Messages

31

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 25, 2014, 12:42:04 PM »

I think that zombies are not being being destroyed by tnt when out of view.

I'll look into it.

Also, a key binding for the lantern would be really nice. Either that or one that reuses the previously used item such as the lantern, tnt, cocktails, etc. Maybe simply "E"?

Something like that would be nice. Although I'm not sure about 'E' immediately using the last used item. I'd never dare use it in case I accidentally light a dynamite, or quaff some harmful potion (or waste a good one). It would need a confirmation query then "Turn on Electric Lantern? y/n", or "Drink Potion of Vitality? y/n". This could be somewhat faster than pressing 'e' and navigating to the lantern in the menu though. Another option as you suggested is that 'E' is only used for toggling the lantern. It's probably the most commonly used item, so it would make sense in that way. If you have multiple lanterns I suppose it would toggle the first one in the list.

I'm seeing a bit of redundancy in the inventory menu and the use items menu.  Seems inventory is only good for seeing my non equipped items and dropping them.  It would be nice if I could also use items from that same menu.

That could work. Hm, I wonder if the 'e' menu could even be removed completely then? In that case, 'e' could be used to toggle the lantern. I'm not sure about removing it though. I think it's nice to have a filtered list of only things you can activate somehow, especially in a tough situation. Then I always press 'e' and see very clearly what my options are.
I'm also thinking that if the 'e' menu is kept, and if I implement item usage through the 'i' menu, it would seem a bit weird. The only purpose of the 'e' menu would be to filter the list. It would be more redundant than the current system.

UI design is really damn hard...

For Potions, maybe a quick pop-up that asks the player whether they wish to drink or throw it in order to make throwing them less cumbersome?

I intend to implement throwing any single item without equiping it in the throwing slot somehow. All item types should them be throwable as well, so you could for example throw a Sledgehammer or Iron Suit. Perhaps you could press 't' while browsing items in the 'w', 'e' or 'i'?
(I will still keep the missiles slot for regularly thrown stuff like throwing knives of course).

A sound for lighting/sizzle for the tnt/cocktail would be a nice touch. And a splat/squish/gib sound for destroying corpses by bashing.

That would be good. I've written it down.

Sorry if it was discussed before, but is there any way to restore sanity?

You can only restore shock not insanity. Maybe (probably) in the future.

Maybe a small amount of anti venom in the medical bag?  Poison almost always gets me down very close to death and I've had to quaff several vitality potions to try and wait it out.

Quaff several vitality potions? For one poisoning? The vitality potion should heal the poison, and restore your HP completely. So you should only need to drink one.

There are already antidote potions, so it would be strange and redundant to also include it in the medical bag. But perhaps there could be something that slows the poison, or shortens the duration? Some sort of syringe?

Could multiple medical bags be combined (supplies from one transfered over to the other) so you only have to carry one bag?

Good idea. I should make it so that when you pick up one bag, it will just increase the supplies in the currently carried one. Although I will some day (not too far) implement item descruction, such as scrolls burning up when you're on fire, or potions shattering from cold, or items being dropped (and disappearing) when you're swimming or climbing. It would be infuriating if you have gathered a huge medical bag with like 120 supplies, and it gets destroyed/lost. I suppose a solution could be that instead of the whole thing being destroyed/lost, you lose X number of supplies.

Is it currently possible to set sounds for all enemies/actions or just the ones you actually have sounds for currently?  I wanted to try and set sounds for rats, spiders, other enemies etc.  A config file to do so and .wav support would be nice for sound effects to make for easier customizing.  I wanted to try and add some sounds from Blood for my personal use.

At the moment you can only replace the sounds already in place. Although maybe this could be externalized to make it more customizable. See my comments in this thread:
http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/share/view/67239996

The corpse bashing is still confusing me. If there is a 1/3 chance of destroying a zombie corpse by bashing it, wouldn't that mean that it would take 3 tries at most to destroy it. I know it has taken more than 3 times before for a single corpse.

That's not how probability works. If you toss a coin, is it 100% guaranteed to land on heads within two tries? I have sometimes tossed a coin and it lands on heads 10 times in a row. It's the same thing in IA - for 1/3 chance, it will ocassionally happen that it takes even 20 tries. Normally it will take around three tries though.

