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

[Z]

After playing MathRL I have decided to try to create another roguelike based on some kind of mathematics, and here is the result.

The game is all about heads, you use your weapons to cut hydras' heads, and then they grow them back, usually. You need to choose your weapons carefully, just bashing the hydras with your "best" weapon is not likely to be a successful strategy. I think choosing your set of weapons and using your resources efficiently is quite challenging and fun in Hydra Slayer.

This is a small game, created in one day of writing and one day of playtesting.

Hydra Slayer homepage

Please post your log files

[Darren Grey]

Your link is a bit messed up.  And why do you not have the file name as .zip?

Seems like a fun little game, but I find the vikeys very frustrating to use    Very impressive for a day's work, I must say.

[Z]

Yeah, it was messed up, I have fixed it. My hosting site does not allow me to name my files as .zip, but it lets zip files named strangely, so I do that. (Maybe I should change to a better hosting, but on the other hand, IIRC there was no such problem when I registered.)

You should have been able to choose vi keys or numpad, whatever you prefer - seems I have not tested the Windows version well enough (arrow keys were working, and diagonals on numpad also, but 2468 on numpad did not - on Linux it worked alright). This is fixed in the new version (and there are also some other minor fixes).

Thanks very much for your comments!

[magellan]

Just died on level 2 after trying to kill a 6 headed chaos hydra with a -3 heads strongly chaotic weapon ... can you say "oops?"
Very impressive and (most importantly) fun for 2 days!
What i found slightly annoying was that you have to keep your 1 weapon, to get through mushrooms. But I only played one quick game right now, so maybe that goes away.

[Hi]

I'm on windows and > didn't work for going down the stairs. I really enjoy it and wish I could continue.

[Z]

Maybe a bit illogical, but that's because 'g' is for going down stairs (it is explained in help '?').

I don't know what is the optimal set of weapons, I suspect a -1 weapon would be a useful thing to have even if there were no mushrooms (otherwise you would have to use magical runes against all 1-headed hydras).

[magellan]

Actually, the "Bloody mushrooms" went away a little when I found out what potions of strength do...
Still, not a big fan of the mushrooms. I think they add little to the game.
Maybe if they did something.
Hmm... they could spread? Cellular automata? The level starts with a 9+ patch somewhere, and that turns into a huge 1 field?
Or the hydras could eat them, having some effect on them.

[Ancient]

Greetings!

I would like to report on my victory in Hydra Nest. Here is commented log file:

> You have won!

Yeah! Like ten attempts it took. Once a promising character was devoured by a floating point error. My guess is sometimes hydras get placed on X or Y coord equal zero.

> Items found and used:
>   Rune of Growth (6/19)
>   Rune of Cancellation (9/18)
>   Rune of Death (5/9)
>   Rune of Stunning (8/8)

Lost one due to a typo.

>   Rune of Conflict (2/13)

Found these to be difficult to use effectively. Must practice more.

>   Scroll of Transmutation (5/16)

Sometimes full info revealed key weaknesses.

>   Scroll of the Big Stick (7/15)
>   Potion of Power Swipe (2/6)

Love those. I plan to get quad kill someday.

>   Potion of Speed (4/14)
>   Potion of Knowledge (2/19)

Quickly learned to deal with creatures myself. Used only out of curiosity what would game hint.

>   Potion of Strength (4/4)

The slayer looks like a marilith now.

>   Potion of Mushroom Seeds (1/4)
>   Potion of Life (0/3)

By time I found them ancient hydra was dead. After reading description decided to save all three.

> Items used on the last level:
>   Rune of Stunning (1)

Single glance at the Ancient Hydra convinced me I would be oneshotted uness this was employed. Rune of Death was tempting but killing that beast with "conventional" methods gave more satisfaction. :-)

> Weapons at the end:
>   amethyst triple staff (x12)

Often used to minimize wounds taken if target Hydra could not be slain with three/four hits or less.

>   acid dagger (-1)

Carried mostly to cut mushrooms. Mushroom heads is a cool feature. You will want to have multiple-headed shrooms when doing Power Swipes. How about allowing mushrooms to be crushed barehanded? Tactical value of fungi would not diminish and at the same time opening road to more Hydras becomes matter of dropping a weapon for a moment.

