Slow Results II

The last few years, Land of Strangers' development went into a hiatus, while ye olde questionnaire about content wishes stayed around in the sidebar. Now that I'm hoping to put more time on LoSt again, it felt about time to close the poll ;) We clocked in at 82 voters. (On a side note, I think 82 must be a lucky number in The Land, being the atomic weight of lead.)

I will compare the results to my own wishes and plans, of course, always happy about any feedback from interested parties. It helps understand how people are perceiving the project, and what I might do to further my own plans, increase overall "readability", as well as scratch the potential fan base's itch ;) 

With that said, here are the results in order:

Dawgs (1st – 4th; more than 30 votes) 

38 Mounts and vehicles
37 Camping, survivalism
31 Changing world
31 NPC companions

The contest for gold and silver is tight between Riding and Camping. I think horses and trains are a given feature for a game like LoSt (as well as boats and some oddities, like pogo sticks). Camping/survivalism is a feature I've personally been on the fence about. Seeing that it's a popular wish has of course made me think about possible designs – if so, definitely something in my own, slightly experimental style

… On a shared third place are "Changing world" and "NPC companions", both among my personal favorites. Going ahead, I'm definitely focusing on game world factions and groups, including the possibility for the player to form alliances, gain rumor etc. Being part of a posse should be a feature (and not necessarily as their leader).

Second Lead (5th to 11th; 25 votes or more) 

29 Drinkin' and drugs   
29 Rumors and investigation
28 Non-lethal combat
27 Dice games, gambling
26 Ropes and lassos
26 Tinkering, farming
26 Visions, dream quests

This tier of results have some strong contenders. Some feel genre-inherent in the psychedelic wildwestworld of LoSt, like booze (29), gambling (27), and rope use (26). Others relate to planned open world concepts like NPC companions and changing world (investigation mechanics and non-lethal combat). Regarding tinkering, we'll see – to me, it feels like a feature so prominent in many RPGs that doing anything new or interesting with it really demands a lot of work. It probably won't be a main concern in the next few versions, but I might yet find some fun way to add a tinkering system.

Miscellaneous (12th to 20th; 20-25 votes)

25 Fire and water
24 Calendar, seasons
24 Mines, caverns
22 Aging
22 Construction, base building
22 Dynamite and traps
22 Light and darkness
20 Disease
20 Height map

Some interesting options here; most of these are nifty ideas that can be implemented to enhance simulationist aspects of the game world. Which of these make it to the game, will depend on various factors, like whether they serve as auxiliary features to other content, or if the ratio between amount of work to add a feature, and how much fun it will bring, seems promising. A few are on my definite todo-list despite lukewarm responses in the poll, like a simple system for landscape elevation, at least as a way to create borders and bottlenecks in the landscape with ravines and plateaus.

Backwash (less than 20 votes)

13 Add better interface!
12 Retirement, ghosts
2 Other (Comment)

The "Add better interface" option is actually a jocular throwback to a previous poll about UI, most of which I've haven't gotten around to reacting to, although I've been working on it ::) So the next version will include important features like mouse support and a better graphics engine (another feature high on the todo-list is to add sound effects, and hopefully an original soundtrack). The option to retire player characters and have previous character runs affect later playthroughs did not garner a lot of support, although I can't guarantee that it won't pop up if it feels natural at some point. In the "Other" section, one voter left a comment asking for trading as a feature, and I've got to say it's a good idea, and frankly not overused in open world games, although I'll have to chew on it for a while to see what might come of it. Another voter clicked Other along with every single other poll option, but left no comment, whether that might have been a bot or a very enthusiastic player who simply wants more of everything.

With the poll closed, all that remains is to extend thanks to all who participated. I can now happily get to work on the system for dynamic NPC factions, which should scratch some of these itches. I will keep you posted as work progresses. 

In the meantime I think it's not yet too late to wish you all a happy, prosperous year ahead. Stay Lost, and keep fucking that chicken!

As always,
Minotauros

Status update

Greetings me hearties, here's a long overdue status report from the Land. The year, in retrospect, has been busy on other fronts than development. Since my last blog post last spring, I did start to flesh out rules and effects of alcohol and drugs, making some changes to how the Grit stat (♥) works.

Grit UI outline with wounds from the right and
state («giddy») from the left. ©placeholder art

The new design is using ♥ to track, in addition to wounds, various states of being (including intoxication).

Extending how ♥ works, to accomodate the new designs re: drinkin'n'drugs, affects various game systems. (At the end of the day, status effects will probably be implemented as a kind of data kit. That way, statuses will be very flexible to deal with in the game engine. Different kinds of drugs/poisons, special rules for swimming and sprinting, etc. will all be possible, at least ;)

At some points, elements of the GUI need to change. And frankly, it's becoming increasingly difficult as LoSt's graphics rendering has become an ugly bugly mess over the years. This time, I started to implement some changes I've been thinking about for a while, and the whole graphics engine is currently in the middle of a refactoring.

It means the game itself is in a bit of a limbo, but it's okay. I'm taking my time and making sure the next iteration is designed in a way that will be robust with regards to future plans. By now, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what I need.

Depending on how various factors in my «other RL» (real life) pan out, I may get some more time to tinker on LoSt by the end of the winter, or come spring. In the meantime, I wish you all the best.

As always,
Minotauros

Say Yes to Drugs

Just say No
to family values,
and don't quit
your day job.

Drugs
are sacred
substances,
and some drugs
are very sacred substances

–John Giorno, Just Say No To Family Values

In development, certain features give instant gratification to implement. From getting "a @ walking on a map" and onward, it's thrilling to see your game take form. Other features require more extensive work before they start to become noticeable in the game. Seeing these grander plans gradually unfold carries a joy of its own, but for motivation's sake, it's good to sprinkle some short term design goals into the mix here and there.

After I announced the feature poll a few weeks ago, some votes have started to come in, and the option that currently seems to be getting ahead, is to add drinking and drugs to the game. Cheers. So, on the side of working on random sites and factions (which I'm starting to realize will be quite a big undertaking), I started to make sketches for intoxicants for Land of Strangers. It's something I can probably add without too much hassle, but with a lot of potential depth.

Starting to experiment with drugs

So, how to implement drugs in a Roguelike? I think it's a point to keep the presentation tight, as fluff-free as possible. Since this is a one player game, it was clear to me from the onset that the character needs a  mechanical incentive to ingest drugs. Another point that felt natural in LoSt, was to opt for random drugs.

Thinking about taxonomies and making plans for drug effects, it struck me that some of the substances that cropped up, would be "drugs" in the wider sense of actual medicines, but with possible side effects. It will be appropriate to add "druggist" saleskids who peddle anything from psycho serum injections and hallucinogenic meat, to painkillers and natural medicine. Additionally, substances that come from plants and animals can be linked to species in the random biomes.

When it comes to random content in LoSt, I sometimes imagine the templates as something akin to tarot readings or solitaires, with "cards" (kit plugins) laid out in patterns. If the reading is for a person, each node or card represents a strength, weakness, or other detail. If the reading is for an objective, the nodes represent obstacles, helpers, ulterior motives, etc. These nodes branch out and connect, and may spawn nodes of their own (as the random artifact gets an effect, the effect gets a random duration). A prop template for a random drug can probably be structured with nodes in about six different categories:

Form/source, method, dosage: Is it a powder, beverage, flower, etc? Some forms are available in nature (raw or prepared biotic/mineral parts), others are synthesized in a lab. Method and dosage indicate how to administer the drug. This data is at least used to generate the drug as an actual prop in the game world, and provide a skeletal "consume" event with pending effects.

Effect: Most drugs should have a (potentially) beneficial "main" effect. There is a subset of pure combat drugs, but also some effects for other stimulants, depressants, hallucinogenics and miscellaneous. Effects of drugs are typically not instant, but have an onset duration/curve, which can itself be randomized.

