Hellband blog

AngTd

2010-04-30T13:57:00.001-07:00

Greetings,

Not related to Hellband, I've been fiddling with a Tower Defense game based on 'Processed Tower Defense' http://ptdef.com/. I always like to take something open source and see how far I can go in giving it a console look by putting a black background and replacing images with ASCII symbols.

Sadly enough, Processed Tower Defense has flaws; you will see the critters stick slightly in the north west, but if you close the north piece of wall next to the exiting east stair case, the path detection actually fails... Too bad I have not been able to abuse this yet in the real game ;)

So, if anyone wants to play with, go ahead, download and play with it.

Clipped screenshot;

Swamp vs. Deserts

2010-02-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

after reading that there is no more auto-scum and there are no more great drops I got reminded of this little pearl written by Hajo in 2002. The pearl is a little bit hidden and only talks about OO design but really it talks about all design, so I extracted the part that struck me right between the eyes and rewrote it a little :

But in the meantime I think to get anything finished, creating perfection isn't the optimal approach.

Most other RL games are quite messy, code-wise, but they are all prosper and evolving.

Currently I'm trying to find a golden path between the desert of perfect theory and the swamps of usable reality. The swamps will in the end swallow you, but perfection can be like a desert that is very hard to cross (= takes a long time to implement properly).

Between the swamps and the desert there must be a temperate zone, which is easier to walk than the deserts and less dangerous than the swamps. Now the question is, how far should you stay from the swamps, and how deep should you travel in the desert?

This could be applied to anything in design, but specially to roguelikes. The Vanilla team is right now too much in the desert; it is a noble place to be, but us lesser players cannot always see where you're going to or have the patience to wait for the final product.

The other thing I'd like to say is dont be like the French, I will never forget working for a French company that did not like their email system, they were going to replace it. So since they were going to replace it, they cut the current email system without replacing it first. This stock quoted company went without email for 2 days (!!!) before realizing that you know, maybe they should have the replacement first... Taking out the auto scummer without first re-designing level generation is 'being French about it'. Refusing to give people a buy out button and also not redesigning shops is 'being French about it'. Refusing to give 'great drops' because long term you're going to fix item distribution is also pretty French.

Now, I've worked in a few countries since then and whaddayouknow, it's not just the French ;) If you've found a better term for this behaviour, let me know, I love and adore the French, I'm even married to one of them.

T.

Bounty!!

2010-02-15T15:28:00.000-08:00

So,

probably a first in banding ( and roguelikes ? ), I am providing bounties. Bounties are issues which have the 'Bounty' status :

http://code.google.com/p/hellband/issues/list

So far there is only 1 bounty : get big screen working.

Bounty would be for getting the windows port, using main-win-old.c, to have a resizable window that shows as much of the dungeon as the window is large. Bounty is 50 USD on paypal.

If you want to work on a bounty issue, shoot me an email first.

Cheers,

Getting close to 0.8.8

2010-02-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

The earlier mentioned 'myshkin' has not only fixed the mac build for Snow Leopard with a case sensitive file system but also is finishing up a Leprechaun Mystic, reporting all bugs and balance issues he finds.

At this point I'd like to finish all object descriptions and release 0.8.8. And of course fix any bugs that might come up.

Cheers,

I sense a minor disturbance in the force

2010-02-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

So,

Sentient weapons are in and working in svn, so are 2 'new' classes and a rewrite that deleted tons of duplicated code thanks to a hint of myshkin on oook.

Part of the cygwin build process updates a stat file with the new executable size since I dont want to inflate executable size:

01/27/2010 03:03 PM 2,002,859 hellband.exe

02/02/2010 10:18 PM 2,002,572 hellband.exe

Mission Accomplished ;)

Next..

2010-01-29T13:50:00.001-08:00

So,

in free time development I always hit at some point an assignment that I keep avoiding, which is in this case the XP weapons. So if folks are reading this blog and they want me to do XP weapons or instead fix the bug that's been driving them crazy or do the long promised bloodmages or even shadow mages or even hedge mages, let me know.

Enjoy your weekend,

Choose a destination

2010-01-27T07:06:00.001-08:00

Greetings,

demonic weapons are in, they dont get xp or powers yet, but at least warlocks no longer need chaotic weapons and they dont start bare handed any more. I've started play testing a Lilli Warlock to see whether things hold together with the new leveling rewards and recent changes. They do.

Link : http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9859

One thing I noticed with this character is that when casting 'Sleight of Hand' the phrase 'Choose a destination' stays on screen, even after teleporting. So I Control Shift F for the sentence 'Choose a desti" and lo and behold:

Find all "Choose a desti", Subfolders, Keep modified files open, Find Results 1, "Entire Solution"

C:\cygwin\hellband\src\cmd5.c(1394): msg_print("You open a dimensional gate. Choose a destination.");

C:\cygwin\hellband\src\cmd5.c(2374): msg_print("You open a dimensional gate. Choose a destination.");

C:\cygwin\hellband\src\cmd5.c(2810): msg_print("You focus your Chi. Choose a destination.");

C:\cygwin\hellband\src\cmd5.c(3473): msg_print("Choose a destination.");

C:\cygwin\hellband\src\cmd6.c(4770): msg_print("You open a dimensional gate. Choose a destination.");

Matching lines: 5 Matching files: 2 Total files searched: 72

The same exact code has been copy pasted 4 times, and, 1 of those times it was copy pasted by yours truly...

