I personally have been away from the project for a couple of months, and was pleasantly surprised by the better structure and more readable pages – I had no idea this was taking place. So big thanks to XuaXua for stepping up, grabbing a shovel, and wailing away at the mess!

Go check out the wiki now!

--Eino

List of significant changes for the Unified Combat Control branch:

1. Capitalization of words is performed automatic (done by Kilobyte, altered by SamB)
• Instead of passing an explicit capitalization (NOCAP or CAP) to the mprf system, mprf determines automatically whether capitalization is necessary.
2. Fight rewrite
• Restructuring of combat into phases
• Attempted
• Hit
• Damaged
• Defender Killed
• Dodged
• Blocked
• End
3. Merging of player / monster codepaths
• This comprises the bulk of the rewrite and will be subject for continued (numerous) changes in the future. Some codepaths are not entirely unified because doing so would require symmetry between players and monsters in regards to how a particular effect is handled (weapon brands, spells, etc. etc.)

List of things for players to be aware or mindful of for bug-reporting purposes

1. Out-of-order combat messages (especially as they relate to weapon brands)
2. Combat messages which leak otherwise unknown information
3. Unusual sanctuary behavior
4. Unusual messages or behavior on the last turn of combat (when the monster is killed)
5. Brands, spell effects, or mutations which consistently do not result in a noticeable effect
6. Weapon effects or behavior which do not appropriately result in god-affects
• Examples include using speed weapons with Chei, attacking dishonorably while worshiping TSO
7. Capitalization errors in combat text
8. Missing combat effects (from uniques or from specific player-races)
• Examples include vampire-specific effects for players, or Maurice’s “thieving” attacks

Report bugs here! Thank you in advance!

So, here are some recent changes:

• Guaranteed damage reduction (GDR) from body armour is doubled
• Body armours are now enchantable up to a bonus equal to their base AC
• AC/EV bonuses are no longer generated on randarts

GDR is based on base AC of the armour. You now get 5% of GDR for each base AC over 2. So, a robe gives 0%, a leather armour gives 5%, a scale mail gives 15%, plate gives 40% and the rare crystal plate mail gives 60%. This means that armour is especially good against fast enemies with many not-so-strong attacks (such as executioners).

Enchanting armour: robes have base AC of 2, so they can be enchanted up to +2. Chain has 6 AC, so +6 is possible. Plate can go up to 10, and CPM up to +14! This might well be too much, capping to +9 is a possibility (to match weapons). Enchant armour scrolls now no longer have that chance of failing when you try to enchant a piece with high pluses. Randart armour can be generated with a plus of higher than the base AC (e.g. you’ll still find +6 randart robes). Heavier randart armour with very high pluses isn’t currently generated.

Finally, AC/EV bonuses from randarts were often as big as skill investment. These are now gone, so getting high AC on an EV character, and vice versa, is now harder. edit: the base type of the randart can still be one that gives AC or EV, such as rings of evasion or weapons of protection.

This should provide plenty of testing material for heavy armour characters. The builds are available on the Windows test build page, and playable online on CDO. All the player feedback and testing has been very important. Big thanks to ledtim for providing some dodging/armour statistics in the wiki. Automatic statistics from morgue files is on the TODO/wishlist. Happy crawling!

–Eino

–Eino

Contributors no longer need to ask for page-creation privileges to add new pages to the Code and Development Wiki. This should make contributing your ideas easier.

Note that when we moved our development resources to crawl.develz.org, the intention was to use the wiki for brainstorming and the tracker for ready proposals. We haven’t really enforced it so far, but would like to see this in action. FRs tend to turn into discussions and rot in the tracker, which limits the usefulness of tracker functionality. Discussion (and rotting) will happen in the wiki as well, but we think it is a better tool for that, as developers can summarize and reboot the pages more flexibly. We also hope that related issues get grouped better, so that contributors are more aware about related issues surrounding particular features.

Arguably, having categories called “Feature Request” in the tracker is pretty bad for the intended workflow. We are working on sorting this out. :-)

I’d like to add that the DCSS development mailing list is also a tool available for discussing ideas and issues with the development.

Below is the current tracker/wiki HOWTO for reference:

How to use the tracker and wiki

The Mantis tracker is used for reporting bugs and submitting patches, graphics and vaults. The wiki is used for requesting features, discussing ideas and providing feedback.

You need to create an account to be able to create and edit wiki pages, file issues and post your comments.