Side effect: Potential or guaranteed side effect, typically a penalty, like a hangover.

Overdose, extradose: In excessive doses, the substance can have extra potent (side) effects, including death. Overdose effects will need a probability of incurring depending on dosage and other factors. There can also be a possibility of other "extradoses" that could be outright positive, expanding on the normal effect.

Long term effects: Side effects which can be temporary (chronic as long as you keep using) or permanent (even after you quit). Again, I probably need to randomly set thresholds, timers, etc. for each separate effect. Addiction could be classed as a form of this, but may also merit its own category.

Addiction: Drugs are more or less addictive, with more or less severe withdrawal symptoms, etc.

There may be other systems I'm overlooking that should be proper to the drugs as actual props and related events in the game world. But I think that covers the basics. Other questions come on top of the actual prop design, however, including how to put drugs in the game world, and how to present them in the interface.

For intoxication itself, a simple interface may work well. Being influenced could tap one ♥ with a flag describing your feeling. The effects themselves need to be implemented, but a lot can be done with simple status flags. Finer points, like long term effects and poly drug use, will have to be ironed out along the way.

Setting the dials to max random in a prototype generator yields some pretty varied results, like "Murphy (PBUH)", a plant juice to be ingested in the rectum, causing hallucinations, but with the possible side effect of strong and fast on-coming diarrhea. Frankly, that's one of the less weird ones. Transitioning from the prototype generator to data modules will definitely incur some fine-tuning, although hopefully with room for the occasionally utterly absurd.

One thing to make sure of, is that some sane default templates are more or less guaranteed to be generated. For balance' sake, there should probably be at least a few stimulants that increase healing or combat capabilities. We also can't have us a Western without booze, although the drink of choice across the Land may vary from banana wine to corn spirits. Some of the weirder drugs may come with factions and sites of their own, from Delphic cults who gather at natural gas sources to inhale the intoxicating fumes, to outcast colonies that willingly inflict themselves with a euphoria-inducing virus. Other encounters may include junkies/pharmacists paying for rare substances, ranches/pens with psychoactive herds, and other silliness. Sinister drug dealers may be a thing, but there will probably not be any legal sanctions against drugs as such, seeing as how the game plays in a land that hardly has had the time to get any laws at all. There may be abolitionists or a Temperance League, of course, possibly even zealots that sort rather in the general category of "homicidal maniac".

Morality studies in the Land

One funny thing that struck me in all of this, was that the question inevitably cropped up whether it could be alienating or inappropriate towards some audiences to add drugs in the game. I had the same thought about swearing at one point. And had to laugh at myself for questioning this in a game that's basically about killing vaguely defined "enemies". If anything, it shows I'm a product of cultural cliches.

On the other hand, I think the random generator will be spitting out some quite dangerous drugs, so I probably can't be accused of glorifying drug abuse. Regarding ethics as such, LoSt was never ever intended to be a showcase of goodness, and it's rather been a stated design goal to grey out "the alignment scale", aiming instead to focus on factors like reputation and social standing. If the game has an age rating, it's some Parental Guidance shit at least, although I can't imagine most kids would take any damage from messing around with my little game. I think the best I could hope for, would at least be to teach them some naughty words.

As always,
Minotauros

LoSt this month: Enemy of the state of the art

At the turn of a calendar year, it's customary to take stock of the year that went and the current state of affairs ;) Regarding Land of Strangers, 2018 was a relatively slow year, although I did manage to release version #13. And have been going at it (slowly) since then. 2018 actually marked the 5th anniversary of LoSt, and development, I guess, is going more or less according to plan.

Looking ahead, my current goal is to make the game more "presentable", a two-fold task. For one thing, the current interface is still a bit rough around the edges, though mostly complete now. Second, the game needs more encounters, places and things to do in general (and reasons to do them).

In December, I did some work on LoSt.

LoSt with a mouse (but as you see,
sprite rendering is still buggy)

The game now has a mouse interface. It's click to walk towards a tile or bump into an adjacent being (open a door, attack a target). Right clicking will bring up a menu next to the cursor, where you can choose an action or prop. The new action menu, that hovers over the map, is now also bound to the keyboard's "action hotkey" (Space/C). The keyboard bindings were thus switched around, since the "inventory hotkey" became obsolete. Instead, I added a pure utility command to toggle through your inventory. This made sense now that inventory handling doesn't cost any game time.

I'm still testing out the default configurations, but think the details will iron themselves out naturally as development and testing continue. For instance, I still want the game to register a mouse grab/long click (default to the same as right click, for anyone with a one-button mouse?), as well as double clicking (autowalk to a visible hex on the map).

Regarding content, I've been hacking away at some of my "sites", as I call them. They're just glorified place templates/blueprints with moving parts and various variables. I have some sites to play around with now, and plan on adding to them as I go along. At the moment, I'm working out basic patterns for placing them in relation to each other. The sites themselves are currently quite insular, in that there is little direct interaction between them, although this is going to change.

The long term plans are quite grandiose, of course (and I easily see another half-dozen years before the game is feature complete). There might be something like pseudo-random factions, each with their influence in the form of sites and encounters across the map. Random quests should reflect faction enmities, alliances and goals, and provide the player with a means to influence the story. While some factions will mostly be guaranteed, like robbers and law kids, some should be optional or highly random, such as ranches and trading companies, a traveling circus, or the ruins of a toppled civilization scattered across the Land.

In the short term, I'm concentrating on adding some plot hooks and bounties that might later work as side quests, or as segments of longer quest lines.

Also on the short term todo list is to make a few last fixes to the interface, to improve graphics rendering a bit. This shouldn't be too big of an undertaking, and needn't happen asap, but I probably want that in before the next release, at least, in the name of "presentability".

Meanwhile, in the future

yet another
punt gun pic

Going onward, I'll continue fleshing out sites and factions, and making interactions more detailed in general. Regarding long-term plans and feature ideas, I've glossed over some old notes and todo lists, and might at least give a rough outline of some of the ideas that have persisted over the years and may perhaps come into fruition one day…

Non-lethal combat: There should be the option of running away, also on the NPCs' part. I might add a "neutralized" state, when a critter doesn't have any untapped grit (red hearts) left. At this point, the critter is immobile and at the mercy of the environment. Defeated NPCs can be dealt with as the players wants (leave them, rob them, kill them, etc). Likewise, NPCs might opt to spare a defeated player character's life, typically incurring some other loss. Ending up in prison, or tarred and feathered in the middle of the desert, can work as an appropriately harsh, but not final, defeat in a game that on the one hand features permadeath, but on the other doesn't offer to advance the player character to godlike abilities.

Posses: I'm thinking of a more detailed system for defining units of NPCs, from a flock of birds to a band of robbers. There is also no reason why the player shouldn't be able to join or gather up posses of their own. In fact, I intend the game to encourage it. There should be shticks and props to recruit NPCs, depending on factors like your reputation. Again, adding NPC allies might be a way for the player to increase survivability. More importantly, perhaps, I imagine it fun with scenarios where the player has to cooperate with computer-controlled units.

Expanded usage of Grit ♥ and Lead ♄: I might to try to make small changes to how these traits work. I think ♥, aside from being a health bar, could be used to measure fatigue and other ailments, and maybe even as slots you can fill with status effects (for instance, being hasted from mercury bubblegum might tap a single ♥, or sprinting makes you accumulate fatigue markers). ♄ (lead) is also a stat that might be expanded a bit, perhaps to represent resources on a more general level. Some actions could cost a few ♄ to use, like tinkering shticks.

Ropes and miscellaneous: Rope could be an option to deal with prisoners, like hog-tying a neutralized foe and bringing them alive before their perpetrator. There could also be props like fuses and trip wire, or shticks to set traps. On the topic of "tinkering and utility" shticks and props, I can currently only say that all of that might or might not make it into the game. There will certainly be some rules for harvesting/building in the Land. I've set this up with destructible terrain and all that – but it remains to be seen which directions these ideas will take.