I guess my 'destination' at this point is to create a common routine and add some message flushing after the teleport is done ;)

Bleeding edge download

2010-01-21T13:17:00.001-08:00

Greetings,

for people who live on the wild side, I'm providing a 'wheneverly', which really is a 'nightly' whenever I remember to upload one ;)

Basically it is a bleeding edge binary of the Hellband game, Windows only, with all the new shiny features ( and bugs ) inherent to wheneverlies.

Link : http://download.hellband.net/hb_bleeding_edge_win.zip

Bugs, praises and philosophic discussion is always welcome. Bleeding edge has full screen and allows testing of the new patron level rewards in debug mode.

Bye bye angband look ;)

2010-01-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

So,

all bands except Un sport the stat bar on the left, no one knows why really ;) I think part of the 'uh, another band variant' syndrome is because of this unthinking assignment of 1/3rd of the screen real estate to something that really isnt that important to the player..

Anyway, Hellband has fullscreen dungeons now, screenie :

Of course, bland dungeon generation algorythms become more apparent this way, I guess I will keep stealing from Un for some time ;]

On Fury and Un

2010-01-17T18:28:00.001-08:00

Greetings,

updates to Hellband have slowed down to a more sustainable rhythm, partly because of I've been busy with competition 80 and 81. I was second in 80 until the very end and currently am on the number one spot for 81.

Fury is a fun variant for people, like me, that liked ToME when it was growing and changing every week. It ads more craziness like Jedi Knights, and does it properly. Great games can add unbalanced features without making the game easier to win. I've been kicking ass but still haven't won the game.. I will steal the exp weapons from Fury, with only minor modifications ( who doesn't hate it when the poison realm gets assigned to your kick ass weapon.. ) 7/10 for Fury, had he not stopped development on it, it would be 9/10.

Un has been surprisingly good. I remember previous attempts with distaste and a sense of 'I want my time back'. The idea to 'find' notes all over the towns and dungeons is great, although I wish I'd actually find the actual note on the floor so that I could carry it and re-read it. I play so fast in town that the note is gone before I realize it is a note. Anyway, notes -> great idea, something to remember for Hellband. The other thing is that Un has done away with the left hand side stats part of the screen and it looks beautiful, which motivates me even more to do the same for the 0.8.8 release.

Still, Un remains bizarre. ~~Apparently NO_TELEPORT is an upside when the item is uncursed.. Notice that others disagree :~~

~~q_ptr->art_flags3 |= TR3_NO_TELE; /* How's that for a downside? */~~

~~This code comes from Zangband where Stormbringer was deemed too powerful and got balanced by giving this flag, in Unangband it would be considered more powerful..~~
See comments. Still, point remains that every ego item I wear I now need to read a scroll of Phase Door or read spoilers to find out what the second ego item is that might have NO_TELE.

Still, I enjoyed the dungeons very much and the spells of competition 81 fit well together and Un gets a solid 7/10. Andrew is too much strolling from the beaten path and expects the player to either read change logs or read his mind ;)

And I have also still been coding in Hellband, current progress;

* No more warnings under Cygwin

* No more warnings under MSVC

* Demon Patrons are much revamped and as functional as before, still want to add more new stuff

Servants

2010-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

Patron rewards are pretty much on track to be finished this week. All the changes I proposed are in except for Demonic and Undead Servants.

Servants as hinted to in my previous post will be based on player ghosts. Basically there is space reserved in Hellband for 800 monsters, but only 697 are used, so there can be 102 servants and 1 player ghost at the time of writing. Obviously Servants will need to be stored in the savegame, since they are different from game to game. I’ve cloned the player ghost code for this purpose which violates one of my personal and corporate coding rules : no copy-pasting.. I might still re-visit this and merge player ghost and Servant code at a later point.

I’ve also checked the xp gaining weapons in Furyband and I think importing them into the Hellband codebase should be a fairly straight exercise. I will write up some design document before starting coding for player feedback.

Curse Weapon

2010-01-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

So,

after reading this , it confirmed my thoughts about curse weapon: it can make you quit the game in disgust..

As I am reworking patron rewards, I've upgraded curse weapon so that the concentration of destructive forces actually give resistances/immunities.


a) The Long Sword 'Ringil' (4d5) (-1,-2) (+10 speed) {cursed}
    Heavily cursed.
    +10 speed.
    Slays evil creatures, undead, trolls.
    *Slays* demons.
    Branded with frost.
    Provides resistance to cold, fear, light.
    Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
    Blessed by the gods.  Slows your metabolism.  Speeds regeneration.
    Prevents paralysis.  Grants the ability to see invisible things.

This is the new cursed Ringil for 0.8.8 :
The destroyed damage dice might still need addressing ;]


Examining a Long Sword (Shattered) (0d0) (-7,-5) [-3] {cursed}...
9:27 AM
15th Sep       This sword is commonly found all over Europe, it's long and
<DEBUG MODE>   has a cruciform hilt. All parts of the sword are used for
LEVEL     50   offensive purposes, including the pommel and crossguard.
Exp ********
AU  12345678   It weights 13.0 lb
|}=="*(()]]]   It does extra damage from frost.
str!    40+    It poisons your foes.
INT:    40+    It drains life from your foes.
WIS:    40+    It is very sharp and can cut your foes.
DEX:    40+    It provides immunity to cold.
CON:    40+    It provides resistance to life draining.
CHA:    40+    It provides resistance to nether.
              It provides resistance to disenchantment.
Cur AC   293   It renders you incorporeal.
Max HP   878   It slows your metabolism.
Cur HP   847   It is cursed.
Max SP   563
Cur SP   563   [Press any key to continue]

In the end, this cursed ringil gives on average only half the damage output of the old ringil, but gives immunity to cold, some high resists and ( this happens 1 in 3 ) constants wraith mode. Ringil is now at least a good swap weapon.

