Hydra Slayer (now at 16.1), NotEye (now at 8.1)

[Xecutor]

Further into keypad on mac.
Actually there are two modes of keypad input.
Numeric mode (default) and application mode.
This:

Code: [Select]

fputs ("\033=", stdout);
will enable application mode.
In application mode following code seems to work:

Code: [Select]


    if(ch==0x1b) {
      ch=getch();
      if(ch=='O')
      {
        ch=getch();
        switch(ch)
        {
        case 'q': ch=KEY_END; break;
        case 'r': ch=KEY_DOWN; break;
        case 's': ch=KEY_NPAGE; break;
        case 't': ch=KEY_LEFT; break;
        case 'v': ch=KEY_RIGHT; break;
        case 'w': ch=KEY_HOME; break;
        case 'x': ch=KEY_UP; break;
        case 'y': ch=KEY_PPAGE; break;
        case 'u': ch='.'; break;
        }
    }
  }

But I don't know how it will behave on non-mac terminals
I enabled 'strict vt100 keypad' option in terminal for this to work.

[Xecutor]

Code: [Select]


                                                    1 flaming dagger         -1
                                                   2* Silver Trisector       /3
                                                    3 silver two-handed sword-10
                                   ##              4  bronze longsword       -5
                                  ..    2           5 sapphire flail         S8
                                 ..53#2.         
                  ##         #  ..E....           
                   .       ##5 ....$.#             LV 7 HP 70/84
                   #.#    #.. 3..?..             
                   #...  #.. .1...               
                   #...##.4#..5..                  4-skeletal             +5
                  ##...P...!..4                    3-brown                +8
                  #.......B..#                     11-golden              +6
                  #.........                       14-swamp               +2
                 #......@.#                        30-storm               +8
                #........33#                       25-ice                 +0
                #....24245...                     
              ..314415.....#?.                   
             #. U.   ....>.. ##                   
              #.    .....!3..                     
                   ........###                   
                  ##########                     

That's what I call 'Warm welcome!'

[Xecutor]

Yey!


You have won!

Items found and used:
  Rune of Growth (16/17)
  Rune of Cancellation (11/15)
  Rune of Decapitation (5/9)
  Rune of Stunning (9/9)
  Rune of Conflict (2/10)
  Rune of Fungification (1/2)
  Scroll of Transmutation (4/16)
  Scroll of the Big Stick (8/15)
  Potion of Power Swipe (2/10)
  Potion of Weapon Charge (0/2)
  Potion of Extreme Speed (0/8)
  Potion of Knowledge (4/12)
  Potion of Strength (4/4)
  Potion of Mushroom Seeds (0/9)
  Potion of Life (0/2)

Items used on the last level:
  Rune of Cancellation (3)
  Rune of Stunning (4)

Weapons at the end:
  obsidian dagger (-1, from Level 10)
  Storm Decimator (/10, from Level 9)
  acid longsword (-5, silver longsword from Level 3)
  flaming two-handed sword (-10, storm bastard sword from Level 7)
  ruby triple staff (S12, from Level 9)
  Bone Eradicator (R2, from Level 12)

Various stats:
  764 total wounds (110 HP left)
  4897 total turns (hydra movements)
  11231 total seconds of real time
  12 levels solved
  373 total blade attacks
  104 hydras killed by your blades
  25 total divisor attacks
  102061 heads cut by your attacks
  370 heads regrown after your attacks
  12 total blunt weapon attacks and shield bashes
  138 total heads stunned
  4 total missile attacks
  3 total targets hit by your missiles
  99577 total stunned heads cut
  236 mushrooms destroyed by blades
  641 mushroom heads destroyed
  18 total attacks in conflict
  1 total hydras killed in conflict
  88 total heads cut in conflict
  73 total heads regrown in conflict
  5 total hydras killed by Rune of Decapitation
  311 total heads removed by Rune of Decapitation (killing)
  110515 total heads awakened after stunning
  4 total hydras awakened after stunning (part or total)
  93 heads grown by Rune of Growth
  210265 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning
  2 max runes active at once

[Z]

Congrats! You seem to have used a very different set of weapons than me. That's good, it means that the game can be won using different strategies. (Although you had to use up more runes.) Here is my log file:

You have won!

