RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[pampl]

For the past few weeks I've been noisily working on porting the monster races of Pos into the latest version of V so I could enjoy playing as a monster while enjoying the latest features and conveniences of V. The basic gameplay is essentially working now, though the UI is still a little quirky. I'm not sure where I should go from here in development - there's still plenty of features left to add, so I figured I'd ask the good people of oook what they want to see.

If you're not familiar with Pos, the basic idea (putting aside possessors for a moment) is that you start as a wimpy member of some monster race, complete with its (wimpy) powers and unusual equipment slots, and by gaining levels you change into tougher members of that species. For example, you can start as a 2-headed hydra, and at level 8 you grow a third head and get the power to cast fear. Later on you get the power to cast stinking clouds, and then to breath fire and even plasma, just like tougher hydrae can. As you gain heads you also gain more slots to equip helmets and (in RePos) amulets. If you make it to level 45, you'll be sitting pretty with 11 helmet and 11 amulet slots!

That's what I've got working so far. There are other features too, and that's what I want your help with. Is this basic gameplay enough, and I should focus on ironing out the UI bugs and adding monster races? Do you want to see the random quests and artifact reforging of the Adventurer's Guild added? Do you want King monsters added? The ability to summon friendly monsters (a prerequisite for implementing some races)? What say you, banders?

Here's the game, beta version 0.5.2:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/g858d872qe5muil/reposband%200.5.2.zip

edit: Ugh, and of course it wouldn't be a release without at least one completely untested, crash-inducing feature being included. Upload should be fixed now.

edit: LATEST VERSION:

https://github.com/downloads/simongre/RePosBand/reposband%200.6.5.rar

OSX compile:

https://github.com/downloads/NickMcConnell/RePosBand/reposband-3.2.0-osx.dmg

[pampl]

Important notes for people playing the game:
Press the "U" key to use your race's powers, if it has any.
It doesn't matter what class you initially select if you're playing a monster, you'll always be assigned the monster class.
Baby red dragons evolve up the red dragon line every ten levels. At level twenty you can become a chaos drake instead of a mature red dragon if you want. If so, you'll have to reach level 40 before becoming a GWoC.
Hydrae evolve every 7-8 levels. Once you reach 9 heads, the EQ display will start misleading you. To remove EQ that comes after the piece labelled (w), press (x), (y), (z), ({), (|), or (}). The labels are bugged, ignore them.
Generally, if you want to swap one item out for another and you have more than one slot of that type (e.g. ring slots) it's better to manually take off one then wield the other. The prompt for switching items sometimes refuses to respond correctly.
Hydra are pretty strong in melee but have no versatility. They're kind of a unique challenge, like playing a warrior.
Red dragons get gobs of HP and cheap attack spells but also lack versatility and their attacks will be resisted later on.
Chaos dragon have expensive and weak spells but they're hardly resisted, and they get a melee attack that confuses. They have the most versatile powers though they still have to carry around plenty of rods.

[buzzkill]

More races, definately... and classes. For example, dragon should be a race and red (blue,green,white) should be the classes.

The (V) UI seems fine though I didn't play for more than a few minutes. here's what jumped out at me.

My baby red dragon started with a wielded ring of open wounds, a wielded torch, and 3 scrolls of curse weapon. Shouldn't dragons have dark-vision or something instead of a torch slot. What's with the other stuff? Are those just the mandatory cursed items that drop when I die. He also had 6 limbs in addition to his 5 other slots. He also got 3 attacks (claw,claw,bite). Is that normal for a baby dragon?

Might want to add a strictly limited number of utility spells in addition to his breath ability (don't go crazy with it). Detect treasure seems appropriate for a dragon at some point in his career.

Unlitited home slots for dragons... they are treasure hoarders.

... and rename the title screen.

[pampl]

More races, definately... and classes. For example, dragon should be a race and red (blue,green,white) should be the classes.

I have eventual plans to use the class slot for possessors and other variations on being a monster. I could make a colorless drake race that turns into a baby * dragon at level 5, though.

My baby red dragon started with a wielded ring of open wounds, a wielded torch, and 3 scrolls of curse weapon. Shouldn't dragons have dark-vision or something instead of a torch slot. What's with the other stuff? Are those just the mandatory cursed items that drop when I die. He also had 6 limbs in addition to his 5 other slots. He also got 3 attacks (claw,claw,bite). Is that normal for a baby dragon?

Yeah, starting EQ was a bit messed up, I just fixed that. Now they start with a ring of damage and 2-3 scrolls of *Destruction*, like in Pos.
I don't remember if dragons have infravision or darkvision.. Smaug wasn't able to see Bilbo, but Bilbo could maybe have been invisible to all kinds of vision except Sauron's. I don't want to take the light slot away from them without good cause though; it's an important source of activatable powers
The 6 limb slots are for rings (four feet and two wingtips), maybe I should rename them from "on limb:" to "ring:" to be clearer.
Attack data is pulled straight from the monster file. I want the character sheet to display it eventually.

Might want to add a strictly limited number of utility spells in addition to his breath ability (don't go crazy with it). Detect treasure seems appropriate for a dragon at some point in his career.

Unlitited home slots for dragons... they are treasure hoarders.

... and rename the title screen.

Red dragons do get word of destruction and blink after a few evolutions. I really like the idea of giving dragons the detect treasure spell.
One design goal is to make slow play less unattractive compared to diving, so that's another reason I ought to add unlimited home slots. It's now on the short list of things to do before 0.5.3.
I know I should change the title screen but I'm not really interested in doing ASCII art. Do you know anyone who's good at that sort of thing I could PM for help?
Above all, thanks for the feedback!

[buzzkill]

I'm sure there's a freeware program that can make ASCII graphics, I'll give a look for something and get back to you.
The 2nd screen on the character sheet is messed up, and shouldn't red dragons have innate rFire.

[jevansau]

Very glad to see you working on this. Pos was one of my favorite variants.
I'd say more races and polish in the UI should be the first priority, and then the Adventurers guild - artifact reforging is such a needed thing for some of the races.
Summoning, and more importantly summoned creature AI would be nice, but I think would be very hard to get right. The companion leveling in Pos was fun, but tended to become very unbalanced.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Regards,
Jonathan

[juggle5]

I also want to offer my encouragement on this--Posband is probably my favorite variant as well.

Since you claim that adding more races is an easier task, I would focus on this, followed by ironing out gameplay bugs and polishing the UI so everything is playable.

Then work on summoning, since this is lots of fun, and required for some races to play effectively. I *wouldn't* worry too much about the balance of the game--the unbalance of the original Posband was part of the fun. Plus, it's easier to tweak game balance after all the races and features are in place.

Keep up the good work!

[buzzkill]

I'm sure there's a freeware program that can make ASCII graphics

More fonts than you can shake a stick at..

______         ______                 _ 
| ___ \        | ___ \               | |
| |_/ /___  ___| |_/ / __ _ _ __   __| |
|  __// _ \/ __| ___ \/ _` | '_ \ / _` |
| |  | (_) \__ \ |_/ / (_| | | | | (_| |
\_|   \___/|___|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|

   _ (`-.                .-')  .-. .-')     ('-.         .-') _  _ .-') _   
  ( (oo  )              ( oo ).\  ( oo )   ( oo ).-.    ( oo ) )( (  oo) )  
 _.`     \ .-'),-----. (_)---\_);-----.\   / . --. /,--./ ,--,'  \     .'_  
(__...--''( oo'  .-.  '/    _ | | .-.  |   | \-.  \ |   \ |  |\  ,`'--..._) 
 |  /  | |/   |  | |  |\  :` `. | '-' /_).-'-'  |  ||    \|  | ) |  |  \  ' 
 |  |_.' |\_) |  |\|  | '..`''.)| .-. `.  \| |_.'  ||  .     |/  |  |   ' | 
 |  .___.'  \ |  | |  |.-._)   \| |  \  |  |  .-.  ||  |\    |   |  |   / : 
 |  |        `'  '-'  '\       /| '--'  /  |  | |  ||  | \   |   |  '--'  / 
 `--'          `-----'  `-----' `------'   `--' `--'`--'  `--'   `-------'

[pampl]

Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone!

The 2nd screen on the character sheet is messed up, and shouldn't red dragons have innate rFire.

They do, which becomes ImmFire at level 30, it just doesn't show up because of how much I've broken that screen. That's one of those UI issues I need to fix ASAP

then the Adventurers guild - artifact reforging is such a needed thing for some of the races.

