On returning from yet another break at Crawl development, one of the first things I always do is try to find out what I’ve missed. Now this would have been much easier if there had been any recent Playtesting blog posts, but unfortunately this was not to be. Then again, since I’m already rummaging through the commit log, I might as well share my findings. You guys love to read these lists, right?

So here’s the gargantuan listing of what’s been going on in 0.8 development. Enjoy!

Bug fixes

Critical bugs

Fix #2289: crashes on entering new levels with restart_after_game = true. Fix Jiyva off-level eating crash. Fix a crash when Jiyva worshippers spawn jellies for non-monster-damage. Fix #2628: Don’t treat rods as throwable. Fixes crashes. Fix a crash when autoinscribing items no longer in the inventory. Fix ?/M crashing; monster_info won’t have a real monster. Fix a demonspawn mutation loop. Fix #2909: Prevent save file corruption for overly long player names. Fix #537: wizard mode spellcasting crash. Fix #2879: gods missing from the game due to corrupted_temple.

Non-critical bugs are listed under the corresponding category.

The big stuff

New god:

Ashenzari, god of divinations

New species:

Felids, sentient cats

New spells:

Passage of Golubria (level 5 Translocations)

Malign Gateway (level 7 Summonings/Translocations)

Tornado (level 9 Air)

New monster sets:

The former two may be encountered in Ziggurats.

Everything else

Gods

Yredelemnul

Turn Yred’s prayer (Injury Mirror) into an ability.

Reduce Injury Mirror spam when getting hit by multiple attacks.

Remove Yred’s twisted enslaved souls, they’re all intact now.

Let torment damage be reflected by Yred.

Take kills of artificial beings (golems, gargoyles).

Kikubaaqudgha

Tone down Kiku’s mummy death curse protection.

Kiku protects followers from ordinary mummy curses.

Make Kiku properly accept your undead slaves’ kills of demons.

Elyvilon

Allow Ely’s Destroy Weapons ability to work on staves.

Improve Elyvilon’s healing descriptions.

Improve Ely’s in-game pacification messaging.

Zin

Allow Zin to protect from Hell effects, dependent on piety.

Make spell failure glow anger Zin.

Distinguish costly glow in Zin’s messages.

The Shining One

Remove item sacrifices.

Fix #2784: Properly remove halo on TSO penance.

All good gods

Extending (card/Xom) Necromutation results in excommunication.

Xom

Fix #2903: Disallow starvation by Xom swapping you to a vampiric weapon.

Harmless new Xom effect: coloured smoke trail behind player.

Tiles: Xom altar animations (by coolio).

Cheibriados

Beefed up Chei wrath to be interesting and dangerous.

Make armour keep its ponderousness when melded.

Jiyva

Followers of Jiyva gain food, hp and mp on jellies slurping items.

Jiyva no longer provides the “amulet of conservation” effect.

Trog

Extended rage doesn’t cause glow.

Fix #411: Properly handle igniting spellbooks under clouds or features.

Fedhas

Fix #2457: Make Fedhas care about trees burned down in forest fires.

Sif Muna

Sif Muna punishes destruction of spellbooks.

General

Add some penance welcome messages.

New wizmode command &W to force god wrath.

The player character

Bugs fixed

Fix doubled berserk penalties Fix mutators and glowing occasionally giving good mutations. Fix clarity being ignored in some cases when it’s supposed to be heeded. Fix Merfolk in water having functional talons. Fix #873: Make hellfire ignore monster AC. Fix #2727: Handle passive freeze mutation properly handle in clouds of cold. Fix #2186: Demonspawn Fire and Ice facets are now mutually exclusive. Fix #2758: Blade Hands being better for STR and DEX of multiplies of 4. Fix #2901: Player undead and Demonspawn can now be mutated properly again. Fix some body slot mutations not taking effect immediately. Fix #2205: Ghouls being unable to use food-cost abilities while starving. Fix #2294: Let bloodless Vampires and starving Ghouls evoke invisibility. Fix #2380: Scale Vampire hunger for poisonous blood with duration. Fix #2136: Don’t train stealth for unaware pacified monsters. Fix Empathy not working in portal vaults and Pan. Always display ability upgrade messages in the proper sequence. Fix skill points rescaling when changing race in wizmode. Fix #2506: Update Draconians’ glyph on maturing (show_player_species).

Other player character changes

More interesting Draconians.

Dragon form changes for Draconians according to colour.

Allow Merfolk transformations even in water.

Retain talons, fangs and tail in appropriate transformations.

Stalkers as transmutations-based Stabbers.

Balanced demonic guardian timeout, minimum time of existence at 4 turns.