Riding, velocity: I've pretty much worked out in my head how I'll try to design this. When a being is moving fast, the game will assign it a certain velocity/inertia. Sprinting humans will be moving 2 hexes/turn, with some animals going faster. The next logical step would be to add mounts – probably some kind of hossies, broncos or other equines ;) That entails rules for animal taming and more, and while I'm at it, I'll probably want to add a system for pets in general :) The velocity system can be expanded to some pseudo-Galilean rules for moving platforms (boats, carriages, trains). I think riding as fast traveling can work well with the game's "reasonably big" overworld. Walking from town to town might be a bit of a chore, but it should be bearable on horseback and outright luxurious to ride a train.

Fire and flooding: I'm gonna want at least some rules for the elements, including wildfire setting off dynamite and other slapstick situations.

Landscape elevation and such: This is another feature I hope to somehow kludge through. There will probably not be a proper z-axis in the world's coordinate grid, but some tiles may serve as terraces or slopes, almost like the old Zelda-games, with unclimbable cliff sides segmenting mountain areas, balconies that can only be reached by a staircase, etc. I do also have ideas for something similar to Rogue-stairs, which lead to a separate map, for places like mines and cellars. It would be quite cool if I could implement standing on the roof of a house, or even atop of a moving wagon or train. In general, I can think of a lot more landscape features that could be added, like quicksand, ravines, landslides, dust devils, swarms, etc.

Gatling guns: At that point, you should be able to get scenarios like going down a dangerous river arm on a boat with a mounted machine gun.

Gambling: Current ideas include a simple dice game, as well as betting on fights between animals and/or humans (or even becoming a professional pit fighter). I want the interface to be pretty simple, most likely betting by bumping or dropping some ♄ on the bookie/table. By striving for a seamless interface, I hope to include ways to influence the outcome and proper responses. You might get away unnoticed with feeding some Kraft-Futter® to give "your" bird the edge in a cock fight, but maybe not shooting one of the contestants in a dog race.

Drinking and drugs: I'm still not quite sure how to bring this into the game, but it certainly deserves a place in the setting. Since it's a one player computer game, I want some technical incentive for using intoxicants, as well as punishments for abuse and addiction. It seems hard to balance. I guess you can have "speedy" combat drugs, or effects like sipping whisky to shake off negative mental effects, or even eating a weird root to go on a spirit quest. For adverse effects of abuse, that topic is probably tied in with the next …

Passage of time: The current public release features the very bare bones of a "passage of time"-system, used to heal long term wounds and "cash in" on your achievements, getting new shticks and reputations. There is certainly room for expansion and improvement. In the long run, I imagine a several systems coming together here. With each passing week, there may be a chance of "newsflash" events which affect the current state of various sites and factions. For instance, if there is a conflict (quest/drama) with a village being plagued by a group of bandits, and the player just passes time, something might happen, like the robbers besieging the village, or the villagers organizing a militia to strike back. There may also be changes occurring in the longer run, including aging and other effects of wounds, abuse, trauma and karma.

In-game hall of fame: Surprised that not more games feature this, I'll definitely add an in-game graveyard/high score in LoSt. Boot Hill should be an actual place you can visit, with gravestones for some of your former top characters. There are some more far-flung ideas for features that could let a player character influence future playthroughs, from a postal service à la Shiren, to options for retiring a character, to actual vengeful spirits of characters past.

LoSt this year

Rounding off 2018's installment of monthly status updates with yet another week-late post, I don't think I'll extend the series into the coming year. Whilst writing "LoSt this month" has helped me keep my eyes on the road, I hope to use the blog for some other ramblings in 2019. Stay tuned, of course, and in the meantime, cheers to an auspicious future, and to all of you, players, developers, dabblers and lurkers.

As always,
Minotauros

The LoSt Polls: Interface poll results

The results are in, as LoSt's UI poll closes at the respectable number of 42 voters (I can think of no number more respectable than 42). A heart-felt thanks goes out to all who participated.

Participants were allowed to pick multiple options, which is why there are slightly more ballots cast than people who cast them.

To test everything, I did leave a vote myself, ticking "Other". It bears noting, perhaps, that I put up the poll in part to gauge interest in the project, and I feel like I'm coming out on the other side with increased motivation, as this shows that LoSt does indeed have a little base of interested players.

Now, to get to the meat of the matter – the results, in order of popularity:

More gameplay (24 votes): Not surprisingly, this option got the most votes. The current interface is certainly acceptable, but the game absolutely lacks content. In the time ahead, I'll try to concentrate on this, adding more encounters, bounties, critters and props, and things to do in general.

Mouse support (13 votes): I'm partial to the keyboard, myself, which is probably why the mouse has gotten so little love up until now – but I am also aware of the fact that a pretty big chunk of computer gamers prefer a workable mouse interface, so had anticipated this option to get a fair amount of votes. The good news is that I've started, and the current testing version on my own laptop is already 100% playable with the mouse. I just need to polish off some rough edges before I can call it officially done, which shouldn't take more than a coding session or two. Expect to read more about the details in the monthly update for December.

Sound and music (7 votes): Moving on, we get to the less obvious options, perhaps. Among these features, audio came out on top. I tend to mute Roguelike games, myself, playing either in silence or with my own preferred soundtrack (The Residents' Mole Trilogy is a personal fave in that department, for that good ol'e chthonian feeling). Also, while I do possess a modicum of musical ability, I really don't have the know-how, or the equipment, to make decent recordings. But I aim to please, and have taken note that music and sound would be a welcome addition to the game, although it may still have to wait for a while. Sound effects I can probably rip from various free sources. Regarding music, I could try to solicit outside help – although being a one-person shit storm does have its benefits. Conversely, I may find the time and motivation to learn some music making on the computer, or make recordings using the equipment I have available (a crappy microphone, some string instruments, plus my kids' electric pianos and various bits of percussion). Surely, I'd have a lot of fun hacking together a grainy sounding, psychedelic honky tonk soundtrack befitting my overall vision of The Land.

Smoother graphics (6 votes): This one would entail an improved gaming experience without demanding too much work, and is something I do hope to sink my teeth into in the not too distant future. First of all, a lot of the choppy graphics in the current release will be fixed by defining dedicated layers for drawing backdrops, sprites, speech bubbles, menu popups, etc. Currently, everything is painted to a single pygame surface – a horrible design decision dating back to earlier releases, when there was much less happening on the screen. At some point, I'll have to retrace my steps and implement a more robust engine. Fixing it shouldn't prove too challenging, but will take some manual work, so it may or may not be something I get around to before the next release. Secondly, some graphical problems (like unevenly tessellating wall tiles) stem from the fact that LoSt uses dynamic scaling. While it's cool that the player can set the tile size to any value their heart desires, the result will look better if I set some predefined sizes, and then go over the sprite sheets by hand. But this may still be a while – it's going to entail a pretty big overhaul, as I'd probably take the opportunity to repaint some sprites I'm not quite satisfied with, fine-tune the walking animations for each critter type, etc.

Gamepad support (3 votes): I don't own a gamepad myself, but I've had this option in the back of my mind since quite early in development. Getting it in the game should probably not be too hard. The Pygame framework, which LoSt is built with, includes support for various joystick peripherals, so it's probably just a question of adding some lines to the code here and there to let the game register gamepad input in the same way as it does keyboard events and the like.

