the from and to menu.
  • Wrath: Reduces xp gain by 50%.
  • Allow Ashenzarites to cancel scrolls of remove curse.
  • Allow Ashenzarites to choose which piece of armour/jewellery to curse.

The good gods: Elyvilon, The Shining One, Zin

  • Shorten and tweak Elyvilon’s ^! description to fit in an 80×24 screen.
  • Don’t consume food/mp/piety when trying to pacify invalid targets.
  • Make TSO non-holy summon extension at most double the current duration.
  • Zin forbids shapeshifting spells and protects against Kirke’s pig spell.
  • Fix recite working through walls and squarelosish.
  • Make recite train more often.
  • Add a message when you switch from a good god to another good god.

Other gods

  • No stat boosts during Cheibriados penance.
  • Fedhas: Don’t blame the player for trees felled by monster-cast tornado.
  • Reduce the number of corpses from Kiku’s invocation.
  • Makhleb: Fix Lesser Servant summoning chaos spawn instead of hellwings.
  • Increase piety cost of Makhleb’s greater servant, since 1s were improved.
  • Fix Okawaru not accepting kills of holy beings.
  • Repair Xom’s potion of experience.
  • When Xom lifesaves you, clear stat_zero penalty.
  • Let His Xomminess grant you extra xp at level 27 (xp pool).
  • Don’t let Yred gift Eidolons anymore.

General

  • No instant divine retribution — many gods are abusable.
  • Don’t give experience or items for killing monsters from god wrath
  • Reduce the amount of unrands among god gifts.

Monsters

Bug fixes

  • Don’t crash on banishing dancing weapons; don’t abyss any kinds of summons.
  • Fix a crash when the player thinks the monster has a wand but it doesn’t.
  • Fix #2404: Disallow polymorphing monsters taking the stairs.
  • Fix #2927: crash when looking up ghosts in the db search.
  • Fix non-ghost spells not getting loaded.
  • Fix silence working on demons, orbs of fire, etc.
  • Fix #3750: coming into view messages ignoring mislead.
  • Fix shouting monsters not being announced.
  • Fix resurrected shedu being placed in bad places.
  • Fix #3718: grey draconians not floundering in deep water.
  • Don’t give a chance to hit rock worms in walls except in Zotdef.
  • Fix #3689: dual wielding monsters’ descriptions.

Mimics

  • Remove trap mimics.
  • Disable portal mimic generation for 0.8.
  • Prevent stair mimics from posing as branch stairs.
  • Don’t place downstairs mimic on branch bottom, and vice versa.
  • Make door mimics replace actual doors.
  • Make item mimics appear earlier, reduce both types’ rarity.
  • Don’t include unknown mimics in beam targetting.
  • Include item type in item mimics’ names.

Uniques

  • Disable Terpsichore, she’s not ready for 0.8.
  • Give Asmodeus a permanent ring of flames, replace greater demon with fire summon, remove bolt of draining.
  • Dispater: give LCS instead of lightning bolt, remove common demon summon.
  • Mnoleg: + AF_BLINK/AF_MUTATE attacks, -greater demon, -invis, +summon eyeballs, more hp.
  • Lom Lobon: give AF_ANTIMAGIC attacks.
  • Make Antaeus amphibious again.
  • Make the royal jelly stay on Slime:6.
  • Give Grinder AF_PAIN attacks instead of a weapon.
  • Give Pikel a whip of elec instead of pain.
  • Remove rF+ and rC+ from Nergalle.
  • Allow Ijyb to get high-tier wands in normal game.
  • Give Jory Mesmerise (new spell) instead of Cause Fear.
  • Adjust Roxanne’s casting messages, since she can’t move.

Other monster-related changes

  • Don’t give experience or items for killing monsters from god wrath or miscasts.
  • Revert monsters avoiding walking into clouds — the new behaviour was abusable.
  • Don’t cancel monster travels when player goes out of LoS.
  • Don’t make a monster at the edge of LOS leave a trail.
  • No elephants in D and Vaults, slightly reduce their frequency in Lair.
  • Announce all monsters “coming into view” at once.
  • Give the non-spellcasting random pan lords (10% chance) a guaranteed melee brand, and a chance of greater speed.
  • Restore monster speeds for Orb Guardian, Royal Jelly, Fiends, Storm/Golden dragon, Grater Mummy.
  • Tweak holy monster speeds: phoenix/blessed toe: 10, pearl dragon/shedu: 12.
  • Improve Cacodemons: -Dig, -Call Imp, +Energy Bolt, +Slow, +Confuse, + 3 levels rPois/Elec, extra attack, more health.
  • Green Death, Blue Death: remove call imp.
  • Give Eidola spells: Cause Fear and Pain.
  • Give giant orange brains Cause Fear instead of Polymorph Other.
  • Hunger attack takes 25% of your nutrition.
  • Give clinging to geckos, giant mites, cockroaches and demonic crawlers.
  • Allow fake rakshasa to use weapons and armour like real ones; don’t hide equipment of Mara and rakshasa.
  • Rework monster rElec levels.
  • Set the xp for vanilla orcs to 3.
  • Remove bears, replace with grizzly or black bears where appropriate.
  • Boost monster ghouls’ health and damage.
  • Reduce electric eel accuracy slightly.
  • Make Fiends and Pit Fiends use regular spells rather than abilities.
  • Give vampires blood.
  • Give Ophan high intelligence.
  • Convert shedu’s main attack to kick instead of claw.
  • Allow raising trapdoor spider zombies.
  • Always remove the mold when fungal colony is destroyed.
  • Add a message for monsters casting Trog’s Hand.

