Halls of Mist is coming soon

[Derakon]

You can make the game be the story of one family or organization's attempt to kill the final boss. The character the player is controlling is then just one part of that overall attempt; each individual will then in some way get the organization closer to their ultimate goal -- and your score will reflect how many bodies you accumulated along the way. The best score, but also the most difficult game, comes from winning the entire thing with only one character, but that might be impossible or at least incredibly difficult. Once the boss is defeated, the organization (i.e. savefile) is retired.

Compare with Spelunky, which is a sort of roguelike/platformer game. The game is broken up into 4 sets of 5 levels (cave/jungle/ice/temple), and when you make it to a transition between the level sets, you're given the option to trade away treasure (i.e. points) for progress towards digging a tunnel (i.e. shortcut) to the next region. The shortcuts get your later characters closer to the endgame, thus making it easier to win -- but you sacrifice points by doing so, because you aren't playing some of the levels and thus miss out on treasure. The best scores come from games that play every level in one sitting.

So I think this gels nicely with your ideas on having multiple lives, different regions in the dungeon, and so on. The question really is how you go about adjusting the difficulty of each "life" based on the exploits of the previous characters. Should the game ultimately be winnable by anyone willing to simply pile up a large enough body count?

[ekolis]

I like the idea! Makes the game feel more epic (honestly, kinda reminds me of Castlevania ), and even lost characters aren't wasted, so you always feel a sense of progress - much like Dragon Quest, where getting your party killed doesn't result in game over, but merely returning to the last church you visited with only half your gold! (That's one thing that always irked me about Final Fantasy as opposed to Dragon Quest - you could die and lose a lot of progress, having to grind the same areas over again, so later in the game you might just give up because you're wasting so much time!)

[debo]

Something that might bear comparison here:

In the Famicom roguelike Shiren the Wanderer, you're fulling expected to die several times. In fact, it's necessary to unlock all the game events.

Basically there's this big mountain you're climbing, and it has 30 floors. XP and levels are gained fairly easily. If you die, you lose everything.

But here's the catch -- there are several towns along the way, and a few of them have "warehouses" that will store your equipment between sessions. A big part of the gameplay is finding a good sword, grinding its stats way up, and then leaving it in a warehouse before you die with it in your person.

Each new "life" resets a lot of the event counters, one of which is a blacksmith that lets you forge your weapon one level higher. Other "story" type events require you to die/quit in order to get to the next arc. It's really quite neat, although difficult to wrap your head around without reading a FAQ or something.

I think that, based on where you guys are going with this, it might be neat to have a home "warehouse" (much like the current Angband home) where I can dump gear for future hopefuls. If I die with the current character, my lil bro can pick up what is in the warehouse and come out to avenge my death. (Bonus points if I can loot his corpse -- kinda like ghosts, I guess )

Given what you've described of the game's setting so far, though, I think it might be equally neat just to have one life and one adventurer. I've always like the solitary/isolation feel of most roguelikes, and it seems like this game has an environment that is particularly suited to it.

[ekolis]

Huh, the way you describe Shiren the Wanderer kind of reminds me of Baroque... didn't much care for that game, but it was probably more the weird atmosphere and awkward controls that turned me off to it than the idea of dying a lot, saving items between lives, and unlocking parts of the story by dying!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

(I wrote this before reading debo's ideas.)

I'll probably want to have some kind of "campaign mode", yes.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about one particular feature of Fay/Mist stair system. Every time you take the stairs back to the dungeon, your minimum depth increases by one. I tend to imagine that the character spends a lot of time between the dungeon levels, navigating down towards the next interesting enemy base.

How about this:
Your minimum depth = weeks of time that have passed in the game world.

I already use this timekeeping system when calculating the duration for long-term blessings and shapeshifting.

Well, the system allows lots and lots of other awesomeness if you go on thinking about the possibilities.

For example, a cooperative multiplayer hot seat/emailed savefile mode with a shared home would probably be quite easy to code. The players would take turns clearing one dungeon level at a time. Whenever they get a chance to take the stairs back to town, they may access the shared home. That's it, there's no other changes needed. The players would advance at their own pace -- some would dive, some would descend slowly -- but their minimum depth would always be within one level from each other.

I'm very likely to code something like this at some point, as cooperative hot seat roleplaying sounds a wonderful way to spend Christmas holidays with old friends. (Drinking lots of beer and eating good food is part of the plan.)

Your ideas got me thinking about the possibilities of this idea for a single player game. What if you would sometimes get an opportunity to free a prisoner in the dungeons. The new hero would join your team. She would have about the same experience and equipment level as your original hero, and would begin the game at the same minimum depth. From that point on, you two would take turns clearing dungeon levels, just like in the multiplayer mode. And there's nothing to stop the adventuring party from increasing to three or four heroes later on.

The good:

• It's simple! No need to make radical changes to the gameplay or flavour.
• Extra lives allow me to tune up the danger level.
• Traditionally players spend lots of time on shallow depths, which may get boring eventually. This mode would increase time spent on deeper depths.
• Less junk. Found a priest dungeon book with your warrior? Well, give it to your friend.
• Dividing the loot for the party in the most optimal way would be a fun strategic challenge.

[ekolis]

Hmm, the "extra adventurer" system sounds a bit like the latest Kingdom Hearts game, where you get swapped between several characters' perspectives on a timer. So each character would have his own min-depth counter, right? But they could share items between adventures? That sounds interesting - you wouldn't have a full-fledged adventuring party that could be a nightmare to manage in a roguelike (not to mention carve swathes through monsters), but you would have the advantages of extra time to explore and extra lives!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Given what you've described of the game's setting so far, though, I think it might be equally neat just to have one life and one adventurer. I've always like the solitary/isolation feel of most roguelikes, and it seems like this game has an environment that is particularly suited to it.

Right. Good point. And that's where my development efforts will go in the near future anyway.

The most important thing right now, well above anything else, is enhancing the flavour of the place. Not just renaming things but also making the mechanics fit the world better, and breathing some new life into monsters. (I love the mist-phantasms!)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In the Famicom roguelike Shiren the Wanderer, you're fulling expected to die several times. In fact, it's necessary to unlock all the game events.

Basically there's this big mountain you're climbing, and it has 30 floors. XP and levels are gained fairly easily. If you die, you lose everything.

But here's the catch -- there are several towns along the way, and a few of them have "warehouses" that will store your equipment between sessions. A big part of the gameplay is finding a good sword, grinding its stats way up, and then leaving it in a warehouse before you die with it in your person.

Back when Roguelike Radio had a Shiren the Wanderer episode I actually had an idea for a warehouse mechanic that could work in Halls of Mist.

Powder Vial of Time would start appearing at DL 20 and would get more common until DL 40 or so. It could be poured on a broken circle to complete a Circle of Time Vault. Everything inside the circle would be saved (like monster memory) to the next generations of characters.

This would give a nice alternative win mechanic. Even if you don't win, at least you've made winning a bit easier for future generations.

One remaining question. What should the Powder Vial of Time do when it is thrown at a monster and hits? I imagine a powerful time storm with a radius of two but what should the effect be?

[debo]

Back when Roguelike Radio had a Shiren the Wanderer episode I actually had an idea for a warehouse mechanic that could work in Halls of Mist.

Powder Vial of Time would start appearing at DL 20 and would get more common until DL 40 or so. It could be poured on a broken circle to complete a Circle of Time Vault. Everything inside the circle would be saved (like monster memory) to the next generations of characters.

This would give a nice alternative win mechanic. Even if you don't win, at least you've made winning a bit easier for future generations.

One remaining question. What should the Powder Vial of Time do when it is thrown at a monster and hits? I imagine a powerful time storm with a radius of two but what should the effect be?

I think that the monster should be vanished instantly... but it's sent to your vault so that you have to fight later it to get your stuff back

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yes, obviously. Now I remember thinking that myself.

I'd say no radius for this effect, but no saving throw for the monster either.

I remember thinking that the two ways to use the powder would fight each other too much. Players would choose one of them, and never use the other. Now I feel that either of the abilities is too good to give up, and it would work just fine. Playtesting needed...

Powder Vial of Time doesn't sound like a good name with this effect, though. Imprisonment? Containment? I'd like to have some mystical element in the name somehow...

[Derakon]

Stasis? Mystic Vault?

[LostTemplar]

I remember thinking that the two ways to use the powder would fight each other too much.

Why ?

Stockpile valuable treasure and experience for future generations.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Why ?

Stockpile valuable treasure and experience for future generations.

Ha! Right.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It's still coming soon, on 15th September or so.

Last night I fixed the last few annoying bugs and annoyances.

At the moment I'm playing a Dwarf Priest and rolling along nicely on DL 18. I'm diving always. It seems almost easy at the moment but not boring... My last priest died at DL 8 and it was tough all the time, even though I descended at a slower pace. Luck plays a big role in difficulty but I like that. After all, much of the addiction factor of *bands comes from the fact that they are big, glorified slot machines.

Now I have to remember how to build various executables, including a DOS version. Halls of Mist is one of the few modern variants that still build for DOS, so there's a nice niche to be filled.

I'm collecting all useful documentation from the threads here to a web page. Documentation will probably be online only at first, and somewhat incomplete.

I'm starting the version numbering from 1.2.0 (continuing from FayAngband).

Discussion here has been very useful, thanks everybody! You're all my teddy bears. At least these features benefited greatly from discussion, and are going to be implemented sooner rather than later:

• Summoned creatures are phantasmal mist-critters.
• Simplified Stealth skill. (But not combat skills or device skills -- they're too experimental, and I don't want to destroy a carefully constructed game balance.)
• More flavourful ego items to make sacrificing items to deities intuitive.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Psst. A Windows version of Halls of Mist can be downloaded here, for testing purposes. The official launch will happen later. Of course you may start playing if you like.

Newer versions of MinGW had removed the command line option -mno-cygwin. I removed all instances of -mno-cygwin from the Makefile.cyg (legacy from EyAngband). I've no idea really what the option does. I hope the executable still works on all Windows versions. I've only tested on Windows 2000, running on Virtualbox.

I may or may not have fixed an old bug. Displaying alchemical combinations or the contents of your home didn't work on some versions of Windows.