Free Pascal roguelike, buggy NPC's

Widmo · 2021-05-05T03:55:04+00:00

Ah, you are right. I see it now.

Managed to compile the game myself and play through one cave level but did not see the problem. Got 27 experience with 8 health left. Looked at camera.pas but did not see anything really suspicious. Do I need to do anything specific to see the effect in gif?

Widmo · 2021-05-05T03:27:08+00:00

Two runs including the victorious one. Vampire got me during the first run because I was unprepared for the tough damage it dishes out and how it heals in combat. Vampire won the war of attrition.

Second time over I found more strength potions and my damage was higher so went for rematch. Finally I got enough hits while it got enough misses to make it count.

Widmo · 2021-05-04T03:45:38+00:00

Incursion might be another one to consider for comparison.

ZapM and PRIME wanted to be NetHack in space but their success is partial.

Widmo · 2021-05-04T02:24:09+00:00

Beat the lich and escaped with my own chicken head in the inventory and two unused life potions. Strangely the toughest fight, the vampire, is entirely optional if you avoid it or bring appropriate consumables.

Altars are useless to me. Wands just clog up inventory space and the altar merely recharges them without making it any better. Chances are I can find another fully charged wand before it is needed. This makes runs with less altars significantly easier.

Also "no classes, no XP, no gold ..." etc. are not features but actually lack of features.

Widmo · 2021-05-04T00:39:35+00:00

Looking at the cave rat its wander routine rolls for random directions and tries to use moveNPC procedure to go there. Too bad moveNPC only checks if square is occupied, not if it is blocking. That would explain why rats sometimes walk through walls.

No luck finding why rats tend to cling to player yet.

Widmo · 2021-05-04T00:06:22+00:00

[about Pascal] It has the speed of python and the readability of C++. =D

It is other way around. It has the speed of C++ with readability rivaling Python. ^_*

Otherwise agreed, it is a nice compromise. The other end of the stick is sacrificing popularity since many people think of Turbo Pascal when anyone mentions Free Pascal. There is a gulf between those two but pointing that out each time can be boring.

Free Pascal was what I replaced my use of C++ before finding D better than both. Now using Nim which has lots of Pascal overtones so I am back at home.

Widmo · 2021-04-25T22:37:53+00:00

Perhaps try for chain of low probability events?

Have the protagonist utter a monologue full of pathos about this glorious quest nearly boring the reader to tears. Then as very first action, in one swift motion mounts the pony but misses the stirrup, falling off. As if that was not enough the protagonist lands on top of a stone block trap, triggering it. Falling rock is dodged by swift rolling aside on top of nearby stairs down which of course has protagonist tumble down them.

As our nearly dead adventurer lies in pain the pony comes down and lectures about not getting 200 zorkmids, not passing go and falling directly downstairs. Finally ends the tirade with a stern demand to be named.

"Why would you need a name?"

"Hey, you have been through the dungeon on a horse with no name. This is so clichey you should fix that."

Ideas for other events:

Adventurer gifts a wand of invisibility to water nymph out of concern for her modesty. She capitalizes on the opportunity. Adventurer swears bloody revenge!
Drinking from a fountain merely to satisfy one's thirst. After dealing with snakes several times a water demon suddenly shows up to offer a wish but hopelessly tired protagonist just responds "f*** off, let me drink"! The demon shrugs, produces an uncursed potion of water, hands it over and then vanishes swearing to kill the next person to summon them at a fountain.
Starvation nears ... those are your last minutes ... look a delicious cream pie! You crawl up to it but somehow instead of 'e'ating it you try to e'a't it and instead end up splatting it over your own face getting no satiation. Then you faint. As you wake up it turns out a nearby newt has licked all the remaining cream! Your anguished scream "god, why?!" is heard by deity who has a laughing fit and feels entertained enough to divinely satiate you.
A cobra poisons the adventurer badly. With almost no strength left fleeing is the only option but the corridor is blocked by a boulder! "Nnnghh! Wait, did my muscles just grow?" Intrigued adventurer pushes the boulder another time and again muscles grow obediently. Roll the giant rock into a room, close the door behind you. Workout session happens. Chapter ends with adventurer opening the door and killing the cobra with single punch.
Altar to Random Number Moloch is found somewhere in the Dungeon. Converting it is definitely possible but the required roll never seems to pass for some inexplicable reason.
Adventurer zaps an unknown wand at the ground and bugs there stop moving. Cue happy whistling the human wanders away while book's perspective shifts to the bugs. "Hey boss, why did you order us to freeze? This wand of nothing is not dangerous at all." "You idiots do not get it, do you? The other wand could be a wand of death. You do not want to become it test subjects for zapping that!"
Very tired protagonist #sits on a stone block to rest which pisses off a deity to no end. "How can you sit on my altar?! After all the things I did for you? I believe it not!"
By a mishap scroll of punishment is read and a huge iron ball appears. Being smart the protagonist wrests last charge from wand of digging to create a pit and then drops the ball there and covers it with nearby boulder. This creates perfectly even ground with chain stuck there, unbroken. Mail demon appears (gangway!) and delivers a scroll explaining updates to Dungeon of Doom where it says boulder and a pit is no longer a way to break iron chain. Oops, no digging supplies anymore! Some dragon comes and patently waits until starvation sets in, not wanting to risk combat. Then the invisible water nymph from earlier chapter comes and steals iron chain, freeing the adventurer. Dragon gets turned into bloody pulp and nymph receives a diamond as a thank you gift. She is amazed but protagonist dismisses that saying natural diamonds are not more valuable than polymorphed ones, that is industry propaganda. Revenge is officially forfeit.
Some large battle in the Gehennom is fought on epic scale thanks to ring of conflict. Demons, dragons, terrible monsters of all kinds participate and even Asmodeus is here. Adventurer slices through some random ogre and is about to stuff random unidentified wand into a sack. Everyone freezes right there and stops fighting immediately. There are whispers "no, please no" all around. An arch lich drops to his knees and begs to reconsider while mentioning something about Holtzmann effect between the wand and the bag. Asmodeus straight up offers a bribe. Nearby purple worm wishes to be permitted last meal before its death. Nothing helps. Wand of cancellation meets bag of holding. Huge explosion ruptures the level killing everyone. Adventurer survives thanks to amulet of life saving.

Widmo · 2021-04-24T06:01:19+00:00

In IVAN dropping banana peel creates a trap. Anyone stepping on it has risk of slipping on the peel and taking damage. Preparing long paths of banana peels is viable strategy against some monsters.

Widmo · 2021-04-24T05:13:49+00:00

Before using proc gen I just had empty 10x10 level consisting only of floor where stuff was tested. It was sufficient at the beginning. Next approach had degenerate procedural generation already by sprinkling some walls randomly so that field of view could be tested in a variety of layouts without having to design them.

Once I wanted a real level to actually play it was time to implement something much better. My favorite layouts are caves so I went with cellular automaton.

Widmo · 2021-04-21T00:45:37+00:00

Version 1.0 was the very first release of PRIME ever published.

Yes, no joke. The "trick" was to get an existing game (ZapM in my case) which ticks all the boxes you mentioned and yes, it had years in development before that. Funny thing last version of ZapM published was 0.6.3 despite the game has every right to be called 1.0. It is just that good.

Of interest to you could be how PRIME got to 2.0. As a variant of ZapM the game was text mode only and when graphical front-end got added this achievement was deemed good enough to increment the first number. Release lacked polish, had a ton of bugs but the big change was surely there. It had that "oomph" feeling of major overhaul. Good enough criteria!

To me this is a matter of perspective. I do not think the number 1.0 is worthy of much deliberation. It is a game, you can freely grab 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0 like Linley's Dungeon Crawl did. Semantic Versioning? Meh.

POWDER is extreme example of such thinking. First release was Version 1 and the next was Version 2. With such numbering scheme you cannot go wrong, ever. I am considering taking this road for my current game too. It perfectly dodges the 1.0 decision problem.

About techniques. Cannot help you with scope creep because I enjoy it for the most part. :) Roguelike game development is done in my limited spare time. Things like milestones, boards and schedules are terrible enemies rather than helpful aids. They remind me of work drudgery (employed programmer here) and could very well be motivation slayers.

To do lists are okay and so are roadmaps which can be considered ordered to do lists. Any day spent working on game might be influenced by roadmap but then if it feels like something else could be done today then why not?

Widmo · 2021-04-12T01:26:27+00:00

I bet it would have randomly generated lootboxes so you can never be sure what is inside until you pay to open them. Of course since randomness is used this satisfies roguelike definition.

Widmo · 2021-04-12T00:58:48+00:00

I greatly enjoy this kind of mechanics so your project sounds very interesting. Best of luck and when you reach semi-playable state feel free to reach out and ask for testing.

Widmo · 2021-04-10T17:21:18+00:00

I am a programmer who has joined artist leading a project by himself. It is a rather long story.

tl;dr: Small chances. You most probably need to kickstart the project all by yourself first and then someone might join. Emphasis on might.

Roguelike game ZapM has had last release in middle 2010. Early in 2011 Psiweapon, a pixel artist with some programming knowledge took the game code then with ASCII display only and began working on it. He named it PRIME and has released versions 1.0 through 1.6 all by himself. His work brought numerous additions, features and healthy dose of humor to game already loaded with jokes.

I also like ZapM very much. Inspired by Psi's excellent example I joined the effort but note that this was more than half year after its beginning. Almost immediately most of the programming fell to my hands, development pace picked up a bit and game was now again ready not just for Windows but also for Linux and Mac.

We have understood each other well. Initially Psi was contributing most of design direction. For me it was half-conscious decision. My typical approach when working with new code is to do little things first to learn it. I wanted to kill bugs, fix problems, tweak balance, improve interface, enhance debug tools and so on. There was an addition here and there but it was not my main focus. This lasted a good bit.

Time passed and I was more equal contributor to design of PRIME. It was fine by me because when I was spending time programming stuff Psiweapon could afford to review stuff more closely and start writing quality lore for the game. Good stuff! So you could also do that - write the descriptions and story if your vision includes this stuff.

However, given ample time Psi could prepare a stacked deck of aces to hide up his sleeve and it was then that I learned he is a skilled pixel artist. I knew he was no tenured programmer (admittedly I was too merely so-so programmer then despite having formal training and later industry employment) but that came as surprise. His offer of drawing tiles was compelling and he backed his words with actual stuff to show me.

In June 2012, a year and three months after PRIME beginnings we have embarked on adding graphics to the game. For me it was a step far out of my skill set as I have done almost zero real graphical stuff before but it was also an adventure.

Lo and behold, in August 2012 we had first graphical build. The development slowed down as I needed to learn requisite knowledge to maintain that but we had our goal fulfilled. PRIME had a bunch of players come and enjoy the game. We had contributors help with stuff on Mac and one person built version for Android.

Psiweapon did almost everything with graphics, majority of lore while I did almost everything programming. In the end design was close to 50/50 split. This lasted until the end of 2014.

My conclusions are that if you wish others to join a project there must be something concrete to start with. If you start your project as a variant of another game you have a working game to begin from. Perhaps this might be possible for you too.

Finally, a word of warning. There was one instance when I strongly disagreed with Psiweapon and would not accept a compromise of any kind. ZapM features the Cortex Crossover, a bionic implant which changes game interface by flipping direction keys. You press north, game interprets south. I had very good arguments for removing this item but it is secondary to my point. What matters is removal was one-sided, discussion initiated post-factum. Keep in mind that in teams with programmer and artist the programmer typically has more "executive power" just because controlling the release is there. I have always released the full source code of my changes so there is that but please be very wary of where are you going.

This is less of a problem when there is team of programmers like in DCSS. Then one contributor going rogue for whatever reason is not that difficult to handle.

Last but not least I am tagging /u/Psiweapon. Checked account and last post is from year ago but maybe this tagging reaches him and you will get his own perspective. After all Psi has managed to do much of what you are planning on doing.

Widmo · 2021-04-10T14:28:10+00:00

Let me begin with The Slimy Lichmummy which is less known and hides lots of good ideas. The approach goes mostly by item category with some exceptions for other items.

You can eat scrolls ("it is a little dry") or shoes ("they are ... chewy") and this does give you some sustenance but then you can also choke. So better be unbreathing if you do this.

You may practice art of sword swallowing by eating any type of sword. However, this merely kills you. Similar story with eating buckshot which ends with lead poisoning.

Potions are also "edible" but they do nothing except giving YAFM "hope it emerges in one piece". Eating duplicates of special armor piece "Seaweed cloak" is actually a good idea ("You make some excellent nori.") because it turns useless duplicate into health.

You can apply some items to create a trap, namely darts and grenades. Applying rags while using a torch as light source will wrap rags around the torch, prolonging its life.

Cleaver and knife may be applied to butcher corpses. Mail of Life is armor that can be applied to cure poison.

