NLarn - a Larn remake

[jaydg]

Phil Cordier, who maintained ULarn for many years, chose to modify the Lance, too:

In Larn, the basic strategy was to get enough money to buy a Lance of Death, usually by getting to dungeon level 10, killing or getting around the demon lord, and getting and then selling the Eye of Larn. This would usually get you enough money to buy the Lance from the dnd store. You could then go into the volcano and kill everything in sight with one hit from the Lance.

Well, the Lance is still deadly to all monsters. Demons, on the other hand, are merely tickled. And there are a LOT more demons (and relatives) in Ularn than in Larn.

(see http://www.cordier.com/ularn/)

This helps to get rid of all the other annoyances in the deeper levels, but keeps the challenge.. This is appealing to me, as the umber hulk or other nasties are pretty annoying when they get near.

[stu]

also remember, larn was an beginner game with a low difficulty level, it is not adom/omega/nethack etc with high difficulty.

[Etinarg]

Larn must have been my first roguelike ever. I don't know which version or variant that was, just that I had an Amiga 500 those times, and was amazed how much game there can be behind such simple ASCII letter. I had mostly no idea what to do, but I remember that I was pretty impressed.

It must have been fairly easy at the beginning, in Moria or Angband I remember dying way often on the early dungeon levels. Maybe it was good that I got my hands on Larn first

[jaydg]

Another week is gone, and fortunately I've been able to make some progress:

• made the LoD deadly  
• improved town further: (see attached image)
  
  • added mountain tile type
  • changed dirt symbol
  • changed the elevator to match the dungeon entrance
• cleaned up spellcasting:
  
  • book get used up by reading
  • spell power is increased according to spell knowledge level
  • spell description can be viewed.
• it is now possible to examine a remote position
• containers can be used (taking things out and putting things in is possible
• ...and of course: fixed some nasty bugs

Proper time management seems to be so complicated that saving and loading the game looked easy compared to it. So I started with that and hope to it this week. If I manage to do so I will put out another release this weekend.

[stu]

the new town map looks very busy, remember its a town, not a complete wild wilderness.

did you use the larn 12.4 code or are you writing it from scratch?

[jaydg]

the new town map looks very busy, remember its a town, not a complete wild wilderness.

I tried to separate the dungeon entrances and the regular part of the town, hence the forest.

did you use the larn 12.4 code or are you writing it from scratch?

I used only a few lines of the original Larn 12.3 code, e.g. the level generator, but almost all of the games data, such as monsters and spells.

If you compare the code of Larn and NLarn, you will find very little similarities.

[stu]

I'm guessing from the screen shot too you don't have random building placement either.

I'm itching to play this one

[jaydg]

I will need a few more days till a new version as making the game structures saveable is such a gigantic change that almost everything is broken right now and the only thing I get when starting the game is a SIGSEGV. Thus I'll spend some days with my friend gdb.

[stu]

ah yes. save should be built from the beginning, its very hard to add later on

[Slash]

Unless you are using Java and default serialization

then again, you will still stumble a bit

[Krice]

ah yes. save should be built from the beginning, its very hard to add later on

Not true. In fact saving is easiest to add when everything else is ready, because you don't have to adjust the save routine every time you add something.

[jaydg]

ah yes. save should be built from the beginning, its very hard to add later on

Not true. In fact saving is easiest to add when everything else is ready, because you don't have to adjust the save routine every time you add something.

That's excactly the reason why I started to think about saving so late. On the other hand it would have been very smart to think about saving in the beginning as stu said and just implement it now. Too late!

I now keep a hash for all of the game object types and register and unregister things I create or destroy there. All of these hashes use pointers as key. Glib offers black-magic macros to hide integers in pointers, thus allow me to use unsigned integers as object ids and store them where these objects are used.  When finished  (20% done) saving will be a piece of cake (I keep telling me).

@Slash: Many times I cursed my decision to use C and wished I had used something that offers handy high level functionality and does not waste so much time. Too late, as well.

[AgingMinotaur]

@Slash: Many times I cursed my decision to use C and wished I had used something that offers handy high level functionality and does not waste so much time. Too late, as well.

I write in python, and I sometimes curse myself for not having chosen a lower-level language. For various reasons. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

As always,
Minotauros

[Slash]

ah yes. save should be built from the beginning, its very hard to add later on

Not true. In fact saving is easiest to add when everything else is ready, because you don't have to adjust the save routine every time you add something.

I disagree... you'll have better times if you design your saving routine (and rules) carefully early in the project. A nicely designed saving routine won't be affected by big "adjustments"

[Omnivorous]

the new town map looks very busy, remember its a town, not a complete wild wilderness.

What is the difference in a fantasy-world with a tiny town such as this one? :-) For some reason, towns in original roguelikes looks like they have been paved with concrete..pretty dull and uninspiring.

I love how your town-map looks! It looks..alive!