If you have a bug to report

1. Make sure it hasn’t been reported yet:
   • Search the tracker if it was already reported.
   • You can also search through the list of changes to see if the bug you found has been fixed already.
2. Either add your comments to the existing bug or report it as a new bug in the tracker: Choose “Bug Report” as the category. More instructions on the bug reporting page.

If you have an idea for a feature

The checklist is a little long, but don’t be discouraged – ideas and insights are very welcome! The work-flow is to iterate over the idea in the wiki. The developers will then post an implementable, approved proposal as an “Implementable” in the tracker. The aim is to have the tracker as a list of approved ideas, that anyone who is interested can pick up and make a patch for.

1. Check the Philosphy section (N) in the manual to see if the idea fits in those principles.
2. Check the brainstorming wiki pages if someone already has posted a similar idea there.
3. Idea not discussed yet? Add to an existing appropriate brainstorm page or put up a new one as necessary in the correct namespace.
4. It’s also possible to drop by ##crawl-dev on Freenode or mail to DCSS mailing list to discuss the idea.

Reaching the developer team for further questions

• ##crawl-dev on Freenode
• The DCSS mailing list

Do not use the tracker to ask questions or start discussions.

More discussion about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

• ##crawl on Freenode
• rec.games.roguelike.misc on Usenet
• Your favourite gaming forums! Start a new thread if necessary. :-)

We have migrated our bug and feature-request tracking to a Mantis Tracker – please sign up there to contribute! In addition to the tracker, we have created a DokuWiki for play-testing feedback and for suggesting and discussing new features and ideas.

Also, the official home page for the Stone Soup project is now http://crawl.develz.org – if you haven’t yet checked out our development blog, you should! Mailing list and git repository are still located on SourceForge.

Thanks to Jude for covering many of the major changes in 0.6 in the play-testing posts, Darshan for his history blog-post, and Johanna for the post covering tiles and tides! And last but not least, thanks to develz.org and Napkin for hosting us!

The other run managed to grab two runes. This was a long enough game to let me see a good bunch of the new content in a real game. Slime creatures, ugly things, I can’t remember a time I was glad to see one of either! While I didn’t get Shoals or Wizlabs, I did have a Treasure Trove. I think the trove itself had more gold than I paid for it though, that was strange.

I didn’t have a lot of trouble starting out. I think the key to getting a naga off the ground is to spit, spit, spit that poison. Transmuters might have a hard XL1, but the very first level gain unlocks Evaporate (and Sticks to Snakes, which I opted out of), which makes matters both easy and fun. A lot of the game was spent e’x'amining if the encounters had poison resistance or not.

I also found a flaming randart sling with AC+5, which I used quite a bit to conserve potions. I ended up with 7 whole levels of Slings skill, so I must have used it quite a bit indeed. I figured I could use it with a buckler, and with all the new ammo brands, that slings would make a nice sidearm. I didn’t find a huge amount of interesting ammo however – apart from a life-saving small stack of dispersal darts – so I regressed into unarmed brawling for finishing off opponents. Plus the poison spit. I can’t stress enough how useful that ability is.

Converting to Cheibriados in the Temple.

I converted to Che in the temple, and made one piece of ponderous kit quite soon – gloves I believe. Gaining piety was easy, thanks to nagas’ innate slowness. I ponderified a cloak later on, so I could be slow in Ice Form too, but didn’t go further. Will do so in a later game – wearing five ponderous items nets +15 to each stat! Not sure if I’d do that on a naga. Their racial slowness on top of that.. well, maybe it doesn’t really matter if you move an inch or two inches per hour. And the Slouch damage should be spectacular!

I decided to try Ice Form instead of Blade Hands because it involved more melding for testing purposes. It was actually pretty good. Slowing cold-blooded creatures, faster running speed, and more than decent damage – plus amphibiousness, which I was half expecting to kill me via careless autoexploration in Swamp.

Before Lair I got my first taste of the merging slime creatures. That was fun. You must remember I was moving quite slowly. So, I was frantically casting Ice Form to escape, and Dig to dig some room for them to split. I never was quite sure how to deal with them, but I did learn to exterminate any lone slime creatures as quickly as possible. What a great change to them. I never actually found them that boring as monsters. I think they’ve always had their distinct slot in the dungeon ecology (player killerology), but I don’t think they lose any of their old charm with the merging.

I also had some ugly things, but in retrospect I was far too cautious with them. I was careful about the brown ones (acid), but also thought that purple meant mutations, when it’s only sickness. Green ones would probably have been poison resistant – luckily I met none!

In Lair I found a book of necromancy, so I decided to branch into that properly. Dispel Undead! Who needs caster gods by the way, you’ll find plenty of books over time anyway, and acquirement can cover some of your needs. At least if you’re willing to adapt. Well, I find it fun.