Other (3 votes): As noted, one of these votes was my own, to test that the poll was working. The second vote was cast without any comment, so what that player had in mind remains an open question. The third vote for "Other" came with a comment, namely to add an Android version of LoSt… I have to say, it's a pretty compelling thought, and I do believe the interface itself could bear being ported to a smaller touchscreen. The biggest hurdle, however, would be that LoSt is written in Python, and to my knowledge, there isn't any easy way to get Python applications working under Android. I'll certainly look into whether or not it's feasible at all. Barring that, I would have to port the game to a language or engine with native Android support, but that's not something I've planned at the moment. If I were to start using Godot, for instance, it would probably either be something like LoSt 2, or more likely a different game altogether (maybe a Roguelike with superheroes, or a more puzzle/story heavy game in a world inspired by Carl Barks and Tove Jansson). So while I'm sympathetic to the idea of LoSt running on mobile devices, I wouldn't hold my breath to see it happen.

OS X version (2 votes): Most likely, LoSt is coming soon to a Mac near you. It's not a big deal to "compile" Python applications for personal computers (I'm using pyinstaller, myself) – if you have access to the appropriate hardware. Since my partner just got a new computer, and it's a Mac, I'll try to put my filthy hands on that, and start shipping native binaries for OS X in the near future.

Terminal support (2 votes): I was rooting a bit for this option myself, but the community didn't give it a lot of loving. It means I'll be postponing a terminal version for now, since it'll definitely entail quite a lot of work, and not just of the brainless sort, either. But further down the road, I do hope to get a proper terminal version. It would bring some sweet bonuses, like being able to play LoSt over a ssh/telnet connection, and adding features to support playing with a screen reader.

Integrated content editor (2 votes): This is also an idea I've been kicking around for a while, including a dynamic editor for game data, and the option to enable various mods. Even if it didn't garner many votes, it's still something that might make it into the engine soon. The game's content is kept in human readable text files, which I'm writing by hand. However, I have done some experiments with an automated editor, and found that the process of adding game data became easier and less bug-prone. So while I'll still be relying on my trusty text editor to meet the demand for more content, I would probably be able to chug out more stuff if I put a bit of work into making the editor more streamlined. If and when the editor reaches a certain point of polish, it might as well be included with the public release. I don't see a huge modding community for LoSt emerging, but it certainly won't be a problem if the game at some point supports custom extensions.

That's all, folks. I hope to be able to shoulder the immense responsibility given to me by the poll results ;) Also, since I felt like the poll was a success experiment in and of itself, I'll be broiling my head to come up with another one soon. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a line with comments of any kind, regardless. I'm all ears.

As always,
Minotauros

LoSt this month: Persistence of sloth

No shadow
No stars
there's no moon and
No cars
November 

   —Tom Waits, «November»

I'm sorry to report that this was another slow month in LoSt. For once, I'll try also to keep the blog post short to reflect this. Besides, November's update is way overdue. I did add a few shticks, in particular making way with some plans I have for unarmed combat. The idea is for players who start climbing the martial arts skill tree to tailor their natural attack into something unique for each playthrough, by combining shticks that each determine different aspects of their fighting style. The skill tree will have several tiers, each with a handful of mutually exclusive shticks, so that a given character can only acquire one "critical" effect, for instance. Hopefully, this will turn into a system with some interesting synergies and strategic choices to be made.

I also started to add a new site of interest, a hunting lodge where you can collect bounties on animals, much like how you're currently able to visit judges to collect on the heads of criminals. I'm starting to get to the point where there are enough random sites that it'll make sense to begin ironing out the system for placing those sites on the world map, and determining their internal relations. I do anticipate this to be quite a big undertaking, but hopefully worth it in the long run, and probably something that can take shape over the course of several releases.

Finally, I put in some work to improve the mouse interface, which should probably be prioritized in the next release, judging by the preliminary results of the current poll. By the end of the month, I do hope to have mouse support properly implemented, so that I can concentrate on sites and other content in the time ahead. With a bit of luck and self-discipline, I'll wrap up the year with a meatier blog post outlining some plans for upcoming releases.

In the meantime, I wish y'all a happy and prosperous conclusion to 2018.

As always,
Minotauros

Sloth will prevail!

Released: Lost #13 (One Crawled out of the Foxhole)

Get it here or from itch.io, or click to download the game directly:

Windows binary
Linux deb installer
Linux binary
Python sources

This is mostly a bugfix release for Windows users, who reported frequent crashing with the previous version. With a bit of luck, number 13 will work better for everyone ;)

I also fixed some minor issues and rebalanced some items and shticks. I think the biggest addition is that NPCs now can accept generic gifts. If you get a green speech scroll in reply to giving a gift, it means your favor with the individual in question has increased, which may in turn increase your long term reputation with that NPC's factions. Once I can confirm that the game is working as expected, I'll get on with the plans for the next release.

As always,
Minotauros

Changes

Grid view generated too big for screen (crashed in Windows)
Trying to give/drop props crashed in Windows
Typo in data files sometimes caused game to (region hogging ai)
Plants sometimes marked as dead (when not)
Newly dead corpses no longer curse at you for killing them
Sprites in upper left corner vanished between turns
Speech bubbles flicker less in this release
Some speech bubbles were getting supressed
Drifting smoke wasn't spawning/working properly
Dilettante didn't have access to "shooting" shtick tree
Skills with direct damage (eg. Butt whipping) weren't working
Spawning corpses could cause game to crash
Game sometimes crashed when sightblocking objects were destroyed
Shtick T.Y.T. didn't show up during character generation
Removed msg "You stand in uffish thought" when passing a turn
Removed "Trick shot" shtick (not very interesting)
Sledgepick damage set to 1♥
Modified critical hit of knifes (always inflict 1☠ extra)
Nerfed shtick Feel no Pain
Removed shtick Iron Mind (obsolete)
Renamed shtick The Breathing Way to The Blood Way
Shtick Burro is back in the game :)
New critters: Traveling saleskid
Added more cash to the game world
Description of shtick Skillful -> "Gain a random skill."
Scissors now tagged as a blade
NPC AI can use distance measuring in more varied situations
NPCs now accept gifts (and are pleased at getting things they like)
Autopickup no longer works on items marked as corpses or trash
(chargen) Random choice won't pick 3 point foibles (most severe)
Skip repeating messages in log
Crashlog now includes python traceback, when applicable

Released: LoSt #12 (Night Errands)

Download Land of Strangers #12

I finally decided that the time was ripe to release Land of Strangers version #12. This version has been in the works for a year (on and off), and represents the meatiest changelog in the project so far. Some of the more notable changes include a basic infrastructure for bounties (quests), the option to heal long term wounds by resting, a zoomed out view of the map, and a rehaul of the combat system, UI and controls. In addition, #12 is the first version with (rudimentary) mouse support, as well as a (placeholder) system for character advancement by shtick aquisition.

LoSt joys

The current scenario starts you in Arken Town, a sleepy settlement in the unsettled outskirts of the young world that some simply call The Land. By some ill-boding twist of fate (yet, ill-boding still unbeknownst to whom), you have gleaned the location of an infamous fugitive. So you find yourself drawn to the jailhouse, at least to ogle the Wanted-poster and count your options …

As always, player comments are very welcome, here or on appropriate discussion boards or to the e-mail address supplied in the archives. Players should be advised that the game is still sparse on the content side. However, picking up the plot hook with the bandit campsite should offer a challenging little game in itself, enough to showcase the new features and give some indication of the direction I'm hoping to take the game in.

Version #12 is quite experimental, rolling in a lot of systemic changes. It is intended to be somewhat of an interim release, as I'm hoping to add more content for the next version, as well as doing a quick turnaround of important bug fixes that will hopefully become apparent in the time to come. There are some obvious issues, especially a lot of graphical glitches. Take it as a late entry to the "glitch roguelite" subgenre, if you will, but feel free to take the opportunity to point out errors and make more general comments regarding the graphical interface.

As always,
Minotauros

PS. And now, what we've all been waiting for, here's the changelog (a few minor changes may have fallen between the cracks and been left unnoted):
 

Keep fucking that chicken.

