PRIME 2.0

[Psiweapon]

Melnorme claims to have a power to detect quality of floppy disks, but I don't see any results. Using this power on ray guns tells their number of charges, but it does not identify empty ray guns.

This should probably return whether it's cracked/regular/infected

[Z]

Maybe, but this is not clear. I also do not see whether a disk is known to be clean.

Another bug: I do not see whether items in shops are unpaid when picking them up (especially nasty for a large pile of items, since in this case you do not see which of them are unpaid when moving on the pile).

EDIT: no, their power does not identify infected disks.

[Psiweapon]

No no, I meant what they *should* do, as in contrast to what they actually do.

[Ancient]

Been away coding! Finally, I have removed "friend struct shMapLevel" declaration from Interface class. Man, I could write a rant titled "My little C++: friendship is evil". Or at least overused and overrated.

Nice pile of feedback there, Zeno.

If you know the item is bound to "p" why you open the inventory? Will fix nonetheless.

To get its description.

*slaps forehead* Of course!

I have checked the sources and it seems that I need to name the Geiger counter correctly (BTW should not it be capitalized?) while it is clicking to identify it.

You are right. It seems I do the naming automatically nowadays and conflated getting a gizmo to click with getting its type identified. The name was set to lowercase since people are more likely to type it that way. Having string compare ignore case would be even better. However, your suggestion of auto-identifying the item at that point is good. Back when I made the decision to require naming it the most powerful argument against auto-ID was not everyone might think/know about Geiger counters in the first place and revealing the item in question might ruin some discovery fun. Still, that invites spoilers. Spoilers giving significant advantage is not my idea of fun game. The same shall be done to droid callers.

Electronic gizmos will get adjectives like "fiddly", "fragile", "complicated" and "gimmicky". Tricorder then will become a gizmo too.

You have named all the other unused glyphs correctly. The underscore served in previous versions as altar to WH40K deity but this was taken out for not being very interesting. I wish players never have to squint so for now comma is avoided on purpose. Maybe it could work for batches of different terrain.

I meant that it would be nice to know what caused the radiation sickness in your case. One way of doing that would be to count the number of units of radiation from each source, and display these numbers on the dead character's diagnostic screen.

Ah, okay. That sure would help. It inspired me to color radioactive known items in inventory green. I'll see how that will work out. Green generally is a color associated with good things so it might be not the best choice here.

An upgrade to item inspection screen is in the works. What it is missing are bits of knowledge like this:

This item is vulnerable to acid.
You do not know if it is acidproof. / It is acidproof. / It is not acidproof.

This item might be infected with computer virus.
You do not know if it is infected. / It is protected with antivirus. / It is not infected.

Some new things: most keymaps display "In default keymap these are '5' and 'g'", this is unclear in the default keymap, and useless in other keymaps. A newbie might have problems to rest in place for a long time. ADOM allows to press "5" to rest, and "w5" to long rest, and these do not work in PRIME with ADOM keymap ("w." works, but is awkward).

Keypad and arrow key problems again. I see that in ADOM keymap rest is bound twice to '.'. One definitely should be '5' so that with numlock on you could do that. Oh, and you can do "ww" to rest in place too.

Also, I am doubting the usefulness of look here command. Far look handles describing current square well enough.

I will have to think about empty ray guns too. It looks like ray guns with zero charges do not immediately switch to empty ray guns when you get to know number of charges. A bug.

Psiweapon is right about Melnorme. Reveal item quality service should either be unavailable for floppy disks or check for viruses. A bug.

Another bug: I do not see whether items in shops are unpaid when picking them up (especially nasty for a large pile of items, since in this case you do not see which of them are unpaid when moving on the pile).

I would call this a missing feature rather than a bug. Anyway this one was easy to correct.

[Z]

Thanks!

