Vapors of Insanity version 0.56 (June 27, 2012)

[Z]

Game title: Vapors of Insanity
Game version: 0.56
Release date: June 27, 2012
Main website: Link
Synopsis: A big and detailed roguelike inspired by the classic majors, with a mixture of many classic and original systems

The original announcement post (0.50):

This is the first release of my big roguelike, named Vapors of Insanity. It is intended to be a major roguelike. It already has lots of features, but probably also lots of bugs, imbalances, and other bad stuff. Check it out at your own risk!
 
Vapors of Insanity is a roguelike game set on a paradise island of Fortarica, where the common Humans, mighty Dwarves and Orcs, insect-like Melissans and Formicans, and many more people lived in peace and harmony... until now. One day, you wake up, and see magical fog everywhere around you, and every man and beast around seems to become a mindless machine, wanting only to kill you! The only way to find the source of the problem is to fight the crazy beasts, hoping that you will find a way to remove the vapors, and the beasts will be sane again... Will you be able to win?

Vapors of Insanity features:

• A big three-dimensional world, consisting of a big variety of outdoor, building, and underground locations.
• You can play both in hex and orthogonal mode.
• An original spell system, where you can build complicated spells using simpler spells as components.
• Also original skill/experience and fighting systems.
• Many hopefully interesting magical gadgets that can be found.
• A variety of creatures and items to find: about 150 types of items, 150 species of monsters and plants, 150 materials (including potions), 150 types of magical runes, 80 skills and spells; some of them are parametrized. These include both the standard high fantasy stuff and more original ideas.
• Graphics that are supposed to not only have the advantages of a graphical display (better aesthetics, accessibility for new players), but also the roguelikes' classical ASCII display (clarity, allowing one to use imagination, simplicity of creation of new monsters and items). An ASCII mode is also provided for SSH access, and other hardcore ASCII fans.

For developers:

• Most of the game written in a special scripting language called VaporGS, allowing developers to create new modules, which can be simply placed in an appropriate game to modify the game somehow; these can range from minor additions (and you should be able to easily use several such additions at one time, if there are no obvious conflicts); they can be also provided as either open source (for educational purposes), or as closed source (if you want to have hidden secrets)
• The language is based on a extension of the Object Oriented paradigm, where objects can modify other objects by providing additional methods to them (like a ring of flying providing a flying ability to the wearer, but this paradigm has been applied in many various ways)

(Note: the development tools and the script sources are not yet available in the current release)

Link

[teoleo]

link?

[dephbokks]

You can get to it by going thru his signature, but here it is:

http://www.roguetemple.com/z/vapors/index.php.


Anyway, congrats on the preview release Z. Keep up the good work. The screen shots look interesting. I have been doing programming/computer work all day today so I am taking a break, but I will try to check out your game later tonite.

[Z]

Sorry about the missing link, this is fixed. Releasing and announcing seems to be a lots of work, and I missed this detail

[teoleo]

i have downloaed the zip two times but i found NO- files to extract....  :O(

[Krice]

This far: I don't know what I'm carrying. I don't know how to pick up items (I tried, something seems to happen but all I get is a targeting cursor of some kind). Moving around is confusing. What's the reason for that kind of tile structure? I always keep walking into wrong direction.

Other than that the game sure feels different! Not your usual roguelike clone.

Oh, and when you die it seems nothing happens (screen goes grey though) and when you try to save the game, then it's possible to exit the game. Weird.

[getter77]

Congrats on managing since a substantially ambitious project in the shadows Z!  Here's hoping to a bright future to 1.0 and beyond.   

[Z]

i have downloaed the zip two times but i found NO- files to extract....  :O(

Apparently the download script that I was using did not work correctly sometimes... What was the size of the downloaded zip? (I am using the script to count the downloads, because I did not like it that I didn't know how many people are downloading my games and how many of them are just looking at the website.) I'll try to replace it with something else now. (EDIT: done.)

This far: I don't know what I'm carrying. I don't know how to pick up items (I tried, something seems to happen but all I get is a targeting cursor of some kind).

Yeah, the interface is different than the roguelike standard. I have added help about these things to the quick start guide on the download page.

Moving around is confusing. What's the reason for that kind of tile structure? I always keep walking into wrong direction.

That's just hexes (just drawn using square tiles for simplicity). If you don't like it, you can edit the "geometry hex" line in vapors.ini and replace it with "geometry oct".

Other than that the game sure feels different! Not your usual roguelike clone.