Spells

Bug fixes

  • Fix #3650: Don’t spend turn/MP when aborting the berserk spell.
  • Fix placing Fire Storm on a wall.
  • Don’t allow cancelling out of chain lightning with ally prompts.
  • Guarantee IOOD placement on tiny levels.
  • Correct the colour of LRDed glass.
  • Don’t display a success message when aborting sublimation of blood at full mp.

Books

  • Remove Summon Hydra from the Book of Summonings.
  • New spellbook, book of zoology: summon butterflies, sticks to snakes, call canine familiar, ice form, summon ice beast, summon hydra.
  • Move Silence from the book of Maledictions to War Chants (replaces Haste).
  • Add IOOD to the book of Power.

Other spell-related changes

  • Tornado changes for 0.8: pure Air, 80% damage, negative spell enhancer.
  • Disable Tukima’s Ball as a player spell.
  • Remove the Stonemail spell.
  • Allow Sticks to Snakes on javelins, disallow on steel/silver stuff.
  • Death channel spectral monsters are not abjurable.
  • Invisibility becomes pure Hex.
  • Silence becomes Charms/Air.
  • Brand spells go back to being Charms.
  • Simplify low spell success adjectives: Merge Cruddy and Bad into Very Poor (now 5-30%).
  • Make poison clouds all lightgreen.
  • Apportation targetting: allow cycling with +/-.
  • Don’t destroy the rest when apporting part of a stack.
  • Don’t destroy items apported if at the item limit.
  • Don’t rot while under Death’s Door.
  • Fix spells being unaffected by antimagic in some cases.

Items

Bug fixes

  • Fix #2722: crash when accessing a buggy deck’s description.
  • Fix 2535: “stasis identification check.
  • Fix scroll of fear not being use-IDed properly.
  • Fix placeholders in Xom’s book gift names.
  • Remove nutrition from kills with vampiric weapons.
  • Fix #3614: wizmode creating “cards” not working.
  • Fix an out-of-bounds assertion with unknown rings of sustain ability.
  • Fix #3441: inventory actions occasionally affecting the wrong item.
  • Fix #3319: Don’t prevent butcher swap with temporary distortion brand.
  • Fix #3217: equipping sInv artefact not reactivating autopickup.
  • Fix #3682: Identify brand of vampiric and holy artefact weapons when wielding fail.
  • Fix throwing nets becoming “stuck” after a monster pushed past another monster trapped in a net.
  • Prohibit flame-branded missiles from entering trees and wax.
  • Filter scrolls of (old) paper out of the item knowledge screen.

Cards

  • New card for decks of Wonder: the Alchemist, transmuting some of your gold into health and magic.
  • Don’t let high-power common/rare Experience card be better than legendary.
  • Fill the Potion card effect list with potions that are useful in battle.
  • Make the Torment and Experience cards a little rarer.
  • Improve the Hammer card at low power.
  • Reduce the maximum duration of Pentagram, Dance, Foxfire and Bones cards.
  • Tweak the weapons created by the Dance card at low power.

Other item-related changes

  • Remove crystal balls of fixation.
  • Nerf the speed brand. Damage reduced to 90%.
  • Reintroduce item stat loss prompts.
  • Prompt before wearing or wielding a known-cursed item.
  • Remove misleading messages about weapon str/dex weighting.
  • Warn when equipping armour with a penalty caused by low strength.
  • Don’t let the vorpalise weapon effect destroy potions or scrolls.
  • Correctly mark amulets of controlled flight useless for Kenku above xl5.
  • Identify rings of sustain ability if they block stat loss completely.
  • Don’t allow using crystal balls if they are guaranteed to fail.
  • Don’t corrode ammo by clumsily bashing jellies with it.
  • Don’t let antimagic work on priests.
  • Don’t acquire manuals or sage to utterly useless skills.
  • Make acquiring rods of striking less likely.
  • Obsidian axe bug fixes. Add +Lev to get across obstacles.
  • Improve rods of striking: 1d5 -> 1d8.
  • Make default books ‘:’ again, use different glyphs for detected items on Windows.

The Dungeon

Bug fixes

  • Fix #218: Place upwards and downwards escape hatches in all isolated Orc bubbles.
  • Fix returning from portals to Pan clobbering the level.
  • Don’t place steam near fire out of bounds.
  • Fix door restrictions being ignored when calculating travel paths.
  • Make troves handle manuals correctly.
  • Fix the portal short timeout messages for unnannounced portals.
  • Fix wizmode-blinking (xm, &b) asserting in the Abyss.