I feel that droids work in a rather strange way. Should not they fight my enemies and leave my friends alone? I have used a restraining bolt on a protocol droid, and the first thing it did was to attack a peaceful catbot. After the catbot won, I have used another restraining bolt, and the first thing it did was to attack a peaceful melnorme (and the catbot won again). Some time later we met a hostile catbot, and they did not want to fight. Also I think that slaves should display something special instead of "peaceful".

By the way, I would like to support PRIME tiles in NotEye once they are released (probably interpret ASCII PRIME with PRIME tiles, in order to use other features of NotEye).

Locked doors show "A [color] keycard is required.", I think this could be misleading for newbies, as it suggests that there is no other way in. Maybe it could be phrased in some better way without hinting too much?

[kraflab]

Perhaps "you see a [color] keycard slot", which implies that it can be opened in such a way, but not that it is necessarily the "required" way.

[Z]

There is no "discoveries" command to list all known identified classes of items.

[Ancient]

Ah, it is good you remind me of discoveries command. It was postponed because floppy disk of computer virus purposefully mimicked another randomly chosen but not yet encountered floppy to misidentify itself. It was so powerful it would regularly fool me. In result there was tendency not to use programs at all until getting antivirus. Since this was removed there is nothing really preventing me from implementing discoveries list.

Door keycard message will be rephrased. I have not yet chosen wording but sure something needs to be done about it.

Droids and pets attack only if their hit points are not almost depleted. They also do not attack higher level monsters unless they are kamikaze. There is NetHack pet logic inside. In NetHack you also need to be very cautious or your pets will kill shopkeepers and other valuable allies. On the other hands droids should be programmable and just obey commands. No idea what to do about it. Perhaps Prime needs 'shout command' command.

Yes, for slaves 'restrained' would fit better.

By the way, I would like to support PRIME tiles in NotEye once they are released (probably interpret ASCII PRIME with PRIME tiles, in order to use other features of NotEye).

Very nice but I sense a problem. Some tiles are meant to be generated. Floppy disk labeled AAIO actually is created by layering AAIO label on a colored floppy disk.

[Z]

Indeed, it would be hard to label floppy disks AAIO with the usual NotEye approach (interpreting the Curses output). Would be easier with the integrated approach (just like Hydra Slayer animates stunned hydras).

Even without viruses getting a random name, it is still true than anything can be infected. It is very hard to avoid viruses, since antivirus is very rare, and there are usually not enough ways to identify disks. The character below has cracked an identify disk early, so he did not have this problem.

There is a funny way of recoginizing viruses: if my disks of identify do not go into a single inventory slot, then there is some difference between them, usually one of them is infected. Probably hard to fix reasonably (similar methods work in other roguelikes, too).

Gamma caves are somewhat confusing, in some cases it is hard to tell whether a space means a wall or unexplored land. Would be better with hashes on diagonals IMO.

There is no warning when I go into an acid pit. This is especially bad because an acid pit filled with items just looks like an item.

When I execute optimized transportation, I usually answer the question by moving the cursor somewhere and pressing space. I think it understands this answer as cancel.

If I have identified reflex coordinators and try a new one, and it is +0, then it does not become identified as +0. It should.

Code: [Select]

        ########                                                Zeno           
        #.....)#   #####   ########                             Programmer     
        #......#####...#####<..)..##################            XL 20:19187     
        #......'   +...+[  +......+  '....>........#                           
        ######'#####.M[#####'#########.............#            Str 16  Con 11 
        ######+#####...### #[#       #.............########     Agi 19  Dex 16 
        #      '...+...'.# # #       #.............'  +.[[#     Int 21  Psi  7 
        #      ######'#### # #       ######'######+####.[[#                     
        #      #    # #    # #            #.#    #.#  #.[[#     Speed  -15     
        ####'###    # #    # #            #.#    #.#  #.[[#     Armor   39     
           # #      # #    # #            #.#    #.#  #####     HitPts 120(120)
           #[#      # #    # #            #.#    #.#            Energy1035(1000
           # #      # #    # #            #.#    #.#            $10969 *35     
           #.#      # #    # #       ######'#    #.#            Burdened       
#####      #.#      # #    # #       #......#   ##'##                           
#   ########'##    ##'######'#       #......#   #   #                           
#   '   +.>...######..[......#       #......#####   #                           
#   #####!.[..+   [[.........#########......+   +   #                           
#   #   #.(@.!######.........+       '......#########                           
#####   #######    ##########################                   Space Base 15   
What do you want to use? [BEGQRTVWcfjlmuwxy or ?]
Hot dog!  You finally got your paws on the Bizarro Orgasmatron!
You use its awesome power to beam yourself off this two-bit space hulk.

