i7/kerkerkruip

Kerkerkruip - the interactive fiction roguelike game

Kerkerkruip

http://kerkerkruip.org

Kerkerkruip is a short-form roguelike in the interactive fiction medium, featuring meaningful tactical and strategic depth, innovative game play, zero grinding, and a sword & sorcery setting that does not rehash tired clichés.

Setting up Kerkerkruip for development

After cloning the Kerkerkruip Git repository onto your computer you will need to do a few more things to prepare your system for developing it.

1. You will need to download a few extensions. Please check the i7/extensions repository, the Inform 7 Public Library and the old Inform 7 extensions site for any missing extensions. Copy them to your Inform 7 extensions folder.

Beta testing Kerkerkruip

We use Travis CI to automatically build each commit. So if you'd like to help beta test the game, just download this file:

kerkerkruip-git.zip

kerkerkruip's Issues

New monster: wisps of pain

Putting a new monster idea here for discussion.

Name: wisps of pain
Level: 1
Difficulty: appears on adept or higher (or maybe on expert and higher)

The wisps of pain are will 'o the wisp like creatures, but not made of light, but of dark, necromantic magics. They have a normal amount of hit points and are not too hard to hit, but have a large amount of damage reduction (at least 4 points, maybe more).

The wisps of pain do not attack normally. Instead, they have a draining attack that always hits and that will permanently lower the player's body, mind or spirit by 1 point; it does no damage, however. They also have a separate pain attack that deals no damage, but breaks the player's concentration if she fails a mind check.

To be clear: the wisps of pain never deal damage. The player's optimal strategy is therefore one that eschews defence entirely and focuses completely on damage maximalisation. You must kill the wisps as soon as possible, and minimise the amount of faculty they drain.

The power of the wisps of pain is also very special. When you absorb their soul, you will get the "in pain" status. This status gives you a -n penalty to body, mind, spirit, and max health, where n is the level of the highest power you have absorbed when you kill the wisps (minimum 1, if the wisps are the first creature you kill). Their soul is still tormenting you, and making your life more difficult.

But as soon as the soul of the wisps is driven out of your body by some new soul, the situation is reversed: you now get a permanent "hardened by pain" status, which grants you a +n bonus to body, mind, spirit and max health for the rest of the game.

The wisps of pain should shake up the standard thinking about powers a bit. This is one power that you want to lose as quickly as possible. It is also a power that will benefit you more intensely if you get it later (when n is higher), but will benefit you for longer when you get it earlier (obviously). Finally, because the wisps cannot deal damage, they are an absolutely riskless way of healing, and you might want to keep them alive for the situation in which you need this; but you really don't want to be absorbing them as the last creature in the game. So there are a lot of difficult strategical decisions that you'll have to make about when to fight them!

As for the power, I'm thinking of "torment": everyone in the location must make a mind check or lose concentration. (Comes with a cooldown, can be used as a reaction.)

Let me know what you think!

Menu improvements

A few people have said they'd prefer a numerical menu. Let's do it.

Should we keep the arrow at the same time? Maybe.

We could also add hyperlinks!

"Willpower" still referred to in text for vampire

When the player is a vampire, there is still text mentioning willpower as a stat. I forget whether willpower was mapped to "mind" or to "spirit". A quick grep lists these files as still containing the word willpower:

Kerkerkruip Items.i7x
Kerkerkruip Start and Finish.i7x
Kerkerkruip Systems.i7x

Possibly the words for other qualities are also still present.

Major every turn bug

This must be fixed:

i7/ATTACK#1

Biomes

From the intfiction.org forum

Inspired by Terraria we will introduce Biomes to Kerkerkruip. These will be large scale geographical features, and I'd expect to have 3-5 of them in a dungeon. Some of them would be in every dungeon, others would only sometimes be present. Some of the Biomes I've thought of are:

• The core dungeon: This is where the player would start, and it would have a few essential rooms such as the drawing room. I've always imagined Kerkerkruip to be roughly hewn from rock.
• Malygris' home/fortress/bunker: Malygris lives in a separate part of the dungeon, which is much more nicely decorated. Inside his home would be the library, workshop and other more civilised rooms. This biome would always be present. Malygris however wouldn't always be inside. Possibly it should appear half abandoned (otherwise the player might be afraid to enter)?
• The underworld: a world of heat, smoke and lava. If the bridge is present it will be here. (Or perhaps, if the bridge is selected to be placed, then the underworld will be selected as a biome. I haven't thought too far about how the dungeon generation rules would work.) The biome would be below everything else.
• On the shore of the underground sea: a linear biome would stretch out N-S or E-W, with the sea stretching out on one side of it.
• Borrowing from Terraria, maybe a forest or The Corruption? If we had something like The Corruption it could be a place that even Malygris would be afraid of, perhaps a place of dark blood magic?