Thoughts are welcome, I do think I will make the damage dice reduction less drastic, maybe keep 1/3 of the dice + 1, so 4d5 becomes 2d2 instead of 0d0.

T.

Demonic Patrons

2010-01-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

So, as discussed on oook, I've been wanting to separate chaos patrons from infernal patrons. Only Chaos Knights and maybe Devil Spawns would have chaos patrons everybody else would have Demonic Patrons. Demonic Patrons will be close to Chaos ones ( different names, stats and preferences of course ), but they dont do morphing of the player, they might be a little less chaotic as well.

One thing I want to remove is pointless rewards. I really hate getting 'REW_HEAL_FULL' when my health is full and my stats are at max.. Or getting REW_EXP when I just turned level 50... So more checks need to be coded and if the reward is pointless, a different reward should be chosen.

Another thing I want to avoid with Patrons is that they mess up awesome characters. POLY_SELF with its chances of getting 2500 damage is not fun. CURSE_WEAPON and CURSE_ARMOR which blast items into something terrible and useless is not fun, especially once the player starts finding awesome artefacts..

Something I want to consider adding is preferences of Patrons for certain classes/races, so that conservative players can game the chances of getting punishments vs rewards. Also, players should be able to choose their own Patron unless of course if you're a DevilSpawn ;)

I've categorized current Chaos Patron rewards & punishments:

* Give Servants ( only Demonic and Undead, needs Fallen Angels and Devils for Demonic )
* Dispelling ( Banishment, Dispel, Mass Banishment, I think the first 2 should destroy rather than banish, giving the loot to the player )
* Gifts ( Objects , Stats, Experience )
* Theft ( Stats, Experience, Hitpoint )
* Give Opponents ( Locals and OOD's only for now, I'm thinking of more tailored results )
* TY_CURSE, everyone likes the TY_CURSE ;)
* Morphing ( wounds, race , mutations )

Changes planned :

+ I like the servant idea a lot, but not the way it is now, I am definitely planning to take the Player Ghost code and make custom made servants. Because the levels in Dis are shielded, no one shows up till level 30 when servants are given.

+ Dispelling I like, but objects should be dropped, the odds are low of this happening anyway, the player should experience 'w000000t!' or something.

+ Gifts ( yes, and none of that 'good object drop' stuff ! )

+ Theft ( I dont mind extra stat stealing, in fact I dont mind even some permanent stat damaging, especially since alchemy exists in hellband, so the player has access to more stat potions at some point ).

+ Give opponents is ok, I think there should be way more opponents though, maybe just blast away a large circle around the player and put tons of monsters with 1 or 2 turns of confusion ;] Also, in shielded levels, sometimes nobody shows up, that has to be fixed

+ TY_CURSE is so classic, I cant touch it.. Maybe check on cyberdemons though, not sure that part of the code still works in Hell. There were no cyber demons in Dante's work that I can recall.

+ And of course, last but not least, add support for reward testing in debug mode.

I need some fresh ideas on punishments for the character that do not kill the character but are still pretty damn annoying and more importantly allow the character to recover. To start off I am pretty open to dungeon/recalling/monster modifications. I'm pretty confident that I can code staircases that run away from the player, burn all scrolls of recall in inventory, replace all monsters on the dungeon with something ten levels OOD. Force a scroll of Descent on the player etc etc.

Your thoughts and ideas are most welcome.

For Linux Players

2010-01-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

for new players on linux using the curses/gcu version, there is a trick needed to make Control S ( save ) and Control Q ( save and quit ) work.

As per the words of Pete Mack :

$ stty raw

before running the program

and
$stty sane at the end.

This should fix any Controls S/Q problems that you might encounter. Apparently Vanilla has this solved in their GCU build, I will find their solution and implement it in Hellband as well.

Smokin' !!

2010-01-04T19:57:00.001-08:00

Current changes:

* Screenshots can now be in html or forum code, based on Vanilla

* Viewable items sub screen, sorted by price in shop

* Resistance to blindness as a temporary effect

* Show negative temporary effects in 'C'haracter overview

For the wishlist of 0.8.8 there is only one item left which is already in progress : nicer item description.

Any ideas, concepts or musings about the item overview screen are very welcome.

New Mac version

2010-01-03T13:48:00.001-08:00

Changes:

* player dumps and screenshots are now in a new folder called 'dump'

* on Mac OS X, this folder is now created and its in ~/Applications/angband/Hellband087/dump

* no need to log in with root ;)

* does not crash with a mysterious 'bus' error ;)

Now, I still need to sync back to svn and see if I broke Windows or not, probably not ;)

Band debugging of Mac

2010-01-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

As we all know,

There are three kinds of developers, the kind that thinks debugging is for wusses, the kind that thinks graphical debugging is for wusses and finally there are productive developers ;)

For Mac :

* create your project with all your source code

* compile your project with debugging support, use the -ggdb compile option, it provides more information than -g

* Run your app

* Start xcode, open your project, click 'Run' , attach to process, choose your *band

* At this point you are debugging your game, click continue to keep playing and start putting breakpoints where you have problems

Observations:

* Sometimes the process is finicky, keep trying ;)

* Sometimes breakpoint de-activate themselves, when clicking a breakpoint, it should turn dark blue, not light blue or orange.

