DCSS variant: Crawl Light release announcement

[Derrick Sund]

I may as well get the inflammatory bit out of the way first.  The
development of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is in many ways at cross-
purposes with itself.  On the one hand, with each passing version, the
game takes on more and more of the character normally found only in
lousy ROMhacks: difficulty for the sake of difficulty rather than for
the sake of fun, design based around the capabilities of the game's
best players rather than those of the average player.  Having seen
games designed explicitly for expert players before and the quality
they tend to have, I find this troubling.

On the other hand, even as it makes the games balance increasingly
hostile to new players, the team also adds profoundly good
improvements to the game's interface.  The game has excellent
tutorials, and the ease-of-use of the tiles version of the game is
quite possibly matchless.  NetHack- and ADOM-style instadeaths are
nearly nonexistent, and one of the team's explicit goals is to reduce
the need for spoilers.  The goals, here, are both admirable and well
done.

But many of those improvements will be of interest only to beginners,
which begs the question: who is Stone Soup being designed for?  The
game, I fear, will soon find itself following in the footsteps of
monstrosities like The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds; it will have
a friendly appearance belying a brutal, impenetrable nature.  In the
future, the only people able to succeed in the game will be those who
have already learned how to play it in past versions.

And so, we come to this: it is with some solemnity that I announce a
variant of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, called Crawl Light.  The code is
based on that of Stone Soup 0.8.0 (with the 0.8.1 fixes applied
later).  This first version, Crawl Light 0.1, is intended to be
somewhat conservative in its changes (see the changelog below); my
estimation is that it is a bit easier than Stone Soup 0.8, but hardly
so easy as to be boring.  More ambitious changes, such as a
significant reduction in the game's length and the addition of
optional challenges earlier in the game, are planned for future
versions.

The Crawl Light homepage can be found at:
    http://crawl.aerdan.org

The page is currently rather sparse, but I hope to improve it.
Currently, you can find downloads for the Crawl Light 0.1 Windows
binary (both console and tiles), the OS X binary (just tiles,
presently), and the source code tarball.

The git repository for the project can be found at:
    https://github.com/dtsund/dtsund-crawl-mod

I welcome any and all people willing to contribute to the project.  As
is the case with Stone Soup, I intend for the development process to
be highly open; for now, the github page has a wiki for the project,
and ideas, bug reports, and code from any and all potential
contributors is welcome.  There is also a (currently lightly
populated, but I hope for this to change) IRC channel on FreeNode,
#crawllight.

And without further ado, the changelog:

Crawl Light 0.1 (20110812)
--------------------------

Disclaimer: These are merely the highlights, not an exhaustive list of
changes.
Breaks save compatibility with the Stone Soup 0.8 release.

Crawl Light 0.1 Highlights
--------------------------
* Charms, Hexes, and Poison Magic reshuffled to make the new
Enchantments and Sorcery schools.
* Restored spell: Selective Amnesia.
* Restored background: Arcane Marksman.  Now uses a different list of
spells.
* Removed species: Felids and Demigods.
* Acquirement now lets players choose between specific items rather
than classes of items.
* Haste and Slow nerf reverted.
* Tweaked backgrounds: Fighter, Gladiator, Monk, Assassin, Hunter,
Stalker, Wizard, Crusader.
* Automatic training of skills is now possible.

Character
---------
* Removed the Felid and Demigod races.
* Restored the Arcane Marksman background.  Now uses the new book of
Distance, detailed below.
* High Elves' -2 Poison Magic aptitude improved to +1 Sorcery.
* Halflings' 0 Charms aptitude lowered to -1 Enchantments, -1 Poison
Magic improved to 0 Sorcery.
* Centaurs' -2 Poison Magic aptitude improved to -1 Sorcery.
* Spriggans' 0 Poison Magic aptitude improved to +2 Sorcery.
* Vampires' +1 Enchantments aptitude lowered to 0 Charms, -1 Poison
Magic improved to +1 Sorcery.
* Assassins now get a wider variety of needles to use.
* Fighters now get better weaponry.
* Hunters may no longer start with nets and javelins.
* Gladiators now get javelins instead of a buckler, or exploding darts
for small races.
* Monks now begin the game with a +3,+0 ring of slaying.
* Hunters now begin the game with more ammunition.
* Okawaru followers now gain access to Might and Haste, rather than
Heroism and Finesse.
* Removed "monstrous" Demonspawn.

Interface
---------
* Ability success rates are now displayed as percentages, rather than
adjectives.
* Automatic training is now available in the skills menu.
* Monster HP indicator tiles have been replaced with less misleading
icons.
* Autoexplore now fails if Str, Int, or Dex is at lethally low levels.
* The halo surrounding holy beings and TSO followers is now visible in
the tiles version.
* Fire Storm, Ice Storm, and Major Destruction now warn players if
they're likely to catch themselves in an explosion.

Spells
------
* The Charms, Hexes, and Poison Magic schools have been replaced with
Enchantments and Sorcery.
* Except where otherwise noted, new Sorcery aptitudes are equal to old
Poison Magic aptitudes.
* Except where otherwise noted, new Enchantments aptitudes are equal
to old Charms aptitudes.
* Slow is now level 2 Ench/Sorc (was level 2 Hex).
* Leda's Liquefaction is now level 5 Sorc/Earth (was level 5 Tmut/
Earth).
* Passwall is now level 3 Tloc/Earth (was level 3 Tmut/Earth).
* Replaced Recall with Passwall in the book of Spatial Translocations.
* Replaced Repel Missiles with Throw Frost in the book of Minor Magic.
* Replaced Silence with Haste in the book of War Chants.
* Restored Summon Butterflies to the book of Cantrips.
* New book of Stalking: Corona, Fulsome Distillation, Evaporate,
Blink, Ensorcelled Hibernation, Passwall.
* Added book of Distance for Arcane Marksmen: Corona, Slow, Poison
Weapon, Leda's Liquefaction, Cause Fear.
* The Stone Soup 0.8 nerf of the Haste and Slow effects has been
reverted.
* Skills sufficient to grant 98% success or greater now confer 100%
success for spellcasting.
* Restored the Selective Amnesia spell.  Now found in the books of
Wizardry, Enchantments, and Dreams.
* Sticky Flame nerf reverted.

Monsters
--------
* Monsters may no longer invoke Zot traps against the player.
* Silent spectres have been completely overhauled to be fast but weak
Silence-casters.
* Skeletal warrior packs now have a chance of containing one, or
rarely more, silent spectres.
* Mennas' evasion lowered from 28 to 20, large shield reduced to
medium shield.
* Removed Silence from Mennas' spell list; instead, he has a band of
holy-flavoured silent spectres.
* Updated the megabat description.
* Added a special case message when attacking door mimics.

Levels
------
* Shoals has been temporarily disabled, pending an overhaul.
* Toned down the deadliness of a Swamp entrance vault with vampire
mosquitos.
* Removed the disco hall Pandemonium vault; it is extremely buggy in
the tiles version.
* Removed the ability for players to place shaft traps using Flight
and Minefield cards.
* Ghost moths removed from possible Spider's Nests.

Items
-----
* Scrolls of acquirement now let the player choose between specific
items rather than broad classes of item.
* Misc. acquirement replaced with potion acquirement.
* Manuals now increase the appropriate skill by 3 levels when read,
disintegrate immediately.
* Every non-randart spellbook now has a unique description.
* Crystal ball of energy nerf reverted.

Technical
---------
* All god invocation code is now in god-abil.cc
* mkrelease.sh script is now responsible for making build.h and
tarballs