A few rooms/items/monsters would be locked into a particular biome, while others will be more likely to appear in some biomes than others. Some, such as the temples, could appear in any, but would change in appearance depending on where they are. In the core dungeon they would appear as they do now, but on the shore of the underground sea maybe they would be a simpler arrangement of standing stones. This would largely be flavour text, but perhaps the biomes could influence the behaviour of rooms too sometimes.

Tunnels would sometimes be required to link up between biomes, while their descriptions would be generated to match the biomes they are next to.

Rooms currently have a mood. If you want to keep that system I don't know how best to integrate it with biomes.

Remove gating by difficulty level + make unlocking optional

Based on discussions with Erik, and my own thinking afterwards, I now believe that we should do the following two things:

• Placement of items, monsters, locations and so on should not be restricted by difficulty level. Difficulty level measures how proficient you are at the game (or how much luck you've had!), but content ought to be restricted based on familiarity. That is, we don't put the most confusing monsters and items in the first few games, because, well, that would confuse the player. We let the player unlock these things through victories.
• However, this latter process should be skippable. There should be a menu option "unlock everything" for players who want to see all of Kerkerkruip's richness.

Agreed?

Convert the Table of Victories to a generic storage system

We should convert the Table of Victories (and KerkerkruipData.glkdata) to a generic key/value storage system. It would still use a table, but with two columns, and an expandable number of rows. Inform is designed to load tables from incomplete files, meaning that we won't have any hassles with upgrades. (It doesn't like having too many rows however! How much do we care about people going back to old versions of Kerkerkruip? I'll try to find a work around for that.)

The system could then be used for both stats and options.

I'll add some helper phrases so that code that deals with this data system won't need to talk about rows and entries.

Change "type" to "creature-type"

Per the discussion here:

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5755&p=47339#p47330

.gitignore changes

1. Currently, .gitignore screens out files with a .inform extension. I don't think that there are any such files; on most systems, .inform is a directory. But on OS X, the .inform directory is implemented as a "package", which makes it a kind of pseudo-file, and this seems to be causing me problems in committing story.ni--I have to supply a command-line flag in order to do that.

Is there any reason not to remove the *.inform pattern from .gitignore?

2. I am also planning to remove the .gitignore references to the following files, per the discussion here:

Projects/Kerkerkruip.inform/Settings.plist
Projects/Kerkerkruip.inform/manifest.plist
Projects/Kerkerkruip.inform/uuid.txt

I will also start tracking Headings.xml as discussed at the same link.

3. Finally, do we want to version-track the Materials directory? It seems like a good idea to me, once the Glimmr stuff is in place at least, but I notice that you guys had been screening it out (all but the smallcover.jpg, which I requested be added a while back). Is there a reason not to include /Materials/ now?

Update unlocking scores

As a follow on from #16, the unlocking scores of pretty much everything should be revised. This is a job for Victor!

You might like to list them here for future reference:

Monster groups

There are several subsystems -- granting powers, power of the bomb, Arena of the Fallen, score cards, x monster -- that need to know about monster groups and packages. We need to implement a powerful and centralised way of handling that stuff -- probably using listsrelations.

• Monster placement
• Statistics
• Granting powers
• Arena of the Fallen
• x monster (individual monsters now have levels!)
• Completely remove all traces of the fanatics of Aite package
• Power of the bomb
• Consider implementing enslaving using groups

Forge

Probably, putting a weapon in the forge should work just like putting a scroll in the analyser: it remains in your inventory.

New monster: the overmind

Putting a new monster idea here for discussion.

Name: the overmind
Level: 4
Difficulty: appears on expert or higher

The overmind is a giant floating brain. It is rather weak, with medium health, low defence, and no ability to attack at all. However, that doesn't mean it's not a fearsome foe!

