Random Item Fluff

Yes, I'm still alive. Due to other things, work on the next version of Kharne is progressing slowly. One feature I'm thinking of adding to the next version (0.06, which will also include NPCs and potions) is random flavour text for items, e.g. when you inspect say a +1 Spear you get something along the lines of:

“This ruby-encrusted spear was formerly the prized weapon of JoeBloggs the Hero of Xyzzy. He used it mainly in the war 600 years ago against the Goblins of Zzyyyzzzy. He fell in battle against Bob the Goblin Chief and the weapon was subsequently lost. What it was doing in the hands of a common goblin you have no idea.”

This is fairly easy to program, e.g. it is nothing more than a series of randomized phrases in a format such as:

“[description] [owner] [owner legacy] [now]."

Each of these could be constructed out of further tags like [weapon description] [weapon name] [time period] [owner fate] [weapon fate] etc, which may or may not be present in an individual description. Some tags require randomly generated names, which can be done using the existing name generator routines.

So the example above could be broken down into:

[weapon description] = "This ruby-encrusted"
[weapon name] = "spear"
[owner] = "was formerly the prized weapon of"
[owner name] = "Bill"
[owner famous] = "the Hero of Xyzzy"
[owner use] = "He used it mainly in the war"
[owner timeperiod] = "600 years ago"
[owner use reason] = "against the Goblins of Zzyyyzzzy"
[owner fate] = "He fell in battle against Bob the Goblin Chief"
[weapon fate] = "and the weapon was subsequently lost."
[weapon now] = "What it was doing in the hands of a common goblin you have no idea".

But as ever, my creative juices are failing. Any suggestions and ideas for randomised phrases to use in this generator are most welcome.

Roguelike localisation

A fascinating thread on Roguelike Localisation. Eventually (hah!) its something I'd like to include in Kharne. Hebrew Kharne anyone?*

*I need to get the bloody thing finished first though

AARP

I was going to participate in the 2010 AARP but alas, I've been busy with last minute dissertation panic instead. But it is being submitted on Monday, so after that I'll have plenty of time on my hands so I hope to have a new version of Kharne out by the end of the month.

0.05c source archive now available

As promised, a source-only distribution for v0.05c is now available here (also linked from the menu on the right)

DnD 4e and Status Conditions

I play a lot of DnD 4.e and I think some of the character statuses (stati? statum? stata?) could work well in Kharne (with some small modification). Others wouldn't work so well.

For example, certain undead could stun you. Stunned creatures can't do anything; the stun has a certain duration, or there is a chance the stun wears off at the end of each turn. In the context of a roguelike with a single character this is a highly lethal attack - it might be worth restricting this property to certain unique monsters.

Immoblisation/Restraining is also easy to implement - you can do everything except move! The closest analogue to dominated in the roguelike milieu would be the classical Confusion, where your movements are randomly swapped (along with further limitations that are generally roguelike-specific). Weakened is also simple to implement, and would also be a good brand.

Dazed however, which in DnD cuts down on the number of actions you can perform in a round to a single (standard) action would be tougher to implement. At its core, dazed is about controlling and limiting the effectiveness of a character, perhaps the closest analogy in a roguelike might be not allowing the character to attack, but allowing the character to do anything else.

And finally another status effect (but this time, not from DnD) - bleeding. Like poisoned, you lose hp each turn (or so) but to cure it you need to raise your hp to minimum as opposed to quaffing a potion.

Any thoughts on any of these? Have I missed any?

Autoexplore

I'd really like an autoexplore feature. Just like Crawl's. Anyone any idea how to write one? Or will I need to RTFM and dig out the Crawl code and have a squizz there?

Some thoughts on Potions & Food

The latest version of the SVN code booked in already has a lot of the potion handling built in, I've just not implemented the actual code for what happens when you drink a potion. That's next on the list to do, and I want to get a potion-enabled version out soon, in the next week or so.

I'm also going to change the eating-restores-full-health feature to:

• take a significant number of turns (@s should suffer from indigestion when eating too quickly, just like humans)
  
• during which there is a small chance of a wondering monster coming by
• not be possible when in view of a monster

Other small (and not-so-small) changes I want to include in the next version are a general increase in the number of monsters, an option to remember the last character type created and give an option to quickly start a new game with that, and putting a house where you can stash items into the town level.

