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Vanilla Angband Borg.
On this page, I share information about my borg. The borg is an automatic player for the game Angband. To learn more about Angband, check out the Official Angband Home Page. This borg runs on the most recent vanilla version (3.0.6), as well as DrAngband and Zangband 240. You can find executables for Windows here. If you need a DOS executable, email me and I'll send one to you. I work on it daily. So check this site often for the latest version
These files were last updated on 21 January 2010. All files compressed in a .zip format.
Please make sure your borg.txt file is located in your \lib\user\ directory.
Vanilla Angband 309B:
Borg Source--You
will need the rest of the game source. Be sure to have the
ALLOW_BORG_GRAPHICS turned on in
config.h if you want to use graphics. This source code works
only
with Angband
3.0.9b. You need to make sure that the game source files included here
write over the original game source. There are several changes to the
game
source in order for the 309b borg to run.
309b Windows Executable --For 3.0.9b. Just the Windows EXE file with some required borg files.
309b Windows Borg ScreenSaver Executable-- The borg engine updated. You will need the rest of the supporting files. Read the Borgread.txt for installation
Vanilla Angband 306 and 305:DrAngband 299:
Drangband Borg.
You may want to visit the
Drangband
Homepage to learn more about it.
Zangband 240:
Zangband Borg Source. You
may want to visit the ZBorg
page
to learn more about it.
Information on this Borg and my To Do list
Parts of this code came from Adam Goodman. He did the work on *ID*, home optimization, borg_prep, speeding up a borg with telepathy, and basic borg defense routines. I expanded on each one, but he laid down the important skeleton. He also wrote the code for the Dynamic Calcs. Which allow external influences on the borg behavior. He deserves a huge thanks.
Be sure to modify your delay under the Options menu to watch the borg. If you have questions or want to know how certain bugs were squashed, just drop me and email at apwhite@itctel.com As I mentioned, improvements are made on a daily basis. Your comments are greatly appreciated. If there is a command or certain things you would recommend for the borg, just email a description to me.
This borg is customizable. Meaning you can select certain play options and have the borg play along those themes. To learn more, read the borg.txt file located in the file archives.
Click Here to see a massive list of what sets my borg apart from the others. It is truely impressive.
All bug reports are appreciated.
To Do List:
-The borg does not pickup Grond or the Massive Crown.
-Fix the bug with big screens. If the borg resumes a game
which had been
regular sized screen, but is now a large screen then the borg will
crash the
game. The borg will not crash if the screen is expaned in town. If the
game was
saved with a large screen, and the borg resumes a large screen game, it
will
not crash. So if you want to play the borg in a large screen, make the
change
in town or wizard light (or clairevoyance) the whole level before
activating
the borg.
Very bad things can happen if the borg is used in Big Screen
mode. It is
recommended that you not use Big Screen.
Statistics on Borg Deaths/Survivability
Tables of various borg deaths. Made from Excell using Pivot Tables. (special thx to Dan L.)
Send me your Winners, as well as your borg.dat if it has more than 100 deaths listed and I can add them to the database
Rephial from Andrew Sidwell. He has cool graphics on his page. Not at all like the rest of us.
The Official DrAngband Homepage. The variant of this wonderful game, with new dragon races and much, much more. Maintained by myself.
Amiga & Variants Page from Bablos. He has compiled many of the amiga versions and has links to just about every variant out there. There is also a link to borg statistics.
If your link is not here and you would like it to be, email me the address.
Daily
Record of Changes
Archive of old changes.
January 21, 2010 1) the money-scum_amount was not being reset to 0 after he made his large purchase. That is now repaired. 2) Sometimes he could loop illuminating a hallway with a beam of light if he was very close to the panel edge and needed to shoot off the panel. 3) added an extra defense maneuver called Offense. Which is an attack consideration. The idea was that if the borg is afraid of a very scary but weak monster he will teleport away and avoid the baddie. This way, he will consider an attack to see it he could kill the baddie in one hit thus denying the monster the chance to use it's scary arsenal.
November 24, 2009 1) the munchkin start mode needed to be able to pick up objects similar to those in his inventoy. He was not picking up items if full. He could have stacked scrolls/rods/potions.
November 20, 2009 1) I added a new flow routine called flow_recover(). The borg will fall back a certain number of spaces to a reasonably safe then rest to recover. This will allow him to avoid attracting too much attention from monsters which might be close by and who are inclined to chase him. 2) Added a new exploitation called munchkin_start. At low clevels he will scum the stairs looking for loot to sell. Once he fills up with loot, he returns to town to sell it then jumps back down for more. He will do this until about clevel 6 or so. This option is set in the borg.txt file.
April 5, 2009 1) Improved retrieval of nearby items in the dungeon. 2) Borg will Detect Monsters in town, to locate potentially dangerous townspeople and if need be, flee town.