SYSTEM Started work on travelogue mode (zoomed out map) 
SYSTEM Scaled everything up a bit in size
SYSTEM Added base system for boons
SYSTEM Added long-term resting (incomplete)
SYSTEM Added individual reputation stat for Critters (incomplete)
SYSTEM Dynamic nicknames (incomplete)
SYSTEM Experience/shtick acquisition (temporary)
SYSTEM Disabled sprinting (temporary)
SYSTEM Drop/pickup now works on adjacent tiles
SYSTEM Give items by dropping them onto an adjacent NPC
SYSTEM Replaced wound system with a flat Grit meter
SYSTEM Interrupted attacks not blocked, but always graze/go wild
SYSTEM Increased inventory space
SYSTEM Flumadiddling (inventory handling) counts as a free action
SYSTEM Flumadiddling with cocked guns can be dangerous
SYSTEM Better support for instantaneous events
SYSTEM Perks and skills merged to one category, shticks
SYSTEM Character generation changed to reflect new shtick system
SYSTEM (testing) Set all shtick costs to 1 point in character generation
SYSTEM Kits for unarmed combat moddable (like prefixed guns etc.)

CONTENT Start game in Arken Town, a small settlement
CONTENT Basic bounty: Bring a wanted bandit to justice
CONTENT Changed intro text to reflect sample, soft "win condition"
CONTENT Simple rivers and mountains added as climate types
CONTENT Added some props: [redacted] and more
CONTENT New shticks: Muster, Circle blow, The breathing way, Leatherbrain
CONTENT Made bricks stackable and gave them stats as thrown weapons
CONTENT Derringers and pepperbox guns are now two separate types
CONTENT Changed effect of adrenaline syringe to: heal all bruises
CONTENT Changed effect of bleeding to: inflict all bruises as wounds
CONTENT Changed feel no pain to: always heal for 3 turns
CONTENT Changed war wound to: increase chance of wounds healing badly
CONTENT Changed tough as nails to: decrease chance of healing badly
CONTENT Removed Swordfighter career, added Barber instead

UI Started to implement mouse support (incomplete)
UI Configuration wizard for first-time players
UI Message log now oriented to center of the menu
UI Message log not flushed between turns
UI Added option to cancel character creation mid-process
UI Replaced dual-button system with main button (experimental)
UI Separate shortcut keys for inventory (default [F1-F10])
UI Shortcut [G] and [,] to get/give/drop command
UI Commands to zoom in/out on map
UI Menus reorganized to put option 0 on top
UI Scrolling menus are still ugly and buggy, but less buggy :P
UI Distinct animation for grazes and several other events/effects
UI Support for onomatopoeta (sound effects) on tactical map
UI Added colored messages (signals pleased/annoyed status)
UI Speech scrolls now take a few seconds to fade out when dismissed
UI Removed all non-free fonts from the game
UI Modified font (Linux Biolinum) for better unicode support
UI Redid the in-game character sheet a bit
UI Disabled player survey (at least for now)
UI Removed obsolete manual (temporarily)
UI (debug) print_me() to log/stdout when looking at beings slightly prettier
UI (debug) Game now makes a backup log when the game crashes

WORLD Place templates can contain player's starting position
WORLD Merged Region and Climate classes
WORLD Added Superregion class (named region on the map)
WORLD Region name generation takes climate etc. into account
WORLD Lots(!) of small and big changes to how the world is built

AI States can be pure switches
AI State machine can remember several distinct targets at once
AI Can prompt the player to choose an alternative and react accordingly
AI Can test (simple) scripted conditions directly from the data files
AI Some tactical changes to reflect new combat systems (incomplete)

BUG Time system with simultaneous actions wasn't simultaneous
BUG Shtick descriptions weren't displayed during character generation
BUG Sometimes crashed when critter ai had no target
BUG Game crashed with manually inputed world seeds
BUG Trying to draw off screen crashed (hopefully fixed)
BUG Various other small bugs that would crash for no reason ;)
BUG Post mortem "screensaver mode" sometimes hung
BUG Impossible to demolish house walls
BUG Certain places didn't spawn at all
BUG Savescumming may have been buggy, should now be more fool proof :)
BUG Help screen didn't print command keys properly
BUG Game window sometimes started maximized when it should not
BUG Reset some attributes when patching beings with certain kits
BUG Some speech scrolls were rendered twice (fixed, but reappeared )-:
BUG Some speech scrolls didn't get painted to the map
BUG Speech scrolls flickered for a split second between turns
BUG Sprites disappear when several gets drawn to the same hex
BUG Certain "steppable" objects, like thorns, didn't work properly
BUG Random characters always started with "animal friend" shtick :P
BUG Character sheet listed inventory's kit names instead of prop titles
BUG Typo in /kits/desert_life/brains.yug made tool wielders unable to attack
BUG Dilettante sometimes got same skill twice
BUG Attack forms without crit effects did no damage on crit hit
BUG Typos "pilarist", "omniscinet", "likelyhood", and a few more ...

LoSt this month: Petrichor

Fame is the worst thing that could happen to your reputation.

   – Kate Tempest, «These things I know»

LoSt's loyal fanbase never lost faith.

When May turned to June, I decided to push my so-called monthly update ahead of me, just a few days, to make some progress that I could report (May had been another slow month). Well, here we are squarely in the middle of July already!

Since last, I did sink some hours into character advancement (≈leveling up). It's hard to fit it into the game at this moment, since it would rely on some more content to get the right scope. At the moment, I scrapped the original idea (described in an earlier post) of letting the player influence skill advancement by presenting them with story options (à la «choose your own adventure» books, reminiscent to how they did it in Shattered Planet). A system like this may come at a later date ;) What I did keep, was the idea of tying up character advancement with a resting mechanism, that also encompasses healing long-term wounds and amassing reputation. I got in place a very rough system, that just looks at the player's recent conduct tracker and decides how/if to modify character traits. The current design will need a lot of refinement, but the bare bones may still be deemed enough to cut it for release #12.

Goals and Achievements

A long term plan I've been having for LoSt, is to have a rather involved system for renown and faction relations. I have now added a reputation stat, which is a step in the right direction. The new mechanism builds on an existing framework of «causes», data plugins dictating critter behavior, which I've also been using to simulate a faction system, by giving each cause a list of other causes and flags that they have a particular bias towards. Favor between critters is a simple positive or negative integer that's set randomly each time a critter sees another critter for the first time, and the cause-related modifiers work by simply adjusting the (min,max) range. Thus, predatory animals attack prey more or less on sight, because the «predator mentality» cause has a (-2,-2) favor modifier to any critter tagged as «prey». Likewise, shticks like «Animal friend» and «Musky» work by flagging the player so that animals get an extra modifier of (0,+1) or (-1,0), respectively.

The main addition to this in #12 is that individual critters can now have a dynamic reputation stat. It works by listing a set of causes and assigning each cause a modifier. Reputation is modified between missions, whenever the player rests at the saloon (or other resting hubs that will appear). The game tracks and stores the player's conduct as «karma», so I have info about who @ has interacted with and how, which tools/shticks have been used, success/failure at missions, places visited, etc. Reputation is currently modified by looking up the causes of critters @ has pleased or annoyed, and making a few random checks to see if @'s reputation should be modified with one or more causes. It can be fleshed out later, especially as I'll want to flesh out a more detailed system for factions, which could be much more than just glorified AI plugins, as is currently the case.

Related, a sketchy system has cropped up for something I call «boons», tangible achievements and missions the player can fulfill. Currently, the main mission is to bring down a wanted bandit, and I'm testing with some minor boons, including collecting the bounty on any random mudfaced goon, visiting a new place, or drinking milk (perhaps the first in a series of boons related to abstinence, for careers like ascetics and abolitionists). At the moment, boons cheesily yield a kind of experience points, which at certain intervals trigger a «levelup» function that improves the player's stats upon resting. It's at least fun to test, since we now get characters that scale up and gain new shticks (skills) as time passes.

