Iiiiinteresting. All in favour of user-created content for those IF games which are suited to it, and Kerkerkruip is one of the more obvious candidates.
So you’re limiting it to marshmallow men of moderate and smaller sizes? I guess that makes sense. I mean, it would need to fit into the room …
No promises, but small-to-medium sized marshmallow men could be discussed. 
I’m planning to change it so that you can throw grenades into adjacent rooms. Hopefully will make them a little more useful!
Yeah I always tried doing that with grenades: I’ve never successfully used them in a fight.
We should talk about grenades, but maybe not in this thread. I’ve made a new Kerkerkruip discussions thread, so we can keep this one for the tutorials.
TUTORIAL 2: the cursed backstabber
For our second tutorial, we will apply the lessons learned last time, and create another weapon. Remember those nasty items in Kerkerkruip that can turn out to be something else, like the goggles of acuity turning out to be the goggles of blindness? It sounds like a good idea to make a cursed weapon that the dagger of the double strike we made last time can turn out to be. Here is the design idea:
- The backstabber is a cursed dagger that sometimes attacks a random person instead of your chosen target. This random person can be you yourself.
The fastest way to find out how to make an item that does X is almost always to look at some other code that does X. In this case, we can easily check the code for the goggles of acuity / goggles of blindness (or some other noncursed/cursed pair) to see how hidden identity works. Copying the relevant code and combining it with what we wrote about the dagger of the double strike leads to this:
[code]The backstabber is a cursed curse-identified dagger. The backstabber is proper-named.
The backstabber is iron.
A treasure placement rule (this is the double strike can be backstabber rule):
if a random chance of 1 in 4 succeeds:
now the hidden identity of the dagger of double strike is the backstabber.[/code]
Unlike a normal item, the backstabber has no valuation, i.e., it is not “minor”, “major”, or “epic”. (Technically, it has the default valuation “non-treasure”.) This means that it will never be generated in the dungeon. Instead, we generate the dagger of the double strike, and use a treasure placement rule that gives it a 25% chance of having the backstabber as its “hidden identity”. Kerkerkruip will automatically turn any piece of clothing or any weapon with a hidden identity into its hidden identity as soon as it is worn or wielded.*
For the same reason that the backstabber has no valuation, it also has no mood.
The backstabber is “cursed”, which means that it cannot be removed once wielded, and “curse-identified”, which means that the player can see that it is cursed. Normally, cursed items are not curse-identified, because then the player would never wear or wield them; they only turn curse-identified when it is too late and they already stick to the player. Items with a “hidden identity” work a little differently: we are actually going to replace the dagger of the double strike with the backstabber once it is readied, so there is no reason not to have the backstabber be curse-identified from the start.
We need to give the backstabber a description:
The description of the backstabber is "This treacherous blade sometimes strikes out at random people -- including yourself.".
The special weapon info of the backstabber is "; sometimes attacks a random person instead of the intended target[run paragraph on]"
And now we need to code the special ability of the weapon. Looking at our code from last time, this shouldn’t be hard. We just need to randomly substitute one hitting action for another:
[code]Making-backstab is a truth state that varies. Making-backstab is false.
First check an actor hitting (this is the hitting with the backstabber rule):
if the global attacker weapon is the backstabber:
if making-backstab is false:
if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
let X be a random alive person in the location of the actor;
unless X is the noun:
say “The [bold type]backstabber[roman type] attacks [X] instead!”;
now making-backstab is true;
try the actor hitting X instead.
Check an actor hitting (this is the reset backstab rule):
now making-backstab is false.[/code]
The making-backstab variable ensures that the backstabber doesn’t redirect the action more than once. The current code will make the player attack himself 25% of the time in 1-on-1 fights. In bigger fights, the possibility of attacking someone you don’t mean to can rise to 50%. Obviously, this is not a weapon you want to be wielding!