Proc-based item brands

Here are some suggestions for beneifical and hindering item brands I've been thinking of implementing, based upon procs. There are three types of procs - those that have a chance to occur when an attack is made (i.e. offensive), those that have a chance to occur every turn, and those that have a chance to occur when a creature gets attacked (i.e. defensive). Some (e.g. torment) are more powerful than others - I haven't worked out competitive power rankings yet but I would like the slightly less powerful effects to be more common than the more powerful ones.

I envisage these brands would be placed upon magical items in a similar fashion to other brands, although their names would take precedence in item name construction.

Suggestions for more, and their frequency would be more than welcome.

Offensive beneficial effects:

1. transfer 10% of hp from target to attacker [vampiric]
2. inflicts 50% extra damage [vorpal]
3. reduces maximum hp of target by 25% [draining]
4. teleports target to random place on level [telekinetic]
5. teleports target away permanently [banishment]
6. turns a normal hit into a critical [slaying]
7. knocks target back a number of squares to the nearest wall [thundering]
8. turns a single attack into two or more attacks [quick]
9. chains the damage to any adjacent targets [chaining]
   

Offensive hindering effects:

1. drains target of 10% of hp and returns it to the attacker [withering]
2. turns an attack into a miss [clumsy]
3. makes the target trip and fall, thus losing the current action [stumbling]
4. teleports target randomly around the level [blinking]
5. injures target for half hp [tormenting]
6. randomly makes target drop an item carried in inventory [itching]
7. randomly eats a carried ration of food [consuming]

Defensive benficial effects:

1. absorbs the blow entirely [shielding]
2. heals the target for the damage the hit would otherwise have caused [restoring]
3. makes target's evasion temporarily higher and forces the attacker to reroll the triggering attack against the new evasion [displacing]
4. knocks attacker back one square (if possible) [rebound]

Defensive hindering effects:

1. freezes the target in place for a turn [rooting]
2. terrifies the target, cutting the target's evasion rating to 0 temporarily and allows a reroll of the triggering attack [terrifying]
3. allows the attack to proceed at full damage, ignoring armour [piercing]
4. teleports a nearby but non-adjacent creature to a square adjacent to the target [attracting]

Now these effects are relatively easy to code, being all instanteous effects. But if you have any ideas for longer lasting effects, it would be good to read them as well.

A few of these procs also might make good scrolls as well.

Kharne 0.05c now available

Kharne Alpha 0.0.5c is now available for download (an archive of the source code will be available soon, but if you want the latest code it is already in the SVN).

Changes in this version as are follows:

• Some monsters now can poison.
• Some monsters now follow characters up and down stairs.
• Mineral nodes are now found on levels and can be dug out for extra gold or occasionally items.
• Classes now have different titles, dependent upon current character level.
• Only the just finished game will be now highlighted correctly in the hiscore list after character death.
• Spurious double quotes (") will no longer appear in automatically generated character names.
• When resting, there is chance of a monster appearing randomly near the character.
• Eating now restores all lost health points.
• When starting a 2nd game in the same session, the Character Background will be reset properly.
• On Character death, the Main Window Title will be reset properly.
• Elemental Intrusion Creatures no longer have as many hitpoints.
• Unidentified Scrolls are now identified properly on Character Death.

Arguments for and against Stamina as a stat

In the comments to my last post, Nolithius remarks (rather sensibly) that:

No need to have complexity for complexity's sake! If 4 stats work well for your system, then 4 stats is the right amount. In fact, for a 3-class system you can get away with 3 stats and have the HP progression be determined by the class.

To be honest, the thought (of just having three stats in Stygia) had already crossed my mind, but I've been resistent to just having the three stats for several reasons:

• Dungeon Crawl has only the three stats, and using the same stats smacks of ripping Crawl off (the corrolary of this argument is below).
  


• To have HP Progression determined by class makes class the most important choice in the game (which is why, I guess, Crawl determines HP by skill levels).
  

However, on the other hand, there are excellent reasons for not having a stamina stat:

• A Stamina stat becomes either an irrelevance or worse, it becomes a 'stat tax': witness the continual dependency (and arguments) upon stamina items in certain MMOs
  


• It doesn't actively contribute to the game, and doesn't have any natural decision points hanging off it. In short, its additional unwarranted and unjustified complexity.
  