Yes, lots of things done not in a standard way

Oh, and when you die it seems nothing happens (screen goes grey though) and when you try to save the game, then it's possible to exit the game. Weird.

Yes, the world still goes on when you are dead  Save does "Save and Quit", there is no "Quit without saving" option. Maybe "Q" should do this too.

[Krice]

Save does "Save and Quit", there is no "Quit without saving" option. Maybe "Q" should do this too.

I don't understand why you have to quit the game after you are dead. (or in this case try to save the game). Is there a reason for that?

[Z]

I don't understand why you have to quit the game after you are dead. (or in this case try to save the game). Is there a reason for that?

Classically, in roguelikes, after you die, you are asked the famous DYWYPI question ("Do you want your possessions identified?"), shown the list of conducts, asked whether you want to create a final log (a text file which lists the achievements and stats), shown the high score list, shown some stats which the roguelike thinks that they might be interesting, asked whether you want to enter the Wizard Mode and resurrect yourself, and then deleting the character. So having to just press 'Save' or 'Quit' is actually quicker

(I think this classical behavior is not very convenient,  and furthermore if you e.g. answer "no" to DYWYPI by mistake, there is no way to return to the question. It is very easy to fix the interface, you just have to show the menu of all possible after-death actions, instead of a sequence of screens. But somehow roguelikes seem to tend to keep the bad interface.)

And if YWIPI or want a final log, you can ask for them before quitting (although such options are not available in the current version).

I think it could be also useful to keep the finished character for one's records. More useful than keeping just a final log.

Another reason is that you still could be healed by an ally (well, not in the current version), a delayed spell, or some weird magical item. A bit strange, but theoretically possible.

[Krice]

So having to just press 'Save' or 'Quit' is actually quicker

How about just pressing space or esc after "you died" -message? How the hell you are supposed to know you need to (try to) SAVE the game after you die? You can't even save it.

It's strange how user interface design seems to be difficult for many roguelike programmers.

[Z]

Yeah, there should be a message which tells you what to press. Well, expect lots of not-perfect things in the current version

Hierarchical structure of the world gives new choices, but also lots of interface design difficulties.

[Krice]

I find the source code confusing, too. It's incredibly hard to understand. But that's not the point. Let's hope you can improve some UI issues, maybe it will become more playable. But it could be cool as it is, for some people like Dwarf Fortress players.

[Z]

I think it is not very useful to try to understand the source code at the moment. Most of the game logic is inside the GSL files, the sources for which are not included yet, neither is the documentation about how the whole system works. So... well, you not only don't know how it works, but also what it does. And since it is not commented well, and some parts are very old (written before I have learned STL)... Well, you get the idea.

Hopefully it will become more understandable once I write the docs and show the sources of GSL files.

[Endymion]

Tried this out for a bit and it seems very interesting.

Starting the tutorial naked and then picking up stuff would probably be better than already having everything you could need since as is I didn't really figure anything out(besides how to move forward in twisty passages) from the tutorial that I wouldn't have quickly figured out without it.

After managing to memorize some map I couldn't figure out a way to see it without packing the map again but from the wording I assumed there'd be some way(Looking at the Universe doesn't work, the information isn't in my soul, there isn't a specific key for it, looking at the cells above me doesn't do it)

Also how do I charge wands? I tried wielding one in one of my hands for a while but it didn't seem to work.

Played as artificier for a bit, after my golem killed something I got "You punch the dead human in the head with the left arm." and
"The dead human blocks with the bronze spear." messages which probably shouldn't be happening. Figured out how to fix the golem once it broke but is there any way to do it while it's still alive? Also not having any idea what the golem was doing while moving forward was a bit unnerving so I hope there's some way to track beings outside your field of view. Then I made a silly mistake of forgetting my entanglement thing while trying to forget spells I tried to make based on some equipment, so "Are you sure?" prompt for forgetting importantish skills might be nice.

Then I decided to try being a knight which I found a bit boring as there wasn't that much to do other than just following the road to closest village("g" imho should move along the roads like it does in twisty passages) and to decide when to stop to rest and whether to use some of the orbs I found on the enemies.(with them I managed to teleport my sword a little bit and make a chimpanzee helmet)
I'm not really sure how do I get experience, after my initial free exp got assigned or just disappeared or something it seems to be staying at around -4 and none of my skills appear to be changing(could be that I just didn't play long enough).

Also my computer is a bit old and so the game runs a bit slow for me, are there any settings or something that might improve the performance?

Anyway I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops.