LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars -- Now version 1.7 (29.12.2018)

[mariodonick]

Hi everybody,

some may remember me and my game LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars. I worked on it pretty hard from 2006 to 2012, and then I removed its website and vanished.

(Vanished to finish my PhD thesis (done in 2014), marry (2015), start a new job in a new city (2015), to develop stuff in the flight simulation world (X-Plane 11 addons since 2016), and to learn flying (for real, since 2017, I have about 25 hours now, so way to go until the exam which requires at least 30 hours).

Anyway, one gets older and starts to get nostalgic, and LambdaRogue was such an important part of my life that I indeed missed it. It has also some open tasks, esp. finishing the graphical tileset, which started in 2013 but then stopped, because I neither had time or money to do it.

So I finally sat down, re-released the game on itch.io (https://mariodonick.itch.io/lambdarogue-the-book-of-stars), contacted my former pixel artist (hope she's still available...) and made a road map for the upcoming months.

The new download is version 1.6.4 but with a new build for Linux systems (i386 and x64, tested on Ubuntu 18.04); Windows version is identical to previous releases.

More to come in the upcoming months.

[getter77]

Great to see.   

[Krice]

Roy Khan returned to Conception and now this. I wonder what next? I'm going to find a beautiful half-ukrainian girlfriend?

[mariodonick]

I'm going to find a beautiful half-ukrainian girlfriend?

Maybe Nice to see you still around, Krice. How's Kaduria and Teemu going?

[Krice]

How's Kaduria and Teemu going?

I've been stoked about modular programming style (in C++) where you put similar type of classes etc. in one file. It makes management of larger projects easier.

[AgingMinotaur]

Wow, it's really cool to see LambdaRogue resurface. We've kept you in our hearts all this time. Congrats, and good luck ahead!

As always,
Minotauros

[Krice]

There are couple of basic things that are quite annoying:
1. No go/travel command.
2. Keyboard help should be in a quick key, now you have to press ? and then d (deyboard commands) to check them.
3. No automap, the radar is way too small to be useful at all.

Other than that the dungeon generator is somewhat braindead, sometimes creating doors next to dead end corridor and sometimes corridors are right next to level edge which looks funny. It is inappropriate to ask money from game that has such a dumb dungeon generator.

[mariodonick]

There are couple of basic things that are quite annoying:
1. No go/travel command.
2. Keyboard help should be in a quick key, now you have to press ? and then d (deyboard commands) to check them.
3. No automap, the radar is way too small to be useful at all.

Other than that the dungeon generator is somewhat braindead, sometimes creating doors next to dead end corridor and sometimes corridors are right next to level edge which looks funny. It is inappropriate to ask money from game that has such a dumb dungeon generator.

Oh, I missed your friendly voice

1. I find such commands lazy.

2. Worth of consideration.

3. Press the map button to display an overview map.

I know that dungeon generation (as any other part of the game) is not perfect. It's a simple puzzle-map approach, where randomly selected puzzle tiles are stiched together. After that, some post-processing is carried out to remove the most dumbest of the dumb situations, but obviously I overlooked some of them. The two examples you mention should be easily to fix, but I have not looked at the dungeon generation code since 2011, I think. I'll take a note of your observation when I start the next update (after I finished printing the source code and getting accustomed with it...)

The game is still free and open source, and will stay free and open source. But as I continue to pay people to create graphics for it, itch.io's possibility of donating ("pay what you want") can theoretically help at least a bit. And deciding that "no, it's not worth to pay" is perfectly fine, too.

[Krice]

1. I find such commands lazy.

Maybe automatic (pathfinding) travels are that, but I was talking about moving in one direction until you reach wall or branch/end of corridor. It's much nicer than pressing direction keys thousands of times more than you would have to with go command.

[Krice]

3. Press the map button to display an overview map.

Why is the minimap in ascii when the game is graphical? It's quite bad minimap and shift+m is annoying to check out it, should be something fast and accessible like Tab key.

I found two potions labeled C#, is it a bug or something else? I tried to consume one, but nothing happened. Also, I think the Details in inventory should be Equipment screen, also with a key command to look at it (like 'e' or 'I') without having to go through inventory. Some keyboard commands don't make much sense, like S for search. Why it's not s like in all other roguelikes?