Items found and used:
  Rune of Growth (9/21)
  Rune of Cancellation (6/20)
  Rune of Decapitation (0/10)
  Rune of Stunning (2/5)
  Rune of Conflict (0/6)
  Rune of Fungification (2/2)
  Scroll of Transmutation (0/12)
  Scroll of the Big Stick (3/12)
  Potion of Power Swipe (0/10)
  Potion of Weapon Charge (0/3)
  Potion of Extreme Speed (3/9)
  Potion of Knowledge (1/11)
  Potion of Strength (4/4)
  Potion of Mushroom Seeds (0/12)
  Potion of Life (0/1)

Items used on the last level:
  Rune of Stunning (1)
  Potion of Extreme Speed (1)

Weapons at the end:
  obsidian dagger (-1, from Level
  acid heptagram (M7, acid shuriken from Level 3)
  poisoned triple sword (-12, from Level 10)
  Poisoned Decimator (/10, from Level 10)
  golden small shield (P4, from Level 6)
  silver claymore (-11, from Level 9)

Various stats:
  978 total wounds (4 HP left)
  4575 total turns (hydra movements)
  1980 total seconds of real time
  12 levels solved
  287 total blade attacks
  109 hydras killed by your blades
  19 total divisor attacks
  1 total eradicator attacks
  103325 heads cut by your attacks
  695 heads regrown after your attacks
  3 total blunt weapon attacks and shield bashes
  12 total heads stunned
  38 total missile attacks
  34 total targets hit by your missiles
  115 total stunned heads cut [apparently not all are counted]
  164 mushrooms destroyed by blades
  4 mushrooms destroyed by crushing
  479 mushroom heads destroyed
  63 heads grown by Rune of Growth
  154 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning

[Z]

A new version of Hydra Slayer has been released!

This version includes an option for those who have slain the boss to go further into the dungeon for extra challenge (go as deep as you can). Also some new features and improvements are added.

[Ancient]

It is nice to see the game development still going strong. I made a RogueBasin page for Hydra Slayer:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Hydra_Slayer
Please tell me how you like it.

Haven't had time to play newest version yet but surely will get back when I decapitate the big bad next time.

[Z]

Looks great, thanks!

Contrary to normal roguelikes which can be extended infinitely (a fantasy roguelike that has no bows or no magic or no horseback riding usually feels incomplete), Hydra Slayer has quite restricted theme, and there is no reason to add stuff which does not fit well into this theme (almost all items found in HS would not make that much sense in another game). For that reason, I think it is quite complete. Still, I do manage to find new ideas for features of Hydra Nest sometimes. (One thing that is missing is save feature, its lack was acceptable in the 2DRL version, but now that it has grown, it becomes more and more of a nuisance. Probably the next version will have this, but I want also some other ideas

[Z]

Still no save feature, but I have found a nasty bug. Version 3.1 fixes it.

EDIT: Version 3.2 contains save feature and some minor bugfixes.
EDIT: Uploaded Version 3.2 again (it contained some debug output which made playing less comfortable).

[Ancient]

The ancient hydra has perished!

I downloaded version with debug stuff printed to stderr. That annoyed me quite a lot until I read code, got enlightened and routed everything to /dev/null. Whoever designed this device is a genius. So useful for everyday tasks ... But enough complaining, game features await to be commented on!

BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD!

.
.
.
.

I welcome new vampire hydras with joy. No weapon element is completely useless against them but they are difficult to beat without a shield. Ambidextrous attacks help here a lot.

You have won and escaped!