April 2, 2009 1) He might loop if strategically backing up to a grid of equal danger to his current grid. 2) problem with conflicting rules about taking downstairs if carrying lots of stuff to sell. 3) Problem with recognizing certain floor grids and being open. 4) "Immediate need" purchases for food not working fully. He was trying to buy torches instead.
February 28, 2009, 1) Borg needed help with Everburning lites.
February 25, 2009 1) Improved how low level borgs will move in the dungeon to avoid being Spastic. He will also leave the levels sooner. 2) Added a breeder counter so he won't consider one giant white mouse a scary guy, but if there are several of them, then he will flee the level. 3) Sell the dungeon junk more frequently (level dependent greed factor), instead of staying on the level for a long time. This will help him to raise money which he can spend on better armor. 4) Don't use wands in town. Charges are too spendy. 5) Improved the flow_take() a bit so he can chase down some of his spent missiles. 6) Lots of zborg updates.
February 11, 2009 1) The borg could build up a stack of empty non-id'd wands and not crush them (because they were non-id'd). 2) Problem with borg_analyze_item() and it not correctly determing the ID status of certain scrolls, 3) Borg could get stuck at shallow depths with a 'rs clw/csw' message.
February 9th 2009 1) Sometimes the screensaver would not complete the creation of a new character. Note that the screensaver works better if you create the file using Angband, setting up the term windows and options. Then save the file and note that savefile name in the angband.ini file for the screensaver. The screensaver will create a savefile if none exists, but it can not initiate the borg due to changes in the game code relating to menu selection. The screensaver will create the character and wait in town until the screensaver exits. Then on the next load, it will initialize and run correctly (well as correctly as a borg can run).
February 2, 2009 1) Low level borgs needed to be able to use unid-d and unaware wands. This helps them improve low level combat. 2) I recommend replacing your borg.txt with this one (or the one from the 27th). It will help him save money by not purchasing ?Teleport or ?WoR until a little later in the game. 3) The routine for 'scum item' was not looking for scaryguys on level and could attempt to flow to a take even through a minefield of scaryguys. 4) Don't throw our spell books as painful objects. 5) more Zborg updates. 6) Improved how borg_flow_stair_less and borg_flow_stair _more and borg_flow_stair_both will calculate flow if scaryguy on level, mainly, he will avoid unknown grids, forcing him to retreat to the stairs using the pathway by which he came. 7) Freaky retreats were happening if hp=0 and danger = 0.
January 27, 2009 1) The borg.txt had an error on formula 000 and 001. Those are both corrected. 2) There was a problem with the borg not wielding equipment correctly if the option borg_uses_swaps was set to false. I corrected that issue but there may be other odd behavior with the borg_uses_swaps set to FALSE. I always have it set true so I never see odd behavior. 3) Zangband borg work progressing.
January 21, 2009 1) Borgs attempting to flee to a stair using the borg_desperate(three) will not flee if an adjacent monster is faster than the borg. 2) Low level borgs will make it a higher priority to purchase CLW and slings. This will save him some money to use on armor. 3) Better integration for CLW potions with respect to borg_prep() and restock(). 4)Lots ore Zangbandborg updates.
January 14, 2009, 1) Repaired a few things that came in the email: there were some transpositions of the borg_has[] and borg_skill[] in borg4.c. 2) Some typos in the leash functions of borg6.c. 3) Another correction to the town crash when >255 monsters were created. 4) Borg_danger() is without a doubt the most expensive borg routine. It is called so frequently and has sort through so much information (twice). I have tried to remove a few of the non-essential calls to borg_danger(). I removed about 5-7 calls and I think I could get a few extra pulled out. More important than these eliminated calls is the reduction in the second sort within borg_danger(). This will greatly speed up that routine. I don't really think about how fast or slow the borg runs on certain machines. Seems like most computers are blindingly fast anyway. Most pple I know slow the borg down in order to watch him. But I suppose if you were trying to collect massive amounts of borg-data, then having fast borgs would be important. 5) A borg unhook was reported. It had something to do with the Destruction defence maneuver. The savefile was corrupted so I could not reproduce the error. If you have a borg unhook, save the game and send me the savefile right at the unhook spot.