Congratulations, you are the baddest motherfucker in the galaxy now!

--- INVENTORY ---

  Energy Cells
o - 35 energy cells
  Money
B - 10969 buckazoids
  Weapons
b - an optimized +6 phaser (wielded)
a - an optimized +5 pea shooter
K - an optimized +5 assault pistol
O - a debugged +0 flamethrower
  Ammunition
A - 227 bullets
  Armor
Z - an optimized +4 radiation suit (worn)
f - an optimized shield belt (activated)
g - an optimized +2 pair of zealot leg enhancements (worn)
z - an optimized very burnt +2 superhero cape (worn)
S - an optimized burnt pair of x-ray goggles (worn)
Y - an optimized burnt +2 elven combat helmet (worn)
p - an optimized +6 aquamarine power armor (worn)
  Bionic Implants
e - an optimized radiation processor (implanted in frontal lobe)
n - an optimized +5 reflex coordinator (implanted in parietal lobe)
d - an optimized +5 reflex coordinator (implanted in occipital lobe)
L - a golden torc (implanted in neck)
J - an optimized poison resistor (implanted in temporal lobe)
h - the optimized Eye of the BOFH (implanted in right eyeball)
  Canisters
y - an optimized canister of speed
E - an optimized canister of plasma
V - 2 optimized canisters of healing
  Ray Guns
P - an optimized transporter ray gun (4 charges)
r - an optimized healing ray gun (9 charges)
D - an optimized disintegration ray gun (8 charges)
I - an optimized heat ray gun (11 charges)
q - an optimized freeze ray gun (5 charges)
s - an optimized freeze ray gun (7 charges)
i - an optimized poison ray gun (7 charges)
U - an optimized disintegration ray gun (6 charges)
X - an optimized heat ray gun (6 charges)
k - an optimized transporter ray gun (5 charges)
  Floppy Disks
H - an optimized cracked floppy disk of debugging
M - an optimized cracked floppy disk of transportation
v - 3 optimized floppy disks of transportation
C - a buggy floppy disk of lifeform detection
  Tools
j - an optimized flashlight (activated)
W - an optimized master keycard
F - an optimized fission power plant (100 charges)
N - an optimized fusion power plant (100 charges)
w - a small energy tank (300 charges)
t - an optimized rabbit's foot
u - 2 blue pills
l - the Bazaaro Orgasmatron
x - 2 red pills
Q - the Bizaaro Orgasmatron
R - the Bizzaro Orgasmatron
T - the Bizarre Orgasmatron
m - a large energy tank (500 charges)
c - an optimized protected +1 bio computer
G - the Bizarro Orgasmatron

--- MUTANT POWERS ---

  Power            Level Chance Status
Haste                2     40%   
Restoration          3     30%   
Teleport             5     10%   
Autolysis            6      0%   

--- SKILLS ---

Combat Skills
Handguns (Dex)              15+0 (15)     
Light Guns (Dex)            3+0 (5)     
Adventuring Skills
Repair (Dex)                2+0 (15)     
Programming (Int)           20+0 (21)     
Spot (Int)                  10+0 (10)     

You had 9 unused skill points.