Items found and used:
  Rune of Growth (6/8)
  Rune of Cancellation (9/16)
  Rune of Decapitation (4/9)
  Rune of Stunning (3/3)
  Rune of Conflict (0/4)
  Rune of Fungification (2/3)
  Rune of Fungal Necromancy (1/3)
  Scroll of Transmutation (10/15)
  Scroll of the Big Stick (15/22)
  Scroll of Reduction (2/2)
  Potion of Power Swipe (6/7)
  Potion of Weapon Charge (3/3)
  Potion of Extreme Speed (4/8)
  Potion of Knowledge (1/8)
  Potion of Power Juice (4/4)
  Potion of Mushroom Seeds (2/9)
  Potion of Ambidexterity (2/4)
  Potion of Life (0/1)

I found out Fungification + Fungal Necromancy create really cheesy combo. I made a 642-headed zombie. ^_^ It ate more enemy heads than it was worth. My feelings about reduction are mixed bag. Must test those runes more. Is rune application outcome deterministic or random?

Items used on the last level:

Last level now really mean last one. How about logging ancient hydra level instead? That was probably whole point of this feature.

Weapons at the end:
  golden epic sword (-17, golden two-handed sword from Level 5)
  skeletal medium shield (P6, skeletal spiked buckler from Level 7)
  golden shuriken (M4, from Level 3)
  storm triple sword (-12, from Level 11)
  bronze triple sword (-12, bone triple sword from Level 10)
  Flaming Decimator (/10, Storm Decimator from Level 9)

I ignore eradicator unless boss is near a square root. For early and mid game blunt weapons are quite useful but later divisors replace them.

Various stats:
  938 total wounds (36 HP left)
  5411 total turns (hydra movements)
  6716 total seconds of real time
  12 levels solved
  3 times loaded a saved game
  277 total blade attacks
  110 beasts killed by your blades
  41 total divisor attacks
  102563 heads cut by your attacks
  618 heads regrown after your attacks
  10 total blunt weapon attacks and shield bashes
  37 total heads stunned
  63 total missile attacks
  44 total targets hit by your missiles
  102 total stunned heads cut
  3 total ambidextrous hits
  8 single attacks used in ambidextrous hits
  95 total mushroom heads converted to zombie heads
  52 heads regrown by vampire hydras while attacking
  80 mushrooms destroyed by blades
  58 mushrooms destroyed by crushing
  346 mushroom heads destroyed
  4 total beasts killed by Rune of Decapitation
  28 total heads removed by Rune of Decapitation (killing)
  59 total heads stunned by Rune of Charge
  10 total heads awakened after stunning
  4 total beasts awakened after stunning (part or total)
  8 heads grown by Rune of Growth
  41 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning
  2 max beasts killed at once with a Power Swipe
  2 max hydras killed at once with a missile

Ettins are cool as well but unfortunately a bit buggy. They ignore missile weapons but also dodge weapon charges. I made an experiment:

Code: [Select]

@.....8.....2..###

That '2' here is an ettin. With a sword (-10) I charge at 8-fire hydra and CRRASSHH! Oooopsss. Fortunately program made an emergency save for me. Great! But wait a moment ... why are my first two items replaced with a dagger and machete? Hmmm ... this might be a good way to kill ettins in future.

1 Drop first two tools.
2 Save and reload.
3. Kill ettin with recently summoned machete. :-P
4. Pick up your main battle gear.

Oh it is nice that ettins can be left alone.

About ambidexterity:
Divisor attacks are not executed even when hydra is eligible for being cut with one. When you select only divisors this just wastes a turn. I know that I can use my trisector by selecting no hands and making sure the asterisk is next to arm wielding the divisor. If this is intentional I vote for axing this feature. Please allow players to make neat combos. It will increase satisfaction from hydra slaying.

Another thing with ambidexterity is you need to watch out for selected empty hands. Sometimes a hydra may catch player with a hand free because he was crushing mushrooms. He may forget to disable empty slot and cause game to die.

