User talk:Tomsod/YANIs and patches

Wand of make invisible idea

This is pretty interesting and provides a good use for the wand after the player's already gotten themselves permanently invisible, fixing the zap-once-and-never-use-again issue. I have some concerns about it on Astral: by secret-door-ifying the (initially locked) doors there, you could prevent all monsters, even the Riders, from getting through them. If that can be fixed somehow, since there's a patch provided I'd possibly add it into xNetHack. And I'll also mention it to AntiGulp in case he's interested in adding it to SpliceHack as well. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 23:08, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Actually I did think about that! It doesn't work on Astral plane at all. ("The door momentarily fades.") But note that my patch is buggy. In particular, you should incorporate the fix to this bug once either the Devteam writes or I write it myself (I'd prefer the first outcome). As it stands now, you can turn a shop door invisible, then break it down, and shopkeeper won't charge you because of the bug. Tomsod (talk) 08:18, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

#bite idea

This is an idea that has done the rounds but in practice I fear there is less need for it than one might think. Ordinarily if you are being actively attacked the eating process will be interrupted after one turn anyway (which means lizard corpses normally are multiple-use) and if you aren't you probably wanted to eat all of your lembas wafer anyway. You should bring K-rations not because they take only one turn but because you probably don't have an unlimited supply of lembas.

Changing lembas's time to eat to 3 turns would make K-rats superior in one respect; more nutrition/time, potentially useful when fighting Famine or casting very nutrition-intensive spells. Pinkbeast (talk) 22:42, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, if you say so! I usually switch to a lembas-only diet as soon as I can polypile enough meatballs, so I was only going by what I read on the wiki. There's some advice here that apparently doesn't apply to my personal circumstances (e.g., it's stated often that Rodney can and will steal your quest artifact so you can never rely on it -- but I always wand of death him as soon as he appears, so I just don't see what the problem is; but maybe for less prepared players it's more relevant), and I've assumed it was one of those cases. Tomsod (talk) 19:57, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Good catch; I've corrected K-ration and lembas wafer. Polypiling meatballs (or, I guess, the heaps of useless C-rats) is ingenious but indeed not common practice.

I'm not sure I would be that sanguine about the quest artifact, though; any given zap can miss... Pinkbeast (talk) 20:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

If I can position myself so that a rebound is possible (happens fairly often, esp. in the Gehennom mazes), the chance of hitting the Wizard on either the direct hit or the rebound is 82%. Since I also usually have speed boots and over -50 AC, I am unlikely to suffer even if I miss the first time. Further, the theft attack always steals the Amulet first, and if I face Rodney I probably already have it, so that's a safety buffer. (I suppose if he appears right after the invocation I won't, but I tend to wield a rubber chicken for the Sanctum (if I can detect the pit in advance), and the chicken surely won't miss.) And if all else somehow fails and the Wizard is now magic-resistant and I am not, I still should have a few "oLS and potions of paralysis. MR doesn't protect from paralysis and subsequently being stabbed to death. Tomsod (talk) 21:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

That all seems prudent, and indeed there is no chance of missing with maxed Luck etc. Pinkbeast (talk) 22:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Bite could be abused to eat most of a corpse that gives a negative intrinsic upon finishing the corpse, like bat/stalker stun or teleportitis. There is also the case where the player is stunned but may not be under direct attack, like a booby trapped door or a slow gnomish wizard. --Luxidream (talk) 21:03, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough. I suppose it's amendable by having a X% chance for the special effect after eating X% of the corpse, but I see now why the option is absent in vanilla. Tomsod (talk) 21:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Infidel

I love the infidel patch. It's such a creative idea, and such a distinct role from any of the current ones in vanilla.

I would be interested in porting it to 3.7, if you would be all right with that. ——Agulp (talk) 14:22, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I would be as well for EvilHack, AntiGulp and I have been discussing this on IRC today. Nice spin for a new role. K2 (talk) 14:35, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Of course, you and anyone else are very welcome to include my patch(es) in your variants. After all, I made them to be played, and this way there's actually a good chance someone bothers to!