• Crawl doesn't have a stamina stat, and Crawl is the best roguelike about at the moment.
  

The first one is perhaps the biggest argument against stamina, and the argument that I'm likely to persuade me. But if I don't have a Stamina stat, how do we determine Hit Points?

Leaving aside whither or not we should have hit points (a whole other argument altogether), the standard roguelike options tend to be:

• by Class
  


• by Race
  


• by Skill
  

I'm against determining HP by Class alone, and Stygia will not have any races (the PC will be 'human'-ish). For this reason, I'm gravitating towards making Hitpoints dependent upon both Level and the value of the class's primary Skill (e.g. Fighting, Sneaking or Spellcasting).

Charisma and other stats

Getting back to Stygia development, I'm pondering, for a small roguelike, how many stats a character needs? 3, like Crawl (these are Str, Dex, Int). Or 6 like DnD, Angband?

I think 3 is too few, but 6 is too much (has anyone ever worked out a good use for Charisma in a roguelike?

I think just the four (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Stamina) would be better. They also suit thematically the type of game I'm planning (with only three Character Classes - Basher, Sneak, Adept that map to Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence respectively).

Thoughts?

BRogue!

A new version of BRogue is out and its now fully cross-platform courtesy of Libtcod!

I've downloaded it but not played it yet other than a cursory wander through to check that it works. But I'm really looking forward to playing it!

C# Cartesian Point class

I've developed a class for using Points in C# (unlike Delphi, there's no inbuilt type). You can grab the source code and a sample console app here or here. All code is public domain, knock yourself out, etc, etc, etc.

The best laid plans of mice and men....

This weekend I'll won't be working on my map classes and getting the '@ walking around an empty map' state done after all.

The perils of running out of anti-depressants on a bank holiday weekend. :-(

Stygia - story & monsters

Unlike Kharne, I'm intending to have a detailed story line from the start with Stygia. This will manifest itself in many ways throughout the game, from factions the character can join, perform quests and obtain reputation for, to NPCs from different factions fighting each other if the character's actions have caused a war between them. I think C# will allow me to make a really good living world and NPC/Monster AI.

I've found two posts on creature AI in roguelike that I can't recomnend heavily enough: here and here. Certainly the first one (and its followups), courtesy of the ever informative Andrew Doull should be read by any budding roguelike developer.

Meanwhile, a random screenshot from the intro section (which I eventually hope to animate and sort out suitable music to accompany it) explaining the back story of the game:

This weekend I'll be working on my map classes and getting the '@ walking around an empty map' state done.

Stygia - some initial design thoughts

One of the things I'm planning to do with Stygia is to not overreach myself - something that sadly, Kharne suffers from. To get the game done in 3 months, I'm going to limit the initial version to something achievable:

• One main persistent dungeon, with around a dozen levels (with varying themes). Dungeons will be smaller than those in Kharne.
• No character classes.
• Characters will have fewer stats then Kharne. I'm currently thinking of only having Strength, Agility, Constitution and Intelligence as the main stats.
• Only a few skills, e.g. Fighting, Defense, Subterfuge and Spellcasting.
• Only a limited number of items and brands.
• A limited selection of spells (perhaps just over a dozen, giving just enough to initially make magic playable and no more).
• Around a dozen types of enemies.

By limiting the scope, I hope to get an actual game out, which some of us perpetual roguelike programmers seem to forget to do.

Beyond this, I have a whole spreadsheet filled with ideas I want to implement in both Stygia and Kharne, culled from other roguelikes and near-endless searching of a decade of r.g.r.d's archives.

Stygia - day 3

Here's the main menu:


Before I start working on the @ moving round the screen (and does libtcod make it easy!) I think I'll look into setting up a quick music player API (probably OGG files from The Rogue Bard) as this will give me much-needed practise in using different assemblies and wrappers.

Stygia - weekend 1

So, weekend 1 of Stgyia coding completed. Time spent so far: 3 hours. Managed to get the title screen and a framework set up (albeit in a glorified hello world-esque application):

But this is the same as his previous hello world application, I hear you cry. Not really. This is using the new C# wrappers for libtcod. I pretty much had to rewrite from scratch all my code.

Next stop, a main menu framework and doing some more framework code, so I can progress onto Step 3.