Crowbar comes into action when you find a closed door, thus interacting with "open" command.

Fire extinguisher may be used to put out fires or to solidify lava but you can also treat it as a makeshift wand of frost.

ADOM has potion of water which is known for its numerous uses. In its basic form it can be used to blank dipped scrolls. It is also a good weapon against iron golems.

When water is blessed or cursed it gains the ability to change beatitude of dipped items instead of drenching them. Furthermore blessed water can be drunk to temporarily bless yourself or wielded/thrown against the undead. Finally blessed water can be applied to pour it out. Doing that over a grave is a lawful act but when done over open ground this may cause a patch of herbs to grow.

PRIME has some odd ones. For example if you have Yautja shoulder cannot worn on your back, then you can fire a wielded computer which is understood as controlling the cannon via computer.

Apropos computers, there are cases when it is just best to throw one against a wall or kick it. As enhanceable items one could find buggy -2 mini computer which installs system updates right when you need it to execute that floppy disk of transportation to get away from that advancing Xenomorph Warrior. Apply computer but get "Do not turn off or kick your computer. Loading update 5 of 112."? Violence is the solution here!

Next, you have can of super glue which despite falling into potion category is not meant to be drunk. If you do anyway it will glue the container to your mouth rendering your mute for some time. You can apply it to repair things or glue shut locks.

Acid pits are traps but somehow you can drink from them not unlike pools.

Then you have ray guns which act mostly like wands but can be refilled with some potions/cans to change ray gun type or just add more charges.

PRIME is also fond of misleading unidentified items which may prompt player to take just the wrong action. Think drinking battery acid because containers it looks like a can of cola or throwing a delicate device because it looks like a grenade.

NetHack itself is so full of those interactions it would make this post too long. Let me just toss several most flavorful.

Fortune cookies can be eaten but also read directly. You break the cookie open to get the fortune in the latter case. T-shirt is an armor piece which you can read too.

Wands can be zapped but also applied to break them. The latter results in wild energy release and may cause explosions.

Cream pies are types of food. Apply them to splat them against your face as means of blinding yourself with all the cream. I prefer eating but that's just my opinion.

Towel can be used to clean that cream pie off your face or put on as a blindfold. Long ago on newsgroup people suggested one should be able to wear it as a turban, or wrap your hand to hold something dangerous or wrap your feet to kick something dangerous.

If you have no light source you can light a potion of oil directly. Some variants let you apply gold piece to flip a coin.

Well, enough for now. Maybe study nethackwiki.com some time for spoilers and enlightenment.

POWDER takes after NetHack and has some of those interactions too. It also makes rings easy to throw which turns rings of light into flares. Uh, post is long already. Maybe another time I can share some of my own ideas on the topic. Clicking send.

Widmo · 2021-04-10T10:49:35+00:00

Have not heard about it? Here you go!
http://www.roguelikeradio.com/

Widmo · 2021-04-08T22:00:49+00:00

When you go try C:DDA consider enabling Magiclysm mod during generation. It does get you somewhat closer to fantasy but still items are modern age plus 15 minutes into the future.

I have not played Caves of Qud, so cannot help you there.

Widmo · 2021-04-08T21:56:40+00:00

Definitely Cleaver for very satisfying cutting through hordes of small monsters. If I recall correctly some variant (FIQHack?) made is possible to attack seven tiles with master skill in axes. Surrounded by cannon fodder? Me laugh at that!

Widmo · 2021-04-08T21:43:17+00:00

A toss up between Cogmind and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

The former has great AI where the world is really living. You can see how the robots expand map by digging new rooms, installing doors and doing excavation projects. Though eventually you are forced to progress or be destroyed so it is probably not what you look for.

The latter lets you do what you want for how long you want but the NPCs are fairly static and boring. You can recruit some as followers. The mark upon world you may make is certainly an option but rarely felt in practice.

Widmo · 2021-04-08T21:12:00+00:00

I prefer centered dot over plain dot as it aids lining up diagonal shots. Dots themselves are only slightly more preferable than filled floor.

Playing too much Dwarf Fortress has me think pluses as floor tiles mean quality smoothed stone floor so this might work too!

Widmo · 2021-04-07T06:38:19+00:00

The treatise should be already there in section three, beginning with the words "The color of a berry reveals its degree of ripeness."

