[Announce] PosChengband 1.0.0

[HugoVirtuoso]

Problem (It's more of a suggestion!) - I really, really think all items (especially ego and artifact) should indicate where they have been found!! ...because I (as well as many players) lose track! With my recent char, HugoIncarnate, I'm going so fast that I can't remember if I found my ego weapons in Angband or Icky Caves.

Also: How do I access notes that I put in the game. You know, the notes you put in via the : (colon) command?

[Arjen]

(About the question which new monster races could be implemented)

How about the animated weapons? Might be troublesome with equipment. Maybe instead of equipment, drain/destroy x weapons to gain their abilities, where x is of course a very very low number. To prevent overpowering chance of successfully drain abilities = 100%/number of drained weapon. So the first gets 100% chance, second 50%, third 33%. Or just of it's abilities you get 50%/33%/ect. of stats and 50% of resists/abilities. Or an combination of both. It's should not get too easy to get overpowered deep in the dungeon with all those überweapons.

Resist should stack, so getting resist fire 2x gives you the normal 65%. I don't know what you should do with slays, would they become too powerful? I don't think you can get those as monk. But monks can equip armor and you loose that ability as animated weapon. Maybe non-stackable slays are not too overpowered.

And only 'barehand' fighting abilities, so no draining of +hit +dam +AC. Maybe you should also be able to drain Armor too for access to resist (but might be more fun to restrict armor for extra difficulty. Don't restrict type, so as broken sword, you can also drain a mace).

About equipment, you need a light somehow. Make the sword shine?

You also should get to power to "Clean" your weapon, removing all flags, so you won't get stuck with your first drained weapon

Might be troublesome to build, but doesn't it just sounds like fun flying around as lump of steel? (Maybe also give the deathsword the ability to actually move ?)

This way you create something completely different than the existing monsters.

[chris]

(About the question which new monster races could be implemented)

How about the animated weapons? Might be troublesome with equipment. Maybe instead of equipment, drain/destroy x weapons to gain their abilities, where x is of course a very very low number. To prevent overpowering chance of successfully drain abilities = 100%/number of drained weapon. So the first gets 100% chance, second 50%, third 33%. Or just of it's abilities you get 50%/33%/ect. of stats and 50% of resists/abilities. Or an combination of both. It's should not get too easy to get overpowered deep in the dungeon with all those überweapons.

Resist should stack, so getting resist fire 2x gives you the normal 65%. I don't know what you should do with slays, would they become too powerful? I don't think you can get those as monk. But monks can equip armor and you loose that ability as animated weapon. Maybe non-stackable slays are not too overpowered.

And only 'barehand' fighting abilities, so no draining of +hit +dam +AC. Maybe you should also be able to drain Armor too for access to resist (but might be more fun to restrict armor for extra difficulty. Don't restrict type, so as broken sword, you can also drain a mace).

About equipment, you need a light somehow. Make the sword shine?

You also should get to power to "Clean" your weapon, removing all flags, so you won't get stuck with your first drained weapon

Might be troublesome to build, but doesn't it just sounds like fun flying around as lump of steel? (Maybe also give the deathsword the ability to actually move ?)

This way you create something completely different than the existing monsters.

Wow! This is a very original idea ... I like it

So, essentially, the player *is* a single object (e.g., a broken sword or, much later, a blade of chaos) and has no equipment as such! This could be fun!!

Broken Death Sword -> Death Sword -> Hellblade with Stormbringer as boss is consistent. Or we could let Polearm of Animated Attack into the mix as well. But probably not the Death Scythe ...

[chris]

How about the animated weapons? Might be troublesome with equipment. Maybe instead of equipment, drain/destroy x weapons to gain their abilities, where x is of course a very very low number. To prevent overpowering chance of successfully drain abilities = 100%/number of drained weapon. So the first gets 100% chance, second 50%, third 33%. Or just of it's abilities you get 50%/33%/ect. of stats and 50% of resists/abilities. Or an combination of both. It's should not get too easy to get overpowered deep in the dungeon with all those überweapons.