I have a saved slayer at level 27 but he has been robbed twice by dagger+machete bug. On the other hand (he has got eight now) in his backpack there still is a second potion of life to be quaffed.

Fine game Hydra Slayer is. I will be waiting for next patch.

[Z]

I found out Fungification + Fungal Necromancy create really cheesy combo. I made a 642-headed zombie. ^_^ It ate more enemy heads than it was worth.

There is another Necromancy combo which is even better, I think.

My feelings about reduction are mixed bag. Must test those runes more. Is rune application outcome deterministic or random?

Yes, it is deterministic.

Items used on the last level:

Last level now really mean last one. How about logging ancient hydra level instead? That was probably whole point of this feature.

Indeed, it would make more sense that way. Fixed.

 golden epic sword (-17, golden two-handed sword from Level 5)

This looks suspicious, there should be no two-handed swords on Level 5.

For early and mid game blunt weapons are quite useful but later divisors replace them.

I have upped blunt weapons found on later levels to be (a bit) bigger. (Also now you have a small chance to find very good stuff on levels below 12. You can no longer be sure that there is no point in saving your Big Sticks for later because you will not find anything bigger anyway )

Ettins are cool as well but unfortunately a bit buggy. They ignore missile weapons but also dodge weapon charges. I made an experiment:

Code: [Select]

@.....8.....2..###

That '2' here is an ettin. With a sword (-10) I charge at 8-fire hydra and CRRASSHH! Oooopsss.

Oh, the ettin case was considered correctly when checking the line attack, but not when executing it. Fixed.

Fortunately program made an emergency save for me. Great! But wait a moment ... why are my first two items replaced with a dagger and machete? Hmmm ... this might be a good way to kill ettins in future.

Sorry, apparently I have been only trying reloading while still possessing the original weapons. (And since they were regenerated from the same seed, their materials did not change either.) Fixed.

About ambidexterity:
Divisor attacks are not executed even when hydra is eligible for being cut with one. When you select only divisors this just wastes a turn. I know that I can use my trisector by selecting no hands and making sure the asterisk is next to arm wielding the divisor. If this is intentional I vote for axing this feature. Please allow players to make neat combos. It will increase satisfaction from hydra slaying.

I thought that divisor attacks should not be allowed in ambi because it was not obvious which one should be executed first. But indeed, executing division first is logical and allows for neat combos. So this works now.

Another thing with ambidexterity is you need to watch out for selected empty hands. Sometimes a hydra may catch player with a hand free because he was crushing mushrooms. He may forget to disable empty slot and cause game to die.

This is fixed. Also the interface used to select a set of weapons hase been changed, so that the starred weapon will always be selected (previously you could select one for ambi and star another one, which led to confusion).

Fine game Hydra Slayer is. I will be waiting for next patch.

Version 3.3 is available. Thanks a lot!

EDIT: Version 3.3 allowed ambidextrous combinations of division and subtraction which should not be allowed (not enough heads). Version 3.4 fixes this. Also fungification no longer leaves a dead body available for necromancy (of course you can fungify one hydra and raise another one nearby).

[Ancient]

One thing managed to escape my memory when I was writing above post. In Hydra Nest I found a Null Sector! This item sparked my interest but being a hobby programmer I knew that if you didn't consider the case using it would surely crash the game (and replace my stuff with a machete and a dagger). On the other hand you provided a neat name for the divisor so that means you probably thought about it. With a bit of fear I approached a mushroom and attacked. Apparently grepping game code seemed too much work for me. Man ... the message made my day. :-D

This gave me a weird idea. What if you could use the Null Sector to instantly kill ancient hydra but sacrificing your sanity in the process? A partial victory akin to nuking both the Cyberdemon and yourself in DoomRL.

For necromancy there is option of deliberately letting hydras grow with runes conflict (eg. two same-element hydras fighting each other) before fungifying them but it seems like an exploit to me. Unless there is some limit stating how many heads a hydra can accumulate.

I have upped blunt weapons found on later levels to be (a bit) bigger. (Also now you have a small chance to find very good stuff on levels below 12. You can no longer be sure that there is no point in saving your Big Sticks for later because you will not find anything bigger anyway )

Great news! Adding more meaningful tactical decisions is always good.

[Z]

The Null Sector was intended just as a joke item, for those who have already won (it appears below the AH level), without any intention of usefulness (well you could also use Big Stick on it, but still there is no reason for that).

There are never two same-element hydras on one level. And when you have two different hydras, they cannot grow indefinitely, because ultimately one of them will be big enough to defeat the other one. In the newer versions there is a growth limit (so that we don't run into overflow), but I think it cannot be reached that way. This winner will be probably very big and you can use fungification + necromancy to turn in into your friend, but since it cannot go to the next floor anyway, the most you can do with it is killing all remaining hydras on the level quite easily. I think pulling this off could be worth it, but not enough to consider it an exploit. (BTW, I think the method of producing giant hydra zombies I know is better than this.)

EDIT: OK, the problem with what I wrote is that the loser is usually not actually defeated, just dwarfed below the threshold of the winner. And the loser still tries to attack the winner, making it grow even bigger. Yes, probably I could try fixing that, but I am not sure how (allow hydras to attack with partial force? this seems to be the best idea)

[Z]

OK, Version 3.5 is out, with the following modifications:

* conflict has been nerfed (hydras are now allowed to attack other beasts even if they have more power than required to kill; vampire hydras are resistant)
* shields now help against ettins if the colors match; also Knowledge now correctly displays damage for ettins
* some other minor modifications (messages improved)

I had no time to test it thoroughly, but should be OK.

[Z]

After heavy playtesting (warning: link contains heavy spoilers), version 4.0 is out, with the following improvements:

• fixed blunt weapons not working with Power Swipes
• added extra stats (about special enemies and missile attacks; I think it is a very good style/extra challenge to use your missiles either to damage/kill one hydra, or to kill several of them without the help of mushrooms, so there are stats for that now)
• zombie now longer has x2 on attacks of its own color, which led to an exploit
• no longer forgets where the two first weapons come from after save
• full info now displays all weapons in sight, and some information about special enemies
• fixed reduction (a bit more useful, displays stats of the new weapon, no longer disappears after cancel)
• improved debug mode (creates more items for testing, allows to automatically test the quality of a weapon set)
  

[Ancient]

Greetings again. I advise not to look at my logfile ... it is SPOILER heavy!

As for your log: I am impressed by your power swipe score! The best I got was four. Weapon charge also seems like it took quite a lot of effort to arrange.

That collapsed hydra makes me a bit curious ... need to find out what is the amount of head the beast needs to accumulate in order to get die instantly.

Game saved.

Items found and used:
  Rune of Stunning (12/12)
  Rune of Decapitation (8/14)
  Rune of Cancellation (20/22)
  Rune of Growth (20/27)
  Rune of Conflict (12/12)
  Rune of Fungification (8/8)
  Rune of Fungal Necromancy (6/6)
  Scroll of Transmutation (16/21)
  Scroll of the Big Stick (29/36)
  Scroll of Reduction (3/9)
  Potion of Power Swipe (5/7)
  Potion of Weapon Charge (7/7)
  Potion of Extreme Speed (11/11)
  Potion of Knowledge (8/11)
  Potion of Power Juice (6/6)
  Potion of Mushroom Seeds (11/12)
  Potion of Ambidexterity (9/9)
  Potion of Life (0/2)

Now at 38th level with 12HP left. Good thing is I finally learned to use conflict effectively. When combined with extreme speed you can herd multiheaders together and curse some with conflict. Very helpful.

Need to quaff life potion now but with ~800 HP I should be all-right for quite a long time. Who knows when this character bites the bullet. Probably I will move hydra.sav somewhere else to run some other slayers in near future. It is tempting to test new way of dispatching ancient beast. For that and another try of creating a really giant zombie eradicator is needed but this character left it at twelfth floor.