The overmind coordinates all monsters in the dungeon that are allied to it (in general, everyone who is not undead, the player, or an ally of the player). Because of the overmind's psionic help, each of these monsters has a +n bonus to body, mind, spirit, attack and defence, where "n" is the monster's level (or 1, if levelless). This would mean that, say, the swarm of daggers gets a +1 bonus to these five stats, whereas, say, the minotaur would get a massive +3 bonus.

This means that the player has excellent reasons to try and find the overmind as soon as possible, before fighting any monsters, or at least any monsters of level 2 or 3. Digging tools, scrolls of shadows and means of teleportation have never been as important as now.

The overmind itself is an easy kill. It can't attack back. However, while the player is fighting the overmind, the overmind will send out a psionic distress signal to all other monsters allied to it (except Malygris). These monsters will slowly move towards the room where the overmind resides, if possible, and will arrive there to make the player's life more difficult. (Never was the rod of the master builder, with its ability to collapse passages, more useful!) So you need to kill the overmind quickly, or you'll be in big trouble.

The power granted by the overmind mirrors its strengthening and its directing role. First, all of the player's allies get a +2 mind, spirit, body, attack and defence bonus. Second, the player now knows the location of all hostile non-Malygris monsters (i.e., remember always gives their correct locations, even when they haven't been seen yet), and the player can direct them to go somewhere else ("command mindslug to library"). This can be used to break up groups of monsters, to get monsters out of the way if you want to explore a new part of the dungeon, or to get monsters into a location that gives you tactical benefits. It doesn't work when the monsters are fighting you.

Because of its complexity, the overmind should not appear under expert level, I think.

Let me know what you think!

Not clear whether we have taken a discovered item from the pile of body parts

The text when items are discovered in the pile of body parts in the Quartering Room, and perhaps similar texts for discovered items elsewhere, do not make it clear that we have taken the item we discover:

search pile
You have found a scroll labelled CISTROB JIRSGEV buried between the body parts. It is slightly wet and smelly, but still usable.

get it
You definitely do not want any of the body parts.

get scroll
You already have that.

The last sentence could be changed to fix the problem:

It is slightly wet and smelly, but still usable. You scoop it up.

Challenges

Currently, increased difficulty in Kerkerkruip comes largely from two sources: stat manipulation and new monsters. I'd like to propose an alternate method of increasing difficulty that I think would be more fun: Challenges.

After the player beats Malygris on difficulty level 1, we offer him/her a choice of three challenges for the next game. These would be very broadly similar to "conducts" in Nethack, only they would be explicitly presented to the player as the basis for the next game. The player must accept one of the three challenges, but he can change on the first move of any subsequent game should he fail the challenge.

Challenges might be along the lines of:

• Defeat Malygris without using any scrolls
• Defeat Malygris wielding no other weapon than the rapier
• Defeat Malygris without using ment

...and so on. Challenges would be fed to the player in order of difficulty, with three available at any one time. Every challenge would also be an achievement (in fact, we might want to make the challenges the only achievements).

(See also #37.)

Table of AI Action Options

I cannot fathom how this has happened, but it seems that Inform has suddenly become fussier about non-existent entries in the Table of AI Action Options. I got errors and fixed this issue for the armadillo, but now I'm seeing error messages for the chain golem as well.

I need to go through all the monsters and fix this.

Dynamic hints

Implement a system to offer dynamic hints which will determine which skill would be most useful to the player at each moment and track the user's progress in using the skill until it is deemed learnt.

Hint ideas

• "On your first turn in a new room, you can retreat without provoking attacks."
• "Concentrate one or more times to increase the accuracy and power of your attacks."
• "You can throw grenades as a reaction."
• "You can examine individual characters in the drawing." (Only in the drawing room.)
• "Every time you use "sense" Malygris can further prepare for his fight against you." (After he's teleported away from you)
• "Don't forget that you can lash as a reaction!" (Only when lashing is available.)
• "Ment can give you the edge you need in a difficult fight."
• Pro-tip: "You can now use ment in combat."
• "Feed blood magic items before or during easy battles."
• "Let the blood ape grow in size to get a better power from defeating it."
• "Reaping as a reaction can get you out of a tough situation."
• "Killing its slaves makes the mindslug much easier to defeat."
• "Not killing the mindslug's slaves will gain you useful allies."
• "Increase your body score for extra defence."
• "Increase your mind score to lose your concentration less often."
• "Increase your spirit score to gain more initiative."
• "Balance body, mind and spirit to maximise your chance of rolling 20."
• "Most scrolls won't hurt you, so experimenting can pay off!"
• Pro-tip: "You can now see a monster's health by examining it."
• "The goddess Sul can help you with cursed items."
• "Fragmentation grenades will break people's concentration." (see hint 3)
• "The power of the bomb will automatically choose the best victim."
• "Choose which faculties to increase based on the powers you have or will get."
• "If you want to see all items and monsters, use the unlock everything option in the menu."

