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Working on a roguelike...

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Tormuse:
Okay, I played a game of version A0120 and I won!  :D

I got a bit of wonky RNG action in this game;  I only found one grimoire and didn't find enough books to translate it, so I didn't get to do much in the way of spell-casting, despite (I daresay) having a pretty impressive collection of spell-casting ingredients.  :)  The game buried me in healing sources and fire water, but not so much in the way of calming elixirs, so I spent the late game well lit and physically healthy, but insane.  :P

The amulet of haste made the game a breeze; as long as I was careful and didn't impatiently charge into battle, I was able to avoid taking any damage.  Also, the Embermace is surprisingly effective against the undead!  It was able to take down mummified swordsmen in 2 or 3 hits, whereas the khopesh would take about a dozen hits.

I also encountered a couple Spectral Remnants that "rended my soul."  I don't know what that means, but it sounds bad.  Does that mean they drain sanity?  In any case, I'm glad I had the Soulcradle at the end.  My sanity level was "unstable," but I'm sure it would have been lower without that.

Spoiler: Autopsy (click to show/hide)Autopsy: 24 Mar 2019 03:51:43

Game time played: 0 days 07:14:19.416

Cleared the game on level 14

Total XP: 26656

Equipped Items:
an embermace (+3, 9d2+4) [Slightly Damaged]
a virulent green grimoire <R>[Lem - 57.99%]
an Atlantean torch <fire water:91%>
an Atlantean soulcradle [Undamaged]
an amulet of haste

Carried Items:
<315> an ancient falchion (+2, 4d6+4) [Slightly Damaged]
<270> an embermace (+3, 9d2+4) [Undamaged]
<105> a text of alchemical wisdom <R>[Lat - 100%]
<60> a Lemurian censer <sacred oil:99%>
<12> an amulet of protection
<9> an amulet of resistance
<9> an amulet of focus
<9> an amulet of precision
<10> 1x flask [lamp oil] (62%)
<30> 3x flask [sacred oil] (75%)
<90> 9x flask [fire water] (97%)
<8> 1x vial [medicine] (4)
<224> 14x clay jar [healing ointment] (40)
<90> 3x clay jug [healing ointment] (18)
<3> 1x vial [mercury] (35)
<76> 19x pouch [bone dust] (760)
<16> 2x casket [Lemurian incense] (24)
<15> 5x vial [scarab ichor] (100)
<60> 15x pouch [sulfur] (375)
<45> 9x cluster [foam-scoured shells] (135)
<84> 14x sac [worm bile] (252)
<63> 9x beaker [cobra's milk] (144)
<55> 11x hourglass [prismatic sand] (242)
<63> 7x satchel [whalebone] (28)
<28> 7x oyster [moon pearl] (112)
<4> 2x strip [ancient serpent scales] (20)
<28> 4x pouch [frost mushrooms] (28)
<18> 3x shard [splinters of obsidian] (18)
<32> 8x brace [basilisk's eye] (16)
<4> 2x necklace [etherglass beads] (42)
<8> 2x sheaf [manticore spines] (24)
<3> 1x plume [phoenix quills] (15)
<36> 4x phial [tincture of ectoplasm] (52)
<0> 1x spindle [dreamsilk strands] (17)
<12> 1x golden case [iridescent discs] (2)

Kills:
80x giant red rat
24x cave worm
2x grave worm
4x corpse leech
33x tomb serpent
11x swarm of tiny scarabs
1x vitriol serpent
12x mummified swordsman
5x mummified noble
2x spectral remnant
1x Lemurian necrocrat

[checksum: 2921f302]

EDIT:  Whoa, that's weird...  I just found a bug.  After I won, it took me back to the main menu and there was a "continue game" option and when I selected that, the final level where I faced the Lemurian Necrocrat flashed on the screen for a second, and then it took me back to my previous saved game.  I'm guessing it's not supposed to do that.

Sereg:
Part of the reason I require reagent containers to take actual inventory space is because a player might at some point want to manage their inventory and remove excess reagents to make space for other things.