>   poisoned triple sword (-12)
>   Chaos Trisector (/3)

Found a decimator but considered this to be more useful.

>   frozen claymore (-11)
>   bone legendary sword (-14)

Some runes of Big Stick were used on this. Boy it is really mean stick!

> Various stats:

All entries should get two spaces like above.

> 611 total wounds (39 HP left)
> 4200 total turns (hydra movements)
> 11 levels solved
> 242 total blade attacks
> 97 hydras killed by your blades
> 10 total divisor attacks

Five employed against Ancient Hydra.

> 10949 heads cut by your attacks
> 213 heads regrown after your attacks
> 22 total blunt weapon attacks

Meh. Me prefers blades.

> 216 total heads stunned
> 224 total stunned heads cut

How could I cut more stunned heads than actually have been stunned?

> 95 mushrooms destroyed
> 180 mushroom heads destroyed
> 18 total attacks in conflict
> 91 total heads cut in conflict
> 120 total heads regrown in conflict

I made two hydras fight themselves and offed winner with a Stun & Death rune combo.

> 4 total hydras killed by Rune of Death

Some larger targets were either stunned with hammer or rune and then dealt with.

> 48 total heads removed by Rune of Death

I found a 49 headed foe. Stunned 48 heads in four hits and stabbed the last.

> 19 heads grown by Rune of Growth
> 10053 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning

Over nine thousand belonged to Ancient Hydra.

> 2 max hydras killed at once

Allowed myself to be surrounded by two four-headed monsters. There also happened to be three-headed mushroom in between those. With a Power Swipe of my frozen claymore I made a double kill.

> 2 max runes active at once

Ditto. Probably a conflict and a stun due to typo.

Thank you for a very fun game. Pure tactics rocks!
And oh ... please make game print "press 'G' to descend" when you first walk over stairs.

[Z]

> You have won!

Yeah! Like ten attempts it took. Once a promising character was devoured by a floating point error. My guess is sometimes hydras get placed on X or Y coord equal zero.

Strange. I will try to fix that.

>   Rune of Conflict (2/13)
Found these to be difficult to use effectively. Must practice more.

I agree, they are rarely useful.

>   Potion of Life (0/3)

By time I found them ancient hydra was dead. After reading description decided to save all three.
> Items used on the last level:
>   Rune of Stunning (1)

Single glance at the Ancient Hydra convinced me I would be oneshotted uness this was employed. Rune of Death was tempting but killing that beast with "conventional" methods gave more satisfaction. :-)

It would not oneshot you, but yes, it would kill you in several hits (you can make notes and guess the formula used to calculate damage done by a N-headed hydra, and then extrapolate for the Ancient Hydra). Rune of Death does not work on the Ancient Hydra (it would be too cheap, would not it?). I think it gives more satisfaction to win this fight without using any runes, but then, you probably need potions of life, and ignoring the Decimator possibly makes it harder (I have used one Potion of Life and the Decimator).

>   amethyst triple staff (x12)

Often used to minimize wounds taken if target Hydra could not be slain with three/four hits or less.

Good that you have found blunt weapons useful

>   acid dagger (-1)

Carried mostly to cut mushrooms. Mushroom heads is a cool feature. You will want to have multiple-headed shrooms when doing Power Swipes. How about allowing mushrooms to be crushed barehanded? Tactical value of fungi would not diminish and at the same time opening road to more Hydras becomes matter of dropping a weapon for a moment.

Yeah, that was indeed my intention when introducing mushrooms (providing additional heads for Power Swipes). I like the idea about barehand crush

>   Chaos Trisector (/3)

Found a decimator but considered this to be more useful.

I preferred the Decimator, but that's right, a larger number does not necessarily mean greater usefulness here. But it's fun to use the Potion of Growth and see how the hydra grows lots of heads, which you then cut off with one Decimator strike and one normal strike

> 216 total heads stunned
> 224 total stunned heads cut

How could I cut more stunned heads than actually have been stunned?

"Heads stunned" counts only heads stunned by your blunt weapons (there is a separate stat for Rune of Stunning), and I suppose that  due to a bug stunned heads cut off by divisors are not counted, but I'll have to check.