Resist should stack, so getting resist fire 2x gives you the normal 65%. I don't know what you should do with slays, would they become too powerful?

At this point, there are a couple of ways to proceed.

[1] Player evolves as normal monster races, for example as Broken Death Sword to Death Sword to Hellblade. The damage dice of the player is determined by their current form. The player can absorb the essences of weapons they find, thereby improving themselves. The precise improvement algorithm remains to be determined, of course, but getting the first "flag" should be easy while improving an existing "flag" to a higher value should become increasingly difficult. Also, some flags like TR_SLAY_EVIL should be harder to acquire than others, like TR_RES_FIRE.

-OR-

[2] Player is simply an animated weapon. Perhaps for an added challenge, they must choose a specific kind of weapon at birth (Sword, Hafted, Polearm). The player can absorb weapons (perhaps only of chosen kind) as they find them, thereby destroying the object and accumulating essences. But, the player does not improve this way. Rather, they have a "racial power" called "Reforge Self". When chosen, the player chooses an object from their inventory (perhaps only of chosen kind) and the player becomes that object. Also, all of their accumulated essences are drained into further improving themselves in one fell swoop. Should the player reforge themselves again, they lose their "current object" as well as *all* of the abilities gained from essences applied at the time of their last reforging. The player does not evolve. Rather, they are simply an "Animated Weapon".

With [2], the player can strategically upgrade themselves throughout the game, but, they will cease to grow more powerful once this is accomplished. Of course, they can reforge again later, but they lose their current power in the process.

With [1], the player simply accretes power and can thus grind themselves to victory. With [2], I think the balance will be better. Also, I would prefer limiting the class of animated weapon as well, for extra challenge!

Thoughts?

[Arjen]

Wow! This is a very original idea ... I like it

So, essentially, the player *is* a single object (e.g., a broken sword or, much later, a blade of chaos) and has no equipment as such! This could be fun!!

Broken Death Sword -> Death Sword -> Hellblade with Stormbringer as boss is consistent. Or we could let Polearm of Animated Attack into the mix as well. But probably not the Death Scythe ...

Hmm only that many animated weapons? Might be difficult to gain 'slots' on a smooth way. I should use the animated polearm and death scythe too. How does damage work? Do you 'copy' the abilities of the monsters or do you create you own damage output? I've no idea, I can't program stuff (tried to read pieces of the source once, failed) so I don't know the mechanism behind it.

If you can create everything yourself, the Death Scythe is just a name and symbol on your map. If you actually gain his damage it will be too powerful, you might need to create a second Death Scythe monster who has a spawn chance of 0.0% with changed stats. But just copying the barehand fighting doesn't make sense either, you can't punch or kick stuff. But you have more experience with this with all those non-weapon monster classes. So that's up to you to fix.

But I like monsters with multiple evolutions. Especially if you gain stuff with an evolution.As weapon you could get Vorpal_Flag as Death sword and the retaliation as Scythe. I've also no idea how many slots are needed, might use the same system as jellies.

Broken Death Sword -> Death Sword -> Hellblade

I would go with Broken Death Sword -> Death Sword -> Animated Polearm -> Hellblade -> Deathscythe

Broken Death Sword: res_poi, res_blind, no_cut (no blood in metal), hold_life
Death Sword: Same as above + Vorpal
Animated P: Same as above + res Cold + res Elec
Hellblade: Same + res chaos
Death scythe: Same + retaliation

Every evolution gets +1 item slot(?) and evolving should be in a non-linear way. First three forms are those of low level monsters and the last two (especially the DS) are very deep. Would be weird to be a Hellblade while killing the orcs in the OC. But getting the DS form around lvl 30 is a bit late.

Enough spamming from my side. Your turn to make stuff balanced (or just making it work).