Of course, you want to test this item to see whether it works as expected. To do so, it is smart to change both the random chance that the dagger of the double strike is the backstabber and the random chance that the backstabber redirects your attack to 100%, and then to add a “When play begins” rule that puts the dagger of the double strike in the Entrance Hall. That way, you can easily test whether the code works as it should.
- Actually, this is only true for weapons since I wrote that code today. This was an oversight, but we never had weapons with hidden identity before.
TUTORIAL 3: Cloak of reflection
The backstabber, which turns an attack to someone other than the intended target, gave me the idea of implement the cloak of reflection, a cloak that sometimes turns ranged attacks back to the person who makes them. There aren’t that many ranged in the game currently: Bodmal’s lightning bolt and the staff used by the tormentor of Aite both count as ranged, and so does the glass cannon. So such a cloak would be of only minor usefulness, but it might be a fun addition to the game.
Therefore we write:
[code]The cloak of reflection is a minor cloak.
The cloak of reflection is magical.
The cloak of reflection is cloth.
The description of the cloak of reflection is “A piece of silk with thousands of small magical mirrors sewn on it, this cloak is both beautiful and useful. It will sometimes, though not infallibly, reflect back ranged attacks to the attacker.”.[/code]
All of this should be straightforward. Cloaks are one of the pre-defined pieces of clothing, as you can see in the Kerkerkruip Items file. The mood is “magical”, the valuation is “minor”, the material is “cloth”. (Kerkerkruip only supports one material per item, so we don’t define it as cloth, glass and silver, even though the description of the item might make us assume that all these materials are part of it.)
The code that will actually turn around the attacks is really easy. The only new ingredient we need to know is that a weapon can be “ranged”.
First check an actor hitting (this is the cloak of reflection rule):
if the noun wears the cloak of reflection:
if the global attacker weapon is ranged:
if a random chance of 2 in 7 succeeds:
say "The cloak of reflection [bold type]reflects[roman type] the attack back to [the actor]!";
try the actor hitting the actor instead.
It then suddenly seemed like a good idea to sometimes give the cloak of reflection to Malygris, just to make the final fight a little more unpredictable. (We probably need more random changes to Malygris in the game.) Turning the glass cannon on Malygris and finding out that he is wearing the cloak of reflection is going to be… interesting. For this purpose, we use a dungeon interest rule. These rules run after the dungeon has been made and the monsters and treasure have been placed, and they’re meant to add some spice to the dungeon.
A dungeon interest rule (this is the Malygris sometimes wears the cloak of reflection rule):
if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds:
if Malygris does not wear a cloak:
now Malygris wears the cloak of reflection;
if generation info is true, say "* Malygris wears the cloak of reflection.".
That’s it!
By the way, you may be wondering whether the dungeon doesn’t get too full if we keep adding more item. The answer is no: the game places a specified number of minor (6-12), major (3-6) and epic (1-2) items, which does not depend on the total number of items we have defined.
TUTORIAL 4: Spiked mace of the ape king
Let’s make another weapon. This time, we take our cue from the blood ape, the level 1 monster who grows in size every time he damages someone. What about a weapon that grows in size every time it damages someone? We’ll call it the “spiked mace of the ape king”. When it’s small, it won’t be very powerful, but as it grows it gets better and better, until it starts becoming too big and unwieldy. In the end, it becomes so big that you can’t use it any more. Tactically speaking, then, the player should increase the mace’s size against easy monsters until it reaches a point where it becomes an effective weapon; then use the mace at its best against worthy foes; and stop using it once it stops being worth it.
There is no mace kind. While this is not necessary, we’ll start by making one:
[code]A mace is a kind of weapon.
A mace is usually iron.
The damage die of a mace is usually 5.
The weapon attack bonus of a mace is usually 0.
The weapon damage bonus of a mace is usually 1.
The dodgability of a mace is usually 2.
The passive parry max of a mace is usually 2.
The active parry max of a mace is usually 2.[/code]
This makes maces middle of the road weapons: more damage than daggers and swords, but less than axes; average dodge/parry statistics.