Vampire hydras are too rare below AH level for my taste. Challenge factor would get a healthy boost by their presence. Right now it is a no-brainer to use stunning + decapitate on them.

Items used on the ancient hydra level:
  Rune of Stunning (1)
  Scroll of the Big Stick (1)

I thought about logging all messages during ancient hydra level. Probably would be more interesting but may be not worth the effort require to code it.

Weapons at the end:
  Obsidian Divisor (/5, obtained by reduction, from Level 28)
  Obsidian Trisector (/3, obtained by reduction, brought from home)
  Obsidian Bisector (/2, obtained by reduction, brought from home)
  storm triple sword (-12, from Level 35)
  poisoned epic sword (-13, from Level 36)
  obsidian three-handed sword (-15, obsidian dagger from Level 8)
  flaming epic sword (-16, acid three-handed sword from Level 17)
  golden large shield (P7, from Level 31)

Baah. Obtained by reduction and brought from home means I must have had some runes of reduction at home, right? Seriously that is another artifact of game loading. First two items are treated as if they have been brought from home. Fortunately you fixed it.

Have a look at my stuff. Obsidian + reduction makes for a cheesy combo. Soon I will have enough big sticks to replace one of the swords by obsidian variant.

Various stats:
  4830 total wounds (12 HP left)
  17179 total turns (hydra movements)
  22471 total seconds of real time
  37 levels solved
  1 times loaded a saved game
  873 total blade attacks
  330 beasts killed by your blades
  435 total divisor attacks
  137447 heads cut by your attacks
  1725 heads regrown after your attacks
  10 total blunt weapon attacks and shield bashes
  99 total heads stunned
  49 total missile attacks
  32 total hydras hit by your missiles
  3064 total stunned heads cut
  17 total ambidextrous hits
  52 single attacks used in ambidextrous hits
  1578 total mushroom heads converted to zombie heads
  72 mushrooms destroyed by blades
  344 mushrooms destroyed by crushing
  1232 mushroom heads destroyed
  1608 total attacks in conflict
  30 total beasts killed in conflict
  13244 total heads cut in conflict
  8042 total heads regrown in conflict
  8 total beasts killed by Rune of Decapitation
  1132 total heads removed by Rune of Decapitation (killing)
  990 total heads stunned by Rune of Charge
  122 total heads awakened after stunning
  6 total beasts awakened after stunning (part or total)
  87 heads grown by Rune of Growth
  3115 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning
  2 max runes active at once
  2 max beasts killed at once with a Power Swipe
  2 max hydras killed at once with a missile

I would add most hydra heads cut with a single ambidexterous attack. 360 was my high score. 360 /5 /3 /2 -12 = dead hydra. As you see no vampire head growth is listed. This is because I have exterminated them with extreme prejudice but encountered only a few. If memory does not fool me I could count them all on a single hand. MaxHP would also be useful additions if 4.0 does not provide it already.

Single ambidextrous hits seems to count attacks against hydras unaffected by the potion. It would explain why with only nine potions whole game I managed to accumulate 52 single attacks. IMO when you stun a hydra using ambidexterity and fight another hydra meanwhile it should not count.

Ettins deep down carried some really neat tools. Among them was a five-handed sword and a six-handed sword. Oh, now I remembered. Some of new names with longer element types exceed status area space and corrupt the map. Staff of misfortune is among them when combined with sapphire. Same for poisoned three-handed sword. That should be easy for you to fix.

I left both giant swords where they were. With my current setup I can effectively fight and finish off last bunch of heads quite easily. With really large pointy sticks it would be easy to decrease hydra size but very difficut to kill completely so I opted to keep smaller weapons. Such large tools are rather impractical without a missile weapon to finish off.

And oh ... subject line should read 4.0 now.