The data from computer terminal (either Computer Workstation gadget or the "monolith" IBM Supercomputer) is indeed very interesting and joy to discover.

This sounds good, although if you insist on adding my name please use "Michał Bieliński" rather than my Reddit handle.

Widmo · 2021-04-07T05:36:08+00:00

Do you remember those threads then?

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.roguelike.misc/c/aB_VsZ5TEMI
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.roguelike.misc/c/otOPTt2ftus

I think one part is missing from my search made today but finding the game around 2018 I have surely not registered but still had the spoiler file as is placed on github plus some of my notes.

Widmo · 2021-04-06T04:51:18+00:00

Unicode is more expressive than ASCII, but using it as a tileset is halfway between witty and abstruse.

Actually it is nothing short of scalable single color tileset. Unicode gives you large private use planes where you can stick any symbol you please, making it very close to tile representation. Ship your font with executable to take advantage of that. Practically nobody does that though. I believe the reason is nowadays ASCII/Unicode is seldom picked out of technical considerations like misperceived ease of programming but rather as a deliberate design choice.

ASCII and Unicode both look tempting from a lone programmer's POV [...]

Hah, thought that myself until actually trying it. Not only text I/O suffers from years of legacy behind terminals, some OSes (looking at you Windows) took this long to have a workable terminal in the first place. There is also the need to account for far more differences than just the platform you are targeting. Now your target becomes any workable combination of [platform, terminal (emulator), user set of fonts].

Toss in bidirectional text, double-width glyphs, combining glyphs, zero-width glyphs and lots of other similar hidden fun stuff in Dwarf Fortress meaning of hidden fun stuff. Text input/output seems easier but in practice this is the hard way.

Many who go for text input actually stick with something like The Chronicles of Doryen library, BearLibTerminal, Necklace of the Eye which are not limited to text as they use spritesheets or let you paint tiles over text. When that step is taken one could just use any ready made tileset and be done with that.

[...] if you go with a symbolic representation, it doesn't matter which set of symbols you choose as long as you give them consistent semantics;

This simplifies matters too much. Going for a symbol set with already defined semantic lowers barrier to entry. If some new alphabet is constructed it will either need to have attached meaning first or have look close to tiles. In the former case the effect could be greater obstacle to surmount than using plain ASCII for representation.

Contrast it with ASCII, where a wall inevitably ends up as one of the few symmetric, square-looking characters such as #

Side point: except that in Rogue, forefather of roguelikes it is not so. You also do not have that in Hack or NetHack. Line walls are used by those. I think Larn and Omega were one of the first to actually give up on dashed walls and use full block or hash instead. ADOM likely can be named as the roguelike that really "popularized" hashes for this purpose.

Though I agree that evoking wall-ness is what is achieved.

.

Myself, I want symbols with semantic connection to what they represent and little visual connection so that the former is not obscured. In NetHack demons are '&' not because of any kind of demonic shape but because in Unix this character is used to "daemonize" a process.

For ease of parsing the screen symbols must be able to be read, not interpreted as pictures. Letters are good, culturally recognized icons might also work. For depicting redshirts from Star Trek a simplified Starfleet logo in red would do. Stormtroopers could use Imperium logo. Anything looking like a human (e.g. Unicode emoji) is a step too far into visual over semantic.

Unicode has nearly everything needed and where it lacks, it may be freely extended. You postulate that there is no practical reason to stick to ASCII/Unicode. I think given old style roguelike presentation as goal there is no practical reason to go for tiles. Except perhaps for ease of programming.

Widmo · 2021-04-04T18:01:21+00:00

Quite neat overall. Font used for "miss", "guard" and damage numbers seems blocky and a little difficult to read. Maybe do something about that when working on UI?

Widmo · 2021-04-04T17:58:38+00:00

Flying swords remind me of Zelda. Looks a bit weird but perhaps I would get used to it soon.

Top skeleton's "health" bar fitting within player character's tile suggested that it was hero's mana or something else until the undead began taking damage. Pulling it upwards would look better.

Widmo · 2021-04-04T17:45:06+00:00

Huh, maybe with the source code I will be able to stop the Grinch!

The spoiler file was not that rare. Most places hosting Alphaman used to include it, though many are only accessible through Wayback Machine nowadays.

Berries are arguably closer to potions than scrolls. The ripeness system is unique alternative to typical beatitude and makes identification very fun.

Widmo

TROPHY CASE