Thank you for a very fun game. Pure tactics rocks!
And oh ... please make game print "press 'G' to descend" when you first walk over stairs.

Thanks for your comments! I have also devised some new features in the meantime, so a new version should be out soon

[Z]

A new version is ready. It improves things mentioned by Ancient, and also adds some new features (two new types of magical items, shields, and missile weapons).

(The floating point error turned out to be caused by placing a line of mushrooms from point A to point A, which caused a division by 0.)

[Xecutor]

Downloaded latest version.
Compiles and works fine on mac os x.
Why there are A LOT of scrolls at start? Is it intended?
How can I pick more than 2 weapons?

[Z]

Oh, sorry, that was for debugging purposes. I have uploaded the version without that (without changing the number).

To pick more than 2 weapons, you have to use one of the items (whose name is quite strange).

Good to know that it works on Mac Os X Is it true that it supports only 8 colors in the console? If yes, then probably it is a bit harder to see some things which are marked by color. (Although it should be still possible (usually), and also should not be a very big problem.)

[Xecutor]

Oh, sorry, that was for debugging purposes. I have uploaded the version without that (without changing the number).

That's what I thought

To pick more than 2 weapons, you have to use one of the items (whose name is quite strange).

Hm. Ok

Good to know that it works on Mac Os X Is it true that it supports only 8 colors in the console? If yes, then probably it is a bit harder to see some things which are marked by color. (Although it should be still possible (usually), and also should not be a very big problem.)

There are 16 foreground and 8 background colors.
It seems like you don't use background colors at all, so I think it's totally fine.
I can distinguish all types of hydras by color.
Much bigger problem is keypad. It is impossible to turn off num lock on mac!
It's always numbers for console apps.
And hjkl with diagonals is pain to use.
I added this little hack:

Code: [Select]


    if(ch==0x1b)
    {
      ch=getch();
      switch(ch)
      {
        case '1':ch=KEY_END;break;
        case '2':ch=KEY_DOWN;break;
        case '3':ch=KEY_NPAGE;break;
        case '4':ch=KEY_LEFT;break;
        case '6':ch=KEY_RIGHT;break;
        case '7':ch=KEY_HOME;break;
        case '8':ch=KEY_UP;break;
        case '9':ch=KEY_PPAGE;break;
        case '5':ch='.';break;
      }
    }   
to be able to use alt-keypad for movement.

Btw there are two links to hydra 2.0 on your page, but 1st one points to old source with debug items.
And link to cons2tcod is broken.

[Ancient]

> You have won!

Effortlessly. :-(
Having giant supplies at start proved to be disastrous to game balance. All challenge was gone. In my second game of HS 2.0 I decided that usage of Strength and Life Potions shall be disallowed.

> Items found and used:
>   Rune of Growth (1/11)
>   Rune of Cancellation (6/14)
>   Rune of Decapitation (2/6)

Hey! I like the new name a lot.

>   Rune of Stunning (8/10)
>   Rune of Conflict (0/8)
>   Rune of Fungification (21/102)

This gives experience? Great!

>   Scroll of Transmutation (13/110)
>   Scroll of the Big Stick (105/119)
>   Potion of Power Swipe (3/11)
>   Potion of Weapon Charge (21/104)

Whenever you end a charge with damaging but not weeding out completely a mushroom your character is not moved. See this example:

@....4...2

If you charge with a longsword (-5) the 4 will get killed and 2 damaged for 1
cut. The @ will not move though.

>   Potion of Extreme Speed (3/3)
>   Potion of Knowledge (0/122)
>   Potion of Strength (0/4)
>   Potion of Mushroom Seeds (1/4)
>   Potion of Life (0/2)

> Items used on the last level:
>   Rune of Stunning (5)
>   Scroll of Transmutation (4)
>   Scroll of the Big Stick (80)
>   Potion of Weapon Charge (14)
>   Potion of Extreme Speed (2)
>   Potion of Mushroom Seeds (1)

Constantly stunning ancient hydra I didn't even take a single wound. To finish it I had to do some running. Two missile hits were needed.