*edit* made this post without seeing your last one, im going to read it after making/eating dinner

[Arjen]

At this point, there are a couple of ways to proceed.
[2] Player is simply an animated weapon. Perhaps for an added challenge, they must choose a specific kind of weapon at birth (Sword, Hafted, Polearm). The player can absorb weapons (perhaps only of chosen kind) as they find them, thereby destroying the object and accumulating essences. But, the player does not improve this way. Rather, they have a "racial power" called "Reforge Self". When chosen, the player chooses an object from their inventory (perhaps only of chosen kind) and the player becomes that object. Also, all of their accumulated essences are drained into further improving themselves in one fell swoop. Should the player reforge themselves again, they lose their "current object" as well as *all* of the abilities gained from essences applied at the time of their last reforging. The player does not evolve. Rather, they are simply an "Animated Weapon".

I don't really get (understand) this version. You collect a weapon, take over it's form (destroying it), gain it's abilities. But where does the essences come into play? (Sounds interesting, I like weaponsmith too because of this essence gathering ability.) What do you improve with them? And only getting the abilities of one weapon will make it hard to cover resists. Could you explain it a bit more?

But I do like the idea that you don't evolve according to clvl, but you get stronger destroying weapons. It will be a combination of leveling up by killing monster, but really getting stronger by using weapons in some way.

With this version it will be very interesting to have specialties.

Maybe you should create 2 monsterclasses: Death Sword (maybe keep it as your suggested 3 stage evolution) and Animated Weapon. They will be so much different from each other.

[chris]

Hmm only that many animated weapons? Might be difficult to gain 'slots' on a smooth way. I should use the animated polearm and death scythe too. How does damage work? Do you 'copy' the abilities of the monsters or do you create you own damage output? I've no idea, I can't program stuff (tried to read pieces of the source once, failed) so I don't know the mechanism behind it.

This is your idea, so I'll let you decide the best approach. I'll just let you know what is possible and we'll go from there:

[1] Adding new monsters is possible and perhaps even desirable. I was thinking we could add 'Diamond Edge' and 'Mace of Disruption' monsters

[2] The code does not copy the monster info in any way, except for the symbol used to draw the player. We are free to do whatever we want, though it is obviously desirable to make each evolutionary step behave like the original.

[3] For attacks, we can do one of two things. Either give the player an equipped object and use the normal attack code. Or we can give the player innate attacks. The equipped object approach would be easier to implement since all the code for all the various slay flags is already implemented. Also, the object ... I mean the player ... will show up in the Equipment dump.

[4] But we need to decide about other equipment slots. The realistic option is none! But perhaps we could give a few jewelry slots and say that the weapon is "adorned".

If you can create everything yourself, the Death Scythe is just a name and symbol on your map. If you actually gain his damage it will be too powerful, you might need to create a second Death Scythe monster who has a spawn chance of 0.0% with changed stats. But just copying the barehand fighting doesn't make sense either, you can't punch or kick stuff. But you have more experience with this with all those non-weapon monster classes. So that's up to you to fix.

Agreed. For the evolutionary approach, if the player is in the form of a Death Sword, then their equipped weapon is a long sword. Rather, the player is a long sword If they are a Hellblade, then the player is a Blade of Chaos (6d5). And if the player is a Death Scythe, then, well, the player is a Death Scythe (10d10). Probably, we should keep the same expected damage dice, though the Death Scythe should not get all the slays automatically. And perhaps number of attacks can be limited to balance the power.

But I like monsters with multiple evolutions. Especially if you gain stuff with an evolution.As weapon you could get Vorpal_Flag as Death sword and the retaliation as Scythe. I've also no idea how many slots are needed, might use the same system as jellies.

Then by all means, lets go with this approach.

I would go with Broken Death Sword -> Death Sword -> Animated Polearm -> Hellblade -> Deathscythe

Broken Death Sword: res_poi, res_blind, no_cut (no blood in metal), hold_life
Death Sword: Same as above + Vorpal
Animated P: Same as above + res Cold + res Elec
Hellblade: Same + res chaos
Death scythe: Same + retaliation

Sounds good. I like the Death Scythe retaliation, but then we really do need to limit their blows.

Every evolution gets +1 item slot(?) and evolving should be in a non-linear way. First three forms are those of low level monsters and the last two (especially the DS) are very deep. Would be weird to be a Hellblade while killing the orcs in the OC. But getting the DS form around lvl 30 is a bit late.

Item slots? What can a sword realistically wear? Not armor I hope

Enough spamming from my side. Your turn to make stuff balanced (or just making it work).

*edit* made this post without seeing your last one, im going to read it after making/eating dinner

Actually, I'd like you to decide which way you prefer. You don't need to design all the details, but if you like evolution, lets do evolution. Does the player lose absorbed flags when they evolve?

My thoughts on absorption was to track everything by flag, rather than by object. For each flag, then, their would be a formula as for how to translate the number of absorbed essences into player attributes. So, absorbing infravision would be fairly easy up to maybe 100', but then would become more difficult. Absorbing Slay Evil would be rather difficult: perhaps you need 10 essences before you actually get slay evil.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. Feel free to suggest alternatives if you had something different in mind. I'll let you know if you suggest something that is too difficult (or "impossible).

[debo]

Can you have an "animated rocket" race???? Or at least an animated rocket launcher.

[Arjen]

This is your idea, so I'll let you decide the best approach. I'll just let you know what is possible and we'll go from there:

[1] Adding new monsters is possible and perhaps even desirable. I was thinking we could add 'Diamond Edge' and 'Mace of Disruption' monsters

If adding new monsters isn't that hard, you could create an evolution for every weapontype (sword/blunt/polearm/axe) except Axes don't have anything after great axe 4d4? Maybe add a Dwarven Axe equal to the high tier weapons of the other 3 classes.

If this is possible, Ill start thinking about a way of evolution of every type.

[3] For attacks, we can do one of two things. Either give the player an equipped object and use the normal attack code. Or we can give the player innate attacks. The equipped object approach would be easier to implement since all the code for all the various slay flags is already implemented. Also, the object ... I mean the player ... will show up in the Equipment dump.

Giving the player an equipment slot feels wrong; you are the weapon, you can't equip or unequip that weapon. But I don't know how hard it is to fix that slays problem you mention. And being able to "view" yourself somehow like you would with equipment will make keeping track of yourself a lot easier (or else you need a lot of Self Knowlegde potions).

[4] But we need to decide about other equipment slots. The realistic option is none! But perhaps we could give a few jewelry slots and say that the weapon is "adorned".

You might need something to get enough speed or fill some nasty resistance holes. But maybe start (for playtesting) without slots.

Agreed. For the evolutionary approach, if the player is in the form of a Death Sword, then their equipped weapon is a long sword. Rather, the player is a long sword If they are a Hellblade, then the player is a Blade of Chaos (6d5). And if the player is a Death Scythe, then, well, the player is a Death Scythe (10d10). Probably, we should keep the same expected damage dice, though the Death Scythe should not get all the slays automatically. And perhaps number of attacks can be limited to balance the power.

Limit it to 4 blows (like most innate monsterraces) and seriously increase weaponweight with the last evolutions. A Broken Sword weights like 1.5 lbs. but a mace of disruption is already 40.0 lbs. I don't know about a Death Scythe, but maybe 50 lbs isn't that bad, or make it that you need 18/*** to get the final blow.

Sounds good. I like the Death Scythe retaliation, but then we really do need to limit their blows.

Retaliate only applies 1 blow right? But if it too powerfull to have 1x 10d10 retaliate, maybe give a 50% chance to retaliate (or less if needed). But monks do have very high dices too with retaliation (but without slays).

Item slots? What can a sword realistically wear? Not armor I hope

I called it item slots by the lack of a better name, but these are the amount of weapons you can drain for your abilities. You should be able to drain more when leveling up.

My thoughts on absorption was to track everything by flag, rather than by object. For each flag, then, their would be a formula as for how to translate the number of absorbed essences into player attributes. So, absorbing infravision would be fairly easy up to maybe 100', but then would become more difficult. Absorbing Slay Evil would be rather difficult: perhaps you need 10 essences before you actually get slay evil.

Ow is this what you mean in your previous post? Could work pretty well. When you drain a weapon you gain it's abilities but need more of the same ability to actually "activate" it or improve it (stats and such). This way you need more than finding a few great weapons. But you do need to make a difference between stuff you do or do not have (resists) and stuff you can increase (infra, stats, stealth).

But how do you make it work if you have drained for example 2x a fiery weapon giving you 2x resist fire and +2 light radius? The brand is an ability you do or do not have (and let's make the light always max at +1 radius), but the resist fire can be stacked to get 65%. So you will have as ability 1x Fire brand and 2x resist fire. So we happen to find a third fiery weapon (to keep stuff simple), instead of using it's abilities you choose to drain it to strengthen the 2 previous absorbed fiery weapons. Can you make it this way you improve the fire brand (easy part as you only have it once) but only one of the 2 fire resists (as you only add one essence of fire resistance and not 2).

So to make it short Firebrand: (0/5) -> (1/5) Fire resist (#1): (0/5) -> (1/5) Fire resist (#2): (0/5) -> (0/5)

(I hope you understand )

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. Feel free to suggest alternatives if you had something different in mind. I'll let you know if you suggest something that is too difficult (or "impossible).

This idea just popped up in my mind when I read your post in my character dump, didn't really thought it through. So feel free to contribute. I'm not good with working something out in detail, just rough ideas.

You also mentioned something about loosing everything when evolving, I would do it different, giving you the power to remove all abilities when activated, but keep your abilities when evolving or else you wouldn't use some items until you are at your final form, giving that form a huge boost compared to the previous ones.

[chris]

Just a heads up ... I *am* working on this, but it is proving harder than expected. I'll probably need a few days, especially as this will play so differently that I better run a character or two once I am done.

I will need to give the player a dummy equipment object as the game gets rather unhappy with no equipment slots and refactoring the combat code is a project that might take a month of my time ... It needs to happen someday, but not today

Otherwise, the main obstacle is the 120 or so object flags that require sensible encodings. And display code. Man that is a PITA ...

[Derakon]

Perhaps the player could have equipment slots for "edge", "pommel", etc.? And those could be upgraded piecemeal. That way you'd have a meaningful equipment screen and more flexibility for the player.

[chris]

Perhaps the player could have equipment slots for "edge", "pommel", etc.? And those could be upgraded piecemeal. That way you'd have a meaningful equipment screen and more flexibility for the player.

What objects would count as "edge" or "pommel"?

I am worried that the lack of an equipment game will prove troublesome ... That's why I initially suggested the "reanimation" mechanic (i.e. reforging). But, I personally might like the absorption/grind approach just fine

To spice things up, each time you evolve you lose some of your essences in order to maintain a new, more powerful form. So yeah, you might want to store certain objects for the end. But probably, you will need to absorb everything you find anyway just to cover resists. And perhaps disenchantment is something to be avoided? (Fade evil laughter ...)

[chris]

Can you have an "animated rocket" race???? Or at least an animated rocket launcher.

I think Cyberdemons already count as this

[Derakon]

What objects would count as "edge" or "pommel"?

I was more thinking that the absorption/upgrade system could be applied separately to each component of the character. Thus you could replace your "armor" (sheath, pommel) without replacing your "weapon" (edge, point). If this system was used then you wouldn't be reincarnating your entire body when you upgraded; rather you'd do those upgrades piecemeal.

[chris]

Version 1.0.29 is available here:

* Fixed bug when attacking monsters inside a wall.
* Monsters with innate attacks can now benefit from extra attacks.
* Added new monster race: The Death Sword. (Thanks to Arjen). This particular monster race is unable to wear any equipment. Instead, they simply are an animated weapon of a particular form, and they evolve to better weapons over time. To gain abilities, they need to absorb magical essences from the weapons they find, destroying these in the process (Use the Extra Information Screen to display your essences: Press '~' then 'x').

Any more crazy ideas for monster races? How about a fishy (kraken) that needs to stay in water?