Cheers,

Mac Version, Hallelujah!

2009-12-31T15:53:00.000-08:00

Yes!,

I finally managed to compile and package the band from Hell ;)

For your downloading pleasure : Hellband-0.8.7-osx.dmg

Thanks to all those Mac experts in general and Pete Mack in specific!

Mac : almost there

2009-12-30T10:29:00.000-08:00

So,

Successes thus far:

Hellband compiles on Snow Leopard, God bless Pete Mack
Hellband.app can start, initialize, create character and save
Hellband.dmg works fine now

It however does not find the /save directory to load an existing character!!

Once that is fixed, I will release Hellband for Mac as well.

Hello item descriptions, good bye katana's

2009-12-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

So,

item descriptions..

Based on an email someone sent to me years ago I did most of the item descriptions in ToME.

Now, having lost that email and armed with wikipedia and google I am doing item descriptions again ;)

So far only mushrooms have been impacted sideways by this activity, good mushrooms got better, bad mushrooms got worse. And I got rid of Katana's, I doubt any were to be found in the late Middle Ages in Italy. I also changed bastard sword into Gladius since bastard sword really is the same as long sword. Even a broadsword is really a longsword..

Tulwars ( curved blades from India ) pose an interesting question, there are over a dozen Indian blades with an interesting story and unique qualities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talwar#See_also

But will I include them in Hellband ? No.. Because people already consider Hellband over the edge and at least the weapons keep things familiar. Still, its a shame. Now kids out there think that bastard swords, broadswords, long swords and "2 handed" swords are different things.

Release HellBand 0.8.7

2009-12-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

Hi,

this is the official release of Hellband 0.8.7, since its been a while I've first pre-released it and it seems to work fine. The most important fix here is stability, there should be no more crash bugs. I've been flooding levels with monsters and items in wizard mode and hellband is now responding properly to abuse.

Links :

Download : http://hellband.net/downloads.html

Bugs: http://code.google.com/p/hellband/issues/list

OMG I want to subcribe to a zombie list : http://groups.google.com/group/hellband/topics

*Creatures

- 0.8.7 Quite a few creatures had double genus flags, some even

contradictory ones

- 0.8.7 Uniques that only drop gold drop much more gold now

- 0.8.7 Added Babylonians on level 24 to speed up level generation,

Nimrod was feeling lonely

*Story

- 0.8.7 Story added for the Heretics level

- 0.8.7 Story added for the Satan level

- 0.8.7 Story added for the first pos Dis level

*Equipment

- 0.8.7 Added the infamous white banner of hell, when carrying you

should experience 'hmm','cool!','wot?','f!!','oh','heh'

*Character Building

- 0.8.7 Restarting character creation allows you to re-choose stats

- 0.8.7 Mindcrafters can now be generated again, *blush*

- 0.8.7 The temple can now remove all your corruptions for 1.500.000

gold

- 0.8.7 Werewolves did not get random names

- 0.8.7 Skeletons no longer have the Second Sigh but Second Sight

now ;)

- 0.8.7 Profile file names are now based on the safe name instead of

hard core player name

- 0.8.7 Potential crash bug found and removed for custom names

- 0.8.7 Player names can now be up to 40 characters because of the

Italian names

- 0.8.7 Italian name generator added ( male and female )

- 0.8.7 Fearless and coward mutations could not be gotten, they were

their own opposite

- 0.8.7 Removed reference to 'Draconian', it should all mention

Draco now

- 0.8.7 Minor background spelling mistakes and punctuation fixed

- 0.8.7 Random characters work now

- 0.8.7 Fixed missing space in Ogre descendant description

*Wizard Commands

- 0.8.7 ']' now induces amnesia so I can test graphic effects with

telepathy and squelching better

*UI

- 0.8.7 Editing colors now shows the colors against the 3

differently lit dungeon floors, so the effect can be

measured

- 0.8.7 Added support for 32px tile set and made it the default in

fact

- 0.8.7 Since nothing except floor/walls/doors is done, support for

transparent ASCII symbolds is coded for windows

- 0.8.7 casting *id* now only shows items that have not been *id*'d

yet

- 0.8.7 casting id now only shows items that have not been id'd yet

- 0.8.7 Picking up from the floor now presents a list if more than 1

item is on the floor

- 0.8.7 Ring choosing now asks left or right while showing the rings

in those locations

- 0.8.7 Dragon Armor no longer gets squelched

- 0.8.7 Squelch no longer squelches boots of speed, even if set at

'keep artefact only'

- 0.8.7 Squelch will not squelch terrible artefacts.

- 0.8.7 Native Mac support for intel macs <- broken, sorry

*Help Files

- 0.8.7 Alchemy command key is now integrated into interactive help

* Stuff

- 0.8.7 Chests are now much more interesting like in cool variants

- 0.8.7 Weapons of KILL_ANGEL now protect the player from Lucifers'

curse

*Stores

- 0.8.7 Black Markets have deeper items once you start to get over

character level 25

*Internals

- 0.8.7 Remove compile option ALLOW_EASY_DISARM and

ALLOW_EASY_DISARM, why would you not want it ??

