Infra Arcana, a horror/Lovecraft roguelike (now at v22.1.0!).

[jocke the beast]

The more I play this game the more I fell in love with it...
I like the atmosphere, easy controlls (throw dynamite, knifes, fire weapon etc.) and it feels well made.
I really hope you keep up the development to improve current features and add new ones later on.
Good work Sir!

[NON]

Thanks! Release 7 is coming this week...

[Legend]

Thanks! Release 7 is coming this week...

Sweet!

Hope it's by friday so I don't have to wait through my work week to try it out. :p

[NON]

The version is finished now. Manual is updated, game folder created, et c. Just need some more testing. I'll release it within 24 hours from this post, unless a natural disaster happens or something.

[NON]

Well, I missed the ARRP-weekend by a few days but here it is.

Release 8.
http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/Downloads

Highlights are potions and special rooms. Insanity is also more intuitive now I think.

New features
*Potions (14 types)
*6 new scrolls (some old scroll effects are now potions instead)
*Special rooms with descriptions and various effects
*Some rooms give temporary shock (restored when leaving)
*New trap: Spider web
*Flying creatures actually fly (can fly over chasms, acid, etc)
*New terrain types:
~Water (slower walk speed, dodge penalty)
~Blood (slower walk speed, doge penalty, causes shock)
~Acid (does damage)
~Mud (much slower walk speed, heavy dodge penalty)
~Chasm (only flying creatures can pass)
~And a few more...
*New symbol for gravestones
*New symbol for impassable rubble

Fixes & changes
*"SAN" (sanity) changed to "INS" (insanity) in the interface. Counts up from 0%. The values are called "insanity" and "shock" (or stress)
*Insanity increases when shock reaches 100% (instead of randomly happening when shock is high)
*The backstabbing skill gives highest dmg +50/100/150% extra dmg (was +50/100/150% added to rolled dmg)
*The XP info in the interface is of the format LVL: [level] NXT: [xp remaining for next lvl]
*Disease last much longer (but there are two types of potions that removes disease)
*Sadism does not decrease shock for killing LVL 1 creatures (rats, spiders...)
*A bug caused monsters to cast spells even while unaware
*Smoke was not erased when switching level
*Unseen cells are darker than in previous versions, and very slightly coloured blue
*The line under unaware monsters is blue instead of white
*When reading a scroll of summoning, the scroll identity is always revealed
*Fixed a typo when reading scrolls

[Ari Rahikkala]

Gave it a try. Quite nice! Seeing quite a bit of DoomRL influence here, which I like, and a smack of ADOM too I think?

The game's been pretty tough on me so far though. That's not a problem, but replaying the early levels would go by a lot more quickly and be less frustrating with a few interface niceties:

- If there's only a single door to 'c'lose, it should be automatically chosen (at least that's what I prefer - some people are weird and prefer that that shouldn't happen for some reason)
- Since the monsters tend to move about and not line up in corridors a lot, it would be nice to have something like Crawl's tab to hit the nearest monster
- 'w'alk from ADOM or, if you're feeling ambitious, aut'o'search from Crawl would be a really nice addition
- Also, this is just aesthetical, but I prefer FOV to be more permissive (at least enough so that you see the walls of a corridor you're in)

I kind of want to say that a few more starting HP would be nice, but that's probably just my newbieness-to-this-game talking. But I could stop being a newbie a lot faster with those interface features!

Oh, and one more thing: Permissive aiming. How about it? I really don't want to go into that room with the tommy gun-wielding guy when I know I could just kill him from the door like in DoomRL... except I can't since the aiming line goes through a wall

[NON]

The game's been pretty tough on me so far though. That's not a problem,

Yeah I wanted it to be challenging from level 1, instead of having to play for 20 minutes before actually having to think about the moves.

