Gumband 2.3.0 released
R. Dan Henry
at http://angband.oook.cz/gumband/
So, what is new in this version?
* New and Changed Items: Potions of Death no longer quite instadeaths.
Slime molds are gone. Some armor and weapon adjustments have been made.
Four new artifacts. Treasure types adjusted to remove mithril and
adamantite and add amber and ivory. Kanajana tweaked slightly and a
couple of bugs fixed.
* New and Changed Monsters: Level of new monsters ranges from 1 to 97.
Some errors from the last version fixed.
* New Player Races: Gone are Elves, Hobbits and Spectres. Instead we
have the Eldren, the Oager Uv, and the Halflings. Eldren have the unique
ability to resist the assaults of Time!
* Changes to Old Player Races: Half-Giant's Extra-Might power now
functions completely as envisioned. Human's no longer have
self-knowledge power. Instead they can invoke Heroism. Melniboneans will
find their racial demon-summoning calls hostile demons only 1 time in 8
instead of once in three tries. Vampires now hunger more rapidly than
bleeding, drain life in melee, and summon bats as their racial power.
Most of the above changes were done to improve the "Multiverseness" of
Gumband. This version drew on the "Eternal Champion trilogy", the
individual books of which are /The Eternal Champion/, /The Silver
Warriors/ (aka /Phoenix in Obsidian/), and /The Dragon in the Sword/.
* UI Changes: actual multiplier on bows now shown, including racial and
class bonuses for Half-Giants and max-level Archers. Easy_open,
filter_identify, and show_damage options are now on by default. Damage
will be shown for magical attacks if the option to show damage done is
on. The "repeat last command" function should now work for mindcrafting
powers (but still not for mutant powers, that's on the list for next
time).
* Mutation and Racial Power Changes: Major revision of the mutation
list, including there now being 33 more of them. Mutant and racial
activations are now powered from a single pool called "psyche", with
each power having a cost and a minimum level of psyche required for its
use. Psyche can become negative and regenerates with time. Adequate
information should be seen when the 'U'se powers command ('O' in
roguelike keyset) is employed. Mutations that add an extra melee attack
now no longer use the regular damage bonus, but get a level-based
multiplier to scale up with level. Unarmed monks get a 50% bonus damage
with these attacks. Vampiric attacks, mutant or racial, are now extra
melee attacks instead of activations.
So, what's especially worth trying? Well, there are the three new races
to play. Vampires have changed enough to be worth a new look. A Beastman
is the best way to experiment with the new mutation set. A Half-Giant
Archer can the game with a x7 multiplier using a heavy crossbow of
extra-might. Mindcrafting has been made more convenient since I debugged
the repeat-command code.
What's in the future? Well, the only major sword & sorcery series left
for me to cover is the Elric books, but that's a lot of books, so expect
that to take awhile. Meanwhile, I will draw on some of the shorter,
minor works to keep adding Multiverse elements. I want to clear out
ancient save-file support, add new flag sets for items and monsters so I
can extend the abilities there, fix repeat command for mutant and racial
abilities, move some more data into text files, and generally clean up
the code. Bigger changes will come once I get around to addressing the
Elric saga; that is the point where the magic system and the classes
will be revised.
--
R. Dan Henry
danh...@inreach.com