Navigation by monster name

Traveling by room is currently allowed, e.g. GO TO LIBRARY. Traveling by monster name should also be allowed, by navigating toward the last known location of the enemy e.g.:

GO TO TENTACLE
You last saw the giant tentacle in the Hall of Mirrors, and strike out toward that room.

Unidentified scroll names and the parser

I believe it used to be the case that you could still use the unidentified scroll names after identifying a scroll, though I may be mistaken. With the new scroll system, it is certainly no longer the case. This leads to undesirable stuff like:

put mort in analyser
It is a scroll of shadows!

read mort
I can't see that here.

Code rearrangement

A few things:

It can be a little confusing to find the code for certain systems. I think it would be sensible to move all people, room and thing systems to the Monsters, Locations and Items files respectively.

Does anyone other than Malygris teleport or use the ray of disintegration? If not they should be moved to the Monsters file and be Malygris-specific actions.

The when play begins rules is a confusing mix of stuff needed for the menu, and stuff to set up the dungeon. We could move the menu and file related stuff somewhere else so that the when play begins rules are purely for setting up the dungeon.

Thoughts?

Window panes for status information

I ran across this post at Temple of the Roguelike:

I appreciate the RL/IF mix, but I find the single text stream a bit unwieldy. I'm typing status, inventory and remember all the time, then having to type look because the room description is off screen. Have you considered displaying game text/status/memory/inventory in separate screen sections?

This was seconded by another commenter, and it's something that I have often wished for as well. I even mocked it up quickly once, but I hate the way that it looks in Gargoyle, where text flows in from the bottom:

Possibly it would look better if both windows were on the right side of the screen...

Anyway, what do you all think about having separate inventory and status windows. (I don't think having a separate window for "remember" is a good idea.)

Media tasks

• Are the Eldritch Insanity [Armadillo]* images still required or can they be removed now?
• Can @ektemple please add his source images/movies/whatever to the repo? It doesn't matter what format they are, but it'd be good to have them for both posterity and in case someone else wants to work with them.
• Come up with a new cover image
• Come up with an icon
• Images for the Windows installer: welcome.jpg and banner.jpg. welcome.jpg is okay already, but banner.jpg is really just a placeholder. (The daggers are upside down, I couldn't get them looking right otherwise.)
• Add keyboard tapping sounds to intro movies? (If there are sync issues maybe this could be one sound file that has the tapping sound repeated, and it could just be turned off once all the letters are finished.)

New Room: Arena of the Fallen

Hello all,

I'm in the process of designing a new (rare) room, called the Arena of the Fallen. The basic idea is that, if this room is found, the player gets the opportunity to fight one more time against an already defeated opponent, thus giving him / her the opportunity to regain a power. However, this should of course be a risky endeavour.

Characteristics:

1. It should be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity only.
2. It isn't just a fight for free. Either the player has to have a relatively tough fight or the player has to sacrifice something in advance.
3. If won, the player will regain the power of the spirit as usual.

For 2, I'm considering the following options:

1. The player should sacrifice a certain item (say, a weapon).
2. The player must fight the opponent with a penalty on his stats (say: [level of the opponent]^2) / health, thus making the fight more risky in terms of survival.
3. The player must sacrifice [level of the opponent]^2 in permanent hit points.

Any ideas / thoughts?

List of features I'd like to have implemented:

• Reviving stronger monsters in the Arena of the Fallen.
• Do not allow teleportation.
• Fix the smoke / backdrop bug.
• Otherworldly spectators.
• Fix the demonic spectators rule.
• Only make shard available once power has been lost.

The Imp can fail to teleport but still escapes being hit

Act> a
(the imp)
The imp teleports away, but reappears in the exact same spot.

The imp cackles in a loud, shrieking voice.

I guess that this is probably a result of my changes to the teleporting code.

Go through all treasures

I'm planning to go through all the treasures in the game (i.e., the Items file), in an attempt to improve what may be improved and remove what is just uninteresting. Every treasure should be cool.