Defining boons as the source of coveted experience points may be hard to balance, in that it could easily encourage grinding to collect'em all. I might offset this by tying shtick acquisition more directly to what you do on the map: as instantaneous rewards for collecting particular boons, through books or paid tutoring, etc. Another system I've been thinking about, is to introduce a stat like decrepitude. (The term is ripped from Ars Magica, where wizards become slowly more old and gnarly and in danger of drifting away from the world). In LoSt, decrepitude, or whatchammacallit, would work to impose a soft time limit by amassing over time as new foibles and negative stats (trauma, wounds, addictions, bad reputations, etc). I think a system like that might work well, especially in conjuncture with some other long term ideas about the option to retire your character, and other ways characters' legacies can have an effect across several playthroughs.

Be that as it may, I'm trying to restrain the todo-list for the upcoming release #12. It's better to put out some crude implementations, and hopefully getting player feedback that can inform further development. It's really high time for the new version to come out, and it's going to be a meaty one, even though it may end up as a short interim before #13, if I can quickly turn around and fine tune some of the bugs that will undoubtedly become apparent upon release. There are some minor things I will definitely (hope to) fix before #12 is ready, but nothing too big, mostly just tying up loose ends.

Ugly bugly.

☞ Fix flickering text bubbles when the map scrolls. In fact, there are a bunch of graphical glitches that I'm loathe to fix one by one, simply because the whole display engine needs an overhaul; small patches now would be a waste of time in the long run, but this exact bug is so disturbing that it's probably right to label it release critical.

☞ Brush up AI: This is another topic I don't want to do too much with at the moment, but changing the combat system around did leave a few bugs. In particular, I need to fix some causes/beings that won't enter their attacking states properly.

☞ Make boon system release ready: To get some more to test with, I might define a few more minor boons. And although I am happy to leave the character advancement system as a prototype, some fine-tuning would still be in order there. I may also have to look into the UI department, for instance whether the player should receive a notification when they collect a boon. It's tempting to start adding more places and missions, of course, but I'll try to save that for later versions. Regarding the prototype boss fight/starting quest, I have it working from a technical perspective, but the actual fight/encounter is a bit uninspired, so maybe I should fire up my content editor to give that particular challenge a bit more zazz.

LoSt this month

“How’s it look to you?” Bill said. He was handling the reins, sitting tall and handsome, nodding at voices when somebody called to him from the street. The word of who it was in the wagon got through town before Charley and Bill made a hundred yards. 

“Like something out of the Bible,” Charley said.

[…]

“What part of the Bible?” Bill said, when they were alone again. 

“Where God got angry,” Charley said.

   —Pete Dexter, Deadwood

Full speed ahead!

Last year saw some sporadic updates under the header of "LoSt this week". They weren't exactly the most ambitious posts on this blog, but still a way to document progress, at least. I figured I'd try a model of more reliable monthly updates this year. We'll see how reliable I manage to keep'em.

Back to the Meat

January saw some slow, steady development. Most notably, perhaps, I've reimplemented wounds in accordance with some old plans. I'm now testing with a flat counter à la hit points, although I call it "grit" rather than hp. The player will probably start with about 9-12 grit (a bit more than your average neighbor, owing to the natural determination and character that sets a wannabe frontier hero apart). Grit is marked out when an actor gets wounded. Currently, there are markers for bruises and grievous wounds. Wounds are semi-permanent, and typically only heal between missions, whilst Bruises regenerate every turn that is passed without taking any action or receiving any damage.

That's the gist of it, but I'm still ironing out the details and making related changes. The idea is to make bruises "inexpensive" (in that there is no food clock), so the player can freely gambit their grit in any local situation – if they feel confident on winning the fight. Wounds, on the other hand, will force the player to touch base every now and then, and some bounties and other story related content will certainly have time limits and thresholds; the world should not stand still if the player spends two weeks at the saloon to recover from a bear attack.

Expanding on the current implementation, I'll test using grit for status ailments and buffs in addition to wounds. For instance, being temporarily blinded or confused might occupy a grit marker. Likewise, positive modifiers from skills/props could tap your grit when active. I think this can work well as "payment" for certain skills, having decided early on that I don't want skills with cooldown periods, as that may encourage techniques like pillar dancing. Instead, each effect should be designed with built-in weaknesses. For example, the "fan gun" skill allows you to cock and fire in one turn, but at the cost of reduced accuracy. Another available effect is sprinting (move at double speed for some turns), and I hadn't been able to come up with a good penalty for that. Now I'm thinking grit may offer a solution. Let's say you accumulate "out of breath" markers the longer you sprint, meaning that you must spend turns to recover, or else come into the next encounter at a disadvantage. That should cap the amount of running around it's feasible to do, without nerfing it too much as a defensive strategy. I don't mind if running away is an effective "panic button" for many situations. Knowing RL players, each and one will die by the dozen, anyway; and it bears mentioning that I'm hoping to add non-lethal combat: in particular the option to surrender – so why not an option to run away? The villain should really just stand back and shout insults then, all the while depleting the player's reputation as a valiant hero.

UI Overhauls

Testing #12: «Wanted» poster in Arken Town
Note random truism in the bandit's generated name :)   

Changing the combat system has many ripples. For one thing, the tactical menu had to be rearranged. Working with visual interface design is something I find at once painful and strangely compelling (a bit like masturbating with a branding iron). There's a lot of relative coordinates to keep track of, especially if you take into account varying resolutions and font sizes, and more often than not I'll stumble over cryptic pieces of algebra in the existing code, that my previous self sucessfully used to put things where they belong on the screen, but which my present self is utterly unable to understand.

The new UI puts some info in a top panel. I've kept the right hand menu for inventory, actions and message log, but I was thinking it might be nice to add a "wide screen" mode as well. You'll notice the new interface has flashy menu buttons. I added these since LoSt now has basic mouse support. Yay. The icons in this screenshot are place holder art, by the way. They are more or less hand made, but some are direct ripoffs of Mayan glyphs that actually mean something completely different. So I may or may not keep the visual style, but I'll want the designs used to be original, in any case.

Fonts: Before…

While I was at it, I did some font work. Earlier versions used (and embedded) a few fonts with restrictive "freeware" licenses. I've been wanting to clean up that whole mess: reduce the amount of embedded fonts and make sure everything is open software. So I went font hunting, and found 1001 Fonts quite usable, especially as the site has the option to filter for only open source fonts. I also used Fontforge for the first time, making a very basic Frankenstein font by merging some glyphs into Linux Biolinum. I pulled the glyphs from various free sources, but was especially thrilled to discover Quivira, a font with pretty good Unicode support. In fact, that's where I got the glyph ♄ for lead, arguably the most important letter in the LoSt alphabet.

Fonts: After!

I also redid the logo, using Gimp to draw the letters with filled rectangles, that I then ran over with a bunch of filters. The new menu font IM Fell was just added for being pretty great and having probably the second most fantastic license I ever read (donated to the Oxford University by its creator upon his death in 1686). It may be too old fashioned for LoSt in the long run, but here and now it's quite functional.

Questin' fer Bounties

Since I need to test out the new wounds system, as well as the basic content for defeating the bandit scourge of Arken Town, I had to zoom back in on tactical aspects of the game, which has been refreshing after mostly doing macro-level world building stuff for the last period. I had completely "turned off" encounters (houses, animals, and even plants), but now switched them back on to get a trajectory back and forth to the bandit to slay him/her and bring back the head to the sheriff in Arken. If I do that (currently not trivial, but there's always the cheat options in the main menu :) it raises a little "karma flag" that I plan to use later, to influence reputation and skill advancement, whenever the player passes time between missions at one of the game world's resting hubs (eg. saloons, oases, hospices, cloisters).