A shield item that could provide a small amount of protection and assist in bashing?

A shield doesn't seem to fit with the time period.

Where's my spiked mace?  

Well I decided that it doesn't really fit in the game (see above comment) - at least for now. However, I do have some vague plans to introduce old medieval-era stuff, which could have been lying around in the dungeon for hundreds of years. Although the question would arise why this stuff is not rusted after lying on the floor of a damp dungeon for a thousand years? A sword can't possibly be usable in this condition, after all this time? It would have to be magic weapons.

Also, for some reason, when I run the game, my display shifts to the right slightly so a few lines on the side get cut off.  Not sure if this is due to the game or my monitor. I tried fiddling with the monitor but no luck. The only rl/program  I have the issue with. Running in fullscreen 16x24 dos ascii mode btw. Monitor is 1280x768 resolution.

Well, as you know, we discussed it here (I'm just linking for others to see):
http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/share/view/67239996

32

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 23, 2014, 06:41:23 PM »

However I'd like to express one small complaint: Any reason why you decided to go with only 3 presets for character creation? I rather enjoyed creating my own doomed character each time -anyhow it won't stop me from playing just my two cents!

Well most people (including myself) really enjoy picking traits as the game is progressing. I will likely add more backgrounds though (Doctor/Psychic/Scientist are some candidates). I'm also considering having some optional background traits Fallout 2-style. These would be optional (you don't have to pick one), and each one would have both positive and negative consequences. This could be something like "Small frame", which makes you harder to hit with ranged weapons, but your melee attacks do -1 damage.

33

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 21, 2014, 08:11:04 AM »

I've uploaded some videos of me playing IA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7avZ-o4h0k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52Qvx_wF08

(No sound)

34

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 21, 2014, 07:16:04 AM »

Is there a technical reason that there's no Mac build, or is it just something you can't be bothered with?

Lol. He'll likely answer you but it is almost certainly a technical issue. Cross platform to mac is hard in most cases.

The reason that I've not provided a build for it just that I don't have access to a Mac. But - it's very likely that you can easily build your own. Check out this info from Github:

Some people have successfully built IA on OSX by using the Linux Makefile as it is. Although building on OSX is not “officially supported”, the goal is to keep the project as portable as possible. It should require little extra effort (or no extra effort at all) to build IA on OSX. So go ahead and try Please tell of your problems or success at the IA webpage, or email me (Martin) - see contact.txt in the game folder (or assets/contact.txt in the IA repository).

https://github.com/InfraArcana/ia#osx

You can download the source and Makefile here:
http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/Downloads

Direct link:
https://github.com/InfraArcana/ia/archive/v16.0.zip

35

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 19, 2014, 09:00:34 AM »

This is explained well in the manual

Yeah I saw that, what I'm asking is, what steps can I take to avoid being wounded?  What decisions are there to be made regarding wounds?  It feels I'm being penalized at random and the correct choice is always to use a medkit if I have one.

Avoid getting shot, avoid melee with heavy hitting monsters (especially axe zombies).

Yes, there is no choice. If you're wounded, you should definitely heal it asap. The challenge is to find a secluded place and make sure you're not interrupted.

36

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 19, 2014, 08:47:32 AM »

I noticed that there seems to be a lot more traps than before and are almost always grouped together in close proximity to each other in groups of at least three. Was this intentional? It's not that bad, but does get quite annoying.

It's intentional. I think that in previous versions, and in many other Roguelikes, traps are a bit lacking. This is because there is no strategy in searching for them. You either spot it or not depending on luck, and there's not really anything you can do differently. In this version, since they are usually clustered, if you find one trap you know you should move carefully.

37

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 18, 2014, 03:29:46 PM »

How am I supposed to do to avoid being wounded?  What purpose do wounds serve?

This is explained well in the manual:

The state of your physical health is described in two ways:
   (1) Hit Points (HP)
This represents minor wounds like bruises and sprains, and also general combat morale, fatigue, stance, etc. If your HP reaches 0, it means you received a killing blow, or the circumstances are such that you can no longer fight back (you are fallen, pinned or exhausted). Hit Points usually regenerates automatically over time.