I'll update this issue as I make changes. Comments are welcome.

• Essence of caution: increased +2 retreat bonus to +3; removed random initiative loss (not visible enough); instead, added a -1 spirit penalty.
• Necklace of torment: the person being dealt damage in combat (either the wearer or the person attacked by the wearer) no longer receives a small initiative penalty, but must now skip an entire turn writhing in agony.
• New cursed version of the diadem of the priestess: the demon lord's diadem. Gives you a +4 spirit bonus, but 2/3 of the time (the player cannot know this), it is set to summon a demonic mistress after a set number of turns. This demonic mistress uses her mind-reducing whip to enslave the player and carry him/her/it off to serve the demon lord in Hell. She can, of course, be fought and defeated, which would give the player a mind reducing whip... could be useful!
• Metastasio'ss hat: removed, for now.
• Shirt of muscles: still a +2 body item, but is now know as the bodice of physique.
• New cursed version of the bodice of physique: the bodice of breathlessness. It gives a +2 body bonus as normal, but tightens when the player concentrates, giving a -2 body penalty for every level of concentration.
• Asbestos vest: removed, for now.
• Boots of the war dance no longer give initiative bonus, but now give a +1 dodge bonus.
• Boots of wandering no longer give initiative bonus.
• New: gauntlets of grip, give a +1 parry bonus.
• New: greasy gauntlets (cursed hidden identity of gauntlets of grip), sometimes makes your weapon be knockec from your hands.
• Monk's robe: Miranda's robe now grants -2 body, +1 mind, + 1 spirit.
• Mouser's sword: renamed to sneaking sword. Deals +2 damage when used by someone who is hidden.
• New: blindfold, gives you blindness when worn. (Works like goggles of blindness, but isn't cursed.)
• Plate mail: now gives -2 body instead of random initiative loss. Also, its description tells more about what it does.
• New: periapt of prophecy. An epic item that only works when you are under the influence of ment. It then gives you a rough but always correct prediction of your attack roll each turn.
• New: psychedelic cloak: does nothing unless the player is under the influence of ment. When that happens, becomes covered in psychedlic colours that distract everyone else, decreasing their mind scores (while the effect is active).
• Except for rust grenades, all rusted grenades now have a 50% chance of not working.
• Flash grenades now blind temporarily.
• Fungicide contraption: also kills rust spores in adjacent rooms.
• Scroll of the blade: slightly less powerful.
• New: singing sword, a cursed version of Mouser's sneaking sword. Can be engaged in a singing contest!
• Fafhr'd sword is now the claymore: for every 4 points of body, it has a 5% chance of destroying any weapon which it parries or by which it is parried.
• Healer's sword is not the holy sword: it deals 1 extra damage to all undead and demons for every 6 points of spirit that the wielder has.
• Defender's sword is now the immaculate sword, which is incorruptible. (Cannot rust, cannot be disintegrated, and so on.)
• Fearsome axe now actually instils fear: the target has a mind-based chance of being unable to react to an attack.
• New: the fearsome axe can turn out to be the cursed fearful axe. This axe sometimes makes the player to afraid to attack (which makes her skip a turn), though the effect is made more rare by having a high mind score.

Main menu graphics and music

A basic version of the main menu graphics has now been committed in the Glimmr branch.

Still to do:

1. Some cards (mindslug, tentacle, etc.) still need to be finalized.
2. Need placeholder cards for the 9 monsters not yet illustrated.
3. Music...?
4. Fix dungeon generation progress updates.
5. Bug fixes.
6. Restore Chain Golem's wild hair!
7. Change it so that button-presses highlight button text, rather than fading it out.
8. Border colors in Gargoyle should change along with the window color.
9. Fix animation pauses during monster card display.

There may be some other things; I'll update as and when I remember them.

New scoring proposal

I'd like to propose a new system of keeping score that would do a better job of representing the progress in a game (or "round") of Kerkerkruip. Rather than calling the score the number of games won successively, I recommend that we score each game independently, using a simple system along these lines:

• Each power absorbed is worth n points, where n is the level of the enemy.
• Killing Malygris is worth 12 points (sum of all the other monster's levels minus 1)--totally negotiable
• The sum of the first two points is multiplied by the difficulty level, calculated as it currently is.