January 9, 2009, 1) Improved the Leash for the borg. The leash will keep the borg from wandering too far from the stairs. It is in place until he reaches clevel 15 and the leash is clevel *3+9 steps in length. In the flow code the borg was allowed to flow to an interesting grid as long as the distance to the grid was shorter than his leash. But the leash was calculated as a distance and not a path. Certainly, he could be only 5 grids away but the path might be much, much greater than five. I made all the checks uniform now. He will check the actual flow cost (number of steps) from the stairs to the interesting grid. If the grid is too far from the stairs then he will not flow to it. This is a big improvement over the previous method. In the old method, he would start to walk there then realize he was too far from the stairs then return to the stairs. Ocassionally, this could induce some bouncing from the stairs back to the interesting grid. The benifit of this change will be seen in a more efficient borg. He will bounce less, thus saving money on food and fewer turns on the overall game. 2) The borg now understands that some items are not worth picking up. Previously, he would see all items as interesting and would walk over and pick them up. Even a rodent skeleton would be picked up and then instantly crushed. He now understands that some items are of no value and need not be picked up. This will be an improvement for the low level borgs because they will not flow towards a junky item, and risk exposing himself to threatening monsters. It will also help him in number of turns played and saving on food since he will waste fewer steps. 3) I made some major updates on the zborg. It has been about 4 yrs since the zborg was updated. I was not able to implement all the updates in place but most of the important ones were ported. I have been playing a Vampire Mindcrafter and making sure the zborg is equipped with special tactics for that combo. Most borg updates for the next few months will probably be related to the zborg and will be ported over to the vborg.
December 23, 2008, 1) Needed to fix a few more in-bounds checks.
December 12, 2008, 1) I had a winner on one of my machines this morning. It was from the Oct 30th build. My last winner was 12-13-07. So it was almost a year to the day.
December 11, 2008, 1) Certain ID'd Elvenkind armours could be carried in the inventory without being *ID*'d nor would they be sold until they were *ID*'d. 2) An interesting savefile was submitted wherein the borg was swaping his dungeon armor as soon as he returned to town. But while wearing his town armor, he was not prepared to recall back into the deep dungeon. So he would take the stairs to level 1. As soon as he would enter the dungeon, he would put his dungeon armor back on and suddenly be prepared for deep dungeon exploration so he would recall back to town in order to recall back into the deep dungeon. Of course as soon as he got back to town he put the other armor back on which then left him unprepared to recall. So anyway, that was fun to track down.
December 9, 2008, 1) Borgs with Enchant were not enchanting slings. There is a good reason to not do so, but he was also not enchanting good ego or randart slings. The prohibition of enchanting slings will now not apply is the sling is an artifact or ego.
December 7, 2008, 1) Some cursed randarts in the inventory were not being *ID*'d.
December 4, 2008, 1) A borg with a large light radius (> 4) could get stuck in a loop casting Spear of Light, trying to illuminate a room, thinking it was a hallway. That is now fixed. 2) Let me know if the changes from Dec 2 or 3 make the borg act goofy. I was only able to test them a few hours. The OoD effect is useful for borgs who are low on ID scrolls and who have poor pseudoID, which would be guys about level 15-25. After that, they tend to have decent pseudoID and they would figure out quickly that the item is cursed. It may be inefficient for the high level priests to be OoD'ing the items if he would learn within just a few rounds that they were cursed. The routine will only be called with borgs who have fewer than 10 ID quantities so maybe hight level guys won't do it.
December 3, 2008, 1) Fleeing the level (via Recall) needed to be made slightly high priority if he were fleeing to restock certain critical items (those listed in borg_restock()). 2) Borg needed to be able to ID an {excellent} item that he decided to wield. 3) Repaired a crash introduced yesterday with the OoD thing. 4) I have the borg doing just a little bit of scumming when he needs to flee town from scaryguys (BSV, SER, Maggot). Basically, he will chase down any close item in order to sell it when he returns to town. He does not really explore the dungeon, just gets a nearby item. I tested it for about 5 hrs today and found no crashes, but it did unhook once. I think I corrected the unhook. If you find any problems with it, send me the savefile so I can fix it right away. My goal lately has been to get the low borgs to have more cash. Cash needed for better armor and some potions or ?Phase.
December 2, 2008 1) I taught the borg to use Orb of Draining on items found in the dungeon. As you may know OoD will cause cursed items to melt. Since Priests/Paladins do not get easy sources of Identify, they needed to be able to filter out some items to conserve resources. He also understands the blast radius of OoD and will know if a neighboring item was caught in the blast. That way he won't cast OoD on both objects. 2) Borg had casted ?WoR while standing on a stair. There was a problem with the wrong variable which kept him from easily escaping the level via the stairs. 3) The leash for low level borgs was shorted and the ceiling for low-level was raised to clevel 15. 4) Melee attacks have been given boosted rewards over ranged attacks for low level borgs. This will keep him from throwing Flasks of Oil at floating eyes, instead of knifing the kobold adjacent to him.
December 1, 2008 1) Borgs needed to be able to uninscribe objects with certain confirmation marks ("!d!k!q") and such. 2) Borgs have been spending way too much money on ?ID for mundane items. So the borg will be more likely to sell non-ID items to the stores. This will allow him more spending flexibility to purchase ?Phase Door and ?Recall. I will be addressing his abuse of ?Recall. At $200 each, they are really expensive to burn. He might be better off investing that money into better armor. 3) In addition to selling non-id items to stores, the borg is far less likely to ID certain types of items. He will ID once the pseudo-id kicks in. Otherwise, he will just sell the items non-id'd and risk losing the artifact items to the store. 4) Low level borgs are no longer required to stay on a dungeon level for a minimal amount of time. He is free to leave when he gets bored. 5) The Zborg.exe file was missing some runtime libraries so some computers were erroring out when it was run. The new one has the library included.
