PORTRALIS Review

[Lipa]

I know that TJA is already planning to write a review, but I decided to post my own as well. The more the better!

But what I'm about to write is also a kind of a summary, really. I'm sad that not many people are familiar with the variant, and I'll try to explain and list all the interesting (outstanding!) features.

IMO, this is one of the best variants out there! Go check it out!

[Lipa]

PORTRALIS is based on New Angband (that in turn based on Pern Angband, an old variant of ToME). Portralis was born when changes to a certain New Angband version (1.7.1) were so significant and fundamental that Variaz, the creator of both, decided to rename the new version (1.8.0) and turn it into a whole new Angband variant.

Portralis offers some radical new ideas and concepts that differ much from Vanilla Angband, most of them being focused on the detailed, multi-class character development.

At birth, the player only gets to choose its character’s race. There are numerous races in Portralis, each of them offering some bonuses and penalties to various stats, resistances and skills. Everything else is initially fixed: all stats are set to 5 (plus/minus racial effects), and there is no class to begin with (the character is an Apprentice). Later, as the real game begins, the character can change to whichever of the numerous classes he wants. He can choose between basic classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue, etc.), and (if he is skilled and experienced enough) between some advanced ones (Elemental Lord, High Mage, Shadow Stalker, etc.). Each class also offers a set of ten unique special abilities that the character can learn (more on that later).

But the character doesn’t have to stick to just one class. The most radical Portralis feature allows him to change at leisure from one class to another! This way, he can learn certain special abilities from various different classes, thus becoming a finely tuned adventurer, skillful in multiple disciplines.

As the character gains an experience level, his development is entirely up to the player. First, he is granted some stat points. These can be used to boost any of the general stats (Strength, Intelligence, etc.). Then, he gets some skill points. With these, he can advance any of the many available skills, another interesting feature in Portralis. There are general skills like Fighting, Spellcraft or Defense, making the character more able in respective disciplines, and specialized skills like Swords, Rods, or Elemental Magic, which make him more powerful. Last but not least, the character also gets one ability point for each experience level. With this point, he can learn (or advance) any of the special class abilities.

In short, the player has total and complete control over his character! He can create a very specific, very unique adventurer, exactly the way he wants. Possibilities are endless.

But the customization doesn’t end here. Another ingenious feature of the game is the incredible magic system. In Portralis, there are no spell books. Instead, there are numerous books with various magical effects (Acid, Identify, Paralyze, Reduce Level, etc.). As the character finds (or buys) such a book, he can (permanently) learn the magical effect. Then, the player can create his own custom spells! He can choose the magical effect (or even combine more of them), the type of spell (Bolt, Chain, etc.), its power and radius. This way, he can create an infinite number of unique, custom spells, combining many effects together, casting what he really wants to cast.

A few more words on the game world. Older New Angband versions (up to 1.7.1) had only one town with one very deep dungeon. There were also some quests present, and a simple story. Portralis, on the other hand, features a huge world with many towns, dungeons, quests, and an elaborate story with dialogues.

Monsters in the game are numerous, and users can create custom monsters as well. From time to time, however, a character will also have to cross swords with special “elite” and “boss” monsters, another fun feature of Portralis. These randomly generated monsters are very powerful, and they possess various special abilities (Immunity to Melee, Ability to Return Damage, etc.). Killing them is often a tough challenge, and this is why the multi-class approach to the game with special class abilities becomes almost a necessity.

Interesting items, too, can be collected in the game. First, there is ordinary equipment lying around in the dungeon. Then, there are randomly generated magical items (mostly weapons and armor), which the player can usually get after killing an elite or boss monster. These items possess many bonuses to general fighting performance (to hit, to damage, to armor class, etc.), as well as bonuses to stats, skills and resistances. Last but not least, there are also special randomly generated “tweakable” magical items. These are much rarer, but also more powerful. And most importantly, they can be tweaked! The player can (for a price) increase the already existing bonuses, or even add new abilities (Permanent Light, Regeneration, Resistances, etc.).

All in all, Portralis is extremely rich with all sorts of items, which help the player to create exactly the type of character he wants.

One last thing about death. The game offers another radical option here: the character can resurrect, though he loses all his items (except for those carefully kept at home). For some people, this may indeed sound like breaking the most fundamental rules. However, Portralis can be tough, very tough. Monsters can become quite nasty later in the game, and this is why the resurrection option was introduced in the first place. But if the player really doesn’t like it, he can as well start anew – his score (and his current “death count”) is entered in the highscore list after each death.

Since the release of New Angband version 1.7.0, New Angband has become more and more popular, and the community has started to grow. Then the game turned into Portralis, an even larger, more complex and more interesting variant. The game’s creator, Variaz, has never been so busy coding, fixing, polishing. And he still never seems to run out of ideas, possible additions and improvements for his creation. Portralis is facing a bright future indeed.

