Yes, you are right! That would definitely make it the best weapon in the game. Though of course the player is also something of a sitting duck when he is that large.
Uh, yeah, you are right, I was wrong. I was looking at an earlier version of the code.
Indeed, natural weapons are defined by ATTACK to ensure that everyone always has a readied weapon. Here is the interesting part:
The damage die of a natural weapon is usually 3. The dodgability of a natural weapon is usually 2. The passive parry max of a natural weapon is usually 2. The active parry max of a natural weapon is usually 0.
Reproduced and eliminated. Due to a mistake of mine the explode-on-death power could never trigger. (Not that exploding when you are killed by Fafhrd will ever help you, since you canât absorb his soul to regain health, but hey!)
Great, glad you found it! Now, usually when youâre fighting Fafhrd, youâre also fighting the slug. If Fafhrd kills me in that situation, and I explode, do I have a chance to damage the slug, or is it only Fafhrd (the attacker) who can be damaged? I seem to recall from a brief glance at the source a few days ago that the latter is the case.
By the way, I like the new powers, and particularly that we now need to effectively cultivate the blood ape in order to gain the most benefit from himâlet him beat on us a bit so that he grows as large as possible, then finish him. He was pretty much a windshield kill before, particularly if you had already absorbed a soul or two.
EDITED: Oops, a bit of an unfinished thought in that first paragraph. My intention was to point out that the general Kerkerkruip model for explosions is an area effectâeveryone in the room is exposed to damage or whatever (e.g., frag and rust grenades). If itâs true that the power of the bomb only affects the entity who kills you, then it doesnât really feel like an explosion, in the context of the gameâs other explosions.
Further ideas for animated title screen
Iâve been brainstorming ideas, and I thought that a trophy gallery of the enemies that the player has killed might be a fun direction to go. This would cycle over the gameâs main menu, with the animation consisting of transitions between the creature portraits. Only enemies that the player has killed at least once would be shown. The animation could also provide statsâe.g., how many kills for each monster (and how many times he/she has killed you).
I thought that typographical collage might be a good illustration medium, since it gestures at both the use of a single letter for enemies in a roguelike (e.g., k for kobold) as well as the textiness of IF. It also happens to be a medium that leaves room for the playerâs imagination, and that is possible for someone w/o artistic talent (like myself) to do. Each enemy would be rendered using a different font, e.g. a sweeping calligraphic font might be appropriate for one character, while a boxier font might appropriate for another. Below is a draft of the Reaper rendered using glyphs from Zapfino, to show what I mean.
So, how does this sound to folks? (Particularly the dev team?) Would anyone be interested in contributing illustrations?
Yep. There are some tweaks Iâd like to make, but⌠yep.
(Itâs actually not that hardâyou need a little imagination to think of a suitable glyph for a particular situation, but otherwise since itâs collage you donât have to have a lot of abilityâŚ)
Well, I believe that I am being complimented here, so Iâll back off on the talent questionâŚ! In case youâre interested, here are some examples of the form that I think are pretty nice:
Well, I was using that as shorthand for âIâm kind of glad I didnât open it in front of my three-year-old.â Though of course itâs not like heâs unfamiliar with the concept of boobs.
Erik, that Reaper looks awesome! The general idea is also very appealing to me. Keeping track of the number of times a certain monster killed the player and was killed by the player is of course no problem. Itâs probably a nice addition to the game anyway. (It could be part of a bigger âStatisticsâ list, that also shows your win percentage on different difficulty levels, and so on.)
The only (slight) worry I have is that if we would like the gallery of monsters to remain complete, someone would have to contribute a drawing whenever a new monster is added to the game. But this worry is only slight because completeness would be nice but not terribly important.
I look forward to being terribly humbled by my statistics.