Incidentally, as well as the sources mentioned previously, the plot will also be inspired by this old (and criminally underrated, IMHO, CRPG).

One other thing I'm intending to do within the three months is to write all my data maintenance tools in ASP.NET.

Stygia - a 3-month Roguelike

It might have been obvious that I've been having some thoughts recently about rewriting Kharne in C# using libtcod.

This would mean rewriting an absurd amount of code from scratch.

I don't want to do that, however, I've got a powerful career incentive to learn C# properly.

So I'm going to turn the work I've done already on Prelude into a new Roguelike, which I'll develop in parallel with updates on Kharne.

This one will be called Stygia, and I've set myself a strict 3 month timescale to get a complete game out, following the steps outlined here.

Stygia will be loosely inspired by this particular classic CRPG and somewhat more by this classic roleplaying game. Features wise, it will follow the usual roguelike conventions, but with a more heterotopic and dystopic vibe.

It might even have tentacles in it. Scratch that, it WILL have tentacles in it.

And lots of san loss.

Town Levels?

I've had a sudden crisis of confidence regarding my town level. It will probably be the last thing finished, but I find myself asking: do I really need it? Its very incomplete at the moment - no NPCs or plot-related items.

Here are some alternatives:

• Get rid of town levels entirely and adopt the Crawl approach.
• Get rid of town levels as such and allow their functionality to be inherent (for example the character has a device that can teleport him/her to an "extraplanar shop" at regular intervals)
  
• Implement regular "outpost" levels (that would be safe) that function as mini-towns.
  
• Implement an overworld (or rather oververse) map (almost like the old version of Kharne)
  

At this point I'm not sure what I want. Analysis paralysis ahoy.

Bah, I hate having existential crises!

An experiment....

Using Libtcod.NET and C# with Visual Studio 2008. I shall have to ponder what this means.

Narrow Horizons

May the Lords of K0bol save us from narrow-minded Stallman acoplytes*:

"Well - sad...since you use this properietary M$ crap, i can't test this variant. Also i think that it could be quite interesting from the gameplay.

IMO you shouldn't use programming languages like visual C (or other one-manufacturer-one-system languages) for *Bands because its against the philosophy. They should run without trouble on most common computer systems and not only on windows."

So..what have we got here:

• Obligatory reference to "M$". Check.
  
• Obligatory insistance that only the one true language (probably C?) be used Check.
• Miltonesque mindset of the true believer on display - that "philsophy" comes first before everything else. Check.
• Lazy assumption that windows software can't be ported to other operating systems. Check.
  

Dude, chillax, as I believe the youth of today say.

But to answer the respondant's specific points (without bursting a blood valve):

Visual Studio is pretty much the best development environment out there at the moment. Mono allows cross-platform .NET development. Microsoft (the whole M$ thing is just immaturity), for all the bad things they've done, have also done plenty of good things as well; and programming, when you take a reasonable view of things, isn't important enough to be something worth an ideological crusade over. Women's Reproductive Rights, Identity Cards, Access to Clean Drinking Water, Trade Tariffs and Barriers - those are worth getting worked up about. But not whither someone uses one bleeding format of input text or another to produce a load of sodding pixels on a screen.

Bet he's a Vi user as well. That would explain a lot**.

Feh, and more feh! His attitude makes me want to code a C# roguelike just because. Kharne# anyone?

* This post was brought to you by the concepts "maturity" and "perspective". Dude, try it some time. It works, y'know.
** Emacs, definitely, in case you ever wanted ot know. Although Textpad is better than both of them.

Poison

I've implemented poison. It is modelled after Crawl, though its not quite as lethal in that it will never kill the character directly (poison won't reduce the character's hit points beneath 1).

Onwards - a new roadmap.

0.05c will be released when I have potions and ranged combat implemented.

According to the old roadmap, I'm way behind on just about everything. Quelle surprise. Such is the life of the roguelike developer. Problem is, I have so many ideas for the game its preventing me from really developing it quickly. That, and the fact that I'm doped up to my eyeballs most of the time on venlafaxine, and that also I've got my dissertation ("Microquasar VHE photon production and its implications for microquasar identification, morphology and classification") to write this summer.

The two biggies coming up next to implement are persistence and magic.

Lighting Enhancements

Something I'd like to introduce in future releases of Kharne (mainly inspired by the visual sexiness of Brogue) is independent light sources. Fortunately Delphi implements the Win2k+ AlphaBlend WinAPI call which would make implementation quite easy (he says confidently).

First batch of changes for v0.05c uploaded to the repository

I've uploaded the first batch of changes to the code for the next version to the online source-code repository. Fixes & Updates completed in the code so far are:

• Some monsters now follow characters up and down stairs.
• Classes now have different titles, dependent upon current character level.
• Only the just finished game will be now highlighted correctly in the hiscore list after character death.
• Spurious double quotes (") will no longer appear in automatically generated character names.
• When resting, there is chance of a monster appearing randomly near the character.
• Eating now restores all lost health points.
• When starting a 2nd game in the same session, the Character Background will be reset properly.
• On Character death, the Main Window Title will be reset properly.
• Elemental Intrusion Creatures no longer have as many hitpoints.
• Unidentified Scrolls are now identified properly on Character Death.

I'll not produce an executable release for these, but I'll wait until the other changes (including potions!) are finished before releasing the next version (some of them are incomplete in the code but don't affect compilation).

You are of course welcome to download and compile the latest version if you are in a position to do so.

C#/Libtcod.net revisited.

I never got very far in the end with using libtcod.net to write a C# roguelike. Mainly due to various issues with setting it up, and a general development ennui which had enveloped me over the winter (major personal issues & upheaval didn't help either).

I do see that there's a new version out now with improved C# documentation. I don't intend to start work on a C# roguelike until I get Kharne complete.

But after that I may end up writing some additional optional features (such as a hiscore/chat server in ASP.NET, which I have to learn soon for my day job.

Dungeons and Room Types

My next blatant theft of a feature from another roguelike will probably be the room names from Unangband. I've deliberately not looked at the code for this on that game, but am designing my own system. I have the implementation worked out in my head for this already, but as ever I need more lubrication for my creative juices!

So let's imagine, say, a circular room in an undead themed level. What could it be called?

• The most straightforward would be random selection from a list generic names such as "The Slaughterhouse", "The Crypt", "The Necopolis". This would have to be a large list to avoid reusing names.
• This could be enhanced by adding one of more random adjectives before and after the name, e.g. "The Hidden Slaughterhouse", "The Crypt of Despair", "The Crypt of Hidden Dreams".
• And then we can consider the role of uniques. If we generate a unique in the level inside a room, name the room after the unique: "The Crypt of Barney", for example.
• Now, additionally, depending on the name, selected, we could reverse the traditional way of generating dungeons and let the name drive the dungeon features. For example, consider a room called "The Hidden Slaughterhouse" - use of the term "Hidden" would mean the entrances to this room are sealed up with diggable walls (or doors) - and use of the term "Slaughterhouse" would mean that there would be loads of corpses generated in the room, as well as certain types of monsters.
• There could also be passive effects tied to the room, for example, with "The Hidden Slaughterhouse" there could be a smell that makes the character nauseous whilst inside it.
  

Yes, I know I'm probably going through the same thought process that Andrew Doull went through about ten years ago, but I'm increasingly convinced random generic dungeons can't cut it any more in roguelikes.

So yet again, its time to ask: thoughts? ideas? Comments are most welcome.

...in which I admit I play DnD 4e

There are several main reasons why I've never won Crawl. The first is that I'm much too impatient. The second is that I'm not cautious enough. And the third is that I get complacent playing MdFis (my favourite class). Yet I'm glad about this. Mindlessly hacking things isn't and shouldn't be the way to win at Crawl, thankfully. Its a testament to how state-of-the-art (when it comes to Roguelikes) that Crawl has become, really.

That aside, that you have an added level of depth for "just" melee characters is something I'd like to emulate in Kharne. albeit via a slightly different mechanism. I've played a lot of DnD 4e recently and am impressed with some of the features that have been introduced to pep up playing fighter/melee classes.

So I'm going to make slight changes to the class system in Kharne. The five classes will stay the same (Warrior, Knight, Thief, Cleric, Mage), but as the character advances in level, they will gain powers and innate abilities.

They also gain a different name as they gain in level, for more atmosphere. For example, a level 1 Warrior would be a Grunt whereas a level 5 warrior would be a Soldier.

