Halls of Mist is here!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thank you! That's the single most annoying bug yet, probably worthy of a bugfix release sometime soon.

[Scatha]

How do you start a spellcaster with the cold domain of spells?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

If some mechanics in Halls of Mist seem a little odd, the reason might be the fact that my game design principles for Halls of Mist are a little odd.

I'm after elegancy, but not necessarily after simulation.

You could say that I've designed a roguelike for serious gamers who like German-style board games. "German-style games tend to have a theme ... Game mechanics are not restricted by the theme, however — unlike a simulation game, the theme of a German game is often merely mnemonic."

Take a look at my Lore mechanic. It's not designed to be so much of a simulation of adventurers identifying magical items, but to be an interesting puzzle for the player. Taken together Lore, alchemical circles, rituals, etc., make up a many intricate puzzles that require strategic thinking and some luck to solve.

In the same way, the combat mechanics may not be the closest possible simulation of fantastic combat. Raising your Dexterity or Strength by a point might in some cases double your damage potential, in other cases be almost worthless. All depends on what equipment you have.

This, too, is designed to be a puzzle. Every new great weapon you find forces you to revalue your stats, and perhaps requires you to make new equipment or worshipping choices. Sometimes you decide to carry a wonderful but a bit too heavy weapon as a swap weapon to be used only when your Strenght is temporarily boosted by deity bonuses or shapeshifting. I love this kind of stuff.

The six stats of Halls of Mist are similarily chosen to make choices between them interesting. Realism or simulation is not as important. As long as the names of the stats have some correlation to the mechanics, I'm happy.

Halls of Mist does require reading the manual more than some other roguelikes. The investment might be worth your time if you like gamist puzzles in your roguelike.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

How do you start a spellcaster with the cold domain of spells?

Race determines the spellcaster's specialization. Read the internal help files about the races.

I made up some new elemental spells. My favorite is Burning Hands / Claws of Winter in the third book. (It's slightly buggy. You should only get one attack against either one or two monsters, but a fast player may sometimes get two uses.)

[Satyr]

Another quick bug report: statue form doesn't seem to get the +25 resists announced in the description. I just glanced over the relevant code, but I think the resistance are calculate before the bonus is set in later parts of the code.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Halls of Mist 1.2.2

Halls of Mist 1.2.2 bugfix release is now available!

Please check the first post of this thread for downloads: source, Windows, 64-bit Linux.

Darin, Michael or anyone, feel free to send me OS X executables by email, and I'll make them available. One OS X executable for Intel Macs is probably enough, or has anyone noticed differences between Michael's and Darin's builds?

Changes:

• Rooms with a non-central "forest" have their monster chance increased from 57% to 60%. I'm trying to make creatures from Thornwild about as common as creatures from Skultgard.
• Starting mon_gen upped from 8 to 9. This makes monsters from Aether and Chaos more common, and levels with many empty rooms more dangerous. This should not affect levels with interesting terrain features, they already had lots of monsters.
• Player needs 10% more experience points for each experience level. (Mostly based on my and Scatha's experiences with warriors. The early game was slightly boring for them, even if you dived all the time. Perhaps some other classes need help -- not sure.)
• Updated help files: added "avoid the effects of some traps" to the list of Jumping skill checks. (Most importantly Jumping helps dodge the dart traps that reduce stats.)
• Round up the gold that Templar gets to keep.
• You can no longer second-attack unseen monsters or monsters in the wall. (Thanks Scatha and Starhawk.)
• Ask confirmation to second-attack calmed or sleeping monsters; if not, move on to the next non-calmed or non-sleeping monster if there is one in melee range. This makes especially Calm Monster much more useful.
• Moved XP bar to the opposite corner and made it always 8 characters wide. That means it's visible even on 80 character wide displays, like the curses display I use on Linux. It replaces the old food status display that is not needed anymore. Changed the character from * to + to make the bar different from the monster health bar. (Thanks Starhawk and others.)
• Bugfix: coin-flip powders always completed the second circle. (Thanks Satyr.)
• Bugfix: Burning Hands/Claws of Winter now properly ends after one use even when the player is fast.
• Bugfix: You no longer get messages about monsters hopping on table etc. if you can't see them. (Thanks buzzkill.)
• Bugfix: No more messages about monsters getting blasted by runes if you can't see them.
• Bugfix: Option for the starting kit is no longer visible. (Thanks jujuben.)
• Bugfix: Options to show room descriptions or a subwindow for them are no longer visible. (Thanks buzzkill.)
• Bugfix: Statue didn't get the +25 bonus to all resistances. (Thanks Satyr!)

[buzzkill]

• Round up the gold that Templar gets to keep

+1 to you for another fine variant, Fay being the first (arguably).

[Obsilium]

There appears to be a bug when you agree to attack a sleeping monster in the newest version. I get the repeated message You hit the foo followed by more and then the game stops working.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

There appears to be a bug when you agree to attack a sleeping monster in the newest version. I get the repeated message You hit the foo followed by more and then the game stops working.

Thanks for reporting this so quickly!

The download links in the first post now target to 1.2.2b. Changes:

• Fixed a new bug with second-attacking sleeping or calmed monsters.
• Bugfix: Statue bonus and the Ritual of Fortification did not increase caps for temporary resists.
• Statue now gets +25 to resistance caps, too.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Lore

Based on the character dumps and comments, I think people have generally learned to play Halls of Mist pretty well. Only one thing bothers me: I'm not sure how well Lore is understood.

It might confuse people that Lore is dumped under the command 'p' (use 'p'roficiency) with other abilities, Escape (for faeries) and Recover (for everybody), that have nothing to do with Lore. The only thing that matters for these abilities is your race (for Escape) and your experience level.

Lore is different. I'll now try to explain Lore as simply as possible. (For non-Templars.)

When your MEM+WIS is 20 or more, you get to use either Alertness or Identify proficiency once every dungeon level. Alertness gives +4 to AC, +10 to Saving Throw, and +25 to noticing traps and invisible creatures for as long as you stay on the current dungeon level.

When your MEM+WIS is 30 or more, you get to use Alertness, Identify Pack, or Study Item proficiency once every dungeon level. Study Item is *Identify* for you Angband veterans, except that you have to make an Alchemy (for potions) or Perception skill check to succeed.

When your MEM+WIS is 40, you get to use the better proficiencies twice every dungeon level. At 50 you get to use them three times, and at 60 four times.

There are two important ways to cheat your MEM+WIS score up! Standing near a bookshelf gives +3 to the score, and standing inside a Circle of Knowledge gives +7.

For example, someone with MEM 10 and WIS 7 standing near a bookshelf would get to use Alertness or Identify once. Someone with MEM 14 and WIS 9 standing in a Circle of Knowledge would get to use the better Lore abilities like Identify Pack once.

[Starhawk]

Thanks for reporting this so quickly!

The download links in the first post now target to 1.2.2b. Changes:

• Fixed a new bug with second-attacking sleeping or calmed monsters.
• Bugfix: Statue bonus and the Ritual of Fortification did not increase caps for temporary resists.
• Statue now gets +25 to resistance caps, too.

I just downloaded 1.2.2b for Windows and it doesn't run correctly. Upon startup I don't see any text -- although if I choose "New" to start a new character, the cursor still jumps as if the text were present.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I just downloaded 1.2.2b for Windows and it doesn't run correctly. Upon startup I don't see any text -- although if I choose "New" to start a new character, the cursor still jumps as if the text were present.

Try changing the game font. If that doesn't work, try rebooting the computer. Then report back.

[Starhawk]

Changing the font from 8X16X to 8X13X worked.

The 8X16X font (default, i think) worked in 1.2.1 - didn't get to play your incremental 1.2.2 from earlier.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Changing the font from 8X16X to 8X13X worked.

The 8X16X font (default, i think) worked in 1.2.1 - didn't get to play your incremental 1.2.2 from earlier.

Did you try changing back to 8X16X?

I didn't make any changes to the font behavior. Windows may be doing some tricks here, trying to use one of its default fonts instead of the fonts included in the lib/xtra/fonts folder. (I checked, the 8X16X font is still included in the folder.)

Which version of Windows?

[ekolis]

Windows does some weird font caching stuff that nobody's been able to figure out, so if you were using a font in one version of a variant, and upgrade to a new version, you might not be able to use the same font in the new version until you reboot your computer.

That said, I think it's only an issue with raster fonts - Chengband can use TrueType fonts, and those work just fine, even after an upgrade! (Or maybe it's the fact that Chengband uses the system font list, instead of font files located in the lib folder?)