--- DIAGNOSTICS ---

Your speed was 85.
Your speed bonus was 15.
Your psionic modifier was -11.
You were somewhat resistant to piercing damage.
You were extremely resistant to poison.
You were extremely resistant to radiation.
You were somewhat resistant to psychic attacks.
You were lucky.
You were telepathic.
You had night vision.
You had X-ray vision.
You were a light source.
You were shielded.
You had an air supply.
Your body eliminated radiation.
You had been exposed to minimal levels of radiation.

--- KILL LIST ---

3 fuel barrels
17 warp fungi
18 grid bugs
22 bore worms
543 tribbles
56 flying toasters
7 mynocks
41 giant cockroaches
11 man eating plants
13 little grey aliens
6 ratbots
17 green killer tomatoes
10 mutant humans
13 space goblins
8 tapioca puddings
3 smart bombs
3 kamikaze goblins
1 catbot
3 dogbots
12 red killer tomatoes
13 redshirts
4 space orcs
13 alien eggs
8 vat slimes
9 cylon centurions
4 stormtroopers
1 protocol droid
1 scrubbot
2 high ping bastards
5 space orc pyromaniacs
3 creeping creditses
2 spotted lizards
2 cylon command centurions
4 klingons
10 cheerleader ninja
2 borgs
9 facehuggers
4 radbeetles
4 space orc bosses
1 alien princess
17 recognizers
10 radspiders
15 pink horrors
4 mi-gos
8 zerglings
1 Bene Gesserit
15 smart missiles
1 klingon commander
2 low ping bastards
6 space elves
5 hydralisks
1 striped lizard
1 cyborg ninja
10 mutant ninja turtles
10 radscorpions
the killer rabbit
1 alien warrior
4 tall grey aliens
6 brotherhood paladins
4 space elf lords
8 lawyers
10 aquamarine marines
5 mean green marines
2 50 foot women
2 reticulan dissidents
2 space elf queens
4 crazy chaos marines
2 rocket turrets
1 defiler
1 high templar
3 alien queens
19 checkered lizards
2 warbots
1 securitron
12 giant apes
the Bastard Operator From Hell
3 mail daemons
6 bind daemons
8 nntp daemons
11 ftp daemons
the Shodan

--- SUMMARY ---

Zeno finished adventuring on 2012-7-16.
Zeno earned 19187 experience points and achieved level 20.
Zeno attained the professional rank of Programmer.
Zeno collected 48187 score points.

- cracked an optimized disk of Identify, it was very helpful (never summoned any lawyers)
- later, also cracked optimized enhance implant and unbugged enhance armor
- used the following set of weapons: +1 phaser, +0 assault pistol, +0 pea shooter, +1 shotgun (all unbugged)
- found a matter compiler, was able to use it several times on piles of cosmic junk (got a master keycard, zealot leg enhancements, and a cape); with these enhancements and two +5 reflex coordinators, the character was very fast
- after reaching the Robot Town decided to go to the sewers (looked safer since I had a restoration raygun, so poison did not look dangerous)
- found the first power plant somewhere there (before, I had to use a scrubbot to convert all robots into energy)
- the high templar at the bottom level was dangerous (apparently drained my energy quickly from afar) but it was also found and defeated; found the second power plant on the bottom level (not sure whether there was anything special to be found, but it was useful anyway)
- entered the Mainframe, armor and shielding belt were good enough to be almost invulnerable, energy in the power plants was enough to destroy a daemon, and then I waited for them to recharge (an usual strategy, you can wait on a safer level to restore health and energy)
- the Shodan hit very hard, so I have decided to use a red pill
- had two blank disks, created an enhance weapon program (could not find any...) and a hacking program
- this was not enough as I have not found any optimization program, so I reformatted an optimized floppy, wrote a debugging program, and cracked it. Used it to optimize everything, and also used the optimized enhance weapon/armor to maximize everything

It took me about 100 tries (and consulting the sources for some spoilers) to win. It was the second character which had any success after reaching the Robot Town; the first one met some marines and did not know what to do about them (so he only reached level 12 or something).

Thanks for your work on this game! A very nice roguelike. I have won Zapm in 2004 as a Space Marine, but I do not remember it well enough to tell what has been changed.