The full list of proposed names is as follows:

Warrior
Grunt, Soldier, Warrior, Commander, Warlord

Knight
Squire, Defender, Paladin, Champion, Hero

Rogue
Thug, Rogue, Criminal, Villain, Malefactor

Cleric

Novice, Acolyte, Cleric, Minister, Prelate

Mage
Initiate, Apprentice, Scholar, Sage, Archmage

I've not quite figured out all the powers that each class will have at different levels (suggestions are most welcome), but here's an example of what I had in mind for the Rogue class. The powers gained are cumulative, and would scale for the character's current level. They're also thematic.

Thug: every x turns, make your next attack a critical hit (where x is a reasonable length of time).
Rogue: every x turns increase your stealth dramatically for a short period of time (where x is a reasonable length of time).
Criminal: gain a bonus to critical hit damage.
Villian: gain a bonus to evasion.
Malefactor: give a percentage chance to cheat death once every y turns for a small period of time (where y is a fairly large number)

Now, of course, when you have, in a roguelike, a resource that regenerates over a period of time, you immediately open up the can of worms that is Pillar Dancing. I don't think there have been that many truely satisfactory solutions to Pillar Dancing, but I think that powers that recharge every x turns should only count turns when the character is actually doing something.

Some additional features that come to mind:

• Powers could be recharged (or drained) by fountains
• It wouldn't be good to display the exact number of turns left until a power is usable - but a descriptive indicator would work
• There could be an item brand that decreases/increases the timer of the powers.
• Powers could be enhanced, suppressed or even turned off by certain zones in the dungeon, or certain monsters

Thoughts? Suggestions for appropriate powers? Criticism?

Q is for....

Whilst working on potions, a thought just occured to me.

Press Q to (q)uaff a potion.

But....

Press Q to (q)uaff from a fountain.

What happens if you're standing on a fountain square and want to (q) uaff a potion instead?

Progress Report #19

The next version will be out soon (yes, really!)

Here's the current intended feature list. I'm still working on finishing off the implementation of potions.

• Potions have been implemented.
• Some monsters now follow characters up and down stairs.
• Only the just finished game will be now highlighted correctly in the hiscore list after character death.
• Spurious double quotes (") will no longer appear in automatically generated character names.
• When resting, there is chance of a monster appearing randomly near the character.
• Eating now restores all lost health points.
• When starting a 2nd game in the same session, the Character Background will be reset properly.
• On Character death, the Main Window Title will be reset properly.
• Elemental Intrusion Creatures no longer have as many hitpoints.
• A Character Knowledge screen has been added that shows identified and unidentified items. This can be accessed by pressing "/".
• Identified items that are restocked in shops are now pre-identified correctly.
• A keyboard shortcut ("^") has been implemented to refer to the last item picked up.
• Unidentified Scrolls are now identified properly on Character Death.
• A Toggle ("W") has been added to the inventory screen that displays the weights of items.

And, yes, it will be still be in Delphi. There's too much done and to do now to start rewriting it in another language.

Strange Urges

I have these strange urges to restart development from scratch, only in C++ (or even C).

7DRL: Bane of the Living

This looks interesting. I especially like the clean interface:


Kharne's current interface is still much too cluttered. :-(

Should the minimal view (below) be the default one?

Kh

7DRLs

This year's 7DRL has just started. What is a 7DRL?

A Seven Day Roguelike is a roguelike created in seven days. This means the author stopped writing code one hundred and sixty eight hours after they started writing code.

Already there are quite a few entries. Good luck to all the developers taking part, and I hope to review some of the entries when they are done.

Brogue

This is certainly a beautful looking Roguelike.

Seems to have lots of innovative ideas as well. But its Mac only at the moment. Is it any good?

Development Restarted

Development on Kharne has restarted (slowly, but surely). The next version will have the following changes and bug fixes:

• Potions have been implemented.
• Some monsters now follow characters up and down stairs.
• Only the just finished game will be now highlighted correctly in the hiscore list after character death.
• Spurious double quotes (") will no longer appear in automatically generated character names.
• When resting, there is chance of a monster appearing randomly nearby the character.
• Eating now restores all lost health points.

This last change was prompted by this thread in r.g.r.d.

Alive

Yes, I'm still alive!