This is what I was worried about.. if high level play would be impossible for some races because of lack of reforging. OTOH, I haven't added all the (really tough) NPP monsters so it might not be so bad. I think I'm going to change the Acquirement code so it only grants usable equipment to make things a little nicer for monsters, at any rate.

I *wouldn't* worry too much about the balance of the game--the unbalance of the original Posband was part of the fun. Plus, it's easier to tweak game balance after all the races and features are in place.

This is my philosophy as well.

Thanks to Buzzkill, I now have a new title screen, and today I added the Troll, Basilisk, and Balrog lines, as well as creating an entirely new MHD line. I still need to finish fixing the 'C'haracter screen, expanding the home, and maybe fixing those last few slots for 9- and 11-headed hydra or fixing the "replace which X?" prompt and make it appear for any EQ with multiple slots.

If you have any specific race requests before 0.5.3 is released (that don't require summoning or using multiple weapons at once) then be sure to make them! The way I've done races means new starting races break savefile compatibility, so I'd like to do new races in bursts rather than a steady stream of them.

[Nick]

If you have any specific race requests before 0.5.3 is released (that don't require summoning or using multiple weapons at once) then be sure to make them!

Spiders, please! Araneas did have summoning in the original Pos, but you could include it later when you've done it.

[Philip]

How do I use a breath weapon with the roguelike keyset? U makes me go diagonally.
EDIT: How do I sell, drop and such from my quiver as a Hydra?

[pampl]

How do I use a breath weapon with the roguelike keyset? U makes me go diagonally.
EDIT: How do I sell, drop and such from my quiver as a Hydra?

Oi, two UI problems I hadn't even thought of. I'll get those solved for 0.5.3.. I don't know of any workaround for in the meantime though, sorry

[pampl]

OK, Nick told me how to solve the Rogue keyset problem.. if you don't feel like waiting for 0.5.3 (out in time for New Year's hangovers, hopefully) then you can go into reposband/lib/pref/pref.prf and add the line:

A:U
C:1:p

..or whatever you want in place of 'p'. Not sure if location matters but I put it amidst the other commands like that, about 2/3rds through the file.

Nick: do you like spiders because you like being a capital S with lots of boot slots and poison and paralyzing attacks, or because you like cursing and web spinning? I can add spiders with the former easily but the latter will have to wait a little while. Also, I want to give spiders their full 4 boot pairs, which should just translate into stealth and speed coming cheap to spiders - very in-flavor! I also would ideally like for them to have their full 8 ring slots but that seems like it could be incredibly OP and make the end game a very boring cakewalk (much more so than typical). Maybe I'll give them 2 ring slots, on the grounds that each leg is equivalent to a finger and you get one ring/4 fingers.

The flags display looks normal now but it still won't show innate flags for some reason

[Nick]

Nick: do you like spiders because you like being a capital S with lots of boot slots and poison and paralyzing attacks, or because you like cursing and web spinning? I can add spiders with the former easily but the latter will have to wait a little while.

The former, but also the webs - in the original Pos they were essential for slowing stuff down.

Also, I want to give spiders their full 4 boot pairs, which should just translate into stealth and speed coming cheap to spiders - very in-flavor! I also would ideally like for them to have their full 8 ring slots but that seems like it could be incredibly OP and make the end game a very boring cakewalk (much more so than typical). Maybe I'll give them 2 ring slots, on the grounds that each leg is equivalent to a finger and you get one ring/4 fingers.

Pos had 4 rings and two pairs of boots - so like 4 arms and 4 legs - but it's up to you.

[Philip]

OK, Nick told me how to solve the Rogue keyset problem.. if you don't feel like waiting for 0.5.3 (out in time for New Year's hangovers, hopefully) then you can go into reposband/lib/pref/pref.prf and add the line:

A:U
C:1:p

..or whatever you want in place of 'p'. Not sure if location matters but I put it amidst the other commands like that, about 2/3rds through the file.

The flags display looks normal now but it still won't show innate flags for some reason

I found a workaround. Pressing \ lets me choose from the standard keyset. On the quiver, would it work to allow quivers only for creatures with a shooter slot? As far as I know, the monsters with really wierd inventory can't shoot. Am playing a quylthulg in the original and having a blast. Can't wait for summoning.