[Ancient]

I made a list of all suggestions posted thus far and formed a to-do out of them. On 20th a release will happen with whatever stuff I manage to implement. Integration with Necklace of the Eye might be a worthy alternative to reinventing the wheel and doing things from scratch. I will have to consider the thing very seriously.

Gamma Caves: will be changed. Missing corners look cool in Sewers so but not necessarily in caves.
Acid pit: oh yeah, that too.
Transportation: done! Space and enter are recognized as confirmation. Only escape cancels.
Stat implants: bug fixed.

Congratulations! You are first person to report a win since Prime received a second developer. Your comments about how you achieved your victory are very helpful.

- The log says you farmed tribbles quite a bit. Was that because they multiplied too fast or you noticed they stopped giving experience late?
- Why you haven't activated haste? It almost benefit-only power costing merely two psi points to sustain.
- You had enough energy to have flashlight constantly on despite there is no darkness in the Mainframe. Happens to me too. I just forget.
- Why only four brain implants?
- Really niiice set of ray guns you had there.

- Lawyer summoning is random but using cracked software repeatedly in very short intervals increases this chance. You were lucky with cracked identify.
- Fission power plant is guaranteed item in Sewer Plant. That and radiation suit are two items that make this branch worth a visit.
- Glad to hear you killed the templar. They are formidable enemies. You also killed a defiler. Was it any threat to you?
- I sometimes too get trolled by the RNG and a certain type of floppy disk program does not appear at all. Fortunately for you Software Engineers get no penalties for writing not yet known programs. I think discovery command will list unknown floppy disks so one can have some idea what programs can be written.
- Good to hear you figured the pills.

I would like to know what exactly spoilery details you were looking for. This might be indication some knowledge that should be available easily is not.

Well, quite a lot of stuff is different in Prime. Too long to list but the major changes are at roguebasin page. Add to that lots of new items and monsters. Both me and Psiweapon are generally happy with changes.

[Z]

Integration with Necklace of the Eye might be a worthy alternative to reinventing the wheel and doing things from scratch. I will have to consider the thing very seriously.

Yes, I think it would be a good solution. Unforunately so far it almost lacks documentation and comments, so it is probably currently very hard to do any programming with it for anyone else than myself.

Integration is done by replacing Curses functions with ones from noteye-curses.h (only the functions I use in Hydra Slayer are done for now, and in some cases I implement HS's wrappers rather than original Curses functions, for example a wrapper "int ghch(int context)" (which should be in noteye-curses.h but is not) is used for input to circumvent the problems with arrow keys in Curses). Hydra Slayer has a special function which gives all the information about a given cell (as a Lua table), and NotEye calls this function directly instead of looking at the ASCII map. The current context (map/dialog/etc) is obtained from analyzing the ASCII screen, but with the integrated approach it is also possible to pass this information directly, if there are any problems with it.

The log says you farmed tribbles quite a bit. Was that because they multiplied too fast or you noticed they stopped giving experience late?

Yes, I have noticed that they do not give experience after > 3000. But I also noticed that this 3000 seems to give a substantial advantage for the rest of the early game (at least), so I go for it when I meet a tribble early. In this game I think they were one of the first monsters I met, but the level layout was such that they multiplied a lot and it was difficult to defeat them after 3000, so it took me a lot of kills to eliminate them.

- Why you haven't activated haste? It almost benefit-only power costing merely two psi points to sustain.

Forgot about it.

Why only four brain implants?

I think I had only mecha-dendrites (which conflicted with the helmet so used only when doing repairs and programming), health monitors (not very useful apparently), a +1 psi amplifier (which I did not find useful), and some useless ones.

- Really niiice set of ray guns you had there.

But the transporter one was the only one I actually used, I think. I tend to avoid using wands in roguelikes, because they are a limited resource, and I usually do not know how powerful they are.

