Angband Borg -- Mods

This page describes archived changes in the Angband Borg.

Table of Contents

• Archived changes

Archived Changes

• The Borg no longer attempts to attack the upper left corner of the dungeon. This was caused by some mis-typed attack functions.
• The Borg now tries not to guess that a monster is multi-hued unless absolutely necessary, and notices when a monster "flickers", using this information to convert it into a multi-hued monster.
• The Borg now only fears a depth if he "flees" that depth, and as soon as he completes a depth, he removes any fear of any level up to and including the next depth.
• The Borg now pretends that multiplying monsters move more quickly than they normally move, to increase the effective "danger" of such monsters, to avoid wandering into a nasty death trap.
• The Borg starts ignoring "multiplier" monsters after spending 5000 turns on a level, this helps prevent excessive farming.
• The Borg now allows the use of missiles against monsters which are standing in unknown grids, or grids which once contained walls, but only sometimes, just in case the monster can pass through walls.
• The Borg now throws certain inexpensive, non-wearable, damage causing objects (including "extra" flasks of oil) at monsters, and will even purchase extra flasks of oil to use as "missiles" if the shops run out of normal (cheap) ammo. This should help low level mages.
• The Borg will correctly process the new "special lighting effects", but note that use of the "view_torch_grids" option without the use of the "view_special_lite" option will cause problems.
• The Borg now keeps track of how often he has been forced to "flee" or "leave" a given depth, and uses this information to determine if he is "prepared" for that depth. When the Borg "completes" a given level, the count is cleared for the next deepest level. The effect is to force the Borg to prove he is ready for a level before he can attempt a level which recently scared him. The Borg is allowed to "recall" to a depth which scares him, if the level above is less scary, and when he arrives, he will "power-dive" upwards until he is no longer worried.
• The Borg now uses "phase door" instead of "teleport" if it seems that "phase door" will be useful, and stockpiles phase door scrolls in his inventory and home.
• The Borg now uses special code when all the "standard" goals fail, which first attempts to recall, and then, at several different values, first "boosts" the "bravery" level, and then attempts to perform several tasks, such as running away, or attacking monsters, using the boosted bravery. The Borg should only "twitch" when stuck on destroyed levels. The "avoidance" level now matches the current hit-points, except when attempting to do something with "boosted" bravery.
• The Borg now bases the "fear" of invisible monsters on the action of the monster, either physical attack (fear based on dungeon level), or spell attack (fear based on type of spell). Note that when the Borg is "blind", most monsters appear to be "invisible", so being "blind" is normally very scary.
• The Borg now uses a special function to determine what monster is responsible for each "message" involving a monster, and processes these messages in several passes. Any message that does not have a matching monster is assumed to refer to an invisible monster, and induces general fear of the surrounding sectors.
• The "retreat" code now chooses the "closest" destination.
• The Borg now uses a "local" random number generator and will not affect the random properties of the game itself.
• The Borg now reduces the "regional danger" induced by invisible monsters over time.
• The Borg now attemps to "retreat" from danger towards corridors and pillars, and when this is not possible, attempts to back away from danger anyway, giving preference in town to grids near stairs.
• The "method" of using each spell/prayer, and the "usefulness" of each spell/prayer, is now encoded in a table. The spells/prayers are now learned in order of useful-ness, and all non-dangerous ones are "tested" in the town for the experience.
• The Borg now attempts to recharge empty wands/staffs.
• The Borg now uses a fairly large number of spells and prayers.
• The Borg has been optimized again. The "borg_update_lite()" and "borg_update_view()" routines were rewritten based on the newly optimized code in "cave.c". The "crush" routines only run once each after the inventory changes. The "borg_attack()" function is bypassed if there are no monsters within line of sight on the current panel.
• The Borg now destroys items in three passes, "borg_crush_junk()" (worthless items), "borg_crush_hole()" (to get a free inventory slot), and "borg_crush_slow()" (to reduce weight when slow). The first two steps consider an entire pile at a time. The third is never used in town.
• The Borg now keeps track of which grids have "currently displayed features", which grids are "probably perma-lit", and which grids are "probably not perma-lit", and uses this information to "call lite" in when standing in the center of any "3x3" region of grids in which the "center" grid is "dark" and the "diagonal" grids are floors, which will allow "checkerboard" rooms to be lit, plus all normal rooms, and only lite up occasional sections of corridor, and never more than once.
• The Borg now assumes that all veins are magma, but notices that a quartz vein is a quartz vein when he attempts to tunnel into it, and will only tunnel veins which he has a decent chance of digging into with the current weapon.
• The Borg now assumes that all closed door are not jammed, but notices that jammed doors are jammed when he attempts to open them, and will bash or destroy jammed doors as appropriate.
• The Borg now checks for interesting grids first in the set of torch lit grids, then in the set of viewable grids, then in the current panel, and finally in the entire dungeon. This should be rather efficient, even though some computation is repeated. The most expensive step seems to be checking in the set of viewable grids, and this is primarily due to computing flows.
• The Borg now treats "traps" and "doors" and "rubble" and "embedded treasure" in the same way he treates "unexplored grids". The result is a faster algorithm, and a more intelligent exploration method.
• The Borg now uses a much cleaner "keypress stealer", using a new function hook in "z-util.c", which should not only be faster, but should produce much more meaningful "profile" results.
• The Borg now works with the special "lighting" effects, and does not disable them by default. In general, you should turn off the lighting effects, the output refresh flags, and the savefile compression flag, by hand.
• The Borg can now use physical attacks, missile attacks, spell bolts (magic missile, electric bolt, frost bolt, acid bolt, fire bolt), spell beams (light), spell balls (stinking cloud, cold ball, acid ball, fire ball), spell storms (cloud kill, ice storm, meteor storm, mana storm), prayer balls (orb of draining), rod bolts (electric bolt, cold bolt, acid bolt, fire bolt), rod beams (light), rod balls (electric ball, cold ball, acid ball, fire ball), wand bolts (magic missile, elec bolt, cold bolt, acid bolt, fire bolt), wand beams (light), wand balls (stinking cloud, electric ball, cold ball, acid ball, fire ball, dragon cold, dragon fire).
• The Borg has new code which allows him to analyze his possible physical attacks, missile attacks, spell attacks, etc, taking into account total inflicted damage, and required expense, and to choose the "best" attack available. The total inflicted damage calculations take into account the semantics of ball attacks and bolt attacks, the possibility of missing when using physical attacks or missile attacks, the possibility of failing spell attacks and item usage, monster resistances, etc.
• The Borg now keeps track of what terrain features are at what grids, more or less, and uses a special temporary array to help track monsters and objects, so now the attr/char codes at each location are no longer memorized. New flags mark grids as on the current panel, seen visually this turn, and seen visually at some point. The Borg assumes that monsters/objects can not appear in walls or doors, which is normally correct, but which may cause bizarre behavior when "ghosts" are encountered, but now we use a special "floor" code for such situations, so it should be okay now.
• The Borg now takes account of infravision and telepathy when attempting to "track" monsters.
• The Borg now attempts to "follow" monsters which flee into dark hallways, or step around corners, by "guessing" at a new possible location for the monster, instead of simply deleting the monster. Currently, the code is very restrictive, to prevent infinite loops involving running in circles looking for a monster which disappeared.
• The Borg no longer attacks "sleeping" monsters in town, unless they are "wimpy", or are "easy" and "in the way".
• The Borg no longer considers "dangerous" destination grids.
• The Borg no longer flees instantly when he encounters an invisible monster or a monster with a resistable distance attack, but instead waits until the danger has actually become significant.
• The Borg now calculates danger from monsters in a more realistic manner, taking into account resistances and relative speed.
• The Borg now notices "invisible" and "offscreen" and "bizarre" monsters, and attributes general "danger" to every grid in the 11x11 "region" in which the monster was noticed, as well as every grid in the surrounding regions. The amount of danger is relative to the type of encounter, and to the current dungeon level.
• The Borg now prefers "bows" to "crossbows" if playing a mage or ranger, but will still use a "crossbow" if it is very powerful, such as Cubragol.
• The Borg now searches for secret doors in a more intelligent manner, and does not search in "detected" sectors unless he is bored.
• The Borg now tracks which 11x33 "sectors" have been affected by various detection spells, and uses this information to attempt to detect traps, doors, walls, etc, on each sector as soon as possible, and in the most efficient way.
• The Borg now uses his Home to "stockpile" items, dropping items in the Home which he may need later, taking items from the Home which he needs and cannot get them in a store, buying items from stores to place in the Home for later usage, and removing items from the Home which are no longer needed and selling them to a store or destroying them.
• The Borg now attempts (in stores) to calculate the "optimal" set of equipment and to take the appropriate steps to instantiate that set of equipment, and to always keep his "best" ring on his "tight" finger, and to remove any "worthless" equipment to be sold or destroyed.
• The Borg now rests to recover hitpoints and spellpoints, and to wait for various unpleasant conditions to wear off, but only if the danger of the current grid is minimal.
• The Borg now checks the "danger" of each grid while he is building a potential "path", and refuses to consider paths which enter grids which appear "dangerous". This allows him to walk around floating eyes and sleeping monsters, and to avoid rooms containing monsters with nasty distance attacks, etc.
• The Borg can now calculate the "danger" of a grid, based on various factors, primarily related to the amount of "damage" and "annoyance" that monsters near that grid could do to the Borg if he were in that grid. Unfortunately, there are no standard "units" for comparing "damage" to "annoyance", so the "annoyance" values are converted into "damage" values, more or less arbitrarily.
• The Borg now "tracks" objects and monsters, and maintains information about them such as location, when last seen, kind or race, and other information for monsters such as whether the monster is asleep, and how "fast" the monster appears to be moving.
• The Borg now calculates the "value" of "possible worlds", instead of trying, for example, to evaluate the "power" of a potential equipment item relative to the current world. This allows him to notice that wearing, say, a shield of resist fire, while already wearing a shield of resistance, would be worthless. It also allows him to correctly evaluate the number of blows which he would get with a given weapon, taking into account all bonuses from the resulting equipment set. And the same calculations are used to determine if the Borg has enough "abilities", such as "satisfying hunger" and "refueling".
• The Borg now maintains information about store inventory, and uses this information to determine what items he should sell to stores, and what items he should buy from stores.
• The Borg now maintains information about his inventory and equipment, and uses this information to determine what actions are possible.
• The Borg now maintains a "map" of the world to help him "flow" from place to place.

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