Probably it would be better to treat them separately, as suggested, and not display or track them in the inventory, but since they are currently items, this would require either a large rewrite or a hack - either way, probably still worth it to save a headache in inventory management that's not really intended. I'll see about a solution for this.

There are some contrast issues on some screens - I created a solution for this, but it isn't working as intended, so I'll revisit that and see if I can come up with something better - the player shouldn't have to select a different display theme to read their book.

As far as the save command, intuition is not necessarily universal - 'X' actually stands for "E(x)it", of which saving is a natural side effect, as opposed to 'Q', which stands for "(Q)uit without saving", and in my experience, I exit more games with Ctrl-X than Ctrl-S. However, it would probably not be a huge deal to add a line or two under a modifier switch for the s key code to handle this, since as you point out Ctrl-S may be a more intuitive understanding for some subset of players.

I'll look into the lamp message and see if I can find why that's happening. Fortunately it wasn't fatal, but it's a bad thing when Null Pointers start cropping up in unexpected places for unknown reasons.

The second error was probably unrelated to the refill, if it was so widely separated - I suspect that's a separate issue where the display thread dies. In the past this caused an unrecoverable hang, but in the current version, the game does recover from it after some amount of player input because I monitor the thread and attempt to restart it if I find it terminated. However, the conditions which cause it to be terminated are unclear to me, and apparently can persist for several player actions depending on the game state, so the hang is still present, and not particularly nice if it occurs while the player is in a situation where they need to take precise actions. I have had great difficulty finding the source of this issue, since it occurs in a portion of the code that comes from a standard Java library, and I don't understand why my input is producing the output that causes the crash, so my thread monitoring is a sort of temporary patch to make it recoverable when it occurs, but I'll have to investigate the problem in depth and find a proper solution before any kind of non-alpha release.

As far as the RNG behavior in your win, that's definitely within the scope of intended gameplay - and it's one of the reasons language knowledge persists between games.


Haste is probably too powerful as it is - I'll probably promote it to legendary rarity.

Embermace is definitely strong against undead - it doesn't inherently have a damage bonus against the undead enemy type, but the resistance profile of undead enemies is weak to fire, so the effect is similar.

Soul-rending is indeed a sanity based attack - be careful of those remnants, especially when your sanity is also low. Of course in your situation there's little you can do about it without spells, but in a more generous run, they make a great case for using magic instead of melee.

That bug appears to be caused by your save state persisting even after your victory, which is not supposed to happen. I'll trace it and see if I can find out why that important step was missed.

Tormuse:

--- Quote from: Sereg on March 25, 2019, 07:52 ---Part of the reason I require reagent containers to take actual inventory space is because a player might at some point want to manage their inventory and remove excess reagents to make space for other things.

Probably it would be better to treat them separately, as suggested, and not display or track them in the inventory, but since they are currently items, this would require either a large rewrite or a hack - either way, probably still worth it to save a headache in inventory management that's not really intended. I'll see about a solution for this.

--- End quote ---

(Random idea; don't know how viable it is; probably would need to be done in a hacky way...)  Perhaps reagents could show up in the inventory as a single item, "spell-casting reagents" with weight equal to the total weight of all the ingredients you're carrying and when you select it, it brings up an itemized list of all your reagents?


--- Quote from: Sereg on March 25, 2019, 07:52 ---...since as you point out Ctrl-S may be a more intuitive understanding for some subset of players.

--- End quote ---

...Like people who play DRL for instance?  :)


--- Quote from: Sereg on March 25, 2019, 07:52 ---I'll look into the lamp message and see if I can find why that's happening. Fortunately it wasn't fatal, but it's a bad thing when Null Pointers start cropping up in unexpected places for unknown reasons.

--- End quote ---

Additional information:  I was refilling it with the lamp oil you start the game with.  The refill that generated the error message used up the last of my oil while filling my lamp up to 100%.


