Noooooooo!

So, I was playing my first true and favourite rougelike. After many days of struggle, frustration and effort, I finally arrive as a Master to the same person that sent me to the dungeon. I was equipped to handle any element.

I've leaped trough his guard, prevented their interference by the very power of the cosmos that I commanded and prepared for the showdown.

Of course, dinner came by, so I saved.

After a nice pizza, I arrived back home and set forth to claim the right to the secret title that will befit the one that shall finish MageGuild first!

My save game appears to be either corrupted or irreparable.

While I was on level 16!

I was fighting Ath!

I can prove it!



And the damn thing's corrupted!

The thing's here: http://rapidshare.com/files/170988891/Morgan.sav.html

The error log is at the end of this post.

Also, I made some notes while playing the game:

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Bugs

- Two versions of Mage Guild can be run at the same time.

- Walls do not form properly. Sometimes you can get trough them by the use of diagonal movement.

- Wearing the Yellow Dragon Scale Robe (or any other) does not give you consistently resistence or at least it does not appear to. The flag can easily disappear. Un-equiping and equiping it seems to reset it.

- Alchemists (what are they doing in the dungeon anyway? sounds like they could be productive members of the guild or something. are they exiles?) do not appear to be consistentent with their AI and form. As I am writing this, an alchemist changed form twice and it is reluctant to engage me.

- Not really a bug, but with aftifacts the spelling is weird. "...and provides inflicts [effect]". Provides is needless in this case.

- Casting Detect Walls seems to cancel the markers made by Detect Creatures.

- Elementalists and possibly cosmicists also seem to suffer the alchemist's problem. They just stay in one place, moving between two squares, waiting for you to go into their line of fire.
- LICHES TOO! Liches too suffer from the alchemist's sydrome. Is this deliberate?

- Using the scroll map feature doesn't reset to your position when you go back to normal mode. It will only do so if you moved.

- I tried to use a crsyball that said it revealed items. I never had such a result.

- Does invisibity even work? I tried to use it but enemies were able to hit me regardless.

Some of these observations may be intentional.

Also, some petty annoyances I experienced. All or at least some are arguable, but it might be worth arguing with them.

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Annoyances:

- Push does not seem to work properly when an enemy's path would hit a wall. They bounce back, appearently uneffected. Surely, being knocked to the wall should DO something, a minor damage or even concussion?
- Leap's range should be shown more clearly. That is, the aiming squares should end at the limit of its range.
- Shapechanging should restore your health (why is the "your natural vitality asserts itself" line appear anyway?). If this may upset balance on a standard, an edge should be invested into it. As it is, it is useless to shape-change.
- There has to be a limit on how many minions can any creature summon. Yes, sometimes the player should flee rather than fight but enemies that can use this ability don't summon help, they spam you with minions. Efreets and vermilords especially as it is almost impossible to survive an attack from them. - Gravity should immobolize someone longer. As it is, it is nearly useless as you can't escape in time.
- The performance can be highly annoying on later levels for some reason. Or rather, after extended play, I notice that screens take much longer to load with the tileset on. Possibly a memory leak? Perhaps it is related how much of the map is explored? EDIT: Yes, lag is proporsional to how much the map is explored.
- Mirror and Void knights should cast a non-player spells for them to gain their unique effect. As it is, they are walking tanks, immune to everything except melee at which the player sucks at (even with a Titan Ring with 3 charge with a Strong Charge, I usually ended up dead when trying to face one).

An example of the overcrowd thing:

I've experienced worse than that.

Oh, and some ideas that might be worthwhile to discuss.

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Ideas

- There should be something be done with doors. It should be possible for you to destroy them or prevent them from opening. As of now, its just a weak seperator that quickly turns useless once you face enemies that are more likely to open them. Even just drastically lowering the number of enemies that can use them would be an improvement (how can dragons open doors anyway?)
- Various mages (liches, nythomancers, astromancers, etc) should drop scrolls. I have yet seen them drop anything.
- Perhaps a map editor for engineering costum scenarios and locations? Possibly with a small fee (say, 1-2 bucks?). A map editor would be obviously helpful with debugging.
- Display how much melee or even bolt damage you would do.
- Disply how much turns are left for a certain status effect.
- Void and Mirror knights should not be immune to effect created by thrown potions.

Error log: http://rapidshare.com/files/170990182/error.log.html

First off, I'll take a crack at the save file, see if I can't fix it for you. May be a systemic problem, but if it's something I can correct in the save file itself, I will.

As to the rest, you've definitely got some good points there. Let me get some time (and some sleep...it's been a long weekend...) and I'll try to form some coherent responses to further discussion.