We now define the spiked mace of the ape king:
[code]The spiked mace of the ape king is a major mace.
The spiked mace of the ape king is barren.
The spiked mace of the ape king is iron.
The spiked mace of the ape king has a size.[/code]
Sizes are already used for the blood ape, so why not use them here as well? However, we will make the changes in the mace more fine-grained than just the couple of sizes that Kerkerkruip defines, and to do so, we will set up a table.
Table of Spiked Mace of the Ape King
Blood Dam WAB WDB DOD PPM APM Size
0 3 1 0 1 2 2 tiny
1 3 1 0 1 2 2 tiny
2 4 1 0 1 2 2 small
3 4 1 1 1 2 2 small
4 5 0 1 1 2 2 small
5 5 0 1 1 2 2 medium
6 6 0 2 2 2 2 medium
7 6 0 2 2 2 2 medium
8 7 0 2 2 2 1 large
9 7 -1 3 2 1 1 large
10 8 -1 3 2 1 1 large
11 8 -1 3 3 1 1 huge
12 9 -2 3 3 1 1 huge
13 9 -2 4 3 1 0 huge
14 10 -2 4 4 1 0 gargantuan
15 10 -3 4 4 0 0 gargantuan
Blood is the number of hits that have been made, and the other columns are damage die, weapon attack bonus, weapon damage bonus, dodgability, passive parry max, active parry max, and size. The middle rows define a very good weapon: 1d6+2 damage with no significant drawbacks is definitely above-average. The early rows define a weak weapon: 1d3+0 damage is just not a lot, and a +1 attack bonus is not enough to counteract this. The late rows define a powerful weapon that is very hard to hit with; 1d10+4 damage is amazing, but the -3 attack penalty combined with the fact that a dodging opponent gives you another -4 penalty, makes doing that damage nigh impossible.
Now we need code that will change the weapon to reflect this table.
[code]Spiked-mace-blood is a number that varies. Spiked-mace-blood is 0.
To set stats for the spiked mace of the ape king:
now the spiked mace of the ape king is iron;
now the spiked mace of the ape king is not rusted;
if spiked-mace-blood is less than 16:
choose row with a blood of spiked-mace-blood in the Table of Spiked Mace of the Ape King;
now the damage die of the spiked mace of the ape king is Dam entry;
now the weapon attack bonus of the spiked mace of the ape king is WAB entry;
now the weapon damage bonus of the spiked mace of the ape king is WDB entry;
now the dodgability of the spiked mace of the ape king is DOD entry;
now the passive parry max of the spiked mace of the ape king is PPM entry;
now the active parry max of the spiked mace of the ape king is APM entry;
now the size of the spiked mace of the ape king is Size entry;
otherwise:
let guy be a random person who has the spiked mace of the ape king;
unless guy is nothing: [who knows whether we program animated weapons at some point?]
say “The [bold type]spiked mace of the ape king[roman type] suddenly grows so big that [guy] cannot hold on to it. It [bold type]crashes[roman type] to the floor!”;
move spiked mace of the ape king to location of guy;
otherwise:
say “The [bold type]spiked mace of the ape king[roman type] suddenly [bold type]crashes[roman type] to the floor!”;
move spiked mace of the ape king to location of spiked mace of the ape king;
now spiked mace of the ape king is not readied;
now spiked mace of the ape king is fixed in place;
now description of spiked mace of the ape king is “The mace has grown to such proportions that not even the strongest man in the world would be able to lift it.”.[/code]
The first if-block sets the new properties of the mace after it has grown, while the second handles the case where the mace has grown too big to use: it falls down and becomes a fixed in place object. We do some subtle things here. First, we assume that growing turns the mace back into an iron, unrusted weapon. This is mostly because otherwise, the interaction with Bodmall’s turn-to-wood power would become really weird; perhaps we will implement a more elegant solution once we get round to implementing a more powerful materials system. We also ensure that the dropping-and-fixing-in-place stuff also works correctly when nobody is holding the mace. While this is useless code in the current Kerkerkruip, one can imagine scenarios in which this might become essential: animated weapons, thrown weapons, stuff like that. We prefer to always be cautious and make as few assumptions as possible.