On a different note, wouldnât it be more interesting if you actually got the mindslugs power to enslave other enemies instead of killing them? To balance it, the power could strip them of their soul, so if they died for your glorious cause you wouldnât get any soul-eating benefits. Dominating another could involve a your-mind vs. their-spirit check. If the power is still felt to be unbalancing, the check could be repeated every so often. Maybe each time the slave loses, they could be cowed somewhat, leading them to lose spirit. When their spirit reaches zero they could fall into torpor.
Joey, I like the idea of being able to enslave monsters with the mindslugâs power. I guess the best thing would be something like this: when you kill the enemy, then if it fails a mind vs mind check against you, you enslave it. (We probably donât want to give the mindslugâs mindblast power to the player, because if you decide to use it, you should simply use it every turn â which kills the strategic depth of the combat.) Hm⌠it needs some thought, but I like the basic idea. Maybe you can get the normal soul absorption, and the guy follows you as a mindless slave without a soul? (If you donât get to absorb the soul, the power would probably be very bad to ever use.)
I was thinking it might be handy for when youâve already got a bunch of souls and you donât want to lose them but you need to get past a higher level enemy. Dominating instead of killing it would still give you a benefit (itâd follow you around killing stuff for you), you wouldnât lose your current souls, nor would you have to physically defeat the more powerful foe. It could make for an interesting decision. Unless the game has changed dramatically since I last played it, I remember that it was often the case that I didnât actually want to absorb souls (but maybe I should have been cannier about the order in which I was killing things).
Iâm not necessarily the god of playing Kerkerkruip, so others should definitely chime in, but I find it hard to believe that not absorbing all available souls is ever the best strategy. If nothing else, youâd be depriving yourself of one the very few possibilities of healing up. (I love to keep a low level monster alive somewhere so I can retreat from my fight with Malygris and heal up if needed.)
I think Iâd prefer a way to combining the enslave mechanic with the soul absorption mechanicâŚ
Though your idea and my idea could of course be combined: you enslave the enemy instead of killing it, and youâll get its soul later when it dies while under your command. (Maybe you even have a âdie Xâ command with which you can kill them when you want to.) That might be very useful indeed. It would need to be carefully balanced, but I like the basic idea.
Well you could balance having your slaves retain their souls by making it increasingly likely that theyâll successfully revolt, thus adding an element of risk in having them.
Thanks! Iâm excited about this. My thought about keeping the gallery in sync with new monsters was to show an empty picture frame (drawn in the same typographic collage technique) for missing monsters, with an appropriate or clever message (âArtwork not yet acquiredâ, âThis portrait was stolen by the Marquis LeVaine, we hope to restore it shortlyâ, something like that).
I may post a tutorial of sorts sometime to try to encourage art contributions.
Switching tracks, I really like the proposal to allow the player to make use of the slugâs mind control ability. A couple of thoughts:
Having the PCâs control over the slave weaken naturally as time progresses is a good idea. An alternative might be to have it weaken when the controlled creature takes damage, particularly when it takes a large amount of damage in a single turn. And if it takes that damage from the PC, that could provide an additional increase to the chance of rebelling. (This would make farming the slaveâs soul for hit points a bit more dangerous. Possibly it could be balanced a bit by allowing the playerâs first direct attack on the slave a to-hit bonus, due to its trust in the master.)
I like Victorâs suggestion that you have to defeat the enemy before enslaving him/her, but what should then be done about the slaveâs hit points? Does it get just 1 HP back? That would make it pretty weak and of fairly limited use. Or does it get half its original points, or some number according to its spirit score, or is it just fully healed? The latter probably provides the most interesting scope of opportunities.
If the mindslave kills an enemy with a soul, I assume that the player being present should still absorb the soul (it is the PC rather than the slave that has the soul-suck ability, after all). However, would it be possible for the slave to kill something when the player wasnât in the room, e.g. if the player retreats just before the slave lands a critical hit? Or does the game simply make this sort of thing impossible?
Though of course the player is also something of a sitting duck when he is that large.
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