Ok. Save file is fixed; the underlying problem has to do with saving and loading when there's an active chaos cloud. I've fixed that in the code, so it'll be OK for the next version.

http://rapidshare.com/files/171149724/Morgan.sav.html

This should load and run OK, just don't save with a chaos cloud up.

THANK YOU!

The title shall be mine!

Oh, and what about my notes?

OK! Had some sleep, had some time to reflect. Let's get down to brass tacks here.

Zixinus wrote:

- Two versions of Mage Guild can be run at the same time.

This isn't specifically intended, but I didn't bother to prevent it, either. Does this cause some sort of problem?

Zixinus wrote:

- Walls do not form properly. Sometimes you can get trough them by the use of diagonal movement.

I'm not sure I get where you're going with this one. Can you describe it in more detail, or provide a screenshot?

Zixinus wrote:

- Wearing the Yellow Dragon Scale Robe (or any other) does not give you consistently resistence or at least it does not appear to. The flag can easily disappear. Un-equiping and equiping it seems to reset it.

Yeah, the worn items providing constant effects is a little wonky. I'll see if I can close up some of those loopholes.

Zixinus wrote:

- Alchemists (what are they doing in the dungeon anyway? sounds like they could be productive members of the guild or something. are they exiles?) do not appear to be consistentent with their AI and form. As I am writing this, an alchemist changed form twice and it is reluctant to engage me.
- Elementalists and possibly cosmicists also seem to suffer the alchemist's problem. They just stay in one place, moving between two squares, waiting for you to go into their line of fire.
- LICHES TOO! Liches too suffer from the alchemist's sydrome. Is this deliberate?

Well, the basic behavior of a spellcasting type is to stay away from you, try to get you into line-of-fire, and then blast away. They're not extremely great at this, at the moment. Right now, there's an intentional disconnect between AI and body; if you change a melee-grunt monster into a caster monster, it'll still charge you blindly. Critters that are reasonably intelligent should be able to realize that melee is a better choice for them sometimes, though. I'll take a look at that. Does that answer your question/concern?

Zixinus wrote:

- Not really a bug, but with aftifacts the spelling is weird. "...and provides inflicts [effect]". Provides is needless in this case.

Yeah. When you're building sentences algorithmically, you get some oddities. I'll see if I can't fix that.

Zixinus wrote:

- Casting Detect Walls seems to cancel the markers made by Detect Creatures.

It does, at the moment; it probably shouldn't, but some low-level display code makes this much harder to fix than it should be. I'll see what I can do.

Zixinus wrote:

- Using the scroll map feature doesn't reset to your position when you go back to normal mode. It will only do so if you moved.

Hmm. Ok, I'll take a look.

Zixinus wrote:

- I tried to use a crsyball that said it revealed items. I never had such a result.

Interesting. I was able to get this to work, I'll see if I can figure out what's causing it to break sometimes.

Zixinus wrote:

- Does invisibity even work? I tried to use it but enemies were able to hit me regardless.

Whether or not a critter is effected by invisibility is a function of that creature's intelligence. Smarter creatures are more likely to see through your invis. Even smart creatures, though, will only see you for short blinks of time; evasive movement while invisible can easily throw them off.

Zixinus wrote:

- Push does not seem to work properly when an enemy's path would hit a wall. They bounce back, appearently uneffected. Surely, being knocked to the wall should DO something, a minor damage or even concussion?

I'm somewhat leery of making push cause damage, which Arcane is specifically supposed to be weak at, but stunning the creature for a turn or two might be a nice addition.

Zixinus wrote:

- Leap's range should be shown more clearly. That is, the aiming squares should end at the limit of its range.

Good idea. The targeting code isn't extremely smart in general, right now, and could use cleaning up in a number of spots.

Zixinus wrote:

- Shapechanging should restore your health (why is the "your natural vitality asserts itself" line appear anyway?). If this may upset balance on a standard, an edge should be invested into it. As it is, it is useless to shape-change.

That line indicates that the PC has a special property. When anything else changes form, it gets the HP of the new form. So, if you're a critter at 4/12 HP, and you change to something with 6 max HP, you end up at 2/6 HP. PCs are unique in that they get either the HP of the new form, or their own HP, whichever is better. Generally, I find myself shapechanging to use certain abilities (trolls come to mind), or to switch into something that can seriously bust skulls in melee (golems, behemoths, etc). Typically, I end up shapechanging others more than I do myself.

Zixinus wrote:

- There has to be a limit on how many minions can any creature summon. Yes, sometimes the player should flee rather than fight but enemies that can use this ability don't summon help, they spam you with minions. Efreets and vermilords especially as it is almost impossible to survive an attack from them.

Agreed. This is a question of implementation difficulty, really. The master/pet linkage is easy to create in-game, and difficult to persist across savegames. But this definitely needs to happen.