I want you kids to get ahead

The infrastructure for implementing this basic kill/fetch quest, where the parameters are ultimately written in the human readable data files, can be used to track smaller achievements as well. There will probably be other "little karma flags" for conduct like giving to beggars, (not) shooting someone in the back, flaunting your pistol in church, and just generally pleasing/offending members of this or that faction/group in one way or the other. In the long run, I hope that the life time of more accomplished characters will span several years of game time, with slowly developing reputation, skill set, as well as global faction relations and story lines. If the game should come to that point, the "original bounty" I'm working on now will probably just be folded into a repertoire of random situations, that can be repeated, omitted and randomized over many replays.

So I'm walking a bit in the desert, getting killed some on the way, trying to imagine what the game will be like a few iterations down the road…

As always,
Minotauros

Gif of the month looks decent, but there's a lot of
graphical glitches too, as when simultaneously
scrolling the map and fading out dialogue bubbles!

Breaking habits

Seeking fresh ideas … Hum!

Accomplished creators will sometimes say something to the effect that one needs to master the formal conventions in order to bend them and innovate. (In the arts, I suspect there is some deeper truth about the historical transition from Romanticism to Modernism, but I digress as always).

When I first started making LoSt, the idea was for a small 7DRL shooter with card based mechanics and no hit points (getting hit was game over). That didn't scale well, however, and was gradually transformed into the current combat system.

Wounds UI

Health: Actors have a number of health levels (HLs), each with a number of bruise levels (BLs). If an actor spends a turn not getting hit, they regenerate one BL. Once a HL reaches zero, however, it won't heal naturally, and the player needs to rest at a saloon or hospice.

Initiative: All events have a speed value, with actions performed in a fixed order each turn. Melee precedes missile attacks, which in turn precede movement. If you're next to an enemy, you can back away, but giving your enemy a free attack. Also, actions can be "interrupted" by incoming attacks. The idea was to give melee an edge in close quarters: If you're wielding a knife and facing a shooter, your best bet should be to get up close and stab your foe before they get a chance to shoot you.

Randomness: The system is mostly deterministic. Attacks have fixed damage, and there is no probability "to hit". Instead, melee sometimes deal grazes (half damage) or critical hits (effect depending on weapon). Firearms have a chance of going wild, depending on conditions like cover and skills.

Game changer

This may sound good on paper, but I've been vexed by the fact that melee in particular doesn't work well in practice. There was a problem of getting ganged up on, since taking more than one hit in a single turn almost invariably depletes a whole HL, something that should be avoidable with clever tactics. On the other hand, the rapid bruise regeneration means the player often has to land successive blows to properly wound the enemy, in turn taking as many hits himself. Likewise, it doesn't make any sense for instance to stab once and then spend some turns to wield and cock a gun, since the stab wound will be fully healed by the time you pull the trigger.

There's also been a problem with balancing damage. Comparing a club and a knife, they both deal 2 BLs, but the club spreads the damage over several HLs, whilst the knife puts all of it in a single HL. At the end of the day, the knife is almost unambiguously better, since it has the chance of depleting HLs more quickly.

However unbearable I find the current states of affairs, this system has been in place for years now, and me stumped as to how to fix it. Should I try to make something different altogether? Introduce a standard hit points system? God forbid! I'm giving the current rules another chance, and started by just tweaking the existing values.

Here are some of the changes I'm trying out currently:

Damage output: I made mostly everything deal a little less damage. I figured the lower tier weapons (bowie knives, tools, whips) can deal just a single BL in damage, and still be better than unarmed fighting, since unarmed fighters are unable to score critical hits. Increasing the player's health might also be an option here.

Bruise regeneration: Bruises now regenerate every second turn, and healing the last BL of a HL takes another extra turn.

Interrupted actions: I've disabled this almost completely. If an actor gets hit right before carrying out an attack, that attack is no longer blocked, but rather guaranteed to be a graze/wildshot. At point blank range, a wildshot will hit the target about 50% of the time.

This already works better than before, even if it's basically the same rules. For one thing, a couple of angry animals won't kill you in a single turn, even though it's still bad to get surrounded. The slowed regeneration rate means that there is more time to apply actual tactics, like spending a turn to reposition, without all bruises being reset. The fact that the last bruise in a HL takes an extra turn to heal also gives an advantage to weapons which deal damage over several HLs. A weapon dealing 2 BLs to a single HL still has an edge when it comes to quickly whittling down your enemies HLs, whilst a weapon dealing 1 BL to two separate HLs is less of an immediate threat, but will give an advantage a few game turns down the road.

I may still have to make some more fundamental changes to how combat works, but it's refreshing just to see the game work slightly different from what I've grown accustomed to.

Props unbound

Burro!

Inspired by the moderate success with switching around combat rules, I'm also trying some changes to the inventory system. Again, some pretty arbitrary principles had grown out of the original game (some of them outlined in an earlier post). For instance, I felt that limiting actors to carry only six items at any time was pretty neat, since dead dudes would just drop all their loot in a nice circle around themselves.

Now, I've upped the inventory cap to 12 items, which really just lets the player carry more trash around (although balance issues may arise later). Secondly, props are now dropped and picked up from adjacent hexes rather than the one you're currently occupying.

The effect on gameplay is minimal, but I may keep it this way, just because it offers a solution to a problem I've been having: how to give props to NPCs? I didn't want a separate "give" command, so instead I implementing a heavy-handed system for offering NPCs stuff by dropping it in their field of vision. This is how you currently collect bounties from judges, by plopping the severed head of a goon in their vicinity. God only knows if a single player has yet picked up on the fact that this is a thing, as it's only vaguely hinted at in the dialogue. But if props are dropped onto the hex right in front of to you, the system pretty much gives itself: Simply invoking the "drop" command when facing an NPC should make for a pretty intuitive and smooth interface.

Current shop layout, and more spacious mockup
D=door, s=shopkeep, c=counter, p=props

I'm slightly concerned that some veteran RL players may find this counterintuitive. It's still possible to pick up items you're standing on, but that has the disadvantage of not properly teaching how it "should" be done. Players who fall into the habit of walking on stuff to pick it up, will in effect be wasting a turn as opposed to players who fall naturally into using the new system. There are some possible ways to fix that, either by making it a free action to pick something up, or even let props on the ground block movement. This last solution would mean some pretty drastic changes to tactics, but might even work when I start making everything a bit more spacious, which is something I've planned in any case.

Come what may, it's always good to break habitual thinking by changing the rules around a bit. Every dead end explored is a step in the right direction.

As always,

Minotauros

Released: LoSt #11 (Mercury Bubblegum)

Catch of the day

This is an interim release, preceding a hefty rewrite of some of the systems. I wanted to start refactoring from a clean cut, so to speak, so I'm publishing what I have to date.

In other words, LoSt is still in alpha. Compared to #10, this version contains some bug fixes and a bit of content. The most spectacular feature is perhaps that you can now gain followers by choosing the "Populist" shtick.

I'm about to redesign big chunks of the world generation algorithm, in part to fix problems which have become apparent in testing, in part to accomodate plans I have for bounties (quests) and other features. Bounties will also be tied up to a system for the passage of time (including healing and skill advancement), so there may be some exciting prospects on the horizon, even though I as a developer will have to do some untangling to get there.

Comments are always appreciated, on appropriate forum threads, per email, or you can fill out the in-game survey that I added as an experimental feature in this version. It'll be interesting to see whether that garners any response, and if I can use it to guide and motivate further development.