- Glad to hear you killed the templar. They are formidable enemies. You also killed a defiler. Was it any threat to you?

A defiler seemed to be not a threat, the shield belt worked well.

- Good to hear you figured the pills.

Was quite obvious (and probably most players get the reference). But I did not risk using a red pill when facing Shodan. Used the transporter ray first. Also I did not try to use the fake Orgasmatrons.

I would like to know what exactly spoilery details you were looking for. This might be indication some knowledge that should be available easily is not.

I don't remember exactly what I was looking for, but:
- what are the chance of successfully using disks of hacking and blank disks?
- is it possible to get something out of an infected disk of identify?
- why did a grid bug have a force field?
- there are lots of strange pieces of armor, do they give any special powers?
- how to get rid of alien embryos?
- how to use the matter compiler? [it is not obvious that you should stand on a pile of matter to decompile... also it is strange that leftover matter is compiled into piles of cosmic junk, which is one of the heaviest items in the game and means that lots of matter is lost]

EDIT: The next version of NotEye will be a shared library, and will include a very simple sample "roguelike". So it should be easier to use for integration than the current version.

[Ancient]

Version 1.10 is uploaded and ready for download. Website awaits changes and proper release announcement but that will be made later.

http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/1.10/prime_win-1.10.zip
http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/1.10/prime_lnx32-1.10.tar.bz2
http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/1.10/prime_src-1.10.tar.bz2

Turns out I left the preidentified flag on tricorder and it is not presented as gizmo in result.
Changelog: http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/changelog.txt

Next steps: fix remaining minor issues, try toying around with NotEye and start laying foundations for Yautja equipment.


Z, you may read about the fake orgasmatrons in Artifact.cpp. You haven't missed much by treating them as trophies. For hacking and blank floppies changes are planned. Hacking will display known modifiers and final result will be computed as percentage chance like usage of mutant powers is. Blank disks probably will be "choose program to write from a list" deal instead type the name without typos stuff.

Infected floppy disk of identify is practically useless except for permanently blind characters like Xel'Naga. Then it reveals only appearance but even that can be good.

Examine screen received an overhaul and you no longer need floppy disk of analysis to receive information about armor resistances, intrinsics and ability modifications. Just have it identified and look.

Alien embryos ... hmm. Now I remember how I first thought only one quaffed canister type killed it in ZapM. A message suggesting to drink harmful stuff should go a long way.

[Ancient]

Here comes bugfix release.

Windows binary
Linux 32 bit binary
Source code

Published first spoiler file for PRIME: on aliens.
Website is also updated and has fresh screenshots. The old were featuring removed wisdom attribute and had charisma instead of psionics. That was just screaming for replacement.

[kraflab]

I will try to get some more playtime in and give you another batch of feedback once I stop being so damn busy

[kraflab]

Ok, got some more play time in.  Here are some thoughts...

In various item descriptions, you get something like
"This object is vulnerable to fire"
"This item might be fireproof"

One of these statements contradicts the other.  They should be combined to say "This object might be vulnerable to fire".

In the inventory, upon selecting a ray gun, i get some options such as:
v - wield
W - quaff
W - zap

As it turns out, v is zap, and obviously having W as quaff and zap must be some kind of mistake.  This was with the Dungeon Crawl control set.

"Your professional rank is now mop boy": I found this quite charming

You can wield a monkey wrench thru selection in the inventory (it seemed to be my best melee weapon and worked well for me) but if you press w for wield it is not listed as an option, presumably because it is in the tool list?

I was doing rather well when suddenly my strength was reduced to 7 and i became overburdened.  I tried waiting for it to be resolved but it never went up.  I also removed all my items accept the necessities of weapon and armor and could not lose the burdened status.  To add to this I apparently got exposed to radiation (strange because I had a geiger counter and it didn't alert me at all).  I didn't know what to do so I pretty much died helpless in a corner    That is the kind of unfortunate thing that I had no idea how to deal with that makes people not play a game again.  I really like this game though so I will still play