Thanks. I'm doing pretty well again at this point. Now, I guess it's comments time: I quite enjoy the game, and must say it has grown nicely since last I tried it out. The atmospheric world carries a lot. Most of my comments are nitpicks, only because I find the game to have overall polish and appeal. I'm looking forward to see how the world and the system evolve, so "carry on" is the word of the day.
INTERFACE
* Regarding the compilation process, it was mostly a matter of following the readme, except for hand building the libraries after installing libgtest-dev.
* When I create a character and press "*" for a random option, I'd like to know which option I got to inform further choices (ie. an info line like: "Male giant./ Select your class").
* "w"alk works
But maybe a doorway/branching corridor should be a treated as a stopping point? Just a suggestion.
* After a few games, the log files start piling up. Most of them are empty. Maybe they could be autodeleted, or put in a separate directory?
* Backspace doesn't work in prompts. Annoying when I drop a lot of stuff, get "Drop how many?" and accidentaly put in "d".
* To the benefit of newbies: The manual marks several skills as unused. Would it be plausible to disable/"grey out" these skills in the levelup screen?
* I like the skill system, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing more skills implemented. For instance, I tested tanning at 100% and loved how thoughfully it was scaled.
BUGS
* I left Isen Dun and came to an island where there was a crypt. The crypt level contained a central chamber, but when I opened the door, I got Segmentation fault.
* I don't know if it's supposed to be so, but I'm able to skin corpses and make myself a cloak, even without the Tanning skill.
* Standing in a corridor and throwing clay pots so that they are smashed at the tile I'm standing, they don't drop any ivory pieces.
* Found a "staircase leading down" that looked like a sarchofagus "0".
* I am experiencing what must be a weird bug: If I drop anything in the grass in Isen Dun, it has the same effect as dropping it in water (discarding forever). This does not happen if I drop on special places (tiles where something was laying before, beneath trees, et al).
WRITING
* "You sense the presence of other creatures" is a bit void since, well, there's mostly always "other creatures" in a level. Is this for when a special monster spawns? I don't understand.
* "Kew says, «It's important to always have ways to escape bad situations." [missing end quote]
* Siriath described as an "elderly man in his twilight years", which may be a bit tautological.
CONTENT
* Villages: Good stuff. I would love more interaction, though. I wonder if you've considered something like random places of interest (more shrines and crypts, private property, gardens, pyramids/monuments, shops). (Take with a grain of salt.) On a related note, I don't know if various villages' disposition (are planned to) depend on the player's alignment, but I was half hoping that my Sceadugenga worshipper could enter the village of black servants and be greeted as a peer.
I did notice that I can attack people without their fellow villagers reacting, which felt kind of weird. Also, Hrimgar doesn't move if I shoot at him, letting me pepper him with arrows, but proceeds to attack if I move next to him. I didn't test if he drops the boathouse key when killed, but wondered about this.
* Combat: Some of the monsters can feel a bit samey, with much bumping + monitoring hp. That's typical of the genre, but I'd welcome some more variety in monster behavior down the road. It would seem appropriate for Siriath to cast spells, for instance.
I like the mechanic with status ailments, but they don't seem to really come into play so often. Some are poignant, like blinded, mute, exposed. Others, like slow, poisoned, sick, disfigured, I mostly carry on as usual. Is the severity scaled with the attackers level, ie. would a basilisk have more potent poison than an adder? My gut impression is that the ailments need balancing, should perhaps occur more often, or be more severe (but shorter?), or something …
Anyway, I only played this version a handful of times, and haven't gotten very far before, either. Just to test, I took an ogre more or less straight to the dungeon in the extreme north west, maxing out combat and bashing skills on the way. I managed to kill the first wave of monsters, levelling up from the early teens to level 32 before I was overcome by something in the second room. I don't know if this is an actual exploit/strategy/bug to speed start a game at an absurdly high level.
And Mervyn Peake! That's a name I haven't heard in ages. I read "Titus Groan" many, many years ago. Actually, decades, at this point.
I read
Titus Groan and
Gormenghast about fifteen years ago, and really liked them at the time.
Titus Alone is an interesting conclusion, I think, a bit removed from the other books, and almost venturing into some kind of early gothic/fantasy steampunk
As always,
Minotauros