[mariodonick]

bad minimap

Why, because it's ASCII? It's ASCII because I like it, as a stylistic reminder of the origins of the genre.

C#

If you are blinded by some monster or trap or anything, you drink C#. The name is a (bad? ) play on words. "C#" is pronounced "C sharp", which translates to "scharf" in German. You can say "scharf sehen" ("see sharp") in German for saying "seeing clearly".

I think the Details in inventory should be Equipment screen, also with a key command to look at it (like 'e' or 'I') without having to go through inventory

So a keybinding for getting the equipment details directly, without first opening status or inventory?

Some keyboard commands don't make much sense, like S for search. Why it's not s like in all other roguelikes?

Because you can change keybindings to your liking.

[Krice]

It's ASCII because I like it

I think certain kind of attitude really prevents people from making good games, because they explain their design just like you did there. It's essential to be creative and have your own opinions about design, but sometimes they are wrong opinions. If you can tune down your ego and think about design you'll often find better ways to implement something. This is very true with roguelikes where for example bad UI has been for long something people simply copied more or less, without giving more thought for it.

[Krice]

It's a funny coincidence, but I'm in the process of implementing two types of travel commands in Teemu: go (simply travels in straight path until bumps into something) and "go to nearest item" which is a pathfinder. When I added those features the gameplay feels much better when you don't have to hack direction keys like a madman. I made limitations to pathfinding in order to avoid it making the gameplay too easy, so for example you can't find the path if it's obstructed by FOV or darkness, even you would see the item in some lit area. The distance is also limited to real distance x 2, both to prevent the search of the path becoming slow and at the same time it avoids too complicated paths. The game simply says "You don't know how to get there."

The bad thing in routines like this is that they require special moving, like for example stop walking into water and also stop when something dangerous is near. Possibly also stop when hungry so the player character wont die instantly in the middle of the path traversing. The world also needs to be updated per each move, so it's a lot of moving parts, but it's not that hard. Depending on how you have isolated the routines for those things it may be easier.

[mariodonick]

LambdaRogue has received a huge update to v1.7 today:

This is the first major update for LambdaRogue since 2012, and it is huge indeed.

I worked on a lot of areas, to make the game look better and play more interestingly, esp. in the midgame and lategame, which felt a bit grindy to me in the previous version. I touched nearly every aspect of the game, and it feels much more "fluid" to me now. We have new monsters, some monster behavior changes and additions, new status effects, new items and more variety in dungeon level generation. We have a new fighting style (unarmed), changes to religion, digging, and how ammu for fire-arms is handled.

The most visible change, of course, is the new 40x80 tileset, which is now switched on by default. To let the new 40x80 tileset shine, there is now an additional display mode available, 1920x1080. You can toggle big and small tileset either by pressing Page Up / Page down on your keyboard (this is like zooming) or in the options menu (so you can easily "zoom out" for getting the big picture of the dungeon, and then "zoom in" again).

To better match the style of the tileset, I've also changed the artwork for menus, windows and status effect icons. The status effect icons are also much better readable this way. Note that I actually _removed_ all the intro and "cutscene" graphics which we had in 1.6.4; these were not fitting to the rest of the style visually anymore.

Finally, I've added many more sound effects and a few soundtrack additions, incl. a fresh title song.


LambdaRogue official website:
https://lambdarogue.com/

LambdaRogue on itch.io:
https://mariodonick.itch.io/lambdarogue-the-book-of-stars



Complete changelog:

GAMEPLAY FEATURES:

- Addtions and changes to Dungeons:
  - much more variation in dungeon generation, esp. for the deeper levels, which should
    now be more interesting -- the final level (of the main dungeon, that is) has now a
    completely new generation method. The "lava" level is now already level 19, which avoids
    the repetion of the previous levels 17 to 19. Other levels also received some love.
  - some parts of the dungeons now have toggle switches, which can activate bridges and doors
  - there is now a chance that stairs don't lead further down the main dungeon on first
    usage, but "magically" lead to special secret areas. These areas are small, handmade, and
    come each in 4 different version. Currently, 5 of these special levels are included; more
    will follow in future updates.
  - in addition to water, we have deep water, in which you'll drown and items will sink
  - ice aura transforms water tiles to ice tiles
  - if fire aura is strong enough, the ground tile will become lava
  - if water aura is strong enough, the ground till will become water
  - Earthquakes may now create lava or water holes in the dungeon
  - level names show level depths in feet
  - renamed caves level 3 and 4 to "the nest"
  - renamed "new maze" to "labyrinth"
  - added a well to the coffeebreak version of level 1

