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

[NON]

OK so I don't think the problem has anything to do with SP versions anymore.

I think the problem I'm having is because I'm trying to run it on a virtual machine, and that hardware acceleration is not supported.

I re-uploaded the IA Windows version now, renamed as "x86" instead, since that's clearly what it is.

Would still be great if you could download and try it out on your 32bit machine Legend.

[Legend]

Hey NON. I didn't get to try the version I originally saw which said it was 64 bit. But just downloaded and tried the x86 version that is now on the page and it seems to work fine. Thanks. And yeah, I have xp sp3.

[NON]

Hey NON. I didn't get to try the version I originally saw which said it was 64 bit. But just downloaded and tried the x86 version that is now on the page and it seems to work fine. Thanks. And yeah, I have xp sp3.

Excellent!

The version you downloaded now is exactly the same build. All I did was to rename the folder and zip file to "x86" instead (since it actually already was).

[Legend]

I'm having a blast with the new build. The fewer, yet stronger enemies makes each level pretty tense and un-nerving.  The chains scared the bejezus out of me when I first stepped into them!

I can't quite grasp the new xp mechanics though. I tend to skip the intro level now since killing the wolves reaps no real benefit anymore that I can see. It takes quite a while to level up for me. I can't seem to figure out how to optimize experience gain other than reading every manuscript and coming across the free xp monoliths. I tend to mostly avoid enemies now. I've only reached xp level 2 so far once. Made it to dungeon level 6 so far as my best.

I still suck at the game though.

Yet to find the mace so far. Can't wait for when I do though!

p.s. I miss the tombstone, tree, moon, spider web ascii end screen.

[NON]

Infra Arcana v19.1 released

Downloads:
https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/downloads

Changelog:

Gameplay
* Spells have basic/expert/master tiers instead of a skill percentage - higher tiers can be achieved by picking traits for various spell domains (e.g. "Lesser Invocation" to cast all attack spells at expert level)
* Reworked the spell skill bonuses for all spells
* Lowered the spirit cost for many spells
* The Occultist receives halved shock for casting spells (not just from using strange items)
* Spellcasting is now generally more powerful than before, and scales to be more useful by mid/late game
* Darkbolt and Azathoth's Wrath do random damage within a range, instead of a fixed number
* Being Blessed/Cursed affects the shock cost of casting spells, instead of the spirit cost
* The spell "Healing" is now also available for the player
* The potion "See Invisible" is now a spell instead
* Added spell "Transmutation" (convert items)
* Added spell "Subdue Weapons" - learned simultaneously as "Animate Weapons" (very cheap spell which drops all visible Animated Weapons)
* Added spell "Spell Shield" - grants spell resistance until a spell is blocked (same effect as the spirit traits)
* Removed Potion of Clairvoyance
* The Potion of Invisibility effect ends when attacking or casting spells, and has much shorter duration
* Removed the "Sacrifice Life"/"Spirit" spells
* The spell "Summon Creature" picks more sensible monsters when cast by the player (e.g. a Wolf will not appear when cast at Master level)
* Improved AI of player allied  monsters - they are now much more active in pursuing enemies
* Added trait "Stout Spirit" (before "Strong"/"Mighty Spirit")
* Added trait "Absorption" for Occultists - blocking a spell restores 1d6 Spirit
* Added trait "Resistant" - halved damage from fire and electricity
* Mind Eaters (now called Mind Leeches) can no longer paralyze the player
* The "snake emerge" and "wall crumbling" events are much rarer
* "Snake pit" rooms now contains much fewer monsters (instead of filling the whole room)
* Oozes have much shorter awareness duration and tend to spawn in smaller groups
* Keziah Mason starts together with Brown Jenkin, instead of spending a turn to summon it when she sees the player
* Monsters now attempt to detect the player by vision on standard turns, instead of on their own turns (to prevent very fast monsters from detecting the player too easily)
* Ravens, Bats, and Vampire Bats no longer actively moves towards the player, but will attack if adjacent
* Byakhees are slower
* Ghoul characters have +10% speed and +1 natural Armor Point
* "Infravision" has been changed to the ability to see in darkness instead (this means Ghoul characters can fully see in dark rooms)
* Adjusted Potion of Poison duration so that it's guaranteed to be non-lethal for any non-diseased player character with full hit points
* Poison damage is slower, but poisoning generally lasts longer
* XP gained from Monoliths increased from 15% to 20%
* Rod of Cloud Minds (which the Rogue starts with) now only requires 90 turns to recharge (or 45 with the Electrically Inclined trait)
* Unidentified Rods do not display their recharge countdown - attempting to use an unidentified Rod before it's recharged wastes a turn (with the same message as if the effect is unknown), but does not reset the countdown
* Removed the damage bonuses from the Marksman traits (it made ranged combat very overpowered)
* Removed Armor Points bonus from Tough/Rugged traits
* Added trait "Thick Skinned", which gives +1 Armor Point
* Each melee trait gives +5% chance to evade melee attacks
* The War Veteran starts with a Flak Jacket instead of a Leather Jacket
* The base chances for bashing doors open and pushing lids are higher
* Throwing knives do 2d3 damage (avg 4.0) instead of 1d6 (avg 3.5), and have +10% hit chance
* Rocks no longer have a hit chance bonus, and do less damage
* Increased backstab bonus for Daggers and for the Vicious trait
* The Imperceptible trait is only available for Rogues
* The Mi-go Electric Gun runs on Hit Points instead of Spirit, and does less damage
* The "auto move" command ("e") now also stops before hanging vines
* Greatly reduced the ability penalties for wearing Iron Suit, and slightly reduced the penalties for the other armors
* Putting on, taking off, or dropping armor now takes multiple turns
* Properties applied from monster attacks (such as paralyzation or blindness) have a certain percent chance to get applied - many attacks still have 100% chance to apply their effect, but some now have a lower chance (such as paralyzation from White Spider bites)
* Paralyzation can be re-applied while already active
* Paralyzed actors always have 100% speed, so that very fast monsters (such as  Bats) does not immediately start moving again
* Much higher chances that monsters become "wary" first, instead of immediately detecting the player
* When monsters detect the player due to sounds, they pause for one turn (just like they already did when detecing by vision)
* Burning no longer completely prevents reading manuscripts or casting spells - instead there is a 50% chance to fail (wasting the manuscript or spirit upon failure)
* Removed the regeneration aspect from the Orb of Life
* The Horn of Banishment now also works on Major Clapham Lee's summoned "Tomb Legions"
* Gas masks now also protects against gas explosion traps
* Insanity increments are higher than before, and randomized
* Shock from carrying disturbing items reduced to 0.05% shock per turn (from 0.1%)
* The Rogue background receives -25% passive shock (instead of -50%)
* Reduced the penalty for each wound to -5% melee hit chance (instead of -10%), -5% dodging (instead of -10%), and no penalty to ranged attacks (instead of -5%)
* The Survivalist trait completely removes the penalties to hit chance and dodging from wounds
* Being Frenzied allows waiting in place (with "5" or ".")
* Added some new mid/late game monsters
* Weakening now causes halved melee damage, instead of minimum melee damage
* Removed the Wolves from the intro level
* The Rejuvenator Device causes heavy shock when used
* Good properties no longer interrupt player actions when they are applied (e.g. using medical equipment is not interrupted by regaining spell resistance)

Interface
* Weapon names show average damage instead of dice rolls - melee weapons also show their "plus" damage bonus (not including any damage bonus from traits), e.g. "Machete 9.0 {+2} +0%" - the exact dice rolls can be seen in the detailed item description when viewing the item in the inventory
* Brighter interface color scheme (some menus could be difficult to read before)
* The descriptions for armors and gas masks includes their exact ability penalty values
* Multiple monsters had a red "E" as symbol when playing in text mode, they now use different colors from each other
* "Ornate Tombs" are now colored cyan instead (they were hard to distinguish from normal tombs)
* When viewing monster descriptions ("v"), the monster's hit chances and properties are no longer displayed (only the player's chance to hit the monster)
* Fixed Fire Hound projectile animation in tiles mode (a small "blast" tile instead of a bunch of forward slashes)
* When walking through water or mud, more descriptive messages are printed ("I wade slowly through the knee high water") instead of "splash" or "glop" - this is to emphasise that they cost an extra turn to move through
* When not wearing armor, the armor icon is drawn slightly darker than before
* Ravens are brighter (they could be hard to see)
* The high score list now also shows player background
* A game summary text file is always stored after the game (there is no menu option for this)
* You now also go to the postmortem menu after winning the game, and a game summary file is written
* When browsing high scores, selecting an entry shows the game summary for that entry
* The game no longer pre-loads the ambient sound effects (they are now only loaded on demand) - vastly reducing the program load time (should be nearly instant on most systems) and initial memory usage
* Seeing fire on the map now interrupts actions such as waiting or using medical equipment