As always,
Minotauros

CHANGELOG

BUG: Couldn't pick up lead slugs when pockets were full
BUG: Buggy inventory interface if pockets were empty
BUG: Critters turned invisible when spending props
BUG: Could see through walls at certain angles
BUG: (Serious) bug that made game pick invalid kits
BUG: Bug that printed nonexisting plants and obstacles
BUG: Spitting bush had forgot how to spit
BUG: Some instances of NPCs getting stuck repeating one action
BUG: Crashed because game tried to draw outside the screen
GAME: Player can now start with up to two shticks
GAME: Some props can be used directly from inventory (experimental)
GAME: Prompt to abort extended actions when hostiles enter line of sight
GAME: Commandline options to set world seed
GAME: Scrollable menus (needs polish, but should work ;)
GAME: Cleaned up the log area a bit
GAME: Can save multiple characters in the same world
GAME: Default field of vision now set to 11
CONTENT: Renamed "derringer" as "pepperbox gun"
CONTENT: Fleshed out animal species a bit
CONTENT: Weapon prefixes
CONTENT: Added some skills, props, places and critters
CONTENT: Backstory generator now spits out terser texts
AI: Added more bias switches: annoy, please, exalt
AI: Action calculation for fields of battle plants should be quicker
AI: Gain followers (experimental)
AI: Most beings now set to stay at home or roam their native region
AI: Toolwielders now better at choosing their weapon
VAR: Added an in-game survey
VAR: Various tweaks and fixes

Idea that will never be a 7DRL

Please excuse this quite silly rant about my old idea for a 7 Day Roguelike.
TL;DR: In the end, it's practically randomized, anyway :P

#DogmeRL 7DRL

A Dogme 95-inspired Roguelike, featuring:

No ASCII!
No message log!
No keyboard interface!
No random maps!
No permadeath!
No grid-based tactics!
No item identification!
No MacGyvering your way out!
No resource management (consumables, healing, food clock)!
No hack'n'slash!
No rpg system!
No dungeons!
Modular gameplay!
Emphasis on story!
Play as a party!
The full Roguelitelike experience in one package!

Check and mate, suckers!

I've long wanted to make an Anti-RL that "breaks all the rules" for what a RL is. It struck me now that it would be ideal to combine with two other things I've been wanting to do, namely learning a bit of Godot, and making a game for my kids (targeted age around 6-9).

In the end, I would aim to make something that doesn't fit the genre definition by any stretch, while retaining that good ol'e RL feeling.

Tail of Eugor

For the actual game, I figured the basic interface is a touchscreen Roguelite with minimal text and easily graspable (hopefully deep/fun) gameplay.

The scourge of elephants

The setting rips off various sources. Take a silly mangaish/fantasy universe like Mario, Sonic or Lego: Ninjago, throw in some White Wolf's Exalted, mix with Tove Jansson's Moomin (and more obscure references) ... I decided to just go ahead and make the heroes furries :D So you have this magic stone age world inhabited by tribes of biped animals wielding magic just cooling it with gods and spirits who still tread the earth of this young world. In the rivers and wetlands dwell frogs and hippos, striking secretive deals with daemons of the depths; whilst elephants rule the plainlands from their walled cities of byzanthine bureaucracy, but fear the wild mice who roam the woods. You get the general drift.

On the list of anti-features, some almost give themselves, some merit more consideration.

EUGOR: Featuring
Modular Gameplay™

INTERFACE: We're on a touch screen with graphics, so no ascii or keyboard. We don't want turnbased, gridbased tactics, but we do want modular gameplay. So let's make it a bit like a jrpg (bear with me). There is a walk/explore mode where you tap wherever you want to go on the map. NPCs walk around in real time. If you bump into an NPC or feature (or if an NPC bumps into you), you engange that being (bump a person to speak, bump a monster to fight). This engagement can be handled in a separate mode with alternating turns for combat/actions. Put on top: an overworld mode to travel between the different maps, designed like an overworld in a typical Nintendo console game, with each place a node, and paths between those nodes.

NO HACK'N'SLASH: Since it's for kids, I don't want combat to be the main way to solve everything. Sure, some spectacular fighting scenes with earthquake hammers and the like, but it might be better to give the hungry lion a pancake to make it happy. Maybe it will even join you on your quest!

NO IVENTORY HANDLING: Instead of inventory, the player collects "gifts" (objects, skills or characters who join your party). Your gifts determine what you can do, depicted as icons in a menu. You can always try to use any gift in any encounter? If you have Icarus Wings, you can use them to fly over the river or escape from a fight. If you have Persuation as a gift, use it to calm your enemies or get special favors from friendly NPCs, etc. Gifts may sometimes not work (angry bees won't be persuaded, troll immune to sleeping magic), and gifts are not comsumable. The gift Itching Powder would have infinite charges, it's just a thing your toon can do. Throughout any one game, you'll just get a handful of gifts, so there's no looting and no identification subgame. While there is leeway for some "easter egg effects", there should be no "complex interactions" like dipping, throwing or collateral demolition.

Uh … Follow the
dotted brick road?

NO RANDOM CONTENT GENERATION: The biggie. I'm actually planning to cheat on this one :) I would venture to replace random content generation with (drum roll) stochastic content generation! It would be deterministic, but provide replayability akin to randomness, by dynamically generating the world based upon the player's choices :P

First of all, each level/node you visit is prefabricated. If "elemental temple" is a place, you always get the same layout, with the same designated spots for your acolytes and abbess, your braziers and you vortex of elemental doom. Each place should be a small screen, so the "temple" is really just a little shrine that your avatar can cross in less than ten strides..

Second, the overworld map is predetermined, divided into four zones to visit. From the starting zone are borders you can breach to enter Zone A or Zone B, the midgame zones. Here you need to prepare and to find the key to enter the fourth and last zone, where the endgame takes place. It could be structured a bit like one of those exemplary analyses of Zelda levels, with bombs to breach weak walls, branches to make you feel like you're choosing your own way while carefully guiding you past mandatory choke points, etc. The midgame zone you choose to enter first should be set as the main branch, with the remaining midgame zone tagged to remain as an optional bonus branch.

Third, the player gets to choose some parameters at the start of the game. This is where it starts getting stochastic, as we're doing the equivalent of setting a random seed. Consider the following:

«Just send me the money»

"Eugor was a young …
    1) frog 2) mouse 3) elephant 4) fox 5) chicken

… who lived in a …
    1) cabin 2) town 3) shrine 

… by a …
    1) river 2) ravine 3) mountain 4) great wall. 

… Eugor's neighbor tribe were …
    1) frogs 2) mice 3) elephants 4) foxes."

That gives a little more than 4^4=256, a fine, round number of starting positions. Your choice of species will set a starting gift, like frogs can swim, mice are fast, whatever. Your starting map ("cabin", "town" etc.) has its predetermined follow-ups, so if you choose "cabin" it has paths to "woods" and "town", and if you choose "town", you get "shrine" and "ferryman" as followups. Choosing to start in the town means you won't get the shrine or ferryman later in the game, but are guaranteed to come across the woods and the cabin. A level like "natural source" will play out differently if you're sent there to talk with a guardian, or to steal a treasure, and whether that happens in the early or late game. Also, factors like climate and player race may affect which species inhabits a particular place (facing slow, mighty elephants or quick, crafy mice makes a difference).

Off to see the wizard, biatch!

Visiting the swamp or the desert first might become a strategic choice, since it determines if you'll be facing salamanders and scorpions or spiders and platypuses.

Envisioned on this scale, with 4 zones, I'd probably need around a dozen locations. The game should be scaled to a small proof-of-concept, taking less than an hour to win. Still sounds more like a 7 Month Roguelike to me. It can be done, though. The hard part would be to get the design just right.

I might actually give it a shot (but probably not as a 7drl) if the right conditions arise, as I've really been wanting to check out Godot for mobile games, and I would love to make something silly like that, that my kids (and other random peeps) might enjoy playing.

As always,
Minotauros