Kharne returns.

[Ex]

Recently it was posted to a roguelike newsgroup that Kharne is returning. I'm rather happy, I used to play Kharne before it was even called Kharne. I forget what it used to be called. Anyway, I think it's awesome that this roguelike is back so I thought I'd post a topic about it. Any old players hanging around?

[dopefish7590]

yes 

[Slash]

I kind of remember it from my roguelike collecting days. Nice to see a good ol project resurrect

[Perdurabo]

Hey folks,
just a quick hello - I'm glad people remember the old game.  I learned a lot programming it back in 2000 - in fact I got a job out of it *grins*.

With any luck, the revamp will result in a playable demo at least in the next few weeks.

Some Differences between the old Kharne and the new Kharne:

1) The new one is much much more efficient and less of a pig to run. The code as a consequence is much much better than the previous version.

2) The game can be run in Tiled or ASCII mode.

3) The ruleset/game engine is no longer pure AD&D - rather it is a cross between the Crawl system and DnD 3.5

4) Permadeath is built in this time.

5) There are 9 dungeons, each 10 levels deep. Each dungeon has different graphics, difficulty, structure and themes.

6) The GUI is now much more standard and windows-compatible.



So far, I've coded:

Character Creation
Dungeon Generation
The Game Engine
Item Handling

next on my list is Magic and then Monsters and then Persistance, and after those are done, I'll put a version out for public consumption.

Just to whet your appetite, here's a couple of in-dev screenies (I'm doomed now - I have to finish it since I've put screenshots out!):

ASCII mode:

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ss1ek5.gif


Graphics mode:

http://img339.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ss2wy0.gif

Cheers,
Dave

[Slash]

So far looks interesting, I hope you can make an artist 'J'oin your party so you dont have to use the Gervais tileset; you need your game to have its own identity!

[Perdurabo]

That would be the ideal solution, but to be honest, the graphics are almost an afterthought in this iteration of Kharne - I playtest and debug mainly in ASCII mode.

Which is ironic, considering how 6 years ago I was very anti-ASCII *grins*.

Best,
Dave

[Adral]

Hey, Perdurabo, can you please tell us if the game is/will be cross-platform? I'd really like to try this one out, it is looking really great.

[Perdurabo]

As its currently planned and coded, it won't be - its written using Delphi 7, and Delphi is Win32 only.

Having said that however, once I release the game (and the sourcecode) - if someone wants to convert it to multiplatform using Lazarus and FreePascal (which are about 95% compatible with Delphi), or even Kylix (the old Linux version of Delphi), I'd be more than happy for them to do so, and would help out with the process.

Perhaps at some point down the line, it could be multiplatform. But at the moment, I'm concentrating on getting it finished first.

So I guess that's a "not yet but maybe" type of answer. Sorry if this isn't the answer you're ideally looking for. :-(

Best,
Dave

[Adral]

As its currently planned and coded, it won't be - its written using Delphi 7, and Delphi is Win32 only.

Having said that however, once I release the game (and the sourcecode) - if someone wants to convert it to multiplatform using Lazarus and FreePascal (which are about 95% compatible with Delphi), or even Kylix (the old Linux version of Delphi), I'd be more than happy for them to do so, and would help out with the process.

Perhaps at some point down the line, it could be multiplatform. But at the moment, I'm concentrating on getting it finished first.

So I guess that's a "not yet but maybe" type of answer. Sorry if this isn't the answer you're ideally looking for. :-(

Best,
Dave

I understand you want the game finished, that sounds very logical to me. If there is no game, there is nothing to port .

Well, then I can now only hope that somebody, someday, will port it then .

Thank you for the answer and for making it open source, it always helps with cross-platforming!

[bobinator1992]

Awesome! I loved the beta version!

1. When will the first beta be out?

2. Are the dungeons randomized? I thought they were in the alpha, but I could never tell.

3. Will you be able to use the mouse to do everything?

Thanks!

[Perdurabo]

At the risk of invoking the wrath of the mods via the medium of thread necromancy, I thought I'd better reply here instead of a new topic.

I know its been a few months, I've had a lot of things going on in my personal life (all good, though), and I've done very little coding on the new Kharne since the turn of the year.

However, I've restarted coding, and to answer your questions:

1. As soon as I can. I'm going to set up a development blog to keep people informed with screenshots and progress.

2. Yeah, they will be. At the moment, they're non-persistant, for the sake of simplicity. I know there are issues wth non-persistant dungeons, I've played enough Angband for that, and I do envisage the eventual need for non-persistant dungeons so Uniques can be a lot more fearsome (like in Crawl), but for the first few releases, they'll be randomized non-unique dungeons.

3. Yes! Definitely. I happen to like using the mouse (back when I played MMOs I was a clicker). Keyboards are good also, but I like to give people the option of both. So mouse and keyboard will be equivalent.

I'd like to ask another couple of questions though, for feedback purposes. I'd be grateful for any answers and thoughts you all might have.

Firstly, I've been messing with skill curves and scalings recently, and I've switched from linear scaling to polynomial scaling for skills. The original Kharne and the abortive rewrite used AD&D/DnD rulesets, which were (DnD 3.0 especially) linear as heck. I've ditched this now for a simpler (at first glance) system akin to Crawl's. Does anyone have any preferences?

Secondarily, are graphics important at this stage in development? I'm toying with the idea of ditching graphics temporarily in order just to get a sodding beta out (*grins*) - though I do love graphics, I tend to play RLs nowadays mostly in ASCII. Note that the display engine I use doesn't care whither graphics or ASCII are used, so to add graphics back in it would just be a matter of dropping in some bitmaps in the proper place in the redistributable.

Cheers for Now,
D.