> Weapons at the end:
>   obsidian legendary sword (-90, obsidian dagger from Level
>   flaming legendary star (M20, golden shuriken from Level

Missiles are really fun addition. They obey the same rules swords do and allow some very creative fighting. Unfortunately when a missile kills hydra standing on any weapon it is gone. I suggest creating some find-free-tile mechanism.

> Various stats:

Next four still need identation. Otherwise it looks neat.

> 599 total wounds (134 HP left)
> 5371 total turns (hydra movements)
> 3415 total seconds of real time
> 12 levels solved
>   326 total blade attacks
>   88 hydras killed by your blades
>   10961 heads cut by your attacks
>   116 heads regrown after your attacks
>   90 total missile attacks
>   8300 total stunned heads cut
>   94 mushrooms destroyed by blades
>   126 mushrooms destroyed by crushing
>   829 mushroom heads destroyed
>   2 total hydras killed by Rune of Decapitation
>   72 total heads removed by Rune of Decapitation (killing)
>   1 heads grown by Rune of Growth
>   23851 heads stunned by Rune of Stunning

There is a small problem with this. It doesn't take into account heads recovered by waking up hydra. Another thing worthy placing there is number of heads stunned by Weapon Charge.

>   1 max hydras killed at once with a Weapon Charge

I find shields to be a fine addition. At the moment there is too much helpful things for the hydra slayer. Losing requires some awesome feat of carelessnes. I'll download fixed version.

Another thing changed was representation. I liked former more because now 40-headed hydra has same glyph as 250-headed hydra and ancient one.

The circling asterisk effect is funny but it looks weird when you power swipe with a great mace and stun three hydras but only last one has animation.

[Z]

> You have won!

Effortlessly. :-(
Having giant supplies at start proved to be disastrous to game balance. All challenge was gone. In my second game of HS 2.0 I decided that usage of Strength and Life Potions shall be disallowed.

Sure, with almost as many Runes of Fungification as there are hydras to kill, this is not a challenge. As I have said, this was not intentional

The new version has some balance changes to the last two levels (and a new special weapon), because I felt they were too easy in 2.0. I have also added Xecutor's hack. Also I have decided that the Potions of Speed had almost no use (their only application, fast escape, was rarely needed), so now they can also be used to get a single free attack.

>   Rune of Decapitation (2/6)
Hey! I like the new name a lot.

Thanks! (And there was a Fungification spell in Albion, I always liked this name...)

Whenever you end a charge with damaging but not weeding out completely a mushroom your character is not moved. See this example:

@....4...2

If you charge with a longsword (-5) the 4 will get killed and 2 damaged for 1
cut. The @ will not move though.

This should be fixed now.

Missiles are really fun addition. They obey the same rules swords do and allow some very creative fighting. Unfortunately when a missile kills hydra standing on any weapon it is gone. I suggest creating some find-free-tile mechanism.

Yes, except that they come with a free "charge". Free charge makes it rarer to run into a "not enough heads" or "the number of heads is even no matter what I do" problem, but I think this new "creative fighting" is worth the cost.

There was supposed to be a find-free-tile mechanism (if the missile cannot fall on the cell where the last hydra was hit, it goes a bit further, and if there was no place there, throwing is forbidden). Maybe the missile fell under a mushroom? (Mushrooms with things under them are now marked with a different color.) I have fixed some other things about missiles, and I think the bug is gone now.

There is a small problem with this. It doesn't take into account heads recovered by waking up hydra. Another thing worthy placing there is number of heads stunned by Weapon Charge.

Weapon Charge stunning and awaken stats added.

I find shields to be a fine addition. At the moment there is too much helpful things for the hydra slayer. Losing requires some awesome feat of carelessnes. I'll download fixed version.

I hope you meant this for the version with the hundreds of extra stuff. Without them, I think it is balanced (still with enough place for extra challenges).

Another thing changed was representation. I liked former more because now 40-headed hydra has same glyph as 250-headed hydra and ancient one.

OK, I have changed the representation a bit so that they have different glyphs.

The circling asterisk effect is funny but it looks weird when you power swipe with a great mace and stun three hydras but only last one has animation.

Too lazy to fix that. Thanks again for your comments