If there's only a single door to 'c'lose, it should be automatically chosen

I read a debate on this at RGRD, and I'm leaning towards explicit commands myself, rather than the game interpreting what you want. But in this case it's probably a good idea since you do a lot of door closing. I'll try it.

Since the monsters tend to move about and not line up in corridors a lot, it would be nice to have something like Crawl's tab to hit the nearest monster

I wasn't aware of this feature, so I started up DCSS now, and wow that's a neat feature! I'll definitely implement this. But how do you handle cases where the player is next to several monsters? Does it choose one randomly, or just ignore the command?

'w'alk from ADOM or, if you're feeling ambitious, aut'o'search from Crawl would be a really nice addition

Maybe the walk command. But not auto explore, the map is too small so it's not as worthwhile.

Also, this is just aesthetical, but I prefer FOV to be more permissive (at least enough so that you see the walls of a corridor you're in)

Yes I've heard this elsewhere. I agree that it's too unpermissive and I'm looking into changing the line drawing/LOS algorithm.

Oh, and one more thing: Permissive aiming. How about it? I really don't want to go into that room with the tommy gun-wielding guy when I know I could just kill him from the door like in DoomRL... except I can't since the aiming line goes through a wall

I don't know what you mean by this (and the thread doesn't make it clearer either). Do you mean you can see the guy but not shoot him? That should never happen since the FOV and the aiming-line uses the same line algorithm.

[getter77]

Great to see another release on this!  Just think of it as being very early for ARRP 2012, though I would like to imagine we'll be well into the r double-digits by that time...   

[Ari Rahikkala]

Well, obviously DoomRL is DoomRL and Infra Arcana is a different game, and honestly it's probably best for aiming and vision to be exactly as permissive. But as it is, DoomRL has more permissive aiming than vision, meaning that for instance:

Code: [Select]

######
.....A
@#####
... here you can not see the A, but you *can* shoot at it. In that game it can be an essential tactic. But I don't know if I really want a mechanic like that to spread to other games...

[NON]

Ah, no that feels very much like a distinctive DoomRL mechanic.

In IA you wait around the corner with an axe.  It's easy to lure them out.

[Legend]

Sweet. I was going to get in some old fashioned Doom and/or Minecraft, but think I'm going to sink my teeth into this instead. Looking forward to playing around with the potions and scrolls more.

I agree that AI would be better without the permissive aiming that doomrl has.

I also agree with the comment about FOV.

[NON]

 

New line-drawing algo implemented (Bresenhams), plus a little FOV-hack.

The result is very nice!

+More permissive FOV.
+Corridors light up when you enter them.
+You can easily see corners.
+Projectiles have a much nicer and smother travelling path.


Edit: Nvm, Bresenhams caused some undesired behaviour (intrinsic to the algorithm). I still kept the hack though which works very nicely. Corridors and corners light up much better than before.

[Darren Grey]

You might want to try Shadowcasting for FOV.  There are some good guides on RogueBasin.

For door auto-opening you can set it as a config option.  For auto-attack I suggest you have an order of preference (E, NE, N, NW, ...) when fighting numerous enemies so the player at least knows what to expect.

[NON]

For door auto-opening you can set it as a config option.

Good idea.

For auto-attack I suggest you have an order of preference (E, NE, N, NW, ...) when fighting numerous enemies so the player at least knows what to expect.

I'm going fix targeting for ranged weapons, so that your target is the last monster fired at. Auto-melee should attack your current target if adjacent, otherwise attack something else and set that monster as target. The order of preference here is a good idea when there is no adjacent target.

[NON]

I've added most of the interface improvements suggested here, and I liked them so much that I did a quick release:

Release 8.1 (September 24, 2011)
http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/Downloads

New features
*2 new unique monsters
*The tab key performs a melee attack vs an adjacent monster

Fixes & changes
*The FoV is more permissive with walls (especially corridors and corners)
*Default aim position is at last monster attacked
*If there is only one adjacent door, the 'close' command does not ask for direction