- 0.8.7 Fixed evil wand stacking 'problem'

- 0.8.7 level creation time has decreased MUCH both on count of

object generation and monster generation being more stable

- 0.8.7 Object dropping, stacking and compacting robustified, lots

of arrows should no longer crash the game

- 0.8.7 store item maintenance is now centralize instead of copy

pasted in 4 locations

- 0.8.7 makefile.WHICH now has proper code

- 0.8.7 Stat adjustment tables are merged into 1 2D matrix, cleaning

up 900 lines of code

- 0.8.7 Fixed warlock realm choice

Even more new life

2009-12-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

So,

Dean Anderson returned and I got motivated to release a new version of Hellband : 0.8.7.

You can find it here : http://download.hellband.net/

evil_hellband087.zip contains some extra dll's that you should not need.

I am in the process of adding 32 pixels graphics for buzkill since he probably put the most effort in hellband outside of Dean and myself.

Screenshot ( yes , transparent ASCII symbols ).

I just need to work out how to properly change the color value of the ASCII values depending on torch_light / remembered light / perma light. Then I can release again.

New life for hellband

2009-09-14T10:30:00.001-07:00

So,

hellband is moving along in a steady rhythm.
If you visit hellband.net on a good day, you might actually get through the birth screens and walk around in the town.

Town gen is completed, I am now working on monster generation.
Monster generation is intricately linked with monster updates, which is a huge part of the game..
I want to do this in chunks, and that chunk might be too large ;\

I like how google code accepts code reviews now on change sets, comments are welcome.

T.

And then, there was another distraction

2008-09-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

So,

hellband.net, it's up, I bought it, I like the javascript coding.
Of course I havent gotten past the birth screens yet, I can spend amazing of times polishing those screens and still end with something only remotely acceptable ;)

Have changed 'Saving Throw' to 'Occlusion' after using Visual Thesaurus. After adding it to the game and deciding on racial/class/birthsign bonuses the name started to ring a bell. Seems Ms Rowling also likes thesauruses. She called it Occlumency. Occlusion means 'closure or blockage', which I got to via Jam which I got through 'block'.

Added alchemy and appraising as a skill.

T.

Dungeon Books of Tarot Magic Done

2006-11-28T06:12:00.000-08:00

Dungeon books of Tarot Magic are in now,
hellband wont compile any more, but I am guessing by the week-end that it should.
This should by the way wrap up this release, I will do the Chaos Knight for another time since I have extensive plans ( again ) for this class.

{ 15, 15, 80, 20, "Ink Blot", "Summons a bizarre creature to help you.",},
{ 24, 24, 70, 25, "The Star", "Heals 150 damage and completely stops bleeding or stunning.",},
{ 26, 26, 70, 30, "Fortitude", "Blesses and also hastes you for a short while.",},
{ 30, 30, 70, 35, "The Emperor", "Makes a nearby monster friendly.",},
{ 35, 70, 80, 100, "Branding of the Minchiate","Brands your weapon with fire, cold and electricity",},
{ 40, 100, 90, 250, "Tarot Ascension", "Attunes you with the planes, altering your body.",},
{ 42, 50, 50, 75, "Death", "Banishes all nearby living creatures.",},
{ 45, 100, 90, 200, "The Devil", "Summons devils to help you.",},

{ 30, 30, 60, 50, "Read The Lay", "Detects secret doors, stairs, traps, treasure, objects and monsters (including invisible ones).",},
{ 35, 50, 90, 100, "The Magician", "Fully identifies an item.",},
{ 36, 80, 80, 150, "Patter", "Confuse surrounding monsters.",},
{ 39, 80, 80, 150, "The Tower", "Surrounding monsters get hit with fire and lightning. Walls will crumble.",},
{ 42, 100, 80, 200, "Lay of The Celtic Cross", "Summons multiple monsters to help you",},
{ 47, 100, 80, 150, "Ten of Pentacles", "Summons Higher Demons to help you.",},
{ 48, 100, 80, 200, "The Traitor", "Summons Fallen Angels.",},
{ 49, 100, 80, 220, "Justice", "Banishes all evil, undead, demons, devils and fallen angels.",},

Tarot Magic!

2006-11-28T06:01:00.000-08:00

So, I finally got fed up with the Planar Magic, which really didnt fit too well for me, and I modified it to Tarot Magic, mostly renaming spells and changing them to fit the new descriptions.

First 2 books :

/*Tarot*/
{
{ 1, 1, 50, 3, "Shift", "Teleports you to a random nearby location.",},
{ 3, 3, 50, 4, "The Challenge", "Harms a nearby monster with psychic energy.",},
{ 5, 5, 75, 8, "Hopes & Fears", "Invokes a random (but usually beneficial) effect from a Tarot card.",},
{ 6, 6, 80, 8, "Restack", "Resets the depth that you will go to with Recall.",},
{ 7, 7, 40, 4, "Fool's Journey", "Teleports you to a random location on the level.",},
{ 9, 9, 60, 6, "Sleight of Hand " "Teleports you to a nearby location that you specify.",},
{ 14, 12, 60, 6, "The High Priestess", "Gives you temporary ESP.",},
{ 17, 15, 60, 5, "The Chariot", "Teleports a creature to a random place on the level.",},

{ 20, 20, 80, 8, "The Wheel of Fortune", "Teleports a nearby object to your hand.",},
{ 23, 5, 50, 5, "Temperance", "(nature)Gives you a temporary resistance to cold, fire and electricity.",},
{ 28, 24, 60, 8, "King of Swords", "Creates a magical beast to serve you.",},
{ 30, 10, 80, 40, "The Lover", "Makes a nearby human friendly.",},
{ 33, 28, 80, 12, "Elements of The Minchiate","Summons a fire elemental to help you",},
{ 35, 30, 70, 10, "The Hermit", "Teleports you off the level you are on, onto either the one above or the one below.",},
{ 40, 35, 80, 15, "Search for the Self", "Teleports you back to the town, or - if you are in the town - down to the deepest dungeon level that you have yet visited.",},
{ 42, 40, 70, 12, "Shuffle", "Teleports all nearby monsters to elsewhere on the level.",},

New class/realm.magic/spells system.