--- Quote from: Sereg on March 25, 2019, 07:52 ---...language knowledge persists between games.

--- End quote ---

Oh, really?  Guess I need to go play another game now to test that.  :)

Tormuse:
Well, that was fun...  I was playing along, doing decently well and got insta-killed by a Viridian Aura.  I started a level two tiles away from it.  I was wearing an undamaged Lemurian Noble Cuirass and was "slightly injured" at the time.  (So good HP and armour, I think)  The only thing I did was switch to my Embermace and died while doing that.  I think those things need a nerf.  I had killed one earlier and I observed that they're a lot faster in this version!  It got multiple moves for each of my own.

Spoiler: Autopsy (click to show/hide)Autopsy: 28 Mar 2019 21:10:21

Game time played: 0 days 05:21:57.883

Killed by viridian aura on level 10

Total XP: 9528

Equipped Items:
an embermace (+3, 9d2+4) [Slightly Damaged]
a text of alchemical wisdom <R>[Lat - 100%]
an oil lamp <lamp oil:99%>
a Lemurian noble cuirass [Moderately Damaged]
an amulet of precision

Carried Items:
<315> an ancient falchion (+2, 4d6+4) [Slightly Damaged]
<84> a dark grimoire <R>[Har - 99.99%]
<114> a heavy, gold-bound grimoire <R>[Atl - 54.28%]
<105> an Atlantean torch <no fuel>
<81> a moonglobe <crystallized moonfrost:57%>
<291> a Harappan warlock's attire [Critically Damaged]
<9> an amulet of resistance
<9> an amulet of focus
<10> 1x flask [lamp oil] (25%)
<80> 8x flask [sacred oil] (89%)
<50> 5x flask [fire water] (100%)
<8> 1x vial [medicine] (4)
<16> 1x clay jar [healing ointment] (1)
<3> 1x vial [mercury] (28)
<16> 4x pouch [bone dust] (152)
<80> 10x casket [Lemurian incense] (120)
<12> 4x vial [scarab ichor] (80)
<32> 8x pouch [sulfur] (195)
<50> 10x cluster [foam-scoured shells] (150)
<42> 7x sac [worm bile] (126)
<35> 5x beaker [cobra's milk] (80)
<15> 3x hourglass [prismatic sand] (61)
<63> 7x satchel [whalebone] (27)
<32> 8x oyster [moon pearl] (114)
<10> 5x strip [ancient serpent scales] (50)
<12> 1x menorah [corpse candles] (3)
<7> 1x pouch [frost mushrooms] (1)
<36> 6x shard [splinters of obsidian] (36)
<4> 1x brace [basilisk's eye] (2)
<5> 1x necklace [dragon teeth] (5)
<2> 1x necklace [etherglass beads] (24)
<8> 2x sheaf [manticore spines] (24)
<3> 1x plume [phoenix quills] (15)

Kills:
63x giant red rat
18x cave worm
5x grave worm
1x corpse leech
15x tomb serpent
10x swarm of tiny scarabs
5x mummified swordsman
2x spectral remnant
1x viridian aura

[checksum: 717148e0]

A couple of Some notes:

Something I probably should have mentioned earlier:  The diagonal arrow keys (from the numpad) only work if Numlock is on.  I don't know if that's a problem per se, but in other Roguelikes I've played, they only work if the Numlock is off, so it always causes momentary confusion when I switch.

At one point, I forgot to check out a locked door, because I wanted to secure the area before unlocking it.  My fault, of course, but it makes me wonder if they could appear a different colour or something when they're out of view so they stand out and remind you that they're there.