So, if the player manages things right and manages to kill every leveled monster, he would get:

1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 +12 = 25 points

If he manages the same thing on difficulty level 2, he would gain 50 points. At level 3, 75 points, and so on. (If you ever see a score of 250 points, you'll know the player was on quite a roll when he got that score!) The multiplier also means that every kill is worth more in distinguishing scores at higher levels. At level 4, a score of (1 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 12)_4 = 80 describes a very different win from a score of (1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 12)_4 = 100.

This method of scoring would maintain the original focus on the high-wire act of beating Malygris continually, via the multiplier. But this scoring system also allows folks--like myself--who will probably never beat M twice in a row the chance to compare their performance with past runs. I think it would be fun to present a high score list of the best 10 runs, e.g.:

Killed Malygris with the glass cannon 25 (level 1)
Killed Malygris with the rapier 19 (level 1)
Killed by a blood ape 15 (level 1)
Killed by the tentacle of Tooloo 9 (level 1)

I haven't studied the code, but I think that it wouldn't be too hard to gather and store this information in the right format for a high score list.

Now, I've chosen to present this particular formula largely because it's pretty easy to calculate and understand. But the best system would be one that encouraged the style(s) of play that we consider the most fun or strategically best. (I think that's what I dislike most about the current scoring system: it encourages me to get so good at that game that I can "win" it over and over again--but once I get that good, I'm more likely to just stop playing! Who wants to win all the time--especially a roguelike?!)

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has ideas about the latter. Maybe the best score is actually the sum of the power-levels the player possesses at the time he dies, since this indicates how well he has managed to do in strategically acquiring powers. So if I've killed Malygris and I've got one level 4, one level 3, one level 2, and one level 1 power, I've scored as high as I can on a given level.

Or maybe the score rewards players who kill Malygris more if they've managed to do it with less. If I kill him with just a level 1 power, don't I deserve more points than if I had leveled myself fully?

Flashy website

Lets discuss making a pretty website!

Potentially recalibrate Normal difficulty

Conform Erik's post on the forum, we might need to recalibrate the difficulty of the game if it turns out that Apprentice is too easy. (Apprentice should be moderately challenging.) It is certainly the case that the difficulty of the game has gone down with all the recent changes, and we might need to adjust for this.

New monster: Israfel

A new monster that can split in two, and then rejoin again. Inspiration comes from Israfel from Neon Genesis Evangelion, but the name and image should be changed!

Go over achievements

It would be good to go over all the achievements soon (maybe K8, maybe K9). We should probably add some, and maybe some could be removed.

Note that any removed achievements must remain in the Table of Achievements in the same order they're in now.

• Make love not war. (Add: winning through love.)
• Twice fallen. (Add: winning the arena of the fallen.)
• Unmoved. (Remove -- impossible.)
• Stunning performance. (Remove -- it requires boring strategy.)
• Blood, sweat and blood. (Add: feed blood magic items for 50+ total health.)
• Fruit of kings. (Add: get the fruit of kings from the brambles.)
• Sixth Heaven. (Add: get ment addiction to 6 = 3 (ment) + 2 (essence of addiction) + 1 (fruit of kings).)

Achievements are not displayed in the menu

The achievements you have been awarded are no longer shown as awarded in the menu. They are however stored in the file correctly, and you will not be notified multiple times.

Quick start card

Erik's idea:

I was just thinking that one thing Kerkerkruip could use is a quickstart card, similar in style & presentation to the IF beginner's card.The game has its own unique mechanics and interactions, as well as a growing list of text commands, and a quickstart card might be a really helpful--but low-effort--way for newcomers to find a way in. At the same time, I don't think that the basics are so overwhelming that they couldn't go on a card (maybe two-sided). We could include a PDF alongside the game, and also make the card visible in-game in a graphics window. I think Lea actually designed the IF Beginner's card, so this might be a good use of the IF comp prize! But we should probably wait until this combat stuff is ironed out to start that up!

In the graphical menu maybe there could be a button which would display it where the monster cards appear? Or maybe it should take it to a new screen or something as we might not want a square help card. In any case, buttons!

Issues with concentration

Kerkerkruip is much more fun with all of the content unlocked. I've noticed a couple of issues with concentration:

1. If you attack the imp and it teleports away, you fail to hit him yet you don't lose concentration. If this is intentional, the player should be told that the imp left before the attack, e.g.: "The imp teleports away before you can act! You remain quite concentrated."