2006-11-28T05:39:00.000-08:00

HI,

This is how spells will be defined :

spell_type spells[MAX_REALM][32] =
{
   /*Miracles */
   {/* Level , Mana, Fail, Exp for first time, spellname, spoiler*/
   { 1, 1, 30, 4,      "Detect Evil",                  "Detects all evil creatures that are nearby.",},  
   { 3, 2, 35, 4,      "Cure Light Wounds",            "Cures you of 2d10 damage, and reduces bleeding.",},
   { 4, 3, 35, 4,      "Bless",                        "Blesses you, giving you a +5 bonus to armour class and a +10 bonus to hit.",},
   { 5, 5, 35, 4,      "Remove Fear",                  "Stops you from being afraid.  ",},
   { 7, 7, 35, 4,      "Call Light",                   "Lights the area that you are in with a permanent light - possibly damaging some creatures",},
   { 9, 8, 40, 4,      "Detect Traps and Secret Doors" "Finds all traps, stairs and secret doors in your surrounding area.",},
   { 12, 12, 40, 3,    "Cure Medium Wounds",           "Cures you of 4d10 damage, and reduces bleeding.",},
   { 15, 14, 45, 3,    "Satisfy Hunger",               "Removes all hunger, leaving you comfortably full.",},

etc...

This is how class related spell casting will be defined, with 'the mage' as the gold standard.

class_magic realms_info[] = {
   /*Class Name        Book                Xtra    Stat,    Type,    Level,    Encumbrance,  MIRACLES    SORCERY NATURE    CHAOS    DEATH   TAROT   CHARMS  SOMATIC DEMONIC*/
   /*Warrior     */{    0,                  0,     A_STR,    0,        99,        0,         { NO,        NO,       NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,        },},
   /*Mage        */{    TV_SORCERY_BOOK,    0,     A_INT,    0,        1,        300,        { SAME,      SAME,     SAME,   SAME,   SAME,   SAME,   SAME,   SAME,   SAME,    },},
   /*Priest      */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_WIS,    1,        1,        350,        { SUPER,     WORSE,    SAME,   WORSE,  SUPER,  WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  POOR,    },},
   /*Rogue       */{    TV_SORCERY_BOOK,    0,     A_INT,    0,        5,        350,        { POOR,      SAME,     POOR,   SAME,   BETTER, SAME,   BETTER, WORSE,  WORSE,    },},
   /*Ranger      */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_INT,    0,        3,        400,        { NO,        NO,       BETTER, WORSE,  POOR,   WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  NO,        },},
   /*Paladin     */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_WIS,    1,        1,        400,        { BETTER,    NO,       NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,        },},
   /*Warrior-Mage*/{    TV_SORCERY_BOOK,    0,     A_INT,    0,        1,        350,        { WORSE,     WORSE,    WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  SUPER,  WORSE,  WORSE,  },},
   /*Hell Knight */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_INT,    1,        2,        400,        { NO,        NO,       NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     BETTER, },},
   /*Mystic      */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_WIS,    0,        1,        300,        { NO,        NO,       NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     SUPER,  NO,        },},
   /*Mindcrafter */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_WIS,    0,        99,        300,       { NO,        NO,       NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,        },},
   /*High Mage   */{    TV_SORCERY_BOOK,    0,     A_INT,    0,        1,        300,        { BETTER,    BETTER,   BETTER, BETTER, BETTER, BETTER, BETTER, BETTER, BETTER, },},
   /*Druid       */{    TV_MIRACLES_BOOK,   0,     A_WIS,    1,        1,        350,        { NO,        NO,       SUPER,  NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,     NO,        },},
   /*Warlock     */{    TV_SORCERY_BOOK,    0,     A_INT,    0,        1,        300,        { WORSE,     WORSE,    WORSE,  BETTER, WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  WORSE,  BETTER, },},
};

I am planning on
 - Deep objects that can increase your skill-level ( Sorcerous Orb, etc ) in 1 realm , potentially more but unlikely
 - A race matrix that can increase or decrease your skill level per realm ( ogre descendant should be good with death )
 - Catalogue all spells and allow races / birthsigns maybe even classes to be better in a specific set of spells
   ( example : catalog all spells : violet/non-violent and allow Palladins/Hell Knights to be be more proficient with the violent ones )
   ( example : catalog all spells with a GF_FLAG, then let kobolds be more proficient with spells that have GF_POISON ( poison cloud etc. )

I have also completely revamped corruptions into something more structured so I can more easily get it into my T-Module :

corruption_type corruptions[COUNT_CORRUPTIONS]={
   /*Byte   Flag                Gain message                                               Odds  Loose Message                                             Description */
   { 1,     COR1_SPIT_ACID,     "You gain the ability to spit acid.",                        4,"You lose the ability to spit acid.",                       " You can spit acid (dam lvl).",                           },
   { 1,     COR1_BR_FIRE,        "You gain the ability to breathe fire.",                    3,"You lose the ability to breathe fire.",                    " You can breathe fire (dam lvl * 2).",                    },
   { 1,     COR1_HYPN_GAZE,    "Your eyes look mesmerizing...",                            2,"Your eyes look uninteresting.",                            " Your gaze is hypnotic.",                                 },
   { 1,     COR1_TELEKINES,    "You gain the ability to move objects telekinetically.",    2,"You lose the ability to move objects telekinetically.",    " You are telekinetic.",                                   },

Fourth book is in svn

2006-11-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

Yeeha,

fourth book is in, only Malphas' gift needs coding,
coolest spell of the entire game for now : Behemoth's Call.