Other level-related changes

  • No banishment from hell effects.
  • Don’t enable cTele by quaffing Elf fountains.
  • Shrink the hall of blades, guarantee a single rare weapon with a brand.
  • No potion troves for mummies.
  • Increase the chance of bleeding on walls.
  • Give troves more loot items again.
  • Add a note when entering a Pan Lord level.
  • Let Zot vaults spawn more often.
  • Don’t block off branches with grates.
  • A wizmode command (& ^R) to recreate the current level.
  • ZotDef: no Abyss with Lugonu.
  • Malign Gateway as a hell effect.
  • If the Abyss has been wizmode-mapped, update the map on Abyss shifts.
  • Various glyph changes for features.
  • Give a message when a Golubria portal on the level closes.
  • Disable _many_pools in Crypt.
  • No more darkgrey walls/floors in Geh:7 or Gloorx.
  • Let Abyss and Pan entrances overwrite vaults to make them truly guaranteed.
  • Add two new Spider portal vault maps by 7hm.
  • An awesome Crypt end by evilmike.
  • Replace Wiglaf with Norris in Sprint 1.

Interface

Bug fixes

  • Fix a crash when reloading a game after restart_after_game.
  • Fix #3535: Buggy movement keys for Windows consoles.
  • Fix #3609: autoexplore stopping with no monster in sight.
  • Fix multidrop with monsters in sight.
  • Fix #3709: travel failing to start if standing right next to a cloud.
  • Fix items not being announced when revealed by opening a door.
  • Fix #2930: stash search results not being coloured correctly when matching item heaps.
  • Fix #1184: Limit tagged block display’s lines to screen size.
  • Fix #3700: sprint map menu offering you to replay tutorial.

Options

  • Change the explore_stop option to use greedy_pickup_smart by default.
  • New travel_key_stop option for whether keypresses should interrupt travel/resting.
  • Default easy_exit_menu to false.
  • Make all keyhelp menus respect the easy_exit_menu option.
  • Mantis #1282: Make autopickup_no_burden default to true.

Other interface changes

  • Stop autoexplore when sensing a previously undetected monster nearby.
  • New background choice layout, grouped by category.
  • Autofight: fire at nearest enemy if wielding a ranged weapon.
  • Don’t ranged autofight through walls/glass/scryed walls.
  • Don’t start the game if terminal is smaller than 80×24.
  • Don’t print wielding effect when switching back from butchering.
  • Display “-) Unavailable” if you cannot wield/quiver anything.
  • Better error messages for (M)emorisation. (#3665)
  • Mantis #1839: Treat clearing annotation prompt as “safe”.
  • Mantis #3727: When placing a single exclusion on part of a gate, exclude all of it.
  • Mantis #3112: Mention any skeleton vampiric feeding leaves behind.

Tiles

Bug fixes

  • Fix #3730: inventory crash at some resolutions.
  • Fix #3772: Don’t crash when pressing odd key combinations.
  • Fix #3643: kraken simulacra causing crashes in Tiles.
  • Fix #3764: crash when drawing disconnected tentacle segment tiles.
  • Fix #3596: Don’t fire at friendly monsters when clicking on them.
  • Fix #3596: “Unknown command” when mouseclick-travelling.
  • Fix #3703: pickup by mouseclick on player icon not taking a turn.
  • Fix #3810: mouseclick movement working during the stat prompt.
  • Fix manuals being mouseclick-readable while “brainless”.
  • Fix mouseclick travel internally using the vi keys.
  • Fix #3255: real staff tiles displayed in the undiscovered items list.
  • Fix #3356: clearing the map having no effect in Tiles.
  • Fix #3516: LRD exploding in odd tiles in the Elven Halls.
  • Partially fix #3358: re-init tile flavour on Abyss shifts.
  • Make wyvern zombies use the dragon zombie tile.
  • Upgrade weapon tile when fixing a temp. brand with ?vorpalise weapon.
  • Fix #3639: Slight tweaks to the player naga tiles.

New/improved tiles

  • Curio: Ilsuiw, necromancer, wingless Grinder.
  • Denzi: silver star, pillar of salt, Ashenzari altar, fire bat, Darkness spell, Leda’s Liquefaction spell tile, chardump command tile, arena icon, wingless shadow imp, pressure plate trap.
  • dolphin: jumping spider, shark.
  • Omndra: wall blood spatter.
  • Porkchop: phoenix.
  • purge: eye of devastation.
  • XuaXua: glowing mold, death ooze.
  • Add a tile for liquefied floor.
  • Use !heal wounds icon (rather than !healing) for the wand of healing.
  • Apply Tornado’s colour scheme to Tiles, as well.
  • Remove omndra’s cauldron title screen, not fitting with the rest of them.

Also various documentation updates and description fixes that I won’t bother listing in detail.

As always, bug reports are highly welcome. After all, the stable version 0.8 is at stake. Thanks in advance!