2. The player can concentrate outside combat, though that concentration is silently lost when the player moves to another room. Either concentration should not be allowed outside combat, as with the other combat verbs, or there should be an explicit message when concentration is lost to warn the player of that. (Concentrating outside combat makes sense with a creature like the imp--he shows up so often that it might make sense to concentrate and then just wait for him. Otherwise, is it useful?)

Essences in stats

Some of the essences have a permanent effect that you cannot see anywhere, except when it activates. (For instance, the essence of rage ensures that you cannot retreat, but if you've forgotten this, there's no way to see it before you retreat.) Should we add stuff like that to the "stats" information, so that the player always has full information about the state of the character?

I'm leaning to "yes", but I'd like to check with you in case you guys think "stats" is already overcrowded.

Don't show status bar in title screen

The status bar should only be shown once the game as started. (Or when you're in the menu, but I think the menu code will take care of that itself!)

Powers stats

One idea raised before (#7) was to track how powers are used (to show on the title cards), but we never pinned down what would be good to track about them.

Now while we wouldn't need to track each identically, one thing that would be fairly common would be to track the number of times the player has used each power to make a kill. Obviously it won't work for reap, but it would for many of them.

Any other ideas?

Issues with the hound

The status window says that the hound gives the power of retaliation, whereas the status command says "you are prepared". How about rewording the status command description to read "You are prepared like the great hound to retaliate instantly after any attack against you."

Novice level is sometimes incorrectly applied

It is possible to have victories and still be slotted into novice level.

SCORES:
   Current level                :  NOVICE (0)
   Highest level achieved       :  NOVICE (0)

   Your total victories         :  1

The player should only be a Novice when total victories is 0. The best fix is probably an explicit check of total victories followed by a bump up.

Reshow action after menu is closed

If you open up the menu while it is your turn to react, closing the menu puts you back at the react prompt without telling you what the original action was. If you're like me you might forget what it was. It would be good to somehow show the action again.

ATTACK should probably be changed to allow all ATTACK games to do this.

Detailed statistics tracker, auto-transcripting?

Deciding on questions of game balance might be easier if the game wrote a detailed combat statistics data file that players could send back to us. The easiest way to do it might be to have the game write data in XML or JSON, which could then be post-processed. I'm not sure how much work this would be to implement, but I suspect that the hardest part would be deciding what to track and how.

Relatedly, it would be possible to have the game write a transcript file silently (just as it currently saves games silently). All transcripts could be appended to the same file, potentially, assuming that the file doesn't grow too large. Again, this file could be submitted to the developers, or also be used by the player.

Do either of you think either of these would be useful enough to be worth the work?

After death comment

In order for new players to get familiar to the game, I would like to propose an after death comment similar to DC:SS. The idea is that we check for certain conditions during death in order to give a hint when playing on the beginner level. Some examples:

1. Death with a lot of scrolls / essences unused: "Perhaps you should look at your inventory next time when combat turns ugly?"
2. Death when fighting a level 3 or 4 creature without any powers absorbed: "Perhaps you are pushing your luck a bit too much? Try to advance is smaller steps."
3. Death by Malygris when fighting with only one high level power: "Remember that you can have more powers when fighting lower level powers after higher level powers."
4. Death by frag grenades: Some cynical comment.

Perhaps some location-specific comments.

This will give small hints to players willing to learn from the system. Perhaps players should be allowed to turn these off (or, as suggested above, they are only available on the lowest difficulty level).

What do you think of this idea?

Platform-specific releases

I've been poking around on the roguelike forums a bit, and the gblorb + interpreter thing really does seem to be a stumbling block for new players. There's also the problem of unsuitable but popular interpreters (such as Spatterlight on OS X). I think we should try to set a goal of having platform-specific releases for Windows and OS X.

I don't know anything about Windows, but an OSX app bundle should be pretty easy to do. I'm not sure of the step-by-step, but I think a couple of hours' research should be all that's required.

Platforms:

• Windows
• OSX
• Linux (Debian)
• Figure out copyright licence requirements for installers
• Include an .ini file
• Include an icon (#41)

Physical combat states (prone/standing)

I'm already making an issue so that I won't forget, but I'll post a more detailed proposal (with questions) later. What I'd like to do is:

• Add some advanced combat actions, as already discussed on the forum.
• Make parrying and dodging more distinct, and make the choice between them more interesting.
• Think about whether we would like to add a "being prone" state, like Remko suggested, and think about how it would interact with combat.
• Think about how these combat actions and states could be used to differentiate melee and ranged weapons.