   (2) Wounds
This represents more serious long-term damage, and is shown as a property at the bottom of the screen. Wounds are received when you take a high amount of damage in one hit. Each wound reduces your fighting abilities and HP regeneration rate. If you have more than four wounds, you are dead.

There is an item called a "Medical Bag", which has a certain number of "supplies". It can be used in the following ways:
   * Sanitize infection
When bitten or clawed by certain monsters, you can become infected. Use this option to handle the infection before it becomes a disease.

   * Take morphine
This is used as a painkiller, and will restore your Hit Points. It is not good for the mind however.

   * Treat wound
This will heal a wound, although it requires many uninterrupted turns, and drains many supplies.

38

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 18, 2014, 03:07:49 PM »

For some reason, I can never seem to bash a corpse in order to make it stay dead. Even after trying to bash the same corpse multiple times.

Eh, I tried it now. Works perfectly fine. I was in a fight with 5 zombies, and I managed to bash 3 or 4 of them easily.

39

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 18, 2014, 02:50:50 PM »

Doesn't seem to be any way to Esc out of the choose a character Menu back to the starting screen either---can't exit the game until you actually get ingame.

Could be something to add in the future. You started a new game and then changed your mind?

40

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 18, 2014, 02:48:08 PM »

For some reason, I can never seem to bash a corpse in order to make it stay dead. Even after trying to bash the same corpse multiple times.

Do you mean literally never...? Or just rarely?

It's a plain 1/3 chance per try to destroy it.

Corpses can be stacked in the same cell, so perhaps you bashed one or several corpses without noticing the messages about this?

41

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v16.0).

« on: April 17, 2014, 05:44:09 PM »

Version 16.0 is released!

http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/Downloads

Gameplay
* You now pick traits when gaining character levels (as it was in v14) instead of only at the start. Many new traits have been added. You pick a trait each level, but the XP rate is roughly halved compared to older versions, and your character is limited to 10 levels.

* You now select a background when starting a game, the choices are “Occultist” (magic), “Rogue” (stealth), and “War Veteran” (fighter/firearms) - Your background determines which traits and items you start with, there are also special background-specific abilities, and some traits have background prerequisites.

* You now gain half a monsters worth of experience when spotting it, and the other half when killing it (killing a monster without spotting it gives the full worth)

* You can now “become aware” of a monster by hearing or seeing it - this “awareness” will last for a few turns and cause the monster to be marked on the map with an exclamation mark (“!”) while it is not in your view. This represents the player character listening more closely for footsteps and other small clues, and estimating where the monster could go. This feature is intended to help avoid situations like walking around a corner to get instantly killed by a shotgun blast - now you should have more opportunity to make better decisions about such things.

* Objects on the map are no longer interacted with through popup menus (which were considered slow and boring). Instead you use the standard keyboard commands listed in the manual - such as 'd' for disarming traps, or 'q' for bashing something. The examine command 'a' is now merely used for searching an object (for traps). Bumping an object will attempt to use it in the normal way (opening a chest, drinking from a fountain, descending the stairs, reading the inscriptions on the graves in the forest level, etc).

* Bashing now works in a more general way. You can attempt to find secret doors by bashing on any wall. You can destroy corpses by bashing them. Bashing/kicking now always consumes a turn, whether you hit something or not (“I kick the air!”). When attempting to kick in a cell with an unseen monster (due to blindness or monster hiding), it will behave in the same way as normal melee attacks (“I kick it”) - this fixes a bug where an attempt to kick an unseen monster had no effect

* Reworked Strange Devices. Now instead of keeping them enabled for random occasional effects, you activate them for an instant effect. They can be activated multiple times, although their condition may degrade, and they can malfunction or break. The effects of some of the Devices have been reworked as well. The result of these changes is that the Devices should now be more effective and fun to use. Also, they are more common now, and you can even find them on the first dungeon level.