Spells in :

book 4 [ Lucifer's Spurn ] ( very debatable ]
1 Orb of Impending Doom
2 Temperance
3 True Warding
4 Word of Destruction
5 Gift of Malphas ( Adding weapon flags, Malphas being a friend of artificers ]
6 Pernicious Trade
6 Kiss of Lillith
7 Wish of Behemoth
8 Chaos Rift

3rd book is done

2006-11-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

book 3 [Book of the Grigori ]
1 Araqiel's Wrath ( Earthquake )
2 Kokabiel's Call ( Summon Spirits, lots of them )
3 Baraquiel's Guile (detect enchantment on entire level of excellents and specials)
4 Sariel's Ire ( berserk , prayer , heroism, speed, no magic ( which implies 95% prot mag. att )
5 Azazel's Rule ( Charm goats ;)
6 Danel's Deluge ( Hard Core Light Damage )
7 Amaros' Grief ( Banish Angels and Demons )
8 Teachings of Kasyade ( enlightenment potion effect + ESP demons and spirits if possible )

Demonic Magic is on its way

2006-11-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

Spells done so far :

book 1 [Lesser pacts]( working title , debatable )

1 Unholy Strength ( Heroism , doing 5 hp damage per 10 levels )
2 Sense Evil
3 Scorch
4 Perilous Shadows
5 Teleport
6 Disintegrate
7 Demonic Sigil
8 Hecate's Radiance ( weak light damage + weak charm/confuse/fear spell )

book 2 [ Ghastly Endeavours ] debatable

1 Abaddon's Rage ( Berserk + Prayer )
2 Mind Leech
3 Blood Leech
4 Glyph of Warding
5 Protection from Evil
6 Summon demons
7 Summon the Fallen
8 Balm of the Cocytus

Oddly enough SUMMON_FALLEN_ANGEL is not yet implemented , so so far only devils get summoned with 'summon the Fallen'

T.

Squelcher needed

2006-11-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

So,

It has been joyfull to play this one :
http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=6240

A Gipsy(sp?) thief born under Plutus which means instant pseudo id at birth, id at level 15 , *id* at level 30. I might decrease *id* at level 25 because really that's about when *id* is needed. The only thing hampering my quick playing was the sorting of the trash. So I could really use an automatizer in Hellband now. Mostly based on EyAngband and I will look at the one of NPP which seems interesting as well, thanks to Pete M for pointing that way.

Cheers,
T.

Still working

2006-11-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

Hmm, continuous updates are not my strongest point,
yet another blog doomed to die ;)

Anyway, races and classes are complete. Just fixing up some stuff, which makes me more stuff that needs fixin' etc. etc.

But if you want to playtest and you have a compiler and svn, go ahead and play around, it should be funner if you like Hellband before.

Right now I am re-orging the 'C' character screen, cramming a bit more information on that screen so that you need to press one 'h' less and you still get to see a new line, the most coveted 'Birth Sign' line ;) If this variant ever does get lift off, then lots of people should play with either Draco or Plutus or even Morui.

I might have overdone the hitpoint thing though, Titan descendant Warriors born under Draco are nigh unkillable ....

T.

No bloggin doesnt mean no work

2006-10-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Andrew Doull,

god bless the guy, has revamped the windows code of Hellband so that it can be compiled from windows and linux. Myself I copied a few lines of code so that I can even cross compile from my Mac ( which starts be horribly outdated, there are too many libraries that are not up to date ... )

The first 26 levels are now named, so you will not see 'level 7' any more but you will see 2nd Circle : Lovers. I have been testing quite a bit and it seems good to go. I also fixed the help system and considering what will be the next stuff to do.

I have also been working on a hellband module for ToME 3.0.0, but it seems to be a long haul project, even with me being 'on vacation' till at least january...

SO that's it for today,
T.

Back from holidays

2006-09-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Man,

the Gaspesie in the north of Quebec ( Canada ) is a nice place,
I hope to add some new demons this evening in order to pick up pace again.

T.

Background stories

2006-08-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

In close cooperation with Ms. Konijn I have worked on some of the 'cutscenes' which just display some text.

Intro at birth :

Friend,

It is with great urgency that I write you this letter. Christiaan's Quest
for the Celestial City has abruptly ended in Volterra, Italy. His letters
mentioned a magical towncenter in the heart of Volterra. Only accessible
at 6 minutes past 7 muttering the words "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi chi'
intrate".

Since his disappearance our mystics have collapsed into a catatonic state
and our medium's fail to reach the recently deceased. We fear the Grim
Reaper is playing games with us. At the same time, someone has started to
hunt down all our agents. The network is no longer safe.