But regarding rebasing Infidel onto 3.7 in particular, I planned to do it myself after the release anyway, so in the interest of saving effort, it's probably better if I start now instead of having you do my job. You can then do the Splice-related parts yourself. Give me a week or so, alright? I'll tell if it stagnates. Tomsod (talk) 04:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Make it two weeks, perhaps even slightly more. I've rebased the patch and it seems to work, but I really need to test it thoroughly, and then, ideally, to put it aside for a few days to get a fresh look before publishing it. Also, I found a few bugs in the current version; K2, make sure to grab an updated version of the 3.6-based patch when I upload it (later today). Tomsod (talk) 13:49, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Tomsod, will do. Work on the next version of EvilHack will commence next month. K2 (talk) 14:22, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and one note about porting the patch to variants: I intended for Infidel crowning to be a strict upgrade attribute-wise (the real downsides are the lack of same-race corpses and the silver damage; the Quest in particular is designed to (slightly) disincentivize crowning early), but, e.g. for illithid Infidels getting 18 Int/Wis would not be such a good deal. In general, this applies to any race with high enough attributes. Something needs to be done about this. One way would be for the demonic form to inherit the mental limitations of the starting race. As a bonus, it will make orcish Infidels at least not strictly better than humans (perhaps I should have done it myself; perhaps I will yet). This does not help with races that e.g. have extremely high Str or Cha, however (although giving demons 20 max Cha would be reasonable). So make sure to address this problem somehow. Tomsod (talk) 05:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, I rebased the patch onto 3.7, as of... June 9, I believe. Hopefully nothing major has changed since then. (As I checked this, I noticed a recent commit that is probably a good idea to integrate into my 3.6-based patch. Last-minute changes, hooray!) Here's the rebase. I obviously made no effort to account for SpliceHack code specifically, as that is your area of competence, Agulp. (Also please look at the mentioned 3.7 commit. I haven't realized that crowned Infidels may have trouble with invocation until I saw it, but it does need fixing.) I won't "officially" publish the rebase until the 3.7 release, at which point it'll probably need to be updated.

In addition to the aforementioned patch, I also made a few more minor changes that I backported to the 3.6 version; again, I will upload the updated 3.6 patch immediately. I should be done with the changes for now. Tomsod (talk) 03:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Nice! I've already started work on the next version of EvilHack, your Infidel patch will make its way into this version (0.6.x). Working on fixing known bugs first, but will get to new content as soon as I'm able. K2 (talk) 04:28, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Good luck! Crossing my fingers for actual player feedback eventually, hopefully. Tomsod (talk) 07:16, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I started work on merging your Infidel patch today. I'm slightly over half-way done, merging by hand. If possible, I'd like to collaborate with you on this, either via IRC or email, or both. There's a few minor things I've noticed I want to discuss, see if these are bugs or if these were your intent. Plus I'm going to play test the hell out of this role before the new version goes live. I'm excited for this, what I've discovered so far just from hand-merging the patch, this looks to be a pretty fun and challenging role. K2 (talk) 05:15, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I'll be happy to answer your questions. Email is preferable, here's the link. Tomsod (talk) 11:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Sent you an email, your inbox is full :) K2 (talk) 13:20, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

That cannot possibly be right. My mail server offers essentially unlimited space; moreover, I just tried sending a letter with a reasonably weighty attachment to myself (from a GMail account), and it went through. There's a slight chance I mistyped my email in the note above, though. Let's try this again: is this the address you've tried mailing to? Tomsod (talk) 16:06, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Sent another email quite awhile ago, nothng kicked back so hopefully you got it. K2 (talk) 18:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I found it in my spam folder, but it did arrive! Looks like the server just really dislikes you for some reason. Tomsod (talk) 19:03, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I know right? gmail is sooo evil :) K2 (talk) 19:08, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Infidel (literally "unfaithful") is a term used in certain religions for those accused of unbelief in the central tenets of their own religion, for members of another religion, or for the irreligious.