Zixinus wrote:

- Gravity should immobolize someone longer. As it is, it is nearly useless as you can't escape in time.

Gravity is pretty weak, yeah. Upping the duration a bit could help it out. Might also swap it down into the level 1 slot in Cosmic...the more I think about that, the better I like it.

Zixinus wrote:

- The performance can be highly annoying on later levels for some reason. Or rather, after extended play, I notice that screens take much longer to load with the tileset on. Possibly a memory leak? Perhaps it is related how much of the map is explored? EDIT: Yes, lag is proporsional to how much the map is explored.

Hunh. I'll look into it. I've got a sneaking suspicious as to why this is.

Zixinus wrote:

- Mirror and Void knights should cast a non-player spells for them to gain their unique effect. As it is, they are walking tanks, immune to everything except melee at which the player sucks at (even with a Titan Ring with 3 charge with a Strong Charge, I usually ended up dead when trying to face one).
- Void and Mirror knights should not be immune to effect created by thrown potions.

I'll tone these guys down a bit. I'm not 100% sure what the right answer is, here.

Zixinus wrote:

- There should be something be done with doors. It should be possible for you to destroy them or prevent them from opening. As of now, its just a weak seperator that quickly turns useless once you face enemies that are more likely to open them. Even just drastically lowering the number of enemies that can use them would be an improvement (how can dragons open doors anyway?)

Door-opening is a function of intelligence; anything of orc-or-higher intelligence can open doors. Expanding what you can do to/with doors has a number of fun implications, though.

Zixinus wrote:

- Various mages (liches, nythomancers, astromancers, etc) should drop scrolls. I have yet seen them drop anything.

IIRC, the only thing that creatures can ever drop right now are remains, and occasionally life/energy potions. There are a number of ways this could be expanded upon; something along these lines can be expected in 2.0.

Zixinus wrote:

- Perhaps a map editor for engineering costum scenarios and locations? Possibly with a small fee (say, 1-2 bucks?). A map editor would be obviously helpful with debugging.

Hmm. Well, since there are custom levels, obviously the engine can handle them. Unfortunately, all of the really unique elements are currently hard-coded. So, in order to do this, I'd have to expand considerably on the custom level code, or only allow relatively standard things to be built in custom levels. How do you see this sort of feature being used, outside of debugging? (There's already a pretty robust set of debugging tools built into the debug-version of the code, not that you'd have any way of knowing that. )

Zixinus wrote:

- Display how much melee or even bolt damage you would do.
- Disply how much turns are left for a certain status effect.

This is an interesting one. I've been going back and forth with myself about this for quite some time. Initially, there were exactly zero numbers for damage (or, really, anything else) shown. However, as the game has developed, more and more transparency has crept in. I'm not entirely sure where I want to draw the line on this question, what level of uncertainty/simplicity is beneficial, and what is simply frustrating. It is, of course, made more complicated by the fact that that line isn't going to be in the same place for every player.

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This isn't specifically intended, but I didn't bother to prevent it, either. Does this cause some sort of problem?

I'm not sure. I think there may be some performance breakage though.

Perhaps make it a compatibility setting or give a warning ("Mageguild is already running, are you sure you want to run another?")?

Quote :

I'm not sure I get where you're going with this one. Can you describe it in more detail, or provide a screenshot?

I don't have time to provide a screenshot but it looks something like this:

...###
.#.@..
##....

Where I presume it should look like this:

..####
.##@..
##....

Or, in another way:

.#..#..
.#..#..
.#..#..
.....#..
##...@

Where it should look like this:

.#..#...
.#..#...
.#..#...
.....#...
###..@

I'll post a screenshot if I encounter this again.

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Well, the basic behavior of a spellcasting type is to stay away from you, try to get you into line-of-fire, and then blast away.

That makes sense.

Quote :

Right now, there's an intentional disconnect between AI and body; if you change a melee-grunt monster into a caster monster, it'll still charge you blindly. Critters that are reasonably intelligent should be able to realize that melee is a better choice for them sometimes, though. I'll take a look at that. Does that answer your question/concern?

I guess so.

Although, this does make the alchemist look REALLY ridiculous.

Quote :

I'm somewhat leery of making push cause damage, which Arcane is specifically supposed to be weak at, but stunning the creature for a turn or two might be a nice addition.

I agree with this idea.

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Hmm. Ok, I'll take a look.

Actually, on second thought, allow an option to either centre the screen to your location or allow the currently centered screen to be it.

As in, pressing enter centers back to you but pressing space or another key (like V, the standard map screen) will leave the selection view you are looking.

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I was able to get this to work, I'll see if I can figure out what's causing it to break sometimes.