The Queen herself is very concerned over this matter and wishes someone
to get to the bottom of this. Your barely existing connections with the
League and your interesting background make you a perfect fit for a trip
to Volterra. With this letter I have added a copy of Dante Alighieri's
'Divine Comedy'. It is annotated by Christiaan and our most competent
exorcists. May the Good Lord bless you and your travels.

Prospero

Text when entering dungeon

A foul stench wafts into your nose, turning your stomach upside down.
You can barely avoid to throw up and take some time to get back in control.
Suddenly you hear horrible faraway cries and you start to realize that you
are not just descending into the sewers but found the entry to the lower
levels of Hell.

The notes of Christiaan mention that most souls wandering here are sinners
that have not yet been judged by Minos. They can sense outsiders and will
be driven to destroy you.

A special side note mentions Demonic Scribes. They appear to be harmless
on duty, but are quite nasty in their free time! Many an adventurer met
their end at their hands.

Yesss !

2006-08-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

Now compiling gives 0 warnings, none, zero, nada, zilch.
The green side in me ( http://www.true-colors.com/true_colors_theory.html ) gets a complete kick out of that. Final circle is DONE, only need to create an entry for Satan and force levels after Dis to not generate citizens from pre-Dis.

Then some more polishing and this game is ready for an alpha release ;)

Enjoy the week-end,
T.

Progress

2006-08-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

So,

- written a script to facilitate updating svn, works like a charm
- High Mages now get first 2 town books
- Anything with an armor class bomus can now be enchant armored
- All thieves are done ( suggestion welcome )
- Evil Counselors are done ( suggestions welcome )

Cheers,
T.

Note to self : fix 'Thou art growing arrogant, mortal'

2006-08-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hmm,

seems the summoned monster can be unique, so I am fighting Friar Gomita three times ;)
Fortunately he drops great items.

T.

Implicit flag dependancies

2006-08-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

So,

on rgrd I found out that DROP_GREAT without DROP_GOOD doesnt make a lot of sense , and that UNIQUE's really should have FORCE_MAX_HP, so I added this rule to init.c :

/* Process 'F' for "Basic Flags" (multiple lines) */
if (buf[0] == 'F')
{

/* Minor hack, DROP_GREAT is useless without DROP_GOOD */
/* Instead of modifying the whole codebase, I will just force the */
/* DROP_GOOD flag if I encounter the DROP_GREAT flag */
if (r_ptr->flags1 & (RF1_DROP_GREAT))
{
r_ptr->flags1 |= RF1_DROP_GOOD;
}

/* Minor hack, RF1_UNIQUE should be accomapnied by RF1_FORCE_MAXHP */
/* Instead of modifying the r_info now, I will just force the */
/* RF1_FORCE_MAXHP flag if I encounter the RF1_UNIQUE flag */
if (r_ptr->flags1 & (RF1_UNIQUE))
{
r_ptr->flags1 |= RF1_FORCE_MAXHP;
}

/* Next... */
continue;
}

Cheers,
T.

Play Legerdemain once !! Or twice

2006-08-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

So,

I found another timesink, http://roguelikefiction.com/ .
This stuff seems really good, I sadly enough was not able to reach an inn and feel
reluctant to start all over again.

T.

The hook

2006-08-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

One thing Hellband was missing acutely was a hook, why the hell would a Nibelung Druid want to venture in Dis ?? Should I write a hook for each class/race combination ? My solution, lame but sufficient is that the mighty @ is actually part of the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, lead by Prospero at the very beginning of the 17th Century.

Something seems amiss in Inferno. There are no more dead people arriving in Inferno and the Heavenly forces seem in denial. You have been selected to find out what is going on in Dis and put things back to normal.

Surely, the League can contain any class/race combination ;)

T.

Viva source repositories!

2006-08-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Man,

I just lost cave.c and nothing wanted to compile, I simply downloaded the file again from SVN and all was well. Phew !!

Hah. A site

2006-08-07T17:19:00.000-07:00

I shamelessly copied the site of Guild ( http://www.guildgame.com/index.htm ) and modified it for Hellband and set it up here : http://hellband.googlepages.com/index.html.

It looks good, I might try to force a large font though.

T.

Google code hosting

2006-08-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

The idea of Google is that if they host code, they do just that.

You need to set up your site with googlepages, your blog with blogger, your group with googlegroups. So I created a special user for that purpose ( Hellband ) since I want to keep those 2 Google activities separated. I even downloaded Camino ( a Mac Browser ) that I will only use for Hellband things.

T.

Hellband blog

AngTd

Swamp vs. Deserts

Bounty!!

Getting close to 0.8.8

I sense a minor disturbance in the force

Next..

Choose a destination

Bleeding edge download

Bye bye angband look ;)

On Fury and Un

Servants

*Curse Weapon*

Demonic Patrons

For Linux Players

Smokin' !!

New Mac version

Band debugging of Mac

Mac Version, Hallelujah!

Mac : almost there

Hello item descriptions, good bye katana's

Release HellBand 0.8.7

Even more new life

New life for hellband

And then, there was another distraction

Dungeon Books of Tarot Magic Done

Tarot Magic!

New class/realm.magic/spells system.

Fourth book is in svn

3rd book is done

Demonic Magic is on its way

Squelcher needed

Still working

No bloggin doesnt mean no work

Back from holidays

Background stories

Yesss !

Progress

Note to self : fix 'Thou art growing arrogant, mortal'

Implicit flag dependancies

Play Legerdemain once !! Or twice

The hook

Viva source repositories!

Hah. A site

Google code hosting

Curse Weapon