buylotrogold

I'm currently facing a dilemma in EyAngband which I'd appreciate advice from the newsgroup on. I'm adding several new conditions which can affect monsters (such as blindness, poisoning, bleeding, and a few more), and also several new monster spells and effects. The upshot of this is that I'll have to alter the monster spellcasting/AI to handle these new effects - for instance, a monster that's blinded should be able to use breath attacks (though probably less accurately), but not cast spells. Anyway, in order to avoid writing several alternate monster behaviours, this is forcing me to make monster AI non-optional, at least to an extent. Now, I've already decided that smart_learn and smart_monsters are no-brainers - there's no way I can not make them compulsory, and no reason to do so either. Similarly, smart_cheat will definitely remain an option. The question is what to do about the flow routines, and pack monster behaviour - to be honest, I play without these, and my few tests of playing with them didn't give me enough data about how they affect the game (I know what they do, and I obviously can read the source, but that's not equivalent to actual hands-on experience). So, what I'm asking the more experienced crowd here is - what are the pros and cons of each of these options? I know I don't like the pack behaviour in Oangband - is the pack behaviour in Angband 2.9.1 (which I haven't modified in EyAngband) the same or improved? In another thread, Ringwraith pointed out quite correctly that the AI/pathing options make a big difference when planning the game-balance - I'd really like to be able to make informed decisions here rather than just going by gut feeling. Eytan Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.