We shouldn’t forget to call this routine at the beginning of the game:
When play begins:
set stats for the spiked mace of the ape king.
We want the description of the mace to reflect its size (the numerical statistics are shown automatically):
The description of spiked mace of the ape king is "A ball studded with sharp spikes and put at the end of a stick makes a simple but effective weapon. It is currently of [size of spiked mace of the ape king] size.".Finally, we need to make a rule that actually makes the mace grow! For special stuff that happens at the end of an attack, the aftereffects rules are the place to go:
An aftereffects rule (this is the spiked mace grows rule):
if the global attacker weapon is the spiked mace of the ape king:
if the attack damage is greater than 0:
increase spiked-mace-blood by 1;
set stats for the spiked mace of the ape king;
if spiked-mace-blood is less than 16:
say "The spiked mace of the ape king grows!"
There we have it: a new, and quite peculiar weapon.
A couple of concerns about Malygris’s wearing the cloak of reflection (and I haven’t source-dived, so take this with a grain of salt):
If the game places the cloak in the dungeon and then gives it to Malygris, is the player deprived of an extra item?
Should the cloak of reflection rule say “Malygris’s cloak of reflection…” when Malygris is wearing it? I think I’d be pretty confused about what had happened with this message.
I also wonder about the balance effects of giving Malygris the cloak – it seems like every time you use the glass cannon on Malygris, there’s a 1/35 chance of getting wiped out yourself, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Though maybe there are other items that would let you recover. It might at least be a bit user-friendly to include something in Malygris’s description that changes when he has the cloak, so the alert player only gets burned once. It can be good to have something on the final boss that sometimes prevents a superweapon from working, as long as there’s a workaround (nethack spoilers):
The high priest of Moloch has something like a 1/13 chance of being generated with a cloak of magic resistance instead of a robe, which can be a problem for my strategy of walking in and blasting him with a wand of death. He got me down to single-digit HP before I got the door shut. Fortunately, the high priest didn’t realize that when you’re generated next to a cockatrice, it’s a good idea to block the door.
Matt, would your concerns be lessened by the fact that you can see what items an NPC is wielding / wearing by examining the NPC? So the player doesn’t need to be taken by surprise, and can of course decide not to use a ranged weapon. (The cloak of reflection can even be examined itself to see what it does, so an alert player doesn’t even need to be burned once.)
Do you think this would be confusing?
I guess I would assume that it was something Malygris was wearing, but if you think it is confusing, I can word the phrase differently.
And yes, the player is deprived of an item, but the number of items is random anyway, and other random events can add items to the player’s pool of possible loot. So this doesn’t concern me.
It would indeed. I haven’t played for, ah, a while, and had forgotten about that.
I guess I’d probably figure it out pretty quickly, but if it said “Malygris’s cloak of reflection” I’d figure it out even quicker. And the fix is pretty simple, isn’t it?
"[if the noun is the player]The[otherwise][The noun]'s[end if] cloak of reflection [bold type]reflects[roman type] the attack back to [the actor]!"Done, except that I always use “[Possessive of the noun]” rather than “[The noun]'s”. (I don’t know if this ever makes any difference?)
It makes a difference if you haven’t included Plurality for some reason, which I usually haven’t in my toy test examples.
ATTACK itself includes Plurality, it’s very dependent on it.
RIght, I just meant that when I write little code snippets I tend not to use things that depend on Plurality, because I’m not experienced in it. This will probably change if I ever write a real game.
Tutorial 5: The Arcane Vault
Today we’ll be making a room. This is a rare magical room known as the Arcane Vault. In the middle of the Arcane Vault is crystal pedestal on which the player will find an exotic and powerful magical book – and when I say “exotic and powerful”, I mean bizarre. That is why the room is rare.
How do we make a room? The first part is easy.
The Arcane Vault is a room. "An oppressive silence pervades the marble hall, as if all earthly sounds are smothered by the alien force of magic. For magic is strong here, and seems to be radiating outward from a crystal pedestal in the middle of the room."But if we look at the rooms in the Kerkerkruip Rooms extension, we will see that immediately after the description, a lot of properties are defined that we are unfamiliar with.
The Arcane Vault is connectable.
The Arcane Vault is not connection-inviting.
The Arcane Vault is placeable.
The Arcane Vault is not habitable.
The Arcane Vault is not treasurable.
The Arcane Vault is teleportable.
The Arcane Vault is not extra-accepting.
The Arcane Vault is vp-agnostic.
The Arcane Vault is magical.
What does all that mean?
If a room is not connectable, then (a) the dungeon generation rules will not connect any later-placed rooms to it, and (b) you cannot dig to or from it. This property is meant for rooms like the bridge of doom, where it would make no sense for the dungeon generator (or the player with a magical spade) to connect it to a room above it, say. Normally, we don’t need to worry about that, so almost all rooms in the game are connectable.
A room that is connection-inviting will always be linked up with rooms that are generated next to it. We use this for rooms that should feel like transportation hubs (like the Entrance Hall) or that are just more fun if there are more rooms connected to it (like the Hall of Vapours).
A room that is placeable can be placed by the normal dungeon generating rules. It should only be used for rooms that can be part of the normal dungeon. The Hidden Treasury, the Maze and the Elemental Plane of Smoke are not placeable, for instance.
The dungeon generation rules will only place monsters in habitable rooms, treasures in treasurable rooms, and extra scenery objects in extra-accepting rooms.
Teleportation will only ever take you to teleportable rooms. (We don’t want teleportations to end up in the Lake of Lava, or the Eterenal Prison, or places like that.)
A vp-agnostic room is one which doesn’t care whether it is placed high or low in the dungeon. (Some rooms have a preference – just for flavour. It is probably not noticed by players.)
Finally, just like items rooms have moods, which are used to match items to rooms. The mood of the Arcane Vault is of course magical.
Now, what we want is the following. Sometimes, but rarely, the Arcane Vault will be found in the dungeon itself. And sometimes, but also rarely, it will lie waiting around for an enterprising player with a magical spade. We ensure the first by giving the room a rarity of 5 (making it 32 times less likely to spawn than a normal room), and the second by a rule we copy more or less verbatim from the other hidden rooms:
[code]The rarity of Arcane Vault is 5.
A dungeon interest rule (this is the potentially add the Arcane Vault rule):
if Arcane Vault is not placed:
if a random chance of 1 in 30 succeeds:
put Arcane Vault in a near location;
now Arcane Vault is not teleportable.[/code]
Note two things: we only add the Arcane Vault in a random location if the dungeon generation rules have not already made it “placed”; and if it is placed in a random, unconnected location, we remove the ‘teleportable’ attribute. We don’t want the player to end up in a place she can’t escape from.
Let’s add this, because it goes well with the room description:
Instead of listening to the Arcane Vault:
say "All sounds seem muffled and unreal.".
And now we write the crystal pedestal:
[code]The crystal pedestal is scenery in Arcane Vault. The crystal pedestal is a supporter. The description of crystal pedestal is “The pedestal is made of a pale purple crystal you have never seen before. On top of it lies [if at least one tome is on the crystal pedestal][a random tome on the crystal pedestal][otherwise]a tome-shaped piece of air[end if].”
A dungeon interest rule (this is the place a tome on the pedestal rule):
let item be a random off-stage tome;
move item to the crystal pedestal;
if generation info is true, say “* Put [item] on the pedestal.”.
Check taking a tome (this is the do no remove tomes from the pedestal rule):
if the noun is on the crystal pedestal:
say “The magical forces binding the tome to the pedestal are too great.” instead.[/code]
“dungeon generation” is a truth state that is false in released versions of the game, but that as developers we sometime toggle to true. (It is in the main source file.) It is good design to announce all decisions of the dungeon generating process if generation info is true.
If you are wondering what it looks like, check this:
[rant]Generating map…
- north of Entrance Hall (0, 0, 0) is Alchemical Laboratory (1, 0, 0).
- west of Entrance Hall (0, 0, 0) is Hall of Mirrors (0, -1, 0).
- down of Hall of Mirrors (0, -1, 0) is Portal Room (0, -1, -1).
- east of Portal Room (0, -1, -1) is Crypt (0, 0, -1).
- south of Entrance Hall (0, 0, 0) is Workshop of the Blademaster (-1, 0, 0).
- north of Hall of Mirrors (0, -1, 0) is Bridge of Doom (1, -1, 0).
- north of Bridge of Doom (1, -1, 0) is Library (2, -1, 0).
- down of Bridge of Doom (1, -1, 0) is Lake of Lava (1, -1, -1).
- south of Workshop of the Blademaster (-1, 0, 0) is Drawing Room (-2, 0, 0).
- Placed Quartering Room west of Drawing Room.
- west of Library (2, -1, 0) is Hall of Vapours (2, -2, 0).
- Adding connection between Entrance Hall and Crypt.
Placing monsters…
- Placing blood ape (level 1) in Workshop of the Blademaster.
- Placing Reaper (level 2) in Hall of Mirrors.
- Placing Miranda (level 1) in Bridge of Doom.
- Placing mindslug (level 3) in Drawing Room.
- Placing chain golem (level 2) in Portal Room.
- Placing Bodmall (level 4) in Library.
- Placing Malygris (level 5) in Hall of Vapours.
Placing treasures…
-
Decided that small-rust-grenade-pack is too rare.
-
placed crown of the empire in Library
-
placed small-scroll-of-summoning-pack in Library
-
placed small-scroll-of-identify-pack in Hall of Vapours
-
placed small-flash-grenade-pack in Drawing Room
-
placed fearsome axe in Entrance Hall
-
placed second-small-scroll-of-identify-pack in Entrance Hall
-
placed small-scroll-of-shadows-pack in Drawing Room
-
placed suit of plate mail in Library
-
placed deathly-pack in Drawing Room
-
placed Blessed Grenade in Quartering Room
-
placed large-scroll-of-teleportation-pack in Drawing Room
-
placed large-fragmentation-grenade-pack in Drawing Room
-
placed cloak of shadows in Drawing Room
-
placed robe of the dead mage in Quartering Room
-
Putting small-scroll-of-skill-pack in sarcophagus.
-
Cursed cloak of reflection.
-
Cursed cursed boots of wandering.
-
Cursed monk’s robe.
-
Cursed vampiric dagger.
-
Malygris wears the cloak of reflection.
-
Put Tome of Transmutation on the pedestal.
-
placed flickering lamps in Drawing Room
-
placed holy symbols in Workshop of the Blademaster
-
scroll labelled MORT EILYSH: scroll-death.
-
scroll labelled NAAR OD ERAE: scroll-ghoulification.
-
scroll labelled DOLP ZEEZ: scroll-teleportation.
-
scroll labelled CHETNAK: scroll-remove-curse.
-
scroll labelled CISTROB JIRSGEV: scroll-shadows.
-
scroll labelled TWAN METIER: scroll-protection.
-
scroll labelled HERMEI LE SCHIM: scroll-blade.
-
scroll labelled LONSIFIRA: scroll-skill.
-
scroll labelled KRIPMETEEL: scroll-ethereal.
-
scroll labelled SOUSPENOT: scroll-identify.
-
scroll labelled SHALM SAWESAS: scroll-summoning.
-
scroll labelled ZYXYZ: scroll-fireworks.
