Monsters are about 2.5 times faster compared to 1.4.1

[flambard-took]

[Zal] Does bubble-time make you skip a turn?
[flambard] I don't think so
[Zal] Ok. To me it seems like as soon as I enter bubble-time, the mob gets to react first every single time, which is weird, considering the mob just acted to get me to low health. I'm not sure though, as bubble-time still puts me off when it activates.

Not sure if it's really happening or just a perception thing, but we have to test, as I trust Zal's instincts.

[flambard-took]

I've tested this a lot and I can't reproduce it (at least, fighting a monster one-on-one). If I have
maximum energy, and monster hits me (losing its energy), I always hit it back first.

So I'm thinking there must be some other condition that triggers this bug.

(If you're interesting in debugging timing issues, see develop-timing branch, which has a useful energy/commands queued indicator).

[flambard-took]

Grayshoe's explanation gave me another angle to examine this,

yea, creatures are far for active , rarely ever remain sleeping and they are faster. all the orcs are faster than I am at normal speed above 500 feet
if im moving from away from any of the o's they can hit me at least every other turn

And so I checked: indeed monsters that move at normal speed, can hit you every turn, and so does a Speed: 110 (Normal +0) character. So, everything looks fine, except...

...in classic MAngband, monsters spent twice the energy after attacking players! It worked by giving them negative energy. For example, level speed is 45, monster starts with 0 energy. Over the course of 10 turns, it obtains 45 energy, which is enough to attack a player. After attacking, it spends energy once [1], getting 0, and then again [2], getting -45. Then, it takes twice as long to go from -45 to 45, so players essentially are attacking twice as fast as monsters, in classic MAngband.

This is weird and wrong, but I'm going to restore this behavior :( It got smoked after time-bubbles/energy updates, and monster_type.energy now being a u32b (instead of something signed).

[flambard-took]

In addition, classic MAngband allowed players to "build-up" energy, meaning if they stayed still, for a while, they would get 2x level_speed(), allowing 2 consecutive turns to happen when a fight starts (giving players a bit of an upper-hand/initiative bonus).

[flambard-took]

So I don't know what to do, on one hand I really like the "no energy hacks and we're very close to how V works" situation, but on the other hand, we made the game about 2.5 times harder.

As a compromise I'm going to re-introduce both those behaviors as birth options, but I kinda think it's a terrible idea. Someone should just make a ruling one way or another and just flip the switch permanently.

[billsey]

Because of the real time element that is in Mangband that is not in vanilla it makes sense to have a movement penalty for monsters. In vanilla it's possible to have perfect player movement, where each game play movement can match a monster move. In Mangband it's nearly impossible to get that. I vote for a monster penalty similar to what we've had in the past. Bill Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

…

-------- Original message -------- From: flambard-took <notifications@github.com> Date: 6/8/19 3:36 AM (GMT-08:00) To: mangband/mangband <mangband@noreply.github.com> Cc: Subscribed <subscribed@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [mangband/mangband] Monsters are about 2.5 times faster compared to 1.4.1 (#1248) So I don't know what to do, on one hand I really like the "no energy hacks and we're very close to how V works" situation, but on the other hand, we made the game about 2.5 times harder. As a compromise I'm going to re-introduce both those behaviors as birth options, but I kinda think it's a terrible idea. Someone should just make a ruling one way or another and just flip the switch permanently. - You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#1248?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABM4AOEXEB66S4TOCVVVAYTPZODSTA5CNFSM4HGLPRVKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGODXHSFEA#issuecomment-500114064>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABM4AOCR4IRRONJCTMRF2O3PZODSTANCNFSM4HGLPRVA>.

[flambard-took]

@billsey, thank you! I'll also dump some comments by PowerWyrm:

I'm pretty sure the monster spending energy twice was a bug, if monsters now act twice faster that means there's a second bug somewhere and the two were simply cancelling each other in old MAngband -- I'm using normal energy in PWMAngband and monsters act once per player turn, there is no such behavior as the one mentioned post 1.5 -- so it would be better to find the problem instead of adding some workaround (and as birth option lol)

(My comment: there isn't any problem, the situation indeed is as described)

PowerWyrm concludes:

having 1 bpr and dealing 2 should not be
I'll check again when I have time, but I'm sure last time I checked I had no trouble with 1.5