- Changes and Additions to Monsters:
  - six new monsters
  - certain monsters can now hit together in a coordinated attack if these monsters
    stand next to each other
  - some monsters will now always attack when hostile and next to the player
  - attacks of certain monsters now never miss (don't worry, I use this VERY rarely)
  - monsters can be affected by "calm", "blindness" and "confusion"
  - certain monsters now never flee
  - generation of some monsters can be restricted to certain dungeon tile types in monsters.txt
  - fire attacks by enemies now have the same effect on dungeon features as fire attacks
    by the player (like roasting corpses, destroying paper items, damaging monster hives ...)
  - the sandman can paralyze players even if a few tiles away

- Changes and Additions to Items:
  - 31 new effects of items & magic on player skills (incl. resistances)
  - lots of new items to make use of the new effects (these are mostly new
    potions which are scattered throughout the dungeons, but not available
    from traders)
  - the effect of greased weapons is now taken in account in total status calculations,
    so you can now create a weapon that temporarily affects one of your own status
    values by greasing it, for example a sword that temporarily increases your Move skill
    by greasing it with a potion that increases your move skill.
  - more grease effects can be used in combat
  - removed all profession requirements from most items
  - removed all minimum char level requirements from items and chants
  - adjusted minimum dungeon level requirements of some items
  - ammu for fire-arms is now equipped in a quiver, potentially freeing one inventory slot
    and making more clear what is used as ammu

- Changes and Additions to the Player:
  - New combat skill: Unarmed: thieves now start with this as best battle skill;
    unarmed combat gives +1 to Move skill
  - added random birth sign to character generation, giving a permanent +1/-1 bonus/malus
  - you can start the game with a randomly created character (in the main menu, press [1],
    then [g] ("get random character") when asked
  - besides eating (which was always necessary), you now also have to drink;
    you can use any potion, well or river for drinking (but with wells there's of
    course the risk of wanted or unwanted side effects, and water from rivers can
    be unhealthy), or have lunch at one of the restaurants. If you don't drink for
    a too long time, first PP will decrease, later also HP, and you'll die from
    de-hydration.
  - a little bit more variation in biography generation
  - you can change your name in-game in the character status screen

- Changes and Additions to Digging:
  - digging with some tools can transform the floor type to different types than just
    the default floor, for example water or lava. So if you're in desperate need of water,
    and have a proper tool at hand, you can dig for water and replenish your thirst with
    that. Or if you want to create a lava barrier, to hurt enemies, you can do this with
    the proper tools.
  - while digging, items can now be found before digging is completed, so you don't need
    always to dig till the end, if useless rubble is the result. If an item is revealed,
    you can see it, but to step onto the tile you digged on, you still have to complete
    the digging. You can now simply easier estimate if it is worthwhile, so you don't
    waste so many turns (food, water) for that.

- Additions and Changes to Religion:
  - being blessed gives now +1 to Fight (Ares), Chant (Aphrodite), Hit (Apoll),
    Move (Hermes) and Trade (Dionysa)
  - being cursed gives now -1 to Fight (Ares), Chant (Aphrodite), Hit (Apoll),
    Move (Hermes) and Trade (Dionysa)
  - when you are cursed, your god will un-curse you if your next offer is all your money
    (other ways of uncursing still exist, of course)
  - removed the restriction that characters who follow the god Ares don't get EXP
    for killing caveworms


INTERFACE:

- Graphics mode only:
  - new big (40x80) tile set by Cecilia Souza Santos, incl. tiles for the new monsters
  - you can toggle between small (20x40) and big (40x80) tile size on the fly by pressing
    Page Up and Page Down keys (zoom in / out); this gets saved to the configuration file
  - additional 1920x1080 display mode (in addition to the old 800x600 and 1024x768 modes)
  - status effect icons are now much bigger and use the same graphics as quickbar icons
  - the "dark preacher" has now his own graphics (... dark variant of the standard preacher)
  - new backgrounds for the various screens (inventory, status, etc.); now fitting with
    the visual style used in main view for status area and quickbar
  - modified title screen, also to fit better the general art style
  - item icons in inventory view are now the same as in dungeon view
  - removed all graphical intro and chapter screens, and all window-sized spell GFX,
    because these don't fit stylistically with the pixel-art anymore.
  - removed the unused portraits of the deities
  - removed the old tile set and the option to use it
  - the position of the quick bar can't be changed anymore; it is now set according to the
    selected display size, and also not saved in the save file anymore.

- Both modes:
  - current equipment in inventory is shown as list now
  - when hitting an enemy, a hit effect is shown on the monster
  - when an enemy hits you in melee combat, a hit effect is shown on you
  - negative effects on skills are now shown with red color in status screen
  - if STR is >100%, it is shown in green color in status screen
  - when you die, the reason is first shown in a single message, before the last 20
    messages are displayed. This way you can better recognize what actually happened
    (esp. useful if you were one-hitted by a powerful enemy, or to take a screenshot
    of your last moment and the dungeon).
  - when digging, you are only asked for entering the number of turns to dig if the
    integrity of the tile to dig through is >1. The prompt also shows you how many
    turns are needed with the current tool skill and the equipped tool.
  - the equipment summary screen now displays a hint if your weapon has a higher WP or GP
    than your related weapon skill


AUDIO:

- 4 new CC songs for the soundtrack, incl. new title song
- many new sound effects


BALANCING:

- reduced chant refresh rates and chant base PP costs:
  - chant refresh rate is now chant range / 3
  - chant PP cost is now (chant range / 2) + refresh rate
  These changes directly affect the availability of the spell's crystals.
- enchanters start with 100 PP instead of 50 PP
- renamed (old) Focus Ring to Steadfast Ring
- added (new) Focus Ring (reduces Chant refresh rate)
- increased PP gain during level up
- increased effect of Cola and Coffee
- increased number of songbook slots to 16
- increased inventory size to 18 slots
- 2-handed weapons give -1 to Move skill
- new characters in standard generation (i.e. not quickstart presets) get
  each 1 skill point more to train (in all difficulty levels)
- intelligent monsters do not always open doors anymore, only with a certain chance
- stools and wells filled with water are now considered "town" tiles, i.e. no monster
  will be generated on top of these tiles
- the grease of weapons will now always take effect (unlike built-in weapon effects,
  which have still a random chance of taking effect)
- reduced the effect of dungeon traps (now "Player level * 2" instead "Player HP / 4")
- removed the gender differences for HP and Move during character generation; being
  male or female is purely cosmetic now.
- increased values of elite antbee
- preachers moved down 1 level to dungeon level 5
- Digging through rock will not replace the rock, but instead it will allow you to
  climb it (i.e. you can now stand on top of the mountain-like tiles)
- Hit skill gets a +1 bonus while standing on a hill or on a mountain
- Chant skill gets a +1 bonus while standing on "star" floor
- reduced water aura effect of "Waters of Styx" to 30
- Mindhunter can now cast blindness instead of confusion
- increased Eris' HP, PP and WP; Eris will also transform ground to walkable tiles
- decreased possible paralization duration to 1 to 7
- increased total number of monsters in levels 7 to 18 (felt too empty without them,
  and now, as we have more variety, it gets interesting)
- dungeon tile transformations ("the caveworm defecates" ...) range reduced by 1
- in the main dungeon, treasure chests are only generated between levels 1 to 15
- crypts are now generated in the forgotten realm level 2
- reduced maximum amount of treasure chests in deeper levels
- earthquakes don't produce that much rubble anymore
- decreased the chance of being uncursed just by praying a little
- being healed from a drug addiction by praying now needs at least 5 humility
- slightly increased WP, GP and AP of workshop items
- slightly increased the amount of resources needed for workshop items
- increased the damage taken by lava to player and monsters
- reduced the bonus of a very good parents relationship to skill to +2
- "The Shadow" is now shop-only and moved to DLV 10
- increased GP of "bow" and "shortbow"