"Infidel" in the USA is, of late, associated with politically charged topics. Further, the player characters wouldn't think of themselves as an infidel, they'd regard worshipers of other gods as infidels. This differs from, say, playing a wizard, in which you would probably refer to yourself as a wizard! Heretic might make a more fitting name, for a renegade-type person who's spurning surface society to return the Amulet to its "rightful" owner? --Testbutt (talk) 17:56, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I follow politics here at home pretty closely, I haven't seen the term 'infidel' used at all for anything going on here (USA). Please don't politicize this, the term 'infidel' is just fine in the current context - the role of 'infidel' is appropriate, as this is how the player would be seen by almost every other character/monster in the game. And of course a follower of Moloch would view anyone else as the same if they didn't worship Moloch. K2 (talk) 18:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Politics aside, I did consider "Heretic" as the role name (and in fact it ended up as one of the rank titles), but I rejected it for two reasons: firstly, "heretic" actually means someone who claims to follow your faith, but has some very dubious (heretical) beliefs or practices. So it doesn't quite describe a follower of another god. Secondly, and more importantly, SLEX already has a Heretic race that even has similar abilities (praying in Gehennom), and I wanted to avoid confusion.

Perhaps "Cultist" could work (and it's also a rank title now); in the end I chose "Infidel" over it because it sounds cooler, and also because there are already several roles starting with C (any self-respecting variant will at least have Caveman and Convict), but I is much less used, so it's less likely to cause problems with the starting screen which is restricted to two roles/races per letter in tty and curses (at least). And yes, I'm well aware that Infidels wouldn't self-describe as infidels, but I let it slide as it's just a really cool-sounding word to me. Tomsod (talk) 19:03, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Initial commit of the Infidel role patch (version 1.3) is now a part of EvilHack - https://github.com/k21971/EvilHack/commit/6972e3e6208edd2dfa281e00c5ecc83a3d2f7423 - Tomsod, there were a couple bugs I found and fixed during a brief period of playing the role. Shoot me an email, I can go over what I found. You should be able to deduce what was fixed/changed from the commit versus your latest patch. K2 (talk) 13:44, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Tomsod, I have a question about being inediate. When an infidel is crowned and they change into their demonic form, they no longer get hungry if they just stand around for an indefinite amount of turns doing nothing. But other actions will still cause hunger (spellcasting, causing conflict, wearing a ring of hunger, self-teleport, etc). Plus our inediate demon can still eat food and corpses. Was this your intent, or just an oversight? As it stands currently, inediate is really only a different approach to slow digestion. For information sake, if the player poly's into another form that is considered inediate (example: vampire), the same behavior is observed. K2 (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it was intended to work like intrinsic slow digestion. To remove the need for food altogether would be too OP, especially for a spellcasting role. Consequently, demons are still able to replenish nutrition by eating. Tomsod (talk) 23:06, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Could have some fun with this, but I'll leave it alone :) K2 (talk) 23:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Tomsod, EvilHack 0.6.0 was just released and is available for play on all of the Hardfought servers. Your Infidel patch is part of this update. K2 (talk) 04:50, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Good thing you notified me here -- I was watching for the release on GitHub, and it's not there yet. Let's see if I can ascend! Tomsod (talk) 12:34, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

It'll be a competition to see who can ascend an infidel first, there's already a few players giving it a serious try (myself included) :-) K2 (talk) 13:00, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Luggage

This sounds wonderful! Especially in variants which insist on "realistically" giving gnomes a fantastically limited carry capacity. It could be a thematically-appropriate reward to hide on a mimic-heavy level, in a treasure zoo, or even as an alternative to Ludios when Ludios doesn't spawn. D&D even has a somewhat-similar spell: https://5etools.com/spells.html#tenser's%20floating%20disk_phb --Testbutt (talk) 18:09, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Then let's hope I'll get around to actually writing it someday! Tomsod (talk) 19:03, 7 July 2020 (UTC)