November 5, 2008 1) Repaired a crash in town related to a very full town from town scumming.
November 3, 2008, 1) A crash was reported due to the update on the borg_status screen. I removed the offending code until I could test it further.
October 31, 2008 1) Updated the borg_status screen a bit. 2) Slight repair to how the borg *ID*'d certain uniques which were wielded without being ID'd.
October 27, 2008, 1) A very obscure error was occurring relating to studying spells that were exactly the same level as the borg. 2) Borgs needed to be able to cast Recharge even if the fail rate was high. There was a rogue running around with an empty Staff of Teleport because the Recharge fail rate was higher than the borg's imposed cap of 35%. I upped it to 95% since the borg will only recharge in a safe place and when bored. The town does not always stock recharge scrolls. 3) Another tweak to how the danger of faster monsters is calculated.
October 26, 2008, 1) Found another possible unhook from Amnesia effects.
October 25, 2008, 1) S0be submitted a savefile with an apparent hang. The problem was traced to a very large permutation calculation for strategic retreats while surrounded. The problem is fixed and the update is made. Thanks for the savefile.
October 24, 2008, 1) The borg was pillar dancing even at full health. I added some restrictions to pillar dancing to make sure he would not do it ad nauseam. 2) Improved how the borg sees some nuisance effects (disenchanting gear, shattering of potions from cold damage, etc) 3) Borg was resting adjacent to a mold (freakin' retard). Fixed that.
October 22, 2008, 1) A very important line of code was omitted on the recent danger upgrades. He is very likely to die while retreating if the monster is a bit faster than him. I added that line and it is now working correctly. Without with change and update, it is unlikely that any borg would survive beyond level 30.
October 18, 2008, 1) Repaired the net-zero problem wherein the borg would continue to wield and item like Leather Cap [2, -2]. It turned out to be an issue with depth. The borg removed the net-zero item if shallow (which was how I was testing it) but not doing so while deep. Its all fixed. Interestingly, this solution brought to light an error in how the borg was calculating bonuses to stat-increasing gear (like a +2 Str ring). This error may have been part of some problems related to swapping items continuously. 2) Repaired a problem with not powerdiving if he has exactly 2 ?WoR. This particular problem had the borg hovering around depth 2-4 and wasting a lot of money recalling to town. 3) Slight improvement to how the borg will strategically retreat if surrounded.
October 15, 2008, 1) The borg has been able to navigate the dungeon if he runs out of light, using Call Light as he goes. I added the ability to efficiently use a Rod of Light to illuminate the hallways as he searches for the upstairs. And, to not junk that rod if the inventory gets full. 2) Improved the Spastic Searching which is when the borg will search certain areas for a secret door. 3) Fixed the problem with the borg not fearing the never_move monsters (molds and such). 4) I have not had a chance to fix the problem of resting in a region where an invisible monster may reside.
October 12, 2008, Today is my 40th Bday! To celebrate, I repaired the following: 1) Improved the fear of sleeping monsters. The borg had reduced fear of sleeping monsters. After attacking (and waking) the monster, he would find that the monster was too dangerous for him so he would then flee the battle. Now the borg will calculate the full danger of the monster regardless of it's sleep state. This will allow him to avoid combat with monsters that outclass him. 2) Minor tweak to allow the borg to strategically backup or retreat when surrounded even if 'scaryguys' were on the level. Previously the borg would not correctly retreat to a safe grid if scaryguys were on the level. This would have him stand and fight to his death. Not a good idea. 3) Recent changes have made the borg very susceptible to Never_move monsters. I am trying to track down this strange problem. It was introduced in the past couple of weeks. 4) Corrected a message parsing error which could result in the borg not correctly understanding the state of enemies and whether or not certain ranged attacks struck the monster. 5) The routine that had the borg tunnel to the center of the map will now check to make sure he has some good digging skills before he tries it. 6) Helped the borg to avoid tunneling to the center of the dungeon when he could not explore the dungeon using his regular routines. 7) I think I found the source of the problem which led to unhooks when there were large piles of loot on the ground. 8) Winner posted.
October 6, 2008, 1) Reworked some of the danger calculations for fast monsters who were able to move and attack in the same round. I added some exclusion criteria to make sure the borg was not adding fear from an illegal monster move (a non-pass_wall monster passing through a wall and attacking in the same round) and making sure the monster had LOS after it's potential move. This will improve how the borg is able to navigate the dungeon by not fearing corridors near fast monsters when the fast monster has no possible way to threaten the borg. An example would be a monster in a vault while the borg is in a corridor outside the vault. Although the fast monster is 20' away, it is behind a wall, and cannot pass through the wall. The corridor grids will now not be feared and the borg is more likely to walk near the area. This rework will not correctly calculate the movements of monsters which are very fast relative to the borg (they get 3 actions for every 1 borg action). It is not impossible to add this, but I didn't have time this week and there are few times when this exact scenario manifests.
