Well, that was a bit of work, but Bodmall’s power is now ready. I’m attaching a build of the game with this post; obviously, this is a beta, or rather, a pre-beta release. If you want to test it, that would be great.
Couple of comments and questions:
It might well be the case that currently the game is too easy, because all the powers have become better.
Since we now have people attacking themselves once they’ve become insane, we probably need special prose for that. I haven’t written this yet.
Dannii, is the new scrolls code ready to be merged with master?
Erik, is it sensible to put the reaper / chain golem / Miranda art that you made already in this release? (I’ll have to write some code that tracks number of kills/deaths to support it, but that shouldn’t be too much work.)
I’ll make the changes we discussed and then merge it for you. [Edit: done. The probabilities are only shifted slightly. We can change them after testing if we don’t like them.]
For the cover art, should we wait till the whole set is ready? That might be more impressive.
I think I agree with Dannii that it would be best to wait until there are more illustrations before incorporating them into the game. We don’t necessarily need to wait for the whole set, but I’d like to see at least 8 or so before we go ahead…
When I explode with the power of the bomb, it only affects the enemy that killed me–there’s no area effect. Is that intentional? One upshot is that, in the situation where you are fighting the mindslug and slaves, if you are killed by one of the slaves, the power can do you no good–they have no souls to consume. Since there are two slaves and they attack more often than the slug, there’s a good chance that it will shake out this way…
After dying in just that way, I got a message saying “You have unlocked new content:” … followed by a very long bulleted list of every item and room in the game, including all of the rooms (including the reserved tunnels).
I think that the presentation of the faculties in the stats could be cleaner. Here’s how they currently are printed:
Preferable might be:
or, following the presentation of combat stats:
Better yet would be that, instead of “bonus/penalty”, we were told exactly what the cause of the buff is (e.g., “stunned”)–but that’s probably more work than it’s worth to track.
Anyway, looking good so far! I still haven’t had a chance to try any of the juicy new powers.
Dannii, I’m having some problems with github. I downloaded the latest master branch, but this didn’t contain my last two commits anymore… even though I did commit them, these commits are listed at github, and your two scroll commits didn’t touch these files. And now my github shell is giving error. Hm… I’ll try to sort it out, but it might be a good idea not to touch master until I get things back in order. Never mind, I’m just stupid.
Ah, uh… if you were killed in your first game, the game thought “this guy has 0 victories, so he has just unlocked everything in the game with unlock level 0, i.e., almost everything”. In other words, I forgot to check whether the player was actually victorious!
That’s it for tonight. I attach the new pre-beta to this post, which contains several changes that one can look up at github if so inclined.
This is intended. I have two reasons for it (not counting the fact that changing it means more work ). The first is that this is also how the bomb itself works, and should work – you don’t want the bomb to kill you if it manages to hit someone else. The second is that if you let the power of the bomb damage everyone in the room, there are situations in which the effect would depend on the order in which people are killed. Since this order is random, this would be messy.
(The first situation in which this can happen is if you kill both Malygris and some other not-levelless creature. If Malygris dies first, he’ll swallow you, and you lose. If the other person dies first, you swallow him, and win. The second situation is if you kill both the abyss of the soul and a not-levelless creature. If the abyss of the soul dies first, you can swallow the soul of the second guy and survive. If the second guy dies first, you’ll both be swallowed by the abyss of the soul, and you die.)
Obviously, this could be reworked if it seems very desirable, but I’m not sure that it does?
I have adopted and implemented your first proposal, as it seems the cleanest (a single glance at the left shows you the really important stuff, that is, the final scores.
All monsters now have a new prose rule for attacking themselves (which they can do when insane) and another for waiting when they are insane. I had a lot of fun with this!
It also led me to write an obscure and hard-to-get new victory condition… which I’d like to leave for anyone to discover for themselves.
I have ensured all monsters have sensible body, mind and spirit scores.
I have implemented Erik’s suggestion for showing your scores in the stats list.
Some Bodmall fixes; most relevantly, the power of Bodmall’s thorns and fruits no longer depends on the player’s body score if she is still the one controlling them.
Couple of new (or re-enabled) items that increase you body, mind or spirit while worn.