* Your insanity no longer rises immediately when shock is at 100% or more, instead you now first have three turns with warning messages - during these turns you have a chance to reduce shock below 100% (e.g. by turning on a light in a dark room, drinking a Potion of Fortitude, descending the stairs, or stepping away from a ghoulish statue)

* Added sound effects for melee attacks, spellcasting, dying, and opening tombs - also added more ambient sounds
* The game now prompts for confirmation when attempting to cast an intrinsic spell which could potentially deplete your Spirit
* Greatly reduced duration of Weakening
* Greatly reduced duration of Disease when received from fountains, tombs, and spells (disease will only last a very long time when received from infections)
* You are now immune to Infection while Diseased (being Infected and Diseased at the same time was redundant and annoying)
* Added “Manuscript of Darkbolt”, this is similar to “Azathoths Wrath”, but targets only one monster and costs less spirit to cast intrinsically - selecting the background “Occultist” guarantees starting with this spell
* Added spell “Mi-Go hypnosis”, available for all monsters (but not the player) - all Mi-Go (Fungi from Yuggoth) know this spell - when this is cast, there is a chance that you will faint for a few turns
* Added a spell available only for monsters, which causes the player to burn for a few turns
* Changed “Manuscript of Clairvoyance” to a Potion, and instead of continuously revealing monsters and dungeon layout around you, it now instantly reveals the layout of the whole level (including items, but not monsters)
* Added “Manuscript of Detect Monsters”, which marks all unseen monsters on the map with an exclamation mark for a number of turns (no shock taken from these detected monsters)
* Added “Manuscript of Elemental Resistance”, which gives you temporary resistance to fire, cold, and electricity
* Manuscript of Pestilence no longer spawns dozens of monsters - it is now a more reasonable number
* Quaffing Potions of Health/Spirit when already at max HP/SPI no longer raises your max values, instead they can now temporarily raise your current HP/SPI above the max values
* Reduced the number of vertical map cells
* Added two common monsters (Flying Polyps, Chthonians), and one unique monster
* Added Golden Fountains, which are guaranteed to have a positive effect
* Hearing sounds no longer aborts multi-turn actions (such as healing)
* Reduced the propagation range of sounds (especially loud sounds like pistol fire)
* Added natural fear and confusion resistance for various monsters (e.g. Ooze-types, Spirit-types)
* Knockback no longer cause confusion
* Added a message that tells you when a monster spots you and becomes aware of you
* More sensible rules for where stairs can spawn, and where player descends on the next level
* Reduced number of turns waited when pressing 's' from 10 to 5
* Removed the message “was that supposed to do something?” when reading scrolls with no apparent effect
* The trait “Observant” no longer makes you find clues about hidden doors (was represented by a yellow wall) - instead this trait simply raises your chance of finding doors, and allows you to spot them from two cells away (another trait “Perceptive” raises the distance to three cells)
* Mummies now generally spawn alone instead of in groups
* Removed “Mythos knowledge”, and removed the spell you gained at a certain level of MTH
* You can now disarm traps by pressing 'd' and choosing a direction (works both for traps on the ground and on chests)
* When the electric lantern is flickering, it now merely reduces the lit area to 3x3 cells, it can still also malfunction and fail to give any light, or break completely
* When encumbered there is now an interval between 100-125% where you are able to move at half speed - at 125% and above you are completely immobile
* Added messages when your Spirit is being drained (e.g. by Ghosts)
* The postmortem information no longer lists number of kills for each type of monster, instead it only lists unique monsters killed, and the total number of monsters
* Masochistic Obsession no longer restores shock when player is damaged, it now merely removes the shock normally taken when damaged (and raises minimum shock to 35%)