Don’t treat contaminated chunks as clean for Ghouls.

Allow Merfolk/Kenku to blink over deep water/lava.

Allow Kenku to stop flying.

Change Kenku aptitudes to air +3 and earth -3.

Boost yellow scales acid resistance.

Auxilary unarmed attacks have additional effects, according to type.

Character selection: highlight recommended species in aptitudes table (%).

Show cross/anti training as aptitude bonus/malus on the m-screen.

Potions of berserk rage are useful for Vampires when full or above.

Let fur help against acid, but only for naked slots.

Healers gain 1 extra starting mp, but no Unarmed Combat.

Allow redefining the spider form’s glyph (“spider”).

Tiles fix: Fix Merfolk keeping the fishtail tile when levitating out of water.

Tiles: Many new player doll tiles (by coolio).

Interface improvement

Bugs fixed

Fix #2513: exclusion LOS not being updated properly. Fix #1983: Don’t waste a turn for not renouncing religion. Fix cursor placement with messages_at_top. Fix #2399: Tab not working correctly in startup menus. Fix #2595: default god choice not being read correctly. Fix #2228: Reinitialize the message window and the notes for new games.

Other interface changes

Allow item interaction from the inventory.

Messages for things coming into view even when not exploring.

More status lights: transformation, post-berserk exhaustion, temporary resistances.

Timeout information for temporary resists and See Invisible.

Don’t consider places next to slime walls as “safe”.

Make i_feel_safe smarter about stuff behind lava/statues/etc.

Explicitly name inventory items that are getting destroyed.

Display ghosts’ xl rank, species and background when they come into view and in the notes.

ASCII: Don’t override monster colour when berserk.

Stop shift-running for exclusions.

Allow ‘ to auto-switch from unarmed to slot (b).

Misc. items don’t require wielding (except decks, lantern of shadow).

Don’t waste turns attempting known prevented scroll teleports/blinks.

Abort scrolls used on items if none are available.

Inscribe item modification scrolls with “tried on foo”.

Disallow accidentally blinking to dangerous places.

Disallow autoexploring while berserking.

Colours for output of Ctrl-F.

Re-enable highlighting of notes.

Colour annotations in Overview.

Colouring labyrinth messages.

Add force_more_messages for bazaar and labyrinth announcements.

Don’t prompt for which ring to swap if one of them is cursed.

When enchanting an unknown piece of armour, mark it as uncursed.

Make the . drop/pickup selector respect quantity input.

‘*’ inverts selection instead of selecting drop_filter, and ‘,’ selects all instead of inverting.

More information when missing.

More information when MR is effective.

Display on the HUD if you’re both hasted and slowed.

Add a toggle to the discoveries screen to display _un_known items.

Check terrain before clouds for moveto check.

Don’t warn about entering excluded portals.

Force a -more- on death.

Autoinscribe randarts after death.

Allow easyexit on the overview screen.

Add “You are wearing:” message when amulet of stasis autoIDs.

Taskbar overlap is now automatically detected, and the window is placed just above it.

Allow setting of the window size relative to the screen size.

Tiles: Add a skill management tab. (Tiles by Denzi.)

Tiles: Disturbance tiles for invisible monsters in clouds.

Tiles: More helpful and less obnoxious exclusion tiles.

Spells

Bugs fixed

Fix #2018: Prevent passwalling into deep water and lava if it would kill you. Fix #2581: Teleportation and trampling interrupt Passwall. Fix #2274: Disallow targeting Passwall at self, thereby wasting a turn. Fix weapon grinding via Shadow Creatures in the Hall of Blades. Fix #801: Animate Dead no longer animates through walls. Fix #2265: Don’t prompt for casting auto-hit spells “in direction” of allies. Fix #2291: More accurate Conjure Flame error messages. Fix #2598: bugginess in Confusing Touch status display.

Other spell changes

Haste now makes you go at x1.5 speed, not x2 as before. Similarly, Slow makes you only

1.5 times slower, not 2.

1.5 times slower, not 2. Replace Selective Amnesia with scroll of amnesia.

Allow forgetting spell from book, destroying the book in question.

Removed slower training for magic schools, doubled exp cost for opposing schools.

Add a toggle to the memorisation screen for the spell descriptions.

Remove the restriction for cursed gear blocking transformations.

Auto-id items of wizardry if you have spellcasting skills.

Enable autotargeting for Vampiric Draining and Freeze.

Make Borgnor’s Revivification cost 2-11 *percent* of maxhp.

Restore casting noise for target spells.

Add noise level to spell description.

Increased claw damage for Dragon Form, also allows trampling.