Bug fixes
* On some machines, the random number generator would have a fixed seed (apparently, the C++ std::random_device can silently fall back on this method if it cannot find a source of randomness...), resulting in deterministic map generation, etc - the RNG is now seeded with the current time instead
* Fixed a bug which prevented accessing the manual ("Tome of Wisdom") from the esc-menu during a game
* Fixed a bug which removed the Sentry Drone monster from the game - preventing both usage of the Sentry Drone device, and hostile Sentry Drones from spawning on the map
* When Mi-go commanders dropped their armor on death, this was treated as if the player tried to unequip the armor
* The "wall collapse" event could crash the game in some situations
* The descriptions of "fast" monsters said that they appear to move "slowly"
* Fixed some typos

[getter77]

Nice---another fairly potent update and so soon!  That good momentum~   

[Legend]

I finally found one! I love my spike mace. Thanks NON!

[transcendreamer]

Gameplay now is very hardcore.

[Legend]

Gameplay now is very hardcore.

Yeah it is. I've always found it tough myself though.

I think part of it is due to the new experience system. I like it though, because it is less grindy. It adds a lot of tension and atmosphere in that there are fewer, yet tougher monsters and heavily encourages exploration.

I also like that monsters are fought primarily for the hopes of looting something useful, or because they are blocking your path to exploration,  rather than simply for xp. It's more realistic too and fits with the theme better I think.

[Legend]

There's a new let's play of the most recent version up on youtube by rogueliker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS3SVkyKk_I

He misses the wolves.

[NON]

p.s. I miss the tombstone, tree, moon, spider web ascii end screen.

Hey Legend!

[NON]

Infra Arcana v19.2 released.

Downloads:
https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/downloads

Changelog:

Gameplay
* All items which gave XP on identification now instead gives XP when that item is found for the first time (except "Strange Devices") - the reason for this is to reduce the pressure to identify consumables as soon as possible, and also to have a more "natural" continuous stream of XP, rather than occasional bursts
* When carrying a Potion, the player eventually gets a "feeling" for if the Potion is benign or malign
* Increased minimum distance from player when spawning monsters (when entering a new map, or spawning over time)
* Hounds can no longer bash doors
* Reduced group sizes of Hounds
* Hound bites cause physical damage instead of elemental
* Leech type monsters apply indefinite properties (which can be cured) instead of directly affecting stats
* Slightly fewer monsters are spawned on the map
* Monsters can no longer cast "See Invisible"
* Some monsters now have more specialized spell selections (too many monsters could cast too many different spells)
* Monsters spawned from summoning spells only remains temporarily
* Summoning spells no longer have a risk to spawn hostile creatures
* Monsters cannot summon other monsters near the player from a distance (summoned monsters always appear as near the summoner as possible)
* The "Transmute" spell costs much less spirit to cast
* The spells "Summon Creature" and "Summon Mummy Servant" costs one less spirit to cast
* Animated weapons are stronger, but are permanently destroyed when "killed"
* When cast intrinsically (i.e. not from Manuscripts), some spells can be cast without making noise (this is specified in the spell descriptions)
* The Horn of Banishment now also works on Khephren's summoned Locusts, and on monsters spawned from traps
* Monsters spawned from traps now wait a bit before acting
* Using Rods causes less shock than before
* Removed the "Demolition Expert" trait
* Removed the "Observant" trait (the effects are Rogue background bonuses instead)
* The "Vigilant" trait grants awareness of all monsters within three steps - even if they are invisible, around the corner, or behind a door, etc (instead of only preventing backstabs)
* The "Silent" trait also prevents alerting monsters when wading through liquid
* With the "Rapid Recoverer" trait, Hit Point regeneration is 1 HP every 2nd turn (previously it only regenerated 1 HP every 5th turn)
* The "Survivalist" trait no longer has "Tough" as prerequisite
* The "Self-aware" trait has "Cool-headed" as prerequisite instead of "Observant"
* Melee traits no longer improves chance to evade melee attacks
* Room templates (loaded from file) are now considered unique, each type may only appear once per game
* Fountains with bad effects always dry up on the first quaff
* Added map feature "Alchemist's workbench", similar to bookshelf but may contain potions
* Some monsters such as Molds or common Rats have negative dodging ability (i.e. they are extra easy to hit)
* Leng Spiders have a ranged attack
* Polyp monsters can be knocked back (e.g. by kicking)
* Invisible monsters causes shock (with a fixed amount), provided that the monster cannot be seen, and the player is aware of the monster ("!" sign on the map), and their map cell is seen
* The Spirit Dagger does 300% extra backstab damage (just like normal daggers)
* While the player is using the Medical Bag, infections cannot turn into disease, and the infection turn count is frozen
* Updated the score formula to include turn count (lower turn counts give higher scores), also a winning game now guarantees higher score than a non-winning game
* Removed the Rod of Purge Invisible
* The Shockwave Device is a Rod instead
* The Horn of Deafening is a Strange Device instead
* Nicer tombs are guaranteed to contain better items (and common tomes MAY contain better items)
* Pitchforks gives +15% chance to evade melee attacks
* Sledgehammers no longer knocks the victim back
* Monsters become unaware after the player teleports, if they cannot see the player at the new position
* Ghoul characters can use their claws for destroying corpses (and cannot get sprains from this)
* The Ghoul traits "Foul" and "Toxic" also gives +1 claw damage
* Ghouls do not have access to any ranged weapon traits
* Removed armor bonus for Ghoul characters
* Ghoul characters never gets sprains from breaking down doors, destroying corpses, etc
* Removed the "flickering" effect of the Electric Lantern
* Shock is completely restored when taking a sanity hit
* The Incinerator is always aimed at the floor of the selected cell (no need for players to select a floor cell adjacent to the monster they are attacking)

Interface
* Monsters are drawn with magenta background when they have temporary negative properties (such as paralyzation)
* When viewing monster descriptions, temporary negative properties are listed
* Added information on high scores and memorial files in the manual
* Each section of the manual is shown on a separate screen, accessed from a menu
* The "auto move" feature stops at junctions etc (instead of after a fixed amount of steps)
* When selecting "New Journey" from the main menu, and a saved game exists, the game asks if you really want to start a new game
* Added option for disabling ambient sound effects
* Added option to ask for confirmation before drinking malign potions
* When playing in text mode, the old ascii art graveyard is shown in the postmortem menu screen again

Bug fixes
* Fixed a crash bug for the Incinerator weapon (the game could crash when the projectile reached its max range)
* Energy Vortexes were not resistant to electricity
* In the game summary, insanity symptoms were written in the wrong format (e.g. "Phobia of spiders", instead of "Had a phobia of spiders")
* Monsters no longer spawn over time on special levels (e.g. the "Egypt" level)

[Legend]

Yay!
Thanks NON. Died got in 5 games so far tonight. I still suck, but still having fun dying. 

EDIT*
I have to say that IA is one of few roguelike games, when played in ascii, that really gives the feel of a dungeon. There is a variety in each dungeon level that makes each one genuinely eerie and foreboding. The variances in color, wall types, decorations, there is even the floors that just adds such a nice flourish to the games atmosphere.

[Skeletor]

Anyone got news of NON?
Hopefully he will continue to work on this great game.

I was trying to run it on my Linux Mint Cinnamon.. double clicking on the ia file nothing happens though.
Any advice?
Right clicking on it I don't get the "run on terminal" option.

[getter77]

Next release could be awhile yet, yet will be loaded:

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfraArcana/comments/8s9fag/thoughts_about_the_new_gui_redesign/?st=jnsv317f&sh=b658206b