BUG FIXES:

- it actually occured to me that in Coffeebreak mode the steps to the final
  dungeon level got not created. So it was not possible to win the game fully in
  that mode. Story mode worked, though.
- long-range TP were wrongly calculated (used WP instead of GP)
- corrected the wrong "Press SPACE or ENTER to close" prompt on map screen
- corrected a wrongly mentioned skill in the "basic magic" help file
- some effect icons were a pixel off their actual position
- saving the game did not save if the current weapon was greased
- Vitari drug could increase STR even more than 200%
- attacks with greased weapons did not correctly use the effect range of the
  grease, but did use the weapon's own effect range (which was 0, if the weapon
  had no own special effect, leading to no grease effect at all during the attack)
- the "mouse over" on the status area did not show every effect
- "IncTalent" bonus added only 1 instead of actual effect range to talent
- selling resources in the resource workshop was not taking the "Trade" skill
  into account
- when monsters transform tiles, they don't transform stairs anymore
- the trade skill was not affecting item prices in shops correctly (instead of
  getting cheaper, items got more expensive with higher trade values)
- when a monster split into others (like worm mothers into caveworms), one of the
  resulting monsters was placed on a wrong dungeon tile, due to a typo in a x/y check
- blood was partly placed on wrong dungeon tiles, due to typos in x/y checks
- items and potions which increase EXP and Gold gain now add 25% of the base EXP/Gold
  to EXP/Gold (formerly, they added the double amount of EXP/Gold defined in monster
  data file, which was 0 most of the time, making these effects pretty useless)
- it is now checked for Level Up when player gets EXP after destroying Northdoom
- player PP can't be less then 0 anymore
- fixed a bug where the game would return without notice to the title screen when
  the player was dead or quitting in a previous game in the same session
- the small water, electricity and ice effects were not shown when cast by a monster
- if a monster stood on lava and HP went to 0, HP was set to 1 again, to avoid the
  monster's death.
- sometimes, a door was created near the left or right edge of the dungeon, leading
  to nowhere. This should not happen anymore.
- fixed bug with Crono's sale of the "History of Herbstwelt (Part I)", making it
  impossible to finish Marco's quest (reason for the bug was a simple typo. The item
  was named "Part 1" instead "Part I" in the items.txt)
- screen was not darkened in "throw" selection window
- "hit or miss" check in monster vs. player attacks was reversed
- there should be no NPC tiles created anymore in coffeebreak mode (this avoids ugly
  grey tiles out of nowhere in deeper levels)
- ghosts and silent ghosts don't leave corpses anymore after slain
- monster generation around monster hives now uses all 8 possible directions around it
- when a new game was created in the same session after a lost or won previous game,
  the player's equipment was not cleared
- pressing a wrong button does not leave the "new game / load game" screen anymore
- the inactive (grey) icons for a few effects were too dark (read: black)
- "short arrows" were wrongly named "small arrows" (no real issue, just inconsistent
  with descriptions in bows using these arrows, which mentioned "short arrows")
- fixed a few typos


MISC:

- reworked help texts during new game / character generation, to be easier to
  grasp and convey the most important information on a quick glance
- added a few more "tips of the day"
- the "killed by a (monster)" message now shows the hit points of the attack
- monsters don't step on lava anymore
- rubble is not longer available in shops
- a bit more comprehensive winning message is shown when you defeat Eris in
  Coffeebreak mode
- adjusted the description of "the Krice" in Rinahn's quest
- the Lonely Librarian won't drop his Diary Page in Coffeebreak mode anymore,
  because that item is only useful in story mode.
- no "unknown" variant of rubble is created anymore
- dropping rubble does not barricade anymore
- rubble is not available in shops anymore
- "unremarkable" equipment is not available in shops anymore
- no Muin/Beithe/Huath/Ailm variants of unique and rare items anymore
- machines don't leave blood and corpses anymore, but may leave old metal
- removed MacOS related definitions from source code, because I can't support
  MacOS anymore and have no idea if that MacOS stuff would still work.
- minor code re-formatting
- updated "copying.txt"

[getter77]

Congrats on landing such a huge update---best days lay ahead at this rate.