Animate Skeleton works on unskeletalized corpses and leaves chunks behind.

Shadow Creatures summons only mobile monsters.

Slightly bump Orb of Destruction (IOOD) damage.

Mention the damage reduction for short range in IOODs’ description.

Allow Sticks to Snakes on staves.

Allow Tukimizing staves.

Move Horrible Things and Haunt from Summonings into Demonology.

Remove Call Imp, Abjuration and Recall from the book of Demonology.

Move around spells between books of Summonings and Demonology.

Reduce the chance of any book to be replaced by Power/Wizardry from 10% to 4%.

Don’t prompt for targeting self with clouds if you’ve got the matching resistance.

Make trying to cast Death’s Door when ineligible cost no time nor MP.

Make only heavy armour remove Ozocubu’s Armour on wearing.

Make large rocks do extra damage with Sandblast.

Allow swapping to large rocks when Sandblast is memorised.

Offer wielding coagulated blood for Sublimation of Blood.

Make transformations affect stealth.

Don’t prompt for unwielding weapons branded with Warp Weapon.

Don’t incorrectly mark Levitation/Flight as useless.

More sensible spell sorting in the memorisation list.

Include spell hunger in the chardump.

Monsters

Bugs fixed

Fix #2450: Disallow monsters casting emergency spells while berserk. Fix #2497: Disallow various attacks on submerged monsters. Fix #33: sleeping trapdoor spiders submerging. Fix #2862: silence message from off-screen monster. Fix #2566: undead krakens’ tentacles regenerating health. Fix #2280: Aizul casting sleep through allies, same for Mara’s bolts. Fix #2547: rock worms aimlessly moving around instead of attacking. Fix information leaks for misled monsters in monster_info. Fix Pikel’s freed slaves following the player. Fix #2434: Fix dispersal and Lugonu’s bend space blinking monsters more than once. Fix monsters throwing unthrowable weapons. Fix #2746: Prevent monsters from bleeding when no damage was dealt. Fix #2452: Make jumping spiders leap rather than blink. Fix #2609: buggy description of monster missile deflection. Fix buggy monster names involving prefixes or adjectives. Fix #2853: buggy messages for helpless monsters.

Other monster changes

New monsters: silent spectre, sky beast.

New monster spells: Cause Fear, Drain Life, Agony, Summon Elemental, Noxious Cloud.

New unique: Mennas, unique angel.

Compensate for the haste nerf by slowing monsters that most people fight hasted.

Huge monsters (dragons, elephants) can trample smaller ones, moving them around.

Krakens have multi-segment tentacles.

Spiders can cling to walls which allows them to effectively bypass water and other obstacles.

Limit number of summons from lamp of fire and fan of air.

Get rid of chain paralysis.

Prevent confused giant eyeballs from paralyzing.

Make aquatic monsters chase instead of submerging if they can.

Friendly monsters told to “wait here” don’t follow through stairs.

Merged slimes split on polymorph.

Ghost moth no longer hits like a bulldozer.

Porkelated monsters can’t cast spells either.

Enable elephant generation in Dungeon and Lair.

Implement snail/turtle shells; withdrawing into such a shell adds extra protection.

Replace monster spriggan warpers with berserkers.

Monster draconians may upgrade their weapons/armour.

Revert “more descriptive size names”.

Print “zot!” sound when a friendly monster triggers a zot trap outside LOS.

Make zombified monsters retain their stats (at least HD and HP).

Monsters respect glowing when deciding whether to cast Invisibility.

Ugly things may mutate if adjacent to a monster glowing with radiation.

Make good and strict neutral monsters not choose nearby foes.

Disallow armour mimics from taking the forms of hides.

Naga/serpent glyph changes.

Refactor monster vamp draining.

Remove Duane, Francis, Norbert; rename Wayne to Wiglaf.

Experimentally increase iron imps’ AC from 5 to 6.

Experimentally decrease bushes’ AC from 30 to 15.

Don’t consider plants/fungi “interesting”, no matter their rarity.

Tiles: New mimic overlay (by coolio).

Tiles: Different-coloured variant tiles for Tiamat (by minmay).

New tiles for Geryon and the water elemental (by coolio).

Tiles fix: Burning bushes now actually use their tile.

Level/Map changes

Bugs fixed

Fix #2493: portal vault levels not getting deleted. Fix #1542: duplicate baileys in dungeon due to trowel card. Fix #1870, #2651: beach-front portal vaults. Fix #2641: entering portal vaults from Hell. Fix #2837: Travelling to/from the Vestibule of Hell works now. Fix #2576: Handle missing portal vault levels more gracefully. Fix no-ctele announcements being affected by Tloc skills. Fix vetoed levels messing up previous level’s connectivity data. Don’t generate outright useless troves. Fix #2394: Shoals incremental tide updates to guarantee a shallow water intermediate step. Fix #1417: Don’t open transparent secret doors with warnings. Fix #2583: Update stair emphasis on level load. Fix good_item gold giving ludicrous amounts. Fix traps on Zot:5 not being generated.