[andrewdoull]

At birth, the player only gets to choose its character’s race. There are numerous races in Portralis, each of them offering some bonuses and penalties to various stats, resistances and skills. Everything else is initially fixed: all stats are set to 5 (plus/minus racial effects), and there is no class to begin with (the character is an Apprentice). Later, as the real game begins, the character can change to whichever of the numerous classes he wants.

Now that is a great character creation process - and actually reflects what happens in the real world (of people playing games). How is someone supposed to know what class they want to play from the get go?

Can I suggest that the whole post you've just made replace the existing text at http://angband.oook.cz/variants.php?variant=portralis

Andrew

[Bandobras]

Thanks for the review. I'm interested.

I see the last release was 4 months ago. Is there an SVN I can get a version with the 4 months worth of bugfixes from? Oh, and does it run on Linux (I guess the TJA review will answer this:-)?

P.S. And the active Portalis forum is surprising. How come I've never heard of it? Or perhaps it's only for Window$, so I cursed it and forgotten?

[Lipa]

I'm glad that you like the review. As I said before, this variant is really good (my favorite, actually), however most of the *banders (unfortunately) don't seem to know much about it. I strongly encourage everyone to at least try it out!

You can get the latest version (post-release bugfixes are included) from the Portralis homepage:

http://www.geocities.com/pericles_2ca/

Or at the forums (see the downloads section):

http://variaz.proboards3.com/index.cgi?

As to Linux, I wouldn't know much about it, but I'm sure others will know how to help you out!

Best regards, have fun!

[Daven_26d1]

Nice review, Lipa - I find that an excited breakdown of all the best features gets me a lot more interested than most of the terse descriptions lying around the web. There is a lesson for maintainers who want to attract players here.

Portralis - for the first time - really interests me. Anyone ever play WHFRP? it reminds of character development in that. Sounds also like it borrows a lot from japanese style CRPG games (old-FF skill/class systems, dialogues) - not necessarilly a bad thing in my book!

Urggh, I wish people would stop making me want to play more variants. Even for an insomniac like me, there are only 23.25 waking hours in a day!

Nice one Lipa; for someone who "isn't that familiar" with the variant, you really did your homework!

[Bandobras]

You can get the latest version (post-release bugfixes are included) from [...]

No luck here. The newest I can see is from Wed May 02 18:53 UTC.

[Lipa]

I see. Hm... Not sure if there were any other bugfix releases. I guess this is it then?

Also, please bare in mind that currently Portralis is still in beta stage. It is perfectly playable though! It's just that the world is not yet finished, and there may be a bug here and there... But the story itself (with lots of quests and dungeons) even now provides for *hours* of gameplay, and since there are so many choices a player can take in terms of character design, replayability is extremely high. I really hope you won't get discouraged by the "unfinished" status.

Oh, one more thing I think I should mention. Obviously, I'm a fan. But please note that I didn't write the review in order to "force" you into Portralis. Not at all. I know and I perfectly understand that not all will love it as much as I do, for (fortunately!) we each have a different taste. My intention was simply to describe the variant and hopefully encourage you to try it out! At the moment, Portralis is pretty much unknown, and I think it really deserves more attention. Later, as you'll see how things are, you'll (of course) make your own judgment. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll hate it, or maybe you'll fall in love with it like I did.

Best regards!

[Bandobras]

Wait! There is already a Portalis review by TJA (with replies from the benevolent maintainer, no less). It seems the source compiles on Linux after some tweaks. Great!

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=207

Thank you both. I now have both an incentive and technical assistance to try it out.

[Lipa]

Excellent! I wish you lots of fun!

[Variaz]

Well, thanks again, Lipa, for contributing to Portralis once more!

For Linux versions, again, I apologize for not having one available. The reason why it's tricky to compile is that right now, I don't have any Linux systems. I used to have one, and yes, it works fine, but switching from Linux to Windows all the time became a hassle, so the Linux that was on my laptop was eventually replaced by a Windows, and thus, I haven't been able to update makefiles and things like that for the new version of Portralis.

I'm glad TJA posted instructions on how to compile, I'll probably follow them and make these changes when 0.3 comes out. Again, thanks Lipa and TJA for taking some time to talk about my variant.

Oh, and one more thing. To download the variant, you might want to use this link instead of the Geocities ones:

http://www.assembla.com/spaces/files/Portralis

Geocities has an extremely small bandwidth limit, while Assembla doesn't. You might have more luck with the Assembla link!

[Bandobras]

Thanks for the interesting variant, Variaz. I think, for Linux, sources with good makefiles and up to date main-x11.c would be enough. Of course, binaries would not hurt and public SVN would be a paradise.

Some nitpicking: there is a lot of "lives" where there should be "live" in your texts. As I play, I will edit with some more remarks.

Edit: also "gathers" and probably some more.