Interface
* The game now supports Vi-keys
* You can no longer select things in menus by pressing letter keys
* To make it easier to notice when shocking events happen, exclamation marks (“!”) are now drawn on the player character if enough shock is received during a turn (up to three marks can be drawn)
* There is now two lines for displaying messages - significantly reducing the number of “--More--” prompts.
* Some important messages are now colored orange, and some of these messages always trigger a “--More--” prompt (for example spotting traps and monsters), making them easier to notice and react to
* Item symbols are now drawn in the inventory screen and the wielding info at the bottom of the screen
* Changed the appearance of the main menu and character creation screens
* Removed the option to scale the font to 2x size
* Added a 16x24 DOS font
* Added option for how tiles mode should render walls - full square or pseudo-3D
* The game now handles delays in a nicer way. Previously, a delay would freeze the whole program. So for example while a projectile was travelling, the game could appear frozen (especially noticeable if setting a long delay). Now user input is read during delays so the game is not freezing - you can move the screen, alt-tab back and forth, minimize etc.
* The screen is now redrawn when toggling fullscreen (previously the screen would be black until you entered a command)
* Popup windows with multiple choices (e.g. the medical bag menu) can be closed with space or escape
* The options menu is now accessible from within an ongoing game
* Pressing 'x' re-casts previous spell, and pressing 'X' (uppercase) opens the list of all memorized spells
* Added an in-game menu opened with 'Esc', where you can select Options, Manual, Quit, or Cancel
* Removed commands '>' (descend stairs) and 'S' (save and quit) - instead you now bump the stairs, which opens a menu asking if you want to Descend, Save and quit, or Cancel
* Changed command for viewing descriptions to 'v' instead of 'l' (lowercase L)
* Changed command for bashing/kicking to 'q' instead of 'b'
* Changed command for unloading/picking up ammo to 'G' instead of 'u'
* Changed the message log command to 'm' instead of 'L'
* When reloading, the amount of ammo loaded in the weapon is now printed in the log
* Some special ranged weapons now only show “*” (asterisk) as damage info (e.g. the Incinerator, which previously displayed “1d3” as damage - this only represented the “impact damage” of the shell, and did not include the explosion - the asterisk used now should give a clearer indication that the weapon will do damage in a special way)

Bug fixes
* Fixed many bugs related to saving/loading (e.g. crashing, losing memorized spells)
* Fixed many bugs related to properties (especially concerning properties which were supposed to be permanent, but would time out - e.g. confusion resistance gained from picking the trait “Self-aware”)
* Corrected various spelling mistakes
* Fixed a bug that prevented Ooze-type monsters from passing through closed doors (they should be able to do this)
* Fixed a bug that prevented using Page Up/Page Down/Home/End for diagonal movement

42

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v15.0).

« on: April 15, 2014, 02:04:48 PM »

I just started playing this today in earnest. A lot of fun!

Good to hear

Keep your eyes open for a new, vastly improved version soon.

43

Design / Re: Bones -- how far can you go with them?

« on: April 11, 2014, 02:12:46 PM »

Just a random idea: When you die you get an option to leave some message, anything you want, just constrained to a certain length of course. If other players encounter your ghost, it can then speak this message. Typically players would write something about how they died, but could be anything at all.

'The ghost of NON says: "Paralyzed by a damn floating eye!"'

44

Programming / Re: Multithreading

« on: March 27, 2014, 08:08:07 AM »

[...]

Thanks for your wall of text

I'm still curious about the benefits of running UI in a separate thread for a single player game though. The questions I asked in the part that you quoted, would you say "yes" to them? Or is it not so much worth it if you know you will never deal with networking issues?

My engine also has multi-threaded pathfinding: when a path is requested, the requesting thread will idle while two runner threads calculate the same path at once. One source to goal and the other goal to source - the first one to find a complete path kills the other and returns. This fixes the problem you describe when a monster in an open desert can't get into a small hut - One thread searches out the entire desert looking for a way in, but the search from the hut outwards will very quickly find there's no path. I don't know how well this will work out with my implementation of step 3.

This is especially interesting to me. But wouldn't it be even more effective if these two threads combined their effort, instead of just using the "winner"? It seems to me that you ought to stop when the two paths meet each other (or when one of them discovers that it's impossible). I'm talking about this (scroll down to "Bidirectional search"):
http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/Variations.html

So for example if the monster AI on its own thread is out of time (the game is now asking for a move decision) it's nice if your algorithm can turn out a partial or fallback answer rather than making the rest of the system wait. In a game it can be as simple as "um, I don't know what to do yet! move me one square in a random direction I guess"

Ouch, then you'd get different gameplay depending on the performance of your computer. Dumber AI (easier game) on a slower computer. I wouldn't want to have it like that.

45

Programming / Re: Multithreading

« on: March 26, 2014, 07:01:55 PM »

I'm using C++11 with SDL 1.2.

So, not exactly a modern GUI library.