Elderlore

Source: Ascii Dreams

One possible abuse of the ability to use Angband items in multiple ways is the ability to throw ammunition instead of shooting it from a bow or crossbow. Ammunition is light, which means you can carry a lot of it, and throwing it is 'abusive' because the damage bonus that is applied to firing ammunition is also applied to thrown ammunition, without penalty. This is exacerbated in Unangband because the damage bonus was until the latest version counted twice for thrown weapons and not multiplied by missile launchers, which meant that throwing an arrow (+9,+9) may be more effective than firing it from a longbow.

The damage bonus in this example is insensitive to it's context - it is applied equally when the item is thrown, set in a trap, or fired from a missile weapon*. And if you think the ammunition example could in some way be construed as sensible, consider that the damage bonus a bow applies to arrows fired from it, would also be applied if you threw the bow instead.

At the moment, I'm changing this: damage bonuses will be able to be context sensitive - a weapon that adds damage while fighting, won't necessarily benefit throwing or setting in a trap.

But the question I have is should I enforce this change? This is not quite Warren Spector's proximity mine climbing emergence, but it is an interesting and unintended consequence of a design that may be worth keeping.

I have the flexibility to allow missile weapons with incredibly good trap damage but no shooting damage bonus, but it is unlikely that a player would ever choose such a weapon over a missile weapon with superior shooting damage and no benefit in traps. Whereas if the weapon was multi-functional, it is more possible the player will attempt to take advantage of 'free' additional functionality at some point. I can do either approach with the approximately same level of cleanliness in the code: it is a data design issue, rather than code overhead cost.

It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts.

* There is a separate but related question about worn vs. wielded items. If a sword improves your ability to fight with it, does it also improve your ability to fight with another weapon if you hold it in your off-hand or even just strap it to your body? In particular, if you get one more blow per round with it, do you get that blow if it would be from another weapon?

Source: Ascii Dreams

“When you were born you shit yourself all the time, couldn’t talk and your hands were too small to shoryuken. in other words you really sucked at being a person, but thats ok, when you start out at anything you will suck. the same is true for making games.“

- Sophie Houlden via Pentaduct

Source: Ascii Dreams

I was reminded earlier today of my favourite TV series of all time...

Source: Ascii Dreams

You've undoubtedly seen on the interwebs that Valve have released Alien Swarm, a Source engine based top down four person coop shooter for free.

What you won't have seen - and what is really exciting - is that you can enable both the Source AI director and tile-based procedural generation of levels from the console.

Now that is game changing.

I'll write more about this later.

Source: Ascii Dreams

If it looks like things are quiet on the Unangband development front it is because I'm feeling my way through a ridiculously big chunk of code that I probably should have committed part of already.

Unfortunately, it is mostly back end stuff which you'll see very little of in the actual game: redesigning how timed effects work, allowing items to have multiple pvals (called avals), adding approximately 96 additional item flags which are all pretty much already used in game. The pay off will be flexibility to implement everything I've implemented already. Which is how most redesign work ends up 'helping' what you do.

This sort of thing ends up happening when you code on the train without 3G access.

Source: Ascii Dreams

Clive Barker's Jericho is as much fun as you make it - a squad of seven special ops straight from the Laundry each of which is equipped with enough weapons and supernatural abilities to be the lead protagonist in any other first person shooter.

And that is its greatest failing. Jericho cries out for the inspired level design and puzzle solving featured in the God of War series, and makes the mistake of borrowing the quick time events instead. And it is because you never spend enough time with any one of the squad that you will miss the depth and subtleties of each soldier's specialties.

Jericho desperately needs a Miyamoto to craft it puzzles using a strong visual language or a Warren Spector to build places explorable using a wide variety of strategies, or even just the rebel encampment from the original Predator movie to allow you to practice all the bad-assedry you'll finally get comfortable with just as the game is winding down.

You'll end up blaming the AI or seemingly under-powered characters* or uninspired corridors with their monster closet cramped close quarter fighting when you should instead be celebrating the fact that you can be a self-cutting ninja with a machine pistol whose blood sprouts snaking tentacles which grasp out at your enemies while you slice them limb from limb, or a dual-pistol wielding priest with three different ammunition load outs per weapon who can drain the life of his enemies and resurrect the fallen, or a telekinetic sniper who can steer bullets with her mind and whose high performance rifle has an under-slung grenade launcher, or an astral walking ancient history expert who has thoughtfully attached an automatic shotgun to his assault rifle - and can set alight or blood ward any creature he possesses, or a warlock with a mini-gun, a demon embedded in his arm and the largest customized pistol I've ever seen, or a reality distorting, time slowing technical expert with programmable grenades who can conjure ammunition for the rest of the team and scan enemies for weak spots.

