[Spork] Latest Updates

Definitely a few major ones here, to say the least. First, Pasi has been
making a number of changes to dgamelaunch (the software a number of
public servers use, including NAO and SC, to provide a friendly 'front-end'
to the game) recently, so those updates are included in this; while they
don't matter to Sporkhack directly, they certainly to do those who play
online.

For those of you experiencing bugs with statuscolors when a highlighted
pattern breaks at the far-right edge of the screen, I hope to have that
fixed soon; for now, it is suggested that you turn off show_dgn_name or
showexp to reduce the likelihood of this happening.

I'm interested to hear comments regarding the new sacrificing and genocide;
both of these changes should certainly alter a player's approach to the
midgame and endgame, to say the least.

(I'm compiling the Windows binaries in the background right now; sorry
about the long delay between the last one and this one, but sometimes
Pesky Real Life(tm) intereferes.


1/19:
* DR: Sacrificing will no longer necessarily provide an artifact; god may
simply throw a random 'very good' weapon or piece of armor at your
feet instead.
- The higher your level, the more likely you are to get an artifact; the
minimum XL for a non-zero artifact chance is XL4. At XL26, you will never
receive a non-artifact gift by sacrificing.
- The number of 'very good' items gifted does not affect the chances of
gaining an artifact by later sacrifice, nor vice versa.
- It should take fewer sacrifices overall to get a 'very good' item, at
least until you've gotten a few of them already.
- If your item is a weapon, it will be in a skill you are already
unrestricted in.
- If you are a class who receives a specific artifact as your first gift,
you will still receive that artifact first _if_ you receive an artifact
at all.

1/16:
* DR: Gnomes may turn to flee if they see you throwing eggs _at a creature_
(Oz reference)

1/14:
* DR: Sporkhack.com server updated to dgamelaunch 1.4.8; no longer disconnects
on game-end
* DR: User database converted to sqlite3 format

1/13:
* DR: A tragic accident has occured in Frontier Town (minetown variant)...

1/11:
* PK: more changes to Mines' End

1/9:
* DR: Blessed genocide changed; now semi-randomly selects two species of the
chosen class letter. The chance of a particular species being genoed
increases with its strength, but nothing is guaranteed unless there are
two or fewer species left available (R comes to mind).

1/7:
* DR: New option added: show_dgn_name. This is either TRUE or FALSE, defaults
to TRUE. If this is set to TRUE, instead of "Dlvl:1" on the status line,
Sporkhack will show descriptive dungeon branch names, eg. "Dungeons of Doom:1".
This works best when utilizing a wider-than-80-columns terminal (which is
now supported, per an earlier change)
* DR: Forkney will now announce Astral entry as well as Earth
* DR: Random monster generation speed increase speeded up slightly since nobody
was actually encountering it; sloppy integer math bug fix0red
* DR: Bugfix: entry portal square on Fire will no longer sometimes have lava
generated under it (player would still be placed on a 'floor' square, but
it called impossible() and whined about it)

1/6:
* DR: Several changes to noise; most notable being that a stealthy character
fighting with a weapon that uses knife skill never makes noise
* DR: Scared monsters may scream before running away

1/2:
* PK: Engravings in .des files can now be done in blood

--
Derek

Game info and change log: http://sporkhack.com
Beta Server: telnet://sporkhack.com
IRC: irc.freenode.net, #sporkhack