September 6, 2008, 1) The borg was unhooking when he was hit with an amnesia attack. I identified 4 possible causes due to item activation and corrected them. If another shows up sometime, let me know. 2) Winner posted.
September 3, 2008, 1) A few out of bounds corrections which might have caused crashes if the monsters were very close to the edge of the map. 2) Big improvements to how a borg handles vaults. There is improved excavation of a vault, handling fear, and resting.
August 31, 2008, 1) Corrected a failed bounds check which could result in a crash if a monster is located very close to the edge of the map.
August 28, 2008, 1) The function borg_check_rest() which evaluated the safety of the borg's grid before he rested on it, needed a slight fix. 2) Fixed a potential crash related to monster creation. 3) The borg is misparsing the message line on some messages. It is difficult to catch him doing it. The borg would use Term_Locate() to identify the location of the cursor. In prior versions the game the cursor fell in the message line. Now it seems to be falling onto the borg following the message. The borg used the cursor location to parse the messages. He should be able to parse the messages more correctly now. The current fix might also help him parse long messages on a wider screen. The reason the borg freaked out on larger screens was due to problems in parsing the messages. In order to catch odd parse behavior, borg_verbose needs to be set as TRUE in your borg.txt file. 4) Certain useful spells (sleep, slow) would pass over a monster if it were already slow relative to it's base race speed. But monsters are allowed to have some variable speed, so some monsters would be passed over because their speed was 119 instead of 120. 5) It was possible for the borg to get stuck at 1 borg_no_rest point and then never rest to recoop mana.
August 26, 2008, 1) The damage from Chaos Strike was not being calculated correctly. I personally don't really like this spell much. It has a tendency to polymorph the monster. After the monster is polymorphed, he has his hitpoints reset. 2) Rework of the calcuations for Teleport Other. He was shooting it into walls and using it on some uniques when it was not really appropriate. He also needed to use T.O. if he was getting low on mana. 3) Backing up as a strategic retreat needs to have a better reward value. He was backing up from a danger of 458 to a grid of 450. Hardly seems worth the effort. Just stand and fight. 4) There was a rule conflict involving carrying !Life and returning to town to store them in the home. He ought to save those instead of carrying them around.
August 25, 2008, 1) The borg_desperate flag can be used to flee a level using down stairs now. Previously, he could only use to on up stairs. 2) Borgs would only consider using Teleport Away if there was signficant danger, like 70% of his hitpoints. That was reduced to 50%. We are seeing lots of borgs die from "out of the frying pan, into the fire." 3) Borg will use Banishment more liberally, especially when deep in the dungeon.
August 22, 2008, 1) The borg was incompletely calculating the danger of certain grids if a monster could move and use a ranged attack in the same round. This would be manifested as a borg retreating to a grid of danger 0, only to be chased by a faster monster who was able to threaten the borg's new grid following the monster's action 2) It was possible for the borg to purchase a replacement torch for his lantern if the lantern ran out of fuel. 3) Corrected a really old gobal variable code issue related to borg_full_damage. It is now properly a parameter to borg_danger(). 4) Low level mages will attempt to conserve mana in town by not casting MM on certain town monsters (the ones which do not have an attack or no reward.) Hopefully he will save his mana for the SER, MLM, and BSV. 5) Borgs will try not flow through monsters to a destination. This will help him avoid bouncing on grids near never_move monsters.
August 21, 2008, Implemented changes recommended on the Forum. 1) Genociding Nasties will begin earlier (depth 25 instead of depth 50). Loosened the restrictions slightly. 2) Added new borg command 'C' which will log the current Nasty Count. Nasties are monsters that the borg would rather not fight. He genocides them if they get too numerous on a level. By default, the nasties are monsters with the following tokens: ZAVULWD. The borg keeps count of these monsters and when they reach a certain number on the depth, he will use Genocide to thin them out. Counts are 20, 20, and 10 for the others. I dont think the count is configured in Borg.txt but it could easily be made to do so. By default, at the beginning of every level, he automatically assumes there are 25 hounds, and will Genocide Z as soon as he can. As mentioned above, he did not do this until depth 50 but will now start earlier. The borg has been genociding hounds at the beginning of each level for years (he began doing it November 2002). 3) Borgs suffereing from Confusion were allowed to strategically retreat under certain conditions. This will be disallowed since a confused borg can not actually walk to his destination. 4) there was a problem with the borgs learning spells in their last spellbook. Not sure how that crept in, but not having access to Keleks is a big deal.