I'll work on a proposal and post it here later!

Graphical map

The output of the REMEMBER and TROPHIES commands could be entirely encapsulated in a visual map, e.g.:

This tells us where we've been, which exits we have and haven't explored, who we've seen and where we've seen them, and who we've killed--all at a glance. (Note that the map also shows a player-carved tunnel connecting the Entrance Hall to the auto-generated tunnel that connects the Library with Phantasmagoria.)

This would be relatively easy to implement. The map itself is simple, since Kerkerkruip already generates rooms with XYZ coordinates. The hardest things will be:

1. Multiple levels--need to be sure that different floors are always placed on separated grid zones;
2. Placing tokens for monsters.

...and neither of these are very hard, just a bit fussy.

Dynamic powers page

I am planning to rewrite the powers page, to show only those who have been encountered.

As part of this I will be making a monster statistics file. For each monster there will be a flag saying whether it has been seen or not, and the number of times we have killed it. @ektemple, what other stats do you anticipate wanting for your title page? We will be able to add more at a later time, but we might as well start with all the ones we can think of, even if they're not used yet.

Hound weirdness

I'm not exactly sure what is causing this, but there is some weirdness with the hound -- certainly when you and an ally are attacking him. Here's some output:

The mummified priest stalks towards the hound with his sceptre raised.

The hound jumps to the side.

Rolling 4 + 2 (inherent bonus) - 2 (defender dodging) + 2 (tension) + 1 (defender large) = 7, the mummified priest does not overcome the hound's defence rating of 8.

The hound leaps at you, its teeth sharp and ready.

Rolling 10 + 2 (inherent bonus) + 4 (concentration) + 3 (tension) + 2 (you are a vampire) - 1 (smoke) - 1 (blinding light) = 19, the hound beats your defence rating of 8.

The hound deals 2 + 2 (concentration) + 2 (tension) + 1 (large attacker) = 7 damage, wounding you to 993 health.

The hound leaps at you with unblinking eyes.

React >

As you can see, the attack by the mummy leads the hound to attack me... and I don't get to react? That should never happen! It then attacks me again, and I get to react normally. I've taken a quick look at the code, but I'm not sure what's going wrong.

Jumping down in the Vast Staircase doesn't seem to have any consequences

The description of the Vast Staircase suggests that going down will damage the PC.

A vast staircase spirals up and down. In a pinch, you would be able to jump down to the room below, although this might not be particularly healthy.

However, this never seems to happen.

Scrolls can be identified

I suspect that this is a result of the latest changes to the scrolls: you can now identify them by referring to them with their real names. As in:

You can see a gilded rapier, a scroll labelled SHALM SAWESAS and a scroll labelled PETRICHOR here.

Exits lead south, east, west and down.

take teleportation
Taken.

i
You are carrying
-scrolls:
a scroll labelled PETRICHOR

Faculties and weapons

There are a bunch of weapons that are statistically the same, though they may have other properties. I count all of the following as mathematically equivalent (not sure if it's an exhaustive list):

• Tormentor of Aite's sword
• Defender of Aite's sword
• Nunchucks
• Demon Assassin's blade (it's hot, but that's not particularly exciting)
• Possibly the adamantine blade conjured by the scroll of the blade (though I don't recall for sure)

All of these are 1d6 + 0, good at parrying, and hard to parry. Kind of dull!

I propose that we make a few of these more interesting by linking them to faculties. There are at least three potential models for this:

1. Weapon is more powerful than the standard, but can only be used if the player has enough points in the appropriate faculty.
2. Weapon graduates in power as the player gains points in a given faculty.
3. Weapon is low-powered or generic below a certain threshold in the appropriate faculty but becomes more interesting above the threshold.

Specific proposals (Victor, you have a much better intuition for where the stats should be; these are just examples):

1. The Defender is a large, lumbering sort of guy, so give him a large claymore that is too heavy for most folks to wield in combat. The sword does 1d8+2 damage, but it can't be used at all unless the player has committed 10 points to the body faculty.
2. The Demon Assassin's blade is a standard 1d6+0 blade. It doesn't even flame until we have a spirit of 9 or higher. The power of the infernal flame increases as the PC's spirit climbs. The flames allow for the standard effects of heat, but the flame may also make the blade harder to parry. At the highest levels, it becomes a ranged weapon, acting like a flaming whip.