Other level changes

Ambient noise levels for dungeon branches (affecting stealth).

Add Spider levels to Zigs, with bonus ghost moths and tarantellas.

Include 2010 tournament Dungeon Sprint map, slightly tweaked.

Plain water fountains give no nutrition.

Reveal teletraps triggered by a monster in sight.

Replace hell exit stairs with portals.

New temple maps, many with < 12 altars.

Overflow altars for Xom.

New orb chamber vaults.

Boost alarm trap noise to 25.

A custom trap: basket of spiders.

A custom trap: falling grate.

Many new entry vaults and mini vaults.

Allow specifying monster gods in vaults.

Add a KPROP “no_jiyva” that renders items safe. Used in slime end.

Add explicit KFEAT: O = enter_branch, instead of relying on rune_subst.

Add a wizard command (^E) that dumps level generation information.

Tiles: New statue tiles (by coolio and LoginError).

Items

Bugs fixed

Fix #2435: stacks of blood potions breaking when eaten by jellies and coagulating. Fix #2670: Autopickup weapons subjected to Tukima’s Dance. Fix #2441: Disallow blowing Geryon’s horn when silenced. Fix randarts with unknown base type sometimes not being eligible for identification. Fix #2188: AutoID’d “clarity not identifying item type. Fix #2224: rod pluses not being considered for ?identify. Fix #1880, #2626: misleading spell descriptions on rods; display average power. Fix #1998: unknown scrolls listing themselves in the item menu. Fix #2807: wrong items showing up in the wield screen. Fix #1791: Inscribe “was cursed” for items uncursed using enchant foo. Fix #2597: incorrect “comes into view” message for Xom animated weapons. Disallow creation of randart demonic weapons with the holy wrath brand. Fix #2714: permafood being coloured brown like contaminated chunks. Fix an information leak about magic resistance from unidentified items.

Other item changes

Remove the robe of the Archmagi’s exp penalty, without any compensation.

Fix the robe of the Archmagi doubly enhancing Haunt and Regen.

New items: scroll of curse jewellery, scroll of amnesia.

Antimagic weapon brand.

New artefact: ring of Charms. (May enslave creatures of your species.)

Disable equipment corrosion from slime walls.

Asphyxiation resistance blocks curare damage, but not slowing.

Poison resistance protects against curare entirely.

Add new chunk type that is both poisonous and contaminated.

Remove +AC/+EV from randarts. Fixedarts still keep them.

Do proper foe checking for rod spells that are direct effects.

?EWII may uncurse blowguns.

Remove nutrition on hit for vampiric weapons.

Make Evocations skill help with ball of seeing radius.

Disallow use of staff of channeling when starving.

Give missiles of flame / frost some bonus damage.

Add noise to missiles.

Make wield mass check apply to all items.

Make torment rarer in plain/ornate decks.

Allow staves and rods to become cursed.

Special and non-special unrandarts use the same generation code.

More detailed corrosion resistance reporting.

Tweak blood potion descriptions to mention nutrition for non-herbivores.

Hide pluses for rings and rods in the \ menu.

Tiles fix #2590: randomized animation of unidentified wand/missile.

Tiles: New runed armour/weapon tiles (by LoginError).

Other Tiles-related changes

Add Omndra’s cool new title screen.

Reinstate the red haze during berserk.

Improve default tiles layout for high resolutions.

New blood tiles.

Run pngcrush in non-debug builds if installed, shaving 700KB per download.

Some of the changes (especially for Tiles) can be admired on the updated Screenshot page.

Coding changes

New save file format (safer, more convenient and *much* smaller).

Autosave at game start and in Sprint, to keep crashes from losing the game.

Internal changes to handling monsters/LOS/map/UI, merged from NetTiles.

Merge “Zot Defense” code into trunk.

Plug security holes: multiuser, chmod, …

Except for public servers, ensure robustness against filesystem crashes.

Reorder spell code by school and functionality.

Simplify ghost I/O.

Cleanup the level generation code.

New option: show_real_turns (default off).

And with that, we’re up-to-date with version 0.8.0-a0-3582-g199d915.

As always, you can play trunk online or download a fairly recent build for Windows/Mac.

Please submit bug reports to our fabulous bug tracker and give feedback on the wiki. Thank you!