August 20, 2008, 1) Improvements to light handles. The borg incorrectly thought that Lanterns of Brightness caused him to glow (being a permanent light source) 2) For years, the borg has been able navigate the dungeon if he runs out of light. He has been able to cast Call Light if he found himself on a glowing grid, which would help him illuminate the halls, every few steps, as he moved through them. Of course, he could not cast the Call Light spell unless he were on a glowing grid. I just added a feature which will allow him to use his remaining few turns of light to Call Light so he had a glowing grid to start on. The major drag with this Light-as-you-go technique is that it uses a lot of food due to all the resting to regain mana. So he will only do it if he has food to spare. Running out of light is still a very dangerous position for the borg. He might survive the ascent while dark, but its really risky.
August 19, 2008, 1) The borg will be a bit more flexible in following out-of-sight monsters which are moving and will try to avoid creating a new monster index for the same monster. 2) Borg will attempt to rest on a single grid to avoid the situation wherein the borg is two grids away from a monster and when the borg moves 1 grid to close the distance, the monster gets a free hit on the borg. This is a bit tricky to do correctly; several things are involved including the borg-monster speed differential.
August 18, 2008, 1) Repairs to the borg targetting PASS_WALL monsters who sit in a wall. 2) The spell Detect Invis is no longer a timed event. The borg needed to be told so. Was this game change listed in any change log? This type of spell change is important for the borg and I am surprised I didn't catch it in a log. 3) Improvements to how the borg uses wands: he will be more careful about wasting charges and hold onto certain wands (MM, Stinking Cloud). 4) Low level borgs tend to waste a lot of ?WoR while on depth 1 avoiding Scaryguys. The borg will be allowed to use the borg_desperate functions to find stairs.
August 11, 2008, 1) The distribution files did not seem to work on computers that did not have M$ Visual Studio 2008 installed. There is a well known issue with VS2008, producing executable files requiring a special non-default dll to be installed on the target machine. I have modified the solution to link directly to the needed parts of the dll. 2) Borg will cast the Detection type spells a bit less frequently. This will help the low level guys save some mana and keep him from the rest-regain mana-cast spell-rest again-loop. 3) borg wills reset their flow and movement goals after strategically backing away from a monster. This will force him to reevaluate the danger and value of the grids. 4) The borg will be less likely to rest to mana recoop right after casting certain prepatory/defence spells.
August 8, 2008, 1) The problem with the borg not buying torches to refuel his Torch is Brightness is solved.
August
7, 2008, 1) Some changes to the game code when upgrading from
A to B modified the store purchasing keys. These
changes are
now addressed in this borg. So that basically means that this
release will not work on 309a due to the shopping changes. If
you
really want to, you can get this source code to work by editing borg1.c
at line 454. It is commented for you. If you
attempt to use
any prior borg on 309b, there will be some serious problems with
purchasing wares from the store and shops. 2) The borg is
having
some goofy issues relating to buying torches and running out of light.
This is a new weirdness. I have only seen him do it
with
Torches of Brightness. I strongly suspect he is not buying
normal
torches to refuel the Brightness torch due to a problem with him
thinking the new torch will replace the Brightness one, giving him less
power. I will track it down and fix it in the next days.
August 6, 2008, 1) Updated a potential crash related to the borg being very near the edge of the dungeon border and having a large light radius. 2) Corrected how the borg was calculating light radius from artifacts. This did cause bad behavior related to using Light Beam to illuminate hallways for locating unseen monsters. 3) Improved how the borg will illuminate hallways looking for unseen monsters. Unseen monsters are those who hide in the dark and use ranged attacks. The borg is aware of these attacks and attempts to light up the hallways to reveal the monster in order to ID it and calculate an attack strategy.
August 5, 2008, Updated the webpage. Updated the Zborg. It had been about 4 years since I looked at that code. I got it up and running under VS2008. Fixed a crash error.
March 1, 2008, 1) The borg could miscalculate the benefit of using Teleport Other if he were fighting only a single guy.
February 27, 2008, 1) Updated the 309 borg. If the option to remember torch-lit grids was on, then the borg believed that those grids were glowing grids and would get stuck if he ran out of torch/lantern light. This lead to a few starvation deaths. It's now corrected, that option can be set either way.
February 20, 2008, Major fixes today. 1) When the borg was respawning (rerolling a character after one dies) the startup equipment included torches with 0 turns. Prior to 309, the Pval of the torch determined the turns of light remaining. In 309, it is the Timeout. This is now corrected. 2) Significantly improved how the borg calculates damage to and fear of compromised (sleeping, confused, slow) monsters. This will allow him to use the wands of slow/sleep, etc. Previously, he would very rarely use those things eventhough he knew how. 3) Removed some old 3.0.5 references to clean the code. 4) Improved how the borg will use the defence and perma maneuvers for Bless. This made a huge improvement for his mana in the very early game. 5) Improved how very low level borgs will explore the dungeon and stay close to the stairs. Previously, he would return to town after a short exploration of the dungeon (usually just one hallway). The problem is the town is a very dangerous place with no exp reward for that risk exposure. He will now return to town less frequently and explore the dungeon a little more efficiently while still staying close to the stairs. Staying next to the stairs is a good idea so he can make a prompt escape from Grip/Fang/Jackals, etc. Basically he will explore more than just one hall. 6) The borg will now clear his flow codes when a monster changes his sleep state. This will allow him to abort his flee attempts and attack a monster which has just been put to sleep.