The fungicide contraption should probably accept the verb “use”.
The mindslug’s power absorption message says “dominate” rather than “enslave”.
I suggest removing the word “your” from the dagger’s initial description. It makes more sense when you’re hidden, and it gives it an edge even when you’re not.
Those sound like good reasons. I still have the feeling that a passive ability like the bomb ought to be useful in most situations, at least when we are fighting an enemy with a soul (regardless of whether he has levelless thralls). Maybe a very minor tweak would be appropriate? Something like this:
When the player is killed by a levelless creature, we check to see if there are any creatures with an absorbable soul in the room. If there are, the PC throws herself at the most powerful such creature in a final desperate play to kill it and absorb its soul. This would enable the player to use the power productively, but would also avoid the issues you mentioned.
Refinements could be made: Maybe we do this instead only when the character who killed the PC is a slave and his master is in the room. That would cover the case of the mindslug and its slaves, while leaving the player out in the cold if he simply got tripped up by a smoke demon while fighting Bodmall.
By the way, one of the reasons that I’m pushing this a bit is that I’ve been kicking around the idea of a necromancer in the back of my mind, and that would be another situation where we would see a weakened bomb power–if you’re killed by his undead minions, the power would be no good to you, even as the undead minions are probably the necromancer’s most important attack…
I’ll make it so. I’ll have it include your own slaves, but not your allies. (I don’t think it’s possible to have a non-levelless ally currently, but still.)
I played a few rounds of the pre-beta. It had a slightly different character than Kerkerkruip 1, and felt a little harder, but I think the goals of adding more interesting decisions and making powers affect play style more were definitely accomplished. It was fun. Things that did strike me as needing revision:
Mind currently seems weaker than spirit, and spirit weaker than body. I can always use more initiative or more attack strength, but rarely am I going to gamble with my concentration.
I used to use flash grenades quite a lot in combination with Bodmall’s power, especially in situations where my chance to hit was low, and I needed to wear down my opponent some other way. Now that brambles deal no damage, they seem much less useful.
Also, I found some bugs. Do you want those reported here or on github?
My gut instinct is that mind is better than body and spirit. Sure, you don’t want to gamble with your concentration… but you do it anyway. Every time you concentrate, you’re gambling; and not losing your concentration when you are hit is a huge advantage. I guess we’ll have to play more to be sure, though.
Brambles will still deal damage when you launch their thorns, of course, and their -2 penalty to (almost all) enemy attacks is not something to be scoffed at. Add to that the fact that high level enemies were mostly immune to the previous brambles anyway (because they had higher dexterity scores), and I sure hope that the new brambles are actually more useful than the old ones. But they require more player decisions, which is good. However, this too is something we’ll have to find out by playing more.
Flash grenades are currently quite useless, and this is a problem. Overhauling the grenades is something we’re planning to do in an upcoming release.
Reporting bugs here would be best. I’ve been terribly neglecting Mantis, and I don’t think it’s all that useful as long as I am the only person who is fixing bugs. Just writing them down on a piece of paper next to me computer is much more efficient.
I’ll admit I haven’t played a lot, so my perception of mind might be unfair.
Sorry about the ambiguous wording on the second bullet; by ``they’’ I meant the flash grenades.
Bugs (mostly minor):
The Minotaur power shows up in the status when the power of rage is granted.
The status description for the power of the jumping bomb is now inaccurate: ``When you die, you explode, dealing as much damage to your enemy as the enemy dealt to you. This gives you a last chance to kill your enemy, and perhaps absorb his soul and come back to life in the process. (Level 2)‘’
``Body’’ is capitalized in body checks.
A negative modifier to body, mind, or spirit shows up as a bonus'' rather than a penalty’'.
An insane defender of Aite may ask, ``Do you think this wil hurt?‘’ (note the typo).
Killing Malygris when the Nameless Horror is on the loose yields the victory message ``you end will not be pretty’’ (note the typo).
Attacks, even nearly fatal ones, can go unnoticed, as in:
Dig can be used as a reaction.
Reading a tome is impossible because it requires holding the untakable.
A scroll of remove curse doesn’t affect the Crown of Hargo (and possibly other items with hidden identities) before it’s discovered.
