Halls of Mist is coming soon

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm going to release my variant Halls of Mist, formerly known as FayAngband, in the first half of September.

It's been in the making for too long. I started with really big changes to the gameplay. After six months of playing, bug fixing and rebalancing, I don't have any energy left to rewrite the documentation. But I really should, because playing is much more enjoyable if you know about the new game mechanics. They're really quite transparent and simple, but different from what you're used to.

For the next couple of weeks, every day, I'm going to write a little post about my game. This thread will turn into bare-bones documentation. Feel free to ask questions, too, it will help me make the documentation clearer!

Ha! Now I have a deadline. That's just what a perfectionist and procrastinator like me needs.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

FayAngband

Halls of Mist is renamed FayAngband, which was based on EyAngband.

If you haven't played Fay and want to learn something about it, see here:

http://www.mikkolehtinen.net/fayangband_description.html

Version 1.1 had lots of changes:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=61394&postcount=1

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A brand new world

I've written about the new setting here:

http://www.mikkolehtinen.net/mist/?p=79

http://www.mikkolehtinen.net/mist/?p=91

(My development blog isn't really alive at the moment.)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Torches

Everyone has heard stories about the Halls of Mist. In the stories people usually see horrible visions in the blue mist and lose their mind. (They say carrying a bright torch would help.)

I've never liked the food clock in Angband. Nobody ever dies of starvation, so what's the point? The only food items in Halls of Mist are magic mushrooms. (Shamanistic magic is based on eating 'shrooms!)

Lanterns are gone, too, but torches are now more interesting.

Wooden torches have only 2000 turns of light. You can only have four torches in a stack, and weaker characters don't want to carry too many.

Enchanted torches have a bigger radius and more fuel but they are quite expensive for a beginning adventurer. Rare ego torches are even better, and they have different special effects, like boosting your Wisdom or making you fearless.

It's a tighter clock than in Angband. But in my hundreds (?) of playtesting games I have only very rarely ran out of fuel. More often I want to hurry because I'm wielding an impressive ego torch.

To make all sorts of boring torch optimizations impossible, you can not extinguish a torch. If you take off a torch, it's gone forever.

[fizzix]

Awesome! Any plans for a competition to coincide with release?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'd be really intrigued what would happen in a comp with no limits at all in character creation. Mist is designed to be played at your full ability, with no external limitations. Optimize the hell out of your race, class, and stats, and try to beat everybody else. Play as slowly or as fast as you like. Use whatever scumming method you can find -- there shouldn't be many.

And whoever gets the most points wins. Mist uses the traditional Angband scoring system but I suspect that in this game the method really works.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Can't wait to see the Halls of Mist release! I'm especially interested in exploring the new game mechanics.

[Nick]

I'd be really intrigued what would happen in a comp with no limits at all in character creation. Mist is designed to be played at your full ability, with no external limitations. Optimize the hell out of your race, class, and stats, and try to beat everybody else. Play as slowly or as fast as you like. Use whatever scumming method you can find -- there shouldn't be many.

And whoever gets the most points wins. Mist uses the traditional Angband scoring system but I suspect that in this game the method really works.

Sounds good. Start your own character, anything goes, highest score wins. Any other ideas?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Summoners can get nasty

I'll soon start talking about stats and skills but it's a scary big subject that's connected to most new game mechanics and even the new dungeon features.

I'll talk about my anti-scumming fixes first since I already mentioned the subject.

In Halls of Mist, you can explore at most 48 dungeon levels before you will have to face the boss, the Thin White Duke. In the earlier versions there were some exploits that allowed you to dodge this limitation and keep collecting experience on shallow levels.

I've greatly reduced the number of breeder monsters. The ones that are left don't give you any experience points or loot.

Summoners were a tougher nut to crack. It was painful to watch my friend Ear farm summoners. "Hey, man, Mist is not supposed to be played like that!" I tried several fixes during our playtesting sessions, and the last of them seemed to scare Ear out of farming.

Every time a summoner summons monsters, SUMMON_POWER goes up by one. Then, if you roll 1d40 under SUMMON_POWER, the summoned monsters' level is increased by SUMMON_POWER. When you leave the dungeon level, SUMMON_POWER is reset to zero.

Farm summoners long enough, and you will face Grand Wyrms.

P.S. You may want to read Scrolls of Summon Monsters and exploit Circles of Summoning when you get a chance. That's what Ear does, every time.

[LostTemplar]

This antiscumming seems to become paranoya. Imho changing monsters into valuable resource is a bad habit, if you have to do this, it means your game have some hidden flaws.
It is a common problem in all angband variants, as I think about this, main problem probably is a 'kill big bad boss to win' concept. If player can choose, when to face the big boss, and that boss is by far the strongest monster it makes it natural to prepare for a fight. E.g. if you award a winner for just getting to the bottom of the dungeon, 'scumming' may be reduced, or may be not, it depends on player's habit.

Btw just one more thing, IMHO it is not good idea to 'force' players to play 'optimally', in some way, that is supposed to, it kills the gameplay.

Random idea: You can limit total number of artifacts to be found per game by some reasonable value, like 10, so once you have this number, artifacts
generation stops, this will make it more appealing to go deep fast to get best possible gear.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This antiscumming seems to become paranoya. Imho changing monsters into valuable resource is a bad habit, if you have to do this, it means your game have some hidden flaws.

Mist has a very different philosophy from most other variants, and my specific tweaks are probably not at all appropriate for other games. I've received player comments about how farming is clearly against this philosophy, and feels bad. It's not really a problem in Angband, since you can generate infinite levels anyway.

The basic idea in Mist is to clear all levels completely. I like to play this way, and so do many other players.

Actually Halls of Mist philosophy is closer to other classic roguelikes than Angband. Let's pick Larn, my favorite, as an example. It's a simple and enjoyable game with no flaws that I can think of.

My anti-scumming tweaks move Mist further away from Angband and closer to Larn.

If I were to design Mist from the ground up, it would probably not have summoners at all. But they are too fun to get rid off. So I need to use some "ugly" tricks and hacks to make them fit.

It is a common problem in all angband variants, as I think about this, main problem probably is a 'kill big bad boss to win' concept. If player can choose, when to face the big boss, and that boss is by far the strongest monster it makes it natural to prepare for a fight. E.g. if you award a winner for just getting to the bottom of the dungeon, 'scumming' may be reduced, or may be not, it depends on player's habit.

No one has ever even seen the big boss in Fay or Mist.

Usually the point is to just get as deep as you can, and to get to the high score list. You will die a lot. For this reason I'm trying to increase shallow-level replayability and the speed of play in any way I can.

In Mist you need to prepare for every tough monster. You have a very real possibility of meeting too-tough-to-handle monsters at the very next dungeon level, and you'll want to prepare as well as you can. It's not just for the end boss.

For this reason scumming is a much bigger problem in Mist than in Angband.

Btw just one more thing, IMHO it is not good idea to 'force' players to play 'optimally', in some way, that is supposed to, it kills the gameplay.

You are probably right.

Halls of Mist is aimed squarely at the players who like hard games, and who want constant challenge. Most players do not.

After reading these two blog posts I realized than I'm designing a game for a minority.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.fi/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.fi/2011/02/three-rules-for-difficulty-in-rpgs.html

Fortunately this is not a business and I can just go on and create a game for myself and a few fellow-minded gamers.

An easy fork of Halls of Mist might be a good idea. But I'm perhaps not the right person to design it, at least not without ideas from a bunch of playtesters.

EDIT: I don't think that I'm "forcing players to play optimally". Rather, I'm trying to make the most fun way to play to become the optimal playstyle. For instance, farming summoners used to be the optimal way to play Mist, but is was boring as hell, and so I made farming much more dangerous. Now the optimal play is (I hope) to kill summoners as fast as you can. That's also the most intuitive tactic against them.

EDIT 2: Well, making torchlight a scarcer resource may be just what you mean by "forcing players to play optimally". Taken to extremes, it would kill the gameplay. Players don't want to worry about every single unnecessary move. For that reason, I didn't set the torch clock to be too tight. Only rarely, when you are using a very good ego torch, you need to start thinking about saving fuel. Usually I forget torches entirely and just play how I feel like.

(The torch clock is designed to prevent some unfun behavior, like trying to fight a tough unique for two hundred times, until you finally get lucky enough with critical hits.)

[LostTemplar]

Mist has a very different philosophy from most other variants

Is it not like an angband ironman ? I play only ironmans myself (except for testing stuff), so I allmost forgot how normal angband plays.

Just as an universal suggestion: if you think that killing monsters is too profitable, lower reward (to zero or even negative, if needed), but not monster availability. It is against common logic if player wants more monsters.

Also making optimal way to win equal to most fun way to play, is, at first, very subjective, and, second, IMHO not very good. Choice between doing things right, and doing things easily is a nice strategical choice for the game, it is also probably the only 'game style' choice available in roguelikes.

It is definitely bad if some boring actions are required to win, but if some boring actions can slightly increase winning chance it is good IMHO.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Is it not like an angband ironman ? I play only ironmans myself (except for testing stuff), so I allmost forgot how normal angband plays.

Yes, more or less. You can control how fast you dive: dive fast for bigger danger and profitability. It's more like Sil than Vanilla ironman, maybe?

Just as an universal suggestion: if you think that killing monsters is too profitable, lower reward (to zero or even negative, if needed), but not monster availability. It is against common logic if player wants more monsters.

Isn't this exactly what I'm doing? I didn't remove breeders, I removed the XP you gain from killing them. I didn't remove summoners, I made their summons more dangerous.

What particular change are you disagreeing with?

It is definitely bad if some boring actions are required to win, but if some boring actions can slightly increase winning chance it is good IMHO.

I can completely agree with this, since you had the keyword slightly in the sentence.

In many games of Halls of Mist is probably unwinnable unless you get lucky. Random content + limited dungeon levels tends to do this. Killing breeders or summoned monsters, if it was profitable, would make these games winnable. Just like you said: "It is definitely bad if some boring actions are required to win."

[Mikko Lehtinen]

lso making optimal way to win equal to most fun way to play, is, at first, very subjective,

Oh, I think I agree here also. Like I said, I'm designing a game for a minority.

Actually, I'm designing for myself. I don't bother changing the game unless the change makes the game more fun for myself.

[Scatha]

I'd be really intrigued what would happen in a comp with no limits at all in character creation.

Sounds good, although isn't that what the ladder would do anyway? I guess a competition adds a time limit.

Overall I'm excited to see how Halls of Mist plays, and very pleased that you're making a thread to provide documentation. I tried Fay at one point after reading your comments about design philosophy, but lacking documentation I didn't find the mechanics transparent enough for me to engage with (and I guess I wasn't prepared to put the time in to learn them by trial and error).

Also making optimal way to win equal to most fun way to play, is, at first, very subjective, and, second, IMHO not very good. Choice between doing things right, and doing things easily is a nice strategical choice for the game, it is also probably the only 'game style' choice available in roguelikes.

It is definitely bad if some boring actions are required to win, but if some boring actions can slightly increase winning chance it is good IMHO.

I'll lend a voice strongly disagreeing with this.

[Disclaimer: the design philosophy that Mikko Lehtinen reports is very close to a part of that of Sil; the only substantive difference mentioned here is that Sil doesn't aim for the "clear each level completely". In the other direction, Sil has a strong bias in favour of simple and transparent mechanics.]

I hate the feeling that I could be increasing my chances of winning if only I did this thing I'm not going to bother with because it's dull. I enjoy working out how to do well at games, and trying to optimise my play, but I play games to have fun. So having optimal play be fun is an obvious requirement for me to want to engage with something as a game (at least in this sense of game; open ended exploration can be fun too, but feels less gamelike). It doesn't need optimal play to be the most fun way, but that's a good thing to aim for.

I think that the strategic choices come from not making it obvious what the optimal play in lots of situations is. Trying to increase the number of circumstances in which there's more than one viable alternative is how this kind of gameplay is improved.

To make all sorts of boring torch optimizations impossible, you can not extinguish a torch. If you take off a torch, it's gone forever.

I love the sound of your torches and this is a beautiful answer to the possibility of abuse. Exceptionally clean mechanic which is easy to parse flavourwise.

On the other hand I'm not convinced by your anti-(summon-scumming) rule (though of course I agree that you need some rule there). It's complicated in an artificial way -- as opposed to complexity which comes from following flavour, which is easier for players to understand. And it must really be understood for optimal play, which is likely to involve farming the summoners somewhat, but not beyond the bounds of safety.

Just as an universal suggestion: if you think that killing monsters is too profitable, lower reward (to zero or even negative, if needed), but not monster availability. It is against common logic if player wants more monsters.

This I agree with! I don't think it's necessarily bad for players to want more monsters, but it runs against the grain enough that I think it wants to be a central part of the game (preferably with in-game explanation) if it's going to be present.

How about a really simple rule like giving no experience or drops for summoned monsters? Either by setting a flag on the monster, or by duplicating monster entries to things like "illusionary grue", which is identical to a regular grue except that it has no drops, gives no experience, and doesn't regularly appear in the dungeon, but sources of summoning always create only illusionary monsters.

That said, I'm not trying to slow down your release here; just providing feedback and ideas on the off-chance that it's useful at some point ...