February 19th, 2008, 1) Because the General Store no longer buys torches or cloaks, the borg is filling his inventory with them. The torches are useful, but the way he was sorting them, he prefered higher pvalue torches (3000 turns) over used ones (~500 turns) and would refuel his torch with the higher pval ones. I corrected how he sorts for them and will now prefere the shorter stacks over higher pval. This will keep him from filling up his inventory with a bunch of used torches. 2) I will sell cloaks to the Black Market for the same reason as above. 3) added a borg_verbose flag to borg.txt which will cut back on how many reports are sent to the log. (Cuts back on all the parsing messages making the log much easier for noobs to read.)
February 17th, 2008, 1) Slight tweak on strategic Backing Up, which will allow the borg to step back into a hall or other safe place to avoid being surrounded and such. The restrictions were loosened so the borg will be more likely to do this.
February 16th 2008, 1) Bless is more likely to be cast for low level guys. 2) If fleeing the level from a scaryguy and a monster is adjacent, he will attempt to attack that guy. He keeps dying to bats and really easy guys. 3) Some improvements to the critical Phase Door attempts. Borgs with several ?PD would rather fight in a suicide fight rather than even attempt the phase.
February 9th, 2008, 1) Slight correction to how the borg store the array of runes of protection. 2) the borg will no longer cast Rune of Protection (Glyph) in anti-summon corridors. He was using too much mana doing this. 3) Another slight fix to the 309 borg.
December 14, 2007, 1) Had to repair the 309 borg. It is still not perfect but it does run. There was an issue with Torches of Brightness and the borg thinking that he was glowing.
October 26, 2007 1) I have been working daily on the 3.0.9 version borg. There have been quite a few issues to address. The borg is running and is mostly stable. I find little bugs every few days. Today, I found that the message for failed glyph creation changed. So I had to make that correction. Little things like that pop up. It is stable enough to send out for beta work. I find some unhooks after shopping. You can find a copy of the borg source code and the necessary game code changes here. I am pretty sure I included all the game files that were altered. If the borg won't compile, drop me a line so I can fix that zip file. 2) I added some better handling for *Heal* and Life potions. He will be more careful about storing potions in the home rather than carrying them around and running the risk of getting them shattered by cold attacks. 3) Correction to how the borg deals with a glyph creation in an anti-summoning corridor. 4) Some work on getting the borg to run under a big screen (wider than 80 columns).
Sept 28, 2007, 1) Corrected a bug which could cause the game to crash while fighting Morgoth. 2) The mage spell of Rift needed to be defined as a beam, had been a bolt. 3) Shooting into grids that contained the borg_invis feature need some corrections for pass_wall ghosts. 4) Placing a possible wall under a pass_wall ghost if the borg shoots and misses a pain response. 5) Leave_level() has some changes to make him want to stay on level 100 longer. 6) Minor repair to how the borg will rest if he is in a sea of runes waiting for Morgoth. 7) The borg's self-defined money scumming limit is now 85k. I have a machine with him scumming to get $334,000. He has been there for 2 weeks already. 8) Rewrite to the banish nasties defence routine in borg6.c. This routine will count the number of certain monsters and bast Banishment on them if they get too numerous on a level. I modified it to make it much easier to expand the list and modify its usage. 9) Mass Banishment scrolls are collected and stored in the home better. 10) Interestingly, the borg was doing some interesting behavior. He would stay on depth 99, collecting *Heal* potions, as expected, and storing some in his home. As soon as his *Heal* potion goal is met (adding the personal supply and home supply), he would dive to 100. The problem is, he would dive right then, instead of returning to his home and gathering up all his stored items. He will now return home first, to gather his gear before driving. There were a few changes to the borg.txt, so its a good idea to replace yours (or set the Dynamic Calcs off).
Sept 21, 2007, 1) There had been a very elusive bug were the borg at depth 99 would literally get naked in the dungeon, taking off all his stuff and throwing it on the ground. He would usually pick it back up again, but not always. He would sometimes trade out his nice gear (like Ringil) for an {excellent} weapon. I have seen the borg after this event but never caught him in the act. I received a savefile with this behavior in full swing. With the help of the savefile, I think I was able to identify and correct the error.