On the bottom of the Lair I was running from a hydra in Ice Form with 11 HP or something like that, and totally panicking. Happily I did stop to think and recalled Che’s final ability: stepping out of time. It saved my tail. It also felt like a total panic button ability.. nothing wrong with that, and I guess it might be more spectacular if you had more monsters around you when you used it.

I got one of R1s new Hive endings. The map was very nice, but I still felt like an exterminator on a tedious day. Especially because of clearing the bees with Evaporation, he he. I also cleared Snake:1-4. I did fall down two shafts to Snake:5 with barely noticing. I really need to add “You fall through a shaft” into the force_more options.. I took a peek at the new Swamp too. While much prettier, I think I’ll still dive when it comes to Swamp. I often find it fun, too.

Dipping into Slime.

Around this time I had the great idea to do Slime while in Ice Form. Melded equipment doesn’t corrode, right? (Don’t trust me on that.) Plus I had both the mutation and corrosion resistance amulets. Well, between the time it takes to switch between them, a shining eye gave me teleportitis. Plus I didn’t really have the damage output, and the damage input from the rampant slime creatures was too much. At least I survived, and I had a fancy ring with teleport control (plus electricity resistance!) so it was mostly just embarrassing.

After that I was looking for something fun to do, so I decided to dive Vaults for the Crypt. You can unsurprisingly wipe the place with Dispel Undead. I did skip a Khufu encounter, but otherwise it was a breeze. The ending was new to at least me – and a lot of fun, with opponents varying from iron golems to liches and hell knights. This was a nice change of pace, as each required quite a different approach. For instance, I fell in love with Bend Time against the golems – they are slow to start with, and slowing them down more was quite effective.

Rocking the Crypt ending with iron golems.

In the Crypt loot I found a book with Bolt of Draining. I decided this “unlocked” Snake Pit for me. Nagas are poison resistant and slow, so my beloved Evaporate wouldn’t work. I had underutilized Slouch, but I thought nagas weren’t the best practice targets. Aizul was good for that though – I had previously skipped the fight on Snake:4, but it took maybe three-four shots and I didn’t get a scratch. Grabbing the serpentine rune was a surprisingly quick affair. I got the oldest ending, where the rune is rather exposed, and only fought one wave of defenders, plus a single lone greater naga before running off with the rune. Bolt of Draining did work though!

I did the Slouch thing in Swamp:5 instead. It was glorious! Practically wiped the rune chamber in few short turns (you can watch this on termcast with !lm * rune=decaying id=833617 -tv) . This was ridiculous fun, especially as I had near-fatal trouble with the hydras just before. I must have gotten cocky at this point. I forgot where Elf:7 would send me. Naga in the Abyss – you know how it ends. Should have tried to step out of time – the fiend was summoned, after all.

Dammit. I really would’ve liked to see Zot:5. I had Dispel Undead for the liches and Slouch would probably have worked wonders against orbs of fire and electric golems, both speed 20. I’m not quite sure, but poison and confusion clouds from Evaporate might have covered a lot of the rest. Would have been interesting to try at least.

I’ve committed it to the repository now for public scrutiny, and hopefully, benefit to current and future contributors. (Wow, am I making a speech here..) It’s in the docs/develop folder.

There’s still room for improvement. The following could (should) be added:

The process of a proposal/patch making its way into into the game

Versioning: use of agendas for major versions; only fixes for minor version

And of course, needs to be updated for the new Mantis/Wiki once it’s official. Any feedback is very welcome!

Based on that, I have listed how the Resolution and Status field could be used in each of the categories – this should make it easier to discuss what options we need/are going to use, and as an added bonus, it produces a guideline on how to use the tracker as a side result once it’s agreed upon. :) There’s plenty of Statuses (new, feedback, confirmed, etc..) for instance – I’ve posted an idea how most could be used, but we should agree if we want to use them all (and how). Please discuss on the wiki page! I will summarize and form proposals from the discussion into implementable request for Marc once it’s settled.

Eronarn has been working on the wiki side; the major idea is to utilize it for brainstorming so that FRs would be closer to being implementable when filed. Progress can be seen here:

http://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start

A very rough todo:

* configure Mantis and wiki
* document how to use them
* plan how to move old content (open BRs and FRs) from SourceForge to the new system

* close down SF trackers for new items and direct people to the new system (in one well-planned swoop!)
* move the old content to the new system

Darshan wrote a fine quickstart guide to using git on the mailing list; check it out here.