The "Partial Eclipse" spell says it "imprisons an undead opponent using fuel from a moonglobe."  Fair enough, so I cast a Moonglobe spell and then cast Partial Eclipse, which used up my reagents, but said it failed, along with the message, "perhaps it draws power from the fuel in your lamp?"  Okay, well, the Moonglobe, displayed in my "lamp" slot says "no fuel," but it won't accept any of my oils.  Is there something else I'm supposed to put in to fuel it?  I got the idea of using "moonpearls," and it used up a bunch of them without anything happening, while giving the standard "you must use this reagent in a spell" message, which I'm pretty sure is a bug.  (EDIT:  In fact, it seems that selecting any reagent makes it disappear from your inventory without any effect; I have a feeling this is unintended)

UPDATE:  Okay, so I figured out that I'm supposed to cast another spell to generate fuel for the moonglobe before I can cast partial eclipse and when I finally cast it, it brought a mummified swordsman, (ie the weakest of the undead) down to "heavily injured" and it immobilized him for about three moves, I guess?  I went up to him to finish him off and he started chasing me again.  Considering all the reading and studying I had to do to be able to cast that spell, and the fact that I had to cast three spells and use up reagents for all three, (note that it used up *ALL* of the fuel in the Moonglobe to "imprison" the swordsman and I use the word "imprison" very loosely here) it was a pretty crappy spell, when you consider I could have had the same effect with one whack from my Embermace.

Sereg:
Thanks for the additional feedback. Unfortunately, I've been a bit busier lately, and on top of that I've started a new project to build a much better console than the one Viridian Abyss currently runs on, so most of my spare coding time has been devoted to that recently. What this means is that I don't have a new version ready to go, nor is it likely in the immediate future.

However, I do plan to continue supporting Viridian Abyss with bug fixes and balance adjustments, so I continue to welcome such feedback.

Viridian Auras are intended to be the most dangerous enemies you can encounter in the current version. They do magic typed damage, which the player tends to have fewer sources of resistance against(your armor is focused mostly toward physical typed damage), and they move quickly. A weapon change action, while significantly faster than it was prior to recent changes, is still significantly slower than a basic move or strike action, and the Viridian Aura performs those faster than the player. Additionally, there is no monster pause on level creation - the player will have the first move, but every other monster is queued up and ready to begin acting right away, too.

The current balance is not kind to on-the-fly equipment changes. Perhaps this will be a problem in the long run and will need to be looked at, but for now, that's intended - I don't want players swapping gear as a reaction. I prefer to favor advanced planning - selecting the gear that the player believes will be most effective for the type of enemies they anticipate encountering, and carrying extras not for situational swapping, but for backups when their current gear degrades. If informational spells are available, these can certainly be used to plan situational swaps in a timely fashion, and I don't mean to completely discourage a playstyle of keeping a more powerful weapon in reserve to spare its durability, as you seem to have been doing. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to switch to a more potent weapon as a precaution before heading for the stairs, just in case something bad is waiting for you - if you do end up needing to make a few attacks against weaker enemies, it won't cost too much off the durability, since they'll likely die in one or two strikes.

I already hack doors to be brighter than surrounding terrain when lit, to make them easier to notice, so it should be trivial to do the same when remembered.

Good job working out the eclipse spell - it's meant to be somewhat opaque, so that the player does have to work out from the spell book lore or the spell description how to correctly employ the spells(as one might expect of our intrepid adventurer), but they aren't meant to be dragonslayer hard, so I'm glad you were able to find the solution without too much trouble.

You are correct that using a reagent isn't supposed to consume it - I'll address that along with the overall reagent reorganization suggested in your previous post - I certainly need to do something different with displaying those, so I may as well handle that too.

Sounds like Partial Eclipse needs a significant buff - I don't always have a great sense of what's balanced, what's overpowered, and what's too weak, and it looks like I erred on the side of way too weak in this case. Expect a damage increase and a significant lengthening of the root duration for the next release, and please do let me know if you come across other spells that feel underwhelming - Grimoires are rare, the languages aren't easy to learn, and the RNG can play havoc when it comes to finding the precise reagents you need, so while I don't want magic to be godmode, I also don't want it to be disappointing.

I'll try to get some work done on this over the weekend, and hopefully I'll have something to show for it by early next week, but unfortunately I'm not quite able to promise a release date for these changes just now.

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