Reading a scroll of teleportation as a reaction and arriving in the Hall of Mirrors causes the attacker to perform the mind check for the reflections, even though they’re (usually) not in the hall.
The scroll of protection has no effect on fragmentation grenades.
The body of an attacker killed by a fragmentation grenade continues the attack anyway.
Dodging has no adverse effect on the bridge of doom.
An ethereal player dies on entering the lava under the bridge of doom.
Using the lash power isn’t counted as a violation of Nomos’ command.
Praying to Nomos results in this:
The jumping bomb can kill an ethereal player.
Being grappled by the tentacle interacts doesn’t prevent movement to other rooms via a portal or via digging.
The tentacle can grapple an ethereal character.
Even when grappling, the tentacle can lose track of a player wearing the cloak of shadows.
The tentacle’s squeeze is unaffected by the scroll of protection.
If the tentacle grabs a digging player, the player’s movement out of the room is not stopped.
The tentacle retains its accumulated grapple power after killing the smoke demon.
The smoke demon can re-form in a grappled state.
If the smoke demon does not detect the player, prose like ``The smoke demon casts his vaporous tendrils towards the smoke demon’’ is generated.
The smoke demon sometimes dodges nothing after regeneration.
A successful regular attack after a failed stun attempt has stunning effects.
Pierce against the chain golem gives:
A dead player can still lash out, changing the end message to the one for suicide.
Bees can deal damage to a dead player. For instance,
Malygris will teleport away even if he hasn’t yet noticed a hidden player.
A lot of bugs, thanks! (I’ve already fixed the Nomos bug, which was introduced by the introduction of a new hitting action. Oh well, complex software…)
Anyone wishing to play the game might want to try the newest beta build, which I’ve attached below. Not all known bugs have been fixed yet (only a few of those emacsuser has reported). Changelog:
Nomos prayer works again.
Daggers can no longer perform a pre-scheduled attack when scattered (e.g., by lash).
The player can no longer hide when grappled.
If you dig while immobile (e.g., grappled), you will no longer move to the new location.
Spurious newline fix for Bridge of Doom skill check.
Cosmetic newline change for unlocking content.
Minotaur power now listed in stats when you have the minotaur’s power (rather than the power of rage).
Updated jumping bomb power status description.
New update
Improved the Nomos and scattering fixes, though you probably won’t notice this.
Fixed three typos mentioned by emacsuser.
Swarm of bees is now ambiguously plural.
Body/mind/spirit penalties now listed as “penalty”.
Hugely increased the chance of being detected after a successful hit. (+250% – I don’t think you can have any hiding bonuses that would get this below 100%)
You can no longer dig as a reaction.
Reading only requires you to hold the object when the object is a scroll. (This fixes a bug where you could never read a tome.)
Uncursing now also uncurses hidden identities, but won’t reveal this identity. (It just means that you can take off, say, the boots of wandering or the crown of Hargo after you find out what they really are.)
I’ve fixed a few bugs, including all of the combat happening after death stuff. With a couple of generic check hitting rules in ATTACK, that will never be a problem again.
I think that there are many problems with the smoke demon and etherealness - it will probably take a substantial rewrite to sort out. Victor, should we take these features out of V6, or delay it until we can sort it all out?
I think to sort it out we’ll need more properties for people and weapons. There should be more people types - the smoke demon can only suffocate those who actually breathe. Physical weapons can only attack physical beings. We’ll then have to change all the special attacks to pay attention to these properties.
Also, Github has a nice bug tracker too. We could shift towards using it if you like Victor.
Emacs’s bugs: “The tentacle retains its accumulated grapple power after killing the smoke demon.
The smoke demon can re-form in a grappled state.”
Even after those bugs are fixed, should it even be possible for the tentacle to grapple it?
I also presume that the smoke demon would attempt to suffocate the knives or chain demon should the situation arrive.
). The first is that this is also how the bomb itself works, and should work – you don’t want the bomb to kill you if it manages to hit someone else. The second is that if you let the power of the bomb damage everyone in the room, there are situations in which the effect would depend on the order in which people are killed. Since this order is random, this would be messy.