To be fair, I rarely used this. I tried this three-four times.

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Whether or not a critter is effected by invisibility is a function of that creature's intelligence. Smarter creatures are more likely to see through your invis. Even smart creatures, though, will only see you for short blinks of time; evasive movement while invisible can easily throw them off.

I don't like this, personally.

You should remain invisible as long as you don't manipulate the physical world. Depending on intelligence, critters should react. The most stupid will not react to nothing less but hurting them or directly effecting them. Moderate critters should react to any spell cast or someone else attacked while invisible. Smart should react to the smallest of anomaly, like you picking up items or opening doors or even you walking on a special tile (falling down will alert them and getting damp destroys the invisibility effect).

Quote :

Gravity is pretty weak, yeah. Upping the duration a bit could help it out. Might also swap it down into the level 1 slot in Cosmic...the more I think about that, the better I like it.

I agree. As it is, there are just too few uses for it. The main reason I ever used it is to make flyers drop into a harmful tile.

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Unfortunately, all of the really unique elements are currently hard-coded. So, in order to do this, I'd have to expand considerably on the custom level code, or only allow relatively standard things to be built in custom levels.

Hence the small fee for the level editor. A single $5 won't give you much (except a bigger lunch), but its small enough for someone to purchase it on a whim and make the work worth your time.

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How do you see this sort of feature being used, outside of debugging?

Make stories? Make challenge levels ("You're a hermit in his shack and a horde of vampires are in the area! How long can you stand? Post a screenshot of your death!")? Allow fun levels where players could experiment freely?

Really, the limit is only how much you add to it.

Just make sure that you can make it easy to use. I mean easy, as someone with zero programming knowledge can make a simple level. A tutorial and manual that explains and allows you to do more complicated stuff should be included.

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Initially, there were exactly zero numbers for damage (or, really, anything else) shown. However, as the game has developed, more and more transparency has crept in. I'm not entirely sure where I want to draw the line on this question, what level of uncertainty/simplicity is beneficial, and what is simply frustrating. It is, of course, made more complicated by the fact that that line isn't going to be in the same place for every player.

You could make a compromise by warnings.

IE, "you feel that your invisiblity is wearing off" or "the magic in your amulet is wearing out" or "the [item on staff] seems to glow more dimly".

Zixinus wrote:

Perhaps make it a compatibility setting or give a warning ("Mageguild is already running, are you sure you want to run another?")?

Could certainly do that.

Zixinus wrote:

Although, this does make the alchemist look REALLY ridiculous.

Yeah...they should be able to recognize that they've turned into something that can fight better up close.

Zixinus wrote:

Quote :

Whether or not a critter is effected by invisibility is a function of that creature's intelligence. Smarter creatures are more likely to see through your invis. Even smart creatures, though, will only see you for short blinks of time; evasive movement while invisible can easily throw them off.

I don't like this, personally.

You should remain invisible as long as you don't manipulate the physical world. Depending on intelligence, critters should react. The most stupid will not react to nothing less but hurting them or directly effecting them. Moderate critters should react to any spell cast or someone else attacked while invisible. Smart should react to the smallest of anomaly, like you picking up items or opening doors or even you walking on a special tile (falling down will alert them and getting damp destroys the invisibility effect).

Well, fundamentally, the end result is the same. Invis makes it a little harder for smart creatures to fight you, and a lot harder for dumb creatures to do so. What you propose is certainly a more accurate modeling of invisibility, and does provide a few extra tactical opportunities. It would require a pretty thorough overhaul of some portions of the code, though, and that's probably not going to happen for a while. Eventually, though, it would be nice to put something like this in.

Zixinus wrote:

Make stories? Make challenge levels ("You're a hermit in his shack and a horde of vampires are in the area! How long can you stand? Post a screenshot of your death!")? Allow fun levels where players could experiment freely?

Really, the limit is only how much you add to it.

A sandbox thing would be quite fun. Probably not top of the priority list, but I'll keep it in mind.

Zixinus wrote:

You could make a compromise by warnings.

IE, "you feel that your invisiblity is wearing off" or "the magic in your amulet is wearing out" or "the [item on staff] seems to glow more dimly".

That's already present in a few areas. It would make sense to expand that to a general policy.

On the subject of worn items that grant effects losing those effects; I was able to cause that to happen under two situations. One was that you have another effect put on you that grants the same benefit, which took both effects when it ended. The other was being exposed to an effect like a potion of dissolution. Both of those are fixed. Do you recall seeing that happen in any other scenario?

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Do you recall seeing that happen in any other scenario?

That might have happened, but what I recall is that these items worn down all by themselves, without any outside effect.

Hmm. Interesting. I'll poke at it a bit, see if I can get that result.