But in fact, you are all of them.

Clive Barker's Jericho is available on Steam for a criminally low price. Play it because more games need warlocks with mini-guns.

* Two glaring examples of how badly the game explains or requires the protagonists powers: almost every review cites Jones, the astral traveler, as being underpowered. Except he can set on fire any enemy at any range which he can see, and use Church's blood magic abilities at a distance where she must do so close up. And Cole's visor highlights enemies weak spots, should you zoom in. I neither used or was aware of either ability on the first play through.

Source: Ascii Dreams

Be sure to ask for extra credit if you commented on the blog...

Source: Ascii Dreams

Just to wrench you away from Unangband for a moment: a good summary, the confession, and yet people don't understand how random numbers work. If you generate them in advance, they're still random - unless that information is leaked. And provided you don't peek.

I crafted my backpack away last night so that I only have hats left. It feels... liberating.

Source: Ascii Dreams

The results for what changes do you like in Unangband 0.6.4? Thanks to the 28 people who voted.

Improved dungeon connectivity	8 (28%)
New room types: burrows	4 (14%)
New room types: caverns	5 (17%)
New room types: polygons	5 (17%)
Familiars	5 (17%)
Offering stuff to monsters	0 (0%)
Stealing stuff from monsters	2 (7%)
Monsters surrendering	3 (10%)
Magic book reorganisation	2 (7%)
Less bugs	9 (32%)
Improved documentation	11 (39%)
Improved spell regions	3 (10%)
Sneaking	2 (7%)
Neutral monster AI	2 (7%)
Interaction with allies	4 (14%)
New spells	5 (17%)
New monsters	4 (14%)
Other	2 (7%)
Haven't had time to play	6 (21%)
Unsure; there's so much stuff	3 (10%)
Unsure; still getting a feel for things	1 (3%)

The new poll follows on from the Level 40 post I just made.

Source: Ascii Dreams

I was somewhat surprised by a recent post by LostTemplar on angband.oook.cz:

When I played UN it seemed to me that it is too hard in the beginning and way too easy in late game.

This has to be fixed immediately. I can't have players calling Unangband easy...

A big part of the problem, as Mr Templar points out, is that high level Unangband players end up with an obscene amount of hit points. This is a result of making the size stat determine hit dice, which means even a mage can have a large hit dice. I've tried to balance this by having size penalize agility if your size exceeds your strength, but since every item which adds size also adds the same amount of strength, it is easy to ignore this limitation.

If I remove the size = hit dice benefit, there is little incentive to have a high size, and the size bonus feels about right for most of the game. It's only at high levels (and high stats) where the bonuses becomes obscene.

Which leads me to conclude that I should reduce the level cap for Unangband from 50. This way, the per level bonuses for hit points can remain significant as size and constitution increase, while not having to worry so much about the results at the top end.

I'm immediately attracted to the idea of limiting player advancement to level 40. The reason is that almost all mage spells are under level 40, so I won't have to redesign to many spells to fit the lower level limit. In fact, I shouldn't have to design any*, because spell specialists can cast spells 20% higher than their level, so that they can effectively cast up to level 48 spells. Given I have a to do item to add higher levels spells which only specialists can cast, dropping the level limit to 40 is an automatic win for this reason. This should start to address some of Templar's concerns about imbalanced spells as well.

There are two downsides to this approach: tradition, and level advancement as carrot. Tradition means that long time Angband and Unangband players will wonder what is going on when they get to level 40 and no higher - which will mean that I'll get pestered with questions. Level advancement as carrot means that there'll be less short term goals available to higher level players which they can grind towards. I'm unsure whether this is a good or bad thing.

An alternative is to play with the way that hit points advance. I've done this for other stat advancement: in particular the number of spells learned by low intelligence players is capped before they get to maximum level. I could take this approach. It's very much in the spirit of AD&D second edition where you no longer got to roll hit dice after a certain level. Size contributing hit points up only until level 20 would be one such example. This would make extra size add extra hit points, but not too many extra hit points - +20 hit points per increase in size above 18/110. Constitution by way of contrast gives +50 hit points per +1 CON at level 50 for similarly high constitutions.

* Except Fireball III which is level 49.