Finishing the dungeon…[/rant]
By the way, this code assumes that we have a tome kind, which is not in Kerkerkruip version 5: I just added it. But we already did have a tome, namely, the Tome of Transmutation, which turns all objects of a randomly chosen material into objects of another randomly chosen material. We’ll make more tomes in our next few tutorials.
Tutorial 6: The Tome of Sudden Death
Let’s have some fun. Tomes will be very rare, so we don’t need to worry about actually making things balanced, you know?
[code]A tome is a kind of thing.
The indefinite article of a tome is usually “the”.
The description of a tome is usually “Who knows what will happen if you decide to read this legendary work of magic?”[/code]
We’re not even telling the player what the item does, in decidedly non-Kerkerkruip fashion. That’s just an extra signal that tomes are meant for fun. And what could be more fun than reading something called the “Tome of Sudden Death” without knowing what it does? 
It’s not as bad as it sounds.
[code]The Tome of Sudden Death is a tome.
Tome of Sudden Death is paper.
Tome of Sudden Death is magical.
The sudden-death-boolean is a truth state that varies. Sudden-death-boolean is false.
Every turn when sudden-death-boolean is true:
repeat with guy running through alive persons:
now health of guy is 1.
Instead of reading the tome of sudden death:
say “Life is fragile. A single blow could kill a man.”;
remove tome of sudden death from play;
now sudden-death-boolean is true;
rule succeeds.[/code]
It is like the sudden death mode of a shooter: everyone gets one health, so every hit is fatal. That should certainly make for a unique game experience.
Tutorial 7: The Tome of the Brightest Flame
Our next tome is going to be an item that makes the player more or less invulnerable… but will kill her after 30 turns.
[code]Section - Tome of the Brightest Flame
The Tome of the Brightest Flame is a tome.
Tome of the Brightest Flame is paper.
Tome of the Brightest Flame is magical.
Brightest-flame-counter is a number that varies. Brightest-flame-counter is 0.
Instead of reading the tome of the brightest flame:
say “You have chosen fame over a long life. Achieve it while you may!”;
now hit protection of the player is 50;
now brightest-flame-counter is 31.[/code]
The only new thing here is the “hit protection” variable. It is defined in the section on the scroll of protection (in Kerkerkruip Items). Whenever you are hit by an attack, if your hit protection is greater than 0, you’ll take no damage at all and the hit protection decreases by 1. The scroll of protection grants an average hit protection of 1.4… and obviously, 50 is ridiculous.
But there are other sources of damage, like the fragmentation grenade and the squeezing tentacle. To counteract those, we’ll use a physical damage reduction rule. These rules should add a certain number to the global variable called ‘pdr’, with each point added to pdr counting as one point of negated damage.
A physical damage reduction rule (this is the brightest flame damage reduction rule):
if the test subject is the player and brightest-flame-counter is not 0:
increase the pdr by 100.
Now for the code that will kill (and warn) the player:
Every turn when brightest-flame-counter is not 0:
if main actor is the player:
decrease brightest-flame-counter by 1;
if brightest-flame-counter is 30 or brightest-flame-counter is 20 or brightest-flame-counter is 10 or brightest-flame-counter is 5 or brightest-flame-counter is 1:
say "You will [bold type]die[roman type] in [brightest-flame-counter] turn[unless brightest-flame-counter is 1]s[end if]!";
if brightest-flame-counter is 0:
end the story saying "Your moment of fame has come and gone.".
That’s it! No, wait… we would like to have a special victory message here, because the player is still fated to die if she manages to kill Malygris. For such special occassions, we have the victory message rules:
Victory message rule (this is the brightest flame message rule):
if brightest-flame-counter is not 0:
end the story saying "You have destroyed your foe, and will be able to enjoy your victory for another [brightest-flame-counter] turns!";
rule succeeds.
That’s it. Reading this tome will send the player on a race to find and kill Malygris within 30 turns – which, being almost totally immune to any form of damage, shouldn’t be too hard.