Sept 20, 2007, 1) Repaired a potential bug in how the borg tracks the glyphs. It was causing crashes in some battles with Morgoth. 2) Major improvement in anti equipment loops. There had been a persistant 3-way armor bug with Belegonnon, Thalkettoth, and Isildur. I now have the borg tracking the artifacts he wears and will forbid him from rewearing an artifact which had recently been removed. This will not effect the swapping of armor or weapons from the Swap routine which is designed to help him wear a backup item. You will still see him swap a tiny bit with respect to the Best Combo routine.
Sept 19, 2007, 1) Repaired a swapping loop at the house. This one involved swapping staves. He still loops a little but not nearly as much. I fear this change may adversely impact his food purchase ability. Keep an eye out for an increase in starvations. This repair will significantly improve his turn count. He would previously flee town in a swap loop. That flee would take him to depth 1 for a while then return to town and swap again. This will help reduce the time on depth 1. 2) Made a major bug fix on the money scumming for the botg. He kept buying stuff instead of saving all his money for the scum item. This should help reduce the number of rounds he spends scumming.
April 9, 2007, 1) Borg will no longer attempt those emergency teleport spells if clevel >10. 2) Borg will have an extra check on using the EZ_Heal potions. 3) There is still one more 3-way armor swap that needs to be fixed. I have a save file demonstrating the bug. I will work on it over the next week. 4) A few winners were submitted.
April 8, 2007, 1) More improvements to the borg resting to recover his mana points. 2) Another repair to equipment swaps. The most likely 3-way armor swaps include Rohirrim. 3) Improvement to the use of Sanctuary spell. 4) Improvement to use of missile/ball attacks to Pass Wall monsters while they are in a wall (Dreads, etc) 5) Offset attacks that only do 1 damage are less likely. 6) Some monsters have immunities which, in the game, reduce the damage by 90%. The borg would previously make this exact calculation which often permitted the borg to use an expensive spell and only do 10% damage. The damage is now reduced to zero which should save him some mana. This was often seen as the borg using offset attacks (usually poison ball) on a never_move monster. While the borg rested to regain his mana, the monster would typically heal up. If any of this behavior is seen following this update, send me the savefile while the borg is doing it.
Feb 23, 2007. 1) Borg will be slightly more likely to
rest to
recover his HP/SP. 2) Borg will reset his recall depth a
little
more often especially if he is slightly out of depth (maximal
depth is about 5 deeper than what he is prepared to
handle). 3)
Borg will be slightly more likely to quaff his !Speed if fighting
certain annoying uniques (Wormtongue, Orc Uniques, Bullroarer)
Feb 11, 2007, 1) Repaired some of the Staff Buy-Sell loops. These were introduced when staves stacked. 2) Money Scumming seemed to double up some times. Meaning, after he scummed for the 20k to get the stat potion, he would purchase the potion then continue to scum another 20k. This is now repaired.
October 7, 2006, 1) Borg was having problems counting charges in his staff stacks.
July 15, 2006, 1) Sometimes the borg would cast Create Door in town which could leave him trapped in the ring of doors and he did not understand how to open them. That is now repaired.
July 11, 2006, 1) Found and corrected one source of shop-loops. If the borg was in rough shape upon returning from the dungeon, he might decide to buy something and sell something in the same turn.
July 8, 2006, 1) Some fine tuning to the sea of runes technique. 2) Do not use Teleport Level Defence maneuver if Morgoth is on the level. 3) Log the reason why the borg is looking for up-stairs. 4) I used a savefile of a mage at depth 100 to kill Morgoth about 10 times. There were only a few instances were he was getting whipped. I will try to resolve those this month.
July 6, 2006, 1) Some borgs (Paladins and Priests with < 650 HP
and valid Heal spells) were trying to Questor Combat Heal while in
town. 2) Borg Perma skills need not be cast in shallow depths, nor
should the high level borgs need to Lunal (stair) scum while shallow.
3) Borg.txt is updated to set the borg_self_lunal = FALSE. Self_lunal
mode was actually taking more turns to dive than looking for the stairs.
June 28, 2006, 1) I think I fixed that crash issue with low level borgs in the dungeon.
April 24, 2006, 1) It was possible for the borg to unhook on level 100 if he ran out of mana while making a sea of runes. 2) The borg needed to not do his Restock() checks while in town.
February 17, 2006, 1) Seasoned borgs (clevel 10) were dying on level 1 while trying to escape a 'scary guy level.' They would choose to not fight on the race to the stairs, and take hits from faster monsters. So now, if the borg is clevel >= depth*4, he will stand and fight. 2) Borg needed to be more open to the idea of using the using the Destruction staves.
February 12, 2006, 1) Borg needed a backup method to see if he was standing on stairs, so that he could use them to escape better. There were some cases of 'flowing to stairs 0' which means stair was under him, but he was not able to use. 2) 'Desperate for Stairs 3' allowed a low level borg in danger to continue moving to stairs instead of turning to fight. The borg was being too risky and dying. 3) Slight tweak on danger-escape thresholds to make the borg a bit more timid.