Edit: the story is interesting, but I'm at line 72 and I'm tired (not a bad story, really, but I would like to, say, play a little bit:-). I guess I will skip the rest of the story for now and see how I will fare in the game without the background. BTW, the first ESC does not exit the story screen, only the second does.

Edit: I've chosen to be a Dwarf. "%To Damage"? O-combat? Splendid! "Ability P"? Points? I see rerolling only changes the history of the character, so I rerolled to be a noble. "ESC to accept"? And Enter to escape, I guess? Sigh.

Edit: Now, to the options. No 4GAI? Almost forgotten how that plays. Wow, lots of ancient kinds of options, even stacking objects on the flor is marked as a "testing" option. No monster list window available, so what will I put in the 7 windows that spawn on default? I guess rebasing the code (at least the interface code) on the newest V, NPP, S, O or TOME2 could be a good idea.

Edit: Small window and the 'l'ook command does not scroll the view. Also no auto-center. Description of Clara "sawsomething" and "appear". The Lipa's Reference Card (www2.arnes.si/~blipov/PortralisReferenceCard.pdf) helped me to find the proper command to talk to her.

Edit: Clara says somthing about orcs. I would understand her better if I've read the background story. OK, after I've seen the town and talked to an NPC I repent, I'd like to read the story in full. But now I can't! (Here comes source-diving, fortunately.)

Edit: "At the time when Portralis was discovered", hmm, and I thought that "The world is the world Portralis" (a little bit funny sentence, BTW :-). Another funny sentence "But the orcs were more ambitious than just conquering the mountains."

Edit: OK, I've read the whole background story, except the descriptions of the kingdoms. I don't even know in which kingdom I am, so I can't be bothered. The story is really nice and it's good to have it all in one place, e.g. under the ? menu. However, may I propose that at birth only 1--2 pages with essential knowledge is displayed? Then, to reming the player to learn more, every town may have a library with all the story browsable in "books", with the book corresponging to the kingdown the town is in, most prominent. You may want to find other ways to make sure the player learns a lot about Orcs just before meeting Clara, about kingdoms before travelling, about the funny crystals on their wrapping paper, etc.

Edit: Oooh, 'I' does nothing on my initial equipment, and I hoped to learn something about those crystals and "Dur". Nobody in the town reminded me to choose a basic class. Good that I've read some of the newbie guide! All townsfolk of the same type seem to tell the same lines --- good, I don't have to chase every one of them. Oh, no, the guards of the jail say something different --- could you perhaps change their color? Perhaps also description to "Jail guards"?

Edit: Uh, oh, a crash: when changing permanent wall attribute via the '%' menu, I get a crash on attribute value 18. BTW, could you change permanent walls to, say, attr 14?

Edit: The Old Richard quest is not listed in the quest screen, just as the barman quest. Also, you can't enter Old Richard's house. "Looks like any other level" in the basement sounds strange. The first rat I encounter is said to "never appear". The option "don't pick up monster corpses" does not work (combined with always pickup and query pickup). The monstrous rat is not visible when the dialog appears saying that I see it. It becomes visible later on.

Edit: Ha, I've just died. I bought a lot of Phase Door scrolls and tried to steal the elixir. I had no hints the scrolls will not work in the basement, so I'm a bit angry, but this is what happens to thieves, I guess. Thanks a lot for this really nice story and fun game mechanics. When I play again I will take some more notes and email them to you personally, so as not to clutter the thread.

Edit: one more problem --- I don't know how to die permanently. I guess I'll have to remove the savefile by hand...

Edit: Just one more exploit/crash. Zulgors (at least) can cast chaos missiles with 0 mana cost, 1 power and 100 radius. When I create such a spell with the "circle" type, the game crashes. More specifically, I've done a spell with 2 balls and 1 circle, total cost 0 mana, the crash is when the circle of radius 100 is rendered.

[Variaz]

Sorry for the grammar errors. I live in Quebec, so I'm a french speaker. Though I speak a lot of english(almost more than french actually, thanks to my job and interest in computers), I know it's not perfect.

[Daven_26d1]

I wouldn't worry about it too much Variaz... looking at Bandobras' last post, I think you just netted yourself an ardent beta-tester/proof-reader!

Edit - additional to Bandoras' points: If you are thinking about rebasing your code, might be smartest to do it sooner, rather than later... sounds like you got a big project under your wing there!

[takkaria]

For Linux versions, again, I apologize for not having one available. The reason why it's tricky to compile is that right now, I don't have any Linux systems. I used to have one, and yes, it works fine, but switching from Linux to Windows all the time became a hassle, so the Linux that was on my laptop was eventually replaced by a Windows, and thus, I haven't been able to update makefiles and things like that for the new version of Portralis.

I would recommend you get ahold of a Linux Virtual Machine, e.g. using VMWare. Though I have the luxury of having multiple machines on which multiple OSes can be installed, I still use VMWare (or VirtualBox) quite a bit to debug and test without booting out of Windows. Works like a dream.